The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s latest report on greenhouse emissions unveiled a global rise in carbon dioxide concentrations of 0.6 percent, the equivalent of 19 billion tons, in the past year alone, due to the intense use of fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas).

Despite efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions, the mission becomes more and more difficult each year, as the annual reports have shown. NOAA scientists warned that “Earth’s oceans, vegetation, and soils soak up half of these emissions, (but) the rest stays in the air for centuries or longer.”

The intense use of fossil fuels has boosted carbon dioxide emission for hundreds of years, or even more according to the International Panel on Climate Change, who predicted that these emissions will remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years.

In 2007, carbon dioxide concentration reached 2.4 molecules of gas for every one million molecules of air, which meant a global concentration of 385 parts per million (ppm). Considering that before the industrial revolution these levels were around 280 ppm, this means that human activities in the past century and a half have managed to increase carbon dioxide levels by more than 25 percent.

The rate of increase in carbon dioxide concentration seems to exceed all efforts to diminish greenhouse emissions, and the fact that our actions will affect future generations at least a thousand years from now should be a reason of concern.

Apart from dioxide carbon emissions, methane levels have also increased for the first time in the past decade, and although methane is just half as harmful as carbon dioxide, its climate related effects should draw alarm signals: we should tend towards a less fossil fuel – dependable world.

Ed Dlugokencky from NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory said that the methane increase is an effect of the growing industrialization in Asia and rising wetland emissions in the Arctic and tropics: “We’re on the lookout for the first sign of a methane release from thawing Arctic permafrost. It’s too soon to tell whether last year’s spike in emissions includes the start of such a trend.”

Permafrost is known to store significant quantities of carbon, which under warm conditions could be released in the atmosphere in the form of methane, thus contributing further more to the 'carbon release – temperature rise' cycle, scientists warned.