A combination of global warming and the "El Niño" weather system is set to make 2007 the warmest year on record with far-reaching consequences for the planet, one of Britain’s leading climate experts warn on Sunday. As the new year was ushered in with stormy conditions across the UK, the forecast for the next 12 months is of extreme global weather patterns which could bring drought to Indonesia and leave California under a deluge.

The warning, from Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, was one of four sobering predictions from senior scientists and forecasters that 2007 will be a crucial year for determining the response to global warming and its effect on humanity.

Professor Jones said the long-term trend of global warming - already blamed for bringing drought to the Horn of Africa and melting the Arctic ice shelf - is set to be exacerbated by the arrival of "El Niño," the weather phenomenon caused by above average sea temperatures in the Pacific.

Combined, they are set to bring extreme conditions across the globe and make 2007 warmer than 1998, the hottest year on record. It is likely temperatures will also exceed those of 2006, which was earlier this month declared the hottest in Britain since 1659 and the sixth warmest in global records. Professor Jones said: "El Niño makes the world warmer and we already have a warming trend that is increasing global temperatures by one to two tenths of a degrees celsius per decade.

"Together, they should make 2007 warmer than last year and it may even make the next 12 months the warmest year on record." The warning of the escalating impact of global warming was echoed by Jim Hansen, the American scientist who was one of the first to warn of climate change in 1988.

In an interview with The Independent, Dr. Hansen predicted that global warming would run out of control and change the planet for ever unless rapid action is taken to reverse the rise in carbon emissions. Dr. Hansen said: "We just cannot burn all the fossil fuels in the ground. If we do, we will end up with a different planet.

"I mean a planet with no ice in the Arctic, and a planet where warming is so large that it’s going to have a large effect in terms of sea level rises and the extinction of species. "His call for action is shared by Sir David King, the British Government’s chief scientific adviser, who said that 2006 had shown that the "discussion is now over" on whether climate change is happening.

Writing in today’s Independent, Sir David said progress had been made in the last year but it is "essential" that a global agreement on emissions be struck quickly.

Rising temperatures will leave millions more hungry by 2080 and cause critical water shortages in China and Australia, as well as parts of Europe and the United States,

according to a new global climate report. By the end of the century, climate change will bring water scarcity to between 1.1 and 3.2 billion people as temperatures rise by 2 to 3

degree Celsius, a leaked draft of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report said.

The report, due for release in April but detailed in The Age newspaper, said an additional 200 million to 600 million people across the world would face food shortages in another 70 years, while coastal flooding would hit another 7 million homes. "Every region of the earth will have exposure," said Graeme Pearman, who helped draft the report. "China, like Australia, will lose significant rainfall in their agricultural areas," said Pearman, the former climate director of Australia's top science body, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.

Africa and poor countries such as Bangladesh would be most affected because they were least able to cope with greater coastal damage and drought, said Pearman. The IPCC was set up in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the UN Environment Program to guide policy makers on the impact of climate change.

In a related development, an UN spokesman said on Tuesday that a climate change summit of world leaders would help drive momentum spurred by news reports and changing attitudes in Washington to global warming.

The effects of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide are being felt on every inhabited continent in the world with very different parts of the climate now visibly responding to human activity. These are among the main findings of the most intensive study of climate change by 2,000 of the world’s leading climate scientists. They conclude that there is now little doubt that human activity is changing the face of the planet.

In addition to rising surface temperatures around the world, scientists have now linked man-made emissions of greenhouse gases to significant increases in ocean temperatures, rises in sea levels and the dramatic melting of Arctic sea ice over the past 35 years. A draft copy of the fourth report of the intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that global temperature rises this century of between 2⁰ C and 4.5⁰ C are almost inevitable. Ominously, it also says that much higher increases of 6⁰ C or more cannot be ruled out.

The final version of the IPCC’s latest report is to be published on Friday but a draft copy, seen by The Independent, makes it clear that climate change could be far worse than previously thought because of potentially disastrous "positive" feedbacks which could accelerate rising temperatures. A warmer world is increasing evaporation from the oceans causing atmospheric concentrations of water vapour, a powerful greenhouse agent, to have increased by 4 per cent over the sea since 1970. Water vapour in the atmosphere exacerbates the greenhouse effect. This is the largest positive feedback identified in the report, which details for the first time the IPCC’s concern over the uncertainties – and dangers-of feedback cycles that may quickly accelerate climate change. All the climate models used by the IPCC also found that rising global temperatures will erode the planet’s natural ability to absorb man-made CO₂. This could lead to CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere rising by a further 44 per cent, causing global average temperatures to increase by an additional 1.2 ⁰ C by 2100.

The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report will go further than any of its three previous reports in linking the clear signs of global climate change with increases in man-made emissions of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases since the start of the Industrial Revolution. "Confidence in the assessment of the human contributions to recent climate change has increased considerably since the TAR (Third Assessment Report)," says the draft report. This is due to the stronger signs of climate change emerging from longer and more detailed records and scientific observations, it says.

The "anthropogenic signal" the visible signs of human influence on the climate – has now emerged nor just in global average surface temperatures, but in global ocean temperatures and ocean heat content, temperature extremes on the land and the rapidly diminishing Arctic sea ice. "Anthropogenic warming of the climate system is widespread and can be detected in temperature observations taken at the surface,

in the free atmosphere and in the oceans," the draft report says. "It is highly likely (greater than 95 per cent probability) that the warming observed during the past half century cannot be explained without external forcing (human activity)" The report adds that global warming over the past 50 years would have been worse had it not been for the counter balancing influence of man-made emissions of aerosol pollutants, tiny airborne particles that reflect sunlight to cause atmospheric cooling.

Scientists from across the world gathered on Monday to hammer out the final details of an authoritative report on climate change that is expected to project centuries of rising temperatures and sea levels unless there are curbs in emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.

Scientists involved in writing or reviewing the report say it is nearly certain to conclude that there is at least a 90 per cent chance that human-caused emissions are the main factor in warming since 1950.

The report is the fourth since 1990 from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is overseen by the United Nations.

The report, several of the authors said, will describe a growing body of evidence that warming is likely to cause a profound transformation of the planet.

Three large sections of the report will be forthcoming during the year. The first will be a summary for policy-makers and information on basic climate science, which is expected to be issued on Friday. Among the findings in recent drafts are: The Arctic Ocean could largely be devoid of ice during summer later in the century.

Europe’s Mediterranean shores could become barely habitable in summers, while the Alps could shift from snowy winter destinations to summer havens from the heat.Growing seasons in temperate regions will expand, while droughts are likely to ravage further the semiarid regions of Africa and southern Asia.

"Concerns about climate change and public awareness on the subject are at an all-time high," the chairman of the panel, Rajendra Pachauri, told delegates on Monday. But scientists involved in the effort warned that squabbling between teams and Government representatives from more than 100 countries over how to portray the probable amount of sea-level rise during the 21^st century, could distract from the basic finding that a warming world will be one in which retreating coastlines are the new normal for centuries to come.

Jerry Mahlman, an emeritus researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, who was a reviewer of the report’s 1,644-page summary of climate science, said most of the leaks to the press so far were from people eager to find elements that were the most frightening or the most reassuring.

He noted recent disclosures that there is still uncertainty about the pace at which seas will rise because of warming and the melting of terrestrial ice over the next 100 years. That span, he said, is just the start of a rise in sea levels that will almost certainly continue for 1,000 years or so.

One major point of debate in early drafts of the report is the projection of a smaller rise in sea level than the last report as scientists relying on computer models and field observations struggle to find a consensus.

Global warming has pushed up average global surface temperatures and the rise has been particularly swift since 1976. The past 10 years, with the exception of 1996, have been the warmest on record. Last week, the U.K. Met Office predicted that 2007 could overtake 1998 to become the warmest year on record.

Average global surface temperatures have risen by about 0.7 degrees Celsius since the start of the 20^th century. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has taken the view that average global temperatures could rise by a further 1.4 degrees to 5.8 degrees Celsius by the end of this century.

As a result of global warming, the polar ice caps have shrunk and glaciers that feed many important rivers have retreated.

But the Indian monsoon judged in terms of total nationwide rainfall during the season has remained unaffected. Although there had been a small decrease in India's nationwide monsoon rainfall since 1950, the decline was not statistically significant, according to B.N. Goswami, director of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune. Moreover, the decrease may well be the result of a multi-decadal cycle and the trend could reverse in the coming years, he added.

However, studies using climate models have indicated that global warming was likely to increase extreme weather events, such as floods and droughts. In a study published last month in the journal Science, Dr. Goswami and scientists at the Indian Institute of Science found evidence that bouts of excessive rain had indeed increased over vast areas of central India in the latter half of the 20^th century.

Even if the U.K. Met Office is right in its prediction that 2007 would be the warmest year on record, it is difficult to say how this will impact the monsoon or whether extreme events will become more likely as a result. The monsoon of 1998, currently the warmest year since 1861, saw slightly above average nationwide rainfall while in 2005, the second warmest year, the monsoon ended only whisker below average (but still well within the definition of a `normal' monsoon).

No study has linked changes in the annual average global surface temperature to the outcome of the Indian monsoon, points out K. Krishna Kumar of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology. Moreover, the monsoon was a complex system that was influenced by a multiplicity of factors. However, it was difficult to say how high average global surface temperatures might affect this year's monsoon. On the other hand, if the Eurasian land mass became exceptionally warm in the coming months, it could prove beneficial for the monsoon.

From all accounts, there will not be any major surprises in the first phase of the report prepared by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) headed by Director General of India’s The Energy and Resources Institute, Rajendra Pachauri. If anything, it seems to have filled in many blanks that were left in the previous IPCC study in 2001, such as anomalies between temperatures measured by satellites or at the planet’s surface, or how far tiny, glinting particles of air pollution reflect sunlight back into space. Otherwise the report draws on research done by 2,500 scientists from more than 130 countries to describe a planet sweating under the influence of greenhouse gases (GHGs) that trap the sun’s energy, and reiterates what climate scientists have said all along: human activities are to blame for warming the planet over the past 50 years. The one degree rise in global temperatures in the last century has a lot to do with the atmospheric accumulation of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other heat-trapping gases, by-products of power plants, automobiles, and sundry fossil fuel-burning sources. This is the loudest warning yet that man-made emissions of CO₂ are warming up the earth and could cause irreparable damage to nature by 2100. The effects are being felt on every inhabited continent with the climate now "visibly responding to human activity". More water vapour means more rain and snow in regions lying near the poles, and increased winter precipitation in northern Asia and the Tibetan plateau. This could altermonsoon rains along India’s eastern seaboard, leading to bizarre weather patterns such as increased rainfall that play havoc with crops, which alternates with a widening drought zone. By contrast, rains are likely to decrease in many sub-tropical regions.

Scientists from across the world gathered here today to hammer out the final details of an authoritative report on climate change that is expected to project centuries of rising temperatures and sea levels unless there are curbs in emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. Scientists involved in writing or reviewing the report say it is nearly certain to conclude that there is at least a 90 per cent chance that human-caused emissions are the main factors in warming since 1950. The report is the fourth since 1990 from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is overseen by the UN.

The report, the authors said, will describe a growing body of evidence that warming is likely to cause a profound transformation of the planet. Three large sections of the report will be forthcoming during the year. The first will be a summary for policy makers and information on basic climate science, which is expected to be issued on Friday.

Among the findings in recent drafts :

But scientists involved in the effort warned that squabbling among teams and governments repre-sentatives from more than 100 countries over how to portray the most probable amount of sea-level rise during the 21^st century could distract from the basic finding that a warming world will be one in which shrinking coastlines are the new norms for centuries to come.
The Telegraph (New Delhi), 31 Jan. 2007

A UN climate panel will project wrenching disruptions to nature by 2100 in a report next week blaming human use of fossil fuels more clearly than ever for global warming, scientific sources said.A draft report based on work by 2,500 scientists and due for release on February 2 in Paris, draws on research showing greenhouse gases at their highest levels for 650,000 years, fuelling a warming likely to bring more droughts, floods and rising seas.

The report by the intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC) may have some good news, however, by toning down chances of the biggest temperature and sea level rises projected in the IPCC’ s previous 2001 study, the sources said. But it will also revise up its lowest projections.

"The main good news is that we have a clearer idea of what we are up against, "one source said. The report will set the tone for work in extending the UN’s Kyoto Protocol, the main international plan for curbing global warming, beyond 2012.

A combination of global warming and the "EI Nino" weather system is set to make 2007 the warmest year on record with far-reaching consequences for the planet. The forecast for the next 12 months is of extreme global weather patterns which could bring drought to Indonesia and leave California under a deluge.

The warning, from Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, was one of four sobering predictions from senior scientists and forecasters that 2007 will be a crucial year for determining the response to global warming and its effect on humanity.

Professor Jones said the long term trend of global warming - already blamed for bringing drought to the Horn of Africa and melting the Arctic ice shelf-is set to be exacerbated by the arrival of "EI Nino", the weather phenomenon caused by above average sea temperatures in the Pacific.

Combined, they are set to bring extreme conditions across the globe and make 2007 warmer than 1998, the hottest year on record. It is likely temperatures will also exceed those of 2006, the sixth warmest in global records.

Professor Jones said: "EI Nino makes the world warmer and we already have a warming trend that is increasing global temperatures by one to two tenths of a degrees Celsius per decade. "Together, they should make 2007 warmer than last year and it may even make the next 12 months the warmest year on record." The warning of the escalating impact of global warming was echoed by Jim Hansen, the American scientist who was one of the first to warn of climate change in 1988.

In an interview with The Independent, Dr. Hansen predicted that global warming would run out of control and change the planet for ever unless rapid action is taken to reverse the rise in carbon emissions. Writing in today’s Independent, Sir David said progress had been made in the last year but it is "essential" that a global agreement on emissions be struck quickly.

The demands came as the World Meteorological Organisations (WMO), the United Nation agency that deals with climate prediction, issued a warning that deals with climate prediction, issued a warning that EI Nino is already established over the tropical Pacific basin.

It is set to bring extreme weather across a swathe of the planet from the Americas and south-east Asia to the Horn of Africa for at least the first four months of 2007.

EI Nino or "the Christ Child" because it is usually noticed around Christmas, is a weather pattern occurring every two to seven years generated by above average sea temperatures. The resulting accumulation of warm water off North and South America causes trade winds to die and brings increased rainfall and storms to the Americas from Peru to California while drought hits Australia and the Western Pacific.

The last severe EI Nino, in 1997 and 1998, caused 2,000 deaths and a worldwide damage bill of more than 20 billion pounds. The WMO said its latest readings showed a "moderate" EI Nino with sea temperatures 1.5⁰ C above average is taking place which, in the worst case scenario, could develop into an extreme weather pattern lasting up to 18 months, as in 1997/98. It said "Unusual and some times severe climate change patterns are known to have occurred during EI Nino events of the current magnitude. "The UN agency noted that the weather pattern was already having "early and intense" effect, including drought in Australia and dramatically warm seas in the Indian Ocean, which could affect the monsoons. It warned the EI Nino could also have the perverse effect bringing extreme rainfall to parts of eastern Africa, which were last year hit by a cycle of drought and flooding.

Although the weather phenomenon is separate from global warming, scientists know that a combination can lead to an exceptionally warm year.

In 1998, during the last EI Nino, the average worldwide temperature was 0.71⁰ C above the 30-year average, making it the warmest year on record. Professor Jones said: "The long term warming trend has moved upward from what was recorded 1998. The addition of EI Nino in 2007 means there is a really good chance the world will be hotter than 1998." Globally, 19 of the hottest 20 years on record have occurred since 1980.

Japanese Finance Minister Koji Omi on Tuesday called for a new and ‘practical’ system to manage the global environment that went beyond the Kyoto Protocol and included the United States, China and India. He said that the Kyoto Protocol covered only about 30 percent of the world's total current carbon emissions and that the ratio was projected to decline further as emissions from developing countries increased.

Named after Japan's former capital where it was negotiated in 1997, the Kyoto Protocol is a landmark treaty that mandates cuts in greenhouse gas by developed countries. But the United States and Australia have boycotted the Kyoto Protocol, saying it is unfair because it makes no demands of fast-growing developing countries such as China and India. Speaking at a forum of the

Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Omi said "it is important to go beyond the Kyoto Protocol to create a new, practical and effective framework in which all countries, including the United States, China and India, will participate."

Environment ministers lack power to lead a fight against global warming at a time when ever more governments portray climate change as one of the biggest threats to the planet, experts say. Environment ministers are sometimes rising stars- German Chancellor Angela Merkel had a stint in the 1990s- but are often far less experienced than cabinet colleagues incharge of issues such as defence, health or education.

"I don’t think they are too junior to get things done but the portfolio doesn’t cover all of the essential issues" such as energy or competition policy, Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Secretariat, told Reuters. He met U.N Secretary- General Ban Ki Moon in New York on Monday to press his call for a summit of about 20 world leaders to spur stalled talks on widening the UN’s Kyoto Protocol on curbing global warming beyond a first period ending in 2012.

"Heads of state and government... are in a position to say ‘this is the direction in which things should go’," he said. More and more government leaders are making apocalyptic warnings about climate change. Many scientists say a buildup of green-house gases from burning fossil fuels will bring more floods, heatwaves, desertification and raise world sea levels.

"The excessive exploitation of natural resources is upsetting the climate and will endanger mankind, if we don’t react right now," French President Jacques Chirac, for instance, said in a New Year address. "In many countries the environment minister doesn’t have the bureaucreatic tools power," said Paal Prestrud, head of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research, Oslo.

Carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere much faster than scientists expected, raising fears that humankind may have less time to tackle climate change than previously thought. New figures from dozens of measuring stations across the world reveal that concentrations of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, rose at record levels during 2006 – the fourth year in the last five to show a sharp increase. Experts are puzzled because the spike, which follows decades of more modest annual rises, does not appear to match the pattern of steady increases in human emissions.

At its most far-reaching, the finding could indicate that global temperatures are making forests, soils and oceans less able to absorb carbon dioxide -- a shift that would make it harder to tackle global warming. Such a shift would worsen even the gloomy predictions of the Stern Review which warned that we had little over a decade to tackle rising emissions to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

David Hofmann of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which published the figures, said: "Over this last decade the growth rates in carbon dioxide have been higher. I don't think we can plausibly say what's causing it. It's something we're going to look at closely."

Peter Cox, a climate change expert at Exeter University in the U.K., said: "The concern is that climate change itself will affect the ability of the land to absorb our emissions." At the moment around half of human carbon emissions are reabsorbed by nature but the fear among scientists is that increasing temperatures will work to reduce this effect.

Professor Cox added: "It means our emissions would have a progressively bigger impact on climate change because more of them will remain in the air. It accelerates the rate of change so we get it sooner and we get it harder." Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is measured in parts per million (ppm). From 1970 to 2000 that concentration rose by about 1.5ppm each year, as human activities sent more of the gas into the atmosphere. But according to the latest figures, last year saw a rise of 2.6ppm. And 2006 was not alone. A series of similar jumps in recent years means the carbon dioxide level has risen by an average 2.2ppm each year since 2001.

Above average annual rises in carbon dioxide levels have been explained by natural events such as the El Nino weather pattern, centred on the Pacific Ocean. But the last El Nino was in 1998, when it resulted in a record annual increase in carbon dioxide of 2.9ppm. If the current trend continues, this year's predicted El Nino could see the annual rise in carbon dioxide pass the 3ppm level for the first time.

Professor Cox said that an increase in forest fires, heat waves across Europe and the Amazon drought of 2005 could have helped to drive up carbon dioxide levels.

He admitted "the jury is still out" on whether the recent spike is evidence of a significant change, although some computer models predict that the earth will start to absorb less carbon dioxide sometime this decade.

"Over the past few years carbon dioxide has been going up faster than we would expect based on the rate that emissions are increasing," Professor Cox said. Figures presented to a recent UN climate conference in Nairobi showed that carbon dioxide emissions produced by the worldwide burning of fossil fuels increased 3.2 per cent from 2000 to 2005.

Global Warming is destined to have a far more destructive and earlier impact than previously estimated, the most authoritative report yet produced on climate change will warn next week.

A draft copy of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows the frequency of devastating storms will increase dramatically. Sea levels will rise over the century by around half a metre; snow will disappear from all but the highest mountains; deserts will spread; oceans will become acidic, leading to the destruction of coral reefs and atolls; and deadly heat waves will become more prevalent.

The impact will be catastrophic, forcing hundreds of millions of people to flee their devastated homelands, particularly in tropical, low-lying areas, while creating waves of immigrants whose movements will strain the economies of even the most affluent countries.

"The really chilling thing about the IPCC report is that it is the work of several thousand climate experts who have

widely differing views about how greenhouse gases will have their effect. Some think they will have a major impact, others a lesser role. Each paragraph of this report was therefore argued over and scrutinised intensely. Only points that were considered indisputable survived this process. This is a very conservative document — that's what makes it so scary," said one senior U.K. climate expert.

The report reflects climate scientists' growing fears that the Earth is nearing the stage when carbon dioxide rises will bring irreversible change to the planet. "We are seeing vast sections of Antarctic ice disappearing at an alarming rate," said climate expert Chris Rapley, in a phone interview from the Antarctic Peninsula last week. "That means we can expect to see sea levels rise at about a metre a century from now on, and that will have devastating consequences."

Nearly half of the world's waterbird species are in decline, mostly due to rapid economic development and the effects of climate change, according to a global survey
released today.

The fourth annual Waterbird Population Estimate found that 44 per cent of the 900 species globally have fallen in the past five years, while 34 per cent were stable, and 17 per cent rising. Altogether, 12 families of birds have half or more of their global populations showing a decreasing trend, including storks, shoebills and plovers.

The worst decreases occurred in Asia, where 62 per cent of the waterbird populations had declined or become extinct. That was followed by a 48 per cent decline in Africa, 45 per cent in Oceania, 42 per cent in South America, 41 per cent in Europe, and 37 per cent in North America. Simon Delany, a waterbird conservation officer for the Netherlands-based Wetlands International which coordinated the survey, said the cause of the decline was a loss of wetlands either from economic and agriculture development or rising tem-peratures, which are blamed for worsening droughts and rising sea levels.

A dearth of snow threatened to make this year’s annual meeting of the World Economic Forum the greenest ever, but a storm covered the town with a fresh layer of white on Wednesday as participants prepared to discuss global warming and climate change.The five-day meeting is also focusing on efforts to resolve the seemingly endless tensions in the Middle East.

About 2,500 business and political leaders, journalists, bloggers and celebrities- including musicians and social activists Bono and Peter Gabriel- are meeting at the five-day annual gathering to talk politics, economics and social issues in an atmosphere aimed at finding long-term solutions instead of quick fixes.

Global warming and security are the two dominant issues, according to the Forum’s organisers, and the lack of thick snow in the town that bills itself as the highest ski resort in Europe was a firm reminder that climate change is a hot topic.

The annual meeting is also to focus on securing global energy supplies, including the development of more alternative fuels, particularly in light of oil prices that surged in 2006 before settling in recent weeks, supply disruptions from Russia and attacks on oil pipelines in Iraq and Nigeria.

US President George W. Bush called during his state of the union address for American imports to be cut by the equivalent of 75 per cent of the oil coming from the Middle East. His prescription, as always, relied primarily on market incentives and technological advances not government mandates.

"America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil," he said. These technologies will help us become better stewards of the environment – and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change."

His words echoed those in Davos. "By putting climate change at the top of the Davos 2007 agenda, the World Economic Forum has focused on the key challenge of our time," Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, said on the WEF blog. "The moment to act is now. Many of those present in Davos have the power to move decisively on global emission reductions – the world is looking to them to rise to this crucial challenge."

There will be 17 sessions focusing on climate change, featuring topics to help companies and governments navigate the legalities of implementing policy changes aimed at curbing emissions and pollution and how to make going green profitable.

Among the people scheduled to talk about the issues are US senator and likely Republican presidential candidate John Mc-Cain, Zhang Xiaoqiang, vice chairman of China’s National Development and Reform Commission; and Montek Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of India’s planning commission.

A survey of participants by pollster Gallup International found that this year twice as many attendees as last year thought that environmental protection should be a priority for world leaders.

"The companies represented at the annual meeting have a combined turnover of about $10 trillion- nearly a qauarter of global GDP- so catalysing their deeper engagement in this issue can only be a good thing for all of us," said Dominic Waughray, head of environmental initiatives for the WEF.

The world has just 10 years to reverse surging greenhouse gas emissions or risk runaway climate change that could make many parts of the planet uninhabitable. The stark warning comes from scientists who are working on the final draft of a new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The report, due to be published this week, will draw together the work of thousands of scientists from around the world who have been studying changes in the world’s climate and predicting how they might accelerate. They conclude that unless mankind rapidly stabilises greenhouse gas emissions and starts reducing them, it will have little chance of keeping global warming within manageable limits.

The results could include the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef, the forced migration of hundreds of millions of people from equatorial regions, and the loss of vast tracts of land under rising seas as the ice caps melt. In Europe the summers could become unbearably hot, especially in southern countries such as Greece, Spain and Italy, while Britain and northern Europe would face summer droughts and wet, stormy winters.

"The next 10 years are crucial," said Richard Betts, leader of a research team at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre for climate prediction. "In that decade we have to achieve serious reductions in carbon emissions. After that time the task becomes very much harder" Among the scientists’ biggest fears is that rising greenhouse gases and temperatures could soon overwhelm the natural systems that normally keep their levels in check. About half the 24 billion tons of carbon dioxide generated by human activities each year are absorbed by forests and oceans — a process without which the world might already be several degrees warmer. However, as CO2 levels rise and rising temperatures dry out soils, this process could be reversed with forests pumping out gases instead of retaining them. Sea water’s power to absorb CO2 also declines sharply as it warms. The latest research suggests the threshold for such disastrous changes will come when CO2 levels reach 550 parts per million (ppm), roughly double their natural levels. This is predicted to happen around 2040-50 at curent emission rates.

A four letter word can make a world of difference. In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had observed that it was ‘likely’ that global warming was caused by human activity. On Friday, it added the word ‘very’ to its earlier prognosis. Decoded, the word signifies that there is an overwhelming possibility that global warming is indeed the result of human activity.

Now when 2,500 of the world’s finest climate scientists from 130 countries come to such a conclusion. It certainly makes the issue one of urgent international concern and puts pressure on every country – including India – to understand the new evidence. If global temperatures are likely to rise by up to 4.5 degrees Celsius by the end of this century, as is projected, it has implications for every country and inhabitant on the planet. China, which incidentally tried hard to push for less ‘alarmist’ language at the IPCC, has just got a reality check from home. Meteorological data has shown that the average national temperature in China this January was 1.4 degrees higher than normal and its northern regions are currently witnessing unprecedented drought. As indeed is the case in Australia, thousands of kilometers away.

Just as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has reiterated the gravity of the threat posed by global warming, a tectonic shift is underway in world public opinion on climate change. This could become the most significant political issue in the developed world.

Although George Bush made only a grudging reference in his State of the Union address, American politics is seized of this issue like never before. No less than six major climate change related bills are currently in Congress, many sponsored by leading contenders for the presidency.

Tony Blair, desperately looking for a legacy, is energising the G-8 on this issue, and the Chinese are openly discussing plans for responding to climate change. Even companies like Exxon are changing their tune. There is more scientific consensus on the phenomenon than ever before. If there is an appearance of scientific dissensus, it is fuelled largely by vested interests.

Big business in America is now beginning to see both the political writing on the wall and an economic opportunity. The fact that much of the change of attitudes is being driven by civil society suggests that the debate over climate change will have some traction. Whether this translates into the kind of effective action that scientists are calling for, remains to be seen. But many observers are willing to bet that the US, in only the way it can, will do an about turn on climate change and embrace the cause with messianic zeal.

The shift in global attitudes poses a significant challenge for countries like India. As the prime minister’s speech in January to the Indian Science Congress suggested, India too was jumping onto the bandwagon that the science on global warming is uncertain. India’s position has rested on the following propositions. One, that developed countries are largely responsible for harmful emissions. Two, that it will not sacrifice growth and poverty alleviation for meeting the global environmental challenge. Three, that the best governance instruments to negotiate climate change are the Kyoto Protocol or the UNFCC. Four, it is resistant to any carbon reduction targets, except perhaps those based on a cumulative per capita basis. Five, India has become a great enthusiast of CDM (clean development mechanism), largely because it is a significant business opportunity. Six, in so far as it has a strategy it is based on restructuring the sources of energy: Moving away from hydrocarbons to nuclear energy or natural gas. And finally, it insists that there must be some compensating mechanisms for developing countries, including technology transfers and changes in intellectual property rights regimes.

The challenge is that all these assumptions need to be attenuated if not abandoned. While developed countries are largely responsible for the problem and have so far sought a cheap and easy way out, India and China together will have to be a part of any workable solution; they cannot get a free ride on the sins of the West. India has argued for per capita emission targets. But if they are set at current western emission levels, this problem has no solution.

The Kyoto Protocol and the UNFCC are potentially workable international governance instruments; if they have been ineffective so far, it is largely because of the developed countries not joining in or reneging on their commitments. But India likes them largely because they have given India a free ride. Strengthening these mechanisms and setting more stringent targets will require more active participation on part of countries like India. While restructuring energy use and increasing energy intensity will partially help solve the problem, it will not be enough. There is good reason to think that more efficient energy use can have the perverse consequences of increasing carbon emissions, by making energy cheaper. They have to, therefore, be accompanied by verifiable carbon reduction targets, something India resists.

While CDM hold considerable potential, their actual effects are mixed. Again, rather than taking the current CDM regime as given, India will have to be pro-active in strengthening the effectiveness of this regime. India has made some constructive proposals to the G-8 on technology transfers and the IPR regimes governing these technologies. But any compensating measures or technology adoption strategy requires, first, an articulation of a national strategy tied to specific targets for reduction.

The trade-off between development and environment is a tough one. Some of the best work done for India in this context by Kirit and Jyoti Parekh suggests that stringent carbon reduction targets will have a significant adverse impact on growth and poverty alleviation.There is a contrary line of thinking that argues that India could exploit its latecomer advantage. Because our growth rates are of recent vintage, we are only now going to witness the most astonishing expansion of housing, transport, energy production and manufacturing. If we had a proper regulatory regime and choice of technology governing these critical sectors, we could avoid the costs of substitution later. And the upfront costs of investing in ‘clean’ systems may not be that high. But the debate
on this has not even got off the ground.

Policy makers will now need to take climate change more seriously!! Global warming triggered by human activities is happening at a faster pace than was perceived, implying more economical and environmental devastation. This alarm has been raised by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s premier scientific organisation whose findings are a key reference for climate change scientists, policy makers as well as critics.

In context of the IPCC findings, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) chief policy advisor Kilaparti Ramakrishna said: "The uncertainity of global warming has how narrowed down." He added that the poor countries will be impacted the most and countries like India and China need to address measures to combat global warming.

The average temperature of the Earth is set to rise by a whopping 3⁰C this century if greenhouse gas emissions are not curbed significantly. The Stern review of 2006 issued by the UK government highlighted that the 3⁰C temperature rise would translate into severe water shortage and lower crop yields around the world, with climate change already causing setbacks to economic and social progress in developing countries.

The review also states that we are just 5⁰C warmer than in the last ice age. If a 5⁰C temperature increase can cause such a dramatic change, then with the anticipated 3⁰C temperature rise, we are edging towards

another world. "We are seriously headed towards an unknown territory," says WWF, head of Climate Change, Keith Allot. The new report says that warming during the last 100 years was 0.74⁰C, with most of the warming occurring during the past 50 years. The warming per decade for the next 20 years is projected to be 0.2⁰C.

The findings, which governments worldwide have agreed upon, leave no doubt as to the dangers mankind is facing and must be acted upon without delay. Any notion that we do not know enough to move decisively against climate change has been clearly dispelled, said United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) executive secretary Yvo de Boer. The world urgently needs new international agreement on stronger emission caps for industrialized countries, incentives for developing countries to limit their emissions, and support for robust adaptation measures, he said.

A hard-hitting report on Friday by a UN panel of experts on global warming drew calls for concerted global action, with UN chief Ban Ki-Moon urging a much more rapid and determined response.

In the United States, the world’s biggest polluter, energy secretary Samuel Bodman said the report confirmed what US President George W. Bush had said about "the nature of climate change, and it reaffirms the need for continued US leadership in addressing global climate issues." Mr. Ban said the report "highlights the scientific consensus regarding the quickening and threatening pace of human-induced climate change."

"The global response therefore needs to move much more rapidly as well, and with more determination," the UN Secretary-General said in a statement. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the UN’s top scientific authority on global warming – delivered its starkest warning yet at a conference in Paris. The UN body’s report, its first for six years, said fossil fuel pollution would raise temperatures this century, worsen floods, droughts and hurricanes, melt polar ice and damage the climate system for a thousand years to come.

South African environment minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk urged Mr. Bush to hear the "growing grounds well of opinion in that country (United States)" and to join the global effort to curb global warming.

Mr. Bodman said the US government under Mr. Bush "is taking action to curb the growth of greenhouse gas emissions and encouraging the development and deployment of clean energy technologies here in the United States and across the globe."

The Australian government, one of only two developed countries to refuse to sign the Kyoto Protocol, along with the US, said the latest report was "nothing new" and defended its policies. Australian environment minister Malcolm Turnbull said they had long accepted that the country must prepare for hotter and drier conditions in the future. "The science in this report is important but it is not new," he said. "The Australian government’s response to climate change has been fast and decisive. The past 10 years has seen us reduce the growth in our greenhouse gas emissions to meet our international target and continually push for an effective global climate change agreement."

With the horrors of global warming becoming an internationally-recognised reality; closer home, the gradual melting of Himalayan glaciers and decreasing snowfall in the recent years in the hill state has alarmed climate experts.

Concurring with the latest international report confirming the "unequivocal" nature of global warming, the government is proposing to set up a regional centre for monitoring glacial environment and climate change.

The immediate trigger for such an affirmative action from the government has been the alarming decrease in frequency and intensity of snowfall over the past few years on one hand and the consistent rise in temperatures being witnessed over the years in the hill state.

The scenario has manifested in shrinking glaciers in all four main river basins of the state. Moreover, the more visible impact

of climate change is being witnessed on the pattern of crops with the deodar trees getting dried up due to less cold and apple crop suffering a drop in yield in the apple belt due to decreased snowfall. Interestingly, the shooting up of temperatures in the cold desert regions has started yielding apple crop.

"The retreating glaciers and rising temperatures are a cause of concern for which we need to undertake impact assessment studies so that a policy for adaptation and preparedness can be formulated to atleast prevent its further deterioration," says Mr. R.K. Sood, Joint Member Secretary, Himachal Pradesh Council for Science, Technology and Environment.

For the second consecutive year, negligible rain and a decreasing snowfall pattern is being witnessed in the state, impacting not just the flora and fauna but more importantly posing a threat to the very existence of the hydro-power projects that have been set up in the state.

With just 2.2 mm of rain and no snowfall during the month of January this year, there is concern at this unusual trend as it is for the second time after 1998 that there has been a snowless January in Shimla.

The average snowfall in the state has declined from 272.4 cms during 1976-80 to a mere 77.20 cms during 2001-04. As per a study undertaken by the department of Silviculture and Agro-forestry, Horticulture University, Nauni the terminal points of the deodar trees are drying up because of non-fulfillment of their chilling requirement.

According to the Glaciology Division of the Geological Survey of India (GSI) majority of the glaciers in the basins of the four main rivers of Himachal, Ravi, Beas, Satluj and Chenab have shown both vertical as well as horizontal shrinkage with different magnitude.

Global warming is real, and it is progressing at a quickening pace. This chilling conclusion was included in a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the most authoritative group on global warming, comprising 2,500 scientists from around the world.

The IPCC’s latest report ~ a collection of the most up-to-date scientific findings about the greenhouse effect and climate change ~ came six years after its third such report was published in 2001. The new report states in no uncertain terms that the warming of Earth has accelerated over the past six years.

The IPCC’s third report said the average temperature of our planet had risen by 0.6⁰C during the 100 years from 1901 to 2001. However, the latest report said the average temperature had risen by 0.74⁰C over the 100 years through 2005. These figures indicate the pace of the rise in the average global temperature is increasing.

The report also shed light on the cause of global warming. According to the report, the heating of the planet was "very likely" caused by carbon dioxide and other green-house gases discharged through human activities. The phrase "very likely" meant a probability of more than 90 per cent that human activities were responsible, the report said.Some scientists have sniffed at the argument that greenhouse gases are the culprits behind global warming. However, the latest findings, obtained through six years of research by IPCC scientists, have added credibility to this theory.

Getting hotter, faster
The report predicted Earth’s average temperature could rise by up to 6.4⁰ C by the end of this century, and added that the impacts caused by this climate change would reverberate for several centuries to come. The figure represents an increase of 0.6⁰C from a forecast made in the 2001 report.

All these findings point to the sobering and increasingly undeniable ~ fact that the planet is getting warmer at an ever-quicker pace.What should be done to halt the heating of the Earth? Before anything else, every nation must acknowledge the problem needs to be addressed seriously.

The latest report was the first of its kind to link abnormal weather on a global scale to the increasing temperature of the planet. It said extreme weather such as torrential rain, heat waves, unusually mild winters and massive typhoons are not unrelated to global warming, adding that abnormal weather could strike parts of the world more often than in the past.

Senator Hillary Clinton has finally been fiercely critical of the war against Iraq. Meanwhile, she has also called for another war – this one on global warming. Till now, amongst the Democrats, it was AI Gore who championed the cause, passionately talking about what is one of the greatest threats to the planet today. Ironically, amongst the Republicans, it has been Schwartzneggar and McCain who have acted decisively on global warming.

Finally, now, in a well publicized speech in lowa, Hillary has clearly announced "we’re not setting high goals and moving toward them on energy independence and to combat global warming – although we emit more gas emissions than anybody else globally. We can do this, but there’s a strain of fatalism in some of the conversations that have crept into the political dialogue."

What does it mean for the rest of us? One can only make some sort of optimists’ guess. I won’t even dream that the United States will actually sign the Kyoto Protocol. But that is not the most important issue at hand. If all goes well, we will see more effective incentives in the US to reduce greenhouse gases. It could take any shape, but it will guide global policy making, business attitudes and fiscal instruments.

Energy ahoy!
Energy policy is critical to climate change action. If the US does get its act together, alternative technologies for clean-energy are likely to be improved and made more cost effective. Apart from reducing American oil dependence, already an important security consideration, it will probably allow for oil prices and the resultant economic conditions in other parts of the world, to ease up.

In India, what this means is that some of the Saudi oil may be more readily available. Besides this, India will need significantly more energy to maintain its growth.

On the other hand, it is also a big producer of greenhouse gases. If clean energy is tried and tested, we can negotiate for a transfer of technologies and frog-leaping the dirty growth phase. All this, though, is unlikely to result in two important things. First, to convince the average American to consume less. Second, to reverse the warming process that has begun. We don’t know what can, but armed with just human knowledge and will; we just have to move forward.

Troubled by global warming? How about erecting a cosmic sunshade to divert some sunlight? Or you could think of cooling the climate by pumping a few million tonnes of sulphate aerosols into the upper atmosphere. Or perhaps let loose aluminium balloons filled with hydrogen gas.

Solutions to the grave ecological problem are all around the corner — and quite a few of them seem rather outlandish. But scientists are actually looking at diverse ways of saving the planet from overheating.

The 1995 chemistry Nobel laureate Prof. Paul Crutzen believes in having a contingency plan ready — what he calls an "escape route" should "our politicians fail us". Other scientists may not agree with the idea proposed by the 74-year-old Dutch atmospheric chemist who lives and works in Mainz, Germany, of artificially cooling the climate by pumping sulphate aerosols (particles) into the upper atmosphere, but they do take note of his proposal. After all, few experts can claim to know the chemistry of the stratosphere better than him.

"It’s not a crazy idea," Prof. Crutzen told Know How. In New Delhi last week as part of an Indo-EU science meet, Crutzen says the idea comes from studying volcanic eruptions. His plan is modelled partly on the 1991 Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption which ejected thousands of tonnes of sulphur. Sulphate aerosols thus released into the atmosphere brought down the earth’s surface temperature by an average of 0.5 degree Celsius the following year. Once in the atmosphere, the sulphate particles scatter around and act like tiny mirrors that reflect back sunlight, triggering an overall cooling effect.

"Suppose the political attempts to limit man-made greenhouse gases fail, we still may have to save hapless millions from impending sea level rise and other such calamities," Prof. Crutzen says. His proposal to fire millions of tiny rockets carrying sulphur into the stratosphere, which appeared in the August 2006 issue of Climatic Change, aims to do just that. But he admits that exhaustive simulation studies need to be conducted to ascertain the side effects of such a mammoth operation.

What about the cost? "It won’t be much. Every citizen of the developed world may have to shell out $25-$50 each to inject enough sulphate particles that can last up to two or three years," says Crutzen.

Crutzen’s radical proposal is one of the several "geo-engineering" plans mooted by scientists worldwide to reduce the impact of the build-up of heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — a 2,500 member-strong international network of scientists — which recently released the first installment of a report that looks into the causes and effects of global climate change, said the cause "very likely" is human activity since 1950.

Another curious idea that has come up recently is that of a cosmic sunshade. In November 2006, University of Arizona astronomer Roger Angel published a paper in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences detailing how a multitude of tiny spacecraft, parked some 1.5 million kilometres from the earth, can deflect enough sunlight to nullify the adverse effects of the doubling of greenhouse gases, which is feared to happen later in this century. These spacecraft can be arrayed to form a giant screen.

According to Angel’s plan, the giant screen may be kept in a tilted position so that it would deflect sunlight through only a small angle, just enough to miss the earth. To keep it in line between the earth and the sun, it would be placed at the Lagrange point L1, a point in space 1.5 million km away that orbits the sun with the same one-year period as the earth.

Angel’s flyers would be launched in stacks, packed in canisters and fired into space from electromagnetic guns more than a kilometre long. Twenty such cannons would fire one-tonne payloads every five minutes for 10 years. Once in space, the flyers make their way to the Lagrange point using fuel-efficient ion propulsion thrusters, where they spread out into a cloud as wide as the earth and 1,00,000 km long. The size of a screen thus formed will be four-six million square kilometres — more than 1.5 times the area of India!

The tab: a few thousand billion dollars. Less than 0.5 per cent of world gross domestic product, says Angel.

Blocking the sunlight seems to be the choice for yet another team of scientists. However, the method the California-based Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers conceive of is different. They want to release a massive fleet of tiny aluminium balloons filled with hydrogen gas into the upper atmosphere, which will reflect back a portion of the sunlight. Preventing even less than two per cent of the solar radiation that reaches the earth is more than enough to overturn global warming, the scientists say. The scientific community, including the originators of the idea, however, agree on one thing: the stratospheric ozone layer that protects us from harmful UV rays could be a casualty.

While all these experts are building castles in thin air, literally, there are others who fish in deep waters for a viable solution. Many have pinned their hopes of averting disaster, albeit unsuccessfully, on phytoplankton (microscopic marine plants). These algae, which are at the bottom of the aquatic food chain, use up the maximum quantity of carbon dioxide on the earth for photosynthesis. The quantum of carbon dioxide taken in by these tiny plants is already several times more than that absorbed by all the trees and bushes on land.

Scientists studying phytoplankton — particularly the late John Martin, an oceanographer who worked for Moss Landing

Marine Base Labs, California, about two decades ago — hypothesised that there is a link between plankton growth and the availability of iron in ocean waters. Thus, tiny specks of iron, rare in noncoastal oceans, when added as catalysts can spur plankton growth. As plankton occurs on the water surface and relies on photosynthesis for growth, it sucks carbon dioxide out of the air and stores it in the cells of the ocean vegetation, where it ends up as fish feed, or falls to the ocean floor after its death, safely away from the atmosphere.

Shanghai, Guangahou and other large coastal cities in China could face "unimaginable challenges" if global warming continues and the oceans keep rising, state media said on Friday.

A report released recently by the state oceanic administration has warned of a rapid rise in sea levels that threatens China’s densely populated east coast, the China Daily reported.

"The speed is astonishing," said Lu Xuedu, the Deputy Director of the Environmental Division of the Ministry of Science and Technology.

"Coastal cities including Shanghai and Guangzhou will confront unimaginable allenges if the situation deteriorates," he told the paper.

The sea level had risen by an average of 2.5 millimeters (one tenth of an inch) annually in recent years, the paper said, citing the oceanic administration’s report. It predicted that over the next decade, the sea would to rise by upto 31 millimetres, threatening low-lying cities, according to the paper. "They will beign building dykes like the Dutch, to stop the cities from being flooded," said Mr. Yang Ailun, an expert on climate change with Greenpeace China.

"But building dykes will be an action taken too late, and we first need to start cutting greenhouse gase emissions," she said.

China is preparing a campaign to alert local officials to global warming, in an apparent attempt to address the root causes, the paper said. The plan calls for the reduction of greenhouse gases and development of climate-friendly technologies, and could be submitted to the Cabinet by the end of February.

The recent report of the United Nation’s Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change dispels any lingering doubts. It draws on new and more comprehensive data, more accurate simulation models of climate processes, and sophisticated data analysis to pronounce climate system warming "unequivocal" and the causes "very likely" to be human activity.

The report does not focus on the impact of climate change, but the human and social costs involved glare from between the lines. Take this phrase from the report: "observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, wide-spread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level". It means submerged coasts, fewer islands, flooding rivers, agricultural disruption for India. Imagine Mumbai as a set of islands again. Two islands in the Sundarbans have already disappeared.

India can and must be a leader in responding, both at home and internationally. Domestic emissions of carbon, especially soot, are an easy target.

The strategies for limiting black carbon emissions are straightforward: tackle biomass-based cooking more seriously, allocate more funding for "smokeless chulhas" and ensure that they are suitable for local cooking needs, and support distribution of LPG in rural areas.

Moving to fossil fuel, we must crack down on fuel adulteration and provide incentives for engine tuning. We must also deliver on the promise for rural electrification to cut down the use of diesel generators and encourage the use of CNG for buses and cabs.

International strategies are trickier. On the one hand, India is a developing country, starting to ramp up its fossil-fuel use and emissions after the richer countries have contributed to the problem for decades. It has inherited problems it neither created nor benefited from creating. On the other hand, it is one of the world’s largest economies and, along with China, the future centre of economic activity-and emissions.India has two choices: stubbornly claim its right to unfettered emissions in its economic transition, or acknowledge that the world has changed and that development today might require different strategies than it did in the last century.

India has always sought differentiated treatment in any international agreement to limit emissions. It currently has no reduction obligation and can earn credit under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) for the emissions it does forgo.

There are three reasons to reconsider this stance and to consider committing to phased limits on emissions growth. India should not have to overpay for past emissions, but it also should not underpay for its current
and future emissions.

First, full exemption from emissions controls is not sustainable. The negotiations over emissions control look like a classic war of attrition, with stubborn adherence to positions while the costs of stalling steadily increase. Climate change will affect India at least as much as the developed nations that it balmes for the problem. It is not as if climate change give India special treatment.

Second, energy efficiency — one component of limiting emissions — is not necessarily incompatible with rapid growth. One indicator is China’s energy intensity of GDP (measured as BTU per dollar of GDP) decreased by 4.5 per cent annually in the 1980s and nearly 6 per cent annually over the 1990s, according to the US Energy Information Administration. India, too, has the domestic scientific and technical capacity to complete in the growing international market for green technology.

"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its latest assessment report, pointing to increased global air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising sea levels. The international panel of scientists that has the task of evaluating evidence of climate change found that the burning of fossil fuels, some agricultural practices, and changes in land use have been generating gases like carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide that trapped heat and produced runaway global warming.

If the production of these greenhouse gases continued to soar, global temperatures could rise by up to 6.4 degrees Celsius by the end of this century with far-reaching consequences for the climate, warned the IPCC.

The widespread melting of mountain glaciers and polar ice caps had already contributed to rising sea levels, according to the IPCC's fourth assessment report, a summary of which was released on Friday (February 2, 2007). According to the report, there has been an acceleration in sea level rise since 1993. Between 1961 and 2003, the sea level had increased an average rate of 1.8 mm a year. But between 1993 and 2003, the rate of rise had nearly doubled to 3.1 mm a year.

The fourth assessment report predicted sea levels increasing by up to 0.59 metres by the end of the 21^st century. But the report also points out that 125,000 years ago, which was the last time the polar regions were significantly warmer than at present for an extended period, sea levels rose by four to six metres as the ice melted.

However, the IPCC took the view that an increase in sea level on a similar scale as the Greenland ice sheet disappeared under the influence of global warming might take thousands of years.

Some experts fear the IPCC prediction is too conservative. Recently, Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research in Germany published a paper in the journal Science arguing that "a rise (in sea level) of over 1 metre by 2100 for strong warming scenarios cannot be ruled out."

A sharp rise in sea level could have a considerable impact on India. The United Nations Environment Programme included India among the 27 countries that are most vulnerable to a sea level rise. About a quarter of India's population lives within 50 km of the coastline. The mega cities of Mumbai and Chennai with large and growing populations and huge investments in infrastructure are located on the coast.

Besides, much of the coastal region has fertile agricultural land. Low-level areas, such as those in Orissa and West Bengal, could be vulnerable to inundation. An increase in sea level could also lead to salt water entering the groundwater aquifers on which people depend for drinking water and to irrigate their fields, points out Suruchi Bhadwal of The Energy and Resources Institute in Delhi.

Simulations with a regional climate model indicated that by the middle of this century powerful cyclones could arise more frequently in the Bay of Bengal during the post-monsoon period as a result of climate change, according to a paper by A.S. Unnikrishnan of the National Institute of Oceanography in Goa and other scientists that was published last year. Some empirical studies of cyclones that had occurred in the Bay were already discerning such a trend, they added.

The monsoon has hitherto been a largely stable phenomenon, remarked J. Srinivasan, an atmospheric scientist at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. But there was growing evidence that global warming had put the climate in a different mode and therefore the future could be different from the past, he told this correspondent

Simulations with climate models as well as observational data indicated that droughts and spells of excessive rain like the deluge that struck Mumbai in 2005 were likely to become more frequent in India as the world warmed. It was worrying that both during the 2005 and 2006 monsoons there were spells of exceptionally heavy rain that ordinarily would have occurred once in a hundred years, noted Dr. Srinivasan

"Any major changes in rainfall patterns will have far-reaching consequences for agriculture and water availability," he pointed out.

Glaciers in the Himalayas feed important rivers such as the Ganga, the Indus, and the Brahmaputra that provide water for millions of people as well as for irrigation and industry. The accelerated melting these glaciers are experiencing as a result of the earth's warming will have a profound effect on future water availability.

The Gangotri glacier, one of the largest in the Himalayas, has been retreating rapidly in recent decades. Anil Kulkarni of the Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad along with other scientists examined the data for 466 glaciers in the Himalayas and found that their surface area has shrunk by about 21 per cent since 1962. As the glaciers retreated, they became more fragmented. The smaller glaciers were more sensitive to global warming, said the scientists in a paper published recently.

Changes in temperature and rainfall associated with global warming could result in about 80 per cent of the existing forests in the country undergoing a change in the type of vegetation, according to R. Sukumar, an environmental scientist at the Indian Institute of Science. Such changes were bound to have a very significant impact on the forests and the wildlife they supported. As the Indian forests were already highly fragmented, many species of plants and animals might not be able to cope with climate change and could, therefore, face extinction.

Hitherto, it has been the developed countries that have been the worst emitters of greenhouse gases. The U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which came into force in 1994 and seeks to stop the emissions from rising to dangerous levels, recognised as much, noting that "the largest share of historical and current global emissions of greenhouse gases has originated in developed countries, that per capita emissions in developing countries are still relatively low and that the share of global emissions originating in developing countries will grow to meet their social and development needs."

Consequently, when the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated, developed countries were required to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions while no such obligation was placed on developing countries. But as evidence of global warming becomes incontrovertible and the consequences of climate change grow clearer and more alarming, there is likely to be increasing pressure on the United States, which spews out more greenhouse gases than any other nation but refuses to accept the Kyoto Protocol, as well as on China and India to reduce their emissions.

"Compared with Europe, Japan and the United States, China and India have contributed far less to the heightened carbon dioxide concentrations now in the atmosphere," point out Christopher Flavin and Gary Gardner of the Worldwatch Institute based in Washington, D.C. "But (China's and India's) emissions have increased by 67 per cent and 88 per cent respectively since 1990, and their shares are projected to grow steadily in the decades to come, making it clear that no serious solution to the world's climate problem is possible without their active participation."

India's carbon dioxide equivalent emissions of greenhouse gases could increase to 3,000 million tonnes by 2020, which would be about twice the emission level in 2000, according to information given in a paper by Subodh Sharma of the Ministry of Environment and Forests and others that was published in the journal Current Science last year. Even so, India's emissions would account for less than five per cent of global emissions
in 2020 and its per capita emissions would be low when compared to most developed countries.

Since greenhouse gas emissions were directly linked to economic growth, India's economic activities would necessarily involve increased emissions, pointed out the authors of the Current Science paper. Any constraint on emissions would hamper economic development, they stated.

There are measures that India could easily take to limit its emissions, believes N.H. Ravindranath of the Centre for Sustainable Technologies at the Indian Institute of Science. The burning of coal for power generation was a major source of emissions and clean coal technologies could help reduce the pollution. Electricity consumption could be reduced by about 25 per cent with greater energy efficiencies in manufacturing processes, houses, and offices, and by using better irrigation pumps.

There had to be greater use of renewable sources of energy, he argues. Mass transportation systems needed to be supported and the country should invest heavily in the railways so that goods could be transported with the least consumption of fossil fuels.

Yet another editorial on global warming? Yawn. In most people’s minds it’s become one of the most boring aspects of the entire environmental movement. The reason is the numbers involved. A mere 0.6⁰ Celsius rise in the average temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans over an entire 20^th century seems hardly imperative enough to be commented on repeatedly, much less read. But if that’s the case, then the "good" news is the ante has just been upped. Models and sources referenced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) now predict that global temperatures are likely to increase by up to 6.5⁰ Celsius by the end of the 21^st century. The extra heat could mean more severe rains, heat waves, droughts, melting glaciers and rising sea levels. It could also make the United States which has refused to go along with the Kyoto Protocol – an international treaty on the reduction of the emission of greenhouse gases – take stock. Especially since the IPCC has almost catergorically pinpointed the cause of the warming to the very human-centric activity of burning fossil fuels. It is to be hoped that the US will not give this finding a miss, considering that as of 2005 it is the largest single emitter of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

However, reports have come in indicating that some panel scientists are being offered $10,000 by an ExxonMobil think tank with close links to the Bush administration, in order to generate articles that emphasise the shortcomings of the IPCC report. At the same time, ironic as it seems, it now appears that only America is in any position to resolve the
mess in which humanity is going to find itself in the near future. The reason is because not only public opinion but governmental attitudes too are shifting in that country. Climate change related Bills, for instance, have been tabled in Congress by candidates who could become the next president. If the United States does in fact perform a table-turning act on itself, it can start a dramatic process which will ultimately force other recalcitrant

The Eiffel Tower’s 20,000 flashing lights will go dark for five minutes on Thursday evening, hours before scientists and officials unveil a long-awaited report on global warming.

The darkening of the land-mark in the City of Light comes at the urging of environmental activities and is timed to coincide with Friday’s release of the major report warning that Earth will keep getting warmer and presenting new evidence of humanity’s role in climate change. Ahead of the report, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, pressure is building on UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon to convene an emergency summit of world leaders aimed at breaking a deadlock over cutting greenhouse gases.

UN Environment Program executive director Achim Steiner recommended the summit take place later this year, an official close to the talks said on Tuesday in Nairobi speaking on condition of anonymity.

Earlier this month, Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, had said he would ask Ban to organise a conference. Ban has not decided if he will push for a summit, said his spokes-woman, Michele Montas, in New York.

From a boat at sea, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef seems invincible – its myriad corals stretching 2,300 km beyond sight.

But the reef’s vastness and wave smashing outcrops mask fragility in the face of climate change threatening to bleach its fluorescent depths the stark white of death. The reef, and possibly the A$5.8 billion ($4.5 billion) tourist industry it underpins, will be "functionally extinct" by 2050, a draft report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned this week. "Climate change is clearly a threat to the corals and the tiny plants that live in the tissues, but the issues go far beyond coral. Corals build a structure in which thousands of species live," Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a coral bleaching researcher said.

Coral bleaching due to rising temperatures has struck many reefs around the world, hitting the Indian Ocean, parts of the Caribbean and Australia. It occurs when corals living at the edge of their temperature tolerance expel the tiny animals that live inside, turning colourless and exposing their calcium skeletons inside.

Death follows unless the water soon cools. Global warming bringing temperature rises of between 2 to 3 Celsius makes future salvation less likely. "Coral bleaching can occur for a number of different reasons. But more recently, its been occurring because the seas in the tropical parts of the world are becoming too warm," Hoegh-Guldberg said.

Nicholas Stern, whose eponymous report had recently stirred the world into debating climate change afresh, reiterated that India and other countries in the sub-continent stood to suffer the most from global warming. He said this in Washington, talking at a two-day legislator’s conference on climate change.

Precipitation comes, and the glaciers hold it, he explained in an interview conveyed to the media by the World Bank. "That’s how you get water in the rivers. That effect will not be there if the glaciers and snow are not there. Which means you’ll get torrents during the wet season and dry rivers in the dry season. So you’ll get a combination of flood and drought," he explained the ecological link.

"We also don’t know what effect that will have on the monsoon, and it could have quite a strong effect. That kind of thing is being studied now," he added. Stern pointed out that both Indian agriculture and its urban areas would suffer economically. He pointed out that countries had to adapt, prepare and works towards mitigation. "We have to adapt how we handle water extraction and irrigation. Water management is involved in all of this. Work has to done on what crops would be resilient."He made it amply clear that urban areas throughout the region were also at risk as water supplies could be disrupted over time. Urban areas on the coast were especially vulnerable and work had to be done to create resilience against future change. In his report, which had set alarm bells ringing, Stern had pointed out that the potential melting of the Himalayan glaciers could affect hundreds of millions in India along with almost one-quarter of Chinese population. Any changes in rainfall patterns of the Asian monsoon, he had pointed out earlier, would severely affect the lives of millions of people across south Asia.

The talk in US, a country which has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol unless developing countries like India and China too undertake commitments for reduction in emissions, did’nt focus too hard at the international politics that underlies all climate change negotiations.

Temperatures in rugged Tibet have hit record highs in recent days, China's state press has reported, as a scientific survey warned of the impact of global warming in the Himalayan region. Friday's temperature in the Qamdo area of eastern Tibet was 21.8 degrees Celsius (71 degrees Fahrenheit), 1.7 degrees higher than the previous record set for the same day in 1996, Xinhua news agency reported.

In Dengqen county, also in eastern Tibet, the mercury reached 16.6 degrees Celsius on Thursday, 2.5 degrees higher than the previous record for the same day set in 2001, it said. Eight other places across the region also recorded record-breaking daily temperatures over the past few days, it added. Meteorological data in the Himalayan region began to be collected in 1970.

China's Tibet plateau, seen as a barometer of world climate conditions, is experiencing accelerating glacial melt and other ecological change, the leading People's Daily reported Friday.

The mountainous region's glaciers have been melting at an average rate of 131.4 square kilometers (50 square miles) per year over the past 30 years, the paper said, citing a recent geological study. Researchers who conducted the survey said that even if global warming did not worsen, the area's glaciers would be reduced by nearly a third by 2050 and up to half by 2090, at the current rate.

Europe, the richest and most fertile continent and the model for the modern world, will be devastated by climate change, the European Union predicted on Wednesday.

The ecosystems which have underpinned all European societies from Ancient Greece and Rome to present-day Britain and France, and which helped European civilisation gain global pre-eminence, will be disabled by remorselessly rising temperatures, EU scientists forecast in a remarkable report which is as ominous as it is detailed.

Much of the continent’s age-old fertility, which gave the world the vine and the olive and now produces mountains of grain and dairy products, will not survive the climate change forecast for the coming century, the scientists say, and its wildlife will be devastated. Europe’s modern lifestyles, from summer package tours to winter skiing trips, will go the same way, as the Mediterranean becomes simply too hot for holidays and snow and ice disappear from mountain ranges such as the Alps; the economic consequences will be enormous. The direct social consequences will also be vividly felt as heat-related deaths start to rise and extreme weather events, such as storms and floods, become more violent still.

The report, stark and uncom-promising, marks a step- change in the Europe’s own role in pushing for international action to combat climate change, as it will be used in a bid to commit the EU to ambitious new targets for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases.

The European Commission wants to hold back the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees C above the pre-industrial level (at present the level is 0.6). To do this, it wants member states to commit to cutting back emissions of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, to 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, as long as other developed countries agree to do the same. Failing that, the EU would observe a unilateral target of a 20 per cent cut.

The Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso, has given President Bush a preview of the new policy during a visit to the White House this week. The force of today’s report lies in its setting-out of the scale of the continent-wide threat to Europe’s "ecosystem services".

This is a relatively new but powerful concept, which recognises that essential elements of civilised life, such as food, water, wood or fuel, which may generally be taken for granted, are all ultimately dependent on the proper functioning of ecosystems in the natural world. Historians have recognised in recent years that Europe was particularly lucky in this respect from the start, compared to Africa or pre-Columbian America- and this was a major reason for Europe’s rise to global preeminence.

"Climate change will alter the supply of European ecosystem services over the next century" the report says. "While (it) will result in enhancement of some ecosystem services, a large portion will be adversely impacted because of drought, reduced soil fertility, fire, and other climate change-driven factors.

"Europe can expect a decline in arable land, a decline in Mediterranean forest areas, a decline in the terrestrial carbon sink and soil fertility, and an increase in the number of basins with water scarcity. This will all increase the loss of biodiversity".

There are many direct threats to the well- being of future Europeans, the report says. The cost of taking action to cope with sea level rise will run into billions of Euros. Furthermore, "for the coming decades, it is predicted that the magnitude and frequency of extreme weather events will increase due to climate change, and that floods will likely be more frequent and severe in many areas across Europe."

George W. Bush proposes to deal with climate change by means of smoke and mirrors. So what's new? Only that it is no longer just a metaphor. After six years of obfuscation and denial, the United States now insists that we find ways to block some of the sunlight reaching the earth. This means launching either mirrors or clouds of small particles into the atmosphere.

The demand appears in a recent U.S. memo to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It describes "modifying solar radiance" as "important insurance" against the threat of climate change. A more accurate description might be important insurance against the need to cut emissions.

Every scheme that could give us a chance of preventing runaway climate change should be considered on its merits. But the proposals for building a global parasol don't have very many. A group of nuclear weapons scientists at the Lawrence Livermore laboratory in California, apparently bored of experimenting with only one kind of mass death, have proposed launching into the atmosphere a million tonnes of tiny aluminium balloons, filled with hydrogen, every year. One unfortunate side-effect would be to eliminate the ozone layer.

Another proposal, from a scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, Colorado, suggests spraying billions of tonnes of sea-water into the air. Regrettably, the production of small salt particles, while generating obscuring mists, could cause droughts in the countries downwind. Another scheme would inject sulphate particles into the stratosphere. It is perhaps less dangerous than the others, but still carries a risk of causing changes in rainfall patterns. As for flipping a giant mirror into orbit, the necessary technologies are probably a century away. All these fixes appear more expensive than cutting the amount of energy we consume. None reduces the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which threatens to acidify the oceans, with grave consequences for the food chain.

The demand that money and research be diverted into these quixotic solutions is another indication that Mr. Bush's avowed conversion to the cause of cutting emissions is illusory. He is simply drumming up new business for his chums. In his State of the Union address last week, he spoke of "the serious challenge of global climate change" and announced that he was raising the Government's mandatory target for alternative transport fuels fivefold. This is wonderful news for the grain barons of the red States, who will grow the maize and rapeseed that will be turned into biofuel. It's a catastrophe for everyone else.

An analysis published last year by the Sarasin Bank found that until a new generation of vegetable fuels, made from straw or wood, is developed, "the present limit for the environmentally and socially responsible use of biofuels [is] roughly 5 per cent of current petrol and diesel consumption in the EU and U.S." Mr. Bush now proposes to raise the proportion to 24 per cent by 2017. Already, though the rich world has replaced just a fraction of 1 per cent of its transport fuels, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation reports that using crops to feed cars has raised world food prices, with serious consequences for the poor. Biofuels fall into the same category as atmospheric smoke and mirrors — a means of avoiding difficult decisions.

But at least, or so we are told, the argument over whether or not manmade climate change is happening is now over. On Friday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change publishes the first instalment of its vast report, which collates the findings of the world's climate scientists. If even Mr. Bush now grudgingly acknowledges that there's a problem, surely we've seen the last of the cranks and charlatans who had managed to grab so much attention with their claims that global warming wasn't happening?

Some chance. A company called Wag TV is currently completing a 90-minute documentary for Britain's Channel 4 called The Great Global Warming Swindle. Manmade climate change, the channel tells us, is "a lie ... the biggest scam of modern times. The truth is that global warming is a multibillion-dollar worldwide industry: created by fanatically anti-industrial environmentalists; supported by scientists peddling scare stories to chase funding; and propped up by complicit politicians and the media ... The fact is that CO2 has no proven link to global temperatures ... solar activity is far more likely to be the culprit."

It is the same old conspiracy theory we've been hearing from the denial industry for 10 years, and it carries as much scientific weight as the contention that the twin towers were brought down by missiles.

The programme's thesis revolves around the deniers' favourite canard: that the "hockey-stick graph" showing rising global temperatures is based on a statistical mistake made in a paper by the scientists Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes.

What it will not be showing is that their results have been repeated several times by other scientists using different statistical methods; that the paper claiming to have exposed the mistake has been comprehensively debunked; and that the lines of evidence used by Mr. Mann, Mr. Bradley, and Mr. Hughes are just a few among hundreds demonstrating that 20^th-century temperatures were anomalous.

The decision to commission this programme seems even odder when you discover who is making it. In 1997, director Martin Durkin produced a similar series for Channel 4 called Against Nature, which also maintained that global warming was a scam
dreamed up by environmentalists.

It was riddled with hilarious scientific howlers. More damagingly, the only way in which Mr. Durkin could sustain his thesis was to deceive the people he interviewed and edit their answers to change their meaning.

After complaints by his interviewees, the Independent Television Commission found that "the views of the four complainants, as made clear to the interviewer, had been distorted by selective editing" and that they had been "misled as to the content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to take part." Channel 4 was obliged to broadcast one of the most humiliating primetime apologies it has made. Are institutional memories really so short?

How often must scientists remind the media that a handful of cherry-picked studies does not amount to the refutation of an entire discipline?

With a mountain of data in front of them and demands for action coming from behind, the world's top climate experts launched a massive review here yesterday of the evidence for global warming.

On Friday, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will release its first assessment since 2001, in a document likely to have far-reaching political and economic repercussions. "Concerns about climate change and public awareness of the subject are at an all-time high," noted Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC's chairman.

"At no time in the past has there been a greater global appetite for knowledge on any subject than there is today on the scientific facts underlying the reality of global climate change." Christian Brodhag, representing the French hosts, said "the fight against climate change" had become cemented into national and European policy.

Brodhag said that the 2003 heatwave in France, which killed an estimated 15,000 people, mainly the elderly, had awoken his country to the danger. "This is why our fellow citizens no longer question climate change." But one delegate said many representatives at the conference feared the draft report poorly reflected urgency about climate change, especially about damage to Earth's ice cover and polar caps.

New data released today showed that 30 reference glaciers monitored by the Swiss-based World Glacier Monitoring Service lost about 66 centimetres in thickness on average in 2005, bringing the loss about 10.5 metres on average since 1980.

"The new data confirms the trend in accelerated loss during the past two and half decades," the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said.

Climbers for the environment group Greenpeace scaled the Eiffel Tower to hang a protest banner of a thermometer, representing the threat of global warming.

The report will be the fourth since the IPCC was launched.The panel is highly regarded for its neutrality and caution, and it wields a big influence over government policies, corporate strategies and even individual decision-making.

In 2001, the IPCC declared that carbon pollution from burning oil, gas and coal had helped drive atmospheric levels of CO2 to their highest in 420,000 years.

CO2 is the principal "greenhouse gas," a term that applies to half a dozen gases that linger invisibly in the atmosphere, trapping the Sun's heat instead of letting solar radiation bounce back into space.

Over the previous 50 years, temperatures climbed by around 0.1⁰C per decade and most of the warming could be blamed on human activity, the 2001 report said.

It predicted that by 2100, the global atmospheric temperature will have risen between 1.4 and 5.8 and sea levels by 0.09 to 0.88 metres (3.5-35 inches) compared to their 1990 level, depending on how much greenhouse gas is emitted.

Pachauri said climate science had leapt ahead since 2001, and the report would eliminate some important areas of uncertainty.

The draft report is agreed by consensus among the some 500 scientists and government representatives in the IPCC's Working Group 1.

Two other volumes will be issued in April in what will be the fourth assessment report on climate change by the IPCC since it was established in 1988. The two others will focus on the impacts of climate change and on the social-economic costs of reducing greenhouse gases.

The draft report is agreed by consensus among the some 500 scientists and government representatives in the IPCC's Working Group 1.

Tony Blair on Tuesday waded into the growing controversy over how individuals can help to tackle global warming by declaring that he has no intention of abandoning long-haul holiday flights to reduce his carbon footprint. Days after his Environment Minister branded Ryanair the "irresponsible face of capitalism" for opposing an E.U. carbon emissions scheme, the Prime Minister says it is impractical to expect people to make personal sacrifices by taking holidays closer to home. "I personally think these things are a bit impractical actually to expect people to do that," Mr. Blair says in an interview. The Prime Minister, who recently had a family holiday in Miami, adds that it would be wrong to impose "unrealistic targets" on travellers. "You know, I’m still waiting for the first politician who's actually running for office who's going to come out and say it - and they’re not," Mr. Blair says. "It's like telling people you shouldn’t drive anywhere."

His remarks contrast with the tone set by Ian Pearson, Environment Minister, who last week used strong language to criticise Ryanair for opposing the European Comission’s plan to include all flights within Europe in the E.U. carbon trading scheme from 2011.

Stress on green Issues

Mr. Blair’s remarks are also at odds with the declaration last month by the Prince of Wales that he would cut back on domestic and international flights. David Cameron, Opposition Conservative leader, believes he has stolen a march on the government by emphasising green issues and his own credentials- installing a wind turbine on his new house. The Prime Minister says: "I think that what we need to do is to look at how you make air travel more energy efficient, how you develop the new fuels that will allow us to burn less energy and emit less. How – for example – in the new frames for the air craft, they are far more energy efficient."

Downing Street was irritated on Monday night that the interview, with Sky News, was quickly interpreted as a snub to attempts to reduce people’s carbon footprints. "This is not about the prime minister’s travel," a source said.

The prime minister’s spokesman said Mr. Blair offset all his official travel, though No. 10 refused to say whether he did this on personal flights. He added: "All government activity will be carbon neutral by 2015 and the Prime Minister has taken the lead in this".

Mr. Blair says in his interview that he is taking difficult decision on whether to replace Britain’s nuclear energy capacity. In his Labour conference speech last year the Prime Minister mocked Mr. Cameron for adopting a "multiple choice" approach by saying he would only endorse nuclear power as a last resort.

Mr. Blair’s message in the interview is that every one needs to works together, but imposing strict rules would only backfire. "Britain is 2 per cent of the world’s emissions. We shut down all of Britain’s emissions tomorrow the growth in China will make up the difference within two years.

"So we’ve got to be realistic about how much obligation we’ve got to put on ourselves. The danger, for example, if you say to people ‘Right, in Britain-you’re not going to have any more cheap air travel, everybody else is going to be having it. "So you’ve got to do this together in a way that doesn’t end up actually putting people off the green agenda by saying you must not have a good time any more and can’t consume. All the evidence is that if you use the science and technology constructively, your economy can grow, people can have a good time, but do so more responsibly".

Emily Armistead of Greenpeace, said: "Tony Blair is crossing his fingers and hoping someone will invent aeroplanes that don’t cause climate change. But that’s like holding out for cigarettes that don’t cause cancer. Hoping for the best isn’t a policy, it’s delusion."

World business leaders welcomed US President George W. Bush's acknowledgment of climate change as "a serious challenge" and called on Wednesday for long-term emissions standards to help them plan. Bush declined in his annual State of the Union address to support mandatory caps on heat-trapping carbon gases that big US companies such as General Electric Co. have pushed for, instead backing new technologies to cut the amount of gasoline used in the United States.

While supporting the White House nod to alternative energies such as ethanol, wind, solar and nuclear power, corporate executives meeting at the Swiss ski resort of Davos said they wanted Washington to lock in stricter US emissions standards. "It is a good step, but we need to take many more," Duke Energy chief executive James Rogers said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum meeting, where climate change is dominating talks among some 2,400 movers and shakers from around the globe.

Power plants being built today will be used for 50 years, so a sense of future regulations is critical for current investment decisions, Rogers said, explaining the business interest in more far-reaching US standards.

"We are not sitting on the sidelines waiting. A tremendous amount of work is going into being prepared [for a new regulatory regime]," Rogers said. Alcoa chief executive Alain Belda agreed, saying it was untenable for the American climate change agenda to continue to be set by individual states such as California.

Encouraged by a growing scientific consensus, the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Nairobi looked beyond the goal of stabilising carbon emissions by mid-century and took up the challenge of adaptation to global warming. The quest for clean, low-emission technologies for the future is of paramount importance – but humankind cannot afford to put off the massive task of devising ways of adapting to an altered climate. Changes in climate will affect agriculture, fisheries, water sources, wetlands, and biodiversity-rich ecosystems. The Nairobi conference did well to address this challenge and formalise funding instruments that developing countries can use to cushion vulnerable communities. These are the Adaptation Fund under the Kyoto protocol; and the Special Climate Change Fund. Institutional structures need to be devised to manage such welfare funds at the international, national, and community levels. New evidence on global warming underscores the importance of speedy action. Researchers from the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology and Indian Institute of Science have, using daily rainfall data for monsoons and warming patterns, discovered that the frequency and intensity of heavy rain increased- and the frequency of light to moderate rain decreased – in Central India during the second half of the 20^th century. The grim forecast is that these trends will get reinforced, with profound socio-economic implications for both town and countryside.

In Bangladesh’s south-west lies the Sundarbans nature reserve, one of the last untouched places on earth – and home to the largest population of tigers left in the wild.

But the trees in the Sundarbans have suddenly started dying. And not just that: they have started dying in a way nobody has seen before, from the top down. Nobody is sure what the cause is, but the country’s leading scientists think it is because in recent years the water has turned from fresh to salty.

The Sundarbans is a massive mangrove swamp, and the sea has begun encroaching. What we are seeing may be one of the first casualties of rising sea levels caused by global warming.

"Nobody can say for sure whether it is climate change because there haven’t been proper in-depth studies," says Professor Ainun Nishat, one of the country’s leading environmentalists, and one of those involved in the UN’s recent climate change report. "But this is the sort of effect rising sea levels will have on Bangladesh. We are fighting climate change on the front line. But the battle has to be integrated across all countries."

Then there were the mysterious deaths of thousands of fishermen off the coast of Bangladesh last summer. The Bay of Bengal was unusually rough that year. Usually, the authorities only issue a storm warning to fishermen to stay at home once or twice a year.

Last year there were four warnings in the space of two months. Every warning meant the fishermen lost valuable days at sea. When the last warning came, they could not afford to stay ashore and went to sea anyway. Officially 1,700 drowned, but many Bangladeshis believe the real number may be closer to 10,000.

"Was it climate change? We don’t know," says Dr. Nishat. "Was it unusual? Yes." The weather in Bangladesh is going crazy. Last week there was a freak tornado. Tornadoes occur regularly in Bangladesh – but usually only in the tornado season, in April. A tornado in February is almost unheard of. Then there were the strange events of 2004, when the tides in the estuary of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers stopped changing. The water level just stayed at high tide. The same year the capital, Dhaka, was hit by floods so severe the ground floors of most buildings were under water, and they caught a catfish in one of the government buildings.

In 2005, there was no winter. Westerners tend to assume the whole of the sub-continent is hot all year round; in fact Bangladesh, like much of northern India, gets quite cold in winter. Except it didn’t in 2005. Winter never came – with serious effects on the year’s potato crop. This year it has not been as cold as usual.

"We have a saying, in February even the tigers feel the cold," says Arun Karmaker, environment correspondent of Prothom Alo newspaper. "But these days a visitor to Bangladesh would find it hard to believe."

Bangladesh is on the front line of climate change. The entire country is basically one vast river delta, and that has always left it vulnerable to weather extremes. The villages of the south-east may often lack electricity or clean water, but a cyclone shelter is never far away.

But the country’s climate experts say the weather is growing more extreme – and becoming unpredictable. And this is in the most densely populated country in the world, if you don’t count city-states or small islands, home to 147million people. That leaves a worrying question: what happens to those 147million people if parts of this already overcrowded country become uninhabitable due to rising sea levels.

The problem is nobody really knows just how much effect climate change will have on Bangladesh. "We still don’t have a proper study of the impact of global warming here," says Mr. Karmaker. "Up till now, no one has done one."

The classic scenario of climate change in Bangladesh that has endlessly been played out in disaster predictions is of rising sea levels flooding most of the country, forcing as many as 40 million people to flee. Scientists have measured small rises in the sea level at various points around the coastline, and almost all of Bangladesh lies less than 10 metres above sea level.

But what is less well known is that Bangladesh has a defence against that scenario: a huge series of dykes made of boulders that stretch along the entire coastline – a literal front line in the battle to survive climate change. The dykes were put up to protect against the storm surges from which Bangladesh periodically suffers, but should be high enough to withstand the predicted rise in sea levels.

But that doesn’t mean Bangaldesh is safe from climate change, says Dr. Nishat. "The dykes create their own problems," he says. "By trapping rainfall on the inside, they could end up causing flooding. And they do nothing to stop salinity spreading through our water."

It is not just the Sundarbans that are already suffering the effects of rising salinity. Farmers in coastal areas who used to grow rice have switched to farming prawns, after the water in their paddy fields got too salty. The country has just developed a new strain of rice that will grow in salty water.

But it could be more serious than that, Dr. Nishat warns. "The direction of the monsoon has changed in the last few years," he says. "The depression that brings the rain used to advance north across Bangladesh. Now it is heading west."

Bangladesh has suffered cyclones many times. But Dr. Nishat says the change in direction of the monsoon may mean any cyclone spends more time gathering pace over the Bay of Bengal.

Alarmbells over climate change could open flood gates of the technology mart and create a flurry of environment-friendly products Environmentalists around the world are a worried lot. Not just because of the ongoing climate change but whether a coordinated effort from interested parties – governments, industries and consumers – is sufficient and strong enough to arrest the worsening environment.

This time around, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has given its findings ‘with higher level of confidence.’ It says that human activities are the prime drivers of the ongoing climate change, particularly the induced warming effect. The panel report also reiterates that it has developed a firmer base for impact assessment, adaptation options and vulnerability.

While the report has environmentalists deliberating on various issues, a few pertinent points need straightforward answers. Is the alarm over last week’s report uncalled for? Do we really need to worry? Importantly, can we fix it? Responses from various experts could perhaps throw some light on these points.

First, a look at the grim scenario as depicted by the report. It says that mitigation costs now look very different against the prospects of inaction, while cautioning of more warming effects in the coming years due to projected increased concentration of greenhouse gases. Several experts feel that policymakers’ lack of determination coupled with long cleaning process of atmosphere, innovative technologies have become an inevitable alternative. Thus the situation is likely to open up the floodgates of a technology bazaar.

According to experts, innovative technologies carry intellectual property rights (IPRs) and would become costly and the transfer of technology to the developing world would become difficult, though there would be billion-dollar market for technology trade.

IPCC notes that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in 2005 exceeded by far the natural range over the last 650,000 years. It stood at a concentration of 379 parts per million (ppm), increasing at an annual rate of 1.9 ppm. Then, carbon dioxide radiative forcing increased by 20 per cent from 1995 to 2005, the largest change for any decade in the last 200 years.

Global Concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is primarily due to fossil fuel use and change in land use, while concentration of methane and nitrous oxide is due to agriculture. Concentration of methane in the atmosphere in 2005 too exceed the natural range of the last 650,000 years to be at 1774 parts per billion (ppb). However, its growth rate has declined since early 1990s and is constant at this level. The concentration of nitrous oxide reached 319 ppb in 2005 at a constant growth rate since 1980.

Basing on these findings, the IPCC says that warming is ‘unequivocal’ and that for the next two decades, warming would be by about 2 degree Celcius per decade as against 0.15 to 0.3 degree Celcius per decade in the period 1990-2005.

According to experts, the ongoing climate change has induced variability in weather at local levels (both warming and cooling). Aerosols influence cloud lifetime and precipitation. In the recent past, India had experienced the worst drought in the century in 2002. In the last two years, the pattern of South West Monsoon rainfall displayed a unique shift with heavy downpour in drought-prone areas and dry spell in flood-prone areas. Though the official weather forecasting agency. India Meteorological Department is yet to openly acknowledge the impact of global climate change, the policymakers are extremely concerned. Recently, the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urged scientists at the recently concluded Indian Science Congress to explore the links between global climate change and monsoon performance.

Incidentally, the factors like ice cover, land and sea temperatures, wind patterns that IMD has incorporated in its forecast model are under a perpetual change, as per IPCC report. The report also highlights changes in precipitation (both heavy and scanty at places), frequency of droughts, heat waves and increased intensity of tropical cyclones. Changes are more marked in sub-tropical and tropical regions. Troposphere warming and stratospheric cooling leading to stratospheric ozone depletion and increased radiative forcing are other areas of concern.

Among others, El Nino, the warming of Pacific waters, is known for causing droughts in several parts of the world, including India. Mihir K. Dash of National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research along with his colleagues in Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and Space Application Centre (SAC) has established a

‘tele-connection’ between Antarctic Sea ice cover and El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).Apart from the impact on monsoon and weather, climate change can cause a number of diseases, including some hitherto unknown ones. Some say climate change can cause skin cancer. Shekhar Srivastava of poultry lab division in the animal husbandry department, Lucknow, says that climate change can contribute towards emergence of the much-dreaded Avian Flu. And, according to R.M. Kathiresan and U.V. Jayakanth of Annamalai University, global warming can lead invasion by alien weeds.

Under its new Democratic chairman, Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform took on the Bush administration’s handling of climate changes science on Wednesday, and even the Republicans on the panel had little good to say about the administration’s actions.

The subject of the hearing was accusations of administration interference with the work of government climate scientists. Almost to a person, Republicans on the panel proclaiming their agreement that the earth’s climate was warming and that the principal culprit was greenhouse gases.

Witnesses spoke about how the administration had delayed, altered or watered down the findings of government scientists, the kind of thing they had not experienced in Clinton’s administration.

Drew Shindell, a NASA scientist who said he was speaking as an individual, described research he and his colleagues did on ozone depletion and greenhouse gases over Antarctica. Dr. Shindell said the findings helped explain recent cooling on the continent, a phenomeon cited by climate dissidents as challenging the mainstream view. And, he said, the findings suggested Antarctica might warm rapidly in the future. By the time the administration had signed off on the work, he said, its importance had been played down and references to "rapid warming" had been deleted.

Another witness, Rick Piltz, said he resigned in protest in 2005 from his job with the federal Climate Change Science Programme when he became convinced that the administration’s goal was to "impede" the understanding of climate science. Part of his job, Piltz said, was to compile periodic assessments of government climate research for the Congress. "This report has essentially been made to vanish by the Bush administration," he said.

The world's poor, who are the least responsible for global warming, will suffer the most from climate change, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon told environment ministers from around the world on Tuesday.

"The degradation of the global environment continues unabated ... and the effects of climate change are being felt across the globe," Ban said in a statement after last week's toughest warning yet mankind is to blame for global warming.

In comments read on his behalf at the start of a major week-long gathering in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, Ban said all countries would feel the adverse impact of climate change. "But it is the poor, in Africa and developing small island states and elsewhere, who will suffer the most, even though they are the least responsible for global warming."Experts say Africa is the lowest emitter of the greenhouse gases blamed for rising temperatures, but due to its poverty, under-development and geography, has the most to lose under dire predictions of wrenching change in weather patterns.

Desertification round the Sahara and the shrinking of Mount Kilimanjaro's snow-cap have become potent symbols in Africa of the global environment crisis.

U.N. environment agencies have been lobbying Ban to play a leading role in the hunt for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse gases, which expires in 2012. Ringing in the ears of delegates at today’s start of talks attended by nearly 100 nations was last week's warning by a U.N. panel that there was a more than 90 per cent chance humans were behind most of the warming in the past five decades.

Governments are under huge pressure to act on the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which forecast more storms, droughts, heatwaves and rising seas.

The PMO has got a proposal from the commerce ministry to set up a high-level taskforce to deal with the emerging climate-change scenario. The proposal, mooted by Dr. R.K. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and moved by the ministry, comes in the wake of the release of the first part of IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report. The report reiterated with greater accuracy the threats from global warming to developing countries like India while also warning countries of the impact of their greenhouse gas emissions.

Sources in the ministry said the Planning Commission too was in favour of such a panel and was looking at the proposal favourably.The proposal suggests that the government set up the taskforce to work on two major issues: reduction in human activity that causes climate change and adaptation to climate change.

For reduction in change-causing activity, the proposal has set out four strategic goals. It suggests that the government work closely with the G-77 and China for a 'consistent and principled' stand in international negotiations when the developed countries ask developing countries (including India) to undertake emissions cuts. Read simply, it implies that developing countries fortify their position that they (developing countries) cannot allow their economies to suffer on account of the problem caused by the West.

The proposal also suggests India look at mechanisms and technologies that help reduce its emissions. This includes looking at improved efficiency of energy use, greater use of renewable energy and changes in transport systems.This is an area that Europe, especially Germany, has been working upon and will find India to be a good market to sell its 'clean' technologies to.

These strategic moves, the proposal paper suggests, could help put pressure on other developing countries to follow suit. Besides taking on changes towards green technologies, the proposal suggests that India also move into the carbon-credit markets that are fast emerging throughout the world. The carbon markets, created under the climate change negotiation terms, provide a cheaper way for developed countries to meet their emission reduction targets.

A 12-bedroom guest house with beautiful views of the North Sea, a lighthouse and sandy beaches would normally be considered prime property in Britain, a nation where real estate prices are booming.

But Cliff House is nearly worthless. The offshore wooden barrier that once protected the sand and clay cliffs where the house sits in this quaint village has broken apart, and Britain’s government has decided not to replace it. "The next big storm could take us away," said Ms Diana Wrightson, one of two elderly women who bought Cliff House 26 years ago, assuming the coastline would always be protected. Across Britain, the expected rise in sea levels and storm surges that experts attribute to global warming means that some vulnerable coastal areas just are not worth defending any more. Experts say receding coastlines are a crisis felt around the world.

Indonesia's environment Minister has predicted that some 2,000 of Indonesia's estimated 18,000 islands would be swallowed by the sea in three decades because of climate change Bangladesh, a low-lying country with 145 million people that often is battered by floods, tornadoes and cyclones, could see 5 million of its residents displaced if predictions for rising sea levels are correct, according to its environment secretary.

Low-lying South Pacific countries are asking their islanders to prepare for a complete exodus as rising seas threaten to swamp their homes.

The phenomenon of environmental refugees is something most often associated with the developing world. But Britain is part of a growing club of rich countries whose coastal populations are also under threat.

As temperatures rise and ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctic melt, California and its world-famous seaside resorts are bracing for submerged coastal homes and eroded beaches. A combination of rising sea levels and stronger storms also could inundate many low-lying neighbourhoods of New York, a city where four of the five boroughs are on islands. Tragedies such as Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005, persuaded some scientists that stronger storms are now inevitable, and for that reason it may no longer be possible, or economically sensible, to defend or rebuild such vulnerable areas. Over the past century, Louisiana has lost more than 2,000 square miles (3,200 kilometers) of coast. Meanwhile, levees are sinking, barrier islands are eroding and scientists worry that sea level rise will swamp many low-lying areas. The damaging 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons caused tens of billions of dollars in insured losses in the United States, including US$40

billion (€31 billion) from Katrina alone, according to the Insurance Information Institute. Wealthy nations such as Britain, the Netherlands, Italy and the United States are now recalculating their defense plans because of global warming. Last week, scientists from 113 countries issued a landmark report in Paris saying they have little doubt global warming is caused by man, and predicting that hotter temperatures and rises in sea level will "continue for centuries" no matter how much humans control their pollution.

They forecast temperature rises of 1.1 to 6.4 degrees Celsius (2 to 11.5 degrees Fahrenheit) and sea level rises of 18-58 centimetres (7-23 inches) by the end of the century.

Climate change may well be the most significant environmental problem of our time — significant not just for its portentous consequences, which are severe, but for its ability to test humankind’s collective conscience to take moral responsibility for a problem of its own making. If the ongoing international negotiations are any indication, the world community is yet to come of age. Since its inception, the climate negotiations have witnessed intense bickering between and within the industrial and developing world over who should take responsibility in averting climate change.

India, along with China, Brazil and others, argues that it is inequitable to ask developing countries, which have played little part in creating the problem, to take on greenhouse gas reduction commitments. There is legitimacy to this position. Countries like the US, which with a mere 4 per cent of the world’s population are responsible for 24 per cent of the world’s emissions, have rejected reduction commitments under the Kyoto Protocol; India with one-sixth of the world’s population is responsible for a mere 4.7 per cent of the world’s emissions.

It is in recognition of this powerful equitable rhetoric, enshrined in the climate change treaties as the ‘principle of common but differentiated responsibility’ that developing countries do not as yet have reduction commitments.

India’s energy use, however, will change dramatically in the near future. If its current growth rate continues, energy demand will double by 2020. In addition, if India’s targets on poverty, unemployment and literacy in the 11^th Five Year Plan are to be met, it will lead to greater energy use. India, then, will soon be a significant contributor to the problem. While the equitable rhetoric may serve it well at international forums, the lack of serious domestic action will hamper the world’s ability to tackle climate change.

And climate change is not a problem that affects small island states and African dry regions alone. It will have significant consequences for India. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Nicholas Stern Review underscore this. Even a small change in temperature could result in up to 25 per cent lower agricultural yield, desertification, loss of arable land, and an escalating refugee crisis. It will critically impair India’s economic growth, and its ability to meet its development goals. India needs to take urgent action to limit its emissions.

India argues in its position papers for voluntary practical actions to "decarbonise" its economy. It is a member of the Aisa-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, which focuses on voluntary practical action. The less charitable would describe its position, as well as that of the Asia-Pacific Partnership between the US, Japan, Australia, India, Korea and China, as an effort to appear busy while others make verifiable efforts under the Kyoto Protocol. Decarbonisation, according to India, is a shift in primary energy use from fossil fuels to renewable and nuclear energy, and changes in production/consumption patterns. The India- US nuclear deal may be an illustration of action on the former, although the extent to which climate concerns play a role in this deal is debatable. The US Senate Committee on Energy, however, did consider testimony that suggested that the annual carbon dioxide decreases by 2020 as a result of the India-US nuclear deal would equal in scale the efforts of the EU under the Kyoto Protocol. And if Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s estimate that India will increase its nuclear energy by 40GW before 2015 is accurate, it will result in 300 million tons of carbon dioxide reductions.

It is unclear what action India proposes to take to change production/consumption patterns, reduce carbon dependency, and adapt to climate change. All it has done is to put systems in place to operationalise the Clean Development Mechanism, and harness the economic potential of the Kyoto Protocol. Some 32 per cent of all registered projects are from India — much higher than that of Brazil and China — and they are expected to yield 14 per cent of all certified emission reductions annually. This demonstrates the potential for emissions reductions in India and the dynamism of Indian industry. It also demonstrates that economic growth and climate protection are not mutually exclusive.

There is less uncertainty and greater understanding about how human activity is contributing to global warming and climate change, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body tasked with determining the state of the planet. Much to the disappointment of climate change sceptics, key data and statistical modelling have provided stronger evidence supporting the view that Greenhouse Gases (GHG) such as carbon dioxide and methane released by human activities are warming the world abnormally. In its recently released working group report on the Physical Science Basis of Climate Change, the IPCC has stated "unequivocally" that globally averaged increases in temperature since the mid-20^th century "very likely" resulted from an observed rise in GHG concentrations. In their previous report issued six years ago, climate scientists of the IPCC could make such an assertion with only 66 to 90 per cent certainty; now that confidence level has crossed the 90 per cent mark. The report halds grim portents for humanity. Even if the world becomes a responsible, convergent, cooperative, and energy-efficient place with exemplary performance in reducing GHG emissions, existing gas levels in the atmosphere can continue the warming process for centuries. Going by the estimates for warming, a rise in global temperature of 1.1 degrees Celsius by 2099 appears inevitable while the increase could soar to a dangerous and possibly unmanageable maximum of 6.4 degrees C with less effective interventions. The forecast is for a continuing rise in the sea level and more frequent hot extremes, heat waves, and heavy rainfall events.

Climate change as a result of human activity is no longer in question. The summary report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made it unequivocally clear that the vast quantities of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere by vehicles and industrial smokestacks were trapping the earth's heat. Rising global temperatures would, in turn, lead to more frequent heat waves, droughts, and powerful storms as well as a dangerous rise in sea-level and acute water scarcity. The challenge now is how to go about limiting global warming. In a report prepared for the British Government, Sir Nicholas Stern, its adviser on the economics of climate change and development, pointed out that it would be far cheaper to take strong measures now to cut emissions and stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations at acceptable levels than to face the economic consequences of catastrophic climate change. But meaningful cuts in emissions will require industrialised as well as rapidly industrialising countries to act in unison. After a recent meeting in Washington D.C., legislators from G-8 countries along with those from China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa issued a landmark statement asking their governments to sign up to a "a measurable long-term goal to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere." The `G8 + 5' account for two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate change will boost the global economy and dominate financial markets, according to a new report that challenges the conventional wisdom that global warming will have a devastating impact on economic growth.

The report from Barclays Capital believes the need to increase energy capacity by 50 per cent by 2035, while simultaneously reducing dependence on hydrocarbons, will spark an "energy revolution" reminiscent of the technology revolution which led to the dot.com boom.

"If ever the time were ripe for such an energy revolution, it is now," said Tim Bond, global head of asset allocation at Barclays Capital, and author of the report. "And like all historical adoptions of general purpose technologies, the process should prove immensely stimulative to economic growth." Mr. Bond says that those who couch the climate change debate in terms of the cost to growth are underestimating the impact of an energy revolution. Last year’s Stern Review concluded that if temperatures rise by five degrees celsius, up to 10 per cent of global output could be lost.

"All of the historical changes in energy supply - from dung to wood to coal to oil - were stimulative for the economy concerned. Every major technological change was accompanied or followed by faster economic growth." he said. Like every revolution, there will be winners and losers, with the energy sector set to reap the biggest rewards.

In the meantime, current uncertainty over US climate change policy may be deterring energy investment, the report says. Until public opinion forces the US administration to address the issue, energy scarcity will intensify and prices will continue to soar. Indeed, futures markets suggest that oil prices, already at levels last seen during the 1970s oil shock in inflation-adjusted terms, will keep rising due to a worsening supply/demand imbalance. The same is true for the other hydrocarbon, coal.

"The impact of the replacement, restructuring and expansion of our energy infrastructure cannot be ignored," Mr. Bond said. "Just as the personal computer cannot be un-invented, neither can the impending energy revolution." The report is contained in Barclays Capital’s annual Equity Gilt Study, which shows that equities were far and away the best-performing financial asset in 2006, as the stock market rally continued. Last year, money invested in stocks and shares grew by 11.4 per cent, still less than the 19 per cent growth seen in 2005.

In contrast, money invested in gilts shrank by 4.4 per cent as rising inflation wiped out nominal returns. Corporate and index-link bonds also suffered, falling by 4.5 per cent and 2.1 per cent respectively. Cash returns edged up by 0.4 per cent.

The almost universal recognition of the potential disaster of climate change ascribes the cause to "humanity". Human activity, mankind, man ~ these generalised entities have been the great re-shapers of the planet and its fragile atmosphere. This dispersal of blame diffuses responsibility, and permits the culprits to embed themselves in the global population to escape the consequences of their actions. It is not "humanity" which threatens to wreck the planet, but that section of it which has been so conspicuously advantaged by its depredations. This is not a new thing. Thomas Carlyle, as early as 1829, in Signs of the Times, wrote: "We war with rude nature; and by our resistless engines, always come off victorious and loaded with spoils."

The use of nebulous terms which implicate all the peoples on earth, including those whose millennial, modest cultures are a reproach to the rage of industrialism, also permits an easy passage into the question of what "we" are to do about it. An inclusive first person plural is always invoked when the world faces catastrophe. It is rarely in evidence when the "fruits" of wealth-creation are being distributed. We are all in this together. Both rich and poor are threatened. There is nowhere to hide from global warming. Every country must be "on board", on the far from agreeable voyage to a future land of sustainable harmony. The "we" ~ the bogus unity invoked by privilege ~ masks the reality, namely, that the poor are going to pay disproportionately to put right wrongs of which they have never been beneficiaries. Throughout the industrial era, the poor ~ known earlier under more pejorative aliases as natives, locals and subjects ~ have never been part of the generous allembracing "we", who are now called upon to face the effects of runaway greed, euphemistically described as "wealth creation".

It is not as though the effect of exuberant industrialism were unknown: Wordsworth spoke of "such outrage done to nature as compels the indignant power to avenge her violated rights". If poets had really been the unacknowledged legislators of the world which scientists have now become, much present-day anguish and hand-wringing might have been avoided.

The fictitious unity of a whole world in a common endeavour to heal the abuse of the planet not only elides historic and contemporary injustices, but also prepares the ground for future ones. There was never the slightest concern for the poor (the elided "them" in the appeal to universal humanity) when resources were seized and transferred from Africa, India, Central and South America to feed an insatiable industrial system. China and India will be reluctant to enter into any agreement which makes them equal partners in addressing climate change: for it burdens them with shared responsibility, as though they had invented the industrial paradigm, and were the originators of a destructive globalism.

That they have embraced it with such fervour is, of course another question, as indeed are the coercive pressures which compelled them to do so. If the implications have been resisted by climate-change deniers, this is because they understand the enormous significance this has for the maintenance of economic growth and the accelerating inequalities which come with it.

The US Freedom Works group states: "Global warming is not about sound science or saving the planet so much as it seeks more to cool economic activity...[It] obstructs the spread of entrepreneurial capitalism and will radically stunt economic growth." It threatens the holy of holies ~ limitless economic expansion, that ideology born of the early industrial era, and assimilated uncritically by the heresy of a now vanquished Communism. No longer constrained by the "internal" contradictions of capitalism, the proponents of business as usual see their cherished belief in the mystical capacity of wealth to cure all the ills it has caused now menaced by another bunch of subversives. The tenderness of the rich countries for humanity is a substitute for acknowledging that they are the authors of the present global predicament, and that it behoves them to show the rest of the world how they propose to undo what they have wrought.

Of late, there has been a great fondness for waging war against abstractions ~ on terror, on poverty, wars against "criminality" or "bullying" or "anti-social behaviour". The new crusade against climate change, and its ghost-army of "humanity", is cast in similar rhetoric; the surest guarantor that it will prove ineffective.

Rich and poor alike are caught up in the epic penitence of the planet in peril. Bangladesh will be drowned. Africa will be desiccated. Southern Europe will become uninhabitable. Hurricane Katrina will have been merely a prelude to the drowning of cities. It is one thing to invoke collective action, the common destiny of mankind, but quite another to ensure that the unequal do not bear an excessive share of the asperities required to confront the enormity facing the world. To impose sacrifice and renunciation on those who have nothing is consistent with the division of the spoils of the two centuries-long smash and grab raid on nature. To efface the "footprint" of "mankind" upon the earth would require a contraction, or at least, a different kind of economic activity, one which ensures a more modest use of, and more equitable distribution of, resources. This is the most frightening prospect the leaders of the rich world can imagine; even though it might, as well as guaranteeing a secure sufficiency to the hungry and wanting of earth, also serve as cure for the excesses, addictions and violence of those who have more than enough. This is indeed a pivotal moment. Decisions made now may well determine the fate of the earth and all its peoples. But to provide for the sustenance of the poor remains the most urgent priority.

The UN climate panel is set to issue its strongest warning yet on Friday that human activites are causing a damaging global warming that is likely to raise global temperatures by up to 4.5 degree Celsius by the end of this century and cause more heat waves, droughts and rising seas in the immediate future.

The group, the most authoritative on climate change with 2,500 scientists from 130 countries, is also due to say that oceans will keep rising for more than 1,000 years even if governments stabilise greenhouse gas emissions this century.

Scientists and government officials in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been meeting in Paris since Monday to review the report, including a 15-page summary for policymakers.

"The talks are moving forward," one IPCC official said. The IPCC says it will publish the result on Friday.

The report, increasing certainty that humans are to blame for warming, may put pressure on governments and companies to do more to curb a build-up of greenhouse gases mainly from burning fossil fuels in power plants factories and cars.

"It is very likely that (human) greenhouse gases caused most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20^th century," according to a final draft.

"Very likely" means a probability of at least 90 per cent – up from a judgment of "likely" or a 66 per cent probability, in the previous 2001 report. The report is the first of four this year by the panel that will outline threats of warming.

The Paris study looking at the science of global warming will also project a "best estimate" that temperature will rise by 3⁰C by 2100 over pre-industrial levels, the biggest change in a century for thousands of years.

It says bigger gains, of up to 6.3⁰C in one model, cannot be ruled out but do not fit well with other data. The world is now about 5⁰ C warmer than during the last Ice Age.

The draft projects that Arctic ice will shrink, and perhaps disappear in summers by 2100, while heat waves and downpours would get more frequent. The numbers of tropical hurricanes and typhoons might decrease but the storms would become stronger.

The Gulf Stream bringing warm waters to the North Atlantic could slow, although a shutdown is highly unlikely, it says. And sea levels are likely to rise by between 28 and 43 cm this century, a lower range than forecast in 2001. Rising seas threaten low-lying Pacific islands and low-lying coastal nations from Bangladesh to the Netherlands.

"Governments planning coastal defences have to live with large uncertainties for now, and quite some time in future," said Stefan Rahmstorf of Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

UN officials hope the IPCC report will spur stalled talks on expanding the fight against global warming. Thirty-five industrial nations aim to cut emissions of greenhouse gases to five percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 under the UN’s Kyoto Protocol and want outsiders such as the United States, China and India to do more.

The message, it seems, has finally gotten through: global warming represents a serious threat to our planet. At the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, world leaders saw climate change, for the first time, topping the list of global concerns.

Europe and Japan have shown their commitment to reduce global warming by imposing cost on themselves and their producers, even if it places them at a competitive disadvantage. The biggest obstacle until now has been the United States. The Clinton adminstration had called for bold action as far back as 1993, proposing what was in effect a tax on carbon emissions; but an alliance of polluters, led by the coal, oil, and auto industries beat back this initiative.

To the scientific community, the evidence on climate change has, of course, been overwhelming for more than a decade and a half. I participated in the second assessment of the scientific evidence conducted by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, which perhaps made one critical mistake: it underestimated the pace at which global warming was occurring. The Fourth Assessment, which was just issued, confirms the mounting evidence and the increasing conviction that global warming is the result of the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The increased pace of warming reflects the impact of complex non-linear factors and a variety of "tipping points" that can result in acceleration of the process. For instance, as the Arctic ice cap melts, less sunlight is reflected. Seemingly dramatic changes in weather patterns — including the melting of glaciers in Greenland and the thawing of the Siberian permafrost — have at last convinced most business leaders that the time for action is now.

Recently, even President Bush seems to have woken up. But a closer look at what he is doing, and not doing, shows clearly that he has mostly heard the call of this campaign contributors from the oil and coal industries, and that he has once again put their interests over the global interest in reducing emissions. If he were truly concerned about global warming, how could he have endorsed the construction of coal-fired electricity plants, even if those plants use more efficient technologies than have been employed in the past?

What is required, first and foremost, are market-based incentives to induce Americans to use less energy and to produce more energy in ways that emit less carbon. But Bush has neither eliminated massive subsidies to the oil industry (though, fortunately, the Democratic Congress may take action) nor provided adequate incentive for conservation. Even his call for energy independence should be seen for what it is — a new rationale for old corporate subsidies.

A policy that entails draining America’s limited oil supplies — I call it "drain America first" — will leave the US even more dependent on foreign oil. The US imposes a tariff of more than 50 cents per gallon on sugar-based ethanol from Brazil, but subsidises inefficient corn-based American ethanol heavily — indeed, it requires more than a gallon of gasoline to fertilise, harvest, transport, process, and distil corn to yield one gallon of ethanol.

As the world’s largest polluter, accounting for roughly a quarter of global carbon emissions, America’s reluctance to do more is perhaps understandable, if not forgivable. But claims by Bush that America cannot afford to do anything about global warming ring hollow: other advanced industrial countries with comparable standards of living emit only a fraction of what the US emits per dollar of GDP.

As a result, American firms with access to cheap energy are given a big competitive advantage over firms in Europe and elsewhere. Some in Europe worry that stringent action on global warming may be counterproductive: energy-intensive industries may simply move to the US or other countries that pay little attention to emissions. And there is more than a grain of truth to these concerns.

A striking fact about climate change is that there is little overlap between the countries that are most vulnerable to its effects — mainly poor countries in the South that can ill afford to deal with the consequences — and the countries, like the US, that are the largest polluters. What is at stake is in part a moral issue, a matter of global social justice.

The Kyoto Protocol represented the international community’s attempt to begin to deal with global warming in a fair and efficient way. But it left out a majority of the sources of emissions, and unless something is done to include the US and the developing countries in a meaningful way, it will be little more than a symbolic gesture. There needs to be a new "coalition of the willing," this time perhaps led by Europe — and this time directed at a real danger.

This "coalition of the willing" could agree to certain basic standards to forego building coal-fired plants, increase automobiles’ fuel efficiency, and provide targeted assistance to developing countries to enhance their energy efficiency and reduce emissions. Coalition members could also agree to provide stronger incentives to their own producers, through either more stringent caps on emissions or higher taxes on pollution. They could then agree to impose taxes on products from other countries — including the US — that are produced in ways that unnecessarily add substantially to global warming. What is at stake is not protecting domestic producers, but protecting our planet.

China, set to overtake the US as the world’s largest carbon dioxide emitter will soon set up Asia’s first carbon-credit exchange in Beijing, allowing the country a head-start in the multi-billion-dollar global carbon market.

The exchange and 12 brokerages in western China, estimated to cost $1.7 million over three years, will be established with financial backing from Arcelor’s Mittal, the world’s largest steelmaker, which is scouting for major forays into China. The project aims to establish the clean development mechanism (CDM) technical service centers in 12 provinces, like Xinjiang, Qinghal, and Inner Mongolia.

These centres will act as brokers between international investors and local partners to kick-start Green Investment in China’s less developed regions. The initiative aims to pilot carbon trading in China, build capacity and provide policy input for the expansion of carbon market and reduction of Greenhouse Gas/(GHG) emissions in China, UN Resident Coordinator and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) resident representative Inichina, Khalid Malik said.

Assisting China in its efforts to cope with the impact of global climate change and to create more sustainable, less GHG intensive development paths is an important focus for UNDP. A range of market-based instruments has now emerged to support this effort, with carbon trading emerging as a major opportunity, he said.

Carbon trading, through the CDM, is one of the ways that developed countries can meet their obligations of reducing GHG emissions under the Kyoto Protocol by investing in GHG emission reduction projects in developing countries. Carbon credits are used to encourage companies to reduce pollution. The credits, each representing a tonne’s regiaion of carbon dioxide emissions, are sold to buyers that exceed limits, experts said.

Study of ice extracted from deep under the Earth’s surface has revealed substantially high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Scientists have said the in-depth analysis of air bubbles trapped in the 3.2 km-long core of frozen snow in East Antarctica, the longest, deepest ice column extracted till date, shows carbon dioxide levels are at an unprecedented high, higher than at anytime in the last 8,00,000 years.

"My point would be that there’s nothing in the ice core that gives us any cause for comfort. There’s nothing that suggests that the Earth will take care of the increase in carbon dioxide.

The ice core suggests that the increase in carbon dioxide will definitely give us a climate change that will be dangerous," BBC quoted Dr. Eric Wolff from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) as saying.

He said the ice core from the Antarctic territory known as Dome Concordia (Dome C), also gave valuable insight into past environmental conditions.

The Core has been drilled out by the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (Epica), a 10-country consortium. Dr. Wolff was speaking at the British Associations (BA) Science Festival.

Analysis of the tiny pockets of ancient air locked into the ice core as the snowflakes accumulated, showed that carbon dioxide and temperatures rose and fell in steps.

"Ice cores reveal the Earth’s natural climate rhythm over the last 8,00,000 years. When carbon dioxide changed there was always an accompanying climate change. Over the last 200 years human activity has increased carbon dioxide to well outside the natural range, "Dr. Wolff added.

The "scary thing" was the rate of change now occurring in CO2 concentrations. In the core, the fastest increase seen was of the order of 30 parts per million (ppm) by volume over a period of roughly 1,000 years. The last 30 ppm of increase has occurred in just 17 years. We really are in the situation where we don’t have an analogue in our records," he further said.

Two years ago, Sami Grover, an environmentally minded Englishman, vowed to take his last trip by airplane. Then a summer romance in North Carolina turned into a long-distance love affair — and then into months of busy trans-Atlantic travel.To compensate for the tons of greenhouse gases the couple’s plane trips helped spew into the atmosphere, Mr. Grover quietly began paying Climate Care, a British company, to help make the world a little greener for him and his girlfriend.

"I didn’t want her to think I was some kind of eco-fascist," said Mr. Grover, 28. Mr. Grover is now in the mainstream of a budding market where individuals can buy and sell rights to offset "carbon footprints" from their personal activities, such as driving a car, using disposable diapers, even jet-setting across the Atlantic to court lovers.

Pledges by celebrities, such as Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, have helped generate huge publicity for these carbon-offset trading companies. In turn, the companies have actively sought out a green glitterati and increasing number of concerned consumers in Europe and the United States. The operations reflect a new consciousness about climate change, scientists and environmental watchdogs warm that the carbon trading actually may be producing little of real value to the environment.

"These companies may be operating with the best will in the world, but they are doing so in settings where it’s not really clear you can monitor and enforce their projects over time," said Steve Rayner, a senior professor at Oxford.

Some carbon-offset firms have begun admitting that certain investments like tree-planting may be ineffective, and they are shifting their focus to what they say is reliable activity.

Still, as demand for greener living grows, the number of companies jumping into the game has multiplied. At least 60 companies sold offsets worth about $110 million to consumers in Europe and North America in 2006, up from only about a dozen selling offsets worth $6 million in 2005, according to Abyd Karmali of ICF International.

When it comes to the offsets these firms offer, many environmental groups seem to be even more sceptical than Professor Rayner.

Another green-looking investment has drawn substantial controversy — the planting of trees, to which consumers often flock as a symbol of saving the environment. One of the most troubled tree projects, say critics, is linked to GreenSeat, a Dutch carbon-offset firm. GreenSeat buys offsets from a Dutch foundation involved in the reforestation of Mount Elgon National Park in east Uganda, with a tree-planting programme that it guarantees for 99 years, relying on close cooperation with the local population.

The reality, said Jutta Kill, a climate campaigner at Fern, an organisation monitoring the carbon market, is that villagers living along the boundary of the park have been beaten and shot at, and their livestock has been confiscated by armed park rangers because of disputes over ownership of the land.

A Carbon tax may be a better approach in lowering greenhouse gas emissions than the caps and tradable permits legislation being considered by many American lawmakers, according to a new study.

Tax on carbon emissions would provide businesses and industries with incentive to invest in more efficient technologies which actually reduce carbon dioxide output and achieves the policy objective of lowering the greenhouse gas emissions, the study by American consumer Institute says.

Carbon taxes will not create the price volatility and administrative problems associated with cap and trade and will be a more effective way to reduce emissions and provide a more powerful incentive to develop new, climate-friendly technologies, the study for ACI by Robert J Shapiro, US Under-Secretary of Commerce in the Clinton regime, says.

The study- ‘Addressing the Risks of Climate Change: The Environmental Effectiveness and Economic Efficiency of Emissions Caps and Tradable Permits, compared to carbon Taxes’ – says carbon taxes cannot be manipulate by the markets and would offer the most stable and transparent system for consumers and industry.

Even as environmentalists and leaders pressed Australia to sign the Kyoto Protocol in the wake of the latest UN report on global warming the country’s Prime Minister today maintained his stand to not sign the protocol as it excludes world’s major polluters.

"Signing Kyoto is not going to solve the problem because Kyoto does not include the world’s major polluters. We’ve moved on from that and in any event, we are going to meet our target under Kyoto, many of our critics who have signed Kyoto will not do so," Prime Minister John Howard said in a statement today.

A lack of clarity on what compliance with the Kyoto Protocol will cost Japanese industry could stretch business goodwill to help the country honour its targets under the global warming pact.

Under Kyoto rich countries like Japan can meet their emissions targets by funding cuts in poor countries, getting carbon credits in return in a market worth well over US$2 billion last year.

To meet its Kyoto targets by 2012 Japan may need to buy as much as seven times more carbon credits than official estimates.

Japan has committed to cut its emissions by 6 per cent versus 1990 levels by 2012, and the government has said it will meet less than a third of that by funding emissions reductions in poor countries, getting so-called carbon credits in return.

"That is about 100 million tonnes," an official with the ministry of environment told Reuters. He declined to specify the volume it had purchased so far.

Industry estimates on what is actually needed vary: Tsuneo Takahashi of Natsource Japan Co., a Mitsubishi joint venture., said Japan needs to buy about 300 million tonnes from CDM projects to achieve the reduction target.

Takashi Hongo, the director general of environment finance unit of Japan Bank for International Coorperation, estimates 600-700 million tonnes.

The lack of clarity could put the Japanese government's compliance to Kyoto Protocol in question, Natsource's Takahashi said. "The government measurements are too lax," said Takahashi.

"It has been never clear about what it wants to do and what it wants the private sector to do, even though the government is really attached to the protocol named after Kyoto."

If the extra credit purchases are imposed on industry, rather than the tax payer, investors need to know, said Masanori Maruo, a utility equity analyst with Deutsche Securities.

"Japan has to buy credit after credit if it wants to be honoured for the protocol named after Kyoto. Investors do not object to costs related to environment protection. They just need clear visions how much investment is needed and by when."

The difference in estimates emerge from the fact Japan's emissions are rising instead of falling, leaving it 14 percent above its UN reduction target last year.

The global carbon market is attracting soaring interest from intermediaries including banks and funds like Natsource, as countries appear committed to ever stricter emissions targets.

Japan wants the bulk of its emissions cuts to come from measures such as voluntary industry cuts, promotion of energy conservation and higher operation rates of nuclear power plants, hoping to avoid imposing limits on domestic industry.

Top companies, including Tokyo Electric Power Co.. (TEPCO), Nippon Steel Corp. and trading firm Mitsubishi Corp. have so far bought credits worth about 50 million tonnes per year from 113 CDM projects in China, Honduras and other countries.

TEPCO, which is responsible for about one tenth of Japan's total emission, has secured about 6-7 million tonnes of credits from CDMs for 2008-2012 and it may boost purchase further.

Bringing into focus the need for India to achieve a sustainable pattern of production and consumption to preserve its natural ecosystem for future generations, Union minister of environment and forests A. Raja on Monday advocated for a variety of policies and action in this regard.

Ensuring environmental sustainability- the seventh Millennium Development Goal- requires achieving sustainable patterns of production and consumption, in order to preserve the productive and life- support capacity of natural ecosystems for future generations, the minister said.

The minister was speaking at a three- day Delhi Sustainable Development Summit (DSDS) 2007 organised here by the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) with an aim to explore the natural resources dimensions to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

"Both efforts in turn require a variety of policies and actions that reverse environmental damage and improve ecosystem management," said Mr. Raja pointing out that India’s national environment policy 2006 appropriately addresses various environment related issues. The policy seeks to forge synergy between environmental and economic policies, and appropriate institutional mechanisms to support the integration of economic development recognises that the poor be seen not as part of the problem but as part of the solution, the minister said.

Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit too stressed upon an immediate need to conserve natural resources such as water and power in view of rapid growth in population.

With rapid depletion of fossil fuels and global warming gaining ground as a real danger among an overwhelming group of experts, nuclear power is being projected in some quarters to have more potential than ever before. The solution lies, experts claim, in the "renaissance of nuclear energy".

The USA, the gravest culprit on the global warming issue, which refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol to reduce emission of greenhouse gases, is now a great champion of nuclear power generation, since it emits, to their estimate, little carbon dioxide. The UK kowtowed. Tony Blair took less than two years to make a U- turn from his earlier declaration of nuclear power as an unattractive option.

To him now, it is the only way to securing energy for the future as also a great reliever for the carbon dioxide reduction obligation. In India, too, expansion of nuclear power generation is very much on our national planners’ agenda. Haripur in Midnapore East has been chosen as a prospective plant site. But nuclear power can never play a big role in reducing emission of greenhouse gases. Two- thirds of carbon dioxide are emitted from vehicular and other sources-no way related to power generation.

For their contribution in the emission of carbon dioxide, replacement of all, existing coal- based power plants would call for installation of at least 3,000 nuclear plants the world over. And that can bring down carbon dioxide by 20 percent at the most. Further, the claim that nuclear power is free from emission of carbon dioxide is only a myth.

During mining, milling, enrichment, building of the reactor and finally decommissioning of the plant after it’s spent, enormous quantity of electricity is needed, most of which comes from fossil fuel generators-a potential source of greenhouse gases. Uranium enrichment produces, with other halogenated compounds, chloro-fluorocarbons CFC (a banned gas under the Montreal Protocol), a potent destroyer of the ozone layer. The compounds produced are a strong global warmer- many times more than carbon dioxide.

Benefit of lower carbon emission, however marginal, may be available so long as the world’s stock of rich uranium ore lasts. With poor quality uranium, input energy to the plant would far exceed its output. More carbon dioxide would be produced than the fossil fuel alternative. Nuclear power is not sustainable since the fissile fuel-materials are as limited as fossil fuels are. The total global need of electricity, if supplied through nuclear power, can be met for a few years only.

As an alternative to uranium, plutonium and thorium- based, fast breeder reactors have been suggested which can be recycled for many years. The thorium breeding cycle, which is more complicated, and breeding technology holds little water. It is hazardous and expensive compared to conventional nuclear plants. Only a few breeding reactors are in operation now.

Conventional nuclear power, unless heavily subsidised, can hardly compete in the open market. Undeniably, advances in modern technology have also enriched the nuclear sector. The modern monitoring and control system, computer simulation techniques and so on have all added to nuclear power safety strategies. Reactor operators have also learnt from their mistakes.

Nuclear power plants produce, in addition to electricity, a huge quantity of highly toxic, radioactive waste products. Their safe isolation for thousands of years from the biosphere still remains a big question. Possibility of suicide attacks on the plants is a new add-on on the risk list. Claims of an accident-proof, nuclear power generation system are exaggerated. Experience, even as horrific as that of Chernobyl, recede from memory.

Former UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan in April, 2000, said: " Chernobyl is word we would like to erase from our memory. It opened a Pandora’s box of invisible enemies and nameless anxieties in people’s minds, but which most of us probably now think of as safely relegated to the past. Yet there are two compelling reasons why this tragedy must not be forgotten.

"First, if we forget Chernobyl we increase the risk of more such technological and environmental disasters. Second, more than seven million of our fellow human beings do not have the luxury of forgetting. They are still suffering, every day, as a result of what happened 14 years ago. The legacy of Chernobyl will be with us, and with our descendents, for generations to come."

The Chernobyl accident killed 8,000 Russians and rendered 60,000 disabled. Mankind, along with the entire biosystem of Russia and beyond- the UK, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania, Poland and Austria, for example-still bear the brunt of radioactive contamination, twenty years after the disaster.

Latest technological developments were unable to arrest the damage done by 30 highly radioactive fuel assemblies in the reactor room of a Bulgarian nuclear power plant at Paks in April, 2003. Contamination was not widespread, though the occurrence could have led to a nuclear explosion. But despite the magnitude of the global warming inferno, people did not show much concern.

Global warming is a big problem and its fallout can be disastrous. A renaissance of nuclear power is not the answer. We shall have to think in terms of eco-friendly, sustainable development, suppressing global warming agents as much as possible.

A fresh look at the hedonistic lifestyle of the affluent class of our society is in order. A substantial amount of fuel and electricity can be saved, at all levels, through wise and economic use of appliances. In Europe, having the same standard of living as the USA, electricity consumption is almost half. The prospect for generation of non-polluting, renewable power has not been explored to the extent desirable.

A few months back, our Union minister of state (independent charge) for non-conventional energy sources, Vilas

Muttemwar, said that from wind small hydro, biomass and bagasse co-generation, a potential of 80,000 MW additional power has been estimated. Solar power can add 20 MW more per square kilometer. In 2005, our nuclear power generation was just 3,000 MW.

British billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson, with former US vice president Al Gore at his side, offered a $25 million prize Friday for anyone who can come up with a way to blunt global climate change by removing at least a billion tons of carbon dioxide a year from the Earth’s atmosphere.

Branson, saying that the "survival of our species" is imperiled by current environmental trends, said the prize was similar to cash inducements that led to some of history’s most notable achievements in navigation, exploration and industry.

"I believe in our resourcefulness and in our capacity to invent solutions to the problems we have ourselves created," said Branson, who has already pledged to invest $3 billion in profits from his transportation companies, including Virgin Atlantic Airlines and Virgin Trains, to fighting global warming.

"We are now facing a planetary emergency," said Gore, who has become one of the world’s leading voices on climate change issues, most lately with his documentary film, "An Inconvenient Truth."

Gore, who will serve as a judge in the Virgin Earth Challenge, said he hoped the contest would spur scientific innovation without distracting from more practical steps people can take to battle global warming, such as using energy-efficient light bulbs or pressuring politicians to confront "the crisis of our time."

"It’s a challenge to the moral imagination of humankind," Gore said at a packed news conference, where several noted climate scientists and authors attended, provided videotaped endorsements or appeared by live video-link.

Gore and Branson said that although scientists are working on technologies to capture carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases at power plants and other industrial sources, no one has developed a strategy to remove gases already released into the atmosphere. Those gases are contributing to a dramatic increase in global temperatures that could have catastrophic results in the coming decades, they said.

The winner of the award must devise a plan to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere without creating adverse effects. The first $5 million would be paid up front, and the remainder of the money would be paid only after the program had worked successfully for ten years.

"We’re nowhere," on technologies to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air, Gore said. But he said he hoped innovators might be spurred not simply by the cash prize offered by Branson, but by passion for working on what he called "a moral issue."

Gore cited the example of telegraph pioneer Samuel Morse, whose work was motivated by the death of his wife.

"The telegraph came from his efforts to spare others the sense of loss," Gore said. "There are many other examples of new technologies and innovations we have discovered that did not come in the first instance from the head but came from the heart."

Other judges in the competition are James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies; British environmentalists and authors James Lovelock and Crispin Tickell and Australian conservationist and author Tim Flannery.

Gore, Branson and the other panelists referred repeatedly to a study released last week by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of hundreds of scientists from 113 countries, that concluded human activity is warming the planet at a potentially disastrous and irreversible rate.

Gore dismissed critics who claim the potential effects of climate change have been exaggerated. He said the overwhelming scientific evidence is that "the planet has a fever." He likened the situation to parents told by a doctor that their child needs medical care, saying those parents shouldn’t listen to "some science fiction expert who tells you it isn’t real--you listen to the doctor."

Gore said he believed public interest in climate change was growing in the United States. But asked if he thought Americans were ready for a presidential campaign in which global warming was the central issue, he said, "We’re not there yet."

Branson and Gore said they hoped to ask the governments of the United States, Britain and other countries to contribute to the prize money, or match the $25 million pledged by Branson. "I don’t have much influence with this administration," Gore joked.

In Order to do its bit to contain the problem of global warming, the Science and Technology Ministry has proposed to set up a high-end research institute to look for alternative technologies.

Proposed to be named the Indian Institute of Environmental Technologies, the institute will take up projects in collaboration with the industry to develop greener technologies and material.

The proposal comes three days after the United Nations’ Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report in Paris saying human activities were chiefly responsible for global warming and urgent action was required by governments to contain the damage.

Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal said the idea for the institute was mooted last month, long before the IPCC came out with its report, and was in continuation of India’s efforts to cut down on its contribution to global warming.

"We believe that in the times to come, as a nation seeing a 9 per cent growth rate, India is bound to contribute to global warming. It is therefore important that we develop and use technologies and material that are greener and help in containing the damage due to harmful emissions," Sibal said

Sibal said the IPCC report, though quite important, did not say anything that wasn’t already known. "We had expected these kinds of findings. We are alert and conscious of the dangers of climate change and are already taking urgent steps to move to cleaner alternatives."

He did not, however, put a time-frame for the institute to come into existence but said the proposal had been put on a fast-track.

To start with, the institute, which will be based on a public-private partnership, will engage with the construction industry. "We will take an industry-wise approach and in due course, will work with every sector to ensure that the emission of greenhouse gases is capped," Sibal said.India is not the only one thinking of setting up such an institute. Britain had also come out with a similar proposal. "We are going to work closely with the English and try to extend the network." "We want to be the front-runners in developing technologies for global good," he said.

Influential global leaders have signed a new accord in Washington, strategising ways to handle climate change, global warming and related issues, reports the BBC.

Delegates agreed that developing countries will have to face targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions as well as rich countries. The informal meeting also agreed that a global market should be formed to cap and trade carbon dioxide emissions.

The non-binding declaration is seen as vital in influencing a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol. The forum’s closing statement said manmade climate change was now "beyond doubt"."Climate change is a global issue and there is an obligation on us all to take action, in line with our capabilities and historic responsibilities," said the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment (Globe).

Anthropogenic reasons for climate change, recently inferred by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, were identified years back by some atmosphere physicists and meteorologists. Among them were Indian scientists who specifically focused on the aerosol factor almost synchronously with others abroad. Among those is Dr. Prabir K. Patra, an atmospheric physicist, now research scientist with the Atmospheric Composition Research Program and Frontier Research System for Global Change in Yokohama, Japan. Along with Swadhin K. Behara and Hajime Akimoto of Yokohama Institute, Toshio Yamagata of Tokyo University and Shamil Maksyuotov of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Dr. Patra, in a paper, "The ISMR: interplay of coupled dynamics, radiation and cloud micro-physics’, published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions in 2005, observed that "the breakdown of the dynamical link between ISMR and ENSO could possibly be a manifestation of chemistry-climate interaction in the ‘Anthropocene era’’. Aerosols lead to a reduction in cloud-droplet growth, affecting the microphysical properties of clouds, they observed. The aerosol factor in climate change was first firmly stated in a review article, ‘Oceanic phytoplankton, atmospheric sulphur, cloud albedo and climate’ by American scientists Robert J. Charlson, Stephen G. Warren, James E. Lovelock and Meinrat O. Andreae. The major source of cloud-condensation nuclei (CCN) over the oceans, they observed, is dimethylsulphide, produced by planktonic algae in sea water, causing formation of sulphate aerosol by oxidation. They identified "reflectance (albedo) of clouds, sensitive to CCN density and biological regulation of the climate through the effects of temperature and sunlight on phytoplankton population and dimethylsulphide production". Subsequently, other researchers like V. Ramanathan, P.J. Crutzen, J.T. Kiehl and D. Rosenfeld in another paper, ‘Aerosols, Climate, and the Hydrological Cycle’ (Science), concluded that human activities release aerosols into the atmosphere and enhance scattering and absorption of solar radiation, making clouds brighter and weakening precipitation. Dr. Patra, in an email to this scribe, laid stress on anthropogenic factors while criticising the prediction mechanism of the Indian Meteorological Department: "I am disinclined to believe that India’s summer monsoon can be successfully predicted so much in advance with significant accuracy with an outdated system. Time was when humans used to negligibly influence the weather and climate and the predictive mechanism was reliable. But now we are in an anthropogenic era that heavily affects climate events... Hence, a new theoretical study is necessary..."How the human factor may be minimised to decelerate the changes is the key area of research inquiry. Now that the world is warming at a disturbing pace, no nerve can be left unstrained to introspectively look into those phenomena. The Harvard scientist and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, John P. Holdren, has called for "a massive effort to slow the pace of global climate disruption before intolerable consequences become inevitable". The task is not easy, given the complex inter-relationships.

The leaders of several global corporations, including GE, Volvo and Air France on Tuesday called for prompt, decisive action on climate change created by the emission of greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide.

Nearly 100 companies followed a meeting at Columbia University by endorsing a formal statement to fight for clean energy and against climate change caused by people and businesses. The companies are members of the Global Roundtable on Climate Change, formed in 2004 to explore issues critical to shaping public and industry policy on climate change.

"This is an issue that requires action now," said Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. The international business community seeks to lay out a frame-work for global action to mitigate the impact of human-made climate change without adversely affecting energy and economic growth, according to Sachs. The business leaders hoped that a permanent plan could be in place by 2012.

The newest report released last week by climate scientists telling of a heating Earth and rising surface waters is not new science, but a data update.

It is missing the alarum that a warning of a calamitous meteor collision would have. Its one computation that could cause concern in low-lying regions – a rise in sea level of between 15 cm and 60 cm if the present rate of industrial gas emissions and land-use exploitation accelerates temperature rise ~ is made on a time-frame of one century.

That’s four human generations long. But governments, polluting industries and fossil fuel burners would be guilty of something close to planetary genocide if they gave in to a natural instinct to downplay the report, if not actually cast doubt on the scientific conclusions.

The most important service that the panel of some 2,500 scientists have performed in six years of work, on the imprimatur of the United Nations, is to remove lingering doubt about what has caused global warming.

Their conclusion, to 90 per cent certainty as opposed to 60 per cent in a 2001 progress report, is that human actions are the trigger of change in weather patterns. Variations in nature such as solar energy, a belief some scientists held, are all but discounted. Accepting this principle – a law, before long – would seem a cinch, with the real problem being what governments ought to do to mitigate the effects, and how soon.

But it is crucial that the last of industrial and policy doubters, and even among scientists themselves, are persuaded of the weight of evidence before remedial programmes and the search for alternative means of industrial firing could get anywhere.

Evidence of faster warming is clear: The Earth warmed 0.74 degree C over the past century, especially in the last few decades, but it is calculated to pick up steam by a range of 1.1 degree C to 6.4 degree C by the end of this century.