Climate Change: Rapid Spike in CO2 Emissions Shocks Researchers - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

It's mad I'm buying a house in the hills to keep away from the rising tides. Shall soon be the best beach property in the highlands. Wonder what house prices will do then.


International attempts at climate regulation have failed on a number of levels. With CO2 emissions rising much more than predicted between 2009 and 2010, the goal of capping global warming at a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius now seems elusive. But political interest in changing course has waned.

When Germany's top climate researcher meets with politicians and average citizens these days, he now starts from the very beginning. Then he delivers a lecture on why the scientific community is so sure that climate change even exists. He speaks of a "purely physical" effect caused by concentrations of greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere that heat up the planet by a single degree Celsius. "What's more," says Jochem Marotzke, the head of the German Climate Consortium, "there is the affect of water vapor, which accounts for at least another degree."