Today coal mining causes ecosystem damage, soil erosion, dust and air pollution from surface activities, landscape disruption from surface mining, interruption of streams and aquifers with impacts on water availability, acidified water, subsidence and land instability from underground mining, and emissions of methane and other greenhouse gases.
Environmental protection is critical to maintain ecosystem services essential for human well-being. It is important to be able to rank countries by their environmental impact so that poor performers as well as policy ‘models’ can be identified.
Driven by efforts to curb fossil-fuel use and concerns about the security of energy supplies, the number of applications for renewable-energy patents is booming. But the patents are scattered across many databases, in different formats that are not readily searchable, leading to a lack of clarity over who owns specific energy-technology patents, and in which regions.
Comprehensive, longitudinal field studies that monitor both disease and vector populations for dengue viruses are urgently needed as a pre-requisite for developing locally adaptable prevention programs or to appropriately test and license new vaccines.
Evidence that links increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations to global climate change has amplified over the years and led to a broad scientific consensus that the climate is changing fast and will have far-reaching impacts on our planet.
Clouds with aerosols conspire to block and reflect away sunlight over the Indian subcontinent, a new research claims. This results in what is called 'solar dimming' lessening the amount of sunlight that reaches Indian soil.
