-The Times of India NEW DELHI: El Nino is likely to hit rains in India but the country may escape an overall drought, private weather company Skymet said in the first forecast by any agency about this year's monsoon. Rainfall in the season is likely to be below normal at 94% of the long range average, it said. Releasing its assessment some 10 days before the official India Meteorological Department's monsoon prediction,...

-The Telegraph   New Delhi: An international panel today warned that the world hadn't done enough to curb greenhouse gas emissions but said that changes in lifestyles and energy technologies could yet help avert the most devastating impacts of global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in a report released in Berlin, said greenhouse gas emissions had climbed to unprecedented levels over the past decade despite emission-curbing policies and actions by...

-The Business Standard   This report believes in demanding more, and cares little for inflation. It could have kept budgetary constraints in better focus and thrown more light on carbon-reducing innovations Fans of Rakesh Mohan reports will love this leviathan of a report. With 1,220 pages spread over three volumes, the report of the National Transport Policy Development Committee takes at least a week's effort to read. The analysis is in the second...

-DNA The Indian political class is completely disengaged with the environment because the issue does not get votes. And the poor, who will be the most affected by climate change, are mostly unaware about it, though it is an existential issue for our country. In William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, a series of bizarre events happen in Rome before Caesar's assassination, leading a soothsayer to warn him: "Beware the ides of...

-Deccan Herald India stares at an agriculture loss worth Rs 42,000 crore ($7 billion) by 2030, due to the dangerous consequences of climate change, says the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its latest report. The loss will mostly be on account of a sharp drop in wheat productivity because of the heat stress in the Indo-Gangetic plains, which produce almost 90 million tonnes of wheat annually. Ranging from Punjab and...