Global discharge of greenhouse gases are growing three times faster than in the 1990s, which could produce a temperature rise of 4-6 degrees by 2100, a leading Australian scientist has warned.

Pep Canadell, one of the lead authors of a new paper warning of the growth of emissions, claimed their analysis showed that by the end of 2012, global emissions from fossil fuels would reach the unprecedented level of 36 billion tonnes.

“Just to put this into perspective, this is 58 per cent over 1990... and growing about three times faster than they were growing during the 1990s,” an AAP report quoted him as saying.

Canadell said that 80 per cent of that growth came from China with the rest split among emerging economies and the developed world.

“If you look at what’s has happened over the last year and this year and what has happened overall over the last 10 years, we are now following perfectly on track of the emissions path that is going to take us to anywhere between four and six degrees by 2100 if we don’t do anything different from what we are doing now,” he said.

He further said that this was occurring as Europe and the US experienced major economic difficulties with reduced industrial production.

Canadell said there had been examples in the past when France moved to nuclear power generation and the UK moved from coal to gas for power production which produced significant emissions reductions.

“We have no idea whether we can actually take these examples and put them into a global context for many decades but there is certainly good past experience which could allow for governments to be inspired and look at much more aggressive and faster actions,” he said.

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