BBC: The International Energy Agency, an independent watchdog established by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, has estimated that the world’s emissions of carbon dioxide from energy generation amounted to 30.6 gigatons in 2010. That annual total is the highest on record. The agency had detected a drop in emissions in 2008 and 2009 that it attributed to the global recession. According to Fatih Birol, the agency’s chief economist, the renewed upward trend jeopardizes the goal of the most recent climate summit to limit the global rise in temperature to 2°C by 2020.
Modeling the shapes of tree branches, neurons, and blood vessels is a thorny problem, but researchers have just discovered that much of the math has already been done.