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Business as Usual and then Some

November 4, 2011; 3:19 PM ET

Based on the latest U.S. Department of Energy calculations of heat-trapping carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere, it looks like the world is going for the "business as usual" route.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, from 2009 to 2010 there was a whopping 6% increase in carbon released into the atmosphere globally.

The total increase in terms of tons of carbon was 564 million, which according to the Chicago Sun Times article is higher than the individual emissions of all but three countries across the globe. Those three countries are China, India and the U.S.

More than half of this increase from 2009 to 2010 was from the U.S. and China.

These latest figures are actually higher than the worst-case projections greenhouse gas emissions made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's last report back in 2007.

"It's a big jump," said Tom Boden, director of the Energy Department's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at Oak Ridge National Lab. "From an emissions standpoint, the global financial crisis seems to be over." (via the Chicago Sun Times)

Boden said that in 2010 people were traveling, and manufacturing was back up worldwide, spurring the use of fossil fuels, the chief contributor of man-made climate change, according to the Sun Times.

The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of AccuWeather, Inc. or AccuWeather.com

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Climate Change
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