Ever since the Nobel Peace Prize was conferred on Al Gore and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007, there has been widespread acceptance of the fact that we are in the midst of rapidly changing weather patterns. The connection between rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels and global warming is

Efforts to control climate change require the stabilization of atmospheric CO2 concentrations. This can only be achieved through a drastic reduction of global CO2 emissions. Yet fossil fuel emissions increased by 29% between 2000 and 2008, in conjunction with increased contributions from emerging economies, from the production and international trade of goods and services, and from the use of coal as a fuel source. In contrast, emissions from land-use changes were nearly constant.

The key challenges faced by the coal-power sector in India

Two-hundred-and-fifty billion tonnes. That's the bottom line. If we are serious about avoiding dangerous climate change, 250,000 megatonnes is the maximum amount of carbon we can put into the atmosphere. Keep going at current rates and we will have used up that ration in 20 years.

Fossil fuels have a new crime to live down. A frenzy of hydrocarbon burning at the end of the Permian period may have led to the most devastating mass extinction Earth has ever seen, as explosive encounters between magma and coal released more carbon dioxide in the course of a few years than in all of human history.