TWENTY years ago yesterday, James Hansen, a climate scientist at NASA, told the world that he was "99%" certain that humans were already warming the climate. "The greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now," Dr Hansen said then, referring to a string of warm years and the accumulating blanket of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other gases emitted mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and forests.

Twenty years ago Monday, James E. Hansen, a climate scientist at NASA, shook Washington and the world by telling a sweating crowd at a Senate hearing during a stifling heat wave that he was "99 percent' certain that humans were already warming the climate.

WIND power works, and will work better in the future. But wind is only an interim stop on the way to a world where electricity no longer relies on fossil fuels. The ultimate goal is to harvest the sun

Agricultural scientists have asked Pakistan to stop its irrigation water from further wastage. Globally, agriculture consumes 70 per cent of water withdrawals, but, in Pakistan it goes up to 95 per cent. Speaking at a seminar on

The good news in the International Energy Agency's report on the future of energy technologies is that there is enough oil left on the planet to allow a huge increase in consumption over the next few decades. The bad news is that the consequences for the climate of burning that much oil would be alarming. The IEA, the rich countries' energy watchdog, is urging the world to start weaning itself off oil, not because supplies are running out but to avoid "significant change in all aspects of life and irreversible change in the natural environment" as a result of global warming.

Rich and poor countries argued over how the West can deploy know-how to fight climate change in developing countries but not lose jobs at a UN-run climate conference in Germany on Tuesday. Poorer nations want the West to help them cut their emissions of planet-warming gases and prepare for climate change such as rising seas and more extreme weather because historically the rich are most responsible for those emissions.

UN-led climate talks kick off on Monday in Germany with experts trying to forge a global warming pact facing a new challenge from critics who say climate change measures are partly to blame for higher food and energy prices. The meeting is the second of eight which aim to secure a global climate deal by the end of next year, to come into force after the first round of the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. The Bonn talks focus on the "toolkit" of steps which can curb rising emissions of greenhouse gas such as carbon dioxide, which scientists say risk catastrophic climate change.

A bill going to the US Senate next week seeking deep cuts in US greenhouse gases by 2050 is a "first step" but not enough to avert damaging climate change, the head of the UN Climate Panel said on Friday. Rajendra Pachauri also said that even tougher plans by some other developed nations to rein in emissions were insufficient to head off some projected impacts of global warming, ranging from more heatwaves and droughts to rising seas.