wildsingapore news: Oct 31, 2008

PM Lee officially opens Marina Barrage, Spore's 15th reservoir

Pearl Forss, Channel NewsAsia , 31 October 2008

SINGAPORE: Singapore celebrated on Thursday the opening of its 15th reservoir with the completion of the Marina Barrage. It's the country's first reservoir in the city.

In his speech, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said ensuring that Singapore has a secure supply of water has been a massive national effort and it has managed to turn its vulnerability into a capability.

Singapore is now known for its expertise on water management and how it has achieved strong economic growth while enhancing the environment.

Mr Lee added that Singapore will aside 10 per cent of its scarce land for parks and nature reserves. - CNA/vm

Best of our wild blogs: 31 Oct 08

Nudis galore!
Melibe identified and another mystery solved on the colourful clouds blog

This weekend: talks about our reefs, marine biodiversity and Chek Jawa at the Clean and Green Singapore launch on the wild shores of singapore blog

Nature's Niche: 20% discount on nature books
on the wild shores of singapore blog

Along Clementi "River"
on the Mountain and Sea by Mountain blog

Stork-billed Kingfisher foraging on a rotting branch
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

National Youth Environment Forum 2008 report
on the eco-singapore website

Environmental pact sees F&B packaging waste down 17%

Lynda Hong, Channel NewsAsia 31 Oct 08;

SINGAPORE : A year-old industry-government pact to cut waste has slashed the amount of packaging used for specific food and beverage products by up to 17 per cent.

According to a statement from the National Environment Agency (NEA), signatories to the voluntary initiative, called the Singapore Packaging Agreement, collectively cut down their packaging waste by 850 metric tonnes since they joined it last June.

They achieved this by cutting down on the thickness, weight or dimensions of packaging materials, without compromising on product quality. Other measures include re-using and recycling packaging and educating customers on minimising waste.

NEA also announced that 31 more companies in the food and beverage sector have joined the agreement.

Signed in June 2007, the agreement's signatories already include five industry associations representing more than 500 companies, 19 individual firms, two non-governmental organisations, the Waste Management & Recycling Association of Singapore, and four public waste collectors.

To recognise signatories who have made notable efforts in reducing packaging waste, the NEA also announced the inaugural 3R Packaging Awards.

Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, will be presenting the awards to 10 companies on Nov 3.

The distinction award will be presented to Asia Pacific Breweries (Singapore ) Pte Ltd, Bon Cafe International Pte Ltd, Kentucy Fried Chicken Management Pte Ltd and Tetra Pak Jurong Pte Ltd.

The merit recipients will be presented to Chinatown Food Corporation Pte Ltd, F & N Coca-Cola (Singapore) Pte Ltd, McDonald's Restaurants Pte Ltd, Nestle Singapore Pte Ltd, Subway Singapore Development Pte Ltd and Sunfresh Singapore Pte Ltd. - CNA /ls

Good things do come in small packages ...
Ten firms bag NEA’s very first 3R Packaging Awards
Esther Ng, Today Online 31 Oct 08;

IF YOU’VE been ordering Kentucky Fried Chicken’s (KFC) home-delivered Couple Meal or Family Meal in the past few months, you would have noticed that the box holding the four pieces of chicken has gotten much smaller, and the small plastic bags and napkins have gotten thinner.

By reducing the amount of paper and plastic used for packaging, KFC saved 41 metric tonnes of paper and 2.9 metric tonnes of plastic, or over $40,000, within a year.

“We used to have ‘chicken running around’ in our old delivery boxes, which were bigger. Now with a more compact size, our drivers can pack two instead of one box in their delivery bags,” said KFC’s senior manager of supply chain management Philip Ng.

Meanwhile, Tiger Beer drinkers will find that their favourite glass of beer is now much lighter. In the past one year, Asia Pacific Breweries has reduced the weight of its quart glass bottle from 520g to 500g as well as the base of its 330ml and 323ml aluminium cans for all its brands of beer from 0.285mm to 0.280mm. The minute changes enabled the company to save 79.8 metric tonnes of glass and 36 metric tonnes of aluminium a year.

KFC and Asia Pacific Breweries are just two of 10 companies that have won the National Environment Agency’s (NEA)inaugural 3R Packaging Awards.

The other winners are: Tetra Pak Jurong, Boncafe International, Chinatown Food Corporation; F&N Coca Cola; McDonald’s; Nestle Singapore; Subway Singapore and Sunfresh Singapore.

The awards are given to the NEA’s Singapore Packaging Agreement signatories that have made notable efforts in their public waste minimisation programmes and to reduce packaging waste at source.

And with prices of raw materials fluctuating, more companies might see the benefit of reducing their packaging.

“Prices of raw materials have gone up2.5 times in the last four years while retail price of food products have increased by20 per cent. However, F&B manufacturers have been absorbing the increased cost of raw materials. But if companies reduced their packaging, they can save on raw material cost,” said Mr Sunny Koh, deputy chairman of the Singapore Packaging Governing Board.

Since the launch of the Agreement in June last year, more than 500 signatories, mostly from the food and beverage industry, have collectively reduced packaging waste by as much as 17 per cent, or about 850 metric tonnes, within a year.

Said Mr Lee Huen Yee, chief executive officer of the NEA: “The reduction of 850 metrictonnes isn’t a lot but it’s encouraging for a start.” He added that 31 more companies in the F&B sector, including Delifrance andBengawan Solo, have joined the Agreement.

“We’re hoping to get the toiletries industry on board. People these days like to use liquid soap without realising that the bottle is added packaging. And there’s too much packaging in perfumes,” he said.

The 3R Packaging Awards will be given out by Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, Minister for Environment and Water Resources, at a ceremony during the International Solid Waste Association Congress on Nov 3.

Extremely Rare Leopard Photographed

LiveScience Yahoo News 30 Oct 08;

At least one of the world's rarest big cats is alive and well, according to scientists who captured, photographed and gave a check-up to a female Far Eastern leopard in Russia last week.

The Far Eastern leopard is perhaps the world's most endangered big cat, with an estimated 25 to 40 individuals inhabiting a narrow strip of land in the far southeastern corner of the Russian Federation.

A team of scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Biology and Soils (IBS) captured one of these rare felines in Primorsky Krai along the Russian-Chinese border.

The leopardess, nicknamed "Alyona" by the researchers, was in good physical condition, weighing a healthy 85 pounds (39 kilograms). A preliminary health analysis revealed that she is between 8 and 10 years old. Alyona has since been released unharmed.

Specialists are continuing to analyze blood samples as well as an electrocardiogram, which will reveal genetic information to assess levels of inbreeding (the tiny leopard population is thought to have no more than 10 to 15 females).

Three leopards captured previously (2 males and 1 female) in 2006 and 2007 all exhibited significant heart murmurs, which may reflect genetic disorders.

"We are excited by the capture, and are hopeful that ongoing analysis of biomedical information will confirm that this individual is in good health," said Alexey Kostyria, a senior scientist at IBS and manager for the WCS-IBS project. "This research is critical for conservation of the Far Eastern leopard, as it will help us to determine the risks posed by inbreeding and what we can do to mitigate them."

One of the options scientists are considering is trans-locating leopards from other areas to increase genetic diversity - similar to the strategy used with Florida panthers, when animals from Texas were brought in to supplement the remaining population. Today, Florida panthers have risen from less than 10 individuals to a population of about 100.

Over the past 100 years, Far Eastern leopard numbers have been reduced by poaching and habitat loss. However, camera-trapping and snow-tracking surveys indicate that the population has been stable for the past 30 years, but with a high rate of turnover of individuals. If inbreeding or disease can be kept in check, WCS and its partners think there is great potential for increasing survival rates and habitat recovery in both Russia and Northeast China.

The Far Eastern leopard is listed under CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species), which protects it against illegal trade for fur and medicinal purposes.

The U.S. Congress is currently considering legislation called the Great Cats and Rare Canids Act, which would directly benefit the Far Eastern leopard and more than a dozen big cat and rare dog species by creating a fund for research and monitoring, law enforcement training, and other conservation efforts.

The Wildlife Conservation Society's work to protect Far Eastern leopards receives funding from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's Rhinoceros and Tiger Conservation Fund, National Fish and Wildlife Foundation's Save the Tiger Fund and the U.S. Forest Service International Program.

Nasty Fungus May Be Killing Thousands Of US Bats

Will Dunham, PlanetArk 31 Oct 08;

WASHINGTON - A previously unknown fungus that thrives in chilly temperatures may be the culprit behind the deaths of at least 100,000 bats hibernating in caves in the northeastern United States, scientists said on Thursday.

The fungus is a white, powdery-looking organism found on the muzzles, ears and wings of dead and dying bats hibernating in caves in New York state, Maine, Vermont and Connecticut in the past two years, they wrote in the journal Science.

"Essentially, hibernating bats are getting mouldy as they hang from their cave ceiling," David Blehert, a microbiologist with the US Geological Survey who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

"It's decimating the cave-bat populations," he said.

Bats play a vital role in keeping down insect populations, pollinating plants and spreading around plant seeds.

The disease is affecting all six species of hibernating cave bats in the northeastern United States -- little brown bats, big brown bats, northern bats, tricoloured bats, Indiana bats and the small-footed myotis, Blehert said.

At least 100,000 and perhaps as many as 200,000 bats have died since the so-called white-nose syndrome linked to the fungus first appeared in the winter of 2006-2007, he said.

The fungus was found to have colonized the skin of about 90 percent of the 117 bats examined after they died.

Migratory tree bats, which live in the same region but fly to warmer locales in the winter rather than hibernating in caves, have not been affected, Blehert added.

Based on bat population counts done in two caves in New York state, the disease may be killing off more than three quarters of the winged mammals as they hibernate.

The culprit may be a previously unknown species of the fungi genus Geomyces, which is present in soil and eats organic matter. The new one thrives in temperatures like those seen in caves, 36 to 59 degrees Fahrenheit (2 to 15 degrees Celsius).

The scientists said they have not yet determined whether this fungus is the only factor in the bat deaths. Most of the bats also are emaciated.

They are trying to learn whether the disease emerged because the fungus somehow was introduced into the caves, or whether it already was there and began harming bats only after the animals were weakened by some other unknown cause.

The researchers likened the threat to that posed by another fungus that causes a skin infection and is linked to large declines in amphibian populations globally.

(Editing by Sandra Maler)

Bat Death Mystery Solved
Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience.com 30 Oct 08;

Bats are getting moldy and dying, and this is no Halloween trick. Now scientists have identified the culprit in the deadly mystery.

The killer is a member of a group of cold-loving fungi called Geomyces. This white, powdery-looking fungus coats the muzzles, ears and wings of bats and has meant death for more than 100,000 of the night flyers in the northeastern United States.

"So essentially these bats are hanging on the cave ceiling almost like a piece of food that you've forgotten about in your refrigerator and for whatever reason now they're getting moldy," microbiologist David Blehert of the U.S. Geological Survey told LiveScience.

A big question remains: Why has this murder mystery only surfaced recently?

The fungi live in the soil, water and air, and now on bat skin. They can survive refrigerator-level temperatures, which are typical of many caves where bats hibernate. Once beneath the outer layer of skin covering a bat's wing, the fungus multiplies, sometimes causing the wing to bulge to five to 10 times its original thickness.

The researchers are not sure if the fungus is the sole exterminator of infected bats. Most of the fungus-infected bats are also emaciated and some leave their caves during the cold of winter in search of insect food, in vain. The fungus could be the cause of starvation or it could have invaded the skin of starving bats whose immune systems would have been depressed, the researchers speculate.

The work will be detailed in the Oct. 31 issue of the journal Science.

Mysterious white stuff

Bats covered with the fungus, a sickness now called white-nose syndrome, were first spotted in Howes Cave near Albany, N.Y., during the winter of 2006. At that time, field biologists reported caves that were typically covered with hibernating bats had loads of vacancies, which the scientists assume is because the bats either died or were flitting around in search of food. In one case, a cave floor was littered with dead bats.

Since then, scientists have estimated drastic declines in populations of cave-hibernating bats in Connecticut, Maine, New York and Vermont. In some caves, more than 75 percent of the bats have perished.

To figure out the culprit, Blehert and his colleagues ran post-mortem tests on more than 100 bats from the affected regions. The bats included little brown myotis (Myotis lucifugus), northern long-eared myotis (Myotis septentrionalis), big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) and tricolored bats (Perimyotis subflavus).

"We found that this fungus had colonized the skin of 90 percent of the bats we analyzed from all the states affected by white-nose syndrome," Blehert said.

The fungus had invaded deep into the skin of infected bats. The fungal spores likely sneak into the bats' skin through hair follicles or sweat and oil glands. The fungi continue to multiply and push their way through other skin layers until they've broken through the outer layer called the epidermis and reached a layer of connective tissue, the researchers suggest.

And while the fungus is genetically a member of the genus Geomyces, it looks different from the known Geomyces species.

"A typical Geomyces has club-shaped spores and these are curved or shaped like little bananas," Blehert said.

Bat mystery deepens

The caves where bats hibernate from late October through late April or early May in the northeastern United States could be the perfect spots for fungal growth, the researchers say.

Fungi in general do best in moist environments, and so it's no surprise that the researchers found more infected bats in the most humid caves. In addition, this particular fungus can survive at temperatures between 36 degrees and 60 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees to 15 degrees Celsius), which are typical in caves.

The bats also lower their core body temperatures to match that of the caves, making their bodies perfect hideouts for the fungi. (In addition, bats lower their heart rates from about 1,000 beats per minute to four beats a minute during hibernation.)

He added, "The bats have done this for millions of years. They have hibernated in these same caves using the same physiological mechanism, dropping their heart rates down, not eating, dropping their core body temperature down, and they didn't used to get moldy."

Why now? The bats may have ingested some environmental contaminant that is causing them to starve, Blehert said, or pesticides may have wiped out their food source, keeping the bats from fattening up before entering caves for hibernation. Their emaciated bodies would then be susceptible to invasion by the fungus.

Another possibility is that the fungal infestation is irritating the bats' skin. The irritation could cause the bats to wake up more often during hibernation. While hibernating bats typically wake up for short periods every two weeks or so, the fungi could cause more frequent wake-ups. These mid-hibernation arousals are costly as the bat warms up its body and turns on other body processes like its immune system. That means the wake-up could use up critical energy in the form of fat reserves, causing the bats to starve.

Blehert plans to continue studying the fungi and its link with bat deaths to get to the bottom of the batty mystery.

Pesticide, fertilisers linked to decline of amphibians: study

Marlowe Hood Yahoo News 30 Oct 08;

PARIS (AFP) – A pesticide compound commonly used in the United States is linked to the growth of tiny parasites that sicken and kill frogs and also harms the amphibians' immune defences against infection, according to a study published Thursday.

The impact of this chemical is boosted in the wild by phosphate fertilisers, the investigators believe.

Runoff from fertilisers into ponds encourages the proliferation of snails that are a natural host to the flatworm parasites, they say.

The flatworms, called trematodes, are notorious for causing limb malformations, kidney damage and sometimes death in several species of frog.

The new study points the finger at atrazine, an active ingredient in several herbicide products manufactured by a Swiss-based company, Syngenta.

Atrazine was banned in the European Union in 2004 after the chemical showed up in drinking water, but has over the last 15 years become a leading farm chemical in the United States, especially in corn-growing regions.

In a field survey led by Jason Rohr of the University of South Florida, scientists measured more than 240 variables in 18 Minnesota wetlands that could account for the rate at which frogs are infected by trematodes.

The strongest link by far was with atrazine concentrations, which accounted for more than 50 percent of the likelihood that the amphibians would become diseased.

When the presence of atrazine was combined with traces of phosphate fertilizer -- runoff from nearby agricultural plots -- the rate of diseased frogs went up to 75 percent.

Seeking to find out more, the researchers raised tadpoles for four weeks in several 290-gallon (1,100-litre) tanks containing snails, leaves and insect larvae, to approximate a natural environment.

In tanks where atrazine was added in concentrations found in wetlands, four times as many snails grew compared with the population that was in water free of the herbicide. The population of the parasitic flatworms exploded too.

Green frogs used in the experiment showed significantly higher levels of trematode infection, while pickerel frogs experienced high rates of mortality.

"The wetlands survey was highly suggestive that atrazine was causing the increase in larval trematode load," Rohr told AFP by phone.

"The follow-up experiment really demonstrated that it was indeed a causal link."

He cautioned, though, that these findings did not by themselves explain a massive slump in American frog populations, a fall that began in the mid-1990s and is mirrored by shrinking populations of amphibians elsewhere in the world.

Global warming, inflicting a loss of wetland habitat, has been blamed as one of the causes.

Syngenta, asked to reply by AFP, said in a statement: "50 years of use and a vast amount of research has shown that (atrazine) can be used safely with no long-term detriment to ecosystems."

The concentrations of the chemical in wetlands reported in the Rohr study were well below the "level of concern" thresholds established by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), it noted.

Rohr added that there could be other chemicals in addition to atrazine and fertilizers that affected disease risk.

"Many chemicals can be immuno-suppressive, and standard toxicity tests used to register chemicals in the United States and Europe are conducted on isolated individuals, ignoring interactions with other species, such as their parasites.

"Thus, our findings are likely the tip of the iceberg for pollution-induced disease emergence in both humans and wildlife."

The study was published on Thursday in the London-based journal Nature.

Rohr said that a senior biologist from the EPA, Thomas Steeger, had requested a copy of the study.

In its latest evaluation of atrazine, the EPA concluded in 2006 that the product posed no threat to human health.

Geologists blame gas drilling for Indonesia mud disaster

Yahoo News 30 Oct 08;

LONDON (AFP) – A meeting of leading geologists has concluded that an Indonesian mud volcano which erupted in May 2006, triggering a social and environmental disaster, was caused by nearby drilling for gas, a British university said on Thursday.

The volcano, named Lusi, has swamped 12 villages and displaced around 30,000 people and continues to spew boiling mud at a rate sufficient to fill 53 Olympic swimming pools each day.

The University of Durham, in northeastern England, said 74 top scientists in petroleum geology debated Lusi at a conference in Cape Town, South Africa on Tuesday.

Four experts put forward varying hypotheses, including the university's professor of geology, Richard Davies, it said in a press release.

Forty-two scientists voted in favour of Davies' argument that the cause lay with a gas exploration well, Banjar-Panji-1, that was being drilled in the area by oil and gas company Lapindo Brantas, it said.

Lapindo Brantas disputes this, and says the blame lies with an earthquake two days earlier in Yogyakarta, 280 kilometres (175 miles) away.

Three scientists agreed with this explanation.

Sixteen said the evidence was inconclusive, while 13 believed that a combination of quake and drilling was to blame, the university said.

The vote was taken at a meeting that took place during a conference of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, which ran from October 26-29.

Davies has led several investigations into Lusi and contends that the quake was too small and too distant to have caused the blowout, whereas the gas well was being drilled only 150 metres (yards) from the volcano site.

At the Cape Town meeting, he put forward new data that he said proved that the day before the eruption, the well took a huge influx of fluid, resulting in intolerable pressures.

The data "provide a compelling tape recording of the well as it started to leak," said Davies.

"I remain convinced that drilling was the cause of the mud volcano. The opinion of the international scientists at the event in South Africa adds further weight to my conviction and the conclusions of many other leading scientists who have studied Lusi."

Davies says Lusi is collapsing by about 13 metres (42 feet) a year and could eventually subside to more than 140m (455 feet), inflicting lasting environmental damage.

Climate Change To Help Short-Lived Creatures - Study

Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 31 Oct 08;

OSLO - Climate change is likely to disrupt food chains by favouring animals with short lifespans over often bigger rivals that are worse at tolerating temperature swings, scientists said on Thursday.

The researchers in Germany and Canada said that studies of the physical characteristics of animals showed that all have widely differing "thermal windows" -- a range of temperatures in which they best feed, grow and reproduce.

That meant that climate change would not affect all equally.

"Climate change will favour species with wide thermal windows, short life spans, and a large gene pool amongst its population," the journal Science said of the findings.

Big fish such as cod, which have narrow thermal windows, were moving north in the Atlantic, for instance, partly because the food chain was disrupted by a shift to smaller plankton, reducing the amount of prey on which large fish can feed.

A shift to smaller plankton meant that juvenile cod in the Atlantic had to use more energy to feed, slowing their growth. Female cod tolerate only a narrow "thermal window" when they produce eggs, part of a strategy evolved to cut energy use.

The study focused on the oceans but the scientists said the findings may also apply to land creatures.

"Each species covers a certain range. The ranges overlap, but their (thermal) windows are not the same," Hans Poertner, of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, who was one of the authors, told Reuters.

Knowledge of the differences could help predict the reactions to climate change, widely blamed on human emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.

In the German Wadden Sea, larger eelpout fish, a long and thin species that grows up to about 500 grammes (1 lb), suffered more quickly than smaller specimens when summer temperatures rose above normal.

"In the Japan Sea, different thermal windows between sardines and anchovies ... caused a regime shift to anchovies in the late 1990s," they wrote.

(Editing by Alison Williams)

Precycling: Waste not, want not

Recyling is good, but precycling - cutting out packaging in the first place and buying only what you need - is better. Tanis Taylor tried it for a month

Tanis Taylor, The Guardian 30 Oct 08;

Every Tuesday, as a house, we put out two big green boxes of recycling. I say green because a) they literally are and b) the presumption is that by using them, so are we. But wouldn't it be greener not to put out the recycling - to generate so little waste that, come Tuesday, there is nothing to put in the green box? It is an idealistic notion, but is it practical? I decided to try it for a month to find out. And in doing so, I inadvertently discovered that I'd joined a movement.

Precycling is the practice of reducing waste by attempting to avoid accumulating it in the first place. Precyclers try to cut out as much packaging as possible and, to this end, they think ahead, shop locally, buy things loose and bring their own containers. The benefits are various; from saving money and creating less landfill to reducing food miles and conserving natural resources.

The term was coined in 1988 for a waste awareness campaign in Berkeley, California. Residents were encouraged to avoid single-use items and to buy in bulk. Affectionately known as "wombles", they refused junk mail, carried precycling "kits" (such as cloth sandwich bags and cutlery) and when the internet came, they did their reading online to cut down on pulp. Today, however, precycling is generating interest among the eco-aware. In its report in May, the US market research firm Intelligence Group found that half of all consumers thought about an item's reuse or resale cost before purchase, that 45% of US trendsetters and 14% of mainstream consumers have cut down on bottled water purchases and 49% and 16% respectively have cut down on the use of plastic bags. In the UK, financially concerned and environmentally aware consumers are turning to tap over bottled water and carrying canvas shopping bags; Sainsbury's is even reporting a 36% rise in its sales of lunchboxes.

UK households throw away 5.9m tonnes of packaging every year, 4.7m tonnes of which is food related. Recyling is a greener option - saving between 25% and 90% of the energy it would take to create new products - but there is still an environmental cost. Recycling a plastic bottle takes a lot of time and energy; washing it under the tap does not.

The key to being a good precycler is being prepared. This I learn on day one of my trial when I forget to bring my lunch to work and am reduced to eating fruit and ice-cream (the cone being the ultimate in edible packaging). The following day, I get organised: daily sandwiches (in a washable sandwich wrap), a travel mug, cloth shopping bags and a water bottle are on hand at all times. Gone are the impulse, convenience shopping sprees of old - to be replaced by an intentional, almost military approach to what I need to buy and from where.

I patronise local markets, fishmongers, butchers and bakers and rediscover the joys of having bottles of milk delivered to my doorstep (milk and orange juice bottles can be reused 20 times before they are recycled). There is a nostalgic, parochial pleasure that comes from asking bemused staff at Costa Coffee to fill up my china mug, of carrying apples in a paper bag and using a handkerchief to blow my nose. It speaks of gentler times, a greater custody of care, and thoughtful, less harried, consumption. It saves me money and encourages experimentation. I make bread and cook strange recipes in a kitchen clear of jostling brands.

However, convenience food is aptly named. Buying unpackaged is, initially, hugely inconvenient. Finding naked staples takes real tenacity, but they do exist. Shops such as Unpackaged in north London sell dried goods in open bins, beside loose toilet rolls and a small line in refillable juices and cosmetics - and give you a discount when you bring your own container. Rural and city farms are alive and well, and great for eggs and dairy, while farmers' markets and box schemes provide your five-a-day. For pulses and staples, ethnic high street stores such as Green Valley, off the Edgware Road in London, are bulk-buy havens - with sacks and spice bins of jarish and Lebanese thyme next to tubs of cashews, apricots, figs and dried sharon fruits. At the lower-budget end of the spectrum, Weigh & Save outlets can still be found on the outskirts of some towns, where you can stroll through aisles of ginger cake-mix, pearl barley and dried dog food, buying only as much as you need by the gram. Meanwhile, shopkeepers in smaller, artisan shops, such as the Monmouth Coffee Company, have witnessed a bring-your-own revival, with more customers bringing their own jars to be filled. "People are plumping for less packaging for a variety of reasons, economic and environmental," says Cath Conway of Unpackaged.

So how did I do? During my month, the green halo slipped often. I still bought my mayonnaise in bottles and tuna in cans and I never did find a solution to the wine issue. (It is hard to find decanted wine, and I couldn't face Wetherspoon's superchilled draught wine.) But by the end of the month, my black bin was hardly being used and we were putting out one green bin, a quarter full.

Eventually, says Nimish Shah, a 35-year-old precycler from London, it will be empty. Shah hasn't been to a supermarket for years. He shops at small stores and always brings his own bags. He cuts an eccentric figure at his local market, putting fish fillets in a cloth bag that he washes and reuses. "When I look at an item," he says, "the first thing I think is whether I could just do away with the packaging or, failing that, reuse it somehow. Recycling a product should be the last option really".

Time to bury the 'clean coal' myth

In the second of his Greenwash columns, Fred Pearce exposes how energy companies and governments are trying to rebrand coal as a clean fuel of the future despite the evidence
Fred Pearce, guardian.co.uk 30 Oct 08;

Who came up with the term "clean coal"? It is the most toxic phrase in the greenwash lexicon. George W Bush, by promising to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into the pursuit of advanced "clean" coal technologies, certainly popularised it. But I'd love to know where it came from. Any thoughts out there?

It is, of course, oxymoronic. Coal is about acid rain and peasouper smogs, asthma and mercury contamination, radioactive waste emissions and ripping apart mountains, killing trees, lung cancer and, of course, global warming.

Coal emits more carbon dioxide for every unit of energy generated than any other fuel. Sure you can clean it up a bit – though the toxins you've taken out of the ground have to go somewhere. But clean coal? Just say no.

But the phrase rolls on. Google offers more than a million web pages. We will hear a lot more of it as the UK government wrestles with whether to approve a new billion-pound "cleaner coal" power station – Britain's first coal plant for three decades – at Kingsnorth in Kent.

E.ON, the company that wants to build the station, says Kingsnorth will be "ready" to capture carbon dioxide emissions before they go up the stack. Great, except there is no such technology right now.

This phrase "clean coal" has developed a life of its own thanks to remorseless commercial propagandising. This year a coalition of US coal mining companies and electricity utilities called Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (and recently renamed the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity) is paying the advertising agency R&R Partners $35m (£22m) to promote "clean coal" through advertising and other promotional activity.

This is up there with the safe cigarette and "atoms for peace". The industry is fighting back against growing scientific calls to outlaw coal burning, and the rejection of dozens of coal power plants proposals by communities across the US, with several states effectively banning them.

You may have noticed the campaign's effect. Both John McCain and Barack Obama support clean coal. It's neat. Who could be against clean coal? It allows them to oppose dirty coal without antagonising anyone. You may not have spotted that Americans for Balanced Energy Choices sponsored two early presidential debates, during which – guess what – no questions were asked about global warming.

And here in Britain you can see the impact of the new mantra. In Putney, in southwest London, there is a branch of the International Energy Agency that used to be called the Coal Research Centre. It's changed its name – to the Clean Coal Centre. Thanks to its "industrial sponsors" it is able to "provide unbiased information on the sustainable use of coal worldwide." Right. Like the fact there isn't any?

Is clean coal possible in future? Well, if you mean could we capture carbon dioxide emissions and bury them somewhere out of harm's way – in old coal seams or oilfields or salt mines – yes, it is possible. The former British chief scientist Sir David King called it "the only hope for mankind".

But the most authoritative study, The Future of Coal, published last year by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), concluded that the first commercial carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant wouldn't come on stream until 2030 at the earliest.

Last year too, the Edison Electric Institute, which represents most US power generators, admitted to a House Select Committee in Washington DC that commercial deployment will require 25 years research costing at least $20bn.

And that was before the US administration last December canned the biggest R&D project on the technology anywhere in the world. It said it was too costly and hinted that, for all their green talk, industry wasn't prepared to back it.

Oh, and if the technology did one day work – and could demonstrate that it could keep liquefied carbon dioxide buried for the thousands of years necessary – it would take decades to build the vast infrastructure needed to deploy on a large scale. Infrastructure that could only be paid for by maintaining a vast dirty coal-burning industry for the duration.

But politicians can be very ill-read if it suits them. The mythology of clean coal has penetrated deep into their thinking round the world because it is so convenient. In Australia, the new green-minded prime minister Kevin Rudd is super-keen on "clean coal" because he imagines it allows him to promise both to meet Australia's Kyoto protocol pledges and to assuage the concerns of industry.

Coal provides most of Australia's electricity and is it most valuable export. But you can't meet current emissions targets with a technology 20 years over the horizon.

Similarly German chancellor Angela Merkel, though a chemist by training, has fallen for the hope that she can both build dozens of new coal-fired power stations and meet her promise to cut German CO2 emissions by 40% by 2020. It won't happen.

The British government is as deep into clean-coal cuckoo land as any of them. John Hutton, until recently business secretary, claimed that a third of British electricity could be generated using CCS by 2030 – clearly pie in the sky. He should fire the adviser who wrote that for him. The mirage of clean coal is designed to coax the world into maintaining its addiction to the most dangerous (and profuse) fossil fuel of all. My bet is that if Kingsnorth is approved, it will never deliver so much as a tonne of carbon dioxide to anywhere other than the atmosphere.

UK will face peak oil crisis within five years, report warns

Declining availability of oil will hit the UK earlier than generally expected, with potentially devastating implications for the UK economy, report warns
Duncan Clark, guardian.co.uk 29 Oct 08;

The risk to the UK from falling oil production in coming years is greater than the threat posed by terrorism, according to an industry taskforce report published today.

The report, from the Peak Oil group, warns that the problem of declining availability of oil will hit the UK earlier than generally expected - possibly within the next five years and as early as 2011.

Oil supply could then rapidly decline, or even collapse, the report warns, with potentially devastating implications for the UK economy.

The report was issued today by the recently established UK industry taskforce on peak oil and energy security, a group of eight companies including transport firms Virgin, Stagecoach and FirstGroup, engineers Arup, architects Foster and Partners, and energy giant Scottish and Southern.

Entitled The Oil Crunch, the report argues that the risk of an early peak in oil production poses a bigger threat to UK society than tightening gas supplies, terrorism or the short-term impacts of climate change.

The "peak oil" debate has raged for many years. Some governments and oil companies believe that crude oil production will meet rising demand for decades to come. But an increasingly vocal group - including many experts from within the oil industry - claim that a production peak is imminent.

The new report marks the first time a group of businesses has weighed into this debate. At its core are two newly commissioned assessments of future oil production: one from Chris Skrebowski, consulting editor of Petroleum Review, and one from Shell.

Skrebowski predicts that global oil production will peak in the period 2011-2013 and then decline steadily, with non-conventional sources such as tar sands failing to fill the gap in time to avoid a serious energy crunch. He also warns that supplies could collapse if a handful of huge, long-established oil fields go into terminal decline simultaneously.

Shell, by contrast, foresees oil production rising until 2015, and then remaining on a plateau until the 2020s, with unconventional sources balancing out a decline in regular crude extraction.

Having examined the evidence, the taskforce considers that Skrebowski's peak-and-fall scenario is the "highly probable" outcome, with the collapse scenario also possible.

This view contrasts starkly with the position of the British government. A statement from the new Department of Energy and Climate Change reiterates the government's established view on this issue.

"The government's assessment is that global proven reserves are larger than the cumulative production needed to meet rising demand until at least 2030," the statement says. "This is consistent with the assessment made by the International Energy Agency in its 2007 World Energy Outlook that lead to the conclusion that global oil resources are adequate for the foreseeable future."

How Parked Cars Could Power the Future

Michael Schirber, LiveScience.com Yahoo News 29 Oct 08;

Editor's Note: Each Wednesday LiveScience examines the viability of emerging energy technologies - the power of the future.

Imagine running a parking meter backwards and actually being paid to park your car. Along those lines, electric vehicles might one day make money for their owners by providing electrical storage for the nation's power grid.

The monthly income could add up to a lot more than what you pay for a big-city parking ticket and many moving violations.

The concept, called vehicle to grid (V2G), is based on the fact that your car is typically not being used 90 percent of the time. "What if it could work for you while it sits there?" said Jeff Stein from the University of Michigan.

Of course the car has to plug into a socket, so that electricity can flow both into and back out of the battery. Renting out electrical storage in this way could make electric vehicles more affordable, while also removing the need for backup electricity generators.

Stein and his colleagues have just received a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to explore the possibility of V2G technology using plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs).

"We want to show that it doesn't have to be a one-way street between vehicles and the grid," Stein told LiveScience. "Utility companies could benefit from having a million batteries for storing electricity."

Grid operations

A network of little batteries spread throughout the grid has certain advantages over a single centralized electrical storage facility. If you can get some of the juice to run your appliances from your neighbor's electric vehicle, then that electricity doesn't have to travel as far.

"Electricity consumption is widely distributed, so it makes sense to inject electricity at multiple sites," explained Tom Gage, CEO of AC Propulsion, a California company that manufactures electric vehicles.

A number of small V2G demonstrations have taken place with cars from AC Propulsion and other companies, but the amount of electricity drawn was insignificant. Even as larger projects come on line, the goal is not to have these batteries on wheels provide the grid's primary (baseload) power, but only extra power to smooth out fluctuations.

Fluctuations can occur in the outlet frequency (60 Hertz in the United States) if supply does not match demand. For this reason, grid operators pay to have extra electricity generators that can respond to any sudden changes in electricity consumption.

This so-called "regulation" power is purchased in blocks of 1 megawatt each. One megawatt could be supplied by 100 or so pure electric vehicles (EVs) or 1,000 or so PHEVs, Gage said. It takes more PHEVs because they have a smaller battery, which is supplemented by a gas-powered engine.

(Typically, an EV can store roughly 30 kilowatt-hours on its battery from which it can supply around 10 kilowatts of electric power, while a PHEV can store about 5 kilowatt-hours and supply around 1 kilowatt, Gage said.)

Because not all the electric vehicles will be plugged in at the same time, studies are currently looking into just how many EVs or PHEVs need to be grouped together to ensure that there will always be 1 megawatt of power available to the grid from the ensemble of vehicles.

Can I charge that?

Simulations have shown that an EV owner could get $300 per month as part of a group of cars that offer their batteries for regulation power, Gage said. A PHEV would presumably earn about a tenth of this rate.

Even with that extra dough, though, no one is going to want to come out to their car and have their battery dead. This is unlikely, Gage said, because the grid operator would only be shuffling power in and out of vehicles, so the net effect would be at most a 20 percent drop.

However, a lot of the details have yet to be worked out for V2G. Gage said there will need to be some long-term field trials to see whether battery life is shortened by the constant ebb and flow of charge between grid and vehicle. And work continues on how best to keep track of which cars are supplying power to the grid and for how long.

Four Green Projects To Save Jobs And Cut Emissions

PlanetArk 31 Oct 08;

Oct 30 - A growing "carbon army" of environmentalists and bankers have seized on political support to boost flagging economies to press for more spending on climate-friendly projects.

In times of downturn, spending on infrastructure can prime demand, provide work and avert depression, a lesson learned from US President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s.

Following are four major projects to cut carbon emissions that would need a large input of funding.

1. OFF-SHORE WIND

Britain said last week it had become the world's biggest operator of off-shore wind turbines -- an emerging industry which includes only Denmark and the Netherlands as serious contenders.

Britain's Carbon Trust said this month that the country could obtain a quarter of its electricity from wind turbines planted in the sea floor by 2020, cutting carbon emissions by 14 percent and creating up to 70,000 jobs.

"It's all about timing, the key thing is what we can deploy by 2020," said Tom Jennings, strategy manager at the Carbon Trust, a government-backed group which advises the country and companies on how to cut emissions.

Britain faces a 13 gigawatt power generation shortfall by 2020, the Carbon Trust says, equivalent to about 5 percent of the country's entire capacity now, and an EU target to get a fifth of all its energy from renewable sources by then.

Job creation would in part depend on nurturing non-existent wind turbine manufacturing capacity in Britain, at present dominated by Denmark and Germany which could also snap up installation and servicing jobs.

2. SOLAR THERMAL POWER

Solar thermal plants use mirrors to heat water and turn it into steam, which drives a turbine like a conventional gas or coal-fired power plant.

An advantage over wind is that it is easier to store heat than electricity, making it easier for solar thermal plants to send power to the grid at any time.

The first large European solar thermal plant will be commissioned in southern Spain within weeks. The 50-megawatt Andasol 1 plant cost 300 million euros, which the private sector will re-coup through a 25-year, state-guaranteed power price.

Similar projects would each create up to 100 permanent jobs and 800 more during construction, said Henner Gladen, co-founder of the project's developer Solar Millennium.

Leaders of 43 countries from the European Union and the Mediterranean region met in July to debate a possible "Mediterranean Solar Plan" to develop solar power in the deserts of North Africa, and export the electricity to Europe.

3. CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) traps carbon dioxide produced by burning coal and gas, then stores it underground, for example in depleted oil and gas fields.

Commercial tests have stalled because of the expense and concerns that the technology dents power plant efficiency.

Burning coal is the highest carbon-emitting method of generating electricity, but also one of the cheapest and most readily available, so CCS technology may be indispensable in the climate fight.

The fix may contribute one fifth of all carbon emissions cuts by 2050, says the International Energy Agency (IEA).

An EU target to test up to 12 plants by 2015 would create $30 billion in investment, said the author of an IEA report published last week.

"That would give Europe a head start in a much, much bigger market in the future," said the IEA's Kamel Bennaceur, who calculated a global CCS market worth up to $500 billion by 2050, equal to the entire global coal market now.

4. ENERGY EFFICIENCY

Energy efficiency projects are the best value, because they save money by cutting energy demand, after a big investment.

Efficiency measures could start now and help save jobs in the construction sector suffering from collapsing prices.

Researchers McKinsey estimate that an annual $170 billion investment in efficiency measures such as more efficient heating, cooling and lighting would slash global energy bills by $900 billion annually by 2020.

The IEA estimates efficiency measures could contribute about two fifths of all cuts in carbon emissions by 2050.

(Reporting by Gerard Wynn; editing by Andrew Dobbie)

Financial Crisis Has Lessons For Climate Fight - Expert

David Fogarty, PlanetArk 31 Oct 08;

GOLD COAST - The world still has the funds and ability to fight climate change and nations should not use the financial crisis to delay policies on tackling global warming, a top carbon expert said on Thursday.

James Cameron, vice-chairman of London-based Climate Change Capital, said the mobilisation of trillions of dollars over recent months had demonstrated the strength and scale of cooperation in tackling a global crisis.

"We run the risk that governments will choose to focus on the near-term crisis and allow themselves the delusion that there is more time available to deal with a crisis coming slowly from afar," he told a major carbon conference in Australia.

"So I accept that there is a danger that climate change could slip in the priority list for governments," he told delegates.

"But we have learned that we are able to cooperate across borders to deal with the financial crisis, and beyond political boundaries, so we can mobilize capital very fast and that we do so in ways that support the continuation of our market systems."

He said if governments combined that same capacity to cooperate with a matching urgency in tackling climate change, then the world could deal with both crises at the same time.

There are concerns the financial crisis has already called on large reserves of public capital and that countries would be reluctant to make near-term climate change commitments that would cost their economies or threaten jobs.

But Cameron, a senior member of one of the world's leading investors in clean-energy projects, said such a short-term focus was unwise.

"If you are making investments that are designed to deliver public good in dealing with a crisis that will undeniably cost our economies substantial amounts over decades to come, it trivialises the issue to do a near-term cost-benefit analysis."

"We are not, despite the recent drastic fall in the value of stock markets, without the capital to invest in solutions to this problem," he added.

Climate Change Capital has more than $1.6 billion in funds under management and focuses on companies and institutions affected by the policy and capital market responses to climate change, the firm says on its website.

(Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Climate-Warming Methane Levels Rose Fast In 2007

Deborah Zabarenko, PlanetArk 31 Oct 08;

WASHINGTON - Levels of climate-warming methane -- a greenhouse gas 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide -- rose abruptly in Earth's atmosphere last year, and scientists who reported the change don't know why it occurred.

Methane, the primary component of natural gas, has more than doubled in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times, but stayed largely stable over the last decade or so before rising in 2007, researchers said on Wednesday.

This stability led scientists to believe that the emissions of methane, from natural sources like cows, sheep and wetlands, as well as from human activities like coal and gas production, were balanced by the destruction of methane in the atmosphere.

But that balance was upset starting early last year, releasing millions of metric tonnes more methane into the air, the scientists wrote in the Geophysical Research Letters.

"The thing that's really surprising is that it's coming after this period of very level emissions," said Matthew Rigby of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The worry is that we just don't understand the methane cycle very well."

Another surprise was that the rise in methane levels happened simultaneously at all the places scientists measured around the globe, instead of being centred near known sources of methane emissions in the Northern Hemisphere, said Rigby, one of the study's lead authors along with Ronald Prinn, also of MIT.

A rise in methane in the Northern Hemisphere might be due to a year-long warm spell in Siberia, where wetlands harbor methane-producing bacteria, the scientists said, but had no immediate answer on why emissions also rose in the Southern Hemisphere at the same time.

There is considerably less methane than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Pre-industrial concentrations of methane were about 700 parts per billion -- that is, for every billion molecules of air, there were only 700 of methane -- but that level rose gradually to 1773 parts per billion by the late 20th century, Rigby said in a telephone interview.

The rise in 2007 was about 10 parts per billion over the course of a year, a real jump for such a short period of time.

By contrast, there are about 385 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. However, methane is much better at locking in the solar radiation that heats up the planet.

Methane is destroyed by reaction with an atmospheric "cleanser" called the hydroxyl free radical, or OH. The researchers theorized that the rise in methane might be due in part to a decline in OH.

The researchers said it is too soon to tell whether the one-year rise in the amount of atmospheric methane is the start of an upward trend or a short-lived anomaly.

(Editing by Eric Walsh)

Manmade global warming evident on every continent, polar report finds

Data compiled by the University of East Anglia finds evidence of warming in Antarctica that can for the first time be directly attributed to human emissions

David Adam, guardian.co.uk 30 Oct 08;

No corner of the Earth is immune from the effects of global warming, according to a new study that confirms manmade temperature rises in both the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Temperature records over the last century show that warming in the planet's coldest and most remote wildernesses is caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases.

The study, published today in Nature Geoscience, is the first to find the fingerprints of manmade global warming on the Antarctic, where a shortage of data makes it hard to be sure.

Last year's report, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said human influence could be detected on every continent, except Antarctica. Climate sceptics have exploited this omission to question the science of global warming.

In the new study, Nathan Gillett, then working at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, though now at Environment Canada, compiled, with colleagues, climate data across the Arctic and Antarctic regions since 1900, and compared the patterns with those produced by computer simulations with and without human activity.

They say only the models that included human influences – such as emissions of carbon dioxide and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) – were able to reproduce the observed temperature trends.

Gillett said: "The main message is that for the first time we are able to directly attribute warming in both the Arctic and Antarctica to human influence. Melting of ice shelves has implications for sea-level rises."

Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the Met Office, who worked on the study, said: "In both polar regions, the observed warming can only be reproduced in our models by including human influences, natural forces alone are not enough.

For a long time climate scientists have known that Arctic areas would be expected to warm most strongly because of feedback mechanisms. But the results from this work demonstrate the part man has already played in the significant warming that we've observed in both polar regions."

The polar regions have seen some of the most dramatic impacts of climate change on the planet in recent years. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average, which has contributed to record melting of sea ice in the Arctic summer and thinning in the winter.

The picture in Antarctica is more complex, but the rocky Antarctic peninsula has experienced temperature rises of 3C over the past 50 years – among the largest recorded. Other parts, including the vast east-Antarctic ice sheet, have seen less change.

Man-Made Climate Change Seen In Antarctica, Arctic
Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 31 Oct 08;

OSLO - Both Antarctica and the Arctic are getting less icy because of global warming, scientists said on Thursday in a study that extends evidence of man-made climate change to every continent.

Detection of a human cause of warming at both ends of the earth also strengthens a need to understand ice sheets on Antarctica and Greenland that would raise world sea levels by about 70 metres (230 ft) if they all melted, they said.

"We're able for the first time to directly attribute warming in both the Arctic and the Antarctic to human influences," said Nathan Gillett of England's University of East Anglia of a study he led with colleagues in the United States, Britain and Japan.

The Arctic has warmed sharply in recent years and sea ice shrank in 2007 to a record low. But Antarctic trends have been confusing -- some winter sea ice has expanded in recent decades, leaving doubts for some about whether warming was global.

The UN Climate Panel, which draws on work by 2,500 experts, said last year that the human fingerprint on climate "has been detected in every continent except Antarctica", which has insufficient observational coverage to make an assessment.

The scientists, writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, said the new findings filled that gap.

The study, comparing temperature records and four computer climate models, found a warming in both polar regions that could be best explained by a buildup of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels, rather than natural shifts.

FEW THERMOMETERS

The link with human activities had been elusive in the polar regions because there are fewer than 100 temperature stations in the Arctic and just 20 in Antarctica, they said.

The scientists said temperatures had risen about 2 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) in the past 40 years in the Arctic.

Temperatures in Antarctica, an icy deep freeze bigger than the United States, had gained by a few tenths of a degree. The Arctic is warming fast because darker water and ground soak up ever more heat than ice and snow that reflect the sun's rays.

The study also formally linked greenhouse gas emissions to rising temperatures in the Arctic, where big natural variations included a sharp temperature rise in the 1930s and 1940s.

The human cause had been hinted at by the UN Climate Panel last year, which said a human impact "has likely contributed to recent decreases in Arctic sea ice extent".

Scientists urged more study of ice and temperatures.

The UN Climate Panel projects that sea levels will rise by between 18 and 59 cm (7-23 inches) this century, part of shifts also likely to include more droughts, floods, heatwaves and more destructive storms.

"We really need to pay closer attention to what's going on with these ice sheets," Andrew Monaghan, of the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research, told a telephone news conference with Gillett.

Asked if the findings would affect his view of the likely pace of melting, he said: "I would say that it would lean towards a little bit bleaker side of the picture."

Britain's Royal Society to examine geo-engineering ideas

Yahoo News 30 Oct 08;

LONDON (AFP) – Britain's de-facto academy of sciences said Thursday it is launching a major study into geo-engineering, the term covering a variety of weird and wonderful ideas for the fight against climate change.

Many geo-engineering schemes -- some of the best known invite ocean fertilisation or attempting to alter atmospheric components in near space-- have been widely dismissed as wacky or dangerous.

"We need to investigate if any of these schemes could help us avoid the most dangerous changes to our climate and to fully understand what other impacts they may have," said John Shepherd, heading the Royal Society working group that will carry out the study.

"Whatever solutions technology may offer us in the future, it's clear that the need to cut emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is now more urgent than ever."

Geo-engineering encompasses a broad range of projects that aim to avert the consequences of man-made global warming, or at least give a few years' breathing space for finding a more durable solution to the problem.

Proposals include sowing the oceans with iron particles in order to boost the growth of surface plankton that would then suck up more atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas.

Another idea is to distribute tiny particles of sulphur dioxide in the stratosphere. Circulating the globe, these whitish particles would reflect solar radiation, thus helping to prevent the planet's surface from warming.

A US scientist has even proposed erecting a mirrored sunshade in orbit that could cool the planet by a couple of degrees.

Such schemes were dismissed as ludicrous or desperate a few years ago, but are now starting to get a serious hearing as political efforts to reduce carbon emissions fall far short of what scientists say is needed.

Shepherd admitted: "Some of these proposals seem fantastical, and may prove to be so. Our study aims to separate the science from the science fiction and offer recommendations on which options deserve serious consideration."

Green groups and many scientists are deeply sceptical about geo-engineering, warning that these schemes may simply create new problems.

For instance, plankton blooms caused by iron fertilisation may cause oxygen starvation in some waters, killing off fish and other life, they say.

In its landmark Fourth Assessment Report last year, the UN's Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said geo-engineering projects were "largely speculative and with the risk of unknown side effects."

In November 2007, countries gathered under an international accord on maritime pollution warned against ocean fertilisation.

Parties to the London Convention and London Protocol declared that they held authority over such experiments, and "large-scale operations" of this kind "are currently not justified."

The Royal Society said the report is expected to be published in mid-2009.

Climate ideas put under spotlight
David Shukman, BBC News 30 Oct 08;

Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.

Dr Richard Lampitt: "We have already changed the oceans"

From the twilight zone of science fiction, the idea of "geo-engineering" is emerging into the harsher daylight of science fact - and I'm going to risk the prediction that we'll hear a lot more about it in the coming years.

Only a few years ago, the very notion of planetary-scale projects to tackle climate change was derided by many as too nutty to bother with.

Mainstream media coverage tended to gently poke fun at the images of galaxies of mirrors in orbit or fleets of giant ships seeding the oceans.

But suddenly that's changing. Today's launch of a study into geo-engineering by the Royal Society, Britain's most august scientific body, does give the subject more seriousness.

As does the fact that only last month, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, at its Congress in Barcelona, devoted a session to one particular scheme - encouraging plankton to absorb more carbon dioxide.

As the chair of that debate, I found myself acting as referee between passionate advocates and critics of this plan.

Fertile topic

And now, standing on the deck of the National Oceanography Centre's research vessel Callista, I'm with one of the scientists who'll be contributing to the Royal Society study, the NOC's Dr Richard Lampitt, and - amazingly - it feels perfectly normal to be discussing fertilising the seas with iron.

A bearded figure dressed for the cold in a thick mariner's sweater, he argues that we urgently need to find out if adding iron as a nutrient will foster the growth of plankton which will trap carbon and then carry it to the seabed as they die.

No different to fertilising your lawn, he says.

His worry is that emissions of greenhouse gases show no sign of slowing down and that it's essential to know now if last-ditch responses like using the oceans will be any use.

Will it work? Well, maybe. In the NOC's labs I'm shown how flasks of normal seawater are clear - but when microscopic particles of iron are added, the water darkens into a lurid green as the algae blossom over a few days.

What's unknown is whether the tiny life forms will then descend to the depths and keep the carbon locked away there.

Unknown effects

What's also unknown is whether any of this will trigger some unexpected reaction or create a new problem, and maybe make things worse. One leading marine scientist told me that the oceans are simply too precious to meddle with.

And an analogy surfaces this morning: there's a news item about the legacy of asbestos - at one time that was thought to be a brilliant life-saving product and we now know differently.

No surprise that environmental groups like Greenpeace have serious worries and have campaigned to keep ocean geo-engineering under the tightest control, not least because it distracts from the task of cutting emissions of gases in the first place.

Even in the scientific community, it's a question that provokes markedly different views.

I get a snapshot of that in the canteen at the NOC. Richard Lampitt argues that iron fertilisation is a potentially valuable weapon to fight global warming - under the most optimistic scenario it could trap one-eighth of our greenhouse gas emissions, he says.

One of his colleagues, a supporter, questions whether it could ever capture that much. Another wonders if it'll work at all.

This one will run and run.

Plan to investigate using giant mirrors to reverse global warming
Louise Gray, The Telegraph 30 Oct 08;

Scientists are investigating plans to reverse global warming by using giant mirrors to reflect the sun or growing algae in the sea to absorb carbon dioxide.

The methods, known as geo-engineering, have been considered more fantasy than reality by the scientific community in the past.

However with climate change an increasing threat - despite government efforts to keep it under control - the Royal Society is to look at which methods may prove a serious option for the future of mankind.

Methods proposed for artificially altering the climate include using a series of giant mirrors or a constellation of trillions of space craft as a sunshade to reflect solar energy.

Scientists have also proposed releasing dust particles into the stratosphere to reduce the amount of sunlight warming the Earth or "seeding" the oceans with iron particles to stimulate algae which absorb the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

Another potential ploy would be to send sea spray into the air to make existing clouds whiter in order to enable them to reflect more sunlight, in a bid to offset the heat trapped by increasing levels of greenhouse gases.

However, few studies have been done into whether any of these methods would work in the long term.

John Shepherd, chairman of the Royal Society working group which will undertake the study, said it was time to separate the fact from the fiction.

"Our study aims to separate the science from the science fiction and offer recommendations on which options deserve serious consideration.

"We need to investigate if any of these schemes could help us avoid the most dangerous changes to our climate and to fully understand what other impacts they may have."

However, with the UK Government set to commit the country to cutting greenhouse gases by 80 per cent by 2050, he said the new technologies should not take away from efforts to reduce climate change by reducing carbon dioxide.

He added: "Whatever solutions technology may offer us in the future, it's clear that the need to cut emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is now more urgent than ever."

The Royal Society report on geo-engineering schemes is expected to be published in the middle of next year.

Royal Society to research potential of geo-engineering to limit global warming
Science academy to launch a feasibility study to establish which techniques might best tackle climate change

Alok Jha, guardian.co.uk 30 Oct 08;

The Royal Society has announced plans today to study which planetary-scale geo-engineering techniques might play a practical role in stemming the worst impacts of climate change.

Geo-engineering includes everything from placing mirrors in space that reflect sunlight from the Earth to seeding the oceans with iron to encourage the growth of algae that can soak up atmospheric carbon dioxide. The Royal Society study will look at which techniques might be feasible to carry out and what their impacts or unintended consequences might be on society.

"Some of these proposals seem fantastical, and may prove to be so. Our study aims to separate the science from the science fiction and offer recommendations on which options deserve serious consideration," said John Shepherd, an oceanographer at Southampton University, and chair of the Royal Society working group that will carry out the study. "We need to investigate if any of these schemes could help us avoid the most dangerous changes to our climate and to fully understand what other impacts they may have."

In September, the Royal Society published a special edition of its journal, Philosophical Transactions, dedicated to geo-engineering. In their introduction to the papers in that edition, Brian Launder of the University of Manchester and Michael Thompson of the University of Cambridge wrote: "While such geo-scale interventions may be risky, the time may well come when they are accepted as less risky than doing nothing. There is increasingly the sense that governments are failing to come to grips with the urgency of setting in place measures that will assuredly lead to our planet reaching a safe equilibrium."

In the papers, experts said that a reluctance "at virtually all levels" to address rising greenhouse gas emissions meant carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were on track to pass 650 parts per million (ppm), which could bring an average global temperature rise of 4C. They called for more research on geo-engineering options to cool the Earth.

But not everyone is convinced of the need for such radical techniques to halt climate change. Greenpeace chief scientist Doug Parr said: "The wider point is not the pros and cons of particular technologies, but that the scientific community is becoming so scared of our collective inability to tackle climate emissions that such outlandish schemes are being considered for serious study. We already have the technology and know-how to make dramatic cuts in global emissions - but it's not happening, and those closest to the climate science are coming near to pressing the panic button."

Shepherd said that, whatever his study finds, the world cannot ignore the need to cut carbon emissions anyway. "Whatever solutions technology may offer us in the future, it's clear that the need to cut emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is now more urgent than ever."

The working group's report is expected to be published next year.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)