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The concept of Carbon Footprint, its origin, its relation with greenhouse gases and the methods to quantify it are presented and analyzed. The so-called greenhouse effect causes that the energy that reaches the earth at a certain rate is returned to a slower rate, increasing the temperature of the earth surface. Additionally, it is nowadays accepted that this effect is produced by some gases that are naturally emitted or produced by human actions. The Carbon Footprint is considered to be one of the most important tools for quantifying greenhouse emissions and in a general form it represents the quantity of gases emitted to the atmosphere and that is produced by human activities, and by goods and service consumption. Since there is no consensus about the definition of Carbon Footprint or the forms of quantifying it, this first part of the paper series analyzes the main concept and the main present views on the Carbon Footprint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper surveys the energy problem in relation to global warming and the social criteria of India. India's failure to develop a policy on global warming is highlighted and her economic policy judged in relation to her energy options, including such notable work as jatropha development and nuclear energy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is a matter of concern to society, decision makers, and scientists. As part of the debate about the science of climate change, and in particular the extent to which current climate change is due to human activity or part of the natural variability of the global climate system, earth scientists try to understand how climates have changed in the past, and how past warming and cooling episodes affected the landscape and the plants and animals that occupied that landscape. It is also clear from the fossil record that past climate change has played a role in the evolution of animal and plant lineages, as well as plant and animal communities. Preserved in a series of lake deposits across northeastern Washington State, USA., to Smithers in north-central British Columbia, Canada, the Okanagan Highlands fossil deposits preserve a record of a time when the world was much warmer than now because of a naturally enhanced greenhouse effect, and the poles were ice-free and supported great forests. These sites are well known to fossil collectors for their beautifully preserved insects, fish, and plants. The Okanagan Highlands were an upland 50 million years ago, during the Early Eocene, and supported diverse forests swarming with insects and other animals that today are found in both temperate and tropical areas. The trees, shrubs, and herbs of these Eocene forests echo this pattern, including palms and bald cypress, together with spruce and birches. This special issue presents a series of papers that resulted from a symposium held in 2003 on the Okanagan Highlands that details the warm Eocene world of the interior uplands of northeastern Washington and British Columbia. Topics include reconstructing the landscape, biogeography, palaeoclimates, and fossil plants, insects, diatoms, and fish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paleoclimate modeling has become an important tool to detect the future climate of the global warming that is difficult to be validated. The paleoclimate modeling has to be evaluated by regionally geological data in order to determine if it is able to reproduce a reality of climate states. Geological evidence shows that there was a warm-wet interstadial at 35000±3000 a BP in China, which provides an important climate period to be historical analogue for the future climate changes induced by greenhouse gas emissions. Integrated geological records of later phase of the MSI3 from China also provide basements for evaluation of 35 ka BP climate modeling. This paper reports the paleoclimate experiments applied by various forces, and validates the outputs by geological data, consequently improving the boundary conditions in the experiments and making the paleoclimates more approach the reality. The simulations show an increased temperature in the mid-low latitudes and an extended rain-belt northwards in East Asia, while a decreased temperature in high latitudes and a strong exchange of the N-S atmospheric circulation. As there is only ca. 10–15 ka from 35 ka BP to the LGM (21 ka BP) during which climate rapidly changed from a warm-wet interstadial to a typical ice age, this simulation provides scientific basis to recognize the criteria of global warming and trends of natural climate development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global climate change is now accepted to be the most serious environmental threat facing human race. One of the solution of the problem is improving renewable energy sources. Many countries see the development of renewable energy as a way of mitigation climate change. At this stage , to understand renewable energy development potential haz become very important. Thus, This paper argues the contribution of renewable energy sources with mitigation global warming. Each source is examined independently the others from perspective of progress in short and long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Conceptual models linking climate change with fluctuations in fish population abundances are based on how cyclic patterns in air–sea interactions influence pelagic food web dynamics. The effect of changing mixed layer dynamics on phytoplankton light and nutrient exposure is a prominent focal point in the overall mechanism. The Extended Reconstruction (ER) of Sea Surface Temperature (SST) version one (ERSSTv1) and version two (ERSSTv2) monthly time series from 1854 to 2003, interpreted with the aid of a historically based global Nitrate Depletion Temperature (NDT) climatology, provide a qualitative tool for examining relative temporal and spatial patterns in nitrate availability in normal salinity areas of the world ocean. After an analysis of local NDT variability at four time series stations demonstrated temporal stability compared to SST, [SST–NDT] as a Nitrate Availability Index (NAI) was calculated for April (boreal spring or austral fall) and October (boreal fall and austral spring) for the whole ERSSTv1 data set and for selected years of the ERSSTv2 data set using the global NDT climatology. The more negative the NAI difference, the greater the expected surface nitrate. The more positive the NAI difference, the greater the intensity of temperature stratification between the surface and the nitracline and thus the less likely that nitrate mixed to the surface. The records from April and October both showed that decreased nitrate availability, defined by both smaller negative NAI differences and larger positive NAI differences, generally though not universally occurred throughout the 20th century in association with global warming. The greatest decreases in nitrate availability occurred in two warming events in the time periods 1909–1937 and 1977–present in the Northern Hemisphere and 1926–1937 and 1950–1990 in the Southern Hemisphere. Different areas of the world ocean were affected in each warming event. Prominent exceptions in the ERSSTv1 analysis where 20th century nitrate availability actually increased in at least one season were in western parts of the South Indian, the North Pacific, the equatorial Pacific, the South Pacific, the North Atlantic, and the South Atlantic and in eastern parts of the South Pacific and South Atlantic. The ERSSTv2 analysis also showed increased 20th century nitrate availability in the eastern subarctic Pacific. The nitrate availability trends resulting from the present analysis agree with various literature reports on regional changes in plant nutrient availability, on increased occurrences of harmful algal blooms often associated with dinoflagellates that are better able to access subsurface nitrate pools, and on decadal changes in marine fisheries. They also raise concerns about the resilience of historical patterns of pelagic community structure and function in response to a warming trend continuing into the 21st century. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]