Green House Gases Building Up Faster Than IPCC Models Predict

It seems the dire warnings about future devastation sparked by global warming have not been dire enough, top climate scientists warned Saturday.

It has been just over a year since the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a landmark report warning of rising sea levels, expanding deserts, more intense storms and the extinction of up to 30 percent of plant and animal species.

But recent climate studies suggest that report significantly underestimates the potential severity of global warming over the next 100 years, a senior member of the panel warned.

"We are basically looking now at a future climate that is beyond anything that we've considered seriously in climate policy," said Chris Field, who was a coordinating lead author of the report.

"Without effective action, climate change is going to be larger and more difficult to deal with than we thought."

Fresh data has shown that greenhouse gas emissions have grown by an average of 3.5 percent a year from 2000 to 2007, Field told reporters at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

That's "far more rapid than we expected" and more than three times the 0.9 growth rate in the 1990's, he said.

While increased economic activity could have contributed to the growth in emissions, Field said it appears as though the bulk of the growth is "because developing countries like China and India saw a huge upsurge in electric power generation, almost all of it based on coal."

Welcome to Part N+ILostTrack of why Global Warming is Inevitable.

I need to get that Neo-Oligocene vs Neo Eocene post done. gah.