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The transport sector is consistently responsible for around 30 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions in developed countries and is one of few sectors where emissions continue to increase as a result of apparently insatiable demand for road and air travel. This paper examines how the formulation of transport policy fits into the exposition of UK climate policy, focusing on three principal areas of tension: policy priority (congestion and carbon reduction); strategies to reduce emissions (technological and behavioural solutions) and timescale (short- and long-term vision). We suggest that in overcoming such tensions government ministers will need to devolve significant policy formulation and implementation powers to an appropriate scale of governance – in this case the city-region – to fashion a ‘convergence space’ capable of promoting meaningful action with regard to transport's climate impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on various books related to climatic changes. In the book "Responding to Global Warming: The Technology, Economics and Politics of Sustainable Energy," taking a multi-disciplinary policy perspective that integrates engineering, economics, and decision theory, the writer proposes an innovative strategy in global efforts to limit climate change, linking energy and forestry, North and South. The book "Survival Emissions: A Perspective From the South on Global Climate Change Negotiations," gives background information on the negotiations, as well as the writer's analysis and understanding of the negotiations from a Southern perspective. Taking a cross-disciplinary assessment of fairness and equity issues in the context of global climate change, the book "Fair Weather? Equity Concerns in Climate Change," explores the policy dimensions and analytical needs of the negotiation process. The book "The Way Forward: Beyond Agenda," outlines the successes and failures of the first five years following the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

Climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions is predicted to raise the mean global temperature by 1.0–3.5°C in the next 50–100 years. The direct and indirect effects of this potential increase in temperature on terrestrial ecosystems and ecosystem processes are likely to be complex and highly varied in time and space. The Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems core project of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme has recently launched a Network of Ecosystem Warming Studies, the goals of which are to integrate and foster research on ecosystem-level effects of rising temperature. In this paper, we use meta-analysis to synthesize data on the response of soil respiration, net N mineralization, and aboveground plant productivity to experimental ecosystem warming at 32 research sites representing four broadly defined biomes, including high (latitude or altitude) tundra, low tundra, grassland, and forest. Warming methods included electrical heat-resistance ground cables, greenhouses, vented and unvented field chambers, overhead infrared lamps, and passive night-time warming. Although results from individual sites showed considerable variation in response to warming, results from the meta-analysis showed that, across all sites and years, 2–9 years of experimental warming in the range 0.3–6.0°C significantly increased soil respiration rates by 20% (with a 95% confidence interval of 18–22%), net N mineralization rates by 46% (with a 95% confidence interval of 30–64%), and plant productivity by 19% (with a 95% confidence interval of 15–23%). The response of soil respiration to warming was generally larger in forested ecosystems compared to low tundra and grassland ecosystems, and the response of plant productivity was generally larger in low tundra ecosystems than in forest and grassland ecosystems. With the exception of aboveground plant productivity, which showed a greater positive response to warming in colder ecosystems, the magnitude of the response of these three processes to experimental warming was not generally significantly related to the geographic, climatic, or environmental variables evaluated in this analysis. This underscores the need to understand the relative importance of specific factors (such as temperature, moisture, site quality, vegetation type, successional status, land-use history, etc.) at different spatial and temporal scales, and suggests that we should be cautious in "scaling up" responses from the plot and site level to the landscape and biome level. Overall, ecosystem-warming experiments are shown to provide valuable insights on the response of terrestrial ecosystems to elevated temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper, control theory is used to study the connection between human activities and global warming. A feedback model is proposed and tested against temperature and carbon dioxide concentration historical data. Four scenarios are taken into account and simulated by the model; stability analysis is also discussed. The model proposed here simulates the historical data correctly and the scenarios show that, even in the case of dramatic reduction of the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emission, the temperature will not decrease for a certain time. Stability analysis reveals a complex pole near the unit circle. This means that, although the system at the moment is stable, it is very close to becoming unstable with unpredictable consequences on climate change. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article comments on the Kyoto Protocol, which is an agreement made under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The author stresses that this agreement did not produce demonstrable reductions in emissions or even in anticipated emissions growth. It is cited that Kyoto Protocol has failed not only in achieving success in slowing global warming, but also because this agreement has concealed discussion of alternative policy approaches that could contend climate change and adapt to its unavoidable consequences.

The article discusses some of the most important aspects of the carbon cycle that have the potential to accelerate the rate of global warming beyond that attributed to human emissions of greenhouse gases. It discusses the impact of rising temperature and changing soil moisture on soil respiration. It also mentions the increase in disturbance in terrestrial ecosystems often linked with pulses of carbon to the atmosphere.