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Zitting Cisticola catching caterpillar to feed chicks
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Sustainability Seminar - How Companies Can Gain From Sustainable Development
from AsiaIsGreen
Channel NewsAsia 20 Jul 09
SINGAPORE: Come Wednesday, China, India and Japan will be seeing its longest total solar eclipse in almost 500 years.
But Singapore will have to wait a little longer to experience the full eclipse.
Scientists said Singapore will only experience a partial solar eclipse between 8.40am and 9.40am. They added that unlike other countries there will be minimal changes to temperature and visibility.
The Singapore Science Centre will be providing special equipment for members of the public to view the eclipse.
It will also have talks about the astronomical phenomenon. - CNA/vm
Singapore group head to China for rare glimpse
Victoria Vaughan, Straits Times 21 Jul 09;
A PASSIONATE group of eclipse chasers from Singapore are journeying to Wuhan in central China to view tomorrow's total solar eclipse.
The group of 22 comprises members of The Astronomical Society of Singapore and their families, and is led by society president Albert Lim, who has 'lost count' of the number of eclipses he has witnessed.
'You have the moon biting into the sun, part of the sun becomes dark. When the moon totally covers the sun, the entire sky is black.
'You get a 360 degree glowing light around the horizon, like a sunrise, and you can see the sun's corona dancing round the edges of the moon,' Mr Lim explained.
Leading up to this astronomical event, Mr Lim looked at the path of the moon's shadow across the earth, the weather forecasts and historical cloud coverage in the region before making a decision on where to follow through with his chase.
Even so, such analyses can still result in disappointment.
In 2002, Mr Lim flew to Australia and drove 1,600km to Ceduna for a 24-second eclipse only to have it obscured by clouds.
All those on the 10-day trip are prepared for the perils the weather may bring, but will also enjoy trekking in Tibet and high-altitude astrophotography - taking pictures of the night sky.
As well as soaking up the atmosphere in the lunar shadow, Mr Lim is hoping to get the 'one in a million' shot of the eclipse sequence.
His shot of last year's eclipse on Aug 1, from the site of China's space programme in the Gobi desert, was featured on television's History Channel.
Dr Chew Tuan Chiong, chief executive at the Science Centre, said tomorrow's event will not be as spectacular at this end of the earth.
He explained that Singapore will experience a partial eclipse - only about 10 per cent of the sun will be covered by the moon - between 8.40am and 9.40am, with the peak at 9.11am, if the weather is clear.
Those who would like to see the partial eclipse need a clear view of the sun rising in the east.
It must also be seen indirectly or through solar filters to avoid eye damage.
The Observatory at the Science Centre will be open from 8.30am for people to see the event.
Solar eclipses take place roughly every 18 months, and the next total solar eclipse will be visible in South America on July 11, 2010.
The next total solar eclipse which can be viewed in Singapore will be on July 5, 2168.
Rebecca Carroll, National Geographic News 20 Jul 09;
A total solar eclipse passing over some of Earth's most densely populated regions on Wednesday, July 22, 2009, may become the most viewed eclipse ever.
People across central India and in parts of Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Myanmar will briefly find themselves in daytime darkness before the solar eclipse proceeds into China.
Most of the best viewing opportunities are in China, where some 30 million people will be able to witness the solar eclipse in the coastal cities of Shanghai and Hangzhou alone, according to veteran eclipse scientist Jay Pasachoff of Williams College in Massachusetts.
(Related pictures: "Solar Eclipse 'Ring' Seen Over Indonesia.")
The eclipse will then continue east, passing over Japan's Ryukyu Islands before reaching its maximum duration point over the Pacific Ocean, where the sun will be completely blocked by the moon for 6 minutes and 39 seconds, according to NASA scientist Fred Espenak.
Thousands of overseas tourists and potentially millions of Chinese are flocking to areas along the eclipse path, where hotels are charging higher rates, according to Chinese media reports.
The July 2009 total solar eclipse is expected to have the longest duration of totality in the 21st century, experts say, and should give Pasachoff plenty of data to keep him and his team busy for months.
Pasachoff will see only about five and half minutes of totality from a site in eastern China, but "once you have five minutes-plus of totality, the extra minute that we could have [seen] is not significant," he added.
Preparation
Pasachoff and his team will observe the solar eclipse from a remote hotel at an altitude of about 3,000 feet (900 meters) on Tianhuangping, a mountain outside the Chinese city of Hangzhou. The location sits above pollution that could obstruct a full view of the eclipse.
He chose the site years in advance so he could witness the longest totality from the Asian mainland. Teams of astronomers from around the world have already joined him at Tianhuangping.
Pasachoff, a National Geographic Society Committee for Research and Exploration grantee, will witness his 49th solar eclipse and 29th total eclipse since he began chasing the sun on October 2, 1959. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.)
"We brought about half a ton of equipment and picked up an equal amount borrowed here from our Chinese colleagues, so there is a lot to get ready," he added.
(Related: "Eclipse Expert Makes Hot Finds in Sun's Darkest Hour.")
Solar Mystery
Pasachoff wants to understand why the sun's corona—gas that extends millions of miles out from the sun—is millions of degrees hotter than the sun. The sun is just about 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit (3,300 degrees Celsius).
"Somehow energy has been put up into the corona from lower down, heating the gas, and we'd like to see how that happens," he said.
Scientists believe the coronal phenomenon has to do with the sun's magnetic field, and Pasachoff is looking to identify vibrating magnetic waves that move from the sun out into the corona.
(Related: "'Corkscrew' Waves Seen on Sun -- Keys to Solar Mystery?")
Scientists can't usually see the corona from Earth because its light is fainter than the blue sky created by our atmosphere.
Furthermore, instruments attached to space satellites can't isolate all areas of the corona because the sun and the light it scatters are too bright.
The only time certain observations are possible is when the moon blocks out the sun, creating a darker sky, which highlights the coronal light around the sun.
Although the sun is about 400 times bigger than the moon, it's also about 400 times more distant. So from the ground, the moon appears to be just a little bigger than the sun.
Shadow Chasers
The sun's disappearing act attracts so-called eclipse tourists, who travel the world to watch solar eclipses which happen between two and five times a year, though total solar eclipses are less frequent.
(See solar eclipse pictures.)
Rollie Anderson, a retired actuary from St. Louis, Missouri, is in China now to watch his 14th eclipse.
"The cosmic coincidence that the sun and moon both appear in the sky as the same size, and then, on top of that, they line up every now and again. … Just the very idea of that is pretty mind-blowing," he said.
"As you get to the last several minutes before totality, that's when your eyes actually start noticing things getting dark around you, and you can feel the air cooling," he said. "It gets really dark and totality appears, and that's when it gets most spectacular."
"You see a black hole in the sky where the sun used be, and if there are birds around, they may stop chirping, because they think it's night."
Chasing eclipses has also allowed Anderson and his wife to see the world.
"It's kind of an excuse to see whatever the part of the world the eclipse happens to be in."
Crowds flock to Bangladeshi town for solar eclipse
Yahoo News 20 Jul 09;
DHAKA (AFP) – A tiny town in northern Bangladesh is braced for a rare taste of mass tourism as thousands of people pour in to witness a full solar eclipse on Wednesday.
The event -- the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century -- will be visible in a narrow corridor across north India, eastern Nepal, north Bangladesh, Bhutan and China.
Banamali Bhoumik, the district administrator of Panchagarh town, told AFP that 20,000 visitors were expected and he encouraged residents to "vacate their houses and share beds" to accommodate the influx.
"Already people are rushing in from every corner of the country," he said. "We have made huge preparations, including offering cheap meals and setting up special prayer halls."
Hotels, guest houses and government bungalows were already full, he added.
Total solar eclipses occur when the moon comes between the Earth and the sun, completely obscuring the sun.
The excitement this time around is largely due to the unusually long duration of the instant of greatest eclipse, or "totality" -- when the sun is wholly covered.
At its maximum, this will last six minutes and 39 seconds -- a duration that will not be matched until the year 2132.
"There is tremendous enthusiasm centering on the eclipse," F.R Sarker, the head of the Bangladesh Astronomical Association, said.
"This will be the only total solar eclipse Bangladeshis can see in the next 105 years. We are lucky it's happening in our time."
People in the capital Dhaka will be able to see a 93 percent eclipse, Sarker said.
Solar eclipse: Of celestial mechanics and the Eye of God
Richard Ingham Richard Ingham Yahoo News 20 Jul 09;
PARIS (AFP) – Total solar eclipses have struck awe or fear into hearts for millennia, but scientists are more interested in the unusual mathematics behind the gold-and-indigo lightshow.
Superstition has always haunted the moment when Earth, Moon and Sun are perfectly aligned. The daytime extinction of the Sun, the source of all life, is associated with war, famine, flood and the death or birth of rulers.
Desperate for an explanation, the ancient Chinese blamed a Sun-eating dragon. The Vikings believed the culprits were two giant wolves, Skoll and Hati, which chased the Sun around the sky. Among Indians in South America, an eclipse was simply, terrifyingly, "the Eye of God."
But a remarkable act of celestial geometry explains it all.
When the Moon glides between Earth and the Sun, it casts a cone-shaped shadow, called an umbra, that races from West to East.
The Sun is 400 times wider than the Moon, but it is also 400 times farther away. Because of the symmetry, the umbra, for those on the planetary surface, is exactly wide enough to cover the face of the Sun.
At an eclipse's height, a halo of gold, called a corona, flares around the darkened lunar disc, while the sky turns an eerie dark blue, disorienting birds and causing bats to emerge from their roosts in the belief that night has fallen.
Total solar eclipses are exceptional events, and the one that crosses Asia on Wednesday is especially so.
If the clouds hold back, it could be the most-watched eclipse in history, for its path of totality traverses the world's two most populous countries, China and India.
People living outside totality, from Japan in the north to parts of Indonesia in the south, will be in the penumbra, or partial shadow, which means a "bite" seems to have been taken out of the Sun.
The lunar shadow will first strike the Gulf of Khambhat, off western India, at 0053 GMT, taking eight minutes to cross the centre of the country before entering northern Bangladesh and the eastern tip of Nepal.
It then slices through some of China's biggest cities, including Chengdu, Chongqing and Wuhan, before arriving at Shanghai, a city of 20 million souls.
"This may be the most people that have ever been in the Moon's shadow at once," say NASA eclipse experts Fred Espenak and University of Manitoba meteorologist Jay Anderson.
The umbra then flits across the western Pacific, where at one point the path of totality will be 258 kilometers (161 miles) wide, while the maximum duration of totality will be six minutes, 39 seconds.
By eclipse standards, this is "a monster," Espenak and Anderson estimate in the US magazine Sky & Telescope. We will have to wait until 2132 before the totality duration is beaten.
A total solar eclipse usually occurs every 18 months or so. Any given spot on Earth's surface will host a total eclipse on average once every 375 years.
Until now, the most-watched eclipse occurred on August 11, 1999, when the umbra raced from Britain, across Western Europe, part of the Middle East and India.
The last total solar eclipse was on August 1 2008, and also crossed China.
The next will be on July 11 2010, but will occur almost entirely over the South Pacific, where Easter Island -- home of the legendary moai giant statues -- will be one of the few landfalls.
That will be wonderful news to "eclipse junkies," an eclectic army that pursues total eclipses around the world, sometimes hiring seats on planes or ships to get the best view.
+ SAFETY FIRST: Eclipses, even partial ones, should NOT be viewed with the naked eye or through binoculars, a telescope, beer bottle or photographic film, as this can permanently damage the retina. Observers should use proper optical filters such as welding-goggle glass, eclipse spectacles or a solar projection kit for their telescope. The safest way to view is on television or the Internet.
Andy Sullivan and Kevin Krolicki, Reuters 20 Jul 09;
WASHINGTON/DETROIT (Reuters) - For some U.S. Rust Belt cities, the future will be smaller and greener.
As communities from Buffalo to Milwaukee struggle with shuttered factories and vacant neighborhoods, some have turned abandoned properties into parks, gardens and other open space, even going so far as to plow under entire neighborhoods.
A recognition that the glory days of factory-powered prosperity will not return any time soon, this "shrinking cities" strategy aims to consolidate what remains into denser neighborhoods and more vibrant downtowns.
In Flint, Michigan, the birthplace of General Motors, a pioneering program that allows local government to capture profits from tax foreclosures has generated funds to demolish over 1,000 abandoned homes in the past five years.
"There's a gravitational pull that we're a part of and it's toward a smaller city," said Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County surrounding Flint. "This is not a plan to shrink Flint, it's an acknowledgment that we've lost half our population."
Flint's fortunes -- like those of GM -- have been on the decline for decades. In the late 1970s, there were more than 80,000 GM workers in Flint centered on a sprawling industrial complex known as Buick City.
GM's city-within-a-city covered 235 acres (951,000 square meters) and employed more than 25,000 people. Foremen had to ride bicycles to cover the distances between production areas.
But GM had cut over 90 percent of its jobs in Flint even before it filed for bankruptcy in June. All that remains of Buick City is a bulldozed and fenced-in field and almost a third of the surrounding neighborhoods are abandoned.
The solution Kildee is promoting is a county "land bank" that sells off more valuable foreclosed properties in the surrounding suburbs to generate cash to pay for demolition and create inner-city gardens and parks.
THE WAY FORWARD
A tour of one of the hardest-hit Flint neighborhoods just north of downtown shows the depth of the problem: The only occupied house on the block has a spray-painted warning to stay off the yard. Across the street, patches of grass are waist high and strewn with empty liquor bottles and broken glass.
"It's really personal to me," Kildee said. "This is the neighborhood where my grandmother lived for 60 years."
Other land bank funds, supported by grants from charities including the Mott Foundation, have underwritten an effort to reclaim and restore buildings in Flint's once largely abandoned downtown.
"It's hard for political leaders to acknowledge that maybe we're just not going to grow," Kildee said. "This is a radical experiment in that it's accepting that it's okay to be smaller -- and to be better."
Urban planners say Kildee has shown the way forward for other struggling cities.
"He's really forced folks in Flint to really make some hard decisions and accept some difficult realities," said Charles Smith, a planner with the Michigan-based firm Wade Trim.
But this smaller-city approach risks a backlash from voters who may see it as an admission of defeat, planners say.
"Nobody wants to admit that -- it's in part tied up with this American ideology of growth being good," said Jess Zimbabwe, executive director at the Urban Land Institute Rose Center, a nonprofit focused on sustainable land use.
The concept was pioneered in former East German cities like Leipzig that emptied out when the Berlin Wall fell. Development efforts were concentrated on downtown areas, waterfronts and other pedestrian-friendly sites to foster a sense of vibrancy and density for those who remained, said Bruce Katz, director of the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program.
In the United States' older industrial areas, several cities are starting to take a similar approach:
* Youngstown, Ohio, the poorest mid-size city in the United States, plans to knock down 2,000 abandoned buildings by next year as part of a citywide rezoning effort that aims to concentrate redevelopment on viable neighborhoods and commercial districts.
* Cleveland is encouraging neighborhood-level experiments to turn vacant lots into parks, commercial vegetable gardens, orchards and other useful open space. The city does not plan to raze entire neighborhoods, even those where 80 percent of the housing stock is abandoned. "We're not at that point yet," said Bobbi Reichtel of the nonprofit group Neighborhood Progress, which has been directing federal money to these experiments.
* Highland Park, just north of downtown Detroit, has applied for federal money to demolish several largely abandoned neighborhoods and let them lie fallow until a new use can be found. Home to Henry Ford's first assembly line, the city has experienced a drop in population to a third of its 1940 level. Unemployment is at 22 percent.
* Philadelphia has cleaned up 11 million square feet (1.02 million square meters) of vacant land since 2003 and plans to convert some lots into parks or community gardens.
AVOIDING THE PROBLEM
Other cities, however, have avoided tackling the problem.
Planners say Detroit could reinvent itself as a network of vibrant neighborhoods connected by parks or agricultural space, but scandal has racked the city's leadership and surrounding suburbs have no inclination to help fund the effort.
New Orleans likewise rejected a proposal to raze some neighborhoods that Hurricane Katrina devastated in 2005. Now the city struggles to deliver services to sparsely populated "jack o'lantern" neighborhoods, so named because only a few rebuilt houses on some blocks light up at night.
States and the U.S. government can help. Michigan has passed "land bank" legislation that makes it easier for cities like Flint to take control of abandoned property and consolidate it into larger parcels.
Instead of spending federal highway funds to encourage suburban sprawl, states could use that money to knock down underused freeways that carve barriers through cities such as Syracuse, New York, Katz said.
The recession and the foreclosure crisis have forced many cities to take a second look at a policy they may have initially rejected, Katz said.
"I think we're on the verge of something very different in many of these places," said Katz, who has urged other Ohio cities to follow Youngstown's lead. "I see a much greater openness to this than I did even five years ago."
(Editing by Howard Goller and James Dalgleish)
IUCN 20 Jul 09;
Dolphin hotspots must be protected if the Ganges River Dolphin (Platanista gangetica gangetica) is to survive in the Brahmaputra river system, according to a recent study.
Estimates have put the total population of the Ganges River Dolphins at around 2,000. Out of these, between 240 to 300 inhabit the Brahmaputra River system in India, according to a recent survey by an IUCN Sir Peter Scott Fund project.
“Our research shows accidental killing through fisheries by-catch, followed by poaching for oil, are the major threats to the dolphins of the Brahmaputra river system,” says Project Leader Abdul Wakid. “Their habitat is also being degraded by human activities. Dam building and a proposed seismsic survey in the Brahmaputra river are potential threats.”
The project, funded by Fondation Ensemble, was prompted by the need for some robust dolphin population data after Oil India Ltd. proposed to start prospecting for oil along the bed of the Brahmaputra River using air guns and explosives.
The research identified eight river sections as potential protected areas and community-based dolphin conservation as the best strategy to save the dolphins.
“The Brahmaputra River is very important habitat for these endangered dolphins,” says Gill Braulik, of IUCN’s Cetacean Specialist Group. “To protect them it is vital that we involve local river communities. In some places, like in the Kukurmara area of Kulsi River, for example, the dolphins are a tourist attraction due to protection by local communities. But in other areas, dolphins are accidentally killed in fishing nets or are sometimes deliberately caught and killed for their oil.”
The project carried out 32 awareness campaigns along the Brahmaputra valley, focusing on fishing communities in areas surrounding dolphin hotspots.
The Ganges River Dolphin is found mainly in the Ganges and Brahmaputra river systems in India and Bangladesh. This survey concentrated on the 1,044km stretch of dolphin-inhabited Brahmaputra River system, primarily in Assam of North East India. In a 2005 survey in the same river stretch by the same investigating group a best estimate of 250 dolphins was recorded.
Full report: http://cmsdata.iucn.org/downloads/brahmaputra_river_dolphins___psf_final_report.pdf
Slim Allagui Yahoo News 20 Jul 09;
SISIMIUT, Greenland (AFP) – The Greenland shark, one of the largest species of sharks, is a nuisance to fishermen and its meat is toxic to humans, but researchers now hope the flesh can be used to create a biofuel for Inuits.
Native to the cold Arctic waters, thousands of the sharks get caught and die in fishermen's nets off Greenland every year. The beasts -- which can be compared to the Great White Shark in size at seven metres (23 feet) and can weigh up to a tonne -- are thrown back into the sea.
But at the Arctic Technology Centre (ARTEK) in Sisimiut in western Greenland, researchers are experimenting with ways of using the animal's oily flesh to produce biogas out of fishing industry waste.
"I think this is an alternative where we can use the thousands of tonnes of leftovers of products from the sea, including those of the numerous sharks," says Marianne Willemoes Joergensen of ARTEK's branch at the Technical University of Denmark.
Joergensen, in charge of the pilot project based in the Uummannaq village in northwestern Greenland, says the shark meat, when mixed with macro-algae and household wastewater, could "serve as biomass for biofuel production."
"Biofuel is the best solution for this kind of organic waste, which can be used to produce electricity and heating with a carbon neutral method," she said.
Biofuel based on sharks and other sea products could supply 13 percent of energy consumption in the village of Uummannaq with its 2,450 inhabitants, according to estimates.
The project could help the many isolated villages on the vast island to become self-sufficient in terms of energy.
Joergensen plans to run tests next year at an organic waste treatment plant in a project financed by the EU in Uummannaq, using shark meat mixed with wastewater and macro-algae to create a fish mince that can be used to produce biogas.
In Uummannaq, the Greenland shark represents more than half of the waste disposed of by the local fishermen.
"Entire trawlers are sometimes full of sharks and they are caught everywhere, especially off the east and west of Greenland, to the fishermen's great dismay," says Bo Lings who used to work on a big trawler.
"It's a large predator that devours fish, squid, seals and other marine life, and it also ruins the lines and nets of the halibut fishermen," adds Leif Fontaine, the head of Greenland's fishing and hunting association.
Fishing is Greenland's biggest export industry, with halibut its second-biggest product after shrimp.
The shark, which Inuits once hunted for its razor-like teeth that they used to make knives and for its liver oil that was used to light homes, has "become a problem for the environment."
"There are too many sharks in the nets and they just get thrown back," explains one of ARTEK's founders, engineer Joern Hansen.
Greenlanders usually dispose of fishing industry waste and household wastewater by throwing them into the sea.
In the Uummannaq municipality, over half of all the waste contains large amounts of fat that are suitable for producing biofuels in the future, and Hansen says that waste should be put to good use.
"All you have to do is set up installations in the fish processing centres, like in Ilulissat where the shrimp and halibut plant is partly heated by fish waste," he said.
Aksel Blytmann, a consultant at Greenland's fishing and hunting association, says the shark could turn out to be an "unexpected energy source."
He explained that Uummannaq once paid a 200-Danish-kroner (26-euro, 38-dollar) reward to fishermen for a shark heart in order to keep their numbers down. Other municipalities in the northwestern and western parts of Greenland still continue this practice, he said.
The species "swarms in the Arctic waters and is not in danger of extinction," Blytmann claimed.
But the International Union for the Conservation of Nature disagrees, as does the Danish branch of the Worldwide Fund for Nature.
Anne-Marie Bjerg, a WWF specialist on ocean mammals, says the shark-for-biofuel project "is not a good idea, not at all," and wants to see other sustainable energy projects undertaken instead.
"We know very little about the Greenland shark, which lives in a limited geographic zone, the Arctic," she said.
Contrary to the fishermen's own accounts, she insisted the mammal "does not pose big problems to Greenland's fishing industry."
"We are opposed to the commercial use of marine mammals, such as the Greenland shark, which is not universal and whose population size is unknown," she said.
Alicia Chang, Associated Press Yahoo News 19 Jul 09;
LOS ANGELES – On naked patches of land in western Canada and United States, scientists are planting trees that don't belong there. It's a bold experiment to move trees threatened by global warming into places where they may thrive amid a changing climate.
Take the Western larch with its thick grooved bark and green needles. It grows in the valleys and lower mountain slopes in British Columbia's southern interior. Canadian foresters are testing how its seeds will fare when planted farther north — just below the Arctic Circle.
Something similar will be tried in the Lower 48. Researchers will uproot moisture-loving Sitka spruce and Western redcedar that grace British Columbia's coastal rainforests and drop their seedlings in the dry ponderosa pine forests of Idaho.
All of this swapping begs the question: Should humans lend nature a helping hand?
With global warming threatening the livelihoods of certain plants and animals, this radical idea once dismissed in scientific circles has moved to the forefront of debate and triggered strong emotions among conservationists.
About 20 to 30 percent of species worldwide face a high risk of becoming extinct possibly by 2100 as global temperatures rise, estimated a 2007 report by the Nobel-winning international climate change panel. The group noted that current conservation practices are "generally poorly prepared to adapt to this level of change."
Deliberating moving a species has long been opposed by some, who believe we should not play God with nature and worry that introducing an exotic species — intentionally or not — could upset the natural balance and cause unforeseen ripple effects. It has happened before with dire results. Two decades ago, zebra mussels were accidentally introduced into the Great Lakes and millions are now spent every year removing the pest from water pipes.
Others counter that given the grim realities of a warming planet, it would be irresponsible not to intervene as a conservation strategy. Otherwise, trees may suffer from ravaging disease epidemics while critters unable to head north may find themselves trapped in a declining landscape.
"A tree that we plant today better damn well be adapted to the climate for 80 years, not just the climate today," said Greg O'Neill, a geneticist with the British Columbia Ministry of Forests and Range. "We really have to think long-term."
O'Neill is heading the government-funded experiment that will transform certain North American forests into climate change laboratories. The large-scale, first-of-its-kind test involves purposely planting seeds from more a dozen timber species outside their normal comfort zone to see how well they survive decades from now.
It's more than just a brainy exercise. The findings are expected to guide the British Columbia government on forest management policies. While the experiment deals with moving seeds long distances into unaccustomed climates, O'Neill said any real-life action will not be as drastic.
Outsiders are also keenly watching the experiment as a test case for what is professionally known as "assisted migration."
"We'd all prefer species to move naturally," said Duke conservation biologist Stuart Pimm. But "sometimes you just can't get there from here. Some species are going to be isolated and they're going to get stuck."
The notion of relocating species as a pre-emptive strike against climate change has been largely theoretical. In recent years, some groups have tried assisted migration on a limited basis, most notably the effort by volunteers who last year planted seedlings of the endangered Torreya tree found in Florida to the cooler southern Appalachians.
The Canadian experiment currently under way will cover a broad swath, with tree plantings dotting the Yukon near Alaska to southern Oregon.
Past warmings have forced species to migrate to survive without human help. While some have learned to adapt to new surroundings, other have gone extinct. Faced with the possibility of much more rapid climate change, scientists say, some species may not be able to move fast enough to their new destinations and may need a little power boost to preserve biodiversity.
In North America, some critters have already started their march north. The Edith's checkerspot butterfly, which vanished from its southern range, is now fluttering 75 miles higher in elevation. Red foxes have encroached farther into northern Canada and evicted the arctic foxes.
On the plant side, spruce forests are invading the Arctic tundra and impacting caribou and sheep that live there. In the past century, aspen trees in Colorado have moved into the cold-loving spruce fir forests.
How trees will fare in a warmer world is a concern because they tend to be less flighty than animals. Trees depend on wind and pollinators to spread their seeds. And once a tree is planted, it's harder to move it.
Last year, the British Columbia government took the first steps toward ensuring that trees in the province are adapted to future climates by relaxing its seed rules for timber companies when they replant on logged land. Seeds of most tree species can now be planted up to 1,600 feet higher than their current location.
The government's latest experiment will study how humans can help trees move to more northerly spots where they do not currently grow, but may find themselves existing there years from now. It will not deal with introducing foreign tree species, O'Neill said.
This spring, crews fanned across rugged mountains and began the first dozen plantings on cleared forest land in British Columbia's southern interior and on a private plot near Mount St. Helens in Washington state.
Each test site contains some 3,000 seedlings, on average a foot tall, planted side-by-side on five acres. Fluorescent pin-flags and aluminum stakes dot the corners so that scientists can come back every five years to document their health.
The project will eventually include 48 plots around British Columbia, Washington state, Oregon, Montana and Idaho. It will test the ability of 15 tree species to survive in environments colder and hotter than they're used to.
O'Neill knows that some trees will die and others will go through erratic growth cycles. In fact, he estimates about 50 percent of the plantings may die, but he needs to collect the data to get an idea of how much they can tolerate.
"It will take several extreme climatic events to find out the winners and losers," he said.
Conservationists have launched a secret breeding programme to save Britain's native crayfish from being wiped out by foreign invaders.
Louise Gray, The Telegraph 21 Jul 09;
The white clawed crayfish used to be widely found in Britain.
However the cannibalistic and plague-carrying American signal crayfish have wiped out almost 95 per cent of the native species after being introduced 20 years ago.
Up to 95 per cent of Britain's endemic 'white-claw' population has been wiped out by the invaders in just 20 years.
Now ecologists at the Bristol Conservation and Science Foundation are to set up the first breeding programme to ensure the survival of the species.
The South West White Clawed Crayfish Conservation Group has begun trapping British crayfish and transferring them to "safe haven" breeding sanctuaries.
These so-called 'ark sites' are freshwater pools where neither plague nor American crayfish can bother them.
Two "movements" have been launched at secret locations in the South West – where the population has been hardest hit.
But similar schemes are also in the pipeline for other sites in Somerset, Wiltshire, Devon and Bristol.
The £210,000 project – funded by Natural England – is being led by the Bristol Conservation and Science Foundation (BCSF) in partnership with the Avon Wildlife Trust and the Environment Agency.
It will run for two years and has been described as the largest "strategic translocation effort" in the UK to date.
Secret 'safe havens' to save British crayfish from extinction
Breeding programme begins in south-west of England to save white-clawed crayfish from being wiped out by American signal crayfish
Press Association, guardian.co.uk 21 Jul 09;
A breeding programme has begun to save Britain's native crayfish from being wiped out by foreign species.
The rare white-clawed crayfish will be transported into secret safe havens in an attempt to halt the takeover by the more aggressive, disease-carrying American signal crayfish.
The American signal crayfish were introduced in the UK 20 years ago and have wiped out almost 95% of the native species.
Conservationists have warned that the white-clawed crayfish faces extinction from UK waters within 30 years unless new populations can be created in safe, uncontaminated waters.
The South West White Clawed Crayfish Conservation Group has begun trapping British crayfish and transferring them to "safe haven" breeding sanctuaries.
These so-called "ark sites" are freshwater pools at locations in the south-west, where the population has been hardest hit.
The £210,000 project will run for two years and is funded by Natural England. It is led by the Bristol Conservation and Science Foundation in partnership with the Avon Wildlife Trust and the Environment Agency.
Jen Nightingale, the UK conservation officer for the foundation, said: "White-clawed crayfish were abundant and easy to find until the American signal crayfish species was introduced to UK waters in recent years.
"The American species not only out-competes native crayfish for resources, it also carries a disease, the crayfish plague, which is fatal to UK crayfish.
"We now believe that three quarters of native crayfish populations in the Bristol Avon catchment area have been wiped out.
The team is moving the native crayfish to two isolated water bodies that have little chance of being affected by the American species. "We want to keep these locations secret to prevent people visiting the areas and risk spreading crayfish plague – which can be carried on damp equipment and boots as well as in water.
"People who visit rivers, ponds and lakes can help prevent the spread of disease by washing and drying equipment after use." Nightingale would also like members of the public to report crayfish sightings to the Environment Agency.
The first relocation day involved staff and volunteers from Bristol zoo, the Avon Wildlife Trust and the Environment Agency, who moved a number of crayfish in chilled containers from south Gloucestershire to two new sites in Somerset and north Somerset. Similar schemes are also planned for sites in Wiltshire, Devon and Bristol. The most successful breeding programme for the species was begun in 2003 in the Yorkshire Dales.
Pete Sibley, from the Environment Agency, said: "It was important not to harm the resident ecology when transferring the crayfish to new sites and exhaustive tests had been undertaken to assess the new habitat and ensure that there was a high water quality, tree cover with leaf litter, and rocks and boulders for refuge.
"This type of rescue mitigates the threat from signal crayfish by actively conserving natives through seeking out safe refuge sites.
Andrea Thompson, livescience.com 20 Jul 09;
As Earth's climate continues to warm, life might become the province of the small, a new study suggests.
Climate change has already had documented effects on species living across the globe, from polar bears in the Arctic to coral reefs in the tropical seas. While some changes are specific to certain types of animals, others seem to be more universal.
Two such ecological changes that have been noted and predicted are the shift of species' ranges to higher altitudes and latitudes to keep within their temperature comfort zones and the shift in the timing of key events in the life cycle of organisms - for example, the flowering of plants or the migration of birds.
A third change can now be added to that list: As temperatures rise, organisms get smaller, from the scale of whole communities down to the individual.
This relationship was known to exist in nature, with warmer environments tending to be dominated by smaller-sized species, said study leader Martin Daufresne of Cemagref Aix-en-Provence (a French governmental research institute). But what Daufresne and his colleagues aimed to do with their study was "was to test if this known relationship in ecology was working for climate change," he said.
They found that it's working.
The results of their research are detailed in the July 20 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Shift to the small
This relationship between warmer environments and smaller size works at three different levels in a given biological community: "Being small could mean that you are belonging to a small-sized species; but it could also mean that you are younger, or that you are small for your age," Daufresne explained.
He and his colleagues used long-term surveys to look at these measures for several different aquatic communities that encompassed a variety of organisms (including bacteria, phytoplankton and fish) living in a variety of environments (large rivers, streams and salt water).
The researchers found that, on average, these communities did in fact get smaller as temperatures rose in their environments over time.
For communities of fish in large French rivers, for example, the team observed "a decrease on average of something like more than 60 percent of the mean size at the community scale," during the span of about two decades, Daufresne told LiveScience. This decrease was due to a combination of an increase in the proportion of small-sized species, an increase in proportion of juveniles, and a decrease in size at a given age among individuals within a species.
What exactly is behind this shift isn't clear yet and will require further study, Daufresne said. "Since we observe this decrease at the different scales, it's a bit difficult to find a common trigger - maybe there are several triggers, or maybe just one," he said.
What is clear though, "is that it's something which seems to happen everywhere," which supports global warming's role, Daufresne said. "The fact that we observe this common pattern among different systems and among different kinds of organisms means that there is a real effect of the global warming on size."
Sheep and consequences
More research will be needed to see if this same relationship holds for other species and environments, particularly land-based creatures and warm-blooded animals. One recent study in the journal Science suggests that global warming might be causing the same effect in Scottish sheep, as the woolly beasts seem to have gotten smaller with milder winters over the last few decades.
Whether or not these changes are adaptive to the animals undergoing them is uncertain and something Daufresne hopes to resolve with further research.
Daufresne and his colleagues also want to look into just what the cascading effects of this shrinking might be to communities. One potential way the size change could reverberate would be through the food chain.
"The size of the species is related generally to the position within the food chain, for example, the bigger you are, the [higher up] you are in the food chain," Daufresne said. With sizes shifting to the smaller end of the spectrum, "maybe the upper trophic level could be more sensitive to climate change," which could affect the relationships between predator and prey, he added.
The effect could also be bigger at higher latitudes where warming is expected to be starker, Daufresne said.
Fish are shrinking in response to global warming: study
Yahoo News 20 Jul 09;
CHICAGO (AFP) – Fish have lost half their average body mass and smaller species are making up a larger proportion of European fish stocks as a result of global warming, a study published Monday has found.
"It's huge," said study author Martin Daufresne of the Cemagref Public Agricultural and Environmental Research Institute in Lyon, France.
"Size is a fundamental characteristic that is linked to a number of biological functions, such as fecundity - the capacity to reproduce."
Smaller fish tend to produce fewer eggs. They also provide less sustenance for predators - including humans - which could have significant implications for the food chain and ecosystem.
A similar shrinking effect was recently documented in Scottish sheep and Daufresne said it is possible that global warming could have "a significant impact on organisms in general."
Earlier research has already established that fish have shifted their geographic ranges and their migratory and breeding patters in response to rising water temperatures. It has also been established that warmer regions tend to be inhabited by smaller fish.
Daufresne and his colleagues examined long-term surveys of fish populations in rivers, streams and the Baltic and North Seas and also performed experiments on bacteria and plankton.
They found the individual species lost an average of 50 percent of their body mass over the past 20 to 30 years while the average size of the overall fishing stock had shrunk by 60 percent.
This was a result of a decrease in the average size-at-age and an increase in the proportion of juveniles and small-sized species, Daufresne said.
"It was an effect that we observed in a number of organisms and in a number of very different environments - on fish, on plankton, on bacteria, in fresh water, in salt water - and we observed a global shrinking of size for all the organisms in all the environments," Daufresne said in a telephone interview.
While commercial and recreational fishing did impact some of the fisheries studied, it "cannot be considered as the unique trigger" for the changes in size, the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found.
"Although not negating the role of other factors, our study provides strong evidence that temperature actually plays a major role in driving changes in the size structure of populations and communities," the study concluded.
Steve Leblanc, Associated Press Yahoo News 20 Jun 09;
BOSTON – New pressures on the nation's oceans, from wind turbines to fish farms, are increasingly sparking conflicts with more traditional activities such as shipping and recreational boating and show the need for better planning, the head of the agency overseeing federal ocean research services said Monday.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco said the nation should take cues from Massachusetts, the first state to create a comprehensive planning map for its ocean waters.
While a similar map for the nation would be more daunting — state waters extend out just 3 miles compared to 200 nautical miles for federal waters — Lubchenco said it's important to begin the process.
"We are seeing more and more conflicts between the emerging uses and the old uses," including fishing, she said in an interview with The Associated Press.
One new use noted by Lubchenco is offshore liquefied natural gas facilities. A plan to build an offshore LNG berth in Mount Hope Bay near Massachusetts and Rhode Island has been criticized by residents and elected officials, including Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., who said LNG tankers would pose a hazard to commercial and recreational boat traffic.
The LNG company has defended the plan as safe, saying it proposed the offshore berth to ease fears of tankers approaching more densely populated areas.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration oversees a range of federal research agencies, from the National Marine Fisheries Service to the National Weather Service, that provide weather forecasts, climate monitoring, coastal restoration and other services. Part of its mission is to conserve and manage coastal and marine resources.
Lubchenco, the NOAA's administrator, said the nation needs to adopt "a more holistic, thoughtful approach" when it comes to ocean planning, not just to minimize conflicts but to acknowledge there are legitimate new uses for ocean waters.
"Across the board we are seeing much more intense use of oceans in almost every single dimension," she said, noting at the same time that "oceans in general are becoming seriously depleted and degraded because we have not been the best at our stewardship responsibilities."
Lubchenco sits on a special Ocean Policy Task Force created by President Barack Obama to develop a "framework for effective coastal and marine spatial planning."
That framework should include an "ecosystem-based approach that addresses conservation, economic activity, user conflict and sustainable use," according to a June 12 presidential memo.
"Marine spatial planning" refers to the process of determining which kind of activity should be allowed in which parts of the oceans, including which portions of the oceans should have single or multiple uses, while still protecting fragile marine ecosystems.
Lubchenco said better planning, with the help of extensive public hearing and comment, could help minimize conflicts in the future, particularly as developers seek to place wind farms or tidal energy projects in deeper waters farther from shore.
In Massachusetts, the 130-turbine Cape Wind project, the nation's first proposed offshore wind farm, has prompted a backlash from critics who have vigorously protested the siting of the project in federal waters off Nantucket Sound, where people own expensive homes looking out to sea and recreational boating is popular.
Last year, state lawmakers approved the Massachusetts Oceans Act in part to create a document to cover a myriad of ocean activities while drawing lines around areas considered too environmentally sensitive for development.
A draft version of the map unveiled earlier this month would limit large-scale offshore wind farms to two small areas close to Martha's Vineyard and allow smaller community-based wind projects in other portions of state waters. It would virtually bar any development off the Cape Cod National Seashore, 40 miles of beaches, marshes and ponds home to diverse species.
Lubchenco said the Massachusetts map should be an inspiration for other states and for the nation, although she conceded drafting a similar map out to the 200-mile limit for all national coastal waters would be an enormous task.
The goal of the task force is to get the discussion started and to help move the country away from more piecemeal regulations, she added.
"The goal is to have some reasonable expectations so people can plan," she said. "Exactly what that's going to look like we don't really know."
Yahoo News 21 Jul 09;
BEIJING, July 21, 2009 (AFP) – Developers building one of the world's biggest hydropower projects in southwest China are taking dangerous shortcuts, state media reported Tuesday, citing the national auditor.
Alarm bells started ringing after builders brought forward their timeframe to finish the Xiluodu dam by more than two years, the National Audit Office said in a report on the project, according to the China Daily newspaper.
"The quickened timeline increased the risks and difficulties, and added to the cost," the report said.
Budget costs were also out of control and the developers had illegally collected nearly 10 million yuan (1.46 million dollars) in unauthorised fees, the China Daily cited the report as saying, without giving further details.
The Xiluodu dam, being built along the upper reaches of the Yangtze River on the borders of mountainous Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, is expected to be the world's third biggest hydropower project.
With the new timeline, construction is expected to be finished by 2013, the China Daily reported.
However plans continue to change, with developers last month deciding to raise the height of the dam from 278 metres (917 feet) to 285.5 metres.
The construction director of the project, Hong Wenhao, told the China Daily that the auditor's report "overrated the problem" and that there were no safety issues to be concerned about.
"They have exaggerated the problems a little. We have explained to the auditors before that we have run the project according to a long-term plan," Hong said, according to the China Daily.
"There will be no safety risks under our current working procedures because we do not allow any shortcuts when we build major projects."
China's massive dam projects have been a source of controversy for years.
The government insists they provide a clean source of energy and control flooding, with the world-biggest Three Gorges dam the highest-profile example.
But critics say the dams often cause huge environmental problems and do little to control floods, while millions of people have been displaced to make way for them and the projects are often riddled with corruption.
The China Daily reported last month that several dams on China's Yellow River were close to collapse just a few years after they were built, and there were concerns that over 40 percent of the nation's reservoirs were unsafe.
The Japanese carmaker's wireless system employs the same electromagnetic field technology used to charge an electric toothbrush
Bibi van der Zee and Adam Vaughan, guardian.co.uk 20 Jul 09;
Nissan has developed a revolutionary plug-free technology that it claims will make charging electric cars easier and faster. The wireless charging system is based on the concept of inductive charging, the same electromagnetic field technology used to charge an electric toothbrush. Nissan has scaled it up for use in their Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) electric car, which can charge in a compatible parking bay without the need for wires. Today's electric car owners, by contrast, have to carry a mains plug aboard to recharge.
David Bott, director of innovation programmes at the Technology Strategy Board, said: "If you look at handheld gadgets, inductive charging is a proven technology - the fundamental science says that it will work. I suspect you'll end up plugging electric cars in at night for efficiency, and by day using inductive for on-the-go recharging."
Nissan has ambitions beyond mere wireless charging bays. It hopes to scale the technology up even further as a series of plates laid into the surface of designated electric vehicle lanes on our roads and motorways, theoretically enabling motorists to charge as they drive. However, Nissan admits that it still has no idea on how much it would cost, how long the designated lane would have to be, or how fast the battery could be recharged.
Bott said he was sceptical that such charging lanes would be practical: "It's scientifically feasible, but it's whether it's scalable and feasible is another matter."
Nissan is grappling with its recent consumer research, which revealed that 61% of potential electric car customers were most worried about the inconvenience of recharging. As well as inductive charging, its technological solutions include developing fast-charging facilities, which they hope to see in place in shopping car parks and motorway service stations. "So while you're shopping, or having a cup of tea, the battery will refill to 80% of its capacity, in about 25 minutes," explained Larry Haddad, general manager of product strategy and planning at Nissan Europe.
In addition to these charging innovations, Nissan believes the ZEV has what it takes to compete against established electric models such as the TH!NK City and G-Wiz. Nissan claims it will be the first "dedicated" electric car on the market, arguing that most rival cars have been rehashes of existing models.
The ZEV is a five-seater family-sized car with a top speed of 90mph, a battery range of around 100 miles and surprisingly impressive acceleration. Redmer van der Meer, Nissan's European electric vehicle product manager, said that he is confident the range will be significantly extended in the next few years, and that cars will be built so new, improved batteries can be retro-fitted. Van der Meer said the car is deliberately conventional in style: "We don't want to make a shock in the market, an egg-shaped car or something. We want to make a transition. You could do mad things but we really don't want to."
Nissan's electric car is set to go on sale in the US and Japan next year, before arriving in the UK and rest of Europe by 2012. Pricing is yet to be announced.
Reuters 20 Jul 09;
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The largest utility in southern California urged consumer on Monday to conserve power to help keep air conditioners running without interruption as hot weather sends demand soaring over the next few days.
Temperatures in Los Angles will reach the low 90s Fahrenheit (low 30s Celsius) Monday and Tuesday with the humidity making it feel more like the low 100s F (high 30s C), according to AccuWeather.com.
Edison International's Southern California Edison utility said its transmission system was performing well but the continuing multi-day heat wave and lighting caused some isolated equipment failures and scattered outages.
As the heat continues, the utility warned it was possible other equipment might fail because of the high ongoing usage.
The California Independent System Operator, which operates much of the state's power grid, forecast demand this week, would not top the all-time usage record of more than 50,000 megawatts. The ISO forecast demand would reach about 44,400 MW on Monday and 45,200 MW on Tuesday.
While saying it expects to have sufficient resources to meet demand this week and throughout the summer, Southern California Edison noted conservation could provide an added reserve should an unexpected power emergency occur.
Unexpected emergencies could include mechanical problems affecting a major power plant or wildfires shutting down a major transmission system.
Southern California should see some relief Wednesday when high temperatures fall to the low 80s F (mid-20s C), AccuWeather.com forecast.
Edison International, of Rosemead, California, owns and operates about 14,000 MW of generating capacity, markets energy commodities in North America, and transmits and distributes electricity to about 4.9 million customers in central and Southern California.
(Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
• Report by campaign group Sandbag critical of scheme
• Hot air carbon credits preventing actual emissions cuts
• Datablog: every European carbon permit
Damian Carrington, The Guardian 20 Jul 09;
The system of trading carbon emissions at the heart of the ambitious low-carbon plan announced by the government last week is seriously flawed and close to becoming irrelevant, according to researchers behind a new analysis.
So-called "hot air" carbon credits – those which do not result in any actual emissions cuts – could be so numerous that companies covered by the EU Emissions Trading Scheme would not have to make any cuts to their own emissions until 2015, says the report from climate campaign group, Sandbag. The hot air permits result from the over-allocation of emissions allowances and from those going unused as the recession cuts economic activity.
The ETS covers 50% of the UK and EU's carbon emissions, mainly in the energy, cement, steel, glass and manufacturing sectors. Companies in these sectors are allocated allowances for the carbon they emit, with the total number shrinking over time, theoretically forcing companies to buy additional permits to pollute if they do not cut their emissions.
A large proportion of the UK's promised cut of 34% by 2020 will come via British companies in the ETS. Globally, the carbon trading market was worth €92bn (£79bn) in 2008, trading 5bn tonnes.
However, the large number of carbon permits that have been allocated and a fall in emissions due to the recession, have made the trading system less effective.
"With too many rights to pollute in circulation, the scheme is in danger of being rendered irrelevant," said Sandbag founder, Bryony Worthington. "At a time when other countries are looking to set up their own trading schemes and the world is set to debate a global deal on how to tackle climate change, [this] flagship policy urgently needs rescuing – starting with much tougher caps."
She called for an immediate tightening of the cap on permits to 30% of industry's emissions by 2020, compared to the existing 21%, and a commitment to 40% if a strong global deal results from a UN climate change summit in Copenhagen in December. Making the 30% cut would cost virtually the same as was originally envisaged for the 21% cut, she said, and be much closer to the cuts scientists say must be made to avoid dangerous climate change.
Ed Miliband, energy and climate secretary said: "The UK has been successful in arguing for big improvements to the EU ETS and making sure it's far more effective in tackling climate change. As part of a global climate deal we want Europe to up its targets and that will mean a greater contribution from the EU ETS."
But MP Tim Yeo, chair of the environment audit committee, said: "These findings confirm what many have begun to suspect. Although emissions trading remains conceptually valid, in practice the EU ETS has not succeeded in driving investment in low-carbon technology."
The ETS price for a tonne of CO2 at the close of the market on Friday was €14. To make it economical for generators to switch from coal to less-polluting gas for electricity production requires a price of around €25, while carbon capture and storage technology needs a price of €40-€50 a tonne to be worth investing in.
But Guy Turner, director of analysts New Carbon Finance, said the current relatively low carbon price simply meant the emissions cuts required by the existing ETS cap were being made less expensively than expected. "There is some surplus in the system. But the set targets are being achieved – albeit by a mechanism not predicted: the recession."
He believes emissions will begin to rise once again from 2010 as economic growth returns, and that a year or two after that demand for permits will outstrip supply. "The 21% target will look tight by 2020."
Sandbag's calculation of the potential hot air permits are undisputed and highlight the gap between what is politically possible – loose caps – and what science demands – tight caps – say experts.
The Sandbag analysis comes on the same day as a report by the prime minister's special representative on carbon trading, Mark Lazarowicz MP, published at a government conference on the subject. Lazarowicz's report is expected to argue that carbon trading is a crucial part of the world's response to climate change, and that schemes around the world should be integrated in future.
The potential hot air credits identified by Sandbag include 400m tonnes which industry will not need in the current 2008-12 ETS trading period. These could be sold as windfall profits, raising £5bn at current prices, or banked for the next period, depressing the future price. A further 300m ETS permits exist in a reserve, which supplies them to newly formed businesses. Lastly, companies have the option to offset their emissions by buying credits from outside the EU, usually from hydroelectric or other schemes in China and India. On current trends 900m of these could be available up to 2012, and bankable for use up to 2020.
The non-EU credits come mainly from the UN's clean development mechanism, which is widely acknowledged to be flawed. It includes many projects that would have happened without CDM funding, meaning the carbon reductions are not true cuts. Campaigners also argue it allows rich nations a "get out of jail free card", when they should be making cuts in their own countries.
"Concern remains about the extent to which British companies can purchase credits overseas instead of cutting emissions at home," said Yeo. Sandbag estimates the British companies could spend up to £1.7bn overseas on credits by 2012.
Carbon trading will also be at the heart of the global climate change treaty negotiated in Copenhagen to succeed the Kyoto protocol.
The world's top climate change expert, Rajendra Pachauri, told the Guardian that he shared concerns that the ETS was not being effective in tackling global warming. As the most mature trading system, it is seen as a model for newer markets around the world, which will need to be integrated for a truly effective global system of cutting emissions.
But Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said a strong Copenhagen agreement could lead to a substantial shift in the carbon market, lifting the price: "It may change the whole dynamic. That is my feeling, though I may be wrong."
The cost of tackling climate change will be paid for by benefits that would come from better energy security, employment and health, Rajendra Pachauri says ahead of major announcement on 2013 reports
Damian Carrington, guardian.co.uk 20 Jul 09;
Measures needed to tackle global warming could save economies more money than they cost, the world's top climate change expert said today.
Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told the Guardian: "The cost could undoubtedly be negative overall." This is because of the additional benefits that reducing greenhouse gas emissions could bring, beyond limiting temperature rises.
Until now, estimates of the price of preventing dangerous climate change have all indicated significant costs. The most authoritative study, the 2006 Stern report, concluded that 1% of global GDP would be required, and he has since said 2% is now more likely.
Pachauri's comments came ahead of a press announcement in New York today about the IPCC's plans for its next series of reports in 2013. He said these would include a greater emphasis on the economics, as well as ethical and humanitarian concerns.
Funding for reducing and adapting to climate change in one of the most difficult issues in the negotiations towards a global deal at a UN summit in December in Copenhagen. But Pachauri argues that if the costs are negative, then "inertia and vested interests would be washed away. As the Americans say, it would be like dollar bills lying on the sidewalk."
Alex Bowen, one of the Stern report authors, said: "[Pachauri's] is a defensible postion, not delusional. But I am more of a sceptic."
"My hunch overall is that it will be a little more costly than we estimated in 2006. But if well designed policies are put in place, we can still do it remarkably cheaply. And there is still no doubt that strong action now is much cheaper than no action," added Bowen, an economist at the Grantham Research Institute On Climate Change at the London School of Economics.
The associated benefits Pachauri pointed to include better energy security, protecting consumers from oil price spikes, new employment in green industries, more productive agriculture and lower air pollution, cutting health costs. He said one good example was insulating draughty homes and installing better energy control systems. "This can yield very high rates of returns, with pay back in one year."
The idea of co-benefits is also central to the "green new deals" promoted by the UN Environment programme, Lord Stern's group and others.
Bowen said: "Negative costs depends on assumption that policy design and implementation is sensible and very consistent across countries all over the world. But we have gone three years [since the Stern report] without global policies. Emissions have grown rapidly and a lot of people now think economic growth will be much higher later in the century." The faster you have to reduce emissions, he said, the more expensive it is likely to be.
Pachauri's comments came as he led discussions what the next set of reports from the IPCC should cover. Its last report in 2007 is acknowledged to have settled the argument over whether emissions from human activities were causing climate change.
In the next series, due in 2013, Pachauri said the focus would change. "The IPCC cannot address the issue in purely scientific terms. For adaptation and mitigation, we need to put euro or dollar values on those. But there are also some costs you can't quantify. For example, take Hurricane Katrina. You can put a value on property losses, what about psychological, sociological, and institutional costs. I would not like to try to quantify those."
The IPCC meeting raised a range of further issues that it believes need more attention, including extreme weather events, new greenhouse gases, the full impacts of aviation and global scale geo-engineering.
The reports take between five and seven years to complete, but Pachauri argued that this is their strength: "The IPCC process of regular peer review means the reports are far more defensible than anything else. Comments received are posted on our website as are actions."
UN panel to study impact of climate change on poor countries
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change determined to increase understanding of regional effects of warming
Ed Pilkington, guardian.co.uk 20 Jul 09;
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body of scientists drawn from around the world, will use its next assessment due in 2014 to look at how the impact of global warming is falling unequally on the poorest developing countries.
Two hundred key members of the IPCC met in Venice last week to begin scoping out its fifth assessment. Rajendra Pachauri, the body's chairman, told reporters at the UN building in New York today that the panel was determined to increase its understanding of local and regional impacts of rising temperatures.
There was an awareness, he said, that in Africa in particular there was insufficient scientific and modelling fire-power to be able to predict in any detail what was likely to happen under global warming. "It's critically important that we create the capacity in Africa to be able to assess the impact of climate change."
A portion of the money the panel was awarded for the 2007 Nobel peace prize that it shared with Al Gore has been put into a trust specifically to help the least developed countries predict, and thus prepare for, the likely consequences.
Pachauri said the fifth assessment, the first draft of which is scheduled for 2013, would concentrate both on adaptations and mitigations that countries could make as rising temperatures take hold. "Every nation and community in the world will have to adapt [to] whatever happens in Copenhagen."
Pachauri said he had been heartened by the recent G8 meeting in which the world's industrialised powers agreed on an aspirational ceiling of 2C temperature rise. But he said that in that case they should also have signed up to the IPCC's conclusion that to contain global temperatures within that limit, emissions of greenhouse gases had to peak in 2015 and decline rapidly thereafter.
"They should have categorically stated that by 2020 they will implement deep cuts in emissions. So there are several gaps that are rather glaring." He went on to say that "the time has come for the global community to take action. There is frustration about the gap between our knowledge [of climate change] and acting on that knowledge."
Another area that the IPCC will home in on in its fifth assessment is extreme weather caused by climate change, a topic that has garnered mounting public attention in recent years.
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