Page 53 - Climate Change

Energy transition in EU for 2030 climate target is irreversible: Report

The findings show that European laws will set in stone major transformations of the European economy by 2030: Wind and solar power will be the main sources of electricity, accounting for 55%

Govt launches 'Meri LiFE' app to encourage young to battle climate change

The government on Monday launched "Meri LiFE" (My Life) mobile application to empower young people and encourage their participation in tackling climate change. The app, inspired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Mission LiFE, aims to promote mindful utilisation instead of wasteful consumption. LiFE stands for lifestyle for environment. Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav said the application will foster a nationwide movement for LiFE, demonstrating the power of citizens in saving the environment. The Union environment ministry serves as the coordinating authority for implementing Mission LiFE at the national level. It has been mobilising various stakeholders, including central ministries, state governments, institutions, and private organisations, to align their activities with LiFE and raise awareness about sustainable practices. A month-long mass mobilisation drive is being conducted to further promote LiFE and enhance nationwide advocacy. It will culminate in a grand

RBI, green finance and the blue planet: How are banks placed in all this?

The central bank's report seeks to nudge banks and financial institutions to catalyse risk mitigation from climate change

Volkswagen's annual meeting hit by protests over climate strategy, China

While weathering criticism over its China presence, VW is dealing with the pressing task of stemming a slide in market share in its biggest market

New AI model by IBM-NASA designed to help track Earth's climate change

"The model could speed up geospatial analysis by three to four times, and can help reduce the amount of data cleaning and labelling required in training a traditional deep-learning model"

Study provides more evidence of climate change being human-caused: PNAS

A new research has provided evidence of climate change being human-caused and showed that specific signals from human activities have altered the temperature structure of Earth's atmosphere. Scientists have long recognised differences between tropospheric and lower stratospheric temperature trends as a "fingerprint" of human effects on climate. This fingerprint, however, neglected information from the mid to upper stratosphere, 25 to 50 kilometres above the Earth's surface, the inclusion of which improves the detectability of a human fingerprint by a factor of five, the scientists involved in the study said. "Enhanced detectability occurs because the mid to upper stratosphere has a large cooling signal from human-caused CO2 increases, small noise levels of natural internal variability, and differing signal and noise patterns," the study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) said. Noise in the troposphere can include day-to-day weather, interannual ...

Global climate diplomacy: World is focusing on wrong climate scoreboard

Under the Paris Agreement, every country committed to making changes that will help keep global average temperature rise well below 2C and ideally below 1.5C

Three Adani Group firms lose endorsement of UN-backed climate group

Adani Green, Adani Transmission Ltd. and Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone Ltd. were removed in late April

AI's threat to world may be 'more urgent' than climate change: Pioneer

He added: "With climate change, it's very easy to recommend what you should do. If you do that, eventually things will be okay. For this it's not at all clear what you should do"

82% of Indians either alarmed or concerned about global warming, says study

About 82 per cent of Indians are either alarmed or concerned about global warming and are in support of bringing in energy policies to reduce its effects, reveals a new study. The study report, Global Warming's Four Indias, 2022: An Audience Segmentation Analysis, prepared by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and CVoter International, identified four types of audiences within the Indian public who were classified as 'The Alarmed', consisting of 54 per cent, 'The Concerned', 20 per cent, 'The Cautious', 11 per cent, and 'The Disengaged', consisting of just 7 per cent. The study has found that the majority of the people belonging to three segments backed the formulation of policies to fight climate change and opined that the Indian government should be doing more to address global warming. They also backed the development of a national programme to teach Indians about global warming, train people on renewable energy jobs, encourage local communities to build check dams

A torrid summer, rise in power demand risks stalling Asia's climate goals

It's the expectation of a torrid summer that has sent coal stockpiles in Asia's biggest economies soaring in recent months - and sooner or later, all that carbon is going to end up getting burned

Fossils or not? Nations split on how to meet global climate goals

Senior officials from dozens of nations meeting in Berlin remained divided Wednesday on how to meet international climate goals, with some pushing for a phase-out of fossil fuels and others insisting that oil and gas can continue to play a role in the future provided their emissions are somehow contained. The two-day Petersberg Climate Dialogue hosted by Germany heard calls for a new target on ramping up renewable energy to be negotiated and agreed at this year's U.N. climate summit in December. But German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock made clear that this proposal should not detract from the need to drastically cut fossil fuel use, a position shared by other European nations and vulnerable island states present at the Berlin talks. The United Arab Emirates, which will host the U.N. talks in Dubai, backed the idea of significantly boosting wind and solar power, but made clear it wants to keep fossil fuels as an option for the foreseeable future. Sultan al-Jaber, the UAE offic

India must reduce energy intensity to reach net zero 2070 target: RBI

India's goal of achieving the net zero target by 2070 would require an accelerated reduction in the energy intensity of GDP by around 5 per cent annually

India, China proposes roadmap for carbon transition instead of deadline

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India, backed by China, is trying to build a consensus within the G20 group to let countries choose a roadmap to cut carbon emissions instead of setting a deadline to end the use of fossil fuels, three Indian government officials said.

Climate change talks see pushes for global renewable energy target

Germany called Tuesday for governments around the world to work on setting an ambitious target for renewable energy that would ring in the end of the fossil fuel age and help prevent dangerous global warming. Speaking at the start of a two-day meeting in Berlin attended by dozens of top climate envoys, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock noted that the world needs to sharply cut greenhouse gas emissions in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). But we also know that not all countries are prepared to do so, she said. That is why I want to open the debate (...) on whether we should and can reach a target on renewables at the next climate conference. Baerbock's proposal flips the script on a previous push to set a deadline for phasing out all fossil fuels, which faced stiff resistance from major oil and gas exporting nations. They instead back the idea of capturing planet-warming emissions as a way to reducing greenhouse gas in the ...

Here are 5 ways finance companies are trying to de-risk heat waves

To meet this problem, some financial service providers have started to offer instruments aimed at reducing personal and economic risk associated with heat waves

Severe heatwave may trigger, worsen asthma conditions of patients: Experts

Even as climate models have indicated an increasing heatwave this summer for India, people suffering from asthma, may be at significant risk, said experts here on World Asthma Day

Climate change sparks disaster fears in Anchorage Hillside, Alaska

Research on a flat spot for air evacuations. Talk of old-style civil defense sirens to warn of fast-moving wildfires. Hundreds of urban firefighters training in wildland firefighting techniques while snow still blankets the ground. This is the new reality in Alaska's largest city, where a recent series of wildfires near Anchorage and the hottest day on record have sparked fears that a warming climate could soon mean serious, untenable blazes in urban areas just like in the rest of the drought-plagued American West. The risk is particularly high in the city's burgeoning Anchorage Hillside neighbourhood, where multi-million dollar homes have pushed further and further up steep slopes and to the forest's edge. Making the challenge even greater is that many of these areas on the Hillside home to about 35,000 people have but one road in and out, meaning that fleeing residents could clog a roadway or be cut off from reaching Anchorage at all. The prospect of a major wildfire there kee

India to join international climate action in civil aviation from 2027

Among them are a two per cent annual fuel efficiency improvement through 2050, carbon neutral growth and net zero by 2050. The ICAO has clubbed them under CORSIA and LTAG

Climate change increases risk of new viruses across India: Scientists

Changing climatic conditions, particularly temperature and moisture variations following events such as extreme rainfall in some places and drought in others, will lead to a surge in the spread of vector-borne and infectious diseases across India, say scientists. As concerns mount over the recent increase in respiratory viral infections, including H2N3, adenoviruses and swine flu, in many parts of India, the scientists said it might be too early to attribute it to climate change. But is definitely plausible. The prospect of climate change leading to an increased burden with the spread of diseases such as dengue, chikungunya and malaria looms large. According to public health expert Poornima Prabhakaran, steadily rising temperatures affect the pattern of transmission of disease agents like viruses as well their vectors through a number of pathways. These include changes in the incubation period, the transmission potential and the duration of transmission - all of which can impact th