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 …
TWO RECENT climate studies have found that while changes in solar radiation do contribute to global warming, this effect is small as compared to that of human-made greenhouse gases. The increase in the annual average global temperature at the earth's surface was as much as 0.8o C between 1880 and …
RECENT findings that global warming of the lower atmosphere could trigger major ozone destruction have added an alarming new dimension to the climate change scenario (Nature, Vol 360 No 6401). British scientists John Austin of the Meteorological Office, Neal Butchart of the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Keith Shine …
IT IS WIDELY believed that higher carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere will stimulate plant growth and thus help crops and forests fix more carbon - a positive feedback effort that may partially help control the global warming problem. But two recent studies indicate'forests may not be as efficient in …
Environmental space may be defined as the total quantity of natural resources that can be used on a sustainable basis, for example, the total quantity of carbon dioxide that can be released into the air by humans without damaging atmospheric processes like the global climate. To ensure equitable distribution of …
PORTLAND cement may acquire a new, environmentally friendly, chemical composition. Researchers are focussing on how to reduce emissions from cement manufacture and also use less energy. Another area of research that has emerged recently examines the use of bauxite (aluminiuni oxide) and wastes such as fly ash, scrap iron and …
A clean and green way to reduce acid rain has been developed by Chang Yul Cha of the University of Wyoming in Laramie. The process cuts sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from coal-fired smokestacks using char and microwaves (Science, Vol 257 No 5076). The gases are absorbed as they pass …
THE NEW US administration of Bill Clinton and Al Gore promises to be environment-friendly. Gore, derided as the "ozone man" by outgoing president George Bush has sound environmental credentials. His book, Earth in the Balance, has been called visionary by some. Others liken it to Hitler's Mein Kampf and they …
WESTERN scientists report the burning of fossil fuels is steadily depleting the oxygen content of the atmosphere. And, because the level of oxygen varies inversely with that of carbon dioxide, the new techniques of oxygen measurement provide them also with clues to the carbon cycle. But the scientists are struggling …
TUBEWELL-related deaths in the green revolution districts of Haryana due to the victims getting trapped in poison-gas pockets formed, some say, by heavy use of fertilisers, are rapidly approaching their usual post-monsoon peak. Since 1987, there have been hundreds of tubewell-related deaths in Haryana, in particular in the districts of …
A NEW cryogenic system for industrial cleaning, using "dry ice" or solidified carbon dioxide, has been developed by Distillers MG, which is part of the German Messer Griesheim industrial gas group. The "cold jet" cleaning system, as it is known, uses small pellets of dry ice, which are blown in …
EVERY time an American family decides to take its car out, the resulting carbon dioxide adds to the existing stock in the atmosphere for at least a hundred years. When the polar cap cannot bear the trapped heat, it will melt and drown the distant country of Maldives or Bangladesh. …
THE BRANDT Commission in 1980 had called for a world "based less on power and status, more on justice and contract; less discretionary, more governed by fair and open rules". Shridath Ramphal renews that appeal, on the road to Rio, but passion is not the sole basis of his plea. …
CALL IT a guilty conscience or call it uncanny business sense. But Toyota, Japan's largest car manufacturer, is busy trying to produce a genetically-engineered tree which can absorb larger amounts of carbon dioxide than its more natural counterparts. The research programme first aims at identifying and cultivating existing tree species …
FOUR buses of the Chola Roadways Corporation at Nagapattinam in the coastal district of Thanjavur are different from the rest of the fleet. They are fueled by a half-and-half mix of compressed natural gas (CNG) and diesel. The pilot project is the first of its kind in the country. India …
THIRTY years of deforestation in the temperate regions has caused more pollution than 140 years' use of forests in the tropics. When' temperate forests were cut down in the 19th century by the colonial Europeans 12 North America, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and East Europe, they put into the …
LARGESCALE use of CNG as an automotive fuel can give breathing space to people in the heavily-polluted metropolitan cities of India. Motor vehicles are said to be responsible for 60 per cent of the total pollution load in Bombay, some 12,000 tonnes of pollutants daily, including 40 tonnes of lead. …
THIS fortnight the European Commission unveiled a plan, which its environment comissioner, Carlo Ripa di Meana, called "revolutionary" to staise a carbon dioxide emissions at their 1990 levels by the year 2000. Half of this reduction is to be achieved through a tax on carbon fuels - of $3 on …
ABOUT 176 million tonnes (mt) of aviation fuel was burnt in 1990 -- 14 per cent of the world's consumption of transportation fuel. This air traffic fuel produced about 550 mt of carbon dioxide, 220 mt of water, and 3.5 mt of nitrogen oxides. Dean Abrahamson of the University of …
Hot aluminium THE aluminium industry is responsible for spewing out two potent greenhouse gases - CFC-14 (tetrafluoromethane) and CFC-116 (hexafluoroethane). In terms of their global warming potential, they are over 8,000 times more effective than carbon dioxide, their atmospheric lifetime being over 10,000 years, according to Dean Abrahamson of the …
Nearly 50% of terrigenous materials delivered to the world's oceans are delivered through just twenty-one major river systems. These river-dominated coastal margins (including estuarine and shelf ecosystems) are thus important both to the regional enhancement of productivity and to the global flux of C that is observed in land-margin ecosystems. …
