The temperature’s rising; can the big carbon-emitting countries take the heat? In 2009, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in China -- the world’s leading emitter -- grew by nearly nine percent. At the same time, emissions in most industrial countries dropped, bringing global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use down from a high of 8.5 billion tons of carbon in 2008 to 8.4 billion tons in 2009. Yet this drop follows a decade of rapid growth: over the 10 previous years, global CO2 emissions rose by an average of 2.5 percent a year -- nearly four times as fast as in …

The first decade of the twenty-first century was the hottest since recordkeeping began in 1880. With an average global temperature of 14.52 degrees C (58.1 degrees F), this decade was 0.2 degrees C (0.36 degrees F) warmer than any previous decade. The year 2005 was the hottest on record, while 2007 and 2009 tied for second hottest. In fact, 9 of the 10 warmest years on record occurred in the past decade. Temperature rise has accelerated in recent decades. The earth's temperature is now 0.8 degrees C (1.4 degrees F) higher than it was in the first decade of the …