Despite decades of warnings from scientists about the dangers of climate change, the world is on track to hit a new record high for climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels.
By year’s end, fossil fuels will have flooded the atmosphere with about 36.8 billion metric tons of CO2 in 2019 — up from 36.57 billion tons in 2018, according to monthly emissions data reported by and estimated for different regions. And increasing use of oil and natural gas means those emissions levels will probably keep rising, researchers predict online December 4 in Environmental Research Letters.
The usual suspects
Total carbon dioxide emissions are still rising globally from fossil fuel use as well as cement manufacturing and flaring, or controlled gas burning during oil extraction (bars represent global emissions from each source for each year from 2000 to 2018). The release of CO2 from coal burning is tapering off, but “increases in natural gas and oil use are more than offsetting the emissions from a declining coal industry,” says environmental scientist Rob Jackson of Stanford University.
Global CO2 emissions from different fossil fuels, 2000-2018
Many countries are harnessing renewable energies. In the United States alone, wind power generation rose about 8 percent in 2019 from 2018, while solar went up an estimated 11 percent. But that trend hasn’t been enough to stem the global emissions that are driving climate change, melting polar ice caps and revving up hurricanes (SN: 9/25/19).