Polar ice sheets have accelerated their retreat while global temperatures added up 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since the onset of frenetic industrial activities, prompting scientists to suggest that time may be running out to arrest the ill-effects of climate change.

This according to the latest report issued on Monday by the U.N. World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which highlighted that global efforts of reversing carbon emissions may not make a dent anyway given that too much greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere.

As of last year, the WMO report said that Earth's carbon dioxide levels reached 389 parts per million, significantly rising after more than 200 years and when prior to the start of the Industrial Revolution, it was only pegged at 280 parts per million.

Underscoring the planet's dwindling forest coverage, which could have absorbed most of the man-made CO2 emissions, and the continued heavy consumption of fossil fuels, the WMO also reported that carbon dioxide levels grew by 1.4 parts per million during the 1990s and another 2.0 parts per million in past decade.

At its present pace, carbon dioxide blanketing the atmosphere will witness a steady growth rate every decade, according to Jim Butler of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Global Monitoring Division.

The new UN report said that this year alone, CO2 atmospheric footprints read 2.3 parts per million and the most frightening indicator, Butler said, is the parallel growth of methane and nitrous oxide traces in the atmosphere, both of which significantly to global warming.

The overall growth rate for greenhouse gases, according to NOAA, is 29 percent and growing since 1990.

The latest figures spurred many experts to believe that despite concerted efforts by nations to stop and possibly reverse the climbing levels of greenhouse gases, those actions may prove futile for a number of reasons.

For one, scientists fixed the ideal CO2 level to 350 million parts per million but as the WMO report said, that scenario is now immaterial as world emissions breached that mark two decades ago.

Also, as world leaders scramble to adopt effective measures that will deal with climate change issues, economic considerations by key countries such as the United States, China and India hamper the formulation of a universal approach to resolve the problem.

Both China and India are economically considered as developing nations, leaving them out from the provisions of the 1997 Kyoto Agreement to reduce carbon emission, which otherwise required European nations, Japan and Russia to abide by the environmental pact.

After only four years and with its Senate opting to dump the treaty, America decided in 2001 to exit from the agreement, dashing hopes of global unity to deal with the catastrophic effects of global warming, which experts would induce rising sea levels and engulf many coastal cities around the world.

Going into the next environmental summit in South Africa next week, climate experts are far from being hopeful.

"There's very, very little chance (that the conference will make a difference) ... maybe we've waited too long to do anything serious," Professor Ron Prinn of Massachusetts Institute of Technology told the Associated Press.