Auditing Emissions
Size of carbon footprint depends on where you live
Size of carbon footprint depends on where you live
It was Asia's answer to Hurricane Katrina. Packing winds upwards of 120 mph, Cyclone Nargis became one of Asia's deadliest storms by hitting land at one of the lowest points in Myanmar and setting off a storm surge that reached 25 miles inland. "When we saw the (storm) track, I said, 'Uh oh, this is not going to be good," said Mark Lander, a meteorology professor at the University of Guam. "It would create a big storm surge. It was like Katrina going into New Orleans."
In the Commentary 'Dangerous assumptions' (Nature 452, 531
In their Commentary 'Dangerous assumptions' (Nature 452, 531
In their Commentary 'Dangerous assumptions' (Nature 452, 531
Pielke et al. correctly point out in their Commentary 'Dangerous assumptions' (Nature 452, 531
I largely agree with the overall conclusion of Pielke et al. in their Commentary 'Dangerous assumptions' (Nature 452, 531
The head of the Nobel Prize-winning U.N. climate panel is urging Japan to exercise leadership during the upcoming Group of Eight summit in setting midterm and long-term global targets to cut carbon emissions. "I would feel very happy if in the G8 meeting all the leaders agree that by 2020 the world has to cut its emissions by X percent and by 2050 it has to cut them by Y percent," Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said in a recent interview in Tokyo.
Bill Clinton's philanthropic summit has spurred nearly 1,000 commitments in the past three years from business, non-profit and government leaders that aim to improve the lives of 200 million of the world's poor. In a mid-year update of his Clinton Global Initiative summit held each September, Clinton gave a progress report of the commitments, including one by Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the UN's climate science panel.
The world can reach a significant new climate change pact by the end of 2009 if current talks keep up their momentum, the head of the United Nations climate panel said on Sunday. The United Nations began negotiations on a sweeping new pact in March after governments agreed last year to work out a treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol by the end of next year.
Just who is in charge of climate change?
"Politicians seem to think that the science is a done deal," says Tim Palmer. "I don't want to undermine the IPCC, but the forecasts, especially for regional climate change, are immensely uncertain." Palmer is a leading climate modeller at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in Reading, UK, and he does not doubt that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has done a good job alerting the world to the problem of global climate change.
OECD environment ministers on Tuesday stood by efforts to tackle climate change, despite arguments in some quarters that at a time of economic uncertainty, spending on green issues could damage competitiveness. In an
There may be more to global warming than we thought. On top of the effect of human-made carbon emissions, natural changes in the warm ocean currents travelling to the icy north may be helping to heat up the entire northern hemisphere.
The rule of unintended consequences threatens to strike again. Some researchers have suggested that injecting sulfur compounds into the atmosphere might help ease global warming by increasing clouds and haze that would reflect sunlight. After all, they reason, when volcanoes spew lots of sulfur, months or more of cooling often follows. But a new study warns that injecting enough sulfur to reduce warming would wipe out the Arctic ozone layer and delay recovery of the Antarctic ozone hole by as much as 70 years.
RECENTLY, an advertisement showed how super-models are trying to promote an eco-friendly lifestyle through their outfits made with materials that are less polluting, less harmful to the environment and the earth, which, in other words, is called a green method of living. Comparing black, a trendy colour for evening parties, with this green way of resource utilisation is not only interesting but also reflects the fact that global environmental issues -- climate change to be precise -- have caught the attention of everyone. The problem
Arctic ice may be melting faster than most climate change science has concluded, the conservation group WWF said in a report published on Thursday. It found that ice in Greenland and across the Arctic region was retreating "at rates significantly faster than predicted in previous expert assessments". The Greenland Ice Sheet -- with an ice volume of about 2.9 million cubic kilometres -- is shrinking at a fast pace and "could contribute much more than previously estimated to global sea-level rise during the 21st century," the WWF said.
Speakers at a roundtable on Thursday stressed incorporation of the impacts of climate change into the new health policy. The daily Prothom Alo and ICDDR,B organised the roundtable on climate changes: emerging health problem and strategies to combat it at the ICDDR,B auditorium to mark World Health Day. The day was observed on April 7 with the theme
Much has been made of the role of airlines and oil companies in the fight against climate change, but few think of the built environment. Yet property is thought to account for nearly half of all carbon emissions and about half of those come from commercial buildings. Last year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report highlighted the construction sector as that with the most potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and in the most cost effective way.
The international team of climate change scientists that produced an influential series of reports last year will be doing things a little differently in the future. Government delegates to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), meeting in Budapest, Hungary, approved a plan for the 20-year, 100-nation enterprise that would generate more precise and relevant information on climate change-without taking any longer than the current 6-year gap between reports.