Hantu Dive Blog Log, 27 June 2009 (Part 2)
from Pulau Hantu and Black-tipped reef shark caught at Pulau Hantu
Olive-backed Sunbird: Removal of faecal sac
from Bird Ecology Study Group
The Flying Lemur
from Urban Forest
TeamSeagrass is now certified!
from teamseagrass
Twittering science meetings – nature podcast
from Otterman speaks
Birds and droppings everywhere at this once-beautiful park
from The Lazy Lizard's Tales and why so many dead fish at Kallang
Straits Times Forum 2 Jul 09;
I REFER to the Forum Online letter by Mr Patrick Low, 'Why fine owner $6,000 for felling trees on his property?' (June 24).
Singapore is a densely built city-state that has achieved international recognition as a garden city. This did not come about by chance. The luxuriant greenery Singapore enjoys today is a result of the Government and community's deliberate efforts and commitment in planting and painstakingly maintaining trees over many years.
Singapore's tree conservation policy underpins this commitment. To preserve the ambience of areas where there are many mature trees, two Tree Conservation Areas were designated in the 1990s. The felling of healthy trees above 1m in girth without approval is not allowed within the designated Tree Conservation Areas, and offenders can be fined up to $50,000 under the Parks and Trees Act.
In the case of Mr Low's friend, he was fined for the unauthorised felling of three trees, with girths above 1m, in a Tree Conservation Area. Action was also taken against his contractor, which was not an NParks contractor, for the unauthorised felling of the trees. NParks met Mr Low's friend, his contractor as well as his architect to explain the seriousness of felling the three trees, and Mr Low's friend paid the fine.
Lee Pin Pin (Ms)
Deputy Director/Corporate & Marketing Communications
National Parks Board
Tommy Koh & Leong Ching, Straits Times 2 Jul 09;
WATER is a common but very precious asset. Without water, human beings cannot survive. Without water, the planet's ecosystem, which sustains life, will be destroyed. Without water, there will be no agriculture and no industry. Without water, life on planet Earth will perish.
We regard the right of a person to safe and affordable water as a basic human right. It is a great shame that, at the beginning of the 21st century, about one billion out of six billion people do not enjoy this right. In Asia, about 700 million people do not have access to safe and affordable water.
In Singapore, all citizens have access to clean water at an affordable price. The water from our taps is safe to drink. In spite of this fact, many Singaporeans still boil their water. In recent years, partly because of our growing affluence and partly because of the influence of the West, Singaporeans are drinking more and more bottled water. In 2007, Singaporeans spent $98.3 million on bottled water, an increase of 80 per cent over 10 years. We observe that some of our ministries and universities serve bottled water instead of tap water. In many restaurants, the waiters pressure their customers to order bottled water.
We want to start a campaign to persuade Singaporeans to drink tap water instead of bottled water, whenever possible. The following are our reasons.
First, it is a waste of your money. Bottled water is more expensive than petrol. For one bottle of water you buy off the shelf (at 50 cents), you can get 850 bottles off the tap (at $1.17 per cubic metre).
Second, the tap water is as safe as bottled water. In Singapore, the water in our taps is safe to drink and subjected to daily checks. Health-wise, there is no difference between drinking tap water and bottled water. On the contrary, tests in the United States have shown that sometimes harmful chemicals, such as bisphenol-A (BPA), can leach from bottled water. Other tests in the US have shown that expensive bottled water is no better than tap water.
Third, bottled water uses energy unnecessarily. To make water bottles, you need polyethylene terephthalate or PET, a derivative of crude oil. In the US, 1.5 million barrels of oil are used each year just to make bottles for the water industry. This is enough oil to power 100,000 cars for a year.
Fourth, bottled water is bad for the environment. In Singapore, most of the bottles are not recycled but incinerated. This uses energy and produces carbon dioxide, adding to our carbon emission. Some bottled water travels great distances to Singapore. We are importing bottled water from as far away as France, Italy, Fiji and Serbia. Transport consumes energy and produces carbon dioxide. This is another reason bottled water is not a friend of the environment.
Fifth, you should drink tap water because it is the right thing to do. We can understand the need to drink bottled water in places where the tap water is unsafe to drink.
In Singapore, there is no good reason to drink bottled water. It costs you more, but it does not make you healthier. It is unfriendly to the environment.
By all means boil your water if that makes you feel better, but please do not buy or serve bottled water if you can help it. If a waiter asks you, 'still water or bubbly water', you should politely say you prefer PUB water.
We think the Government should lead by example.
We therefore urge the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources to write to all ministries, statutory boards, agencies, Temasek-linked companies and educational institutions to consider stopping the practice of serving bottled water.
Professor Tommy Koh is the chairman of the Governing Council of the Asia Pacific Water Forum and chairman of the 2008 and 2009 Water Leaders Summits in Singapore.
Leong Ching is a PhD student at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.
This is a revised version of an article appearing in the PUB publication Pure this month.
The right of a person to safe and affordable water is a basic human right. It is a great shame that, at the beginning of the 21st century, about one billion out of six billion people do not enjoy this right. In Asia, about 700 million people do not have access to safe and affordable water.
Encouraging tap water consumption
'The Government should impose an environment tax on bottled water.'
Straits Times Forum 6 Jul 09;
MR SEAH LEONG KHAI: 'Last Thursday's article by Professor Tommy Koh and Ms Leong Ching ('Forget bottled water, tap water as good as it gets') rightly points out the advantages of drinking tap water over bottled water in terms of cost and environmental impact. Tap water in Singapore is clean and can be consumed directly from the tap without boiling. So why do people still insist on bottled water? One reason must be bottled water's perceived cleanliness, and the other is convenience. As a good environmental practice, we should reduce the consumption of bottled water when clean tap water is available. People could carry a re-usable bottle to fill with tap water, and malls could install drinking fountains so shoppers can drink from them or refill their bottles there. Perhaps the Government should impose an environment tax on bottled water, similar to the water conservation tax consumers pay for piped water.'
Today Online 1 Jul 09;
FROM today, consumers will get some help in choosing water efficient products for their homes.
All taps, mixers, flushing cisterns and urinals must now carry a water efficiency label ranging from three ticks (uses the least water), to zero.
The impact on water consumption - and utility bills - is more than just a trickle. Those who use a dual-flush, low-capacity flushing cistern (LCFC) with three ticks, for example, can save about 2,600 litres of water annually, according to national water agency PUB.
About 16 per cent of water consumption in a typical Singapore household goes to toilet flushing, and 22 per cent for kitchen use.
There will be "no significant cost increase" for consumers purchasing the labelled products, said PUB.
The Mandatory Water Efficiency Labelling Scheme is an extension of the Voluntary Water Efficiency Labelling Scheme introduced in October 2006.
The voluntary scheme will continue for the labelling of showerheads and washing machines for clothes.
In addition, all taps and mixers, urinals and LCFCs installed in all new developments and existing premises undergoing renovation must have at least a one-tick water efficiency rating. These LCFC installations also must be a dual-flush type from today.
Mangrove-dependent animals globally threatened
EurekAlert 1 Jul 09;
Extinction looms for amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds restricted to declining mangrove forests
More than 40 percent of a sample of amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds that are restricted to mangrove ecosystems are globally threatened with extinction, according to an assessment published in the July/August issue of BioScience.
The study, by David A. Luther of the University of Maryland and Russell Greenberg of the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, was based on an extensive literature search and expert consultations. The conclusions emphasize the vulnerability of animals that are dependent on a habitat rapidly being lost or degraded through coastal development, overexploitation, pollution, and changes in sea level and salinity.
Mangroves, which are salt-tolerant woody plants concentrated along coastal margins, generally in warm regions, have long been known to support many species of animals. Hundreds of vertebrates are sometimes found in mangroves, but Luther and Greenberg concentrated on the 69 terrestrial vertebrate species and subspecies that seem restricted to mangroves: 48 birds, 14 reptiles, 6 mammals, and 1 amphibian. These include several species with striking adaptations, such as specialized glands to excrete salt. The ground foragers among them feed primarily on crabs, but many of the birds feed on insects. For unclear reasons, mangrove-restricted species and subspecies are concentrated in Asia and Australia.
Between the early 1980s and 2001, between 19 and 35 percent of the world's mangrove forest area was lost. At this rate of loss--about 2 percent each year--mangroves could be extinct in 100 years. Only 27 of the terrestrial vertebrates that are dependent on mangroves have been assessed by the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature), and 13 of those are classified as threatened on the IUCN Red List, Luther and Greenberg report. They urge research aimed at predicting how continuing changes to mangrove forests are likely to affect the species found there: such information could guide attempts to conserve these specialized ecosystems.
###
After noon EST on 1 July and for the remainder of the month, the full text of the article will be available for free download through the copy of this Press Release available at http://www.aibs.org/bioscience-press-releases/.
Mangrove-dependent Animals Globally Threatened
ScienceDaily 1 Jul 09;
Substantial numbers of terrestrial vertebrates are restricted to mangrove forests. Many of these specialized species are listed as threatened by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Prospects for mangrove-restricted animals are bleak, because more than two percent of mangrove forests are lost each year.
More than 40 percent of a sample of amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds that are restricted to mangrove ecosystems are globally threatened with extinction, according to an assessment published in the July/August issue of BioScience. The study, by David A. Luther of the University of Maryland and Russell Greenberg of the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, was based on an extensive literature search and expert consultations.
The conclusions emphasize the vulnerability of animals that are dependent on a habitat rapidly being lost or degraded through coastal development, overexploitation, pollution, and changes in sea level and salinity.
Mangroves, which are salt-tolerant woody plants concentrated along coastal margins, generally in warm regions, have long been known to support many species of animals. Hundreds of vertebrates are sometimes found in mangroves, but Luther and Greenberg concentrated on the 69 terrestrial vertebrate species and subspecies that seem restricted to mangroves: 48 birds, 14 reptiles, 6 mammals, and 1 amphibian. These include several species with striking adaptations, such as specialized glands to excrete salt. The ground foragers among them feed primarily on crabs, but many of the birds feed on insects. For unclear reasons, mangrove-restricted species and subspecies are concentrated in Asia and Australia.
Between the early 1980s and 2001, between 19 and 35 percent of the world's mangrove forest area was lost. At this rate of loss--about 2 percent each year--mangroves could be extinct in 100 years. Only 27 of the terrestrial vertebrates that are dependent on mangroves have been assessed by the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature), and 13 of those are classified as threatened on the IUCN Red List, Luther and Greenberg report. They urge research aimed at predicting how continuing changes to mangrove forests are likely to affect the species found there: such information could guide attempts to conserve these specialized ecosystems.
Journal reference:
1. David A. Luther and Russell Greenberg. Mangroves: A Global Perspective on the Evolution and Conservation of Their Terrestrial Vertebrates. BioScience, July/August
Adapted from materials provided by American Institute of Biological Sciences, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Animals of the Disappearing Mangroves
As mangrove forests shrink worldwide, a menagerie of specially adapted animals that depend on them are at risk, too
Katherine Harmon, Scientific American 3 Jul 09;
In the watery limbo between sea and river, where salt and fresh water mingle in the roots of mangrove trees, a handful of uniquely adapted species—terrestrial and aquatic—have evolved to fill the novel niche.
But more than 40 percent of the land-dwelling animals that live in mangrove forests are now under pressure from habitat loss, concludes an analysis published this week in BioScience.
"Mangroves are threatened by development, pollution, mariculture and changes in sea level and salinity," wrote David Luther, an ecology researcher at the University of Maryland, College Park, and Russell Greenberg, head of the Smithsonian National Zoo's Migratory Bird Center. The impact on creatures that depend on mangroves remains poorly documented.
Tangled woody mangrove forests cover about 65,637 square miles (170,000 square kilometers) around the world, but they're quickly disappearing. A 2007 United Nations report noted that 20 percent of the globe's mangrove forests had vanished in the 25 years between 1980 and 2005, a rate that the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's director called "alarming."
Here's a look at the forests and some of the animals that are now threatened by their rapid disappearance.
Slide Show: Vanishing Animals of the Mangroves
Jyoti Shelar, DNA 2 Jul 09;
Mumbai: Even after losing over 40% of its mangrove cover in the last decade, the reclaimed city refuses to learn. Now, in a bid to prevent the land mafia from killing mangroves and grabbing the land surrounding it, police have now formed a dedicated mangrove squad which will keep vigil on illegal dumping of debris in mangrove zones. In the first phase, the squad will be positioned in North Mumbai areas like Borivili and Dahisar.
The squad, which was formed last week by zonal deputy commissioner of police Sanjay Banerjee, has already fined four dumper drivers for driving in the Coastal Regulatory Zone (CRZ). They have also registered five cases under theenvironment protection actagainst persons who were found dumping debris.
The squad consists of two sub inspectors from MHB colony and Gorai police stations. The sub inspectors have 10 policemen each under them. "The squad patrols the mangroves at night when the dumpers and trucks usually attempt to dump the construction debris," said Banerjee, adding that dumping is done to convert the mangroves into construction sites.
The initiative was taken after Banerjee received a letter from
the New Link Road Residents Forum highlighting the issue. SP Matthew, one of the members of the forum, said, "We had submitted a letter along with two photo proofs of the dumping activities." Mathew said that the miscreants had created earthen bunds inside the mangroves to block water flow and thus arrest the growth of flora.
The members of the forum, consisting over 50 housing societies along the Link Road in Borivili and Dahisar, had kept a watch on the activities in the mangroves and later decided to take up the matter with the authorities. "We submitted the letter two weeks ago and the DCP assured us immediate action," added Matthew.
Banerjee is now also communicating with the civic authorities to work out a solution to stop theentry of dumpers, trucks and other heavy vehicles into mangrove areas. "I have advised them to erect concrete blocks on mangrove roads to block entry of heavy vehicles. Only bicycles or motorcycles can pass through such narrow routes," said Banerjee, who is planning to appoint more such squads in areas likeMalvani in Malad which too has several mangroves.
Tiong Hiew King, founder of giant Asian logging conglomerate Rimbunan Hijau, a company accused of systematically stripping the "paradise" forests of Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands
John Vidal, guardian.co.uk 1 Jul 09;
Environment groups around the world have called for a billionaire businessman to be stripped of his knighthood after claiming that his fortune has been built on the systematic destruction of tropical rainforests.
Tiong Hiew King, the founder of giant Asian logging conglomerate Rimbunan Hijau, was awarded an honorary knighthood "for services to commerce, the community and charitable organisations in Papua New Guinea" in the Queen's birthday honours list last month.
Rimbunan Hijau, which has hundreds of subsidiaries, operates in south-east Asia and Africa, and is the biggest extractor of tropical timber from Papua New Guinea.
The company has also been highly active in the Solomon Islands, which campaigners say has been stripped almost bare of its indigenous forests by a handful of Asian logging syndicates including King's companies.
The award to Tiong, whose personal wealth is estimated at over $2.7bn, escaped notice until now - having not been published in any British newspaper.
Honorary awards for foreign nationals are not published in Britain and are made public only at the discretion of foreign governments.
Yesterday both the UK government and Buckingham palace distanced themselves from the appointment.
"The palace would have decided on the award," said a spokesman for the Foreign Office.
"The prime minister of Papua New Guinea, supported by the governor general, would have made the recommendation to the queen. It would then have been cleared by the Foreign Office and the Malaysian government," said a spokesman for the palace.
Survival International and other groups today accused Tiong's timber companies of systematically stripping the "paradise" forests of Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands for over 30 years.
"It's outrageous that Tiong Hiew King has been given an honorary knighthood. His company is responsible for the destruction of vast areas of forest belonging to the Penan tribe in Sarawak, Borneo, many of whom now have difficulty finding enough food as the animals they hunt have fled Tiong's bulldozers. Britain must stop honouring people who abuse tribal people's rights," said Stephen Cory, director of Survival International.
"His global logging empire is responsible for the destruction of huge swathes of pristine rainforest in south-east Asia. If the Queen knew what he was responsible for she would have knighted him with a chainsaw, not a sword," said a spokesman for Greenpeace.
"Tiong Hiew King is unfit for a knighthood. He is commonly known to be one of the chief people responsible for widespread logging in both Papua New Guinea and other countries," said Lukas Straumann of the Bruno Manser Foundation, which was set up following the death of the Swiss environmentalist.
"We are shocked by the award and would like to write a formal letter of protest to Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth to deprive him of this honour as it is a joke based on the record of his company's activities in our country," said a spokesman for the Papua New Guinea Eco-Forestry forum.
Prince Charles, who visited south-east Asia last year to plead with government leaders to protect forests has led a global initiative to defend tropical rainforests which are being felled at an alarming rate.
A spokesman for Clarence House, which represents Prince Charles, today declined to comment.
The Rimbunan Hijau company website says the jobs it creates for local communities improves their quality of life and that welfare and environmental protection of societies is a major driving force for the company.
Tiong declined to comment.
Yahoo News 1 Jul 09;
MANILA (AFP) – Wildlife officials have foiled an apparent attempt to smuggle rare 200-year-old trees out of the Philippines, the government said Wednesday.
Officers seized 35 Podocarpus costalis trees at a gardening shop in Calamba, south of Manila after the government rejected their owner's application for a permit to transport the rare conifers, considered an endangered species, to the port of Manila.
Known locally as "igem-dagat", the short evergreen trees grow only in the tiny northern Philippine island of Calayan and nearby Taiwan, and are prized as garden plants, the environment and natural resources department said in a statement.
The conifer grows up to three metres (10 feet) tall and has a smooth, greenish bark, horizontally spreading branches and foliage buds of long, triangular scales.
"Igem-dagat is included in the list of threatened species being protected by the government. Its trading is strictly regulated," Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Joselito Atienza said.
The government suspects the trees would likely have been shipped abroad. It did not reveal the exact date of the seizure.
The person seeking to transport the trees, a local official in the northern province of Cagayan, claimed they were planted on private land in the north in 1975.
However, government experts estimate the slow-growing trees could be anywhere between 70 and 200 years old and could have only been taken from the wild.
"Some of the trees would take two pairs of arms to encircle their trunks. As such, these trees could not have been planted in 1975," according to the report of the officials who seized the trees.
Jonathan Wootliff, Jakarta Post 30 Jun 09;
Conservation campaigners in Britain are calling on supermarkets to stop selling products that contain palm oil harvested from environmentally sensitive areas in Indonesia.
Palm oil is widely used in everything from chocolate cookies and potato crisps to detergent and lipstick, and Indonesia is the world's largest producer of this much prized commodity.
The target of this current campaign is the major London Stock Exchange-quoted conglomerate, Jardine Matheson, which is the majority shareholder in an Indonesian palm oil company that plans to convert sections of the Tripa swamp forest in Aceh, Sumatra into palm oil plantations.
Environmentalists claim that the venture will destroy a biologically rich ecosystem that is home to more than 6,000 orangutans.
Although more commonly known as one of Borneo's most endangered species, orangutan populations in Sumatra are dwindling at an even more alarming rate. Experts say that the species found on the island - which is more intelligent and sociable than its Borneo cousin - is well on the way to becoming the first of the great apes to go extinct.
Greenpeace is one of a number of international organizations condemning the Jardine Matheson controlled Astra Agro Lestar palm oil venture, which is headquartered in Jakarta.
It is emotively accusing the company of bankrolling the obliteration of a vital part of Indonesia's rainforests, right in the heart of the region that bore the brunt of the 2004 tsunami which claimed the lives of nearly a quarter of a million people.
Ironically, Jardine's, which is one of the world's oldest companys, was established in Canton in 1832 partly for the purpose of importing opium in to China. Today, it is one of the most respected international businesses in the world, owning a myriad of interests including the prestigious Mandarin Oriental hotel chain.
Its Website states that the company "has always been committed to making a positive contribution to the communities and regions in which it operates."
Astra Agro Lestari (AAL) robustly denies any wrongdoing, claiming its activities are in full compliance with Indonesian law, which requires comprehensive environmental studies that take into consideration any stakeholder concerns prior to the development of any plantations.
AAL says that these studies must cover the potential impact on endangered species, thereby discrediting allegations that its activities have any adverse impact on the orangutan.
The company claims to have set aside thousands of hectares of forest deemed to be of so-called High Conservation Value (HCV), and that the decision to go ahead with the Tripa project was based on the findings of an independent environmental study. In this instance it plans to convert only half of its 13,000-hectare concession as a consequence of conservation concerns.
Less than a quarter of Indonesia's palm oil producers have joined the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, the global organization which promotes sustainable practices in the industry. And yet AAL claims to fully endorse the principles of the Roundtable, although curiously, it is not yet a member.
Nothing is simple when it comes to environmental protection in Indonesia, as this Green-Watch column regularly attests. In Sumatra, locals call oil palm the "golden plant", thanks to the income that the fast growing industry delivers.
But conservation groups say the economic benefits come at a high price. In spite of their call for more responsible practices and stronger government action, even the governor of Aceh, known for his green credentials, seems unwilling to intervene.
It may be hard to judge the rights and wrongs of this particular confrontation, but it is clear that conservation groups must fight to protect Sumatra's rapidly depleting natural forests. I have been flying over the island for nearly a decade and have witnessed the clearing of massive areas of forests to make way for palm oil plantations.
The palm oil industry has its rightful place in Indonesia, and responsible development of well managed plantations that do not impact on biodiversity are a necessary if Indonesia's economy is to flourish.
But there is widespread disregard for the needs of the environment with weak enforcement of regulations and laws being all-too-commonplace. It would be far better, therefore, to entrust the palm oil industry to large businesses like AAL, which can be held account for their actions, than to allow an inevitable chaotic free-for-all to take place.
There is a disturbingly large gap between the accusations coming from environmentalists and AAL's counter claims.
It is in the best interests of the orangutan, local people and the company, that this serious dispute be resolved.
There has been a breakdown of trust that must be urgently addressed. It is surely beholden on AAL, and its highly competent parent company, to urgently execute a comprehensive engagement strategy with all of the concerned stakeholders.
Jonathan Wootliff is an independent sustainable development consultant specializing in the building of productive relationships between companies and NGOs. He can be contacted at jonathan@wootliff.com
One of the largest groups of dolphins ever seen in British waters has been observed off the Welsh coast.
Murray Wardrop, The Telegraph 1 Jul 09;
Conservationists carrying out a coastal survey found their boat surrounded by a pod of around 1,500 dolphins off the coast of Pembrokeshire.
The eight volunteers from the Sea Trust described the scene as a "mile-long wall of dolphins" near the Smalls Lighthouse in the Irish Sea.
The charity's founder Cliff Benson said in wildlife terms the sight "was like winning the lottery".
The team was first alerted to the giant group when they saw what looked like a "blizzard" of Gannets on the horizon.
Mr Benson said: "Beneath them was a living wall of dolphins – a mile long and several deep.
"They just kept on coming pod after pod passing by the boat. It was a wonderful thing to see. It was possible to see all ages of dolphins from big adults to tiny babies."
Experts believe that the group consisted of many smaller pods, which had joined together to exploit a large "bait ball" of fish passing through the stretch of water.
Matt Walker, BBC News 1 Jul 09;
A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered.
Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same interrelated colony, and will refuse to fight one another.
The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.
What's more, people are unwittingly helping the mega-colony stick together.
Argentine ants ( Linepithema humile ) were once native to South America. But people have unintentionally introduced the ants to all continents except Antarctica.
These introduced Argentine ants are renowned for forming large colonies, and for becoming a significant pest, attacking native animals and crops.
In Europe, one vast colony of Argentine ants is thought to stretch for 6,000km (3,700 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, while another in the US, known as the 'Californian large', extends over 900km (560 miles) along the coast of California. A third huge colony exists on the west coast of Japan.
While ants are usually highly territorial, those living within each super-colony are tolerant of one another, even if they live tens or hundreds of kilometres apart. Each super-colony, however, was thought to be quite distinct.
But it now appears that billions of Argentine ants around the world all actually belong to one single global mega-colony.
Researchers in Japan and Spain led by Eiriki Sunamura of the University of Tokyo found that Argentine ants living in Europe, Japan and California shared a strikingly similar chemical profile of hydrocarbons on their cuticles.
But further experiments revealed the true extent of the insects' global ambition.
The team selected wild ants from the main European super-colony, from another smaller one called the Catalonian super-colony which lives on the Iberian coast, the Californian super-colony and from the super-colony in west Japan, as well as another in Kobe, Japan.
They then matched up the ants in a series of one-on-one tests to see how aggressive individuals from different colonies would be to one another.
Ants from the smaller super-colonies were always aggressive to one another. So ants from the west coast of Japan fought their rivals from Kobe, while ants from the European super-colony didn't get on with those from the Iberian colony.
One big family
But whenever ants from the main European and Californian super-colonies and those from the largest colony in Japan came into contact, they acted as if they were old friends.
These ants rubbed antennae with one another and never became aggressive or tried to avoid one another.
In short, they acted as if they all belonged to the same colony, despite living on different continents separated by vast oceans.
The most plausible explanation is that ants from these three super-colonies are indeed family, and are all genetically related, say the researchers. When they come into contact, they recognise each other by the chemical composition of their cuticles.
"The enormous extent of this population is paralleled only by human society," the researchers write in the journal Insect Sociaux, in which they report their findings.
However, the irony is that it is us who likely created the ant mega-colony by initially transporting the insects around the world, and by continually introducing ants from the three continents to each other, ensuring the mega-colony continues to mingle.
"Humans created this great non-aggressive ant population," the researchers write.
Every year, scientists recognize 15,000 new animal species— each one needs a new name. With so many species, scientists are bound to turn to popular culture for inspiration. Here, we've compiled a list of famous (and infamous) people and the often quirky species named after them.
Lisa Merolla, Popular Mechanics 1 Jul 09;
What do George W. Bush, Roy Orbison and Darth Vader have in common? All three have had new beetle species named after them.
Naming species after celebrities is one seriously effective way for scientists to draw attention to taxonomy. Giving species a famous name for more public interest is "shameless self-promotion," says Quentin Wheeler, the director of the International Institute for Species Exploration in Arizona (whose names populate four of our top-15 list). "When you are a taxonomist and are mentioned in Rolling Stone," Wheeler says, "you know you have arrived."
Scientists are given free rein with naming, as long as they abide by guidelines set by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. The rules for patronyms—or scientific names in honor of people—do not limit which names are used. They just provide a uniform naming method. In general, an animal species ending in 'i' is named after one man. The ending 'ae' is for species named after one woman; 'orum' is reserved for species named after couples. Plant species operate under slightly different rules because the gender of the species must match that of the genus.
President Barack Obama is one of the latest to be immortalized in the taxonomic record. And the list of famous plants, bacteria and animals ranges in the hundreds, if not thousands—from the sea of many, here are our 18 favorite famous namesakes.
1. Barack Obama: Caloplaca obamae
Our current president's namesake is an orange-colored lichen. Discovered in California, the lichen was named this March. Kerry Knudsen, the lichen curator in the University of California, Riverside Herbarium, picked the name to "show my appreciation for the president's support of science and science education."
2, 3 and 4. George W. Bush, Agathidium bushi; Dick Cheney, Agathidium cheneyi; and Donald Rumsfeld, Agathidium rumsfeldi
All three members of the former administration have a slime-mold beetle named in their honor. Wheeler is responsible for this choice, which was meant as a compliment. He said President Bush called to thank him for the gesture.
5. Darth Vader: Agathidium vaderi
Wheeler named another slime-mold beetle in honor of the fictional Star Wars villain. The reasoning is that both Darth Vader and his namesake have broad, shiny heads and similar eyes.
6. Roy and Barbara Orbison: Orectochilus orbisonorum
In January of last year Wheeler and his colleagues named a whirligig beetle after legendary singer song-writer, Roy Orbison and his widow, Barbara Orbison. The beetle looks as if it is wearing a tuxedo.
7 and 8. Stephen Colbert: Aptostichus stephencolberti and Agaporomorphus colberti
The comedian, who has begged scientists to name species after him on The Colbert Report, has been honored twice—once with a spider and once with a Venezuelan diving beetle. The beetle species is notable for its male reproductive organs, which display a unique row of fine hairs.
9, 10 and 11. Frank Zappa: Phialella zappai (jellyfish), Pachygnatha zappa (spider), Zappa, a genus of Gobiidae (fish)
Guitarist, free-speech advocate and prolific song writer Frank Zappa is a popular inspiration for a number of species' names. In 1987, a scientist named a species of jellyfish after Zappa because a scientist he wanted to meet the artist (his plan was successful). Next, scientists named an entire genus of goby fish was after the musician, followed by an orb-weaver spider whose black markings reminded the researchers of Zappa's signature mustache.
12. John Cleese: Avahi cleesei
In 2005, scientists named woolly lemur species after the British comic actor to recognize his work in lemur conservation. Cleese promoted lemurs in the film Fierce Creatures and the documentary Operation Lemur With John Cleese.
13. Kate Winslet: Agra katewinsletae
This ground-beetle species is named after Kate Winslet because of her role in the film Titanic. The scientific paper describing the beetle said, "Her character did not go down with the ship, but we will not be able to say the same for this elegant canopy species, if all the rain forest is converted to pastures."
14. Hugh Hefner: Sylvilagus palustris hefneri
Scientists named the marsh rabbit, found in the southeastern United States, after the founder of Playboy. Hefner's organization has donated money to support research about the endangered "bunnies."
15. Greta Garbo: Rostropria garbo
This solitary female wasp reminded the scientists of the reclusive Garbo, who famously said, "I want to be alone."
16 and 17. Harrison Ford: Pheidole harrisonfordi (ant) and Calponia harrisonfordi (spider)
Two types of insects bear Ford's name. Scientists named a spider species after the actor to thank him for narrating a documentary for the London Museum of Natural History. The ant species was named after Ford to honor his conservation work.
18. Gary Larson: Strigiphilus garylarsoni
The creator of the Far Side comic strip, Larson's namesake is a species of owl louse. About the recognition, he wrote: "I considered this an extreme honor. Besides, I knew no one was going to write and ask to name a new species of swan after me. You have to grab these opportunities when they come along."
Yahoo News 1 Jul 09;
RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) – Nearly 2,300 plant species are at risk of disappearing from flora-rich Brazil, many more than once thought, according to an academic study released on Wednesday.
The research, carried out by 175 scientists, indicates the Brazilian government has dramatically underestimated the risk to the country's plant species caused by deforestation, fires and urbanization.
Last year Brasilia said 472 plants were at risk in a country that contains an estimated 15 percent of the world's flora species.
Jose Maria Cardoso, a conservation expert who took part in the project, said the 2,291 species identified as being in danger were many more than the government's "conservative" estimates, which did not take into account rare species.
"Our criteria was to accept that rare plants are automatically in danger," Cardoso told Brazilian daily O Globo.
The study analyzed 752 areas considered "strategic for retaining the country's biodiversity," amounting to 16 percent of Brazil.
WWF 1 Jul 09;
BrasÃlia, Brazil – Conservationists worry that further deforestation will follow from Brazil now allowing squatting on Amazon land – regulations that encompass parcels equal to the combined size of Germany and Italy.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva late last week signed into law new land regulations covering 67 millions hectares that are occupied without proper ownership documentation. However, some mechanisms inserted by the National Congress into this law open the way for possible fraud and do not contain strong enough conservation guidelines, which could lead to further cutting down of the Amazon.
Concerned with these consequences of the law, Brazilian NGOs, including WWF-Brazil, conducted intense lobbying to push President Lula to veto the added mechanisms.
WWF-Brazil supports the land regulation and believes it is essential to ensure property to family scale farmers dwelling in the region, if enforced with social and environmental responsibility.
But some aspects of the law may lead to an inappropriate occupation of Amazon’s lands. For example, the provision allowing the selling properties of more than 400 hectares after three years could stimulate the market for land in the region without necessarily improving the production of food or guarantees against deforestation.
Overall, the law does not establish preventive actions against future land occupation and deforestation, said Claudio Maretti, WWF-Brazil's Conservation Director.
The new law also includes:
• Expanding the maximum size of areas that can be legalized and regulated, from 100 to 1,500 hectares
• Rejecting government inspection of land
• Allowing lands exceeding 400 hectares to be sold to someone else just three years after being legalized, which will stimulate the land market in Amazon
"We need to sensitize lawmakers and the government in order to bring Brazil to a position of leadership concerning sustainable development,” said Denise Hamú, WWF-Brazil's CEO.
While WWF-Brazil applauded Lula’s decision to prohibit the transfer of Amazon's public lands to private companies and the indirect exploitation through an intermediary, the government still needs to clarify how it will prevent deforestation on these areas.
"The debate about climate changes and the struggle against deforestation – the main cause of greenhouse gas emissions of Brazil -- is a global concern, and we are witnessing several natural catastrophes in the country”, Maretti said. “We need actions to encourage an environmentally responsible economy, more protection to the Amazon forest and benefits to local communities, as the creation of sustainable use reserves and real concession of the use to those who live in the reserves.”
Jeremy Page, Times Online 1 Jul 09;
When Indian wildlife authorities took three Bengal tigers by helicopter to an empty reserve in Rajasthan last year it was hailed as a groundbreaking experiment to revive the country’s flagging tiger population.
Now, some experts fear that the male and two females relocated to the Sariska reserve could all be siblings — reducing their chances of a successful long-term breeding programme.
The Wildlife Institute of India (WII), which is in charge of the project, began testing DNA samples from the three tigers yesterday to decide if they need to introduce others from different parts of the country. It already had blood samples from the two females but had not taken a sample from the male until it was briefly captured on Monday to have its broken radio collar replaced.
“We’re to blame — we should have done this earlier but everything was done in a hurry,” K. Sankar, a WII tiger expert who is overseeing the project, told The Times. “Now we have the samples, the analysis is under way and after that we will be able to say for sure. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.” Results are expected this weekend, when the Indian Environment Minister is due to visit Sariska.
If the tigers are proven to be siblings it would be the latest in a series of embarrassments for Indian wildlife officials, who were forced to admit in 2005 that all of Sariska’s tigers had been killed.
Sariska used to be India’s most famous tiger sanctuary and was at the centre of the Project Tiger conservation programme launched by Indira Gandhi, the late Prime Minister, in 1973. But the programme has failed to prevent India’s tiger population plummeting to 1,411 as of February last year — down from 3,642 in 2002 — largely as a result of poaching.
Last year’s relocation, the first of its kind, was part of a £93 million emergency plan to revive the tiger population, which was estimated at 40,000 a century ago.
Dr Sankar said that Wildlife Institute experts knew the females were likely to be sisters, or half-sisters, because they were relocated from the same area of the Ranthambore reserve, also in Rajasthan. The male was selected from a different part of Ranthambore and there was no evidence that the females were his siblings, he said.
However, critics say that the institute should have carried out DNA tests to confirm its analysis before airlifting the tigers to Sariska. “It’s a very simple procedure,” said Dharmendra Khandal, a field biologist based in Ranthambore.
He said that the WII’s census data showed that one adult male occupied the entire territory where the three relocated tigers were born. Inbreeding is common in the wild — even between a male and daughter. But it could create problems by perpetuating genetic weaknesses.
Yahoo News 1 Jul 09;
WINDHOEK (AFP) – In a bid to save tens of thousands of baby seals being killed for their fur, Namibia animal rights activist are rushing to raise millions of dollars to buy out a fur company that buys the pelts.
The annual commercial seal harvesting season officially opened on Wednesday with a quota of 85,000 pups due to be clubbed to death on the Namibian coast.
"I got the offer from the Australian-based owner Hatem Yavuz to buy out his company for 14.2 million US dollars by mid-July and I have started an international online appeal to raise the funds," Francois Hugo of Seal Alert South Africa, a seal rehabilitation centre, told AFP by telephone from Cape Town.
"I have placed the plea on YouTube and Facebook over the weekend requesting individuals worldwide to pledge 15 dollars each until the target is reached and many offers have already reached us," Hugo added.
"Hatem Yavuz even offered to delay for two weeks the culling of the Cape Fur Seal pups and the shooting of 6,000 bulls by his Namibian partner companies which were allocated the quotas," Hugo added.
The original deadline set by Yavuz last Friday to raise the money by July 1 was too short, he said.
However an official in the Namibian fisheries ministry said the cull would kick off Wednesday, as agreed.
The ministry set a three-year rolling quota back in 2007 of 85,000 seal pups annually plus 6000 bulls each year to contain Namibia's total seal population of some 850,000 animals.
The bulls' dried genitals are popular in China where they are used for traditional medicines.
More than 3,200 online signatures were put on the Internet portal Facebook by late Tuesday with an additional petition by an Australian animal rights group launched separately, urging the fur company owner in an open letter to stop buying seal pelts from Namibia.
In May this year, the European Union banned imports and exports of all seal products in their 27 member states, including transporting these products through the EU to other parts of the world.
The sparsely populated southern African country is famous for its wildlife and deserts, especially along its Atlantic "skeleton coast". The seals live on a group of islands off the southern coast.
Happiness lessons, free bikes and growing vegetables in public flower beds are just some of the ways to save the planet advocated by the Government's green adviser.
Louise Gray, The Telegraph 1 Jul 09;
The Sustainable Development Commission, headed by Sir Jonathan Porritt, said the Government has failed to meet a range of targets on green living.
In an effort to get things back on track the advisory body has launched a range of innovative ideas for local authorities, government and individuals. The 19 "Breakthrough Ideas for the 21st Century" have all been developed and tested by a range of experts and many are already in action as pilot schemes across the country.
Suggestions include introducing "personal wellbeing education" or PWE into the school curriculum as well as more outdoor education, converting public flower beds to vegetable patches and handing out free bikes to encourage more people to take up cycling for journeys of fives miles or less.
A more punitive suggestion is to issue everyone with "carbon credit cards" that control the amount of energy each individual can spend on electricity, transport and even food.
The most daring ideas include converting the publicly-owned Royal Bank of Scotland to the Royal Bank of Sustainability, that invests in green technologies rather than fossil fuels, and retraining the unemployed in "green jobs" such as fitting solar panels.
Although many of the suggestions would require a major change of policy, such as increasing NHS spending on preventing ill health from four per cent to 20 per cent by 2020, all the ideas will be considered seriously by the Government. The SDC will also be approaching local authorities and business to take up some of the suggestions, such as setting up a public company to provide communities with low cost insulation.
The ideas are already being backed by a range of high profile names including the Prince of Wales, Rosie Boycott, Anna Ford and Jonathan Dimbleby.
Sir Jonathan, a former head of the Green Party and one time "green guru" to Tony Blair, said the Government has failed to make enough progress on sustainability issues. The UK is still the second worst greenhouse gas emitter in Europe, many species of native wildlife are in danger of going extinct and just two per cent of energy comes from renewable sources like wind and solar.
"Progress on sustainable development, at the national level, has been unbelievably slow. Yet all over the country, there are people taking action to make their own communities more sustainable, driving forward technological innovations, and pushing the policy agenda with really big ideas," he said.
The concept of carbon credit cards was first put forward two years ago by the then Environment Secretary David Miliband. Everyone in the country would be issued with a personal carbon budget for energy, transport and even food. If people go above the budget they can buy more credits on the open market and if they are below they can sell on the allowances.
The idea was rejected but Sir Jonathan, who has caused controversy before by suggesting people should not have more than two children to prevent overpopulation, said it was worth considering again.
"If you look at what is happening with climate change, we are approaching a point where people accept responsibility for their carbon footprint," he said. "The idea of a personal carbon credit card just gets you there a bit quicker. I am very keen to see this trialled."
Greg Clark, the Conservative energy spokesman, rejected the idea of carbon credit cards but said other ideas are worth considering.
"Fresh thinking is vital in every part of public life and no where is innovation more necessary than in finding effective solutions to tackling climate change," he said.
Green living: 19 ways to save the planet - list
The Telegraph 1 Jul 09;
Here is a list of the ways The Sustainable Development Commission, headed by Sir Jonathan Porritt, said the Government could meet targets on green living.
1. Carbon credit cards
2. Happiness lessons
3. More outdoor education
4. Free bikes
5. Locally produced food
6. Grow vegetables on public land
7. Increase NHS spending on preventing ill health
8. Use internet to help communities work together
9. Public forum on the future to look at Government policy for the long term
10. Royal Bank of Sustainability invests money in climate change projects
11. Government-issued green bonds invest in renewables
12. Low carbon zones of energy efficient housing
13. Councils and private companies join up to provide cheap insulation
14. Pay-as-you save to help households pay for efficiency measures by taking cost from electricity bills
15. Green jobs for the unemployed
16. Cap amount of energy from fossil fuels that companies can sell
17. Look at new ways of controlling global emissions as part of any international agreement
18. Charcoal produced from burning wood chips or "bio-char" could be ploughed back into the ground as fertiliser
19. Carbon captured from burning fossil fuels can be used to grow algae which is then converted into biofuels
Records show ExxonMobil gave hundreds of thousands of pounds to lobby groups that have published 'misleading and inaccurate information' about climate change
David Adam, guardian.co.uk 1 Jul 09;
The world's largest oil company is continuing to fund lobby groups that question the reality of global warming, despite a public pledge to cut support for such climate change denial, a new analysis shows.
Company records show that ExxonMobil handed over hundreds of thousands of pounds to such lobby groups in 2008. These include the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) in Dallas, Texas, which received $75,000 (£45,500), and the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC, which received $50,000.
According to Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, at the London School of Economics, both the NCPA and the Heritage Foundation have published "misleading and inaccurate information about climate change."
On its website, the NCPA says: "NCPA scholars believe that while the causes and consequences of the earth's current warming trend is [sic] still unknown, the cost of actions to substantially reduce CO2 emissions would be quite high and result in economic decline, accelerated environmental destruction, and do little or nothing to prevent global warming regardless of its cause."
The Heritage Foundation published a "web memo" in December that said: "Growing scientific evidence casts doubt on whether global warming constitutes a threat, including the fact that 2008 is about to go into the books as a cooler year than 2007". Scientists, including those at the UK Met Office say that the apparent cooling is down to natural changes and does not alter the long-term warming trend.
In its 2008 corporate citizenship report, published last year, ExxonMobil said it would cut funds to several groups that "divert attention" from the need to find new sources of clean energy.
The NCPA and Heritage Foundation are included among groups funded by ExxonMobil, according to details of its "2008 Worldwide Contributions and Community Investments" published recently.
Ward said: "ExxonMobil has been briefing journalists for three years that they were going to stop funding these groups. The reality is that they are still doing it. If the world's largest oil company wants to fund climate change denial then it should be upfront about it, and not tell people it has stopped."
In 2006, Ward, then at the Royal Society, wrote to ExxonMobil to challenge the company's funding of such lobby groups. The move, revealed in the Guardian, prompted accusations of censorship and debate about whether experts should "police" the distribution of scientific information.
In an article on the Guardian website, Ward writes: "I have now written again to ExxonMobil to point out that these organisations publish misleading information about climate change on their websites, and to seek guidance on how to reconcile this fact with the pledge made by the company. I believe that the company should keep its promise by ending its financial support for lobby groups that mislead the public about climate change."
ExxonMobil said it annually reviews and adjusts its contributions to policy research groups. A spokesman said: "Only ExxonMobil speaks for ExxonMobil and our position on climate change is clear. We have the same concerns as people everywhere, and that is how to provide the world with the energy it needs while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We take the issue of climate change seriously and the risks warrant action."
Yahoo News 1 Jul 09;
PARIS (AFP) – Canada ranks last among the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations for tackling climate change while Germany is top, the green group WWF and the German insurance giant Allianz reported on Wednesday.
Their assessment, issued ahead of the annual G8 summit, blasts Canada for greenhouse-gas emissions that are surging "far above" its obligations under under the UN's Kyoto Protocol.
"(Canada's) per capita emissions are among the highest in the world," they said.
"(Its) mid- to long-term greenhouse targets are inadequate. A plan to curb emissions was developed last year but has not been implemented. The Kyoto target will stay completely out of reach."
The United States, which placed last in the 2008 rankings, moves up a notch, thanks to the pro-climate policies launched by President Barack Obama.
Russia, too, is criticised for a steady increase in carbon pollution since 1999 and the lack of policies to reverse the trend.
Japan and Italy, ranked fifth and fourth respectively, have relatively low emissions per capita.
But both are faulted for failing to set down programmes that will help to peg global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees) Fahrenheit above pre-industrial times, a widely-accepted goal.
Germany heads the G8 list, narrowly followed by Britain and then France.
Even so, these three countries are still two-thirds short of what they could achieve, the report said.
The G8 summit takes place in L'Aquila, Italy, from July 8-10.
UN countries, under the 192-party Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), aim to forge a new agreement in Copenhagen in December that will set targets for emissions curbs and channel help to poor countries beyond 2012.
Canada agreed under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce CO2 emissions to 6.0 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. In 2007, the latest year for which figures are available, its emissions were 26.2 percent higher than in 1990.
Canada seen worst of G8 not curbing climate change
Daniel Flynn, Reuters 1 Jul 09;
ROME (Reuters) - With only five months to go until a new global pact on climate change, none of the Group of Eight nations is doing enough to curb global warming, with Canada and the United States ranking bottom, a study said on Wednesday.
The "G8 Climate Scorecards," compiled by environmental group WWF, said even the greenest members of the rich nations' club -- Germany, Britain and France -- were not on track to meet a "danger threshold" of limiting temperature rises to below two degrees Celsius.
G8 leaders gather in Italy next week to discuss the world financial crisis and climate change, hoping to make progress toward a new pact on global warming due to be signed in Copenhagen in December to replace the 1997 Kyoto deal.
They will be joined by members of U.S. President Barack Obama's Major Economies Forum in a bid to forge broad consensus.
"While there might be a bailout possibility for the financial system, no amounts of money will save the planet once climate change crosses the danger threshold," WWF head James Leape wrote in the foreword to the report.
Wednesday's annual G8 scorecard singled out Canada, saying Prime Minister Stephen Harper's conservative government had not implemented a plan to curb emissions, already among the highest in the world per capita and steadily increasing. Canada was not even close to meeting its Kyoto agreements, the WWF said.
The report praised U.S. President Obama for prioritizing clean energy in his economic recovery package and promoting green legislation, but said U.S. per capita emissions were among the highest in the world and were projected to rise.
"There has been more action in the U.S. in the last four months than in the last three decades -- a trend that will hopefully continue," the report said.
Obama's government has not embraced the 2 degree Celsius goal adopted by the European Union. Temperatures have already risen by 0.7 percent since the start of the industrial era.
"In order to avoid or reduce the risk of catastrophic climate change, G8 leaders must agree to do everything they can to stay below 2 degrees," said Kim Carstensen, leader of the WWF's Global Climate Initiative.
GERMANY TOP, THEN BRITAIN
Top of the G8 rankings came Germany, followed by Britain. The WWF praised Berlin for promoting renewable energy and an ambitious target of cutting greenhouse gases by 40 percent by 2020, though said this lacked clear plans for implementation.
"There is no reason to celebrate," said Regine Guenther, director for climate change, WWF Germany, adding that emissions needed to be cut by 95 percent by 2050. "This would be essential to keep global temperature rises well below two degrees."
Britain has already more than achieved its Kyoto pact targets due to a transition from coal to gas-fired power stations in the 1990s, but there was room to cut emissions in transport, power generation and services, the report said.
France has low emissions per capita for an industrialized nation due to its reliance on nuclear power, which provides more than three-quarters of its needs. The WWF does not support nuclear power due to concerns over safety and radioactive waste.
G8 host Italy has low emissions compared to G8 partners due mainly to the structure of its economy, the WWF said, but emissions were rising and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government was not making headway to meeting Kyoto obligations.
(Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)
G8 fails on climate goals. Again.
WWF 1 Jul 09;
Berlin, Germany – G8 countries have so far failed to take sufficient action to protect the world against climate change. The latest G8 Climate Scorecards report shows that Germany, followed by the UK and France, is performing better than the rest of the rich nations’ group. Italy and Japan are in a lower medium ranked group. Canada, the USA and Russia are lagging behind, despite the USA moving up one rank.
The report carried out by Ecofys for WWF and Allianz SE ranks the top eight industrialized countries and five major developing countries according to their climate change policy.
Only five months ahead of crucial climate talks in Copenhagen, the 2009 edition of the annual WWF-Allianz G8 climate scorecards shows that while some efforts had been made, action remains insufficient to set the world on a low carbon economy course.
The report states the lack of a clear leader among the ranked nations and while Germany has slightly improved, countries such as Canada and Russia have completely failed to pass the test.
In the foreword of the report, James Leape, the head of WWF and Allianz board member Joachim Faber urged the nations to take action now and help seal a good deal in Copenhagen.
“While there might be a bailout possibility for the financial system, no amounts of money will save the planet once climate change crosses the danger threshold,” Mr. Leape and Mr. Faber wrote. “It is therefore crucial to limit the rise of global temperature to below two degrees compared to pre-industrial levels.”
The G8 Climate Scorecards 2009 measure countries’ performance and trends in areas such as development of greenhouse gas emissions since 1990, the distance to their Kyoto-targets, their share of renewable energies and the efficiency of their climate policies.
The evaluation is based on their progress and improvement made since 1990, is looking at the current status of emissions and the intended policies for the future.
According to the report, Germany, the United Kingdom and France have already achieved their Kyoto targets - but their long-term climate performance is not adequate to limit the global temperature rise below two degrees Celsius.
Climate initiatives so far planned or announced by the Obama-administration have helped the USA climb from the last rank to seventh place.
Canada and Russia which are at the bottom of the rank either do not have political plans to change this development or do not implement them.
Within the framework of the global WWF-Allianz partnership, Allianz in its position as an international finance service provider supports the G8 Climate Scorecards to better understand the consequences of climate change. That is vital for the investment and regulatory framework conditions that have to be adapted to the consequences of climate change as well as for the development of new climate compliant products and financial solutions.
Joachim Faber, board member of Allianz SE says: “A low carbon future holds growth potential for G8 countries as well as for emerging nations. Future investments and product development therefore require a sustainable political framework.”
Bruce Hextall and Michael Perry, Reuters 1 Jul 09;
SYDNEY (Reuters) - An El Nino weather pattern this year appears almost certain, Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said on Wednesday in a revised forecast, raising the prospect of drought in Australia and a even weaker monsoon in India.
The odds for El Nino, an abnormal warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean that creates havoc in weather patterns across the Asia-Pacific region, had risen significantly since two weeks ago, when the bureau said there was a more than 50 percent chance.
"El Nino is a little bit like recession, you are in it before you can say you have one. If it continues as it is now, the historians will say the El Nino started in May," said David Jones, head of the bureau's climate analysis, told Reuters.
He said they could declare a full El Nino within weeks.
That's probably bad news for farmers in Australia who have sown near record acreage, and in India, which is already bracing for below-average monsoon rains, the lifeblood of the country's agriculture.
It would also have implications for commodity markets, potentially lifting wheat prices that have slumped over the past month on expectations of a bumper global harvest, and adding further fuel to soaring sugar prices that are already bracing for a second disappointing crop year from top consumer India.
Most of Australia's 2009/10 wheat crop has been planted following plentiful rain, leading to forecasts of a harvest of as much as 23 million tonnes, the best since 2005/06 when 25.2 million tonnes were harvested.
"The growers I speak to say if we were to get some rains in spring we could get above average yields. But if the El Nino forecast materialized, we are again at risk of having a sub-standard crop," said Richard Koch, managing director of farm advisory firm Profarmer.
Australia's grain production is still recovering from the worst drought in more than 100 years that cut the annual wheat harvest to as little as 10.6 million tonnes in 2006/07.
India's weather office last week cut its forecast for the June-September monsoon rains by 3 percentage points to 93 percent of normal, after four years of above average rainfall. From June 1 to June 24 rains were 54 percent below normal.
A severe El Nino spawns searing drought in countries in southeast Asia, harming rubber production, while causing heavy flooding in Peru, Ecuador and Chile, among others.
LITTLE CHANCE OF AVOIDING EL NINO
The bureau's latest report found that the eastern Pacific Ocean was continuing to warm, with sea temperatures one degree Celsius above normal, and trade winds were continuing to weaken.
The Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), calculated from monthly and seasonal fluctuations in air pressure between Tahiti and Darwin, remained at around negative 2, while the monthly value for May was negative 5.
A sustained negative SOI often indicates El Nino.
"A more complete picture of the situation in the Pacific will be available next week when the final June indices are calculated," said the report on www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/
The next report is due on July 8.
The Climate Prediction Center in the United States said in June that conditions were favorable for a switch to El Nino conditions during June to August.
(Editing by Michael Urquhart)
Anil Ananthaswamy, New Scientist 1 Jul 09;
FOR a few minutes David Holland forgets about his work and screams like a kid on a roller coaster. The small helicopter he's riding in is slaloming between towering cliffs of ice - the sheer sides of gigantic icebergs that had calved off Greenland's Jakobshavn glacier. "It was like in a James Bond movie," Holland says afterwards. "It's the most exciting thing I have ever done."
Jakobshavn has doubled its speed in the past 15 years, draining increasing amounts of ice from the Greenland ice sheet into the ocean, and Holland, an oceanographer at New York University, has been trying to find out why. Scientists like him are more than a little astonished at the rate at which our planet's frozen frontiers seem to be responding to global warming. The crucial question, though, is what will happen over the next few decades and centuries.
That's because the fate of the planet's ice, from relatively small ice caps in places like the Canadian Arctic, the Andes and the Himalayas, to the immense ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, will largely determine the speed and extent of sea level rise. At stake are the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people, not to mention millions of square kilometres of cities and coastal land, and trillions of dollars in economic terms.
In its 2007 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast a sea level rise of between 19 and 59 centimetres by 2100, but this excluded "future rapid dynamical changes in ice flow". Crudely speaking, these estimates assume ice sheets are a bit like vast ice cubes sitting on a flat surface, which will stay in place as they slowly melt. But what if some ice sheets are more like ice cubes sitting on an upside-down bowl, which could suddenly slide off into the sea as conditions get slippery? "Larger rises cannot be excluded but understanding of these effects is too limited to assess their likelihood," the IPCC report stated.
Even before it was released, the report was outdated. Researchers now know far more. And while we still don't understand the dynamics of ice sheets and glaciers well enough to make precise predictions, we are narrowing down the possibilities. The good news is that some of the scarier scenarios, such as a sudden collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, now appear less likely. The bad news is that there is a growing consensus that the IPCC estimates are wildly optimistic.
The oceans are already rising. Global average sea level rose about 17 centimetres in the 20th century, and the rate of rise is increasing. The biggest uncertainty for those trying to predict future changes is how humanity will behave. Will we start to curb our emissions of greenhouse gases sometime soon, or will we continue to pump ever more into the atmosphere?
Even if all emissions stopped today, sea level would continue to rise. "The current rate of rise would continue for centuries if temperatures are constant, and that would add about 30 centimetres per century to global sea level," says Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. "If we burn all fossil fuels, we are likely to end up with many metres of sea level rise in the long run, very likely more than 10 metres in my view."
This might sound dramatic, but we know sea level has swung from 120 metres lower than today during ice ages to more than 70 metres higher during hot periods. There is no doubt at all that if the planet warms, the sea will rise. The key questions are, by how much and how soon?
To pin down the possibilities, researchers have to look at what will happen to all the different contributors to sea level under various emissions scenarios. The single biggest contributor to sea level rise over the past century has been the melting of glaciers and ice caps outside of Greenland and Antarctica, from Alaska to the Himalayas. According to one recent estimate, the continued loss of this ice will add another 10 to 20 centimetres to sea level by 2100. It cannot get much worse than this: even if all this ice melted, sea level would only rise by about 33 centimetres.
Expanding waters
The second biggest contributor has been thermal expansion of the oceans. Its future contribution is relatively simple to predict, as we know exactly how much water expands for a given increase in temperature. A study published earlier this year found that even if all emissions stopped once carbon dioxide levels hit 450 parts per million (ppm) - an unrealistically optimistic scenario - thermal expansion alone would cause sea level to rise by 20 centimetres by 2100, and by another 10 centimetres by 3000. At the other extreme, if emissions peak at 1200 ppm, thermal expansion alone would lead to a 0.5-metre rise by 2100, and another 1.4 metres by 3000 (see "How high, how soon?").
Then there are the great ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, which hold enough water to raise sea level by about 70 metres. Until recently, their contribution to sea level rise was negligible, and the IPCC predicted that Greenland would contribute 12 centimetres at most to sea level rise by 2100, while Antarctica would actually gain ice overall due to increased snowfall. "A lot of new results have been published since then to show that this very conservative conclusion does not hold," says Eric Rignot of the University of California, Irvine.
To study the ice sheets, Rignot and colleagues have combined satellite-based radar surveys, aircraft altimetry and gravity measurements using NASA's GRACE satellite. They found that ice loss is increasing fast. Greenland is now losing about 300 gigatonnes of ice per year, enough to raise sea level by 0.83 millimetres. Antarctica is losing about 200 gigatonnes per year, almost all of it from West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula, raising levels by 0.55 millimetres. "The mass loss is increasing faster than in Greenland," Rignot says. "It'll overtake Greenland in years to come."
If this trend continues, Rignot thinks sea level rise will exceed 1 metre by 2100. So understanding why Greenland and Antarctica are already losing ice faster than predicted is crucial to improving our predictions.
The main reason for the increase is the speeding up of glaciers that drain the ice sheets into the sea. One cause is the knock-on effect of warmer air melting the surface of the ice: when the surface ice melts, the water pours down through crevasses and moulins to the base of glaciers, lubricating their descent into the sea. Fears about the impact of this phenomenon have receded somewhat, though: Antarctica is thought to be too cold for it to be a big factor, and even in Greenland it is only a summertime effect. "It's significant, but I don't think it's the primary mechanism that would be responsible for dramatic increases in sea level," says glaciologist Robert Bindschadler at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
There is another way for surface melt to affect sea level, though. Meltwater fills any crevasses, widening and deepening the cracks until they reach all the way down to the base of the ice. This can have a dramatic effect on floating ice shelves. "Essentially, you are chopping up an ice shelf into a bunch of tall thin icebergs, like dominoes standing on their ends," says Bindschadler. "And they are not very stable standing that way." They fall over, and push their neighbours out to sea.
The most famous break-up in recent times - that of the Larsen B ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula in 2002 - likely happened this way. While the break-up of floating ice shelves does not raise sea level directly, the disintegration of Larsen B had consequences that models at the time failed to predict. With little to resist their advance, glaciers behind Larsen B immediately began to move up to eight times faster. Five smaller ice shelves in the rapidly warming Antarctic Peninsula have also broken up and many others are disintegrating.
What lies beneath
Surface melt poses little threat in West Antarctica, as it is so much colder. Here the danger comes from below. Take the ice shelf holding back the massive Pine Island glacier, which is thinning in a strange pattern. Radar scans have revealed giant "ripples" up to 100 metres deep on its underside.
Bindschadler thinks that the currents created by winter winds raise relatively warm water from a few hundred metres down in the Amundsen Sea off West Antarctica. This melts the underside of the ice shelf and gets trapped in the space it carves out, thus continuing to melt the ice from below over a few seasons. As the ice shelf thins, the Pine Island glacier behind it is speeding up, from 3 kilometres per year three years ago to over 4 kilometres per year according to the latest unpublished measurements by Ian Joughin of the University of Washington in Seattle.
What does this have to do with global warming? Climate change, aided and abetted by the loss of ozone, has strengthened the winds that circle Antarctica. This is speeding up the Antarctic circumpolar current and pushing surface waters away from the coast, causing deeper, warmer water to well up.
Along with the Thwaites glacier and some smaller ones, Pine Island glacier drains a third of the West Antarctic ice sheet. This ice sheet is particularly vulnerable to ocean heat because much of it rests on the seabed, a kilometre or more below sea level. This submarine ice will not raise sea level if it melts, but if it goes a lot of higher-level ice will end up in the ocean. The vulnerable parts contain enough ice to raise sea level 3.3 metres - less than the 5 metres that was once estimated but more than enough to have catastrophic effects.
Bindschadler has calculated that a change in ocean currents could potentially deliver up to 1019 joules of heat per year to the continental shelf off West Antarctica - and only about 109 joules per year would be required to melt the ice shelves that hold back the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers. "The ocean has an enormous amount of heat compared to the atmosphere," he says.
Even in Greenland, where the ice sheet rests on land above sea level, ocean heat still matters. When not dodging giant icebergs, Holland has been trying to find out why Greenland's Jakobshavn glacier started moving faster in 1997, speeding up from around 6 kilometres per year to more than 9 kilometres per year by 2000 and 13 kilometres per year by 2003. The glacier continues to drain ice from the Greenland ice sheet at a higher rate than before.
The increase had been attributed to lubrication by meltwater, but Holland's team recently stumbled across data from local fishing boats, which deploy thermometers in bottom-trawling nets. One fact stood out: the temperature of the subsurface waters around West Greenland jumped in 1997, prior to the massive calving of Jakobshavn.
As the team reported last year, though, the real trigger lay in what happened in 1996. That year, the winds across the North Atlantic weakened, slowing down the warm Gulf Stream. The weakened current meandered aimlessly and hit west Greenland. "A modest change in wind gives you a big bang in terms of ice sheet dynamic response," says Holland.
Findings like these suggest that predicting sea level rise is even trickier than previously thought. If relatively small changes in winds and currents could have a big impact on ice sheets, we need extremely good models of regional climate as well as of ice sheets. At the moment we have neither - and while regional climate models are improving, ice sheet models are still too crude to make accurate predictions.
"They are coarse models that don't include mechanisms that allow glaciers to speed up," says Rignot. "And what we are seeing today is that this is not only a big missing piece, this could be the dominant piece. We can't really afford to wait 10 to 20 years to have good ice sheet models to tell people, 'Well, sea level is actually going to rise 2 metres and not 50 centimetres', because the consequences are very significant, and things will be pretty much locked in at that point."
So climate scientists are looking for other ways to predict sea level rise. Rahmstorf, for instance, is treating the Earth as one big black box. His starting point is the simple idea that the rate of sea level rise is proportional to the increase in temperature: the warmer Earth gets, the faster ice melts and the oceans expand. This held true for the last 120 years at least. "There is a very close and statistically highly significant correlation between the rate of sea level rise and the temperature increase above the pre-industrial background level," says Rahmstorf.
Extrapolating this to the future, based on IPCC emissions scenarios, suggests sea level will rise by between 0.5 and 1.4 metres - and the higher estimate is more likely because emissions have been rising faster than the IPCC's worst-case scenario. Rahmstorf's study got a mixed reception when it first appeared, but he can feel the winds of change. "I sense that now a majority of sea level experts would agree with me that the IPCC projections are much too low," he says.
Could even Rahmstorf's estimate be too low? It assumes the relation between temperature and sea level is linear, but some experts, most prominently James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, argue that because there are multiple positive feedbacks, such as the lubrication of glaciers by meltwater, higher temperatures will lead to accelerating ice loss. "Why do I think a sea level rise of metres would be a near certainty if greenhouse gas emissions keep increasing?" Hansen wrote in New Scientist (28 July 2007, p 30). "Because while the growth of great ice sheets takes millennia, the disintegration of ice sheets is a wet process that can proceed rapidly."
Hansen has made no specific prediction, however. So just how bad could it get? Tad Pfeffer of the University of Colorado in Boulder decided to work backwards from some of the worst-case scenarios: 2 metres by 2100 from Greenland, and 1.5 metres from West Antarctica, via the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers. Just how fast would the glaciers have to be moving for the sea level to rise by these amounts? Pfeffer found that glaciers in Greenland would need to move at 70 kilometres per year, and Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers at 50 kilometres per year, from now until 2100. Since most glaciers are moving at just a few kilometres per year, to Pfeffer and many others, these numbers seem highly unrealistic.
Worst case
So what is possible? For scenarios based on conservative assumptions, such as a doubling of glacier speeds, Pfeffer found sea level will rise by around 80 centimetres by 2100, including thermal expansion. "For the high end, we took all of the values we could change and we pushed them forward to the largest numbers we imagined would be reasonable," says Pfeffer. The answer: 2 metres.
These estimates fit well with recent studies of comparable periods in the past, which have found that sea level rise averaged up to 1.6 metres per century at times. There is a huge caveat in Pfeffer's number crunching, though. "An important assumption we made is that the rest of West Antarctica stays put. And this is the part of West Antarctica that is held behind the Ross ice shelf and the Ronne ice shelf," says Pfeffer. "Those two ice shelves are very big, and very thick, and very cold. We don't see a way to get rid of those in the next century."
Holland is not so sure. He has been studying computer models of ocean currents around Antarctica, and he doesn't like what he sees. The subsurface current of warm water near the frozen continent, known as the circumpolar deep water, branches near the coast, and one branch hits Pine Island - which is probably why the ice there is thinning and speeding up. "Another branch of it comes ever so close to the Ross ice shelf," says Holland. "In some computer simulations of the future, the warm branch actually goes and hits Ross."
While it is impossible to predict exactly what will cause this, the lessons from Jakobshavn show that a small change in the wind patterns over Antarctica might be enough to shift the warm current towards and eventually underneath the Ross ice shelf. Then even this gigantic mass of ice - about the size of France - becomes vulnerable, regardless of how cold the air above it is. Pfeffer agrees that the Ross and Ronne ice shelves are the wild cards. "If we pull the plug on those two, then we create a very different world."
Is there really a danger of a collapse, which would cause a sudden jump in sea levels? Paul Blanchon's team at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Cancun has been studying 121,000-year-old coral reefs (pictured above) in the Yucatan Peninsula, formed during the last interglacial period when sea level peaked at around 6 metres higher than today. His findings suggest that at one point the sea rose 3 metres within 50 to 100 years.
We just don't know if this could happen again in the 21st century. What is clear, though, is that even the lowest, most conservative estimates are now higher than the IPCC's highest estimate. "Most of my community is comfortable expecting at least a metre by the end of this century," says Bindschadler.
And it will not stop at a metre. "When we talk of sea level rising by 1 or 2 metres by 2100, remember that it is still going to be rising after 2100," Rignot warns.
All of which suggests we might want to start preparing. "People who are trying to downplay the significance say, 'Oh, the Earth has gone through changes much greater than this, you know, in the geological past'," says Pfeffer. "That's true, but it's completely irrelevant. We weren't there then."
What it all means
If a 1 metre rise in sea level doesn't sound like much, consider this: about 60 million people live within 1 metre of mean sea level, a number expected to grow to about 130 million by 2100.
Much of this population lives in the nine major river deltas in south and southeast Asia. Parts of countries such as Bangladesh, along with some island nations like the MaldivesMovie Camera, will simply be submerged.
According to a 2005 report, a 1-metre rise in sea level will affect 13 million people in five European countries and destroy property worth $600 billion, with the Netherlands the worst affected. In the UK, existing defences are insufficient to protect parts of the east and south coast, including the cities of Hull and Portsmouth.
Besides inundation, higher seas raise the risk of severe storm surges and dangerous flooding. The entire Atlantic seaboard of North America, including New York, Boston and Washington DC, and the Gulf coast will become more vulnerable to hurricanes. Today's 100-year storm floods might occur as often as every four years - in which case it will make more sense to abandon devastated regions and towns than to keep rebuilding them.
Anil Ananthaswamy is a contributing editor for New Scientist
Earth faces 'Waterworld' as global warming 'lasts centuries'
Earth faces a bleak future as a "waterworld" much like the one depicted in a Hollywood blockbuster starring Kevin Costner, scientists have warned.
The Telegraph 1 Jul 09;
Sea-level rise is now inevitable and will happen much quicker than most of us thought - and will last for centuries, according to experts.
Even if greenhouse gas emissions stopped tomorrow the oceans will continue to swell as they warm and as glaciers or ice sheets slide into the sea.
The growing consensus among climate scientists is the "official" estimate of sea level rise by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - 20cm to 60cm by 2100 - is misleading.
It could well be in the region of one to two metres - with a small risk of an even greater rise.
In a report in New Scientist magazine, climate expert Dr Eric Rignot, of California University, said: "When we talk of sea level rising by one or two metres by 2100 remember that it is still going to be rising after 2100."
For many islands and low lying regions including much of the Netherlands, Florida and Bangladesh even small rises will spell catastrophe.
Large parts of London, New York, Sydney and Tokyo could be among cities submerged beneath the waves unless a massive engineering effort can protect them against the waves.
Dr Stefan Rahmstorf, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said: "There is a very close and statistically highly significant correlation between the rate of sea level rise and the temperature increase above the pre-industrial background level."
His calculations suggest sea level will rise between 0.5 and 1.4 metres - and the higher estimate is more likely because emissions have been rising faster than the IPCC's worst case scenario.
He said: "I sense than now a majority of sea level experts would agree with me that the IPCC projections are much too low."
Dr Paul Blanchon's team at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Cancun has been studying 121,000 year-old coral reefs in the Yucatan Peninsula formed during the last interglacial period when sea level peaked at about six metres higher than today.
His findings suggest at one point the sea rose three metres within between fifty and one hundred years. We just don't know if this could happen again in the 21st century.
But even the lowest and most conservative estimates are now higher than the IPCC's highest estimate.
Dr Robert Bindschadler, of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, said: "Most of my community is comfortable expecting at least a metre by the end of this century."
livescience.com Yahoo News 2 Jul 09;
A reconstruction of sea ice reveals the lowest levels in 800 years, according to new research published in the journal Climate Dynamics.
Researchers modeled sea ice levels between Greenland and Svalbard, an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean north of Europe, from the 13th century to present using data from a natural climate "archive" and from historic human records.
"We have combined information about the climate found in ice cores from an ice cap on Svalbard and from the annual growth rings of trees in Finland and this gave us a curve of the past climate," Aslak Grinsted said in a press release. Grinsted is a geophysicist with the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. "We see that the sea ice is shrinking to a level which has not been seen in more than 800 years."
The scientists also combed through harbor records and logbooks of ships that traveled the area to record human observation of sea ice levels. Then they pieced together a picture of how much sea ice has existed through this time period.
Sea ice melting and re-freezing is a complicated process that is influenced by a number of factors such as wind patterns, ocean currents, and how much ice has frozen or melted in recent years. The authors did not point to any causes for the changes in sea ice levels in their study.
The scientists noted that even though the 13th century was a relatively warm period and ice levels were low then, 20th century sea ice levels are still the lowest. The "Little Ice Age," from 1700 to 1800 had the greatest cover of sea ice, according to their data.
Other studies have found that Arctic ice is getting thinner over time, so that when the normal summer melt occurs, the entire polar cap is retreating compared to decades past. Last year, this melting opened up the fabled Northwest Passage, as a substantial amount of older ice melted. Climate scientists say the North Pole could be ice-free during summer within a few decades.
Grinsted said there have been instances of sudden changes throughout time, such as when sea ice shrank by 115 square miles (300 square kilometers), about the size of the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, from 1910 to 1920.
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