Jupiter! Up in the sky from Singapore!
from Biodiversity Singapore
My 09.09.09 Awesome Encounter
from Life's Indulgences
Fade to black
from The annotated budak
Blue-tailed x Little Green Bee-eater hybrid?
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Seeing Red
from Urban Forest
Museum butterfly collections chronicle evolutionary war against male-killers from Not Exactly Rocket Science
Tabitha Wang Today Online 11 Sep 09;
LAST weekend, I went to Lamma. The island, shaped like an inverted Y, is best known for being the birthplace of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon star Chow Yun Fat.
Just 30 minutes away from Hong Kong island by ferry, Lamma is worlds apart from the concrete jungle it overlooks.
There are no cars allowed, so already the pace is slowed down to walking or biking speed. Life is so relaxed there that I could feel my blood pressure drop the moment my feet hit the pier.
All the buildings, with the exception of one modern development, are village houses, restricted to three stories. In some areas, you can still see traditional fishermen's huts, built right over the sea on stilts.
It is a tranquil spot, where pedestrians and pets are allowed full reign of the streets and nature spills over into the gardens in the form of flowering rambling plants.
Every weekend, locals and tourists alike jam the ferries, eager to partake of this tiny Eden in busy Hong Kong for the price of a Singapore taxi flag-down fare.
Some are dressed for hiking one of the many nature trails. Most, however, are happy to just stroll down the narrow main street, eating cheap seafood supplied by the fish farms off the bay or stocking up on organic vegetables grown on the island.
There are about 6,000 people living there and they give the place its vibrancy. If they weren't around, there would doubtless be fewer tourists wanting to go there.
Nature walks and beach bumming are all well and good, but you also want the option of being able to go to a deep-fried pigeon restaurant or bean curd shop later.
I have taken many Singaporean friends over to Lamma and they always rave about how lucky I am to be able to visit this untouched spot every weekend. "If only we had this back home," they say wistfully.
But hang on, we did. It is called Ubin.
Years ago, it was just as idyllic as Lamma. Kampung houses dotted the area, there were seafood restaurants and old-style sundry shops all over and tourists clamoured to see a way of life that had all but disappeared in Singapore.
Now, Ubin is just an empty shell, with nature slowly reclaiming all the old wooden houses and the trails deserted apart from a few hardy souls wanting to commune with nature. So what happened?
Ubin died the day the villagers were encouraged to move out.
Yes, it is a park now, but even the most intrepid nature lovers would appreciate a pit stop to buy drinks or a good seafood meal after biking to Chek Jawa.
Singapore lost some soul when it moved out all the people who lived on the outlying islands and turned the places into empty grassland with one or two concrete gazebos (like St John's Island), an amusement park (Sentosa) a training camp (Pulau Tekong) or an oil refinery (Pulau Bukom).
Imagine if the villagers had been allowed to stay. We could have had the same dynamic island life they have in Hong Kong now. The Outlying Islands are home to both locals and foreigners who want something other than shoebox living.
Lamma residents have their own traditions and culture. They've created jobs - the demand for ferries to connect the villagers to Central has spawned an entire industry. Ironically, many of the ferry boats around Victoria Harbour were made in Singapore.
Compare this to our lacklustre maritime culture, where the only boats that see action are the (now motorised) sampans that take tourists up and down the Singapore River.
Imagine having regular ferry services from a revamped Clifford Pier to Kusu and St John's islands. Not only could we create jobs, we could get more tourist dollars.
To do that, we need to repopulate the islands - and I don't mean building more millionaire's homes, as has been done in Sentosa, but to replicate the lovely kampung houses now going to ruin in Ubin.
Somehow, I don't see that happening. So I guess I just have to keep taking Singaporeans to Lamma to show them what they're missing.
Tabitha Wang is dreaming of importing an Ubin kampung house to Lamma.
Straits Times Forum 11 Sep 09;
I REFER to Wednesday's report, 'Fed pricey herb, to strains of Mozart'.
Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (Acres) commends the farm owner's attempt to create a less stressful atmosphere for the chickens. However, we wish to highlight that the environment in which the chickens are housed still appears far from ideal.
From the photograph, it is clear that there is significant overcrowding. This is incredibly stressful for chickens. In the wild, chicken flocks have hierarchical systems and a strict 'pecking order', with some birds dominant over others. However, this only works for flocks of up to 90 individuals. Studies have shown that in groups any larger than this, the pecking order breaks down, resulting in extreme aggression.
Furthermore, chickens become agitated if they cannot act on their natural instincts. In the wild, they feed by scratching in the earth for worms and insects. They enjoy stretching their wings, basking in the sun and having dirt baths. They like to roost in lower branches of trees. These are natural needs of chickens, stemming from their forest bird ancestors.
On today's modern farms, all this is usually taken away from them. The chickens even have no choice over what they eat, fed an unnatural concoction of food. They will probably never see daylight, until the day they are taken to slaughter.
It is revealing that Mr Kwek Theng Swee mentions that the music calms the birds, acknowledging that conditions on the farm can be stressful. Indeed, considering the evidence above, the chickens are clearly in a highly stressful and unnatural environment.
Sadly, overcrowded, unnatural conditions are the norm on today's intensive factory farms, where animals are no longer treated as sentient beings, but more as meat, egg and milk 'machines'.
But it does not have to be this way, and more humane methods of farming are possible. For example, some farms in Brazil and China are participating in the Model Farm Project. This aims to establish an international network of viable and sustainable model farms, where the welfare of the animals is given high consideration.
Ultimately, it is high demand for cheap animal products that fuels the intensive farming of animals. Therefore, the responsibility falls on us as consumers to demand more humane methods of farming, if we wish to reduce the animals' suffering. We can do this by buying only free-range meat and eggs, and writing to supermarkets to request such products.
Consumers may also consider reducing their meat consumption, so the need to raise farm animals so intensively is reduced.
Acres hopes that farms in the region will move towards adopting farming methods which are more humane, such as those of the Model Farm Project, and that consumers will use their purchasing power to help reduce the suffering of farm animals.
Amy Corrigan (Ms)
Director, Cruelty-Free Living
Acres
Doing good to animals is great, but isn't it better that we first do them no harm?
Straits Times Forum 11 Sep 09;
WEDNESDAY'S report, 'Fed pricey herb, to strains of Mozart', is ironic.
No amount of air-conditioning, pricey herb feeds, mood lighting and Mozart can compensate for the pain and suffering a chicken, or any animal for that matter, undergoes before it is slaughtered.
The plight of chickens which are bred in captivity for the sole purpose of being eventually slaughtered, begins from as early as when they are chicks. They have to be de-beaked and have their wings clipped - to prevent them inflicting injury on their fellow chickens.
Chickens bred in factory farms suffer cramped living conditions and endemic diseases. They are given powerful cocktails of steroids and antibiotics engineered to accelerate growth, to shorten their lives and hasten their harvest.
While the antibiotics suppress disease among the animals, their use leads to the emergence of newer and more powerful strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria which are, more than ever, able to transcend animal-human borders.
Feeds fortified by Cordyceps and cultured lactobacillus underscore the inefficiencies of meat sources of food.
A lifetime of fortified fowl feed - anywhere from four to nine months - translates to only a few days of human meals without any assurance that such fowl feed fortification passes on greater nutrition down the food chain.
If such nutrients can withstand the rigours of slaughter and cooking, just imagine the avian virus and other contaminants that must be surviving the transition equally well.
Expending land, water, nutrients and energy for lighting and music on animals means less of such limited resources are available for man's own benefit.
Why not deploy these directly for mankind instead, to optimise them while reducing methane, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions and waste by-products which poison water supplies and necessitate expensive treatment plants?
Doing good to animals is great. Isn't it better that we first do them no harm?
Vijay Kumar Rai
Chickens tuned to Mozart: Questions on feed
Straits Times Forum 11 Sep 09;
IN RESPONSE to Wednesday's report, 'Fed pricey herb, to strains of Mozart', I have several questions:
# How much cordyceps do these chickens eat? Cordyceps are no 'chicken feed', costing several hundred dollars per tahil (approximately 38g). So even if just one tahil is added to each tonne of chicken feed, this minuscule amount would sharply raise costs.
From reading the report, it seems the chickens do not actually eat cordyceps, but some laboratory-produced powder. This powder may well contain the so-called active ingredients in cordyceps, but is still not the real thing.
# Are these chickens still fed antibiotics? Cordyceps (and lactobacillus in the case of Sakura chicken) are said to be a substitute for antibiotics. Does this mean the chickens are no longer given antibiotics, or just given less? And are they given growth hormones and other drugs?
# How much of the beneficial compounds found in cordyceps is passed on to the chicken? This is the only question raised, but still not answered, by the report.
# What is the real price of a cordyceps chicken? Right now, it is sold with a packet of herbs but there is no way to tell how much the herbs cost. Will farmers and supermarkets sell the chicken separately? Or is the pack of herbs being used as a ploy to further inflate prices?
Finally, some questions about farmed fish, which the report states are fed 'trash feed - discarded kacang putih (nuts) and stale bread'.
Are these fish healthy? How can they be if they are raised on a diet of stale and spoilt food, including possibly rancid nuts whose oils are very toxic? Does this affect the amount and quality of, say, omega-3 fatty acids, which fish and seafood are supposed to be rich in?
What are the long-term health effects of eating farmed animals, fish and seafood that are sick or sickly? If, in fact, cordyceps chicken does impart the benefits of cordyceps, does it not follow that 'trash feed' fish will also impart the harm of spoilt nuts and stale bread?
There must be regulatory controls over what farmed animals are fed. Because, ultimately, we end up ingesting what these animals eat.
Richard Seah
Shedding light on cordyceps chicken
Straits Times Forum 14 Sep 09;
I REFER to last Friday's letter by Mr Richard Seah, 'Chickens tuned to Mozart: Questions on feed'.
'The real thing', commonly known as the cordyceps caterpillar, is a form of parasitic fungus, Cordyceps sinensis. It is grown in a kind of worm, where the fungus cordyceps eats the flesh which gives it nutrients and enables it to grow. Thus the nutritional and health value of cordyceps come from the fungus rather than the worm.
With 10 years of research, AP Nutripharm has developed a proprietary cordyceps fungus CS-X100, originally isolated from the Qinghai-Tibet cordyceps caterpillar, together with a patented cultivation process to grow cordyceps in Singapore. AP cordyceps has been offered for human consumption since 2005, and the quality is as good as top-grade Qinghai-Tibet cordyceps caterpillar, according to laboratory testing data. As home-grown cordyceps is much cheaper than the imported variety, chickens can be fed sufficiently to derive benefits.
Except for the European Union, antibiotics or antibiotic growth promoters (AGP) have been added to animal feed since 1946 to help food animals grow faster in most agricultural nations in the world, despite severe restrictions by the authorities.
AP has made a great effort for years on the study of its cordyceps ingredient to replace AGP in food animal feed. From farming trials in different countries, AP cordyceps can function as well or even better than AGP for growth, feed efficiency, health conditions and mortality in poultry farming. Laboratory reports also indicate that cordyceps chicken meat is free of antibiotic residues.
AP cordyceps can also improve the quality of meat and eggs. From laboratory testing results, fat and cholesterol are much lower while collagen and the flavouring IMP are dramatically higher in cordyceps chicken meat and eggs than in normal ones. So far, one key nutrient in cordyceps - cordycepin - is proven by testing to be passed onto the chicken.
Limited by scientific methodology, we have yet to determine exactly how much of the beneficial compounds are transferred. Generally speaking, large components such as protein and polysaccharides would be decomposed in the digestive tract, while small beneficial components like cordycepin are likely to be carried by the chicken and egg.
Dr Mark Xu
AP Nutripharm
Warning as red tide strikes again
Roy Goh, New Straits Times 10 Sep 09;
KOTA KINABALU: People in Sabah are advised not to eat or sell shellfish as the red tide has struck again.
For the second time this year high levels of paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) toxins were found in samples collected from the sea and the market.
The shellfish include sea oysters, mussels, cockles and all types of bivalves, particularly those collected from the west coast. The last warning was issued in January.
Fisheries Department director Rayner Stuel Galid said yesterday samples taken from Sepangar had shown nearly 100 times over the minimal danger level.
Red tide is caused by a population explosion of microscopic plankton of a subgroup known as dinoflagellates.
It is a coastal phenomena caused by environmental conditions which promote rapid growth -- such as warm surface temperatures, high nutrient content and calm seas.
Sabah recorded its first PSP attack caused by the red tide phenomena in 1976 with 202 cases, including seven deaths.
Early symptoms includes tingling of lips and tongue within minutes of consumption or sometimes up to an hour. It may progress to a sensation of "prickling of pins and needles" of the skin and loss of control of the arms and legs.
"Death can occur within two hours, depending on the amount consumed, because the toxins can cause the muscles of the chest and abdomen to become paralysed," Rayner said and warned there is no medication available for PSP.
He said marine life such as prawns, crabs, lobsters, coral fishes, predatory fishes such as sharks, stingrays, barracuda, mackarel, jacks and others are safe to eat.
"As a prudent measure however consumers are advised to discard the guts and gills."
David Fogarty and Sunanda Creagh
Reuters 10 Sep 09;
SINGAPORE/JAKARTA (Reuters) - Asia Pulp and Paper, one of the largest paper producers in Asia, said on Thursday it has no immediate plans to expand its two Indonesian pulp mills and would only do so if it secured sustainably produced timber.
The Indonesia-based company, known by its initials APP, is a target for green groups because some of its products are made from wood from natural forests and peatlands, which release huge amounts of greenhouse gases when cleared.
APP runs two pulp wood mills in Indonesia with an annual pulp production capacity of just under 3 million tonnes. The unlisted firm, a subsidiary of the Sinar Mas Group, has projected 2009 gross revenue of $4 billion, down from $4.5 billion in 2008.
The company, which also has operations in China, has embarked on a programme to continually improve the environmental management of its operations to ensure the greenest possible product, said the firm's head of sustainability, Aida Greenbury.
"The are no plans to expand the two existing mills without access to additional sustainably produced materials," Greenbury said in Singapore during Reuters' Global Climate Change and Alternative Energy summit.
APP is the number one producer of pulp and paper in Asia, outside of Japan, and third-largest globally.
Most of APP's pulp wood is sourced from Indonesia's Riau and Jambi provinces but shortfalls in supply are met by wood from East Kalimantan, West Kalimantan and South Sumatra, said Greenbury.
YIELD EFFICIENCY
She said APP has plans to increase yield efficiency at the two mills, a process called de-bottlenecking, depending on the integrity of new sources of raw material.
"Once we get that and we are certain we have sustainable raw materials, we will probably be conducting further activities for the de-bottlenecking process in our mills," she said, adding that new plantations would be on unproductive or degraded land, such as in South Sumatra.
Around 90 percent of APP's suppliers provide plantation wood and the remaining 10 percent is mixed wood residue from natural forest, she said.
In 2007, the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an independent sustainability accreditation body, announced it was disassociating itself from APP.
APP's website says that according to the FSC policy, the FSC "will only associate with companies that are not involved with illegal logging, civil rights abuses, destruction of high conservation value forests, forest conversion or genetically modified trees."
Since that incident, APP has reviewed its supplier lists and submitted the results to the FSC, said Greenbury. APP's suppliers have been accused of illegal logging and of burning forest to create access roads, but Greenbury said this was untrue.
"We demand that the pulp wood supplier has to ensure the legality of the wood and if possible, certification," she said. "The fact that our material is 30 percent certified is significantly above global standards."
However, she could not guarantee that illegal logs would not make their way to APP's mills.
"There are no companies in the world who can guarantee 100 percent that their materials are of sustainable source. What my institution has been doing is looking at how can we minimise the gap," she said.
Greenbury said that around 60 percent of APP's total sites in Riau and Jambi province would be on carbon-rich peat lands, which scientists say release huge amounts of greenhouse gases when cleared.
Greenbury said deep peat lands earmarked by government assessors as high conservation areas would be left alone but other deep peat lands could be logged.
Greenbury urged green groups to also consider the jobs created by the pulp and paper industry.
"Yes, we care so much about the environment but we have to address poverty at the same time. The first priority of Indonesia is poverty alleviation," she said.
(Editing by Alex Richardson)
Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura AFP 10 Sep 09;
TOKYO — A Japanese court Thursday rejected a lawsuit filed by thousands of Indonesian villagers against the government who claimed that a Tokyo-funded dam damaged the environment and forced them to resettle.
More than 23,000 residents from Sumatra Island in western Indonesia were forced to relocate after the hydroelectric Koto Panjang Dam was completed in 1997 with Japanese aid, flooding a large valley.
Around 8,400 plaintiffs had sought a total of 42 billion yen (452 million dollars) in compensation from Tokyo and called on the government to pressure Jakarta to remove the dam and restore their former living conditions.
The Tokyo Court rejected the claim, finding that the Indonesian government was responsible for securing residents' approval and assessing the environmental impact before giving the green light to Japan.
"The case is an internal matter for the Indonesian government to deal with," presiding judge Yasushi Nakamura said, adding that "the Japanese government sufficiently handled the procedures" before building the dam.
The dam, located on the border between Riau and West Sumatra provinces, was built at a cost of 300 million dollars to generate hydropower, leading to the flooding of 12,400 hectares (30,600 acres) in the valley, according to activists.
The Japan-aided dam "is destroying residents' lives, the environment and local culture. A murder is going on, slowly but surely," said local activist Berry Nahdian Forquan who heads the green group Walhi.
The dam reservoir flooded a forest, displacing fauna such as elephants, tigers and bears, said residents, who themselves were moved to a high plateau where they said water was scarce and making a living difficult.
"Our lives changed 180 degrees. It's bewildering. We used to eat what we grew but now we can't. We can't send our children to school," said villager Iswadi, who has only one name.
Japan's official development assistance is fifth in the world.
It spent roughly 7.6 billion dollars in the year ending March 2009, the most recent figure, although the number has been decreasing over the past few years.
Last year Japan pledged 220 million dollars in low-interest loans to the Southeast Asian country.
The recent case also highlights how Japan for decades did not have specific guidelines to check the impact on the environment and local populations before starting a project. The foreign ministry, which overseas official development assistance (ODA), only set them up in 2003.
"If Japan doesn't take responsibility over its actions and people's lives, then it should end its ODA because its responsibility is too great," said lawyer and retired Tokyo International University professor Kazuo Sumi.
Japan `does not care' about rights or environment
Apriadi Gunawan, The Jakarta Post 12 Sep 09;
An environmentalist and former national commission member of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), Efendi Simanjuntak, has expressed his regrets over the recent Japanese court ruling rejecting a class action lawsuit for environmental and material damages resulting from the Koto Panjang dam.
According to Efendi, the decision would have negative implications on the lives of people living around the Koto Panjang dam in West Sumatra.
Around 8,000 residents currently living around the dam, have been affected by the environmental damage it caused.
"Japan is one country that does not care about environmental issues or people's rights. As proof, their court rejected a lawsuit filed by people who were victimized by their project," Efendi told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.
The lawsuit filed against the Japanese government contained a number of demands from Walhi and residents of 10 villages disadvantaged by the project, he said.
The demands included to restore the damaged surroundings and habitat of elephants and other rare animals, and to take responsibility for the suffering faced by residents whose villages were submerged, Efendi said.
The Koto Panjang dam project, funded using a Japanese soft loan amounting to 31 million yen, engulfed the Kampar Kanan and Batang Mahat rivers confluence area, spanning 124 square km, he said.
The dam, located in Riau and West Sumatra provinces, was built to generate 114 megawatts of electricity.
With the rejection of the lawsuit, the Japanese government had indicated it wished to protect all of its power investments in Indonesia, Effendi said.
"Japan owns many power generating investments in Indonesia, so if *the court ruled in favor of the community* it could have had a domino effect on other Japanese investments in Indonesia," he said.
He added that North Sumatra was also home to a number of power generating facilities financed by the Japanese government, including the PLTA Lau Renun power station in Dairi regency.
On Thursday, the Tokyo District Court rejected the villagers demands for damages after they were evicted from their homes without proper compensation to clear the way for the dam construction project financed by the Japanese government.
The 8,396 villagers sought US$54,250 per plaintiff, or a total of $42 billion in compensation, in the first-ever lawsuit to involve Japanese foreign aid.
The construction of the dam was carried out by Japanese companies, including the feasibility study by Tokyo Electric Power Service Co. (Tesco) in 1980.
The ground-breaking ceremony for the project was conducted in 1991, after 16,954 people were forcibly evicted from 10 villages in the area.
Thirty-one elephants were also relocated, 25 of which later died after failing to adapt to their new environment.
An 11th century Muaratakus Hindu temple was also submerged as a result of the dam.
Fardah, Antara 10 Sep 09;
Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Indonesia is endowed with vast forest, mangrove, peat soil and coral areas as well as biological diversity but at the same time facing huge environmental problems, such as forest destruction, water, soil and air pollution.
However, most of the environmental violators have walked free due to the country`s ineffective legal system, corruption and lax bureaucracy despite the government`s efforts to stop environmental destruction.
Based on an investigation into illegal logging activities in Indonesia, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Indonesia`s NGO Telapak in their joint report in 2007 said corruption and collusion happen at all stages of the justice system, from the police and prosecutors to judges, ensuring that the main culprits behind illegal logging in Indonesia remain at liberty.
US customs data reveal that over two shipments of expressly illegal Indonesian logs and sown timber entered US ports every day in 2006, worth almost US$14 million, the report said.
Indonesia lost around 2.8 million hectares of forests annually and about US$4 billion a year due to illegal logging activities since the beginning of the decade, according to EIA and Telapak.
The report reveals how an unprecedented anti-illegal logging operation in Papua Province in March 2005 failed to snare the powerful timber barons and their protectors in the police and military.
Although the operation identified 186 suspects, by January 2007 only 13 convictions had been secured and none of these were the ringleaders. Of 18 major cases which made it to trial, all the defendants were cleared by the courts.
Another notorious illegal logging case involved Adelin Lis (54) who was declared unguilty by the Medan District Court on November 5, 2007 on a charge of deforestation in Mandailing Natal forest, North Sumatra.
The Medan court`s decision sparked a public outrage which prompted the Supreme Court in July 2008 to punish Adelin Lis with 10 years in jail and a fine amounting to Rp1 billion. But, Adelin Lis has managed to escape from the country, before serving the jail term.
Hoping to address such problems, Indonesia`s parliament last Tuesday (Sept. 8) passed a new environment bill into the Law on Environmental Protection and Management to replace Law No.23/1997, in order to give the Environment Ministry the power to revoke polluters` business licenses.
"In 2010, perpetrators of environmental destruction will be jailed, they will no longer be able to escape the snare of the law," Environment Minister Rahmat Witoelar said in West Sumatra recently.
"Under the law, we will have to protect the environment and manage it in sustainable ways in the best interest of our own and the next generations," the minister said.
The new law will require companies whose operations impact the environment to obtain an environmental license and undergo an environmental assessment process before starting its operations. If the terms of the environmental assessment process are breached, the Environment Ministry can revoke their permit to operate and impose fines.
Anyone who deliberately pollutes the environment could face up to 10 years in jail and a fine of up to 10 billion rupiah ($1 million).
"This will affect basically all industries or companies whose activities create an impact on the environment, including manufacturing, construction, mining, pulp factories and others," said Nur Hidayati, Greenpeace`s country representative for Indonesia, as quoted by Reuters.
Before, if a company pollutes, the Environment Ministry could only give a recommendation and there was no enforcement in terms of the minister stopping the operation because their operation license was held by another department, she said.
The new law, which was approved by the House of Representatives` ten political factions, also provides for sanctions on local or central government officials who issue permits without following the proper procedures.
It will also grant power to National Park Rangers so that they can investigate and arrest anyone who harms the environment, At present, the authority of the civilian rangers is limited to investigating and forwarding any crime reports to the police.
The environment ministry encouraged all parties to integrate the environmental concept in all of their policies, plans and working programs, Arief Yuwono, secretary of the environment ministry, said in Jakarta recently.
The new law emphasizes three points, namely strengthening of the ministry`s civilian investigators, environmental licensing, and eco-region development concept, he explained.
"The civilian investigators will have the authority to arrest, detain, and file reports to the prosecutors," he said.
Environmental licensing will improve the effectiveness of the Environmental Impact Assessment (AMDAL).
On eco-region development concept, the concept will become a base of environmental management for development. "For instance, there will be Sumatra eco-region, Java eco-region, Sulawesi eco-region, and Papua eco-region," Yuwono said.
Environmental experts have warned that if loggers continue to cut Indonesia`s forests at the current rate, the damage they cause will be beyond repair for 15 years.
Greenpeace estimates that 3.8 million hectares of forest are being destroyed each year. "We are running out of time," says Togu Manurung, director of Forest Watch Indonesia, one of Greenpeace`s partners in the fight to halt the logging.
"If this keeps going on, we will facing the reality of total forest destruction in Indonesia in the near future," he said sometime ago.
Despite some hopes on the new law effectiveness, there is also pessimism as corruption is still rampant in Indonesia. (*)
Richard Lane, New Scientist 10 Sep 09;
FIRST, the good news: the UN has declared 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity. Next October, scientists and politicians meet in Japan to assess progress towards the targets under the Convention on Biological Diversity, confirmed at the 2002 Johannesburg summit in South Africa. The bad news is that the chances of meeting those targets are extremely low. Most indicators suggest that the rate of biodiversity loss is increasing, not slowing. It is clear that we need to redouble our efforts.
This has to be done in two ways: by improving scientific understanding of what is happening to the world's biodiversity, and by ensuring that this understanding is conveyed to as wide an audience as possible. Both are difficult but essential - and fortunately both are doable.
On the first front, we need to know in as much detail as possible what has happened to biodiversity over the recent past (the 300 or so years since the revolutions in industrialisation and agriculture had a major impact on the world) so we can better measure current rates of biodiversity loss. Only when we have a validated rate of past decline can we assess the effects of conservation efforts.
We also need to be creative about where we look for that evidence. Monitoring programmes show evidence of changes in one place over a few years or decades, but they are already being made more difficult by the impact climate change is having on the distribution of organisms - and thus on biodiversity - at any particular place on the planet.
When it comes to longer-term changes, monitoring clearly cannot help. This is where scientific collections such as those in natural history museums and herbaria can make a unique contribution. These vast, painstakingly assembled collections of animals and plants are more than mere relics: they offer snapshots of past biodiversity. The collections held in institutions like the Natural History Museum in London can make an important contribution by providing data that will help us all to assess long-term changes in biodiversity.
But assessing the changes is clearly not enough on its own. Action to foster biodiversity is urgently needed, and that requires politicians - and thus the wider public - to understand the significance of the changes taking place. This can be a complex message to communicate. The issue is not whether it is worth conserving a charismatic mammal or whether it matters if a few nematodes become extinct: it needs to be far more widely understood that declines in individual species herald the decline of diversity in whole ecosystems, which, in turn, has implications for human survival.
Here, too, museums can play a crucial role by helping to engage people's interest. The International Year of Biodiversity offers an unmissable opportunity to encourage broader understanding about the threats facing biodiversity and encourage action to solve them.
Richard Lane is director of science at the Natural History Museum in London. The museum's Darwin Centre, which brings together collections, scientists and visiting members of the public, opens on 15 September
Yahoo News 10 Sep 09;
CHICAGO (AFP) – Polar bear cubs, the arctic fox and caribou herds are among the victims of dramatic changes in the Arctic due to climate change, a study published Thursday found.
"Species on land and at sea are suffering adverse consequences of human behavior at latitudes thousands of miles away," said lead author and biologist Eric Post of Penn State University.
"It seems no matter where you look -- on the ground, in the air, or in the water -- we're seeing signs of rapid change."
The study published in the journal Science reviewed recent ecosystem-wide studies of the biological responses to Arctic warming.
They found the effects of a one-degree Celsius warming over the past 150 years were dramatic and cautioned that it is difficult to predict the consequences of an expected six-degree warming over the next century.
"The Arctic as we know it may soon be a thing of the past," Post said.
Sea ice cover has shrunk by a staggering 45,000 kilometers a year over the past 20 to 30 years, causing a rapid decline in the gulls, walruses, seals, horned narwhal whales and polar bears which rely upon it.
Snow cover on land also has declined and is melting faster.
Polar bears and ringed seals -- already in danger of extinction -- are losing cubs when early spring rains collapse the lairs they build under the snow.
Arctic fox populations are down as red foxes move north.
Fewer caribou calves are surviving because their mothers have been unable to adjust the calving season to changes in plant growth and are not getting enough to eat. Warmer summers also have increased the number of insects and parasites which prey on the migratory animals.
Moths are moving north and affecting the dynamics of trace gas exchange by defoliating mountain birch forests and low Arctic trees and shrubs.
That could have a significant impact on the Arctic's ability to act as a carbon sink, Post warned, noting that one study found an unexpectedly large release of methane in Greenland at the onset of autumn soil freezing.
Warming temperatures are allowing shrubs and trees to expand their range and also are damaging native vegetation.
One winter warming episode led to vegetation damage so extensive that plant product was cut by 26 percent over an area of at least 1,400 square kilometers.
"There is little functional redundancy among species in Arctic ecosystems," Post said.
"Therefore, relatively small shifts in species ranges or abundances may cause fundamental changes in a unique ecosystem that also is important for tourism and traditional cultures."
Effects of Arctic warming seen as widespread
Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press Yahoo News 10 Sep 09;
WASHINGTON – Arctic warming is affecting plants, birds, animals and insects as ice melts and the growing season changes, scientists report in a new review of the many impacts climate change is having on the far north.
As the global climate changes, the Arctic Circle has been warming faster than other regions and scientists have documented a series of affects on wildlife in the region.
Indeed, just last week researchers reported that the Arctic is warmer than it's been in 2,000 years, even though it should be cooling because of changes in the Earth's orbit that cause the region to get less direct sunlight.
"The Arctic as we know it may soon be a thing of the past," Eric Post, an associate professor of biology at Penn State University, said in a statement.
Post led a research team that studied the Arctic during the International Polar Year, which ended in 2008. Their findings are reported in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
Snow cover has declined steadily in recent years and in the last two to three decades the minimum sea ice coverage declined sharply, a change that affect animals like polar bears that depend on the ice for habitat and hunting.
"Species on land and at sea are suffering adverse consequences of human behavior at latitudes thousands of miles away," Post said. "It seems no matter where you look — on the ground, in the air, or in the water — we're seeing signs of rapid change."
In addition, he added, the Arctic is very complex and "not all populations within a given species respond similarly to warming because physical and landscape features that interact with climate can vary tremendously from site to site."
For example, migratory caribou in Greenland and elsewhere are declining, the researchers said, since the animals have not been able to adjust their calving season to keep it synchronized with changes in plant growth.
As a result, the time when the females need the most food no longer matches the time when the most food is available, and fewer calves survive. In addition, warmer weather can produce more insects and parasites to prey on the caribou.
On the other hand, wild reindeer on the Norwegian islands of Svalbard appear to have benefited from the earlier seasonal loss of snow cover. These animals don't migrate and the longer growing season and less snow cover means more food for them.
The researchers found that with warmer conditions red foxes are moving north, displacing Arctic foxes from their territories.
Also expanding their territories to the north are the winter moth, which defoliates mountain birch forests, and species of Arctic trees and shrubs.
Having more shrubs can provide food for reindeer and musk oxen grazing, and their trampling and defecation encourages the growth of grasses, which in turn attract geese.
And, as if to help prove the case, the U.S. Geological Survey reported separately that the Pacific brant, a small sea goose, has shifted northward from areas such as Mexico to sub-Arctic areas as Alaska's climate has warmed over the last four decades.
Before 1977 only about 3,000 brant were detected wintering in Alaska, while now that has jumped to as many as 40,000 birds.
The changing Arctic climate appears related to changes in the availability and abundance of eelgrass, the primary food of brant in their nonbreeding season, survey researchers said.
Post's research was funded by Aarhus University in Denmark, the Danish Polar Center and the U.S. National Science Foundation. In addition to the U.S. Geological Survey, funding for its study came from the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
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On the Net:
Science: http://www.sciencemag.org
The Climate's Warm Future Is Now in the Arctic
A new survey reveals just how far and how fast global warming is altering the Arctic
David Biello, Scientific American 10 Sep 09;
When the summer sea ice goes, the Arctic will lose the ivory gull, Pacific walrus, ringed seal, hooded seal, narwhal and polar bear—all animals that rely on the ice for foraging, reproduction or as refuge from predators. And the sea ice is going, faster and faster: In the past 30 years, minimum sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean has declined by 45,000 square kilometers annually*—an area twice the size of New Jersey is lost each year.
"Sea ice is like rainforest in the tropics. There are species that can't live without it," says ecologist Eric Post of The Pennsylvania State University, lead author of a paper in the September 11 Science that lays out a broad review of climate change's impact on the Arctic. "It's melting earlier, freezing up later, the contiguous extent is diminishing, and it's happening faster than anyone expected it to happen 10 years ago."
As a wrap-up of ecological studies conducted during the Fourth International Polar Year, Post and a slew of colleagues surveyed the state of the Arctic and found it to be not good, thanks to climate change. "We looked at plants and animals: vascular and nonvascular plants, migratory and nonmigratory animals, vertebrates and invertebrates, saltwater and freshwater, on the land or in the air—everything is changing," Post says. "It doesn't really matter where you look in the Arctic. Things are changing fast."
Rapid change is coming even for animals once thought to be relatively immune, such as caribou. Whereas the nonmigratory population of the animals on the Norwegian Svalbard Islands is burgeoning thanks to more winter snowmelt exposing a greater abundance of plant life for foraging, caribou in other parts of the Arctic are suffering. In spring, plants are blooming earlier in the year thanks to warmer early spring temperatures, but caribou are still calving at the same time, meaning calves are born after most of the food is available, and therefore fewer of them survive.
"I had no idea caribou could be on the brink of collapse. They seemed to have all the right traits to adapt," Post says. "Now they're of critical concern."
Particularly to the peoples of the Arctic who, in many cases, rely on hunting caribou or other animals to survive. "If you talk to the Inuit people in Greenland, they are suffering consequences for something they haven't contributed to themselves," Post notes. "We're taking away elements of a lifestyle that has worked for them for thousands of years. If somebody was doing that to us, don't you think we'd be upset?"
But the list of effects do not stop with the loss of a way of life and sea ice or the mismatch between spring blooms and caribou birthing: red foxes are replacing Arctic foxes farther and farther north; snow cover is diminishing; early spring rains now wash away seal dens, exposing pups; unusually warm periods in winter kill off Arctic plants and they do not rebound the following summer; and lemming and vole populations have crashed and remained at low levels for nearly a decade without recovering, among others. "There's been such a decline in snow cover that it affects [rodent] survival," Post says. "It means that species like snowy owls and Arctic foxes that are dependent on finding rodents will also suffer."
This is all happening with an increasing temperature of just one degree Celsius over the past century. In the next 100 years, the Arctic might warm as much as 6 degrees Celsius according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "If it were to get to three degrees [Celsius] warmer on average, the Arctic would be a thing of the past," Post says. "Polar bears, long winters of snow, sea ice cover—it wouldn't be the case anymore."
Instead the Arctic might become more like the boreal forests of Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia—vast stands of spruce trees that do not support the unique Arctic flora and fauna.
The problem confronting Arctic species is not the warming itself, of course; there have been similar episodes in Earth's history, such as the warming during the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene epochs. It is the speed with which the greenhouse gases from fossil fuel burning are warming the globe. "The rate of change is so fast now," Post says. "It's about whether it's getting warmer over several decades or one decade. For a long-lived species there's no chance to keep up, no chance for evolution to keep up."
For his part, Post is hoping that the world will begin to treat Arctic biodiversity as worthy of conservation, more like tropical biodiversity, for example. After all, the Arctic is actually abundant with unique species and ecosystems, not a lifeless, white wasteland.
Post's report is not all bad news: Arctic warming has begun to promote the spread of trees and shrubs farther north, and the growth of these plants can lock up more carbon dioxide as they flourish.
Unfortunately, the warmth is also permitting the northward march of insect pests like the winter moth, which defoliates trees and shrubs and reduces the overall carbon sequestration. Plus, the advance of shrubs is affecting ecosystems, promoting more microbial activity in the soil and, ultimately, the release of methane—another greenhouse gas that traps 25 times as much heat as carbon dioxide over 100 years in the atmosphere.
In other words, warmth—and big changes for the Arctic—will keep coming. "Even if we restrict carbon emissions, it will get warmer," Post says, thanks to the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere and feedback effects like the loss of sunlight-reflecting sea ice and snow cover. "That doesn't mean we shouldn't curb emissions. It's a matter of damage control.... We might be losing the Arctic as we know it but we need to do everything we can to make sure the problem doesn't spread."
The Changing Arctic: How Animals Respond to Climate Change
Andrea Thompson, livescience.com Yahoo News 10 Sep 09;
The dramatic changes sweeping the Arctic as a result of global warming aren't just confined to melting sea ice and polar bears - a new study finds that the forces of climate change are propagating throughout the frigid north, producing different effects in each ecosystem with the upshot that the face of the Arctic may be forever altered.
"The Arctic as we know it may be a thing of the past," said Eric Post of Penn State, who led an international team that brought together research on the effects of climate change from ecosystems across the Arctic.
The study, detailed in the Sept. 11 issue of the journal Science, is one of the first to knit together and bring light to the details of the multitude of changes from across the region.
"Usually, when people talk about declines in the Arctic, they show a figure with declining sea ice extent and then show a picture of a polar bear. This study tries to move beyond such recourse by citing the wide array of papers that quantify ecological decline in the Arctic," said Ken Caldeira of Stanford University, who was not involved in the study. "I know of no similar paper that brings together such a wealth of scholarship on the state of Arctic ecosystems."
Arctic amplification
While the Earth on average has warmed by about 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit (0.4 degrees Celsius) over the past 150 years, the Arctic has warmed by two to three times that amount.
This amplification of the global warming signal in the Arctic is partly the result of a self-feeding cycle: As sea ice melts, the oceans absorb more heat from the sun's rays, causing less ice to re-form come winter.
In the last two to three decades alone, the amount of ice covering the Arctic at the summer minimum has declined by about 17,000 square miles (45,000 square kilometers, or about the size of Vermont and New Hampshire combined) a year, the researchers say, in addition to breaking up earlier in the season and freezing back later.
Snow cover over land has also decreased in the northernmost latitudes, as well as melting earlier come spring.
These physical changes to the environment are having a profound impact on the flora and fauna that dwell in the Arctic.
"Species on land and at sea are suffering adverse consequences of human behavior at latitudes thousands of miles away," Post said. "It seems that no matter where you look - on the ground, in the air or in the water - we're seeing signs of rapid change."
Ice melt and migrations
Arctic species that are dependent on the stability and persistence of the ice sheet - of which the polar bear is the most widely-recognized example - are particularly feeling the brunt of climate change. The loss of sea ice is causing a rapid decline in the number of ivory gulls, Pacific walrus, ringed seals, hooded seals, narwhals, and of course, polar bears.
Polar bears and ringed seals both give birth in lairs or caves under the snow. If these refuges collapse in unusually early spring rains, the newborn pups end up lying exposed on the ice, where they die from hypothermia or predation.
Other species are being threatened by the northward migrations of species once confined to more hospitable lower latitudes. One of the most visible invaders is the red fox, which is displacing the native Arctic fox.
The winter moth, which defoliates mountain birch forests, has also been marching poleward, as have Low Arctic trees and shrubs, which affect the dynamics of an ecosystem. Adding more shrubs and trees to the landscape promotes deeper snow accumulation, which increases winter soil temperatures. Warmer soils mean more microbial activity, which makes the habitat even more suitable for shrubs.
The addition of shrubs also propagates changes throughout the ecosystem and affects the ability of the tundra (or frozen soil) to store carbon: While more shrubs may lengthen the period of the growing season when the soil acts as a carbon sink, it also provides more food for grazing musk oxen and reindeer, who limit the carbon-soaking ability as they trim the plants. Grazing, trampling and defecation by herbivores also promote the growth and spread of grasses, which attract geese. Geese, in turn, can influence the productivity of lakes where they rest and graze.
Good for me, bad for you
The changes in Arctic ecosystems can have opposing impacts on different species, with some even benefiting from them.
The study found that wild reindeer on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard benefit from earlier snow melt. With less snow on the ground and a longer growing season, the nonmigratory reindeer can take advantage of an explosion in plant abundance. The result is more reindeer, as they are more able to reproduce and less likely to die.
On the losing side of the equation are migratory caribou in Low Arctic Greenland, whose numbers the researchers find are declining. The caribou haven't been able to adjust their calving season to keep in step with the change in plant season, so new mothers in need of more food have less available and more calves die. Hotter summers may also bring more insects and parasites to prey on the caribou.
The reduction in caribou numbers in turn impacts the local indigenous human populations: "Inuit hunters at my study site in Greenland have all but given up on hunting caribou there," Post said.
Forecasting the future
Understanding why some ecosystems benefit or are less impacted by climate change while others are on the brink of collapse is one area that the researchers say needs more attention.
Documenting the changes in this region is also key to developing any conservation plans, particularly because there are relatively few species in the Arctic.
"There is little functional redundancy among species in Arctic ecosystems," Post said. "Therefore, relatively small shifts in species ranges or abundances may cause fundamental changes in a unique ecosystem that also is important for tourism and traditional cultures."
The rapid changes in the Arctic also provide a way for scientists to tackle a long-standing problem in climate research, predicting what will happen to ecosystems in a warming world, Caldeira said. While some predictions, such dipping polar bear numbers from sea ice melt, are more predictable, others, such as the dynamics between shrub growth and grazing, are harder to predict.
"The Arctic is, unfortunately, a good early laboratory in which to test our predictions of ecosystem response to global change," Caldeira told LiveScience.
To better understand the changes taking place in the Arctic - and the Earth as a whole - the team proposes a series of studies across the region to monitor the drivers of climate change and the biological responses to them over the long term.
"We've seen a great deal of emphasis recently on the melting of Arctic ice," Post said. "The broad, rapid, and in some cases devastating changes documented in this paper remind us of why it's important to give consideration to the consequences of rising temperatures."
The study was supported by Aarhus University, The Danish Polar Center and the U.S. National Science Foundation.
Dramatic Biological Responses To Global Warming In The Arctic
ScienceDaily 10 Sep 09;
"The Arctic as we know it may soon be a thing of the past," says Eric Post, associate professor of biology at Penn State University. Post leads a large, international team that carried out ecosystem-wide studies of the biological response to Arctic warming during the fourth International Polar Year, which ended in 2008. The team's results will be reported on 11 September 2009 in the journal Science.
The team's research documents a wide range of responses by plants, birds, animals, insects, and humans to the warming trend. The scientists found that the increase in mean annual surface temperature in the Arctic over the last 150 years has had dramatic effects. In the last 20 to 30 years, for example, the seasonal minimal sea ice coverage has declined by a staggering 45,000 square kilometers per year. Similarly, the extent of terrestrial snow cover has declined steadily, with earlier melting and breaking up and an earlier start to the growing season.
"Species on land and at sea are suffering adverse consequences of human behavior at latitudes thousands of miles away," declares Post. "It seems no matter where you look -- on the ground, in the air, or in the water -- we're seeing signs of rapid change."
The study led by Post shows that many iconic Arctic species that are dependent upon the stability and persistence of sea ice are faring especially badly. Loss of polar ice habitat is causing a rapid decline in the numbers of ivory gull, Pacific walrus, ringed seal, hooded seal, narwhal, and polar bear. The researchers found that Polar bears and ringed seals, both of which give birth in lairs or caves under the snow, lose many newborn pups when the lairs collapse in unusually early spring rains. These species may be headed for extinction.
The research also reveals that species once confined to more southerly ranges now are moving northward. Among the most visible invaders are red foxes, which are displacing Arctic foxes from territories once too cold for red foxes. Some of the less showy invaders that the scientists found also are moving northward include the winter moth, which defoliates mountain birch forests, and species of Low Arctic trees and shrubs, which affect the dynamics of trace-gas exchange. The presence of more shrubs and trees promotes deeper snow accumulation, increasing soil temperatures during the winter, and more microbial activity in the soil, which in turn makes the habitats more suitable for shrubs. Increasing the shrub cover may lengthen the period during the plant growing season when the tundra acts as a carbon-dioxide sink.
Countering this change, the research reveals, are musk oxen and reindeer, which browse on shrubs, limiting their carbon-soaking capacity and northward expansion to the High Arctic. Grazing, trampling, and defecation by these herbivores promote the growth and spread of grasses, which further attract geese. The geese in turn influence the productivity of lakes, where they rest and graze. The research indicates that complex aquatic and marine food webs like these are extremely vulnerable to alteration due to changes in temperature, precipitation, and nutrient load from the land.
The paper by Post's research team shows that the effects of Arctic warming have been dramatic so far, especially since the warming amounts to only about 1-degree Celsius over the last 150 years. Post said it is difficult to predict what will happen with the anticipated 6-degree warming over the next century.
"The results of our studies so far reveal widespread changes, but also a surprising heterogeneity in biological responses to warming," comments Post. For example, the study shows that wild reindeer on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard actually have benefited from melting of snow during winter, and perhaps also from the earlier seasonal loss of snow cover. With less snow cover and a longer growing season, these nonmigratory reindeer have taken advantage of the increased plant abundance, with the result that reindeer populations and their ability to reproduce are up, while mortality is down.
In contrast, migratory caribou in Low Arctic Greenland and elsewhere are declining in numbers, the study found. The caribou have not been able to adjust their calving season to keep it synchronized with changes in plant growth. Thus, the research shows, the time when the females need the most food no longer matches the time of maximum food availability, so fewer calves survive. The research suggests that hotter summers may result in more insects and parasites to prey on the caribou, which in turn may reduce the annual caribou harvest by local indigenous peoples. "Inuit hunters at my study site in Greenland have all but given up on hunting caribou there. What will be the next component to disappear from their traditional lifestyle, a lifestyle that has worked for thousands of years?" wonders Post.
Many questions remain unanswered as scientists wrestle with forecasting future events and developing plans to conserve the fragile Arctic ecosystems. Because there are relatively few species in the Arctic, ecosystems in this region may be more vulnerable to changes in its climate. "There is little functional redundancy among species in Arctic ecosystems," explains Post. "Therefore, relatively small shifts in species ranges or abundances may cause fundamental changes in a unique ecosystem that also is important for tourism and traditional cultures."
Why do some parts of the ecosystem appear to be unaffected by rising temperatures, while others seem to be heading for collapse? For example, despite heavy harvest and changing environmental conditions, sockeye salmon production in Bristol Bay, Alaska, has remained relatively stable or even increased over the last century. Though hundreds of salmon populations are scattered throughout a range of habitats, the system somehow has compensated for these serious demands.
It has long been assumed that the most important biological activities in the Arctic occur during the growing season, but the work highlighted by Post's team suggests otherwise. One natural winter warming episode in the sub-Arctic led to vegetation damage so extensive that plant productivity in the following summer was reduced by 26 percent over an area of at least 1400 square kilometers. In a different area, there was an unexpectedly large release of methane into the atmosphere at the onset of autumn soil freezing. Though working in the Arctic in the autumn and winter poses logistical problems, the findings indicate the importance of monitoring the dynamics of the ecosystem year-round.
"People have thought of the Arctic as a relatively simple ecosystem that is easily understood, but in fact it is very complex," explains Post. "Not all populations within a given species respond similarly to warming because physical and landscape features that interact with climate can vary tremendously from site to site. I think response heterogeneity is going to be one of the keys to species persistence, community integrity, and ecosystem function as the Arctic continues to warm."
Post's team calls for establishing a pan-Arctic series of integrated baseline studies to monitor the physical drivers of climate change and the biological responses to them over the long term. "We've seen a great deal of emphasis recently on the melting of Arctic ice," Post says. "The broad, rapid, and in some cases devastating changes documented in this paper remind us of why it's important to give consideration to the consequences of rising temperatures."
In addition to Eric Post at Penn State University, the team he led was comprised of biologists, ecologists, geographers, botanists, anthropologists, and fish and wildlife experts from the University of Alberta and the Canadian Wildlife Service in Canada; Aarhus University and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark; the University of Helsinki in Finland; the Arctic Ecology Research Group in France; the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources in Greenland; the University Centre on Svalbard, the University of Tromsø, and the Centre for Saami Studies in Norway; the University of Aberdeen and the University of Stirling in Scotland; Lund University and the Abisko Scientific Research Station in Sweden; the University of Sheffield in the UK; and the Institute of Arctic Biology and the U.S. Geological Service at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, the Environment and Natural Resources Institute of the University of Alaska-Anchorage, and the University of Washington in the United States.
Support was provided by Aarhus University, The Danish Polar Center, and the U.S. National Science Foundation.
Journal reference:
1. Eric Post, Mads C. Forchhammer, M. Syndonia Bret-Harte, Terry V. Callaghan, Torben R. Christensen, Bo Elberling, Anthony D. Fox, Olivier Gilg, David S. Hik, Toke T. Høye, Rolf A. Ims, Erik Jeppesen, David R. Klein, Jesper Madsen, A. David McGuire, Søren Rysgaard, Daniel E. Schindler, Ian Stirling, Mikkel P. Tamstorf, Nicholas J.C. Tyler, Rene van der Wal, Jeffrey Welker, Philip A. Wookey, Niels Martin Schmidt, and Peter Aastrup. Ecological Dynamics Across the Arctic Associated with Recent Climate Change. Science,, 11 September 2009: 1355-1358\ DOI: 10.1126/science.1173113
Adapted from materials provided by Penn State.
WWF 10 Sep 09;
The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) announced today that it has awarded certification to a pink and chum salmon fishery on the Kuril Island of Iturup managed by the Russian Government and Gidrostroy, a joint stock company which owns and manages the fishing, processing, and transport operations. The MSC certification program recognizes and rewards sustainable fishing and promotes the best environmental choices in seafood.
“Among major Russian fishing companies, Gidrostroy is the first and, to this day, the only company that has been awarded the Marine Stewardship Council certification,” says Sergei Didenko from the Sakhalin Salmon Initiative Center. “Gidrostroy’s commitment to sustainable fisheries is a turning point for the fisheries sector and a sign that sustainability has arrived in Russia.”
“Gidrostroy joins a growing list of seafood companies who understand that the long-term supply of salmon and other seafood depends on effective management and conservation,” said Brian Caouette of the Wild Salmon Center, whose mission is to conserve wild salmon across the Pacific Rim. “As demand for sustainable seafood increases, fishing companies that implement best practices stand to benefit economically. “
Like certain salmon fisheries in Alaska, the Iturup Island fishery has committed to implement a number of management changes as part of the MSC process. Changes include taking steps to minimize the potential impact of hatcheries on wild salmon populations— hatchery salmon can place wild salmon populations at risk in several ways including mixing of hatchery and wild stocks, ecosystem and genetic impacts, and disease transfer.
“We hope that the MSC certification will help companies continue to catch salmon successfully for many years and gain new markets, without undermining the stocks and minimizing damage to ecosystems,” said Konstantin Zgurovsky, Head of the WWF’s Marine Program.
A coalition of NGOs, including the Wild Salmon Center, WWF, Sakhalin Salmon Initiative Center, and Sustainable Fisheries Partnership hope that that certification of the first fishery in Russia will draw the government’s attention toward resolving some of the obstacles for effective management of salmon fisheries in Russia.
BBC News 10 Sep 09;
Choosing to eat jellyfish is all about cultural attitudes, according to Carme Ruscalleda, a celebrated chef at work in the kitchen of her Michelin-starred restaurant next to the beach in Sant Pol del Mar, on the Catalan coast.
"Put jellyfish on the table in front of a European diner, and they'll say 'oh no, it's a monster from the sea, a nasty thing that stings'.
"Serve it to someone from Japan or China and they'll say it's the perfect garnish for a summer dish, something delicious and good for you", she says.
Ms Ruscalleda is particularly excited about the health-giving properties attributed to jellyfish.
"The Chinese," she says, "say it improves the cardio-vascular system, balances blood pressure, improves cholesterol levels, helps the joints, is good for the skin. I sometimes joke that jellyfish can cure everything except a case of flat feet".
She has just scooped a live blue and brown specimen, about 25cm (10in) across and caught in the sea nearby that morning, from a bucket and laid it in salt, where it will sit for two days in preparation for being eaten.
Unfortunately, she is not yet allowed to serve this European variety to her customers, due to the fact that the European Commission has not officially classified it as a foodstuff.
She does serve imported Asian varieties, but she is in the process of trying to find historical evidence that jellyfish were once eaten in Europe.
Failing that, it will be a matter of scientifically proving the edibility of her local variety - not that she is in doubt, having eaten it many times.
"The flavour of the Asian jellyfish is very salty," Ms Ruscalleda says, "and the texture is like cartilage."
"But the one we get here, because it's so fresh, tastes much more like the sea. The texture's like fresh squid or like percebes [a type of barnacle eaten as a delicacy in Spain]. It's fantastic!"
Carme Ruscalleda might well be tapping one of the ultimate sustainable food resources. Ignored by humans in the Mediterranean, except when the stinging varieties are accidentally and painfully encountered by swimmers or by fishermen trying to clean their nets, there is anecdotal evidence that jellyfish are increasing steadily in numbers.
It would not be a surprise. Scientists have already established that jellyfish thrive in warmer waters, and sea temperatures are increasing.
Dacha Atienza, who runs a jellyfish research project at the Institute of Marine Sciences in Barcelona, says: "Global warming does have something to do with it."
"Here in the Mediterranean, we know that the coastal area has seen an increase in temperature of about two or three degrees in the last years. So that's a big change. And we know an increase of temperature can increase rates of reproduction of the jellyfish. They can breed twice in the same year instead of just once".
'Not weird'
The other reason why jellyfish are a sign of the times is the fact that we have fished out so many of their natural predators.
"Sharks, turtles and tuna are among them", Ms Atienza says. "But we know that many species of fish eat jellyfish too. We are inflicting big changes on our seas".
Part of her task is to classify coastal jellyfish in terms of how toxic their sting is, and to work with local lifeguards and the Red Cross to make sure bathers are warned when there are stinging jellyfish next to the beaches.
She is used to the reluctance of some local authorities to admit there is a problem, given the potential impact on tourism.
Ms Atienza is supportive of the idea of eating Mediterranean jellyfish.
"I think it is a good idea to make use of something from the sea that has not been used until now", she says.
"We know that it is common in some Asian countries to eat them and I don't think it would be something weird here. The problem is the unreliability of the supply if you want to exploit them commercially.
"On our coast, you can get plenty of jellyfish one day and then see none for the next two weeks."
But she would like to see chef Carme Ruscalleda serve at least one local species, noting that there are big similarities with the Asian edible specimens.
"Here at the institute," she says, "we are open to co-operating with Carme Ruscalleda to establish them as an official new foodstuff. We can work with her, we have the animals here for her in our tanks."
Perhaps it will not be long before culinary Europe really does start to embrace the jellyfish.
Sudeep Chand, BBC News 10 Sep 09;
The British public has become more sceptical about climate change over the last five years, according to a survey.
Twice as many people now agree that "claims that human activities are changing the climate are exaggerated".
Four in 10 believe that many leading experts still question the evidence. One in five are "hard-line sceptics".
The survey, by Cardiff University, shows there is still some way to go before the public's perception matches that of their elected leaders.
The results were announced at the British Science Festival in Guildford by Cardiff's Lorraine Whitmarsh.
A questionnaire survey was filled in by 551 people, from a range of ages and backgrounds, between September and November last year.
Although the findings are similar to those of other UK surveys, this is the first to show that people may be becoming "tired" of claims surrounding climate change.
Perception gap
Dr Whitmarsh told BBC News: "It is difficult for people to perceive what is and isn't climate change.
"But I think what we have to get across is that residual uncertainty in science is normal.
"Unfortunately, some people latch on to this uncertainty and say 'let's carry on as we are'."
She feels that many people are not "playing their part" in reducing humanity's impact on the environment.
"In general people are showing little willingness to change their lifestyles.
"They will recycle, unplug the TV and change their light bulbs; but they won't change how they travel or how they eat.
"These are the things that are going to make the biggest difference."
Alarmist
Half of the people surveyed believed the media was too alarmist.
And a third said there was too much conflicting evidence to know what is actually happening.
Dr Whitmarsh added: "We need to make it clear to people what is due to climate change and what is not.
"It is time we made it real to people."
Other surveys have shown that people in the UK are more sceptical than those in Europe, but less than those in the US.
WHO IS THE MOST 'SCEPTICAL'?
Men more than women
Rural more than urban
Older people
High earners
Conservative voters more than Lib Dem voters; Lib Dem voters more than Labour voters
Global warming cynicism rises in face of stronger evidence
Steve Connor, The Independent 10 Sep 09;
A significant proportion of the population have become more sceptical about climate change and the link with man-made emissions of greenhouse gases despite the fact that the scientific evidence has become stronger.
A survey of public opinion has found that 29 per cent of people believe claims that human activities are changing the climate are exaggerated compared with 15 per cent of respondents to a similar survey carried out in 2003.
About one in five people are uncertain about whether climate change is really happening, about the same proportion who had the same view in 2003, according to the survey carried out by Cardiff University researchers.
Christopher Wanjek, livescience.com Yahoo News 9 Sep 09;
Wouldn't it be nice if foods came with labels to explain how healthy they are? Well, yes, you're right: They do. OK, but wouldn't it be even nicer if the food industry just got together and told us which of their processed food products constitute healthier choices?
Maybe they could just slap a big checkmark on the front of the package that screams, "don't think; just eat this."
Welcome to the bizarre world of the Smart Choices Program, where Lucky Charms cereal is one such "smart choice" for confused consumers wondering if the latest colorful marshmallow addition tips the marshmallow-to-sugary-oat ratio to something suitable only for honeybees and hummingbirds.
Fruit Loops, Frosted Flakes and just about any other commercial breakfast cereal also get the Smart Choices seal of approval, a big green checkmark, apparently for being a smarter choice for breakfast compared to rock candy.
It's healthy, trust us
The program, underwritten by 10 of the largest food companies doing business in the United States, debuted in August. Smart Choices is "designed to promote public health by helping shoppers make smarter food and beverage choices," according to the program's press statements. This is an attempt to standardize and simplify "front-of-pack" nutrition labeling used independently by food companies, which has become meaningless, if not deliberately misleading, in recent years.
I'm all for simplicity. Jack LaLanne, the 94-year-old fitness and nutrition expert still healthy enough to work out intensely for two hours a day, has a simple philosophy: If a human made it, he doesn't eat it.
The primary problem with the Smart Choices labeling system is that the healthiest foods don't have labels because they don't come from a factory. While it is true that all fruits and vegetables automatically make the list of foods that would qualify for a Smart Choices checkmark, you're not going to see a checkmark on a stalk of kale. That's because a farmer made the kale, not ConAgra Foods or General Mills.
So, in the end, the Smart Choices system merely makes highly processed foods appear healthy when they are not.
Only the healthiest junk foods
The second problem is that the guidelines are so skewed by industry that they are laughable. Consider the separate categories for grains and cereal. Cereal is indeed a grain. But a separate category was needed, with a separate list of criteria to earn that coveted Smart Choices checkmark, in order to accommodate breakfast cereals with up to 12 grams, or 3 teaspoons, of added sugar.
Eggs, far healthier than most of the 500 food products on the Smart Choices list, can't earn a checkmark because they have too much cholesterol. This is despite the fact that saturated fats in products such as margarines (many Smart Choices to choose from) raise blood cholesterol levels far more so that eggs do.
But if eggs do seem too rich for you, try some Hellman's mayonnaise or a low-fat Fudgsicle, two more Smart Choices.
The government isn't amused. The Food and Drug Administration teamed up with the Department of Agriculture to send the Smart Choices Program a letter on Aug. 19, explaining politely that they were being monitored. The agencies explained in the letter that they would be "concerned" if the Smart Choices labeling "had the effect of encouraging consumers to choose highly processed foods and refined grains instead of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains."
Is the Smart Choices labeling scheme doomed to fail? Its longevity is questionable, for any consumer relying solely on Smart Choices checkmarks will surely be diabetic, obese or even dead within a few years.
Nicholas Kulish and James Glanz, The New York Times 10 Sep 09;
LANDAU IN DER PFALZ, Germany — Government officials here are reviewing the safety of a geothermal energy project that scientists say set off an earthquake in mid-August, shaking buildings and frightening many residents of this small city.
The geothermal plant, built by Geox, a German energy company, extracts heat by drilling deep into the earth. Advocates of the method say that it could greatly reduce the world’s dependence on fossil fuels by providing a vast supply of renewable energy.
But in recent months, two similar projects have stirred concerns about their safety and their propensity to cause earthquakes. In the United States, the Energy Department is scrutinizing a project in Northern California run by AltaRock Energy to determine if it is safe. (The project was shut down by the company last month because of crippling technical problems.) Another project, in Basel, Switzerland, was shut down after it generated earthquakes in 2006 and 2007 and is awaiting the decision of a panel of experts about whether it can resume.
The Landau project will be allowed to continue operating while the review panel, which held its first meeting last Friday, deliberates. Geox officials initially denied any responsibility for the temblor and continue to dispute the government’s data linking the project to the quake. The panel will, among other things, have to sort through the conflicting data presented by the company and government scientists.
But some experts in the field say they worry that projects like the one in Germany, if the managers deny responsibility for inducing earthquakes or play down the effects on people’s lives, could damage the reputation of geothermal energy, even in highly environmentally conscious areas of the world like California or Western Europe.
“My concern is that the project leaders for different geothermal projects are about to waste public confidence as long as they don’t talk openly about the seismic risks involved in their projects,” said Rudolf Braun, who is the leader of the Basel study and is following events in Landau.
Like other earthquakes that have been attributed to geothermal plants, the Landau temblor was sudden and brief and was accompanied by a sound that in some cases has been likened to a sonic boom. There were no injuries and there was no known structural damage to buildings in the city. But the 2.7 magnitude quake has stoked fears and set off debate in the state Parliament, which subsidized the construction of the plant, about the method’s safety.
The police logged as many as 200 calls after the quake, which struck shortly after 2 p.m. on Aug. 15. Stefanie Schuster was at the local supermarket when she heard a loud bang. She said she wavered unsteadily on her feet “like when you feel dizzy.”
“My first thought was the geothermal plant,” said Mrs. Schuster, 48, a clerk in the city government. “I thought, There’s definitely a problem over there.”
Citing an academic paper, officials of AltaRock, the company running the California project, claimed that the Landau plant caused no earthquakes — a claim that Geox says it never made. In fact, in May, the state geological survey for Rhineland-Palatinate, the state where Landau is located, concluded that four minor earthquakes, too small to be felt by residents, had been generated by the project.
Seismologists at the geological survey said that the larger Aug. 15 quake was also caused by the project. The epicenter was roughly 500 yards from a drill site at the plant and at about the same depth — 1.5 miles — as a steam bed that the plant was extracting heat from. “We are sure it’s from the geothermal plant,” said Harald Ehses, chairman of the geological survey.
In interviews last week, Geox officials conceded that the plant had set off tiny earthquakes and said that they were not certain what set off the Aug. 15 temblor. But consultants for the company dispute the data cited by government scientists to back up their conclusion that the project caused the earthquake: their own data, they said, proves that the quake originated more than two miles from the site of the plant and six miles below the earth’s surface. Those figures would essentially rule out a connection with the plant.
“At this point we can neither deny nor confirm” that the power plant had anything to do with the earthquake, said Peter Hauffe, managing director of Geox.
The Landau plant, which cost $30 million, went into operation in 2007 and produces electricity for 6,000 homes by drawing heat from beneath the bedrock, nearly two miles beneath the earth’s surface. Geox said a coal-burning plant producing the same electricity would emit 30,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually.
Not everyone in town was troubled by the quake. “It’s really not such a big deal,” said Volker Weisenburger, 43. “Gas has its own set of risks.”
But other residents said they were skeptical about the new technology. “The engineers always say that they have everything under control, until something happens that they never expected,” said Sabine Hofmann, 47, who lives near the plant.
Nicholas Kulish reported from Landau in der Pfalz, Germany, and James Glanz from New York.
Poornima Gupta, Reuters 10 Sep 09;
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google is disappointed with the lack of breakthrough investment ideas in the green technology sector but the company is working to develop its own new mirror technology that could reduce the cost of building solar thermal plants by a quarter or more.
"We've been looking at very unusual materials for the mirrors both for the reflective surface as well as the substrate that the mirror is mounted on," the company's green energy czar Bill Weihl told Reuters Global Climate and Alternative Energy Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday.
Google, known for its Internet search engine, in late 2007 said it would invest in companies and do research of its own to produce affordable renewable energy within a few years.
The company's engineers have been focused on solar thermal technology, in which the sun's energy is used to heat up a substance that produces steam to turn a turbine. Mirrors focus the sun's rays on the heated substance.
Weihl said Google is looking to cut the cost of making heliostats, the fields of mirrors that have to track the sun, by at least a factor of two, "ideally a factor of three or four."
"Typically what we're seeing is $2.50 to $4 a watt (for) capital cost," Weihl said. "So a 250 megawatt installation would be $600 million to a $1 billion. It's a lot of money."
That works out to 12 to 18 cents a kilowatt hour.
Google hopes to have a viable technology to show internally in a couple of months, Weihl said. It will need to do accelerated testing to show the impact of decades of wear on the new mirrors in desert conditions.
"We're not there yet," he said. "I'm very hopeful we will have mirrors that are cheaper than what companies in the space are using..."
Another technology that Google is working on is gas turbines that would run on solar power rather than natural gas, an idea that has the potential of further cutting the cost of electricity, Weihl said.
"In two to three years we could be demonstrating a significant scale pilot system that would generate a lot of power and would be clearly mass manufacturable at a cost that would give us a levelized cost of electricity that would be in the 5 cents or sub 5 cents a kilowatt hour range," Weihl said.
Google is invested in two solar thermal companies, eSolar and BrightSolar but is not working with these companies in developing the cheaper mirrors or turbines.
In wide-ranging remarks, Weihl also said the United States needs to raise government-backed research significantly, particularly in the very initial stages to encourage breakthrough ideas in the sector.
The company has pushed ahead in addressing climate change issues as a philanthropic effort through its Google.org arm.
Weihl said there is a lack of companies that have ideas that would be considered breakthroughs in the green technology sector. After announcing its plans to create renewable energy at a price lower than power from coal, it has invested less than $50 million in other companies.
Weihl said Google had not intended to invest much more in early years, but that there was little to buy.
"I would say it's reasonable to be a little bit discouraged there and from my point of view, it's not right to be seriously discouraged," he said. "There isn't enough investment going into the early stages of investment pipeline before the venture funds come into the play."
The U.S. government needs to provide more funds to develop ideas at the laboratory stage, he said.
"I'd like to see $20 billion or $30 billion for 10 yrs (for the sector)," Weihl said. "That would be fabulous. It's pretty clear what we have seen isn't enough."
(Additional reporting by Laura Isensee; editing by Carol Bishopric)
Colin Barras, New Scientist 10 Sep 09;
Shoving electrodes into tree trunks to harvest electricity may sound like the stuff of dreams, but the idea is increasingly attracting interest. If we can make it work, forests could power their own sensor networks to monitor the health of the ecosystem or provide early warning of forest fires.
Children the world over who have tried the potato battery experiment know that plant material can be a source of electricity. In this case, the energy comes from reduction and oxidation reactions eating into the electrodes, which are made of two different metals – usually copper and zinc.
The same effect was thought to lie behind claims that connecting electrodes driven into a tree trunk and the ground nearby can provide a current. But last year Andreas Mershin's team at MIT showed that using electrodes made of the same metal also gives a current, meaning another effect must be at work. Mershin thinks the electricity derives from a difference in pH between the tree and the soil, a chemical imbalance maintained by the tree's metabolic processes.
Practical power
While proving that trees can provide a source of power is a significant step, a key question remains: can the tiny voltage produced by a tree be harnessed for anything useful?
Trees seem capable of providing a constant voltage of anywhere between 20 and a few hundred millivolts – way below the 1.5 volts from a standard AA battery and close to the level of background electrical noise in circuits, says Babak Parviz, an electrical engineer at the University of Washington in Seattle. "Normal circuits don't run from very small voltages, so we need ways to convert the small voltages to something that is usable," he says.
His team has managed to obtain a usable voltage from big-leaf maple trees by adding a device called a voltage boost converter. The converter spends most of its time in a kind of stand-by mode as it stores electrical energy from the tree, periodically releasing it at 1.1 volts.
To provide that periodic wake-up call, Parviz's team developed a clock, also powered by the tree, which keeps time by tracking the quantum tunnelling of electrons through thin layers of insulating material. It operates at 350 millivolts and uses just a nanowatt of power.
Parviz thinks trees could power gadgets to monitor their own physiology or their immediate surroundings, for ecological research. And, he adds, as electronic components continue to shrink and require less power, it is possible tree electricity could one day have a wide range of uses.
Green power race
Parviz's team isn't the only one trying to harness the tiny voltages trees can provide. Voltree Power, a company based in Canton, Massachusetts, patented a tree-powered circuit in 2005, says the company's CEO, Stella Karavaz.
Her firm is using energy harvested from trees to power sensors that monitor temperature and humidity inside forests. Earlier this year the company trialed a wireless sensor network to detect forest fires.
Devices that lose water the way trees transpire through their leaves could also be used to supply power, according to Michel Maharbiz at the University of California, Berkeley. His team recently showed that evaporation from simulated leaves can act like a mechanical pump, and that the effect can be harnessed to provide power.
Journal references: Parviz's paper: IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology, in press, Mershin's paperPLoS One, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0002963, Maharbiz's paper: Applied Physics Letters, DOI: 10.1063/1.3157144
Yahoo News 10 Sep 09;
CHICAGO (AFP) – China could meet all of its future electricity needs with wind power if the government continues to subsidize the development of wind farms with price guarantees, a study published Thursday has found.
Already the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide, China's electricity needs are expected to double in the next two decades and it is currently adding several new coal-fired power plants to its grid every week.
"The real question for the globe is: What alternatives does China have?" said lead author Michael McElroy of Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
McElroy's team used meteorological and geographical data to calculate China's total wind capacity and then estimated how much power could be delivered profitably at different floor prices.
They found that wind energy providers could profitably supply all of China's projected electricity demand by 2030 if they receive at least 0.516 yuan (7.6 US cents) per kilowatt hour for the first 10 years.
That's in line with the price guarantees China has awarded in recent concessions to wind farm operators which ranged from 0.382 to 0.551 yuan per kilowatt hour.
"This suggests that it would be possible to eliminate much if not all of the carbon dioxide expected to be emitted by the power sector over the foreseeable future," the study published in the journal Science concluded.
A contract price as low as 0.4 yuan per year would be sufficient to displace 23 percent of energy generated by coal, the study found.
"This would require a major investment of resources and could be accomplished only on the basis of a carefully designed long-range plan for the Chinese power sector," the authors wrote.
"Benefits in terms of improvements in Chinese air quality would be substantial, however, and there could be important benefits also for the Chinese economy."
By contrast, meeting future needs with coal could increase carbon emissions by 3.5 gigatons a year from the current annual level of 6.6 gigatons.
Health problems caused by air pollution are currently estimated to cost 0.7 to 4.3 percent of China's GDP, the authors note.
And while the authors estimate it would cost about six trillion yuan (900 billion dollars) to introduce 640 gigawatts of wind power over the next 20 years, they note that is just a fraction of China's current annual GDP of about 26 trillion yuan and major investments in generating capacity must be made regardless.
China's future energy needs could also be met without radically altering its landscape or displacing farmers, the authors found.
A network of wind turbines operating at as little as 20 percent of their capacity would be able to produce as much as 24.7 petawatt hours of electricity annually, which is seven times the country's current consumption.
"Wind farms would only need to take up land areas of 0.5 million square kilometers, or regions about three quarters of the size of Texas," said co-author Xi Lu, a graduate student in McElroy's group at Harvard.
"The physical footprints of wind turbines would be even smaller, allowing the areas to remain agricultural."
Wind energy currently accounts for 0.4 percent of China's total electricity supply, but China is the world's fastest growing market for wind power and ranks number four in the world for installed capacity.
Current government policy calls for capacity to grow from the current level of 12.2 gigawatts to 100 gigawatts by 2020.
The Answer to China's Future Energy Demands May Be Blowing in the Wind
Wind power is growing by leaps and bounds in China and might one day supply a significant portion of the country's electricity needs--but not until it surmounts a host of challenges
Sarah Wang, Scientific American 10 Sep 09;
After just four years of rapid development, China has the world's fourth largest wind power capacity: more than 12 gigawatts. However, the power of the breeze has become available so fast that the nation is struggling to make use of it.
For instance, the Jiuquan wind power base in Gansu Province—better known as "Three Gorges on Land"—is expected to supply 10 gigawatts of electricity when it reaches peak capacity in 2020. The wind farm, under construction in the Gansu Corridor—a narrow natural passage cutting through the Gobi Desert, Qilian Mountains and the Alashan Plateau—is just one of seven such giant complexes approved by the Chinese government.
In conjunction with other wind farms in China, Jiuquan might be able to meet the country's entire electricity demand by 2030, according to a September 11 study in Science. In fact, a $900-billion network of wind power plants built over the next 20 years and covering 500,000 square kilometers could provide nearly 25 petawatt-hours of electricity, seven times greater than the nation's current consumption, the researchers estimate.
China seems determined to arrive at that future, installing 6.25 gigawatts of turbines in 2008 alone and aiming for 100 gigawatts by 2020. "The wind has just taken off here," says Li Junfeng, deputy director of the Energy Research Institute under the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the government ministry charged with economic development. But "new wind projects only accounted for 7 percent of the entire new power-producing capacity added in China last year, compared to 42 percent in the U.S. and 43 percent in Europe." And wind power currently accounts for just 0.4 percent of China's generating capacity as a whole.
The larger, looming challenges currently facing China's wind farms include serious problems in connecting grids with larger networks, low-quality turbines, and wind farms that have been poorly sited. And another consequence of all these factors is that the current boom has yet to bring a profit to many wind farms.
Profit problems
Chinese wind power generation capacity, it is estimated, could reach 20 gigawatts by the end of 2009, according to the Chinese Wind Energy Association (CWEA), up from 12.15 gigawatts at the end of 2008. By comparison, globally, there were 120.6 gigawatts of operating wind power capacity at the end of 2008; Europe accounted for 66 gigawatts and the U.S. accounted for 25 gigawatts of the total, according to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) in Brussels.
Chinese wind farms, however, "in general have difficulties in operation or even lose money," according to a government State Electricity Regulatory Commission report, which came out in July. For starters, so far, there is less wind power actually being generated than previously estimated by CWEA. The report notes that China's wind power generation capacity in 2008 should actually have been calculated as 8.94 instead of 12.15 gigawatts because some turbines were installed but not used, thanks to government mandates that set as a target the quantity of turbines rather than the amount of electricity they can generate.
In any case, China's wind farms currently struggle to connect with grids, creating power delivery problems. For instance, many of the farms are located in less developed northern and western provinces, such as Gansu, where patchy grids cannot manage the fluctuations in electricity production inherent in wind power.
Also, the power produced would have to be transmitted thousands of miles to high-energy demand areas on the densely populated coast in order to make a profit, a feat that is impossible today because of the lack of long-distance transmission technology or the funding to install it. One solution would be international assistance. "The U.S. also has to transmit wind power over long distances. The two countries can have technological cooperation," says engineer He Dexin, president of CWEA, who has been promoting wind energy since 1980.
The U.S. has infrastructure issues, too, such as aging and regionally constrained electrical grids, and Europe sometimes sees delays in connecting turbines to its grid. But getting intermittent wind turbines to work properly with the existing grid is "indeed a problem in China, much more so than in Europe and the U.S.," says Angelika Pullen, GWEC's communications director.
In the longer run, grid reconciliation is "not a real obstacle," NDRC's Li says. Half of China's grids were built in the past four years (70 percent in this century). They can be upgraded with better technologies. "We will improve our grids and build new ones to catch up with the wind power boom. We can work it out," he says.
Turbine troubles
One advantage in China—the cost of producing a turbine there is 70 percent of the international cost, Li says. China-made wind power devices accounted for 75 percent of the technology installed at Chinese wind farms in 2008, up from 57 percent in 2007, according to CWEA, thanks in part to central and local government mandates that require an ever-growing percentage of equipment at a wind farm in China be made domestically. For example, the NDRC stipulates in a 2005 regulation that wind farms cannot be built when the percentage is lower than 70.
But the quality of homegrown wind turbines is a serious problem. Many of the roughly 70 turbine manufacturing companies in China were set up in just the past four years. "Turbine producers need to test-use their products, especially their first ones, but some give no time to the step," He says. Some turbines cannot be used when they are installed, and some develop broken blades or cracked axes just a few weeks after they begin to operate.
And some wind farms have been built where there is not enough wind to ensure consistent generation of power, He adds. "The wind power sector is growing too fast. It needs to be stable for a period so that there can be a sustainable development in the long term," he says.
Despite these issues, government continues to chase the wind, setting the price for renewable power as high as 0.61 yuan per kilowatt-hour in July, about 10 percent higher than current prices for electricity from such installations. Wind farms also sell carbon credits at between 6 and 12 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour. "They are major players in China's carbon trading," Li says.
And the links between alternative energy, economic development and climate change pertain no less in China than elsewhere in the world. Harvesting wind power may be key to reining in China's emissions of greenhouse gases. "Our study shows that it is financially feasible to have wind as an important alternative to coal as a source of energy for electricity generation in China," says Wang Yuxuan, associate professor of environmental science and engineering at Tsinghua University in Beijing, who co-authored the September 11 Science paper. "It is possible for China to use wind power on a large scale and to eliminate much, if not all of the CO2 expected to be emitted by the power sector over the foreseeable future."
Powerful Ideas: Reducing China's Carbon Emissions a Breeze
Charles Q. Choi, livescience.com Yahoo News 11 Sep 09;
China is now the world's largest producer of carbon dioxide, the most important global warming pollutant. However, new findings suggest wind farms could potentially eliminate much if not all of China's carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector for the foreseeable future.
Demand for electricity in China is increasing at a rate of about 10 percent per year. At the same time, coal accounts for roughly 80 percent of total electricity production. This suggests that China's emissions of carbon dioxide could grow accordingly.
For example, the equivalent of 800 gigawatts of coal-fired power plants are needed to meet the rising Chinese demand for electricity anticipated by 2030. This could add as much as 3.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, compared to current annual Chinese emissions of 6.6 billion tons.
Wind is currently only a minor contributor to China's energy needs, with an installed capacity of 12.2 gigawatts at the end of 2008, or just 0.4 percent of its total electricity supply. However, China is now the world's fastest growing market for wind power, with an annual growth rate of more than 50 percent over the past decade.
"The world is struggling with the question of how do you make the switch from carbon-rich fuels to something carbon-free," said researcher Michael McElroy at Harvard University. "The real question for the globe is - what alternatives does China have?"
To see how much energy wind farms could generate for China, scientists at Harvard University and Tsinghua University analyzed wind data from a state-of-the-art NASA global weather and climate model that incorporated measurements worldwide from surface observations, aircraft, balloons, ships, buoys and satellites. They also looked at the Chinese government's energy bidding practices and financial restrictions to figure out regional costs for delivering wind power.
They found that onshore wind farms could profitably generate enough power to accommodate all of China's electricity demand projected for 2030, about twice its current consumption. The researchers assumed the wind energy would be produced from a set of land-based 1.5-megawatt turbines operating over non-forested, ice-free, rural areas with a slope no more than 20 percent. They also accounted for the fact that turbines often operate at as little as a fifth of their rated capacity in China, due to a combination of factors, such as lower quality of Chinese turbines, limitations of the power grid, and less-than-optimal placement of turbines to take advantage of wind resources.
"Wind farms would only need to take up land areas of 0.5 million square kilometers, or regions about three quarters of the size of Texas," said researcher Xi Lu at Harvard University. "The physical footprints of wind turbines would be even smaller, allowing the areas to remain agricultural."
A switch to wind power could prove invaluable to curbing any impact China would have on global climate, the researchers noted - as much as 1.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide could be saved per year if just 30 percent of the additional electricity China required by 2030 were produced from wind rather than coal.
"China is bringing on several coal fire power plants a week," McElroy said. "By publicizing the opportunity for a different way to go we will hope to have a positive influence."
This switch to wind power would demand a major financial investment up-front and require careful long-range planning on China's part. Still, the benefits for the Chinese economy could be substantial, as the value of damages linked with air pollution is estimated at up to $167.7 billion, or 4.3 percent of the nation's roughly $3.9 trillion gross domestic product.
"China has become a leader in the wind power industry, not just because of issues surrounding environmental protection and climate change mitigation, but potentially because of all the potential jobs it could create, the potential economic benefits it might have if China becomes a leader," said renewable energy industry researcher Joanna Lewis at Georgetown University, who did not participate in this study. "There are security benefits as well that they're thinking seriously and strategically about, from relying on renewable sources of energy and not requiring imports."
"This study really illustrates how wind can be an important part of China's climate change mitigation strategies, how it can play a much larger role in China than today," Lewis added. "But realistically, it can't be the only part, because it won't be feasible to replace all of coal power with wind power in the time scale we would need to address climate change."
In the coming months, the scientists plan to conduct a more intensive wind study in China, taking advantage of 25-year data with significantly more detailed information for north Asian regions to investigate the geographical year-to-year variations of wind. The model used for analyzing China could also be applied for assessing wind potential anywhere in the world, onshore and offshore, and could be extended to solar generated electricity, they noted.
They are also investigating how wind can be integrated into the power grid in Texas, for example, Lu told LiveScience.
Lewis added that more research needed to be done "on why wind farms have been producing less power than they should in China, and how the power structure currently supporting wind power can be modified to make sure it gets developed properly. If you're building all these farms, you want to get as much from them as you can."
McElroy, Lu and their colleagues detailed their findings in the Sept. 11 issue of the journal Science.
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