This overview sets the scene for the various modules in the Renewables 2024 Global Status Report Collection. It provides high-level trends on the status of renewables in the wider fossil fuel-dominated energy system in the context of global challenges such as climate change, development goals and the geopolitical landscape. Urgent …
WHEN temperatures soared to alarming levels this summer in India, the rising level of global warming was squarely blamed. Many saw the rise as a confirmation of their worst fears that all of Earth is getting increasingly warmer. Although it is inconclusive as yet whether global warming was actually responsible …
1980s Growing public Concern over scientific Evidence that Earth is getting warmer and the need to control the emission of greenhouse gases NOVEMBER 1988 First session of the Inter-governmental Panel for Climate Change sponsored by the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation DECEMBER 1990 The UN General …
WHAT could the consequences be of the rapid extinction of plant and animal species, as witnessed this century? A team of researchers at the Centre for Population Biology, of the UK's Imperial College at Silwood Park says that it has demonstrated experimentally, for the first time, that the loss of …
SWELLING concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are threatening the diversity of tree life on Earth, say 2 US ecologists (Science, Vol 263, No 5149). O L Phillips of the Missouri Botanical Garden, USA, and the late A H Gentry (1945-1993) analysed independent surveys of tropical forests worldwide and …
THE Brazilian minister for environment, Rubens Ricupero, says that Western politicians, NGOs and the media betray the attitude that Third World countries look for what he calls the "lowest common denominator" in international negotiations. These dirty and inefficient cousins apparently force the rest of the world community to settle for …
SCIENTISTS have now discovered that huge quantities of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, produced when fossil fuels are burned, are mopped up by boreal forests -- coniferous forests in the northern hemisphere -- which are themselves coming under the loggers' axe (New Scientist, Vol 141, No 1907). It is established …
RECENT Canadian studies suggest that hydroelectric power generation may, in some cases, be a major source of greenhouse gases, such as methane and carbon dioxide, and so be as polluting as thermal power generation (Ambio, Vol 22, No 4). The gases are produced, explain John W M Rudd of the …
A TIMES poll showed 92 per cent of British citizens opposed the two-stage imposition of a value-added tax on domestic fuel and heating. Unperturbed by these figures, British chancellor Kenneth Clarke said in a television interview, that they must go ahead to help bring down the L50 billion borrowing requirement. …
A TEAM of US researchers have said carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon pollution levels in Kathmandu were the highest among Asian cities, writes Jan Sharma in a Panos report. The average carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon content of emissions of 8,000 vehicles monitored by the team were 3.95 per cent and 0.76 …
THE EIGHTH session of the negotiating committee for a convention on climate change, held in August in Geneva, failed to agree on "joint implementation" by industrialised countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Joint implementation essentially means that industrialised countries can sponsor cheap efforts in the Third World to reduce greenhouse …
THOUGH the State of Forest Report 1991 says India's forest cover increased from 6,40,134 sq km in 1989 to 6,40,694 sq km in 1991, the feat the report describes is impossible: Forest products are primarily used for human and livestock consumption, and as human and livestock population increased by about …
IN THE context of the forest department's increasing sensitivity to participatory programmes such as joint forest management, the "anti-people" stance of the article by a senior forester like A N Chaturvedi is shocking. In his article, he gives priority to specific uses of forests than to people and thus advocates …
JOINT implementation was the main point of discussion at the recent meeting of the intergovernmental committee on climate change in Geneva. The idea of joint implementation has been promoted primarily by industrialised countries seeking ways to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Unable to face the politically difficult choice of reducing …
WHY IS the Indian monsoon so capricious as to cause floods one year and pass on with scarcely any rain the next? Blame it on the increasing concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, say US scientists who have constructed a global climate model that predicts an even more whimsical monsoon when …
HUGE DEPOSITS of iron found in different parts of the world has puzzled geologists because oxygen, which is an important constituent of iron ore, was scarce when they were formed about 3.5 to 1.8 billion years ago. Now, F Widell and his colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Marine …
US PRESIDENT Bill Clinton's efforts to tax energy in order to simultaneously reduce the budgetary deficit and reduce carbon dioxide emissions are running into heavy weather. The US senate is now struggling to devise a simple energy tax that will be universally acceptable after strident opposition from various quarters squashed …
ARTHUR Nonomura, an American scientist-turned-farmer, may usher in another green revolution with his discovery that methanol (or methyl alcohol), traditionally thought to be toxic to plants, can stimulate crop growth in hot and dry regions. "I think it's going to save the world," says Andrew Benson of Scripps Institution of …
Everyone these days is aware of the phenomenon of global warming, even if they find it difficult to distinguish between stratospheric ozone depletion and the greenhouse effect. Global Warming: The Economic Stakes is about the greenhouse effect and the resultant environmental pollution and global damage. Incoming radiation from the sun …
DENMARK is determined to use its position as president of the European Commission to push through the proposed energy tax because, as Danish energy minister Jann Sjurgen put it, "EC must shoulder its responsibility in trying to combat global warming." The proposed tax will be levied on fuels with a …
Iver- TOYOT A vehicles will soon dust equipped with a sensor to regul the air-to-fuel ratio so as to make th ual more economical and with lower emissions (Machine Design, ng a Vol64, No 21). Toyota Motor Corp says introduction of the world's first mass-produced combustion pressure sensor will improve …
