It looks like the pessimistic estimates of a thing called “climate forcing” weren’t pessimistic enough. Climate forcing from greenhouse gases describes the power of these gases to forcibly alter the climate in directions, rates and degrees it might not otherwise go. In this case, we’re talking about global climate change and the inability of the earth to soak up carbon dioxide (CO2) faster as we increase our output every year. Scientists had thought that the biggest carbon sinks such as the oceans and forests would accelerate their consumption of carbon as we produced more of it. That’s what had been happening until the year 2000. However, since then the sinks have have held steady and our output has increased, thereby accelerating the rate at which CO2 enters the atmosphere.
C02 in the atmosphere, along with other greenhouse gases like methane, absorb the sun’s energy and trap it, so that the atmosphere heats up. The more C02, the more heating is trapped. Three point three percent (3.3%) more C02 has entered the atmosphere each year since 2000, which is significantly more (35%) than was entering the atmosphere each year for the last several decades. This implies that the oceans and forests are maxing out in their ability to soak up C02. Which means that previous estimates of how fast the atmosphere is heating up might be far too conservative. Sell short on parkas, buy tanktop futures, and maybe try to help the world from polluting so much.