New Nemos
baby nemos! on the budak blog
Hard Life in the Lagoon
more about the Sisters on the budak blog
Changi under a strange moon
odd happenings in the sky and a not so low tide on the wild shores of singapore blog
Semakau public walk
on the manta blog and discovery blog and tidechaser blog
Ubin Survivor Recce
on the Pulau Ubin Tour with Justin blog
Family of tailorbirds
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog
Recent road death of pangolin puts focus on need to protect rare local creature and raise awareness
Dhany Osman, Straits Times 17 Aug 08;
Pangolins avoid humans but one of these rarely seen anteaters strayed onto Jalan Bahar on Aug 9, and instantly became a road-accident victim.
A nocturnal animal, it probably strayed too far in search of its supper - ants and termites - that night.
Although pangolins are not considered to be endangered in Singapore, there is currently a lack of information as to their actual numbers.
Fittingly, it was long-time wildlife enthusiast Ben Lee who saw the dead animal and picked it up so that its body would not be further mangled by passing vehicles.
Mr Lee, 47, founder of Nature Trekker Singapore, an outdoor adventure and nature appreciation group, said: 'As a nature enthusiast, I felt deeply for the loss of its life.'
He had seen a pangolin only once before in his 30 years of trekking in Singapore. 'I considered myself very lucky to have seen such a rare local creature.'
The Sunday Times spoke to experts to find out more about this shy creature.
'Pangolins have a typical anteater shape, with a scaly exterior, handy when they raid ant and termite mounds,' said Mr Norman Lim, 29, a research assistant at the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research. The researcher, with his passion for small mammals, spent a year studying the creatures for his master's thesis.
Pangolins are toothless, with long tongues to help reach their prey, and will sometimes curl into a ball when threatened.
In the course of his research, Mr Lim tracked down 20 pangolins on Pulau Tekong alone. He suspects there may be many more on the mainland, around forest edges in places like the Bukit Timah area. Some have also been spotted near housing estates next to the forest reserves.
'Pangolins are simply amazing. They can climb, swim, burrow and are very adaptable,' he said.
The Singapore Zoo has three pangolins donated by the public. Mr Biswajit Guha, the zoo's assistant director of zoology, said valuable information has been learnt by studying the animal's activities.
An artificial diet - one that replicates their normal nutrient intake - has been perfected by the zoo staff for pangolins. This is important in the zoo's conservation efforts.
Pangolins are now protected - their meat was once found in Chinatown shops in the 1960s - under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, with a zero-trade quota enforced by the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority.
But they are still poached and traded in places like Vietnam and China for their meat and scales, Mr Guha said.He spearheads a programme to create an educational package for schoolchildren in the region, to help raise awareness of the animals and the need to protect them.
'They are a unique part of our biodiversity and deserve to be conserved,' he said.
PANGOLIN FACTS
Common name: Sunda Pangolin
Scientific name: Manis Javanica
Size: 80cm to 100cm
Weight: Adult males weigh around 7kg - 8kg while females weigh about 5kg
Habitat: Found across South-east Asia. Locally, they dwell in the Central and Western catchment areas, as well as on Pulau Tekong and Pulau Ubin.
Characteristics: Covered in overlapping scales and armed with strong claws, the Sunda Pangolin burrows into termite mounds and ant nests, using its sticky tongue to snag its prey.
A good climber, it can be found asleep in trees at times. Female pangolins are thought to produce one young one a year, which is carried on the mother’s back.
When threatened, pangolins usually try to climb away from danger or resort to curling
into a protective ball.
Threats
Within South-east Asia, they face threats from illegal poaching and trading for their
meat and scales.
This is despite the fact that there is no scientific evidence for the supposed medicinal or tonic properties associated with their consumption.
A seizure in Indonesia earlier this month netted 14 tonnes of frozen pangolins, the largest ever haul, ready to be shipped to China. Publicity surrounding that seizure has helped to raise awareness and galvanised various international animal conservation groups to push for collective action.
Smart to give drivers of its Kia Carens taxis cash handouts over six months to help offset rising CNG prices and falling earnings
Alvin Lim, Straits Times 17 Aug 08;
Going green's fine, but show us the money. Our compressed natural gas (CNG) taxis are eating into our daily earnings.
That angry refrain came from a group of cabbies who are on a four-year contract to drive Smart Group's Kia Carens taxis which can run on CNG.
Their woes: In the past few months, not only were they in a fix having to drive all the way to just two CNG filling stations, but they were also hit by rising CNG prices.
The lure when they signed up was the promise of a $14,000 sum upon completion of their contracts.
But breaking the contract carried a penalty equivalent to 90 days of rental, or nearly $9,000. It would be waived only if the driver found a replacement to take over the lease.
Yesterday morning, 15 representatives of a group of more than 25 unhappy drivers went to Smart's headquarters in Tampines to meet managing director Johnny Harjantho.
The group wanted the company to allow them to return their CNG vehicles without any penalty, and to get back to driving diesel-powered taxis.
Among the reasons they gave were the hike in CNG prices, the lack of refuelling stations and long queues at the pumps.
There are only two CNG stations open to the taxi drivers: one in the west, in Jalan Buroh; and the other in the north, in Mandai.
The cabbies claimed that the Kia Carens' 2-litre engine does an average of only 180km on a full tank of CNG. While the vehicles are 'bi-fuel' and can run on petrol like most CNG cars here, the cabbies said it made no sense to switch to the more expensive petrol mode.
They had to rush back to Smart's refuelling station at Mandai up to four times daily when they ran low on CNG.
One cabby, Mr Willy Neo, 60, bemoaned the long queues in Mandai. He said he sometimes queued up for as long as an hour.
'Spending so much time at the CNG stations just isn't productive,' he said.
But the last straw was the continued earnings dip. Mr Thomas Tay, 32, who has been driving for three months, said that driving his CNG taxi for 16 hours a day gets him only $100 in net earnings.
He used to earn $150 for the same amount of time spent driving a diesel taxi.
'I should be earning more, not less, since CNG is supposed to be cheaper,' he said.
Contacted by The Sunday Times, Mr Harjantho said the company was also in a predicament.
But he had some good news: The company would give cash handouts of $100 monthly over the next six months to drivers of the Kia taxis.
He said Smart did not expect the rapid increase in CNG prices and overwhelming demand for its gas at the Mandai station when it began operations in February.
Smart's CNG drivers get a 12 per cent discount at the Mandai station.
Showing documents and records, he said the cost of buying CNG from the wholesaler had increased by 49 per cent. He added: 'There is a price to pay for going green...We are all doing our part to save the environment.'
It is understood the taxi drivers were unswayed.
'Everybody went green in order to save costs. It doesn't make sense now,' said one.
Another deadpanned: 'I can't afford to save the environment when I'm barely earning anything.'
Smart has a total of 800 taxis, of which 600 run on diesel and 200 on CNG. About 50 are Kia Carens CNG taxis.
Mr Harjantho said Smart had engaged its CNG kit installers to look into mechanical tweaks to improve the fuel consumption of the Kias.
He added that there were no complaints from drivers of other makes of CNG vehicles which Smart operates.
Mr Harjantho also said that Smart is working to improve the refuelling situation at its Mandai station. Two more pump operators have been added on weekends, and Smart plans to double the number of pumps from eight to 16 in the next two months.
A second station in Serangoon is expected to be completed in February next year.
Mr Harjantho said: 'We've come a long way with CNG. It's a shame to undo all the hard work that we've all put in.'
May Wong, Channel NewsAsia 16 Aug 08;
SINGAPORE : Nine new locally-transmitted chikungunya fever cases have been reported in Singapore.
This brings to 117 the total number of cases so far, which includes imported ones.
Of these, 54 were imported cases with history of travel to places like Johor, Malacca, Indonesia and Sri Lanka.
Three of the new cases were found at the Pasir Panjang Wholesale Centre.
A 61-year-old man and his 32-year-old daughter who worked at the centre caught the chikungunya fever virus.
The father is still hospitalised while the daughter has been discharged.
They did not travel overseas prior to their illness.
After screening blood samples of 184 workers at the centre, authorities found another victim - a 44-year-old employee.
The other six cases of chikungunya fever were found at Kranji Way, Sungei Kadut, Queen Street, Segar Road and Jalan Berjaya.
Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan said: "(We've) been fighting mosquitoes for several decades now and I know these are very formidable enemies. They'll try to survive and I think there's no other way except just make sure our environmental hygiene is of very high standards."
He added: "It's a little bit like dengue several decades ago. If we did to dengue what we're doing to chikungunya today, we might have prevented dengue becoming permanent residents here.
"But once they're out there, then you try to eliminate every single case, it's tough...As Health Minister, I'm worried about so many other things. But worrying is one thing...(we should) try to do our best." - CNA/ms
Nine more cases of chikungunya, new cluster emerges
Latest cluster at Pasir Panjang Wholesale Centre; two workers and a kin test positive
Gracia Chiang, Straits Times 17 Aug 08;
Nine more local cases and a new cluster for chikungunya fever has surfaced.
The latest cluster is at Pasir Panjang Wholesale Centre, where a 32-year-old female worker tested positive for the mosquito-borne disease last Tuesday.
Her 61-year-old father later tested positive. He is still in hospital while she has recovered.
Last Thursday, a further blood screening of 184 workers at the centre detected a third person, a 44-year-old worker who came down with the disease there.
The National Environment Agency (NEA) immediately sent some 20 officers and 10 pest control operators to the centre, where four breeding sites were found.
These were destroyed, followed by fogging in the area.
Of the 10 staffing stalls at the centre whom The Sunday Times spoke to, none was aware that chikungunya had hit the place. They did, however, notice that there was an increased effort to clean the area.
One cashier at a supplier there, Madam Serene Lee, 41, said she was 'scared' but business would still go on. 'I have no backup plans but I'll have to be more careful, and take note if any of my workers or colleagues are not feeling well.'
Two additional cases have also been reported at Kranji Way, Singapore's largest chikungunya cluster to date.
The latest victims - a 52-year-old Singaporean and a 41-year-old Chinese national - bring the total affected there to 32. Both work there.
Up to 70 NEA officers and 20 pest-control operators have gone into action there and enforcement measures have been taken against the 52 factory premises found with mosquito breeding.
The NEA has since extended its operations to include other parts of the Kranji and Sungei Kadut areas.
Giving an update on the Sungei Kadut cluster, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said there has been a third chikungunya case there. She is a 61-year-old clerk who works in Sungei Kadut Street 1.
Across the island, three more chikungunya cases - all local males - have also been reported: in Segar Road, Jalan Berjaya and Queen Street. Two are aged 48 and the third is 65 years old.
The nine new cases bring the total number of local cases to 63 and the affected areas in Singapore to 15.
This year alone, there have been 117 cases of chikungunya fever, of which 54 were imported cases with a history of travel.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an event yesterday, Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan, referring to cases in the region, said: 'I don't think it's the mosquitoes crossing borders but patients do cross borders.' There was a huge volume of people coming and going.
'Workers come here to work and Singaporeans go there to visit, and this is the durian season, so many go for durian trips as well.'
He added that the Kranji cluster had significant numbers of foreign workers who crossed the borders every day.
In Johor, chikungunya was a bit of a problem, so new cases were appearing practically every day.
He advised Singaporeans to take preventive measures and see a doctor as soon as symptoms emerged so that cases can be isolated.
He added: 'What you hope for is that it will not become like dengue. Once it becomes like dengue, when it becomes endemic in Singapore, it will be very hard to get rid of it until scientists come up with a vaccine.
'So we are doing our very best to make sure that chikungunya does not decide to stay here permanently.'
Climate change funds have made inroads into Asia. But how many of them have reached Singapore, and how attractive are they?
Jessica Cheam, Straits Times 17 Aug 08;
These days, issues surrounding climate change make the newspapers almost every day.
We hear about them, we know what is happening, and governments around the world are responding in varying degrees by making policy changes and advocating a greener way of life.
In Singapore, an Inter-Ministerial Committee on Sustainable Development was formed recently to study the nation's sustainable development journey and chart its future steps in going green.
But fighting climate change is not a role that falls only on the public sector.
Companies can also play a major role by creating solutions and products that help to increase energy efficiency, or reducing the daily greenhouse gas emissions that are largely blamed by scientists for global warming.
At the individual level, people are equally important - whether in terms of practising a more sustainable way of life, or demanding goods and services that are environmentally responsible.
And as investors, they can do even more.
The good news is that people can help to save the earth while making money from it too.
With the increased awareness of climate change issues globally, many banks and fund managers have put together climate change funds from the growing number of companies that are trying to tackle global warming. These funds give investors a chance to turn a threat into a buying opportunity.
Some big-name companies that investors can buy into are Norwegian solar firm Renewable Energy Corp (REC), Danish wind turbine maker Vestas Wind Systems and United States-based Waste Management, just to name a few.
Some of these companies have their futures closely tied to Singapore. REC, for example, has picked Tuas for its $6 billion giant manufacturing plant, with construction set to begin next month, and Vestas has announced it will build a $500 million research and development centre here.
Leading US research house Clean Edge has reported that revenues in the clean energy industry hit US$55 billion in 2006, with a projection of US$226 billion (S$318 billion) by 2016.
As a result, climate change has emerged as an investment theme that is growing in popularity and attractiveness.
So what are climate change funds?
Climate change funds work like typical funds, but essentially focus on investing in companies from climate change and environment-related industries such as renewable or low carbon energy, energy efficiency, and waste, water and pollution management.
They are also considered part of a larger category of socially responsible investment funds, which adopt a wider social and environmental focus in their investing strategies.
Such funds were previously considered niche products that did not give high returns, but this perception has changed tremendously in recent times.
When he was in town last year, former US vice-president Al Gore debunked the misconception that good returns and ethical values were irreconcilable.
In a closed-door session with ABN Amro's clients, he noted that investors are becoming increasingly aware - as they need to be - that social responsibility and investment returns are not mutually exclusive.
He added that, as investors, even individuals can contribute to the global fight against climate change by putting their dollar where it matters.
What are the pros and cons?
Mr Farley Thomas, global head for wholesale distribution at HSBC Global Asset Management, estimates that there are 40 environment-related funds worldwide. About 15 to 20 of the funds are located in Asia, with US$2 billion in combined assets.
The world is seeing more mainstream action from governments and companies, said Mr Thomas.
'This is a worldwide phenomenon. We definitely see climate change as a big investment theme in the future,' he added.
Investors can be assured of the relevance and performance of such funds over the long term.
Recently launched climate change and environmental indexes show such funds outperforming their key equity counterparts.
These benchmark indexes reflect and track the stock market performance of the companies that are best-placed to profit from the challenges and opportunities presented by climate change.
Last year, ABN Amro launched its Climate Change and Environment Index (CCEI), which tracks the performance of stocks directly involved in business activities related to climate change and environmental degradation. Since its launch in February last year, the CCEI has grown by 10.3 per cent - a significant feat, considering the current woes weighing down financial markets. In May, before sentiment soured sharply, growth reached 21.6 per cent.
Since February last year, the CCEI has outperformed key equity indexes such as the Standard & Poor's 500 Index (down 11.07%) and the MSCI World index (down 11.39%).
ABN Amro's head of Asian product development, Mr Samuel Ng, noted that during market downtrends, stocks and segments represented by the CCEI have proved to be more defensive than the overall equity markets.
The HSBC Global Climate Change Benchmark Index, developed by the bank's Global Research team, is a global reference index that, based on data backtested to 2004, has outperformed the MSCI World index by around 70 per cent.
The flip side to such funds, say financial consultants, is that they are still not hugely popular. As a result, they are too thinly traded and show little fluctuation during market boom or bust periods.
While green funds have garnered huge interest in the West, they are a relatively new investment theme in Asia, said OCBC Bank's vice-president of group wealth management, Mr Vasu Menon.
'At this juncture, most Asian investors are concerned with generating positive returns, irrespective of whether a fund invests in companies that are environmentally friendly or socially responsible,' he said.
However, this will change as Asian governments and companies start to place greater emphasis on safeguarding the environment, he added.
Deutsche Bank investment specialist Bill Barbour added: 'Interest has picked up in the past few years as topics linked to climate change gained prominence on the agendas of policymakers and businesses globally.'
As a result, the bank remains positive about the market outlook for green funds over the long term.
Are these funds in Singapore?
Investors looking to cash in on climate change opportunities must be asking, where are these funds, and what's the best way to invest in them?
In Singapore, unfortunately, such funds are still in their infancy. The local banks - DBS, United Overseas Bank (UOB) and OCBC - do not offer their own climate change related products.
This is probably because local banks might not have the resources or expertise required to manage these funds, which are quite large in scale, said Mr Albert Tse, Schroder Investment Management's head of retail distribution in Singapore.
There are currently two local climate change funds: the DWS Global Climate Change Fund from Deutsche Bank and the Schroder ISF Global Climate Change Equity Fund.
Although local banks do not have their own products, investors can still get access to such funds through them.
OCBC, for example, is a distributor of the DWS Global Climate Change Fund and UOB distributes Schroder's equivalent.
Both funds are also available through other distributors such as Citibank, financial advisers and even online via Fundsupermart.com.
HSBC Bank also has a global climate change investment fund, but the fund is currently domiciled in Luxembourg and available only to the bank's accredited clients in Singapore.
ABN Amro offers a different product but with the same theme. Investors can buy certificates of its recently launched Climate Change and Environment Index, available on the Singapore Exchange.
The certificates offer investors exposure to an initial composition of 30 stocks in eight different sectors engaged in activities such as ethanol, geothermal power and other alternative fuels, hydro-electric power, platinum and palladium mining, solar power, water and waste management, and wind power.
In Asia, fund flows into eco-market related investments over the past two years have been encouraging, said ABN Amro's Mr Ng.
Last year, the bank received 180 million euros (S$378 million) in subscriptions from Asia - about 5 per cent more than in 2006.
What about performance?
In terms of performance, the DWS Global Climate Change Fund had outdone the
MSCI World index by 4.3 per cent, not including management fees, over the past six months, as at the end of last month.
The recent dip in its performance is in line with the general market situation, said Deutsche's Mr Barbour.
Schroder's Global Climate Change fund celebrated its first anniversary last month with a return of 3.6 per cent versus minus 10.7 per cent for the MSCI World index. It has outperformed the index by 14.3 per cent since its launch last year.
To date, the fund has returned around minus 8.9 per cent. While this is negative in absolute terms, the fund has outperformed global equity markets, said Mr Tse.
He explained that the fund's stocks are driven more by regulatory changes, unlike stocks in conventional global equity funds, whose drivers are more cyclical or economic in nature.
Clearly, all funds have deteriorated in performance because of the credit crisis, added HSBC's Mr Thomas. Generally, the cross-border mutual fund universe has been affected, with investors moving to lower-risk products.
'But we're not bothered. We're now focusing on making our core flagship strategy available in as many markets as possible,' said Mr Thomas.
In short, climate change funds look like they are here to stay.
As an investor, you can vote with your dollar if you want to be part of this climate change growth story.
Straits Times 17 Aug 08;
Bangkok - Four people have been killed in flooding and landslides in Laos, where the Mekong River has hit its highest level in at least 100 years after several months of unusually heavy rain.
The government and people in the landlocked country have been rushing to complete a 2.5m-high wall of sandbags to stop the chocolate-brown waters from inundating the capital, Vientiane.
The Mekong, which flows 4,350km from the glaciers of Tibet to the rice-rich delta of southern Vietnam, hit 13.68m in Vientiane on Thursday, trouncing a high of 12.38m recorded in 1966, the worst floods in living memory.
In Vientiane, a levee was built along the river's northern bank after the 1966 flooding but has been overrun in places, causing flooding in parts of the city of 200,000, one resident said.
There was widespread flooding upstream, although the former royal capital of Luang Prabang escaped any damage to its ancient Buddhist pagodas.
Downstream, eastern Thailand and low-lying Cambodia, where the annual flooding of the Mekong is crucial to rice and fish production, are bracing themselves for major flooding as the water surge moves slowly south.
The high waters will ultimately flow down into Vietnam, where at least 130 people were killed and 36 went missing last week after the worst floods in decades due to the remnants of a tropical storm.
Reuters
BBC News 14 Aug 08;
A series of events on bats look set to be overshadowed by problems affecting the mammals' chances of survival, according to an expert.
Anne Youngman, the Bat Conservation Trust's Scottish officer, said wet weather may have hit the breeding season for a second year running.
Her concerns come ahead of the European Bat Research Symposium in Transylvania.
She said public walks being held across Scotland could prove vital in boosting protection of the animals.
There have been early signs the mammals were enduring a poor year in Scotland.
In April, bats were found lying on the ground and one was seen on Mull being mobbed by birds flying in daylight.
The behaviour was linked to extreme hunger.
Last year, adult bats were reported abandoning their young as they struggled to cope with bad weather and find enough food.
Dunblane-based Ms Youngman said: "My feeling is that it hasn't been a good year again."
She said other threats included habitat loss through the intensification of farming and from development.
However, the bat officer expected one of the issues to be discussed at next week's symposium in Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania, in Romania would be wind turbines.
On the agenda is a presentation on wind farms in mountain areas of Portugal.
Ms Youngman said: "Wind farms were a hot topic at the last symposium.
"In Germany, there are turbines above forests and the mortality rate of bats has been found to be high.
"In Scotland, it was thought to be less of a problem because turbines tend to be in wide open spaces where bats are less likely to be."
But she said two dead bats had been found at Braes of Doune, Stirlingshire.
One had broken bones from a possible collision with a turbine blade, but the other had no obvious signs of impact.
Ms Youngman said: "There are different theories about wind farms.
"One of the concerns is that the blades turn so fast the bats can't detect them and another is a change in pressure which it is believed to damage the bats internally."
Bat walks
Speakers at the symposium include Prof Paul Racey, of the University of Aberdeen, who will present a paper written by himself and Dr Barry Nicholls.
Meanwhile, a series of events around European Bat Weekend on 30-31 August could prove important in raising the mammals' profile.
Ms Youngman said: "Events are being held all over Scotland and Europe and the bat walks that are held are one of the most helpful things we can do.
"There have been people who have found a bat in trouble and able to get it help because a neighbour went on one of the walks and knew what to do."
She said rangers at the Highland Council Countryside Ranger Service were "stars" of the Scottish events and this year had organised about 15 walks.
Seven of them are taking place in Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey and Ross and Cromarty between 22 August and 27 September.
Yahoo News 16 Aug 08;
India on Saturday offered money to villagers to vacate wildlife reserves in a bid to save the country's tigers from extinction, officials said.
The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), set up by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, said it was releasing 520 million rupees (1.3 million dollars) out of a total of six billion rupees to be disbursed over the next five years.
Each family that volunteers to move out from tiger habitats and state sanctuaries is due to get one million rupees under the scheme. It was not known immediately how many families would receive funds.
The largest sum of 190 million rupees has been set aside to clear out two villages from inside Sariska park near New Delhi where the entire population of 19 tigers was found missing in 2006, presumed slaughtered by poachers.
The move is aimed at "ensuring inviolate areas for the big cats as well as for other wildlife," a NTCA spokesman said.
"This will help decrease man-animals conflict and create inviolate zones for tigers," the spokesman added.
The federal agency swung into action just months after authorities said last year that India's rare Royal Bengal Tiger population had plunged to 1,411, far lower than the 3,700 estimated to be alive five years earlier.
Rajesh Gopal, who heads Project Tiger, a national conservation programme, has blamed "poaching, loss of quality habitat and prey" as key reasons for the decline.
Conservationists have long complained that many Indian forestry posts lie vacant and that the small number of staff employed are no match for poachers.
India and China have been under fire from international experts for failing to halt tiger poaching, with conservationists blaming collusion between poachers, government officials and buyers.
Tigers are hunted for their pelts, claws and bones, which are prized in traditional Chinese medicine.
More than 40,000 tigers are believed to have roamed the Indian wild before the subcontinent's independence from British colonial rule.
Alarmist predictions of climate change like Oliver Tickell's are not just bad science – they stop us thinking rationally about solutions
Björn Lomborg, guardian.co.uk 15 Aug 08;
Much of the global warming debate is perhaps best described as a constant outbidding by frantic campaigners, producing a barrage of ever-more scary scenarios in an attempt to get the public to accept their civilisation-changing proposals.
Unfortunately, the general public – while concerned about the environment – is distinctly unwilling to support questionable solutions with costs running into tens of trillions of pounds. Predictably, this makes the campaigners reach for even more outlandish scares.
These alarmist predictions are becoming quite bizarre, and could be dismissed as sociological oddities, if it weren't for the fact that they get such big play in the media. Oliver Tickell, for instance, writes that a global warming causing a 4C temperature increase by the end of the century would be a "catastrophe" and the beginning of the "extinction" of the human race. This is simply silly.
His evidence? That 4C would mean that all the ice on the planet would melt, bringing the long-term sea level rise to 70-80m, flooding everything we hold dear, seeing billions of people die. Clearly, Tickell has maxed out the campaigners' scare potential (because there is no more ice to melt, this is the scariest he could ever conjure). But he is wrong. Let us just remember that the UN climate panel, the IPCC, expects a temperature rise by the end of the century between 1.8 and 6.0C. Within this range, the IPCC predicts that, by the end of the century, sea levels will rise 18-59 centimetres – Tickell is simply exaggerating by a factor of up to 400.
Tickell will undoubtedly claim that he was talking about what could happen many, many millennia from now. But this is disingenuous. First, the 4C temperature rise is predicted on a century scale – this is what we talk about and can plan for. Second, although sea-level rise will continue for many centuries to come, the models unanimously show that Greenland's ice shelf will be reduced, but Antarctic ice will increase even more (because of increased precipitation in Antarctica) for the next three centuries. What will happen beyond that clearly depends much more on emissions in future centuries. Given that CO2 stays in the atmosphere about a century, what happens with the temperature, say, six centuries from now mainly depends on emissions five centuries from now (where it seems unlikely non-carbon emitting technology such as solar panels will not have become economically competitive).
Third, Tickell tells us how the 80m sea-level rise would wipe out all the world's coastal infrastructure and much of the world's farmland – "undoubtedly" causing billions to die. But to cause billions to die, it would require the surge to occur within a single human lifespan. This sort of scare tactic is insidiously wrong and misleading, mimicking a firebrand preacher who claims the earth is coming to an end and we need to repent. While it is probably true that the sun will burn up the earth in 4-5bn years' time, it does give a slightly different perspective on the need for immediate repenting.
Tickell's claim that 4C will be the beginning of our extinction is again many times beyond wrong and misleading, and, of course, made with no data to back it up. Let us just take a look at the realistic impact of such a 4C temperature rise. For the Copenhagen Consensus, one of the lead economists of the IPCC, Professor Gary Yohe, did a survey of all the problems and all the benefits accruing from a temperature rise over this century of about approximately 4C. And yes, there will, of course, also be benefits: as temperatures rise, more people will die from heat, but fewer from cold; agricultural yields will decline in the tropics, but increase in the temperate zones, etc.
The model evaluates the impacts on agriculture, forestry, energy, water, unmanaged ecosystems, coastal zones, heat and cold deaths and disease. The bottom line is that benefits from global warming right now outweigh the costs (the benefit is about 0.25% of global GDP). Global warming will continue to be a net benefit until about 2070, when the damages will begin to outweigh the benefits, reaching a total damage cost equivalent to about 3.5% of GDP by 2300. This is simply not the end of humanity. If anything, global warming is a net benefit now; and even in three centuries, it will not be a challenge to our civilisation. Further, the IPCC expects the average person on earth to be 1,700% richer by the end of this century.
Tickell's hellfire and damnation sermon also misinforms us of the solutions to global warming: panicking is rarely the right state of mind for finding smart solutions. In essence, Tickell says that because the outlook is so frightening, we need to cut much, much more than the Kyoto protocol called for. Now, all peer-reviewed, published economic models demonstrate that such an effort is a colossal waste of money – one of the leading models shows that, for every pound spent, Tickell's solution would do about 13p-worth of good.
Tickell finds that current climate efforts like Kyoto have been "miserable failures", which is true, but makes it seem rather odd that he thinks much-more-of-the-same will suddenly be great policy. He claims that the reason these policies are not realised is because our governments are "craven to special interests". While this is convenient to believe, it is, of course, incorrect; the real reason is that no one in the electorate wants to pay £2, £3 or even £4 for a litre of petrol.
If we are to find a workable and economically smart solution, we would do well to look at the best climate solution from the top economists from the Copenhagen Consensus. They found that, unlike even moderate CO2 cuts, which cost more than they do good, we should focus on investing in finding cheaper low-carbon energy. This requires us to invest massively in energy research and development (R&D). Right now, we don't – because the climate panic makes us focus exclusively on cutting CO2.
R&D has been dropping worldwide since the early 1980s. If we increased this investment ten-fold, it would still be ten times cheaper than Kyoto, and probably hundreds to thousands of times cheaper than Tickell's proposal. The literature indicates that for every pound invested, we would do £11-worth of good. The reason: because when we all talk about cutting CO2, we might get some well-meaning westerners to put up a few inefficient solar panels on their roof-tops. While it costs a lot, it will do little and have no impact on Chinese and Indian emissions. But if we focus on investing in making cheaper solar panels, they will become competitive sooner, making everyone, including the Chinese and Indians, switch.
Such a proposal is efficient, politically feasible and will actually fix climate change in the medium term. Being panicked by incorrect data and suggesting outlandish policies might create a splash, but it will stall our prospects of achieving real change.
Let's not be silly – let's choose the best solution.
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