Emissions grow, temperatures rise, talks advance as globe confronts warming

Britain and Sweden are on target for reducing global-warming gases, but other countries will have to toughen policies and rely on “carbon trading” to achieve their Kyoto Protocol goals by 2012, says a new U.N. report.

In the United States, meanwhile, emissions of so-called greenhouse gases climbed by 16 percent between 1990 and 2004, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in its latest assessment. The United States, by far the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming, rejects the Kyoto pact on reductions.

Scientists, meanwhile, are reporting mounting evidence of climate change:

_NASA satellite monitoring shows Greenland glaciers dumping water into the sea at twice the rate of 1996. Such melting land ice is helping raise sea levels, along with the expansion of seawater as it warms.

_The sea around the South Pacific island of Tonga has risen 4 inches (10 centimeters) in 13 years, according to the latest Australian measurements.

_Warmer water, followed by disease, has killed about one-third of coral reefs at official monitoring sites in the Caribbean since last year.

_Globally the year 2005 was either the warmest or second-warmest since record keeping began in the mid-19th century, according to NASA and the World Meteorological Organization. The warming is accelerating, boosting the mercury every decade by more than 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit (0.2 degrees Celsius), NASA says.

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