No looking down

Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have risen to new highs in 2010 despite an economic slowdown in many nations. Carbon dioxide, measured at Norway's Zeppelin station on the Arctic Svalbard archipelago, rose to a median 393.71 parts per million of the atmosphere in the first two weeks of March from 393.17 in the same period of 2009, extending years of gains.

Recent entrants on the emission charts are China and India. In 1994 China and India accounted for 14 and 4 percent of the world’s emissions from fossil fuels and now they account for 22 and 5 percent, respectively -- both country’s emissions essentially doubling over that timeframe.

Meanwhile, we better do something and hold on to the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland. A new study shows microbes (methanogens) living under ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland could be churning out large quantities of the greenhouse gas methane.

In recent years scientists have learned that liquid water lurks under much of Antarctica’s massive ice sheet, and so, they say, the potential microbial habitat in this watery world is huge. If the methane produced by the bacteria gets trapped beneath the ice and builds up over long periods of time — a possibility that is far from certain — it could mean that as ice sheets melt under warmer temperatures, they would release large amounts of heat-trapping methane gas.

Looks like we can not be sure which direction danger will spring from!