Who’s ready for their Friday buzzkill?  Okay, good.   Your Friday Unfun Fact today comes from the Washington Post, which reports that carbon is building up in the atmosphere faster than anyone predicted, including researchers’ “most dire predictions.”  Sweet!

The 2007 levels of carbon in the atmosphere were 2.9 percent higher than they were in 2006, according the the Global Carbon Project based in Australia (that’s the one with kangaroos, not the one with skiing).   These higher levels of output could, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, result in global temperatures being 11 degrees higher by century-end if nothing is done to reverse the trend.

Oh, but it gets better! Aside from the fact that American gasoline consumption will increase in the future, several countries that actually signed the Kyoto Protocol aren’t hitting their targets, and developing nations have doubled their carbon output over the past twenty years, there’s more!

Moreover, new scientific research suggests Earth is already destined for a greater worldwide temperature rise than previously predicted. Last month, two scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of California at San Diego published research showing that even if humans stopped generating greenhouse gases immediately, the world’s average temperature would “most likely” increase by 4.3 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century.

So.   Your Friday going better now?  Good.   Glad to have helped.   takepart and visit the Global Carbon Project’s website to learn more about this mess and see what, if anything, can be done.   And keep your fingers crossed.