Our jellyfishes identified
on the wild shores of singapore blog
The Courtesan
Butterfly of the Month on the butterflies of singapore blog
Barbets of Singapore
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog
Asia Environmental News
some highlights on the AsiaIsGreen blog
Water Footprints Make A Splash
on the Worldwatch Institute website
The rediscovery of 'extinct' wildlife serves to motivate nature enthusiasts
Kimberly Spykerman, Straits Times 22 Aug 08;
WHEN it comes to wildlife native to these shores, it seems people here just do not know enough, grumbles Miss Toh Chay Hoon, a 31-year-old nature enthusiast.
In her spare time, the accountant does her bit to introduce people to the flora and fauna here by leading nature walks on offshore islands such as Pulau Ubin and Pulau Semakau.
She recalled an incident at Changi Beach last year, when a beach-goer found a threatened species of marine snail commonly known as the Bailer Snail, so named because its large shell is said to have been used to bail out water from leaky boats.
She said with dismay: 'He was going to take it home and cook it - even after I told him it was an endangered species! People have to learn to appreciate animals in their natural environment.'
People here are not aware of the rich variety of animals and plants in these parts, largely 'because because they don't get out there and explore', she said.
full PDF file on the Straits Times websiteYahoo News 21 Aug 08;
A new population of rare leopard has been found living in thick forests on the Indonesian half of Borneo island, a researcher said Thursday.
Camera traps in Sebangau National Park in Central Kalimantan province have snapped pictures of two adult male Bornean clouded leopards in an area once decimated by logging, British zoologist Susan Cheyne said.
The discovery by researchers from Oxford University's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit and Indonesia's Pangkalan Raya University is the first confirmation the clouded leopard, which is classified as vulnerable, lives in the park.
The discovery holds out new hope for the little-understood species, which numbers less than 10,000 individuals and is the top predator on Borneo island, Cheyne said.
"This elusive species is a good indicator of forest health. Large cats need prey and the prey -- deer, macaques and bearded pigs -- need the forest," she said.
"The clouded leopard is the largest predator on Borneo, there are no tigers. Having the island's top predator surviving in an ex-logging concession hopefully means that the species is resilient."
However, the discovery still only provides a small amount of information about the behaviour and distribution of the big cats.
"With more time and increased number of photos we can start to identify individual cats, look at which cameras they show up on to get an idea of range, and possible range overlap with the smaller cats," Cheyne said.
The forests on Indonesia's half of Borneo island are home to some of the world's most diverse wildlife, but are under threat from plantations and logging, much of it illegal.
Related articles
Elusive Clouded leopard photographed in natural habitat
Richard Gray, The Telegraph 16 Aug 08;
ABC Net 21 Aug 08;
Marine researchers have found that rising sea temperatures pose a direct threat to reef sponges.
The Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) has found that water temperatures of 33 degrees or higher cause the relationship between sponges and microbes to break down, similar to coral bleaching.
Sponges are considered to be the great cleaners of the ocean, with a one kilogram sponge filtering 24,000 litres of seawater a day.
AIMS researcher Dr Nicole Webster says once the symbiotic relationship collapses, the sponge starts to die and less desirable forms of bacteria take over.
"A lot of the known symbionts disappeared and we also saw the appearance of new microbes that tended to have fairly high similarity to bacteria that have previously been isolated from diseased and bleached corals," she said.
Margot Staunton, Yahoo News 21 Aug 08;
New Zealand's mysterious colossal squid, the largest of the feared and legendary species ever caught, was not the T-Rex of the oceans but a lethargic blob, new research suggests.
The 495 kilogramme (1,090-pound) female, accidently hauled in by a fishing boat in the Antarctic last year, was an overweight breeding machine, leading marine biologist Steve O'Shea told AFP Thursday.
The colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni), donated to the country's national museum, was probably quite docile when alive, said O'Shea.
"The colossal species has a reputation for being an aggressive and dangerous predator and have been feared and misrepresented in the past," O'Shea said.
"My research suggests they're not the T-rex of the sea, they get more docile as they mature, a strange phenomenon that has caught scientists off guard.
"We are looking at something verging on the incredibly bizarre. As she got older she got shorter and broader and was reduced to a giant gelatinous blob, carrying many thousands of eggs," he said.
"Her shape was likely to have affected her behaviour and ability to hunt. I can't imagine her jetting herself around in the water at any great speed, and she was too gelatinous to have been a fighting machine.
"It's likely she was just blobbing around the seabed carrying her brood of eggs, living on dead fish, while her mate was off hunting."
The squid began to reveal its secrets to a team of fascinated scientists in April when it was thawed after being frozen on the fishing boat.
They were struck initially by her beach ball-sized eyes, describing them as the biggest known in the animal kingdom.
The enormous eyes would help the squid locate prey in the dark of its habitat 1,000 metres (3,300 feet) or more below the surface of Antarctic waters.
Two long tentacles carry up to 25 rotating hooks each, while eight arms each contain up to 19 fixed hooks used to capture prey and bring it to the squid's beaked mouth.
O'Shea and his colleagues believe larger squid still lurk in the southern ocean depths.
The New Zealand squid's lower beak measures around 40 centimetres across, while other beaks have been found -- usually in the stomach of predator sperm whales -- measuring up to 49 centimetres.
O'Shea said it is possible that colossal squid may grow to up to 750 kilograms but there was not yet enough information to be sure.
The squid is expected to go on display in a special tank at Te Papa museum in Wellington later this year.
She is believed to be the biggest complete adult of her species ever landed, and very little is known about the colossal squid because they live at extreme depths in Antarctic waters.
But research suggests they have a penchant for toothfish and are no strangers to cannibalism.
Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience.com Yahoo News 21 Aug 08;
A man-sized grouper that trolls the tropical waters of the Eastern Pacific Ocean for octopuses and crabs has been identified as a new fish species after genetic tests.
Called the goliath grouper, the fish can grow to six feet (1.8 meters) in length and weigh a whopping 1,000 pounds (454 kg). Until now, scientists had grouped this species with an identical looking fish (also called the goliath grouper, or Epinephelus itajara) living in the Atlantic Ocean.
"For more than a century, ichthyologists have thought that Pacific and Atlantic goliath grouper were the same species," said lead researcher Matthew Craig of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, "and the argument was settled before the widespread use of genetic techniques."
Once upon a time, about 3.5 million years ago - before the Caribbean and the Pacific were separated by present-day Panama - they were, in fact, the same species. Now, DNA tests have revealed the two populations have distinct genes, indicating they likely evolved into two separate species after their ocean homes were divided by Central America.
Scientists disagree about how to define the term "species" and what separates species from one another biologically, though some say that a species is a group that can mate with one another and produce offspring that are not sterile. However, this biological definition doesn't always hold up, for instance, with coyotes and wolves (considered separate species), which can successfully produce fertile offspring. In this study, the scientists relied on differences in the fishes' genetic codes to establish the separate grouper species.
The new Pacific species, now designated as Epinephelus quinquefasciatus, is described in a recent issue of the journal Endangered Species Research.
The Atlantic variety, E. itajara, is currently listed as critically endangered by the IUCN, or International Union for Conservation of Nature. Due to its scarcity, E. quinquefasciatus also may be considered critically endangered.
"In light of our new findings, the Pacific goliath grouper should be treated with separate management and conservation strategies," said researcher Rachel Graham of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York.
The research was funded by Programa Petrobras Ambiental, Conservation International Brazil to Projeto Meros do Brasil, The Summit Foundation, National Science Foundation and Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology.
Kristen Gelineau, Associated Press Yahoo News 22 Aug 08;
Wildlife officials moved ahead Friday with plans to euthanize an injured and abandoned baby humpback whale that has been trying to suckle boats in the waters off Sydney.
The decision was made Thursday after veterinarians and marine researchers examined the whale, determining that its condition had deteriorated to the point that euthanizing it was the most humane thing to do.
But officials later were unable to find the whale in the dark waters of Pittwater Inlet. Early Friday, the whale was located, and officials moved ahead with plans to sedate it before administering a fatal dose of drugs later in the day.
The plight of the whale, which Australians have nicknamed "Colin," has dominated news coverage here since it was first sighted Sunday and began trying to suckle from boats it apparently mistook for its mother.
"We have a whale whose condition has deteriorated rapidly over the last 24 hours, and who now experts are telling us is suffering, and we've had to make the hard decision to euthanize the whale," said Sally Barnes, deputy director-general of the New South Wales Department of Environment and Climate Change. "It's a very emotional decision."
She said officials had sought out national and international advice on how to deal with the lost whale but its condition had become too poor to treat.
Some Australians have accused wildlife officials of not doing enough to help the calf or trying to feed it.
Previous attempts to guide the whale back to open waters have failed, with the creature preferring to stick close to the boats.
One effort came from Aboriginal whale whisperer Bunna Lawrie, who visited the calf Thursday afternoon. Adorned with feathers on his head and white paint markings on his face, Lawrie reached into the water to stroke Colin while singing a humming, tongue-rolling tune.
But after a few minutes the whale swam away to nuzzle a nearby yacht.
"He's missing the big fellas," said Lawrie, whose visit was broadcast on Channel 10 television.
Reporters were barred from reaching the inlet via land, and maritime police physically blocked a boat carrying members of a rescue group and several reporters.
On the Net:
National Parks and Wildlife Service: http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/nationalparks.htm
Lost baby whale to be killed in Australia
Yahoo News 21 Aug 08;
A lost baby whale which captured Australians' hearts as it tried to suckle from a yacht it thought could be its mother will soon be killed to end its suffering, wildlife rangers said Thursday.
"He's taken a really serious turn for the worse just now," said John Dengate, spokesman for the Department of National Parks and Wildlife which has been at the forefront of efforts to save the animal.
"The vets have had a look, they've said he's having breathing difficulties, his flippers are at an unusual angle, he's not going to last much longer, you should put him down," he told national radio.
The baby humpback was discovered on Monday in Pittwater bay near Sydney's Palm Beach, trying to suckle on the hull of a whale-sized anchored yacht, after apparently being abandoned by its mother.
In a remarkable effort to return it to the ocean, the calf -- dubbed Colin after the man who first found it -- was lured out to sea by the 'mother ship'.
But after failing to find its own mother or an adoptive parent among the pods of whales passing Pittwater, Colin returned to the bay and again began trying to suckle yachts.
With public concern over the calf's fate growing, the army was asked whether it could help with a flotation device to take Colin back out to sea and a scientist suggested it could be fed formula milk through an artificial teat.
But the logistics of feeding and looking after a whale calf which would need about 230 litres of milk a day were insurmountable, experts said.
"The vets who had a look at him were really surprised at how fast he'd gone downhill," Dengate said.
"Their advice to us was 'he's not going to last much longer, he's suffering and you should take action'."
"It's a really tragic result from an operation that people worked really, really hard (on)."
Nobody knows why the uninjured calf was apparently abandoned by its mother, with some experts saying that, while this happened sometimes in the wild, it was also possible the two had become separated somehow.
The humpbacks are on the return leg of a remarkable annual round trip from the Antarctic to tropical waters to breed, and they can be seen ploughing homewards not far off Sydney's beaches on most days.
Tasha Eichenseher, National Geographic News 21 Aug 08;
Worldwide corruption driven by mafia-like organizations throughout water industries is forcing the poor to pay more for basic drinking water and sanitation services, according to a new report.
If bribery, organized crime, embezzlement, and other illegal activities continue, consumers and taxpayers will pay the equivalent of U.S. $20 billion dollars over the next decade, says the report, released this week at the World Water Week conference in Stockholm, Sweden.
The water sector is one of most corrupt after health and education, added Håkan Tropp, chair of the Water Integrity Network (WIN), an advocacy group and report co-author.
That's because the poor often don't have a voice in strategic water policy decisions, said Christian Poortman, head of the anticorruption group Transparency International (TI), which collaborated with WIN on the study.
Skyrocketing Prices
In developing countries, corruption bumps up household water prices by at least 30 percent, experts say.
In Honduras, for example, residents who either cannot afford connections to centralized water systems or live in places where water is not easily accessible pay 40 percent more for informal water supplies, said TI's Donal O'Leary.
The water is often delivered in trucks or pushcarts by entrepreneurs, who in some cases secure supplies illegally from a bigger water company, O'Leary explained.
In Bangladesh and Ecuador, mafia-like groups often collude with public water officials to prevent access to cheap water services.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) estimates that countries such as El Salvador, Jamaica, and Nicaragua spend more than 10 percent of their income on water services, in part due to corruption. In comparison, those in developed nations such as the United States pay approximately 3 percent.
Even so, developed countries are not immune: Bribery is associated with large-scale wastewater contracts in Milan, Italy, and sewer bills are inflated in San Diego, California.
Beyond the Tap
Corruption in water industries also affects farming and energy production, TI's Poortman said.
Expensive contracts for hydropower and dam projects are the most susceptible, and experts expect the disparities to worsen as climate change and the fuel crisis takes hold.
For instance, to prepare for climate change, countries will create more large-scale water storage projects. Likewise, as gas and oil become less reliable energy sources, investments in hydropower are expected to increase.
TI estimates that there will be up to U.S. $60 billion invested annually over the next decade in hydropower and dam projects.
In agriculture, nearly 25 percent of irrigation contracts in India involve some kind of corrupt deal, mostly with the government, Poortman said.
"Lack of access [to clean water] is not just about scarcity—more than anything it is because of failing governments," he said.
While corruption with large-scale projects is dramatic, "it is the petty corruption, which generally involves local police and officials, that affects people everyday," added Teun Bastemeijer, program manager for WIN.
Slow to Change
As anticorruption movements gain momentum, governments should start to pay attention, and employees and citizens will be more likely to report cases of corruption, said Jack Moss of AquaFed, an international association of private water companies.
"There is a fundamental change, but a slow one," he added.
Poortman points to successes in India and China, where pollution maps and citizen "report cards" have helped draw attention to water abuses.
A massive U.S. $8 billion hydropower and canal project in the African nation of Lesotho often tops the list of examples for how water corruption can be shut down.
Contractors from multinational companies in Europe and Canada were accused of offering the Lesotho government bribes for the project contract.
In 2002 the chief executive of the Lesotho Highlands Development Agency was charged with accepting U.S. $6 million and sentenced to jail for 18 years. Some of the companies were also prosecuted and barred from World Bank contracts for a short while, said WIN's Bastemeijer.
Dana Ford, Reuters 20 Aug 08;
LA MERCED (Reuters) - Teresa Rocha, a migrant worker who picks coffee on the steamy, lush, green farms near La Merced in central Peru, might not understand the mechanics of climate change, but she knows its effects.
Rising temperatures and erratic weather patterns are changing historic trends in the coffee season, growers say in Peru, a country closely tied to the impact of climate change because of its rapidly melting tropical glaciers.
Rocha, 16, who moves with the seasons in search of ripe plants, says warmer temperatures are responsible for her early start this year -- about a month earlier than last.
Farmers are also reporting high-altitude plants are maturing at times more typical of their low-land counterparts.
"The seasons are changing tremendously. You can no longer say winter is in November, December or March. It falls in other months sometimes," said Cesar Rivas, president of the national growers' group.
"This is generating complete productive disorder," he said.
Traditionally, Peruvian coffee growers start picking their crop in April, some six months before the global arabica harvest. Its flip season has given Peru, the world's sixth largest exporter of coffee, a unique comparative advantage.
If the season continues to move earlier, farmers worry they could lose their privileged position.
"Producers can no longer make well-laid plans. Calculations are not the same," said Rivas. "The uncertainty is very difficult to deal with."
'A QUESTION WE CANNOT CONTROL'
Global temperatures are expected to rise anywhere between one and six degrees Celsius (1.8 and 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) over the next 100 years, according to the United Nations. Growers everywhere, and of all crops, will need to adapt.
In Costa Rica, rising temperatures are pushing coffee producers to higher and higher altitudes as areas previously too chilly are converted into prime agricultural real estate.
While climate change might make new land available to farm coffee, it could also expose the crop to unusual precipitation and atypical levels of humidity. Peruvian growers have said the scarcity of rains this year in some coffee-producing areas is the result of rising global temperatures.
Climate change has also been blamed for last year's drought in Brazil and winds in Guatemala. Both slashed coffee yields.
Pablo Vargas, director at La Florida, a coffee growers' cooperative in La Merced, says farmers in the group are aware of climate change and some are working to limit their environmental impact -- by planting shade-grown coffee, using natural fertilizers and not clear cutting farms.
But they are in a tight spot. By itself, Peru cannot stop the global march toward warmer temperatures, though it bears a disproportionate brunt of the impact.
Analysts say the Andean nation's melting tropical glaciers will run dry in some 25 years. That spells trouble for populations on the coast -- including the capital -- which rely on runoff and could threaten the country's energy security.
Some 70 percent of Peru's electricity is generated by hydropower. Alternative forms of power are more expensive.
An adamant advocate for the environment, even Vargas admits there are limits to what growers can do.
"Unfortunately, climate change is a question we cannot control," he said.
(Editing by Christian Wiessner)
Gerard Wynn, Reuters 21 Aug 08;
LONDON (Reuters) - Air travelers may be fooling themselves with a feel-good green glow from offsetting their carbon emissions, according to critics of the system.
A lack of rigor in the calculation of greenhouse gas emissions from air travel is undermining carbon offsetting as an approach to fight climate change, one expert said.
Supporters say carbon offsetting allows travelers to fight climate change without altering their behavior, by paying others to cut emissions of greenhouse gases on their behalf.
Travel company Expedia Inc on Thursday added its voice to those urging offsetting as a tool to fight climate change, allowing its customers to continue flying to exotic holiday destinations with an easier conscience.
But airlines calculate the carbon emissions from their flights differently, underlining uncertainty about the credibility of offset calculators.
The United Nation's International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in June launched a carbon calculator which aimed to standardize airlines' efforts, but can still yield misleading results, according to a supplier of fuel data.
"Producing a single number is crude," said Dimitri Simos, director at Lissys Limited, supplier of an aircraft performance model previously used by the UK government and the basis for the ICAO estimate of airline emissions.
"If you go from Heathrow to Athens, ICAO gives 217 kilograms (kg) of CO2. That hides huge variations - fly in a full (Boeing) B767 and it's nearer to 160 kg per person, or fly in a half-empty (Airbus) A340 and it's more like 360 kg."
"It's the variations that are missing and that are important."
For the same trip to Athens, a carbon calculator on the British Airways website calculates CO2 emissions at 314 kg per person from London Heathrow, while Lufthansa calculates 260 kg of CO2 from London Stansted.
Carbon offsetting has also had to contend with critics who say that it only creates an illusion of fighting climate change, focusing on marginal efforts such as planting trees or building wind turbines rather than tackling the underlying problem, for example by flying less or burning less coal.
Expedia published on Thursday a survey showing that ignorance among the general public was adding to offset woes.
One in ten in the survey of 2,000 Britons thought offsetting meant walking to work instead of driving. One percent of men thought that it meant putting out a barbecue properly. Only one third understood the term.
John Vidal, guardian.co.uk 21 Aug 08;
Developing countries and human rights groups will clash today at a key UN climate change meeting intended to arrest the destruction of tropical forests. The felling is responsible for almost 20% of annual global carbon emissions, making it a crucial target in the battle against global warming.
Diplomats from more than 100 countries are meeting in Accra, Ghana, to open negotiations on whether tropical forests should join the emerging global carbon market. This would allow countries and companies to earn money from not cutting down their trees.
The move, backed strongly by many developing countries and the G8, is expected to greatly increase the financial value of forests. It would encourage governments and corporations to protect them and would potentially transfer hundreds of millions of pounds a year to some of the poorest countries in the world.
But human rights and environment groups from three continents are warning that the over-hasty inclusion of forests in the post-Kyoto carbon market could trigger a "land grab" leaving tens of millions of people worse off.
According to the groups, which include Friends of the Earth International, the Rainforest Foundation and the Rights and Resources Initiative, a coalition of environment and justice groups from around the world, it would:
· Undermine the world price of carbon, damaging the effectiveness of the market
· Drive indigenous peoples from the forests
· Benefit only a wealthy elite and increase the risk corruption
Without clear guidelines on land ownership and the involvement of local people, the groups say, the money poured into preserving forests could also fuel violent conflict.
"Sixty million indigenous peoples are dependent on forests for their livelihoods, food and medicines," said Belmond Tchoumba, Friends of the Earth international coordinator of the forest and biodiversity programme.
"These people have already been severely impacted by deforestation. If the value of their forests increases, governments and corporations may be willing to go to extreme lengths to wrest forests away from indigenous peoples and others."
He added: "Delegates are focusing on finance but to stop deforestation, land rights must be centre stage. These UN climate talks shamefully continue to take place without any meaningful participation by indigenous peoples."
Slashing the price of carbon could even lead to a failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions overall, say the campaigners.
"The US could say that it will only join a post-Kyoto agreement on condition that they it can offset emissions by buying deforestation credits. It would be a catastrophe," said Simon Counsell, director of the Rainforest Foundation in London.
"It could crash the price of carbon and would mean the reduction of pollution in rich countries would be come quite uneconomic."
The proposal to use the global carbon-market to stop deforestation has split some of the world's environment and conservation groups which have long disagreed over the relative importance of people and nature.
Conservation groups are strongly supporting the carbon-market plan in Accra. But many justice groups are disturbed that logging, soy and palmoil companies – which have been responsible for large scale deforestation and which own vast tracts of the tropical forests in Asia and Africa – could now demand compensation for every tree they do not cut down.
"These concerns are legitimate and need to be heard and respected. We strongly support we have to learn from the past," said Tom Cohen, media director of Conservation International, the world's largest conservation group, based in Arlington, Virginia.
"Without quick and robust investment in securing forest-community rights, these carbon markets will further marginalise the poorest of the poor," said Kyeretwie Opoku, of Civic Response, a Ghanaian justice group.
"Even the World Bank is saying that this is the social justice issue of our generation."
The meeting is regarded as key to the success or failure of the UN's ongoing climate talks which are expected to culminate next year in Denmark with a global agreement to slow and then reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
A full agreement, not expected in Accra, will encourage developing countries to sign up, but could also allow rich countries to buy credits and thereby avoid reducing their own emissions.
Aminu Abubakar, Yahoo News 21 Aug 08;
Time is running out in the fight against global warming, the UN's top climate change official warned as a new round of UN talks got started here Thursday.
"There is little time left to get a solid negotiating text on the table. Clearly the clock is ticking," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
"People in a burning house cannot afford to lose time in an argument," he said, citing an Ashanti proverb.
The Accra gathering must strive to "reach agreement on the rules and tools" that developed countries will use to cut greenhouse gas emissions, he told more than 1,600 delegates from 160 nations.
Ghana's President John Kufuor echoed the sense of urgency in his opening remarks, noting that his country was already suffering the consequences of global warming.
Rainfall in Ghana has decreased by 20 percent in three decades, and 1,000 square kilometres (400 square miles) of fertile agricultural land in the upper Volta Delta will be lost to rising sea levels and flooding if temperatures rise at their current pace, he said.
The expert-level meeting, which runs through August 27, is the third UN climate change conference since nations committed to adopting a binding climate accord no later than December 2009.
It is the last meeting ahead of a ministerial summit in Poznan, Poland in December where rich countries will be under intense pressure to nail down near-term commitments for reducing greenhouse gases.
The Group of Eight industrialised powers pledged to halve emissions by 2050, but critics say intermediate goals are needed.
"The real political commitment is short- and medium-term," Connie Hedegaard, the Danish Minister for Climate and Energy, told delegates.
"We have to speed up the pace. The negotiations here in Accra must deliver concrete results" about what technologies will be used to cut emissions, she said.
Africa is arguably the continent most vulnerable to the potential ravages of climate change, which range from extreme drought to violent storms to rising sea levels.
De Boer challenged delegates to be "ambitious," and said if they failed Africa would continue, in terms of climate change, to be the "forgotten continent".
He insisted that rich countries step up financial assistance to help Africa with global warming.
African produces the fewest emissions, he pointed out, but will likely well pay the heaviest price.
De Boer and Kufuor underlined the threat of deforestation, which is destroying one of nature's most powerful natural buffers against global warming.
The world's forests -- which are disappearing at a rate of about 30 million hectares (74 million acres) per year -- soak up more than 20 percent of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
"Governments need to focus on reducing emissions caused by deforestation and forest degradation," and on how to reward countries that protect forests, said de Boer.
The problem is particularly acute in Amazonia, central Africa and Indonesia, experts note.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), an environmental group, called on the Accra meeting to adopt the Olympic motto of "faster, higher, stronger."
"Progress on substance ... must be swifter, the level of ambition by both developed and developing countries higher, and the measures to reduce CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions stronger," said Kim Carstensen, director of the WWF's Global Climate Change Initiative.
UN Ghana Climate Talks Start, Time Said Short
Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 22 Aug 08;
ACCRA - Time is running short to agree a new UN climate treaty that will need billions of dollars a year to help the poor cope with global warming, host Ghana told the start of 160-nation UN climate talks on Thursday.
"The clock is ticking," Ghanaian President John Kufuor told the Aug. 21-27 talks in Accra, meant to work on details of a UN deal to combat global warming to be agreed in Copenhagen at the end of 2009.
"We need more than rhetoric to make progress in the next 12 to 18 months," he told 1,000 delegates in a conference hall in Accra. The talks are the third this year of a series of eight UN sessions due to end with a treaty in Copenhagen.
Kufuor said there were damaging signs of climate change in Ghana -- rainfall had decreased by 20 percent in the past 30 years, while up to 1,000 square km (386 sq mile) of land was at risk in the Volta Delta due to sea level rises and floods.
"Climate change makes development harder and more expensive," he said.
He backed a UN pact under which poor nations would agree to slow the rise of their emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, while seeking to curb poverty in return for a package from rich nations that included funding and clean technology.
Estimates of the costs of adapting to a changing climate, such as flood prevention, drought-resistant crops or defences against rising seas "differ enormously but run to tens of billions of dollars per year", he said.
And he said global warming was not only a problem for poor nations. "The entire human race is under threat, no matter its geographical location," he said.
FOOD PRICES
Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, also urged delegates to speed up talks after scant progress in previous meetings in Bangkok and Bonn in 2008 against a backdrop of slowing economic growth and high food and fuel prices.
"Time is short ... negotiations need to speed up," he said. He said Africa had been the "forgotten continent" in the climate debate and among the most vulnerable, with up to 250 million people threatened by water shortages by 2020.
Later, developing nations criticised proposals led by Japan for goals for emissions of greenhouse gases from industrial sectors such as steel, aluminium or power generation as part of a new deal to succeed the existing Kyoto Protocol.
"We feel extremely uncomfortable with the kind of sectoral approaches that are being discussed," Indian delegate Ajay Mathur said.
Developing nations fear that sectoral benchmarks, for instance the amount of energy needed to produce a tonne of steel or cement, could be a backdoor way for rich nations to impose trade barriers on their less efficient industries.
Japan's delegate Jun Arima played down the worries, saying that sectoral goals were meant to highlight opportunities for greater efficiency. "We are not looking for a common target for the Indian steel sector and the Japanese steel sector," he said.
The Accra talks will look at ways to broaden the current Kyoto Protocol, which binds 37 developed nations to cut emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.
Delegates will also look at new mechanisms, such as credits to slow the rate of tropical deforestation. Burning of forests contributes up to about 20 percent of man-made greenhouse gases.
(Editing by Mike Collett-White/Tony Austin)
Nina Larson, Yahoo News 21 Aug 08;
Climate change poses a serious threat to essential water resources in the Himalayan region putting the livelihoods of 1.3 billion people at risk, experts said Thursday.
The mountainous region, home to the world's largest glaciers and permafrost area outside the polar regions, has seen rapid glacial melting and dramatic changes in rainfall, experts at the World Water Week conference in Stockholm said.
"Himalayan glaciers are retreating more rapidly than anywhere else in the world," said Mats Eriksson, programme manager for water and hazard management at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development.
Although high altitudes, remoteness and cooperation difficulties between countries in the region have made it difficult to conduct comprehensive studies, Eriksson said it was obvious "the region is very strongly affected by climate change."
"The glaciers' retreat is enormous -- up to 70 metres (230 feet) per year," he told AFP.
Xu Jianchu, who heads the Centre for Mountain Ecosystem Studies in China, pointed out that temperatures on the Tibetan Plateau for instance were increasing by 0.3 degrees Celsius each decade.
"That's double the worldwide average," he said.
This has a large impact in a region where melting glaciers and snow account for about 50 percent of the water that flows down mountains, feeding into nine of the largest rivers in Asia.
The Himalayas stretch across China, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Myanmar, Bhutan and Afghanistan, and the mountain range thus constitutes a major source of water for some of the most populous parts of the planet.
Eriksson and other experts said the region covers 1.3 billion people.
"Snow and glacial ice melting provide a very important source for fresh water for irrigation, energy and drinking water downstream," Xu said.
Glaciers hold numerous capacities to store water, so although water levels initially rise as the ice melts, in the long term their disappearance leads to less available water downstream.
"Livelihoods will be severely affected by this," Eriksson said.
At the same time as glaciers are melting, scientists say precipitation patterns in many parts of the Himalayas are changing dramatically, serving up more rain in the monsoon periods and less in dry seasons.
"The drier areas are becoming drier, while the wetter areas are becoming wetter," said Rakhshan Roohi of the Water Resource Research Institute in Pakistan.
Eriksson said changes had been especially felt in the drier western part of the Himalayas.
"In the past, the rivers had a fairly constant flow throughout the summer due to melt-water ... Now you have a lot of rain in the spring and then you have fairly dry conditions throughout the rest of the summer," he said.
On top of the more uncertain harvest conditions, which are prompting many people to migrate, farmers and others also face a growing number of natural disasters like flash floods and bursting glacier lakes.
"Maybe before your district was suffering from one flash flood every season, and that was perhaps what people managed to cope with. But if you get three or four or five flash floods, maybe that's too much. The question is how much more can people tolerate without losing their basis for livelihood," Eriksson said.
The Himalayan mountains does not produce much of the greenhouse gases that are so drastically altering its ecosystem, and in fact functions as a carbon sink, capturing carbon dioxide to mitigate global warming.
Xu however cautioned that increased glacial melting means the captured CO2 will seep back into the atmosphere.
"This will transform the carbon sink into a carbon source ... more soil carbon will be released with the melting of glaciers and permafrost," he said.
Yahoo News 21 Aug 08;
Two of Greenland's largest glaciers lost more ice to global warming over the last month, US researchers said Thursday.
Glaciologists at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University observed the break-ups by monitoring daily NASA satellites images as well as time-lapse photography from cameras monitoring Greenland's glaciers.
A huge chunk of the Petermann Glacier measuring 29 square kilometers (11 square miles) -- roughly half the size of Manhattan -- broke away between July 10 and 24, said Jason Box, a professor of geography at Ohio State University.
Petermann, in northern Greenland, last lost a major mass of ice -- 86 square kilometers (33 square miles) -- between 2000 and 2001.
More worrisome, Box said, is an enormous crack further back from the margin of the Petermann Glacier that could signal "an imminent and much larger breakup."
"If the Petermann Glacier breaks up back to the upstream rift, the loss would be as much as 60 square miles (160 square kilometers)," or one-third of the massive ice field, Box said.
The scientists also said that the margin of the massive Jakobshavn glacier has retreated inland further than at any time in the past 150 years of observation.
They believe, moreover, that it has not retreated so far inland "in at least the last 4,000 to 6,000 years."
Jakobshavn's northern branch has broken up in the last several weeks and the glacier has lost at least 10 square kilometers (three square miles) since the end of the last melt season, the researchers said.
About one-tenth of Greenland's icebergs come from Jakobshavn, making it the island's most productive glacier.
The glacier lost 94 square kilometers (36 square miles) of ice field betwen 2001 and 2005, a phenomenon that drew international attention to the impact of global warming on glaciers, the scientists said.
Meanwhile, the roof of an ice tunnel in Argentina's gigantic Perito Morena glacier, 60 meters high and weighing thousands of tonnes, suddenly collapsed July 8, a phenomenon unheard of in the dead of the southern hemisphere winter.
Scientists blamed global warming for the collapse.
Greenland Glacier Breakup Suggests Imminent Disintegration
Andrea Thompson, LiveScience.com 21 Aug 08;
New satellite images reveal that a massive ice chunk recently broken away from one of Greenland's glaciers, which researchers say will continue to disintegrate within the next year.
Scientists at Ohio State University monitoring daily NASA satellite images of Greenland's glaciers discovered that an 11-square-mile (29-square-kilometer) piece of the Petermann Glacier broke away between July 10 and 24. The chunk was about half the size of Manhattan.
They announced their finding today.
Glaciers are large, slow-moving rivers of ice, formed at the poles and in alpine regions by layers of compacted snow. The Petermann Glacier is one of the approximately 130 glaciers that flow out of the Greenland ice sheet and into the sea, where large chunks of ice fall off, or calve, to form icebergs.
The Petermann Glacier has a floating section of ice about 10 miles (16 km) wide and 50 miles (80 km) long -an area of about 500 square miles (1,295 square km).
The last major ice loss to the glacier occurred when 33 square miles (86 square km) of floating ice fell off between 2000 and 2001.
More ice loss has been occurring in recent years as temperatures in the Arctic rise along with global warming. The amount of ice that melted from Greenland in 2007 could have covered an area the size of the United States twice, researchers said last year.
Researchers also noticed what appears to be a massive crack in the glacier that could signal an imminent and much larger breakup.
"If the Petermann Glacier breaks up back to the upstream rift, the loss would be as much as 60 square miles (160 square km)," said OSU researcher Jason Box. That loss would represent one-third of the massive ice field.
Another of Greenland's glaciers, the Jakobshavn isbrae, has retreated inland further than it has at any time in the past 150 years of observations. Researchers think this is the furthest the glacier has retreated in the last 4,000 to 6,000 years.
The Jakobshavn is one of the largest of Greenland's glaciers and is responsible for producing at least one-tenth of the icebergs that calve off into the sea from Greenland.
The northern branch of the Jakobshavn broke up in the past several weeks and it has lost at least 3 square miles (10 square km) of ice since the end of the last melt season.
Between 2001 and 2005, a massive breakup of the Jakobshavn erased 36 square miles (94 square km) from the ice field.
On the other end of the globe, Antarctica's Wilkins Ice Shelf has been hanging on by just a thread as more large pieces of ice broke away from it earlier this summer.
At top of Greenland, new worrisome cracks in ice
Seth Borenstein, Associated Press Yahoo News 22 Aug 08;
In northern Greenland, a part of the Arctic that had seemed immune from global warming, new satellite images show a growing giant crack and an 11-square-mile chunk of ice hemorrhaging off a major glacier, scientists said Thursday.
And that's led the university professor who spotted the wounds in the massive Petermann glacier to predict disintegration of a major portion of the Northern Hemisphere's largest floating glacier within the year.
If it does worsen and other northern Greenland glaciers melt faster, then it could speed up sea level rise, already increasing because of melt in sourthern Greenland.
The crack is 7 miles long and about half a mile wide. It is about half the width of the 500 square mile floating part of the glacier. Other smaller fractures can be seen in images of the ice tongue, a long narrow sliver of the glacier.
"The pictures speak for themselves," said Jason Box, a glacier expert at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University who spotted the changes while studying new satellite images. "This crack is moving, and moving closer and closer to the front. It's just a matter of time till a much larger piece is going to break off.... It is imminent."
The chunk that came off the glacier between July 10 and July 24 is about half the size of Manhattan and doesn't worry Box as much as the cracks. The Petermann glacier had a larger breakaway ice chunk in 2000. But the overall picture worries some scientists.
"As we see this phenomenon occurring further and further north — and Petermann is as far north as you can get — it certainly adds to the concern," said Waleed Abdalati, director of the Center for the Study of Earth from Space at the University of Colorado.
The question that now faces scientists is: Are the fractures part of normal glacier stress or are they the beginning of the effects of global warming?
"It certainly is a major event," said NASA ice scientist Jay Zwally in a telephone interview from a conference on glaciers in Ireland. "It's a signal but we don't know what it means."
It is too early to say it is clearly global warming, Zwally said. Scientists don't like to attribute single events to global warming, but often say such events fit a pattern.
University of Colorado professor Konrad Steffen, who returned from Greenland Wednesday and has studied the Petermann glacier in the past, said that what Box saw is not too different from what he saw in the 1990s: "The crack is not alarming... I would say it is normal."
However, scientists note that it fits with the trend of melting glacial ice they first saw in the southern part of the massive island and seems to be marching north with time. Big cracks and breakaway pieces are foreboding signs of what's ahead.
Further south in Greenland, Box's satellite images show that the Jakobshavn glacier, the fastest retreating glacier in the world, set new records for how far it has moved inland.
That concerns Colorado's Abdalati: "It could go back for miles and miles and there's no real mechanism to stop it."
On the Net:
Ohio State University images and data: http://bprc.osu.edu/MODIS/
World heading towards cooler 2008
Richard Black, BBC News 21 Aug 08;
This year appears set to be the coolest globally this century.
Data from the UK Met Office shows that temperatures in the first half of the year have been more than 0.1 Celsius cooler than any year since 2000.
The principal reason is La Nina, part of the natural cycle that also includes El Nino, which cools the globe.
Even so, 2008 is set to be about the 10th warmest year since 1850, and Met Office scientists say temperatures will rise again as La Nina conditions ease.
"The big thing that's been happening this year is La Nina, which has lowered global temperatures somewhat," said John Kennedy, climate monitoring and research scientist at the Met Office's Hadley Centre.
"La Nina has faded in the last couple of months and now we have neutral conditions in the Pacific," he told BBC News.
Scientists at the World Meteorological Organization have also suggested that 2008 will turn out to be cooler than the last few years.
Breaking the ice
La Nina cools waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, but its effects are felt around the globe.
It is one of a number of natural climatic cycles that can re-inforce or counteract the warming trend stemming from increased levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Earlier this year, one group of researchers suggested that another natural cycle, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, was likely to hold temperatures steady for about the next decade, before reversing direction and allowing a renewed warming.
"The principal thing is to look at the long-term trend," said Dr Kennedy.
"2008 will still be significantly above the long-term average. There's been a strong upward trend in the last few decades, and that's the thing to focus on."
One of the starkest effects of rising temperatures has been the rapid loss of summer Arctic sea ice, which has accelerated since the year 2000.
Earlier in the year, there were indications that 2008 could see even more ice lost than in the record-breaking melt of 2007.
Currently, the ice appears to be holding together better than a year ago, although scientists are wary as much of it is relatively fragile ice that formed in a single winter.
Canadian authorities have just declared that the Northwest Passage is "navigable", though acknowledging that some parts of it still contain floating ice.
Related article
This Year So Far Coolest For at Least 5 Years - WMO
PlanetArk 21 Aug 08;
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