Carbon pollution rises after 3 straight flat years

WASHINGTON — Global carbon pollution rose this year after three straight years when levels of the heat-trapping gas didn’t go up at all, scientists reported Monday.

Preliminary figures project that worldwide carbon dioxide emissions are up about two per cent this year, according to an international team of scientists. Most of the increase came from China.

The report by the Global Carbon Project team dashed hopes that emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas had peaked.

“We hoped that we had turned the corner. . . . We haven’t,” said study co-author Rob Jackson, an Earth scientist at Stanford University.

Carbon dioxide emissions rose steadily and slowly starting in the late 1880s with the Industrial Revolution, then took off dramatically in the 1950s. In the last three years, levels had stabilized at about 36.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide.

Estimates for 2017 put it at about 37 billion metric tons. Sixty years ago, the world spewed only 8.3 billion metric tons.

Man-made carbon dioxide is causing more than 90 per cent of global warming since 1950, U.S. scientists reported this month.

This year’s increase was mostly spurred by a 3.5 per cent jump in Chinese carbon pollution, said study co-author Glen Peters, a Norwegian scientist. Declines in the United States (0.4 per cent) and Europe (0.2 per cent) were smaller than previous years. India, the No. 3 carbon polluting nation, went up two per cent.

The study was published Monday and is being presented in Bonn, Germany, during climate talks where leaders are trying to come up with rules for the 2015 Paris deal. The goal is to limit temperature rise to two degrees Celsius since preindustrial times, but it’s already warmed half that amount.