V Krishna Ananth

Nuclear war between India and Pakistan would cause more than slaughter and destruction -- it would knock a big hole in the ozone layer, affecting crops, animals and people worldwide, US researchers said on Monday. Fires from burning cities would send 5 million metric tonnes of soot or more into the lowest part of Earth's atmosphere known as the troposphere, and heat from the sun would carry these blackened particles into the stratosphere, the team at the University of Colorado reported.

Our parents and grandparents were conservationists by instinct. All the more credit to them as fancy terms had not yet been invented - like reduce, re-use and re-cycle as recipes. Nor of Global Warming, Energy Budgets and Ozone Holes. They simply believed that it was sensible and proper that materials be used maximally or given away rather than being rubbished.