Seagrass monitoring on Labrador
more adventures on the labrador blog
International Coastal Cleanup Singapore workshop
on the Toddycats! blog
Yellow-vented Bulbul: A courtship behaviour
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog
Spitter
a rude but cute spider on the budak blog
Studying seagrasses in the US
on the teamseagrass blog
Sean Augustin, New Straits Times 15 Jul 08;
KUALA TERENGGANU: The green turtles carefully threaded their way down the beach before racing out to sea. Some were a little disoriented but not surprising, since it was their first experience in open waters.
The twelve 2-year-olds were raised in captivity at Aquaria KLCC, in Kuala Lumpur, along with 18 others, including hawksbill turtles, under a headstart project in 2006.
The marine turtle conservation project, called Turtles Can Fly, was developed by Aquaria KLCC and Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT), with the BodyShop and Media Prima as official partners.
Aquaria KLCC managing director and chief executive officer Datuk Simon Foong said the project was to study the effects of raising turtles in captivity for the first two years.
"Will the turtles return to the same island where they were released? It is known they return to the beaches where they hatched. If this experiment works, we will consider releasing turtles at other sites, especially where there used to be recorded landings," he said after releasing the first batch of turtles in Chagar Hutang on Pulau Redang recently.
He said the next course of action would be determined by the data from the first batch of turtles. The next phase of the project is the satellite tracking of green turtles.
Foong also handed RM50,000 worth of Ultrasonic and American veterinary identification devices to UMT, used to track and identify turtles.
UMT Turtle and rehabilitation group project leader Professor Chan Eng Heng said: "Raising awareness of turtles is one of the most important aspects of conservation. People need to know what they need to protect.
"We will be distributing posters of turtles at dive centres so when divers spot them, they can report to us. This way, we will have an idea of where they are and how long they remain in the vicinity."
Letter from Ravindaran K P M
Chairperson, Parent Support Group,St Patrick’s School
Today Online 15 Jul 08;
I REFER to “Plastic turtles will do no one any good” (July 5), and would like to assure the writer that his concerns had been taken care of, prior to the Carnival By The Canal.
A net was placed across the canal to recover the turtle floats so that they can be reused for the next race. The floats are numbered and all 5,700 launched have been retrieved and accounted for.
St Patrick’s School (SPS) also conducted lessons emphasising the need to care for the environment weeks before the carnival.
The school has done its part in educating its students about the need to take care of the environment, especially turtles.
The money raised by the Parent Support Group (PSG) and the students of SPS, will be used to upgrade school facilities.
Air-conditioning the hall is necessary, as it is hot and uncomfortable.
The PSG agrees with the school that the air-conditioner should only be used for mass events and national examinations.
Returfing the field with artificial grass saves money and benefits students. Using natural grass means having to close the field anually to returf and costs thousands. Given proper maintenance, the field will last a long time without affecting the environment.
Yahoo News 14 Jul 08;
Wildlife researchers have fitted three Bornean elephants with satellite collars in Malaysia's Sabah state, marking the beginning of the first study of their "virtually unknown" social structure.
A conservation biologist in charge of the project said studies on the genetic aspects of the Bornean elephant have been carried out in the past but "we have yet to study their social structure which is virtually unknown."
"The collaring of the elephants is to enhance our access to them," said Nurzhafarina Othman, of the Danau Girang Field Centre.
"We will carry out actual observation and collect DNA information via the faeces of particular individuals," she said in a statement over the weekend.
But Nurzhafarina said the bulk of the four-year study in the Kinabatangan floodplain will be done with the Elephant Conservation Unit (ECU).
The ECU, founded to address the issue of human-elephant conflict in 2002, will spend hundreds of man-hours tracking these specific elephants for this landmark study, she said.
Sulaiman Ismail who heads the ECU said the study on the elephants would include ascertaining their mating system, assessing paternity within elephant groups and identifying alpha males.
This data in turn will assist the Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD) in managing the Kinabatangan elephant population.
"We are wildlife managers, the more information we have, the more efficiently we can manage the elephants," said Senthilvel Nathan, the department's chief field veterinarian.
Jo Adetunji, The Guardian 14 Jul 08;
A controversial decision to allow China to buy stockpiles of African elephant ivory looks set to go ahead this week after monitors from the group Traffic said the country had cracked down on its illegal domestic trade.
But campaigners are vehemently opposed to the sale, saying it would provide a "smokescreen" for increased poaching.
The 108 tonnes of ivory have been collected from culls in overpopulated areas, natural deaths and seizures and are being offered for sale by Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
International trade in ivory has been illegal since 1989, but in 2006 the Convention for International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), which oversees the ban, agreed a one-off sale.
Only Japan has been approved as a buyer so far and a sale date is yet to be determined. But there is consensus that the four African countries are holding out for China to be approved, a move that will lead to competition and hence higher prices.
China also has the recommendation of the Cites Secretariat which says that anti-smuggling initiatives by China, the largest blackmarket for illegal ivory, have been effective. Cites's standing committee, meeting in Geneva, will decide if China's controls on the illegal trade are stringent enough to prevent illegal ivory being laundered with stock from the sale or it being re-exported.
"In 2002, China was the principal driver of the illegal trade and made very few seizures," said Tom Milliken, director of eastern and southern African operations for Traffic, which monitors the trade and advises Cites.
"Now it has been making seizures left, right and centre. They've added 100 seizures this year alone. On the domestic front China has moved aggressively."
'Big problem'
The increase in seizures in the past six years has been dramatic. According to the Elephant Trade Information System (Etis), the world's largest database of elephant ivory seizures compiled by Traffic, China is now involved in around 63% of seizures. In 2002 the figure was 6%. Milliken said the contrast with some central African countries is stark: Nigeria has made 12 seizures in 20 years.
Milliken said that China was also cracking down on retailers and had developed systems of certification. "When we go back to stores we flagged up as having illegal ivory they aren't selling it anymore or have been closed down. Product identification cards come with items legally sold and for items over a certain amount you get a photo ID."
Dr Meng Xianlin, head of the Chinese delegation to the Cites meeting in Geneva, said China needed legal ivory to maintain ancient carving traditions. He accepted that Chinese demand for ivory presents a "big problem" for elephant conservation, but argues that "the stockpiles are a positive way to solve this problem."
He added: "There is high pressure to control the illegal trade and we have the mechanism to prohibit illegal ivory going into the legal channel." However, he conceded "we cannot guarantee 100%" effectiveness.
While those supporting approval of the sale believe that linking legal ivory supplies with China's huge demand will reduce poaching and illegal trade, wildlife conservation groups say it still stimulates demand and will have the opposite effect.
A spokeswoman for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw) said that only a total ban on China's domestic trade would stem demand. "Any legal trade creates a smokescreen. Any allowance gives a chance for unscrupulous dealers. It's very difficult to know how old ivory is or where it comes from. [Controls] don't solve the problem," she said.
Illegal trade
Michael Wamithi, director of the global Elephants Programme at Ifaw added: "China is the single largest destination for illegal ivory and to accept them as an importer for these legal stocks will only sustain the rampant poaching that African nations are faced with today. We hope Cites puts the brakes on these sales which will undoubtedly prompt even further slaughter."
Mary Rice, head of campaigns for the Environmental Investigation Agency, which carries out undercover investigations into illegal wildlife trading, said it was admirable that China was making seizures. But she said that while the increased activity might satisfy the requirements for approval as a buyer of the stockpiled ivory, it was not enough to stop all illegal trade.
"We think [China] is making headway but it's still not sufficient," she said. "When a sweep of a market is made there are often announcements in advance. Lower end items have certificates but no pictures – there's no way of matching them to the product.
"It's open to abuse. The Secretariat say China has met all the demands but based on the market place we don't see that."
Milliken said the chances of a sale are high: "There's real motivation for this sale. Last July a nine-year rest period after the sale was agreed by Cites so the southern African countries are keen to get this done. I think a sale will go ahead within months of this decision."
Paul Eccleston, The Telegraph 15 Jul 08;
New light has been shed on the mysterious lifestyle of the critically endangered Leatherback turtle.
Once they have entered the water minutes after hatching, male leatherbacks never set foot on land again and females come ashore only to lay eggs.
They are ocean voyagers who spend their lives on epic journeys of thousands of miles either in search of a mate or in pursuit of their jellyfish prey.
Now marine scientists have succeeded in tagging female turtles using satellite technology to track them across vast distances over a three year period.
It is hoped the insight into their nesting sites and their favourite sea routes will help conserve a species that has seen a 90 per cent population decline in two decades in the eastern Pacific.
The leatherback (Dermochelys coriacea) is the world's largest living turtle and can grow to a monstrous size. The largest ever found was washed up dead on a beach in Wales and was more than three metres long and weighed 900 kilos.
But from the moment of birth the leatherback, which has a tough, oily skin rather than a hard shell, faces a battle for survival.
Eggs laid by females, normally on the same beach where she was born, often fall victim to collection before they hatch.
If the eggs hatch successfully the baby turtles are immediately involved in a life-or-death race to the ocean before they are picked off by predatory birds.
As tiny creatures swimming in vast oceans most fall prey to birds and other sea creatures. Only a handful of the hatchlings will survive to maturity when their biggest threat comes from man. Many drown as by product caught up in long-line fishing nets.
The results of the latest leatherback study by marine biologist Barbara Block and colleagues are revealed in PLoS Biology,
Forty-six females were electronically tagged during three field seasons at Playa Grande in Costa Rica, the largest known nesting colony in the eastern Pacific.
The leatherback is found in all tropical and subtropical oceans and its and its range extends well into the Arctic Circle. There are three major, genetically-distinct populations - the Atlantic Dermochelys population, often seen in British waters, is separate from the Eastern and Western Pacific versions.
The turtles who were tagged at their breeding ground were monitored heading south into the open ocean in search of food. They followed a migration corridor from Costa Rica, past the warm waters of the equator, and into the South Pacific Gyre, a vast, low-energy, low-productivity region.
The study, carried out from 2004 to 2007, revealed that the turtles were at the mercy of the ocean's power and their migration routes were influenced by the ocean's currents. But the scientists were able to identify the areas they used most.
The females only mate every two to three years and while protecting the nest sites is important it is also vital that their movement at sea is known so international management agreements can be put in place to protect them.
More information can be found at http://biology.plosjournals.org/
Leatherback Turtles' Newly Discovered Migration Route May Be Roadmap To Salvation
ScienceDaily 15 Jul 08;
With a name like "Leatherback Turtle" you might think the sea turtles could stand up to just about anything the ocean can throw at them, and for more than a hundred million years, they have. But tough, long-lived critters though they are, the population of leatherbacks in the eastern Pacific Ocean has plummeted by over 90 percent in the last 20 years.
Like many species that migrate across a vast ocean, pinpointing all the possible causes of their decline is difficult and figuring out where conservationists might be able to intervene on their behalf is hugely challenging. But a major effort to tag and track leatherbacks that nest on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica has yielded unprecedented insight into their behavior. While most sea turtles, including other populations of leatherbacks, have widely varied dispersal patterns as they fan out across the ocean from the beaches where they nest, the leatherbacks from the beaches at Playa Grande have been found to consistently follow a relatively narrow corridor out into the sea, past the Galapagos Islands and across the equator to an area in the South Pacific where they linger at length. This discovery could be the key to the leatherbacks' salvation.
"Given that the turtles seem to move in a predictable way from the nesting beach through the equatorial region from roughly February through April, we could potentially suspend fishing in certain areas while the leatherbacks are passing through that part of the eastern Pacific," said George Shillinger, doctoral candidate in biology at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station.
By taking the new data correlating turtle movements with various environmental features along their route and comparing that with the timing of fishing activity in the different areas the turtles travel through, the researchers can pinpoint the times and places where turtles are at the highest risk-thus providing new opportunities for improved management of the leatherback population.
Shillinger is the first author of a paper published in PLoS Biology and part of a large team of biologists and physical and biological oceanographers from the United States, France and Costa Rica who worked on the multiyear study.
The leatherback tagging study is part of the Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP) program, which has tagged other animals including the white shark, bluefin tuna, black-footed albatross and elephant seal. TOPP is part of the Census of Marine Life, a global network of researchers in more than 80 nations engaged in a 10-year scientific initiative to assess and explain the diversity, distribution and abundance of life in the oceans.
Over three field seasons, from 2004 to 2007, Shillinger, co-author Bryan Wallace (Duke University and Conservation International) and a team from Playa Grande National Park outfitted 46 females on the beach with small tags that emitted signals that were picked up by satellites, enabling the team to track the turtles' location.
Shillinger and his colleagues worked with research oceanographers and co-authors Steve Bograd and Helen Bailey at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Daniel Palacios, also at NOAA but from the University of Hawaii. They examined turtle speeds and movements in relation to the distribution and strength of the equatorial current system and found that the turtles increased their speeds as they moved through high-energy areas.
But how much of the turtles' trajectory was from being pushed around by the currents and how much was the result of their own free will, they couldn't tell until French oceanographer and co-author Philippe Gaspar analyzed the data using a method he had developed to make that distinction. Once the effect of the currents had been factored out, the turtles were found to be consistently heading in a south-southwesterly direction.
Year after year, the track was remaining the same. Not only were the turtles heading in the same direction, they were actually trying to follow an even narrower path than the raw data showed. As Bograd put it, "They definitely had a place they wanted to go."
That place is the South Pacific Gyre, a vast region considered a relative desert among the world's oceans. So why go there if it's so barren?
"That's still a big puzzle as to why they choose to go to this region," Palacios said.
The only data available are satellite images showing the color of the sea. Researchers interpret greener water to be richer in chlorophyll, which is considered the foundation for the ocean food chain. Thus, the relative abundance of chlorophyll is inferred to indicate the relative richness of a fishery. Satellite images show very little green in the South Pacific Gyre.
But, satellites can only penetrate about 25 meters below the surface in the gyre. "Maybe the turtles are targeting something that is deeper in the water column," Palacios said.
"What are they doing there is a big question," Shillinger said. "Perhaps the tremendous water clarity may work to the advantage of these leatherbacks because they are visual predators," he said. "They can spot little specks of white out in the deep blue sea." Leatherbacks dine exclusively on gelatinous zooplankton, such as jellyfish.
Shillinger also said that there is a substantial longline fishery in that area, for bigeye and yellowfin tuna. "Obviously, the fish are eating something and it's something we're not picking up in chlorophyll signatures from satellite imagery," he said.
Given that leatherbacks have been recorded diving as deeply as 1,280 meters, they have ample choice as far as where in the water column they choose to feed. And considering that they can grow to over 6 feet in length and weigh up to 2,000 pounds, it seems like a safe bet that they're feeding on something.
The presence of the longline fishery in the South Pacific Gyre may be one of the reasons for the steep decline of the leatherbacks, according to Shillinger. Longliners going after fish such as tuna sometimes hook turtles. This unintentional bycatch can take a heavy toll on a species.
"What often happens with longliners is that it is just inconvenient to hassle with a turtle and they don't want to lose the hook, either, so what people will do is just cut the flipper off with a machete and just send the turtle away to die," he said. "A turtle without a front flipper is a dead turtle."
Shillinger said there may also be another reason for the leatherbacks' population crash, one not so obvious from their data.
There was one turtle that didn't follow the migration route to the South Pacific Gyre. Instead, it swam south along the coast of Central America, where it stayed for the entire time the tag was working, 588 days.
"It seems logical that turtles would want to move along the coast, because these are highly productive regions, where they don't have to work as hard to find food," Shillinger said. Even though only one of the 46 subjects of the study cruised the coastal areas, he said it might be a rare survivor of a larger population that used to swim in the coastal area, but could have been hit hard by human fishing pressure in the near shore areas. Gillnets and longlines are major threats to turtles in these areas.
Shillinger says they won't be able to answer that question until they have gathered more data, since very little current data exists about bycatch in these coastal fisheries. As the tags are designed to degrade and fall off, the researchers haven't been able to capture the turtles' movements beyond about two years. He suggests that turtles returning to Costa Rica from the South Pacific Gyre may turn out to be using the near shore habitats on their return.
Some progress in helping the leatherback population on the beaches of Playa Grande has already been made. Local villagers used to harvest the turtle eggs quite heavily, but owing to efforts on the part of pioneering leatherback researcher and coauthor Jim Spotila (Drexel University), the Leatherback Trust, and staff and volunteers from the Costa Rican Ministry of Environment and Energy, that practice has been halted locally. People who once collected eggs are now paid to protect them and tourists have been coming to see the turtles. "Turtle tourism has emerged as an alternative economy and now there is a real focus on protecting this beach," Shillinger said.
But, noting that there is still intense pressure to develop Playa Grande and that some illegal development is ongoing, Shillinger added, "This beach is more or less the last stand for nesting leatherbacks in the eastern Pacific, so if this beach goes, it's going to be a real blow."
Shillinger and his colleagues are cautiously optimistic about the impact their new data about the migration routes could have on bolstering the leatherbacks' survival rate.
"Being able to see these migratory corridors is something we only dreamed of when we started the project," said co-author Barbara Block, the Charles and Elizabeth Prothro Professor in Marine Sciences at Hopkins Marine Station. Block is one of the researchers on the TOPP team and is Shillinger's doctoral adviser.
The level of detail the researchers obtained about when the turtles are in a particular area along their route means it could be possible to have a major impact on reducing turtles lost at sea to bycatch just by temporary closures of certain areas. Temporary closures are likely to be much more palatable than long-term ones to the various nations and regulatory agencies that would have to agree on any closures for them to be effective.
And because the turtles' migration route crosses international boundaries, it is vital to have international cooperation.
"It is still at the early stage globally, putting together large transboundary, transnational plans for protecting highly migratory species like turtles," Shillinger said. "First and foremost, you need political will and a framework in which to operate." International conventions have produced agreements on the need to protect many endangered ocean species, and Shillinger said that as constituents become aware of the situation and lobby their politicians, governments slowly begin to take action. But the critical part is having solid science to serve as a basis for developing any agreements.
In his efforts to bring the plight of the leatherback populations in the Pacific Ocean to people's attention, Shillinger teamed up with Stanford MBA graduate Mark Breier to create and launch the Great Turtle Race, largely facilitated by TOPP and coordinated by the Leatherback Trust. In this educational project, a race among leatherback turtles across the Pacific Ocean is simulated using real data from the tagging project. This year's race, the second annual, ended in June and for the first time included data from leatherbacks that started from Indonesia, in addition to those starting from the Americas.
"I wouldn't write these turtles off. If we can inform and change fisheries practices with sound science and policy, then hopefully there will be a chance to conserve turtles and the ecosystems that they occupy," Shillinger said. "These turtles could be a really awesome flagship for conservation."
Major funding for this research was from support for the TOPP program (a field program of the Census of Marine Life), UNESCO and the Global Conservation Fund of Conservation International. Additional funding came from Drexel University, Goldring Biology Station, the Leatherback Trust and the supporters of the Great Turtle Race.
Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press Yahoo News 15 Jul 08;
The little devils just can't wait. Faced with an epidemic of cancer that cuts their lives short, Tasmanian devils have begun breeding at younger ages, according to researchers at the University of Tasmania in Australia.
"We could be seeing evolution occurring before our eyes. Watch this space!" says zoologist Menna Jones of the university.
Tasmanian devils live on the island of Tasmania, south of Australia. They weigh 20 to 30 pounds and were named devils by early European settlers because the furry black marsupials produce a fierce screech and can be bad-tempered.
Since 1996 a contagious form of cancer called devil facial tumor disease has been infecting these animals and is invariably fatal, causing death between the ages of 2 and 3.
In the past devils would live five to six years, breeding at ages two, three and four, but with the new disease, even females who breed at two may not live long enough to rear their first litter.
Jones, who has been studying the animals' life cycles since before the disease outbreak, noted that there has been a 16-fold increase in breeding at age one. She reports her findings in this week's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"What we are suggesting in this paper is that there is likely to be strong selection for rapid evolution" toward early maturity, Jones said in an interview via e-mail.
"It was an exciting discovery," she added.
The disease could cause the devils to become extinct in 25 years or so, she said, but this change to younger breeding may slow population decline and reduce the chance of them disappearing.
"To our knowledge, this is the first known case of infectious disease leading to increased early reproduction in a mammal," Jones and her colleagues report.
Meantime, the search for a vaccine continues.
The research was funded by the Australian Research Council, the Australian National University and the Tasmanian Government Save the Tasmanian Devil Program.
Tasmanian Devils Fight Cancer with Sex
Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience.com Yahoo News 14 Jul 08;
Tasmanian devils have for some years been plagued with a mysterious and lethal cancer. Now, the dog-sized mammals are fighting back: They are breeding at younger ages.
Devils are furry marsupials, mammals that have no true placentas - females usually have pouches to carry and suckle newborns. They reside only on the island of Tasmania, though fossil evidence suggests that long ago Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) were spread across the Australian mainland. Devils are known for their offensive odor, disturbing screeches and viciousness when they eat, mostly carrion.
Hunters considered the devils pests to livestock and took a toll on the population in the mid-1800s. Now the devil facial tumor disease is killing the animals within a year of reaching maturity. The infectious cancer is spread directly through biting. The tumors mainly affect adults at least 2 years old, causing death within months.
Menna Jones of the University of Tasmania and colleagues examined data collected before and after the arrival of the disease from five Tasmanian devil populations on the island.
A much higher proportion of older adults, over the age of 3, were present in the populations before the disease appeared.
After disease emergence, precocial breeding by 1-year-old females increased dramatically at four sites, increasing from between zero and 12.5 percent beforehand to between 13 percent and 83 percent after. The range in percentages reflects the different findings at each of the sites on the island.
Reduced population density and reduced competition for food could be behind any growth spurts that would allow juveniles to reproduce before their time, the researchers suggest.
Symptoms of the disease, including cancerous lesions around the mouth, face and neck, were first reported in 1996 at one spot on Tasmania. By 2007, the disease had spread over more than half of the devils' home range there. Some populations have lost up to 89 percent of their members as a result of the facial tumors.
The newly discovered precocial breeding could help to keep the species from vanishing, the researchers speculate.
The study, reported this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was funded by the Australian Research Council, the Australian National University Faculties Research Grants Scheme, and the Tasmanian Government Save the Tasmanian Devil Program.
David King, The Observer 13 Jul 08;
As governments haver over the best ways to tackle global warming, private enterprise is forging ahead - and making money
Last week, I shared dinner with some of the most powerful men and women in the world. It was a gathering of chairmen and CEOs of major European and global companies, titans from the energy, mining and retail sectors, all there to discuss the greatest challenge facing civilisation - climate change. Almost as one, they spoke of the need for governments to take action to reverse global warming and for the carbon to be taken out of the world economy.
For most people faced with images of oil sands being dug up in Canada or reserves in the Arctic being exploited, this might seem remarkable. We are used to hearing groups such as Greenpeace berate big energy, yet the truth is that it's now governments who are lagging behind both public and business opinion. Examples of good corporate behaviour are everywhere. Once derided as 'socially responsible', measures to run cleaner businesses are leading to improved profit margins.
You can see why the titans like it when you check the bottom lines. BP introduced a system some years ago which led to cutbacks in energy consumption that now save the company an estimated $230m a year. DuPont, once labelled by Greenpeace as 'number one polluter', initially responded by stating its aspiration to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 5 per cent, a target it then failed to meet for three successive years. So it introduced a system of awards and rewards within the company. The result was a 72 per cent reduction in emissions over 15 years. The system is now fully embedded in its operation. Big business has reached a tipping point. What was clear from the dinner is that rising oil, gas and coal prices will accelerate such changes and will help, if you'll excuse the phrase, to 'decarbonise the economy'.
Meanwhile what have governments been doing? At the G8 summit in Japan last week, the most powerful heads of state agreed to reduce CO2 emissions by 50 per cent by 2050, a date noticeably far in the future, though that is something, at least. Since the UK government first placed climate change at the top of the G8 agenda, in Gleneagles in 2005, there have been continuous battles in the negotiation of agreed statements, with the US consistently putting red lines through any realistic commitment on future emissions. Now, the US President has made a promise. At the very least, a signal to negotiators working behind the scenes towards the all-important successor to Kyoto in Copenhagen in December 2009 is clear.
Beyond that, the evidence of government action is less heartening. Stung by the concerns of voters about petrol, governments around the world have argued for an increase in fossil fuel supplies. In Britain, calls for another runway at Heathrow have received a positive response from the government, despite the opposition of every mayoral candidate in the recent election. In effect, Labour ministers have been working in opposition to what is necessary for the public good, while eschewing obvious levers available to them to reduce the demand for fossil fuels.
Where are the imaginative ideas for improved rail and public road transport, the implementation of energy-efficiency measures for homes and buildings? Better still, the government, and the agencies it supports, should be taking the lead. What about, for example, capping CO2 emissions for those very departments, with their achievements published on an annual basis? Rather than sending civil servants all over the country, and other countries, the government could increase the use of teleconferencing facilities, cutting the cost of travel both to us, the taxpayers, and the world around us.
The biggest test of governments' commitment to reducing carbon will come with the economic downturn. There will be huge pressure to nurse our economies back to good health. That is not only proper, but essential to manage the growing impact of climate change. As the world's population climbs from 6.8 billion today to nine billion by mid-century, energy demand will rise by around 50 per cent, much of it from rapidly emerging powers such as China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa. Rising sea levels, changing rainfall patterns, competitive demands for scarce resources with a growing global population and rising temperatures will all require investment to manage the risks. Our obligation to countries unable to manage these impacts will create further demands.
We need to work with businesses committed to changing. We need to put a price on emitting carbon dioxide which is high enough to make alternative technologies economic for business, not only for energy production and transmission, but also for energy efficiencies in transport, in buildings, in urban design, in food production, in fresh-water production, in mining, in recycling and in manufacture.
There are ways to do this, but it isn't a single global tax on carbon. Who would be the global tax collector? No, we must accept differing trajectories for carbon emissions by different nations. For advanced economies, emissions must fall by 70 to 80 per cent by 2050, while for developing economies, such as India, the trajectory could be allowed to rise first and then fall. Alongside this, trading in carbon emissions must be encouraged between nations, mimicking what happens among companies. That would be a long-term commitment that would give confidence to the market. We already do this in the EU. The market is worth about €55bn. A tonne of carbon dioxide is now €28. Make this €50 and suddenly changes will transform the continent.
The lesson is that businesses see a market opening up. There are opportunities here for innovation and wealth creation. The pollution that occurred in major cities throughout the world has been controlled by progressive regulations. At first there was fury. Then industry responded by producing the efficient catalyst and trap-exhaust systems that have transformed our cities and our health, while also creating cash for the innovators. With the consumer demanding cleaner goods and the private sector and scientific community innovating solutions, all that's needed is legislators to drive it along.
Here's another idea. Despite their difficulties, all the major banks understand the opportunity presented by this new tradable commodity. Perhaps the government needs to ask Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, to commit to reducing CO2 emissions, just as he is responsible for controlling inflation. The Bank would be more capable of achieving this than the Committee on Climate Change being set up in Parliament.
We need to foster a greater sense of political leadership. There is a widespread hope for better environmental leadership from the US, but this is also true of the rapidly emerging economies. The impacts of climate change on the people of the more vulnerable states is likely to be disastrous over the second half of this century. The governments of China, Brazil and South Africa seem to recognise this.
We in the advanced economies are largely responsible for the extent of the problem. Leadership from all countries in the negotiations leading up to Copenhagen is essential. For it will be in Copenhagen that a workable plan must be delivered to meet the biggest challenge civilisation has ever faced.
· Sir David King, formerly chief scientific adviser to the government, is director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University and senior science adviser to UBS
Alok Jha, The Guardian 14 Jul 08;
A century's worth of future carbon dioxide emissions from the US could be stored securely in a layer of undersea rocks within easy reach of the west coast of the continent, according to a new study.
The Juan de Fuca plate, which comprises the ocean floor a few hundred kilometres from the coasts of Washington and Oregon, contains layers of basalt that geologists think might be suitable for long-term sequestration of CO2 as part of a carbon capture and storage (CCS) system.
CCS is a set of technologies to trap, transport and bury the carbon dioxide from power stations and factories in underground locations such as abandoned oil fields or deep aquifers.
Estimates suggest the technique could prevent up to 90% of the greenhouse gas emissions from major emitters being locked away, so preventing global warming.
But "the effectiveness of these methods for CO2 sequestration depends strongly on the reservoir capacity, retention time, stability, and risk for leakage," notes David Goldberg of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York, in the latest edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Using data from previous geological surveys and drilling studies, Goldberg led a team that estimated there was an area of 78,000 km2 of suitable undersea aquifers on the Juan de Fuca plate.
The team said that the basaltic geology of the Juan de Fuca plate meant that two methods could be used to store CO2 in the long term: physical trapping and geochemical trapping. The first involves burying the gas under layers of rock that have low or zero permeability: this means the gas is physically blocked from bubbling back to the surface. The second method, also known as mineral trapping, involves CO2 reacting with the rocks into which it is injected to make stable, solid minerals such as carbonates.
Goldberg's criteria for suitable burial sites included the aquifers being under at least 2,700m of water and covered by 200m or more of sediment. At this deep level CO2 liquifies and is denser than sea water, so even if a leak were possible, it should not rise to the surface.
The region identified could potentially store around 208bn tonnes of liquefied CO2, the researchers said, a figure that could rise to 250bn tonnes depending on how much of the gas reacted with the rocks to form carbonates.
At the current annual emission rate of 1.7bn tonnes of carbon a year by the US, the researchers estimated that the Juan de Fuca plate would provide sufficient capacity for 122–147 years.
Andy Chadwick, team leader for CO2 storage research at the British Geological Survey, said that, though the basalt that makes up the Juan de Fuca plate was technically suitable for storing carbon dioxide, there were several unknowns that needed investigation before scientists could conclude it was a secure place for CO2 storage.
He said that, for example, Goldberg's team was relying on finding fractures in the basalt to physically pump in and store the CO2. "These fractures they're depending on for the storage capacity may also be connected to the surface or the seabed and would provide leakage pathways," said Chadwick.
It would be technically very difficult to analyse the basalt in sufficient detail to find all the fractures and ensure they were secure. For now, he said, depleted oil and gas fields were a better option for CCS systems. "They are the easiest targets because they are well-characterised and we know they are good geological fields.
"The only problems are they have lots of wells made through them and it's the man-made wells that would provide the greatest hazards of leakage. But they are certainly preferable at the moment to putting CO2 into basalt."
Goldberg himself notes that, even if further study confirms the Juan de Fuca plate as a suitable location for storing carbon, challenges remain in establishing the necessary infrastructure. Pipelines would be needed to transport the CO2, they would need to be maintained and monitoring systems would need to watch for leakages – all of which remains to be costed.
Brendan Borrell, LiveScience.com Yahoo News 14 Jul 08;
Sailors and scientists have been mapping ocean currents for centuries, but it turns out they've missed something big. How big? The entire ocean is striped with 100-mile-wide bands of slow-moving water that extend right down to the seafloor, according to a recent study.
Nikolai A. Maximenko of the University of Hawaii at Manoa and colleagues developed a precise new method for measuring the topography of the ocean surface by combining data from satellites and from the movements of more than 10,000 drifting oceanographic buoys.
In doing so, the team generated detailed maps, in which they first noticed the peculiar striations. Some scientists initially dismissed the stripes as statistical artifacts, but Maximenko's team dug deeper, looking for a similar pattern in water temperature measurements from two test areas in the Pacific.
Indeed, though barely detectable, the striated currents are real.
They flow past each other in opposing directions at 130 feet per hour-just one-tenth to one-hundredth the speed of major ocean currents-and subtle changes in temperature demarcate their boundaries.
Maximenko says a new computer model has corroborated some features of the observed striations, but his team is still mystified by their orientation, location, and strength. The discovery is important, he says, because even weak currents can have large effects on global climate and on the flow of food and creatures in the oceans.
The research was detailed recently in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Posts
visitors since Nov 07