Accra, Apr 22 Climate change in Africa could leave 250 million more people short of water by 2020, spurring conflicts and threatening stability on the world's poorest continent, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner said on Tuesday. Rajendra K Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations panel of climate experts who shared the prize with former US Vice-President Al Gore last year, said the responsibility lay with wealthy developed nations to curb their carbon emissions.

With a growth rate of over eight per cent, if we add up the costs of environmental damage and accounted for the displacement of people due to our policies then the country would have negative economy, said Vandana Shiva, founder, Navdhanya. She was delivering the keynote address at "Climate Change India 2008', a two-day national conference that was inaugurated in the city on Tuesday. City-based World Institute of Sustainable energy is hosting the conference.

Today, as we mark the 38th World Earth Day, in the light of the recent breaking of an ice shelf in the Antarctic region, the warning signals are clear: time is running out. The high pollution levels, the depletion of the ozone layer, and excessive global warming are no longer just predictions but are fast becoming a reality. The changes can be seen around us. According to reports, the number of hurricanes have almost doubled in the last 30 years.

COMMUNITY leadership at its grassroots level have a major role to play in the Climate Risk Management Act 2008, drafted by the Climate Change Department of MS Swaminathan Research Foundation. Talking to journalists here on Monday professor Swaminathan , said the draft model act ("draft for consideration, adaptation and possible adoption by the State Government'') for local level climate risk management was drafted by the participants of the inter-disciplinary dialogue on "Community management of climate change, role of Panchayats and Nagarpalikas'' conducted by the institution recently.

Food inflation in the time of rising fuel prices has a new dimension: diversion of more and more farmland for bio-fuel production. Three experts debate whether food and fuel are either/or choice. What is the long-term solution for obtaining food security? Can a multilateral body like the WTO or UN have a role in this? Can reneweable fuels meet growing energy demand? SUNITA NARAIN Director, Centre for Science and Environment

It's Earth Day on April 22 and we are no better off. Global warming is a larger threat than terrorism because it will affect each one of us. In India, the Ganges would dry up by 2030, according to UNFCCC.

Hurricanes in some areas, including the North Atlantic, are likely to become more intense as a result of global warming even though the number of such storms decline, according to a study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers. Kerry Emanuel, the study's co-author, wrote a paper in 2005 reporting an apparent link between a warming climate and an increase in hurricane intensity. That paper drew worldwide attention because it appeared in Nature just three weeks before Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans.

Lean times lie ahead for fishermen in California and Oregon. Last week, US regulators decided to cancel the entire salmon season for this year. The long-term prospects for the salmon themselves are unclear. In the long term, however, the future of the salmon, and the people that rely on them, may depend on climate change.

Ocean acidification in response to rising atmospheric CO2 partial pressures is widely expected to reduce calcification by marine organisms. From the mid-Mesozoic, coccolithophores have been major calcium carbonate producers in the world's oceans, today accounting for about a third of the total marine CaCO3 production. Here, the researchers present laboratory evidence that calcification and net primary production in the coccolithophore species Emiliania huxleyi are significantly increased by high CO2 partial pressures.

Almost 6 years ago, a paper in Science warned of an unheralded environmental peril. Melted snow and ice seemed to be reaching the base of the great Greenland ice sheet, lubricating it and accelerating the sheet's slide toward oblivion in the sea, where it was raising sea level worldwide (12 July 2002, p. 218). Now a two-pronged study-both broader and more focused than the one that sounded the alarm-has confirmed that meltwater reaches the ice sheet's base and does indeed speed the ice's seaward flow. The good news is that the process is more leisurely than many climate scientists had feared.

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