A no to yes

the role of the Dutch as pioneers in international environmental policy seems to have been relinquished. The question of reducing carbon dioxide (co2) emissions to three per cent below the 1990 levels by the year 2000, is under debate in the Netherlands.

Vicious circle

jorge Sarmiento and Corinne Le Quere of Princeton University in New Jersey, us, have observed that warmer oceans are more stratified and cause the ocean circulation system to slow down. As a result, they absorb much less carbon dioxide (co2) -- 50 per cent of that absorbed before, in some cases (New Scientist, Vol 152, No 2058).

Sieve with a change

Researchers at Tokyo Metropolitan University in Japan have developed a material which can be attached to chimneys of power plants and factories to remove carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) from emissions and help protect against global warming. This material, a sieve-like membrane which can selectively remove CO 2 from mixed gases containing nitrogen and methane, is a two-tiered structure having a sponge-like layer covered by another thin layer that selectively absorbs CO 2 and retains it within its layers, thereby separating CO 2 from other gases.

Sooty symptoms

For a cooler world

it could take something as simple as iron supplements to combat the spectre of global warming. It was John H Martin, an ocean scientist who had first suggested that fertilising the seas with thousands of tonnes of iron compounds could result in the sudden spurt of marine plant organisms called phytoplanktons (example algae) which would gobble up huge amounts of carbon dioxide ( co 2 ) dissolved in sea water, not unlike terrestrial plants removing co 2 from the air.

All for a change

one would think that if more than 1,000 scientists belonging to various countries and working for 10 years, pointed out the grave danger posed by increasing carbon emissions to the climate as well as the global economy, world leaders would take notice and initiate restorative action. Instead, they choose to either pass on the buck or worse, plainly deny the existence of such a problem.

Chink in the armour

The dynamism of Western academia never ceases to amaze me. Once an idea enters the people's mind-set, scholars of all hues begin analysing it from the standpoint of different disciplines. This is quite unlike what happens in a country like India. Gunnar Myrdal in his '60s trilogy, Asian Drama, had pointed out that corruption is an issue that figures in almost every dinner conversation and media article; yet he could hardly find any academic research on the subject. Thirty years later, the situation remains unchanged.

Carbon, carbon everywhere

The origin of greenhouse gas emissions is an important issue in relation to the need for devising policy options to minimise potential global climate change and its impacts. The best known of the greenhouse gases is CO2, which is emitted into the atmosphere in large amounts -the equivalent of more than 6,000 tonnes of carbon per year. The industrialised world, particularly the US, is largely responsible for the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Killed by a belch

IT WAS 250 million years ago that life took its first beating - the worst ever - when mass extinctions marked the end of the Permian period. A group of American palaeontologists say that they have evidence to prove that the extinctions in the Permian period, which devoured 90 per cent of all genera in the oceans, may have been triggered by a belch of deep sea carbon dioxide (Science, Vol 270, No 5241). Researchers Andrew Knoll of the

Fume out

Scientists from the British Natural Resources Institute and the Kenyan Agricultural Research Institute working at Kenya's Rift valley suggest that volcanic carbon dioxide, instead of methyl bromide, could be used to exterminate granary pests (New Scientist, Vol 148, No 2004). Experiments have been conducted on more than 2,000 tonnes of maize . The maize was fumigated with naturally produced carbon dioxide which resulted in the death of most of the weevils present therein. Other tests are required to confirm the effects and if they succeed, the phasing out of