Green Singapore 2050 youth survey on Youth Habitat
on the wild shores of singapore blog
Jane Goodall Youth Summit
on AsiaIsGreen
White-throated Kingfisher catching a lizard
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog
Wattles
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog
Palau’s Sharks Under Seige
on the FiNS Blog
How surfing the web can save the environment
on Short Sharp Science
300 companies, and counting, to switch off their lights
Neo Chai Chin, Today Online 19 Mar 09;
CORPORATE enthusiasm for the colour green is certainly more infectious now than last year — just ask the organisers of Earth Hour in Singapore.
A team of three from the World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature have been targeting buildings in the business and shopping districts. With about a week to go before lights go off for an hour from 8.30pm next Saturday, about 300 organisations have signed up, exceeding the number WWF Singapore had approached, said campaign manager Carine Seror.
“It’s the snowball effect. Once you have some on board, the others might hear about it and they would just call and ask, how can we do it?” she said.
Compare it to just “a few dozen” organisations last year, which Ms Seror attributes to a lack of awareness and outreach, not a lack of interest.
With the prevailing economic gloom, Earth Hour is also a good opportunity for companies and their employees to “talk about something else that’s inspiring and fun”, said Ms Seror.
Corporates that have come on board include CapitaLand, Sentosa Leisure Group, Wisma Atria, Canon Singapore, National Geographic Channel and Parkroyal hotels.
Some are even going regional. Canon, for example, will switch off its neon billboards across South and South-east Asia, including one on Orchard Road. National Geographic Channel will be doing a “channelblackout” of programmes and will run environmental factoids across the screen instead in South-east Asia and Hong Kong. Developer CapitaLand is pulling in 106 of its properties in the region and Australia, with 29 in Singapore, including Raffles City and Bugis Junction, switching off their façade lights, up from 14 last year.
It is part of the company’s ongoing efforts to cut electricity and water usage, said CapitaLand’s spokesperson. Last year, CapitaLand Singapore shaved $1.9 million off its utility bills, and electricity usage was cut by 4.3 per cent.
This year also marks Singapore’s first official participation in Earth Hour, with Deputy Prime Minister S Jayakumar pledging support and so too landmarks such as the Merlion, the Singapore Flyer and the Esplanade.
On the individual level, enthusiasm for Earth Hour seems less infectious. “Like any habit, it takes time to change, but (change) is definitely happening,” said Mr Wilson Ang from Eco Singapore. Last year, the group sent volunteers to Hougang to knock on doors. This year, 1,200 student volunteers will fan out across the island to get pledges from households.
The Housing and Development Board has informed WWF Singapore of 1,000 individuals who have agreed to participate, said Ms Seror. No matter what the participation, Earth Hour is still a “starting point” to engage companies and the public.
“It’s not by switching off the lights for one hour that we’re going to save the world,” said Ms Seror. “Now that you’ve pledged your support and switched off the lights, how can you do more?”
More links See the Earth Hour Singapore blog for a wide range of events organised by NGOs for Earth Hour.
LTA to test if roads can be made up of more recycled material
Maria Almenoar, Straits Times 19 Mar 09;
MORE of what you dump will soon go into building new roads.
The Land Transport Authority (LTA) is aiming to increase the composition of recycled materials in Singapore's roads to 70 per cent, up from 25 per cent now.
Doing this will not only make Singapore greener, it will also save the authorities millions of dollars, reduce the country's reliance on imported materials, and reduce the speed at which landfills pile up.
To test the sustainability of green roads, a 200m stretch along Tampines Road towards the Kallang-Paya Lebar Expressway will be used.
Three 50m stretches will be paved with recycled materials of varying concentrations, while the remaining 50m stretch will be paved in the conventional way and act as a test section.
This site was chosen because it is close to a heavy vehicle carpark and the volume of traffic using the area is high, said the LTA.
The stretch will be monitored for six months before a decision is made on whether recycled material is suitable for use on all other roads.
Singapore roads are laid using four layers. Currently, granite is the predominant material used in all the layers.
The new method will use processed incinerated waste from landfills, mostly discarded household items, to fill the bottom two layers.
The material, called Incineration Bottom Ash, or IBA, contains mainly silica, ceramic, glass and metal.
IBA is made by exposing incinerated waste to the weather for three months to allow it to dry. After this, it is screened to remove unwanted materials, and then sieved into the required size before being treated with chemicals.
The top two layers, which will comprise recycled material - 30 per cent - and a mix of new aggregate materials imported from Indonesia or Malaysia and some granite, are then filled in.
The recycled material is called Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement, or what is dug up from the top layer of roads when they are resurfaced.
Countries such as Japan, the United States and Britain already use recycled materials in their road construction.
Yesterday, LTA's deputy chief executive of infrastructure and development, Mr Lim Bok Ngam, said Singapore is highly exposed to fluctuations in the price of granite, which costs about $30 a tonne now, but hit a high of $80 a tonne about two years ago. LTA uses three million tonnes of the material a year.
Switching to recycled and other materials, Mr Lim said, will remove much of the impact of such fluctuations.
'When you import granite, sometimes you are paying beyond cojavascript:void(0)st because it's driven up by political reasons or the market,' he added.
Pilot project to build Singapore's "green" road kicks off
Asha Popatlal, Channel NewsAsia 18 Mar 09;
SINGAPORE: A pilot project by the Land Transport Authority (LTA) to construct Singapore's "green" road using recycled materials has kicked off.
If successful, it could lead to savings of millions of dollars annually.
Using recycled materials to build roads in Singapore is not new.
It has been done for the last 20 years and about a quarter of the roads today have some form of recycled materials in them.
What makes the latest trial different is that a mix of recycled materials will now be used extensively in all four layers of the road structure, instead of just one layer as was done previously.
If the scheme works, the advantage is two-fold.
Firstly, Singapore can reduce its dependence on the import of expensive raw materials like granite from neighbouring countries.
Secondly, it is cheaper to build such roads as one of the recycled materials used is waste generated within the country.
Household rubbish which has been burnt and processed is one material which will be used to construct the third and fourth layers of the road in the green pavement trial.
Today, an average of 2,000 tonnes of waste is dumped at the Semakau Landfill daily.
If the waste can be used for roads, the amount dumped can be reduced by as much as half and the Semakau Landfill life-span extended by about 25 years.
The six-month trial will take place at a stretch of Tampines Road just outside a heavy-vehicle park.
Laboratory tests have been done, but will it work in practice?
Lim Bok Ngam, LTA's deputy CEO for infrastructure & development, said: "The main thing we are looking at is the longer-term strength (of the road) because the materials that we use today, we know that most new roads constructed can last 20-30 years before any major repairs are required. For this material, the life span of the road may be slightly reduced.
If the pilot is successful, LTA's long-term aim is to increase the amount of recycled materials in roads to 70 per cent from the current 25 per cent.
- CNA/ir
David Fogarty, Reuters 18 Mar 09;
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - When it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, the shipping industry is neither lean nor green.
Ships carry about 90 percent of global trade, and until recently, such has been the demand for coal, cars and electronics, that there has been little concerted effort to rein in the growth of polluting emissions from ships.
But pressure is growing in the United Nations and from the European Union to make ships more efficient and their smokestacks more climate friendly.
Just a few kilometers from one of the busiest ports in the world, a Singapore firm says it has the answer that can help the shipping industry clean up its act.
Ecospec says it has invented and tested a patented method that removes planet-warming carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, which causes acid rain, and soot from ship exhausts.
The process, which uses very alkaline sea water sprayed into the exhaust funnel to scrub out the gases and soot, has already been tested on a tanker and earned the backing of the American Bureau of Shipping.
Inventor Chew Hwee Hong said his firm had already developed non-chemical methods of water treatment and in 2008 was given a challenge by a large Middle Eastern tanker firm to find a way to scrub out CO2 emissions.
The trick was to find a method that didn't cause secondary environmental damage and cleaned up the other polluting gases in the exhaust as well, he said.
"Today, the Kyoto Protocol and the awareness about CO2 contributing to global warming means you can't say I don't care about the rest of the gases. You have to look at the whole thing as one solution."
LESS VISIBLE
Shipping contributes about four percent of global emissions from burning fossil fuels, about double the emissions from aviation.
But the industry is less visible to most people than aviation and only very recently faced limits on some of the pollutants in funnel emissions, particularly nitrogen oxides (called NOx) and sulphur dioxide.
Nitrous oxide (N2O) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) are powerful greenhouse gases. Many new ships have engines designed to emit much lower amounts of these gases, but thousands of older vessels do not, at least not without costly retro-fitting.
An internal report submitted to the International Maritime Organisation's Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) in 2007 estimated total CO2 emissions from shipping at 1.12 billion tonnes in 2007 and forecast 30 percent growth by 2020.
The MEPC is due to meet again in July and is expected to present a scheme to curb CO2 emissions from global shipping, although it's unclear if it will be adopted by the IMO in time to be included in a broader climate pact by December.
The pact is expected to be finalized in the Danish capital Copenhagen in December when some 190 nations will try to agree on an expanded deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol, the United Nations' main weapon to fight climate change.
The EU will include aviation in its emissions trading scheme from 2012 and has threatened to include shipping from 2013 unless there is a U.N.-backed international pact to regulate maritime air pollution by the end of 2011.
While aviation is easier to regulate and monitor, shipping is much tougher. It's unclear if the flag state, owner or operator are responsible for the greenhouse gas pollution and which agency would assess current emissions or allocate allowances.
Chew said individual methods exist to scrub out CO2, SO2 and nitrogen oxides, but he says his method is the only one to date that can tackle all three, plus clean up the soot.
Tests have shown the process, called CSNOX, can remove about 90 percent of SO2, 80 percent of NOx and nearly 75 percent of CO2, he said.
"We don't want to use chemicals in CSNOX," Chew explained. "We wanted to use a pure physical method to do it so you don't cause secondary pollution."
The secret of CSNOX is pure chemistry, says Chew, the firm's managing director and a marine engineer by training who nearly failed chemistry in high school.
The process uses electrolysis and ultra-low frequency waves to raise the alkalinity of sea water to a pH of 10 from a normal level of 8.1. Kitchen bleach has a pH of about 13, while battery acid is at the other end of the scale at about 0.
Seawater is pumped into a tank, the alkalinity is quickly raised and then the water is sprayed into the exhaust funnel where the dirty water is collected, filtered and pumped into an aft tank for further processing.
It would cost between US$500,000 and about $1 million to fit the system to most ships.
CARBON SINK
Chew said the water that is pumped back into the sea is more alkaline than normal and contains sulphates, nitrates and carbonates that sea life need.
This was a beneficial byproduct because the world's oceans are becoming more acidic as global atmospheric levels of CO2 rise from burning fossil fuels.
Oceans are a major carbon sink, soaking up large amounts of CO2 in a process that creates carbonic acid. Recent Australian research has shown that rising acidity has trimmed the shell weights of tiny marine animals.
Exiting methods to remove sulphur dioxide from ship exhausts release CO2, Chew explained. A Canadian study found that removing SO2 from ship exhausts actually contributed to global warming.
"If you scrub out one kilogram of SO2, you produce 2.75 kg of CO2," he said.
But by using highly alkaline seawater, the CSNOX process avoided this side-effect because it neutralized the SO2.
Ecospec, which first announced details of the CSNOX process in January, has since received nearly 60 enquiries, among them from major shipping lines and oil companies. A firm that invests in projects that could yield tradable carbon credits was also among those interested.
"The trend is just irreversible. You have to go this way. You can't be a ship builder without knowing how to install or how to design (emissions-control technology)," Chew said.
He said the company was now looking to adapt the process to clean up emissions from power stations, steel and cement makers and pulp-and-paper mills, as well as rubbish incinerators.
That would be a major growth area for the firm and potentially lucrative, since around 90 percent of mankind's greenhouse gas emissions come from sources onshore.
(Editing by Megan Goldin)
938LIVE Channel NewsAsia 18 Mar 09;
SINGAPORE: The National Environment Agency (NEA) is concerned that a randomly-occurring type of the dengue virus has recently shown up in greater numbers in one area.
Seven cases of Type 3 Dengue infection were detected in Little India in January, up from zero cases in November last year.
NEA says the virus type has "high epidemic potential" because Singaporeans are known to have low immunity.
NEA's Head of Environmental Health Institute, Dr Ng Lee Ching, explains: "Dengue 3 is not very common in Singapore for the past decade. So our immunity level in the population is very low towards Dengue 3. Which means if Dengue 3 spreads, the population will be very susceptible to getting dengue. We also know that overseas, in America and in Southeast Asia, Dengue 3 has caused huge outbreaks."
NEA says it immediately deployed officers to Little India to locate and destroy mosquito breeding grounds. And the number of Type 3 infections there dropped back to zero in February.
As a precaution, Head of Operations for the Environmental Health Department at NEA, Tai Ji Choong, said that officers are permanently stationed in the two areas.
He said: "Actually we put in a permanent team of officers and also the pest control operators. Actually they're roving around the area to actually do source reduction, to remove and destroy breeding habitats and at the same time check difficult areas such as roof gutters for breeding."
NEA says it has also been able to contain the rise in Type 1 Dengue infections reported in Woodlands, Joo Chiat and the Southwest District.
The number of cases in these areas rose over the new year but fell last month.
Type 1 and 2 Dengue are the more common strains occurring in Singapore, while Type 4 is rare.
NEA currently has 750 pest control officers fanned out across Singapore to check and destroy mosquito breeding areas.
The agency says it plans to hire another 250 officers this year to increase its surveillance.- 938LIVE.
Rare dengue type on the rise in Singapore
Alert for Den-3 virus, which can cause a major outbreak if not contained
Jessica Jaganathan, Straits Times 19 Mar 09;
DENGUE numbers are down but public health officers are on high alert.
The reason: An unfamiliar dengue virus has emerged which has the potential to spark a major outbreak.
Though officials said on Tuesday that they have managed to contain the Dengue-3 virus for now, they are still keeping a close watch on it, as it has not been seen here commonly for some 10 years.
With low immunity to Den-3 in the population, people are more vulnerable to infection.
Officials are concerned because cases increased more than three times last November and December, and were found mainly in two areas, sparking fears that transmissions were high and could spread.
There are four types of the dengue virus, and people who have been infected by any one type are immune to it for life. But that still means that an individual can get dengue fever up to four times.
In Singapore, two main types of the dengue virus have circulated in the past 10 years: Dengue-1 and Dengue-2, with the latter now predominant.
Past data shows that outbreaks in 2005 and 2007 were preceded by a switch in the predominant type of dengue virus.
In the past few months, researchers from the National Environment Agency (NEA) found that the third type, Den-3, had emerged in greater numbers in Little India and Geylang.
On average, Den-3 makes up about 5 per cent of all dengue cases here. But in November and December last year, it increased to more than 17 per cent.
Although the numbers dropped back to 5 per cent last month, after NEA officers went to war against mosquitoes in the hot spots, the authorities are still watchful. Because of the rarity of Den-3 here, Singaporeans' immunity to it is very low, said Dr Ng Lee Ching, head of the NEA's Environmental Health Institute.
Alarm bells went off as well, when infections clustered in two areas, Little India and Geylang, for two consecutive months.
'We straightaway launched our resources in these areas as we didn't want Den-3 to have a launching pad to spring out to the rest of Singapore,' said Mr Tai Ji Choong, head of operations at the NEA's environmental health department.
If it did spread, NEA officials feared a worse outbreak than in 2005, which infected more than 14,000 Singaporeans and caused 25 fatalities, he said.
They went to work on the main lines of defence that have been successful in reducing numbers in the past: eliminate breeding spots and rely on the research team's laboratory work to pinpoint where the dengue type was dominant.
Officers are now posted permanently in the two areas to wipe out breeding areas and two additional pest control teams have been deployed to check tricky spots like roof gutters for breeding, he said.
They are also keeping watch on neighbourhoods in the south-west, like Bukit Batok and Jurong as well as Woodlands and Joo Chiat, where there has been a sharp increase of 10 per cent to 20 per cent in Dengue-1 cases over this year.
The numbers fell last month, said Mr Tai, but the possibility of a new outbreak remains.
With warmer weather expected, NEA officers, together with other agencies, are stepping up efforts to reduce and remove possible mosquito breeding sites.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) warned last week that 1.8 billion people in the Asia-Pacific region are at risk of being infected with dengue, which has been gaining in South-east Asia.
Rare dengue cases: Doctors on alert
Cases of unfamiliar Den-3 type rising in Little India, Geylang
Jessica Jaganathan, Straits Times 20 Mar 09;
DOCTORS in Little India and Geylang are taking no chances and are ordering blood tests when patients show up with signs of dengue, now that a new threat has emerged in those areas.
More patients are turning up with a fever, headache and joint or muscular pains at Dr Mohamed Ghazali's clinic in Little India.
He said: 'It's difficult to tell those with influenza, chikungunya and dengue apart as they mostly have the same symptoms. So now I'm getting all of them with such symptoms to go for a blood test early.'
Dengue test results are back within a day.
GPs have received circulars from the Ministry of Health recently after a higher number of dengue patients in Little India and Geylang were found to have an unfamiliar variant of the dengue virus - Dengue-3 - which has the potential to spark a major outbreak.
Den-3 is one of four types of the dengue virus, but Singaporeans are more vulnerable to it because of their low immunity to it.
On average, Den-3 makes up about 5 per cent of all dengue cases here. But in November and December last year, the figure increased to more than 17 per cent.
Also worrying is the fact that the cases were concentrated in these two areas for two consecutive months, where previously, Den-3 was spread across the island.
If it takes root in these areas, they could provide 'a launching pad to spring out into the rest of Singapore', a National Environment Agency (NEA) official had said. The fear is that an outbreak could occur that is far worse than the one in 2005, during which more than 14,000 people were infected and 25 of them died.
For now, NEA believes it has contained the situation by deploying extra manpower to eliminate mosquito breeding spots where the Den-3 virus is dominant.
Residents in those areas, like provision shop owner Chew Yang Koo, 53, are checking and cleaning possible breeding areas like pails and flower pots more frequently.
And when it rains, he makes an extra effort to ensure no puddles are left overnight which would allow mosquitoes to breed at his shop in Race Course Road.
Over in Geylang, Dr Joyce Liang has confirmed three cases of dengue this week alone, while in the past, she would hardly see anyone with dengue in a month.
'I'm being extra vigilant now especially in the Geylang area where you have a lot of movement of people and a high number of foreigners,' she added.
Health officials are unable to confirm where Den-3 originated from, but going by available data, they say the genes of the virus indicate the cases here are related to those in Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka.
Of the 120 dengue patients from November to February in the two areas, 95 were foreigners.
Although people who get one type of dengue develop lifelong immunity to that virus, studies have shown that subsequent infection with a different type makes a person more susceptible to the more severe dengue haemorrhagic fever.
The World Health Organisation's regional adviser in this field, Dr John Ehrenberg, speaks from experience because his wife has had dengue fever twice.
In town for the first Asia-Pacific dengue workshop this week, he stressed the importance of countries in the region sharing data and research in order to tackle dengue epidemics well.
Currently, there are still gaps in many countries, such as poor information flow between the field officers and policymakers, he said.
And instead of reacting when an outbreak strikes, money and resources should be spent in between epidemics to minimise the impact of the next outbreak, he added.
WHO estimates the average annual cost of dengue cases in Asia to be about $245 million, nearly half the global figure.
UNEP 18 Mar 09;
Funds Will Back Forestry Programmes Combating Climate Change and Boosting Local Livelihoods
Nairobi, 18 March 2009- A United Nations programme aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions from forests and boosting livelihoods in tropical nations has approved $18 million in support of five pilot countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The UN-Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (UN-REDD) - a collaboration between the Food and Agriculture Organization, the UN Development Programme and the UN Environment Programme - promises to be an important component of a future agreement on climate change to be agreed under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in December this at crucial meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The $18 million-worth of funding, roughly a third of the sums currently available, has been approved by inaugural Policy Board meeting of Programme which met in Panama. The funding will support action plans to assist the countries concerned prepare for the inclusion of REDD in a new climate deal.
During the high level Policy Board meeting, senior government representatives of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Tanzania, and Viet Nam, presented their plans for preparing national strategies for a future REDD regime. The presentation of the national programmes served as valuable learning and sharing experiences among participants on the way forward.
"This is a very significant first step for the UN-REDD Programme", said Angela Cropper, UN Assistant Secretary General and UNEP Deputy Executive Director, who chaired the meeting.
"I am heartened to see such a dedicated group of countries, indigenous peoples, civil society, donors and the United Nations come together to reach consensus on this important programme. I am confident that the Programme will have a substantial input to the continuing REDD debate."
Many countries will implement their individual strategies aimed at maintaining their ecosystems through sustainable forest management that provides environmental and economic benefits to their citizens and communities while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Activities will include monitoring programmes, consultative processes for engaging indigenous peoples and civil society, links to other benefits such as biodiversity and the strengthening the capacity of national institutions to address these issues.
In addition to the countries currently engaged in the programme implementation, the Policy Board includes members of indigenous peoples groups and civil society as well as donors and many other interested parties such as the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility secretariat.
Ambassador Hans Brattskar, Director of Norway's Forest and Climate Programme whose country is funding the UN-REDD Programme said: "I am pleased with this significant outcome. We are moving in the right direction and I am very happy to see the approval of country programmes that will begin to address REDD at the national level. We are convinced that these countries will help to advance REDD and serve as demonstrations from which others can learn."
Between 1990 and 2005 the rate of deforestation averaged 13 million hectares, mostly in the Tropics.
Greenhouse gas emissions with felling, slash and burn agriculture and other deforestation effects, account for around 17 per cent or more of global emissions-the second largest source after the energy sector.
By 2100 clearing of tropical forests could release 87 to 130 Gigatonnes of carbon to the atmosphere.
Yahoo News 18 Mar 09;
HONG KONG (AFP) – A humpback whale has been spotted in Hong Kong waters, a government spokesman said Wednesday, in the first reported sighting of the giant mammal off the southern Chinese city.
The Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department said it received a report on Monday that a 10 metre (33 feet) whale was seen swimming in the East Lamma Channel, a busy sea channel to the west of Hong Kong Island.
"It is the first time we have seen a humpback whale in Hong Kong waters," the spokeswoman told AFP.
The department has been monitoring the condition of the whale, along with the Marine Police and experts from Ocean Park, a city themepark and conservation centre.
"From our observations so far, its health condition is normal and it is active," she said.
The spokeswoman said it was unlikely the whale would stay long in waters near the city because of the busy sea traffic that flows to and from the major port.
Humpbacks are found in oceans and seas around the world, but especially in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
Humpback whale spotted in Hong Kong waters
Reuters 18 Mar 09;
HONG KONG (Reuters) - A large humpback whale has been spotted swimming close to Hong Kong's famous harbor in what's believed to be the first sighting of the species in the territory's waters.
Local television footage showed the whale surfacing in Hong Kong's East Lamma Channel leading into the city's Victoria Harbour, exhaling through its blowhole and raising its tail fin.
Hong Kong authorities say it's the first time a humpback whale has been spotted in Hong Kong waters.
"From observations it's healthy and we'll continue to monitor it," Jolly Choi, a spokeswoman for the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department, said on Wednesday.
The whale, estimated to be 10 meters (33 feet) long, has already drawn a number of whale-watching boat trips since it was first spotted on Monday.
Some experts have warned the bustling harbor's heavy maritime traffic could pose a risk to the seemingly lost mammal.
"I'm quite optimistic that it can swim back out to the open seas," said Samuel Hung, the director of the Hong Kong Cetacean Research Project.
(Reporting by James Pomfret; Editing by Paul Tait)
Once facing extinction, the 9lb ground-nesting bird has been rescued by breeding scheme
Kathy Marks, The Independent 18 Mar 09;
Scientists in New Zealand have rescued the world’s largest parrot from the brink of extinction. The population of the flightless kakapo has surpassed 100 birds for the first time in decades.
The milestone was reached this month after six chicks hatched on Codfish Island, one of two predator-free islands where kakapo numbers are being restored. There are now 105 birds, more than twice the number in 1999.
The ground-nesting kakapo, which weighs up to 9lb, was once widespread in the forests of New Zealand. But Maoris hunted it for its meat and bright green plumage, and European settlers brought cats, dogs, rats and ferrets into a formerly predator-free environment. A docile bird, the kakapo was prone to freeze on the spot when frightened.
One early explorer, Charles Douglas, wrote in 1899: "They could be caught in the moonlight by simply shaking the tree or bush until they tumbled to the ground ? like shaking down apples."
By 1995, there were only 51 individuals left, and the future of the species seemed precarious. But in recent years, the kakapo’s fortunes have been restored. This summer, a total of 14 chicks have hatched on Codfish Island, off southern New Zealand, and all are thriving. Deirdre Vercoe, manager of the Department of Conservation’s kakapo recovery programme, linked the large number of chicks with a bumper crop of the adults’ favourite food: the fruit of the rimu tree. Kakapo are slow breeders, but perk up when they spot large quantities of the seeds. During lean times, conservationists have tried to fool kakapo into believing there was abundant food available.
"We’ve scattered freeze-dried seeds around their nests, even hung them from trees, but they seem to know when it’s the real thing," Ms Vercoe said.
New Zealand’s Conservation Minister, Tim Groser, warned of a "long road ahead" before the kakapo’s future was secure. Every chick is precious, and scientists have used many ways to give young birds the best chance of survival. In the past, adults were fitted with radio transmitters, and infra-red spy cameras were positioned in underground nests, enabling the kakapo to be monitored by volunteers in tents.
Whenever the mother left to forage for food, a bell rang, which was the signal for a volunteer to lower an electric blanket into the nest, using an extendable ski pole, so the eggs could be kept warm. If a predator appeared, the nest-minder would press a panic button, setting off a bang and a puff of smoke to scare it away.
Capital Territory's chief minister unveils plan to shoot animals, which he says have reached record numbers in Canberra
Sam Jones and agencies, guardian.co.uk 17 Mar 09;
The kangaroos of Canberra could soon find themselves caught in the crosshairs after a local politician called for a cull of the animals, which have taken to hopping around the busy streets of the Australian capital and snacking on the grass and shrubs in its parks.
Although the kangaroo is a much-treasured and instantly recognisable Australian emblem, the animals can be destructive and dangerous.
Canberra has one of the densest populations of the common eastern grey kangaroo in the country, and the beasts can be seen bouncing through parks and thoroughfares, eating plants and stopping traffic.
Last week, one family in the area was awoken by a confused and panicked kangaroo that had leapt through a bedroom window and bounded around the house until it was thrown out of the front door.
According to Jon Stanhope, the chief minister of the Australian Capital Territory, the time has come to get stern with Skippy.
Earlier today, Stanhope released a draft plan explaining how his government would reduce the city's kangaroo population by shooting the animals.
"There are probably more eastern gray kangaroos in Canberra now than any time in the last 100 years," Stanhope said. "I think we have perhaps tried too hard not to cull."
The population of kangaroos in the area is hard to determine because the animals move frequently, depending on the availability of grass and water.
The territory's government has been involved in efforts to develop an oral contraceptive for kangaroos for more than a decade, but none is yet effective in the wild.
Stanhope did not say how many kangaroos should be killed but added that research into humane alternatives to shooting would be encouraged.
However, supporters say the absence of more effective biological controls leaves shooting as the most humane way to control numbers.
The report rules out trapping kangaroos and driving them to areas where they are less abundant because the process is expensive, untested and illogical given the absence of a threat to the species's survival.
The plan has provoked the ire of conservationists, who have warned that any attempts to shoot kangaroos will be met with protests.
"The whole thing is a propaganda exercise to try to get public support for killing kangaroos," said Pat O'Brien, the president of the Wildlife Protection Association of Australia.
Kangaroo numbers were high, he acknowledged, warning: "But there's certainly not too many of them."
The killing of 400 kangaroos out of 600 at an abandoned military site in Canberra last year triggered several heated protests.
Those animals were killed with lethal injections because it was judged that it would be too dangerous to use guns at the site, which was within Canberra's city limits.
According to recent government surveys, 17% of Canberra drivers have reported colliding with a kangaroo at some time, though 82% of respondents said they believed it was important for wild kangaroos to continue living in the city.
Nick Vinocur, Reuters 17 Mar 09;
LONDON (Reuters) - Radiation has affected animals living near the site of Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear disaster far more than was previously thought, a study showed Wednesday, challenging beliefs that local wildlife was on the rebound.
The study showed that numbers of bumble-bees, butterflies, spiders, grasshoppers and other invertebrates were lower in contaminated sites than other areas because of high levels of radiation left over from the blast more than 20 years ago.
The findings challenge earlier research that suggested animal populations were rebounding around the site of the Chernobyl explosion in Ukraine, which forced thousands to abandon their homes and evacuate the area.
Estimates of the number of deaths directly related to the accident vary. The World Health Organization estimates the figure at 9,000 while the environmental group Greenpeace predicts an eventual death toll of 93,000.
"We were amazed to see that there had been no studies on this subject," Anders Moller, a researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research in France, who led the study, said in telephone interview.
"Ours was the first study to focus on the abundance of animal populations."
Researchers said they had compared animal populations in radioactive areas with less contaminated plots and found that some were nearly completed depleted of animal life.
"There are areas with an abundance of 100 animals per square meter," Moller said. "And then there are areas with less than one specimen per square meter on average; the same goes for all groups of species."
The researchers also found that animals living near the Chernobyl reactor -- which was covered in a protective shell after it exploded in April 1986 -- had more deformities, including discoloration and stunted limbs, than normal.
"Usually (deformed) animals get eaten quickly, as it's hard to escape if your wings are not the same length," Moller said. "In this case we found a high incidence of deformed animals."
The findings challenge the view of Chernobyl as ecologically sound, despite the fact that Ukrainian officials have turned it into a nature reserve, with wolves, bison and bears.
Earlier research into the area ignored the fact that animal populations had grown unimpeded in the absence of humans for many years after the blast, Moller said.
"We wanted to ask the question: Are there more or fewer animals in the contaminated areas? Clearly there were fewer," said Moller, who has worked on Chernobyl since 1991.
While researchers focused on the 30 kilometer radius around the Chernobyl reactor, the fallout from the explosion covered a vast swathe of Eastern Europe, including parts of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
The findings probably apply to those areas as well, Moller said, adding that any decontamination effort was unlikely due to the extent of the fallout.
Reuters 18 Mar 09;
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said Wednesday it had banned the hunting of baby seals, weeks after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called it a "bloody industry."
"The bloody sight of the hunting of seals, the slaughter of these defenseless animals which you cannot even call a real hunt, is banned in our country, just as well as in most developed countries, and is a serious step to protect the biodiversity of the Russian Federation," the minister for natural resources, Yuri Trutnev, said in a statement.
Seals inhabit Russia's White Sea region in the Arctic. As in Canada and Norway, hunters target the fluffy baby seals -- also known as "whitecoats" for their highly valued snow-white fur -- in early spring and club thousands to death.
Protests urging a halt to hunting of baby seals took place in 20 cities and towns across Russia this week. On February 27, state-owned Rossiiskaya Gazeta quoted Putin as saying: "This is a bloody business and it's clear that it needs to be stopped." He said hunters should be compensated for lost earnings.
(Writing by James Kilner, editing by Mark Trevelyan)
Valerie Elliott, Times Online 18 Mar 09;
The return of beavers to England after being hunted to near extirpation 400 years ago could help hard-pressed households by bringing down water bills.
Photograph: Barry Batchelor/PAAndrea Thompson, livescience.com Yahoo News 19 Mar 09;
Our bottled water habit has a huge environmental impact, including the amount of energy it takes to make the plastic bottles, fill them and ship them to thirsty consumers worldwide.
A new study breaks down just how much energy is used at each step of the process.
An estimated total of the equivalent of 32 million to 54 million barrels of oil was required to generate the energy to produce the amount of bottled water consumed in the United States in 2007, according to the study, detailed in the January-March issue of the journal Environmental Research Letters. Of course, this is but a third of a percent of the energy that the United States consumes as a whole in a year.
In 2007, the last year for which global statistics were available, more than 200 billion liters of bottled water were sold around the world, mostly in North America and Europe. The total amount sold in the United States alone that year (33 billion liters) averages out to about 110 liters (almost 30 gallons) of water per person, according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation.
Since 2001, bottled water sales have increased by 70 percent in the United States, far surpassing those of milk and beer. Only sodas have larger sales.
The energy required to produce bottled water is particularly of interest now, at a time when many nations are looking for ways to reduce their energy use and associated climate impacts.
Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, a nonpartisan research institute, and his colleague Heather Cooley recently realized that no one had done a comprehensive survey of the energy use involved in the complete production cycle of bottled water, so they took on the task.
Plastic and transportation
The energy use breaks down into roughly four parts of the production cycle: that used to make the plastic and turn it into bottles, to treat the water, to fill and cap the bottles, and finally to transport them.
"Energy is used in a lot of different phases," Gleick said.
Most plastic bottles are made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Little pellets of PET are melted and fused together to make the bottle mold. Gleick and Cooley estimated that about 1 million tons of PET were used to make plastic bottles in the United States in 2007, with 3 million tons used globally; the energy used to produce that global amount of PET and the bottles it was turned into was equivalent to about 50 billion barrels of oil, they found.
(Some companies have been shifting toward using lighter-weight plastics for their bottles, which reduces the amount of PET produced by about 30 percent and would therefore lower the amount of energy required to make them. The transition to less energy-intensive plastic is slow though, and not all companies use them.)
The amount of energy involved in that first step was a surprise to Gleick: "I didn't know how much energy it takes to make plastic or turn plastic into a bottle," he told LiveScience.
The energy required to treat water is substantially less and depends on how many treatments are used on the water and doesn't account for the bulk of the energy spent in production. Likewise, the energy used to clean, fill, seal and label the bottles is only about 0.34 percent of the energy built into the bottle itself.
The energy used to transport the bottled water depends mainly on how far it is shipped and what transportation method is used. Air cargo is the costliest energy method, followed by truck, cargo ship and rail shipping, in that order. A different study on the carbon footprint of wine also found this breakdown of energy use for transportation methods.
In their study, Gleick and Cooley used the examples of different types of water shipped to Los Angeles: water produced locally and shipped by truck involved the least amount of energy, followed by water sent by cargo ship from Fiji, with water produced in France and shipped by cargo ship and rail having the highest energy costs.
Individual choices
The final tally of 32 million to 54 million barrels of oil may be only about a third of a percent of the total U.S. energy consumption, but it could be considered an "unnecessary use of energy," Gleick said. (Roughly three times as much oil would have been needed to produce the global amount of bottled water consumed.)
The amount is 2,000 times more than is required to make tap water, "and we live in a country where we have very good tap water," Gleick said.
Gleick said that the purpose of the study was not to propose that bottled water be banned, but to help consumers "understand the implications of our choices." With the information on the energy impacts, "we may choose to do different things as individuals," he added.
Understanding the energy costs of the process also sheds light on the greenhouse gases that energy use emits. "Energy is sort of the first piece of the puzzle," Gleick said.
Richard Ingham Yahoo News 18 Mar 09;
ISTANBUL (AFP) – Libya shed light on Wednesday on a 33-billion-dollar scheme, contested by some as mad or wasteful, to extract water from deep beneath the Sahara and pipe it across the desert to its coastal cities.
For the first time in a major international forum, Libyan officials gave a presentation of the "Great Man-Made River Project," a scheme that dwarfs all for ambition and cost, and defended it against charges of environmental vandalism and water theft.
The scheme, already some two-thirds complete, is economically viable and should not stoke any conflict with Libya's neighbours, said Fawzi al-Sharief Saeid, director of the project's technical centre for groundwater management.
He put the total bill at 33.69 billion dollars in capital investment and running costs over 50 years.
"Studies have shown that the Great Man-Made River Project is more economical than other alternatives," being some nine to 11 times better value for money compared with desalination plants or water imported from Europe, he said.
At predicted extraction rates, "recoverable reserves would last for 4,860 years" for all four countries -- Libya, Sudan, Chad and Egypt -- that can draw upon its source, he said.
Despite its name, the project is not a river with banks.
Instead, it entails a network of 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles) of pipes, which take water, sucked out from an ancient desert aquifer, to the northern coastal strip, where most of the country's 5.76 million people live.
Driven by Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi to promote food self-sufficiency, the Great Man-made River was hailed in leaflets at the World Water Forum in Istanbul as "The Eighth Wonder of the World."
Despite its mammoth size, the project has been going on for so long and so discreetly that it hardly registers on today's environmental radar screen, said Eugenia Ferragina, a senior researcher on water at Italy's National Research Council.
One reason is the tensions that persisted between Libya and the United States and have only recently eased.
The strategic nature of the scheme bred secrecy -- as well as conspiratorial rumours, aired in some western media in 1997, that the pipes were being used to store biological and chemical weapons.
"This is the first time at a World Water Forum that we hear (in detail) from our colleagues in Libya," said Andras Szollosi-Nagy, a senior official for water at UNESCO, who praised the transparency of their presentation.
"It's a huge engineering project... the biggest thing in town, whichever way you look at it."
But other experts shook their heads at the scheme's astronomical cost and questioned the wisdom of mining "fossil" water, deposited aeons ago, that will never be replenished by the Sahara's meagre rains.
Mark Smith, a water specialist with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), told AFP: "The water is not going to be replaced. You can pump merrily away and do lots of things with it, but it's not sustainable.
"This is such an expensive option. Rather than go through all that expense, spend all that national treasure, you could buy the food from places where there is a sustainable source of water."
Ferragina said Kadhafi's scheme was "senseless from the economic point of view" and laden with potential for stoking friction with neighbours.
"In many cases involving cross-border aquifers, if you start pumping on one side, it causes water to flow from the other side of the boundary to your side, because of gravity," she said.
"It becomes a pumping race, a race to see who can extract the water first."
"Kadhafi's reach seems to have exceeded his grasp," said British writer Fred Pearce in a book on water scarcity, "When the Rivers Run Dry."
"The vast capital cost and the growing bills for pumping water from ever greater depths beneath the desert make wheat grown with the Saharan water among the most expensive on Earth."
Alexandra Hudson, PlanetArk 19 Mar 09;
ISTANBUL - Countries that selfishly use shared rivers threaten political stability at a time when water is scarce and demand is growing, a conservation group warned on Wednesday.
Disputes over shared rivers such as the Tigris and the Euphrates could be resolved if nations put borders aside and viewed the entire river basin as a unit instead, they added.
In the past some states have built dams or siphoned water from rivers for irrigation without consulting neighbors downstream -- stirring political tension.
"The question countries must face is are they interested only in holding all the water themselves and living in a destabilized region, or do they wish to share the water and cooperate?" said Mark Smith, head of the water program of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a body funded by states, and NGOs.
Rivers shared by more than one country provide about 60 percent of the world's fresh water. There are 260 international river basins in the world, covering half of the Earth's surface and home to 40 percent of the world's population.
Traditionally the focus in negotiations over shared rivers has been how to apportion water. Once the water is divided each country tries to optimize water use within its borders, rather than across the shared basin, the IUCN said.
By working jointly countries could reap better economic benefits from rivers and ease political tensions.
Turkey, hosting the triennial World Water Forum in Istanbul, is home to the sources of the Euphrates and Tigris, which form a river basin flowing through Syria and Iraq before draining into the Gulf from Iraq. Wrangling over the rivers is longstanding.
Upriver dams built by Turkey, Syria and Iran have caused Iraq water shortages, exacerbated by an infrastructure devastated by war.
"There is a real distinction between the upstream and downstream position. Those upstream hold a lot of power. In Turkey that power is accentuated because Syria and Iraq are very dry countries," said Smith.
Smith said some countries cooperate well, such as Guinea, Mali, Mauritania and Senegal which share the Senegal River, while the Volta river is shared by six West African states.
"The Rhine for example used to be a huge source of dispute between France, Germany and the Netherlands, particularly over pollution... institutions were set up and now the river is co-ordinated and is a clean river again."
In states were huge dams have been built to the detriment of other nations downstream, the flows of the dams could be altered to allow rivers to replicate their previous natural patterns, Smith said, which would help restore ecosystems. Turkey been heavily criticized by some environmental groups during the conference for pursuing large scale dam and hydro-electric power building projects.
Most controversial is the 1.2 billion euro Ilisu project, begun in 2006, which will construct a dam on the Tigris river, bury part of the ancient town of Hasankeyf and force the relocation of thousands of people.
(Editing by Matthew Jones)
David Adam, guardian.co.uk 18 Mar 09;
Protest and direct action could be the only way to tackle soaring carbon emissions, a leading climate scientist has said.
James Hansen, a climate modeller with Nasa, told the Guardian today that corporate lobbying has undermined democratic attempts to curb carbon pollution. "The democratic process doesn't quite seem to be working," he said.
Speaking on the eve of joining a protest against the headquarters of power firm E.ON in Coventry, Hansen said: "The first action that people should take is to use the democratic process. What is frustrating people, me included, is that democratic action affects elections but what we get then from political leaders is greenwash.
"The democratic process is supposed to be one person one vote, but it turns out that money is talking louder than the votes. So, I'm not surprised that people are getting frustrated. I think that peaceful demonstration is not out of order, because we're running out of time."
Hansen said he was taking part in the Coventry demonstration tomorrow because he wants a worldwide moratorium on new coal power stations. E.ON wants to build such a station at Kingsnorth in Kent, an application that energy and the climate change minister Ed Miliband recently delayed. "I think that peaceful actions that attempt to draw society's attention to the issue are not inappropriate," Hansen said.
He added that a scientific meeting in Copenhagen last week had made clear the "urgency of the science and the inaction taken by governments".
Officials will gather in Bonn later this month to continue talks on a new global climate treaty, which campaigners have called to be signed at a UN meeting in Copenhagen in December. Hansen warned that the new treaty is "guaranteed to fail" to bring down emissions.
Hansen said: "What's being talked about for Copenhagen is a strenghening of Kyoto [protocol] approach, a cap and trade with offsets and escape hatches which will be gauranteed to fail in terms of getting the required rapid reduction in emissions. They talk about goals which sound impressive, but when you see the actions are such that it will be impossible to reach those goals, then I can understand the informed public getting frustrated."
He said he was growing "concerned" over the stance taken by the new US adminstration on global warming. "It's not clear what their intentions are yet, but if they are going to support cap and trade then unfortunately i think that will be another case of greenwash. It's going to take stronger action than that."
Yahoo News 19 Mar 09;
WASHINGTON – Day after day, reports of the dangers of climate and climate change circulate in the news, often filled with confusing data and debate.
In an effort to improve understanding of climate science, a group of government agencies has combined efforts to produce "Climate Literacy: The Essential Principles of Climate Science."
"There is so much misinformation about climate," said Tom Karl, director of the government's National Climatic Data Center. "We want to provide an easily readable document to help everyone make the most informed decisions. Having one product endorsed by the nation's top federal science agencies, as well as leading science centers and associations, makes this document an essential resource." Karl said.
The booklet is available online at: http://www.noaa.gov/climateliteracy.html and http://www.climatescience.gov.
It is also being distributed to teachers attending the National Science Teachers Association meeting this week in New Orleans.
The guide was organized by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, parent agency of the climate center, along with the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services, Interior, State, Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation, Smithsonian Institution, U.S. Agency for International Development and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Catherine Brahic, New Scientist 18 Mar 09;
HAVE scientists muddied the waters over what needs to be done to stave off dangerous climate change? Have they caused confusion instead of telling politicians how to save the world? That's what many are asking in the wake of a major meeting intended to inform politicians before vitally important negotiations later this year.
This December, the Bella Centre in Copenhagen, Denmark, will play host to thousands of politicians, policy-makers and their entourage as they try to agree on emissions targets. In an attempt to make their mission clearer, last week 2500 scientists gathered in the same halls to deliver the latest findings on how human emissions of greenhouse gases are affecting the environment and how that is likely to evolve over the coming century.
However, some delegates worry the meeting has only created more confusion, leaving policy-makers even less clear about where to set their emissions targets. In 600 talks over three days, researchers presented a complex update on their individual work, the majority of which showed the impacts of climate change would happen faster and be worse than previously thought. The sessions appeared to satisfy the needs of scientists but not the policy-makers present.
This was most obvious in the last session, when Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Denmark's prime minister, struggled to get a firm answer on what emissions targets governments should adopt. He wanted to know whether politicians should still be aiming to limit warming to no more than 2 °C.
This widely accepted target is loosely based on the forecasts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), but some scientists in Copenhagen suggested 2 °C may not be enough to avert some of the worst impacts of climate change, such as the disintegration of the Arctic ice cap, while others argued the world will get warmer no matter what. "I need some concrete advice now," appealed Rasmussen. "Should we be setting the bar higher? I need to know and I need to know today. The scientific world has to make an agreement with itself - what is the real platform for politicians?"
John Ashton, who is the UK government's special representative on climate change, says it's "wrong and dangerous" for scientists to confuse politicians over the 2 °C target, and this "will make it harder to get the intensity and urgency of effort required".
The problem, says Martin Parry of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment in London, is that such a large and short meeting was never going to deliver a consensus on climate change. "If you had put another group of scientists on the panel of the plenary sessions, you would have had a different picture," says Parry.
The closest the meeting came to direct advice for politicians was when the organisers published six key messages at the end of the meeting. These messages included a statement that the worst-case scenario IPCC projections are being realised, and an appeal for action. But some conference delegates took issue with the political tone. The messages "carry the authority of the people who drafted them, and no more", says Mike Hulme of the University of East Anglia, UK. "Not the authority of the 2500 expert researchers gathered at the conference, and certainly not the authority of collective global science."
Parry argues that politicians need to ignore the indecision that came out of the meeting and stick to their targets. "Studies continue and there isn't time to take a careful evaluation of all these, let alone get government agreement so science is working back-to-back with policy," says Parry.
Neither Hulme nor Parry doubt that the effects of climate change are being felt more and faster than was forecast by the IPCC, and that limiting global warming is becoming increasingly difficult. "The numbers themselves are not really the message at this stage. There were some mixed messages about these, but what is important is that the Copenhagen climate summit concluded that the IPCC conclusions hold and if anything the challenge is stronger."
Seed clouds to cool the climate
If governments fail to reach a deal on reducing emissions, the option remains to artificially cool the climate. Immediately after the conference in Copenhagen, a small group of climate scientists flew to Edinburgh, UK, where they spent the day discussing the possibility of field testing a proposal to increase the reflectivity of clouds.
The flat sheets of stratocumulus cloud that spread out over the ocean naturally reflect a portion of solar energy out to space. They could be made more reflective by spraying tiny particles of seawater into them, encouraging the formation of smaller water droplets. Clouds that are "doped" in this way should in theory act as sunshades.
Phil Rasch of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, presented a modelling study that showed seeding about a quarter of the area above the oceans could conceivably reduce temperatures by enough to counter a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
The group then discussed two methods for atomising seawater in the volumes that would be needed and outlined a potential field trial. US federal funding for geoengineering field tests could be available within five years, the scientists believe, but in the meantime they may need to turn to philanthropic funds in order to get the ball rolling.
None of the attendees advocated artificially cooling the planet instead of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, preferring to see it as a last-resort safety net. "Geoengineering is not a pleasant thought," said one delegate. "I have yet to meet a geoengineer who wants in their heart of hearts to intentionally modify the climate."
On 18 March, an advisory group to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency was due to meet to discuss geoengineering and although some of those present in Edinburgh were attending, most disapproved of using military funding to develop geoengineering. Some emphatically said they would refuse such money.
We need a another kind of scientist to save the world
New Scientist 18 Mar 09;
SCIENCE and politics make uncomfortable bedfellows. Rarely is this more true than in the case of climate change, where it is now time for emergency counselling. One point repeatedly made at last week's climate change congress in Copenhagen was that formulating an action plan to curb climate change is not the job of scientists.
Politicians may be left scratching their heads over what to do (see "'Give us clarity on climate targets'"), but at this stage climate scientists cannot provide more guidance than they did in the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for two reasons.
First, models will never provide a straightforward prediction of how the climate will change. As one Copenhagen delegate put it: "Tell me what the stock market will do in 100 years and I will tell you what the climate will do." Second, as most climate scientists will agree, their role is not to formulate policy. They can provide more or less apocalyptic scenarios of what will happen if emissions hit certain thresholds, from burning forests to disappearing islands. But when politicians ask what is the absolute maximum amount of carbon dioxide we should allow to be pumped out, the answer is, invariably, slippery: how much risk do you want to take?
There are ways out of the deadlock. As the major climate negotiations in December approach, scientists need to be able to take off their labcoats sometimes and speak as concerned citizens. Some may feel uncomfortable with blurring the line between science and activism, but they should be aware that no one understands the risks better than they do and no one is better placed to give informed opinions.
Politicians, for their part, should stop begging climatologists for easy answers. What they need instead is a new breed of advisers to descend from the ivory towers of academia and join the climate fray - people who are willing and able to weigh up the risks, costs and benefits of various degrees of action. Risk managers, step up to the plate.
If all else fails, there may still be the safety net of geoengineering. As we have said on several occasions, this option can no longer be dismissed as fantasy. Reputable scientists are discussing options among themselves and with policy-makers, but the fact that we are even considering it should spur governments to cut emissions, cut them deeply and cut them fast. Geoengineering is no get-out-of-jail-free card; it has dangers of its own. The military are already taking an interest (see "Seed clouds to cool the climate"), raising the spectre of climate weapons able to divert rainfall and bring drought. That is the last thing we want.
How to create a work space that uses the least amount of energy, creates the least amount of waste, and provides a healthy environment for the people working there.
Joel Makower, Scientific American 18 Mar 09;
Although there's no standard definition for an environmentally responsible office, most people would define it in common sense terms: a work space that uses the least amount of energy and other resources, creates the least amount of waste, and provides a healthy environment for the people working there.
The idea that being green requires untold expense and inconvenience is a fallacy born of stereotypes: that environmental responsibility in business (or in life) demands doing without, sacrificing convenience, and buying premium-priced products that may be inferior to their conventional (and cheaper) countertypes. True, there are some poor-quality, pricey green products out there, but that's no different from the rest of the marketplace.
In reality, "green" can often mean better, and sometimes cheaper. In the case of offices, going green can cut costs, improve efficiency, and create more pleasant—and sometimes more productive—workplaces. Some, but not all, activities may require making financial investments that pay themselves back over time, but many of the changes are free, requiring mostly operational and behavioral changes. Of course, that's easier said than done.
Here are the three categories of environmental improvements with the biggest bang for the buck. Some of these can be done by individuals; others require organizational involvement.
1. Energy and Lighting. Commercial buildings consume more than one third of all energy generated in the U.S. and energy use is the largest operating expense (about one third of the budget) of commercial office buildings. There are myriad ways to use energy more efficiently. First and foremost is lighting. Fluorescent and LED (light-emitting diode) bulbs not only provide more lumens per watt but also produce less heat, thereby reducing air conditioning costs. Newer electronic transformers and ballasts that run tube-type fluorescent bulbs are far more efficient than older electromagnetic fluorescents. Bonus: they also eliminate the bulbs' annoying flicker. According to a recent study by the Canadian government, the annual operating cost for a standard two-lamp electronic fixture costs $2.89 Canadian (about $2.26 USD) a year per square meter, compared with $5.29 Canadian ($4.14 USD) for conventional fluorescents. Based on those figures, a 50,000-square-foot (4,645-square-meter) building with efficient lighting would save $11,148 a year ($8,720 USD) in energy costs. Adding occupancy sensors, which turn lights off when no one's around, and other lighting controls can cut costs even further.
Of course, there are all those machines: computers, printers, modems, telephones, fax machines, scanners…. Many remain powered up 24/7, despite the fact that they're used only a few hours (or minutes) a day. Look for Energy Star computers, which must meet strict energy-efficiency requirements developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE). Buying an Energy Star computer helps save energy by 70 percent over conventional models and could save up to $50 annually per machine.
To maximize those savings, plug office machines into a power strip that can be turned off (or will switch off automatically); the transformers in most machines' AC adapters draw power continuously, even when the machines are not in use, or even when they're not plugged into the adapter. And don't rely on computers' screen savers to save energy—they don't.
2. Paper Use. Reducing paper use is a no-brainer, when you consider paper's real cost. A study by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and Citigroup estimated that the real price tag of a $2 ream of office paper is 31 times that—$62—when you add in the costs of paper storage, printing, copying, recycling, disposal and postage. So, saving paper has a multiplier effect—and not just financially: The pulp and paper industry is the second-largest consumer of energy in the U.S. and uses more water to produce a ton of product than any other industry.
There are countless paper-saving tips, starting with the obvious: Don't print unless you must. If you do print, use both sides of the page or print drafts on the blank side of already printed documents.
Whatever paper you do use, recycle if possible. Recycling white and mixed office paper can be profitable. It eliminates waste-disposal costs, as many recyclers will haul the paper for free, because they can resell it in recycling markets. A 150-person office can generate 23 tons of the stuff in the course of a year, saving up to $3,900, according to a 2000 study by a New York City government agency, although prices fluctuate over time and from region to region.
3. Travel and Commuting. Getting to and from work or traveling to business meetings represents the biggest part of some companies' environmental footprint, in terms of the energy used and pollution generated. In the U.S., roughly a third of total greenhouse gas emissions stem from automobile, air, train and bus travel. Both business travel and employee commuting represent opportunities to save time and money.
For example, telecommuting—allowing select employees to work from home or other locations all or part of the time—can save employees' time and cut their commuting costs, and it can also reduce real estate costs. The cost of operating a computer and a broadband line from home is considerably cheaper than the tab for an office cubicle. Employees might be happier and more productive, too—between 10 and 20 percent more productive, according to several recent studies. For example, a 2004 study by AT&T found that a company could eliminate one office for every three teleworkers, a savings of about $2,000.
Cutting business travel is another potential source of savings. A new generation of "telepresence" technologies is enabling even smaller companies to "meet" long distance with others. Portable telepresence equipment that can fit on a conference table now costs around $5,000, a tab quickly offset by the expensive biz trips avoided.
Joel Makower is the executive editor of GreenBiz.com and author of Strategies for the Green Economy: Opportunities and Challenges in the New World of Business.
Robin Pagnamenta, Times Online 18 Mar 09;
Royal Dutch Shell provoked a furious backlash from campaigners yesterday when it announced plans to scale back its renewable energy business and focus purely on oil, gas and biofuels.
Jeroen van der Veer, the chief executive, said that Shell, the world's second-largest non-state-controlled oil company, was planning to drop all new investment in wind, solar and hydrogen energy.
“I don't expect them to grow much at Shell from here, due to portfolio fit and the returns outlook compared to other opportunities,” he said, speaking at the Anglo-Dutch group's annual strategy briefing.
He said that instead Shell would focus its remaining renewable energy investments on biofuels, where it is conducting research into “second generation” fuels, so far with little commercial success.
Linda Cook, who heads Shell's gas and power business, said that wind and solar power “struggle to compete with the other investment opportunities we have in our portfolio”.
The announcement, which comes as Shell is fighting to maintain its commitments on dividends (which it will increase by 5 per cent this year) and its core oil and gas business in the face of a more than $100 slide in the price of crude since last summer, triggered a furious response from green groups.
John Sauven, the executive director of Greenpeace UK, said that Shell had “rejoined the ranks of the dirtiest, most regressive corporations in the world ... After years of proclaiming their commitment to clean power, they're now pulling out of the technologies we need to see scaled up if we're to slash emissions.”
A spokesman for the Department for Energy and Climate Change said: “We believe renewables have a strong future as part of the UK and global energy mix in the fight against climate change.”
Shell has invested $1.7billion on alternative energy in the past five years, compared with total capital expenditure of $32billion this year. It holds stakes in 11 wind power projects, mostly in the United States, with the capacity to generate 1,100 megawatts of electricity. It also operates research programmes into thin-film solar and hydrogen technology.
Shell also said that it will maintain its spending on carbon capture and storage projects in Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Canada, Australia and America - most of which also receive state support.
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