Researchers claim Indian funerals make global warming worse: According to a new study, the traditional Hindu ritual of burning the dead on funeral pyres consumes 50 million to 60 million trees in India and Nepal annually. That and the combination of camphor, clarified butter and synthetic powders burned along with the body are responsible for a large chunk of a light-absorbing aerosol known as brown carbon. Unlike black carbon aerosols spewed from the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels and biofuels, brown carbon does not typically show up in greenhouse gas inventories. But according to the authors of the study of cultural burning practices, published last week in Environmental Science and Technology Letters, that needs to change.