CO2 Emissions in 2010 Show Biggest Increase Ever Recorded

Global carbon emissions soared 5.9 percent in 2010, the largest increase ever recorded, according to the Global Carbon Project, an international collaboration of scientists that tracks carbon emissions. The increase comes after a short-lived decline in emissions in 2008 and 2009 and is a sign that global CO2 emissions are once again on the rise as world economies bounce back from recession. The overall jump of more than 500,000 million tons of CO2 emissions from 2009 to 2010 was likely the largest absolute increase since the Industrial Revolution, according to the Global Carbon Project. Emissions in China, the world’s largest source of CO2 releases, rose by 10.4 percent to 2.2 billion tons of carbon injected into the atmosphere. Emissions in the U.S., after dropping 7 percent in 2009, rose by 4 percent last year, according to the report. On average, fossil fuel emissions increased about 3.1 percent from 2000 to 2010, about three times the rate during the 1990s.