This site recently has drifted nearly into all climate news, all the time. The skittling drumbeat of uplifting reports on governments and industry, enthusiastically or otherwise, adopting greener technologies, the heavier bass countertempo of weather and climate extremes, struggling wildlife, and relentless confirmation that climate change is real and our fault and worsening…that’s a news budget in itself.

Today’s top climate news is bad. Reports in the PNAS from researchers at the Carnegie Institution, Australia’s lead science agency the CSRIO, British Antarctic Survey, and elsewhere augment with harsh data previous signs that CO2 levels are surging. An unanticipated acceleration now clearly apparent started in about the year 2000. Big reasons: More power hence CO2 is coming from coal; perhaps even worse, oceans and other natural systems are not raising their absorption of the effluent proportionately. The Southern Ocean’s ability to take up CO2, it reports, is saturated! While the established industrial powers have woefully missed goals of the Kyoto Protocol, the impressive development of industry in China and India are big reasons for the rise in CO2 output — a partial vindication, perhaps, of the refusal of both Bush administration’s to get on board with Kyoto without some demands on those giant nations. It is difficult to be wrong about everything.

Stories tend to be dramatic and somber simultaneously. The lede themes are varied in detail, but tend toward urgency.

The AP’s Randolph E. Schmid in his lede notes in his lede that the “alarming new study” comes just days after a Nobel Peace Prize rewarded those who study (IPCC) and who advocate rational response (Al Gore). At Australia’s The Age, Chee Chee Leung puts “losing the race” up high. At The Guardian (UK) David Adam quotes the reports up top that global warming will be “stronger than expected and sooner than expected” ; The Denver Post’s Katy Human reports the numbers are “dwarfing worst-case predictions” ;

The Washington Post’s Doug Struck stirs the new report into a broader roundup of data, and declared that scientists are “drastically speeding up the timetable for global warming..” ;

More Stories:

Toronto Globe and Mail Martin Mittelstaedt stresses the big surprise is a “clog” in natural CO2 sinks; Bloomberg Alex Morales uses a different verb, noting that CO2 is “collecting” faster in the air – nicely connoting the dump that the atmosphere has become; Sci. Am. David Biello says this means the problem is even more difficult than had been thought;

Grist for the Mill:

Brit. Ant. Survey Press Release; Carnegie Inst. Press Release (via EurekAlert) ;

Global Carbon Project with links to PNAS Early Edition and full text of paper, to powerpoint presentations, and to additional press releases.

Pic, from CSIRO, hi res.

-CP

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 10:40 am and is filed under Environment & Energy Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.