World's carbon emissions grew in 2019 to their highest levels ever

Civilization's carbon emissions — like Earth's temperature, sea level, and the rate of ice sheet melting in Greenland — are still going up.

Researchers at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO) in Oslo, Norway spend each year tediously compiling the amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gases humanity expels into the planet's atmosphere. This year, their Global Carbon Budget Report projects that carbon dioxide emissions continued growing in 2019, though by a lower-than-usual amount of around 0.6 percent, reaching a new record high.

Compared to the huge carbon emission numbers in the early 2000s, when emissions jumped by some three percent each year, this is a small increase. But, critically, the 2019 emissions trend illustrates that global society's carbon emissions aren't falling, haven't even peaked, and certainly don't bode well for meeting the U.N.'s hugely ambitious target for curbing Earth's warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-Industrial Revolution temperatures, agreed upon at the historic Paris climate accords. Read more...