A study published finds that a jump in the use of coal to produce electricity, especially in China and India, has contributed to carbon emissions from human activities reaching an all time record high.

With the faltering climate change talks set to open in Copenhagen next month, the latest figures from the Global Carbon Project show carbon dioxide emissions rising another 2% last year as coal became the dominant source of fossil fuel emissions, taking over from oil for the first time in 40 years.

Developing countries such as China and India have more than doubled their emissions since 1990 and now emit more than the developed world. But the richer countries still have a far higher rate of emissions per head, about four to five times the rate of the developing world. The rapid rise in emissions of carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas, is continuing at a rate that the peak United Nations scientific body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, finds will lead to dangerous climate change.

CSIRO's Dr Mike Raupach, a lead author of the study published in Nature Geoscience, said that "There is some bad news. CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion are estimated to have increased 41% above 1990 levels with emissions continuing to track close to the worst case scenario of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

Dr Raupach said that if the current rate of emissions were to continue, climate models projected global temperature rises of between three and four degrees by the end of the century. He added that "That's obviously dangerous climate change by any measure."

(Sourced from www.theage.com.au)