The Day Before F1 Singapore Race
from Beauty of Fauna and Flora in Nature
White-rumped Shama: Feather condition
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Abuzz about “Singapore: A Biography”
from Otterman speaks
Where the tremors were felt – the Southern Sumatran earthquake
from Otterman speaks
Sentosa IR shore: dredging, reclamation and other works
from wild shores of singapore
Mercy Relief response to Ketsana, the South Pacific Tropical Storm (Cat 1), in the Philippines from Otterman speaks
Gladya Ow, Channel NewsAsia 30 Sep 09;
SINGAPORE: Singaporeans feel that the government should pump more money into heritage and culture, than into sectors like tourism, IT and defence. Education topped the list, followed by investment in social welfare.
This is according to a recent survey carried out by the National University of Singapore and commissioned by the National Heritage Board.
More Singaporeans are visiting museums and participating in heritage-related activities. For example, the National Museum's Night Festival attracted 65,000 visitors this year over just one weekend. That was the same number as last year when the festival was held over two weekends.
A survey of 1,000 respondents aged 15 to 69 years old showed that three out of five respondents would rather visit museums in Singapore rather than overseas. 59.4 per cent disagreed with the statement "I would rather visit museums overseas than in Singapore."
Travelling exhibitions that go to the heartlands are a hit. 21.7 per cent of respondents visited them, a significant increase of 15.2 per cent from the 2002 survey.
They include the Kangxi emperor exhibition, which was brought from the Asian Civilisations Museum to the masses at libraries around the island.
Michael Koh, CEO, National Heritage Board, said: "We are trying to step up our programming and outreach events. We have stepped up for example our travelling exhibitions in the community. The heritage festival went out in a big way to the heartlands.
"We went to the heartland malls to really reach people where they live because we realise that we can do a great exhibition, but without the supporting programmes and activities, we won't have the crowds. So this is where we will have to move into this aspect in an even bigger way."
And to do that, a newly launched heritage bus will bring exhibitions about Singapore's different cultures to schools, regional libraries and elderly homes as well as community clubs, kindergartens and orphanages.
Called "Colours of Heritage", the bus is a joint project by NHB, the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, Media Development Council, National Arts Council, National Library Board and Info-Comm Development Authority of Singapore.
The exhibition on the bus is divided into three themes and one of them is games. Visitors can relive their childhood days by playing games such as five stones.
Local food, spices and cooking utensils will also be showcased. Visitors can also learn about the wedding ceremonies of Singapore's four major ethnic groups.
The mobile museum aims to reach out to 80,000 people over six months. - CNA/vm
Choice between floating facilities, land reclamation to be made soon
Ronnie Lim, Business Times 1 Oct 09;
(SINGAPORE) Jurong Island is running out of land and Singapore will decide early next year on how to augment space at the oil and petrochemicals hub that houses biggies such as ExxonMobil and Shell. One option is to build large floating facilities there to store oil, while further land reclamation is another possibility.
As it is, 75 per cent of the island's 3,000 hectares has been taken up or reserved by oil and petrochemical investors, a JTC Corporation spokeswoman told BT yesterday, adding that 'JTC is in discussions with companies for the remaining 25 per cent'.
It was only last Friday that JTC celebrated the completion of Phases 3 and 4 of reclamation, which added 1,500ha and doubled the total land available at the highly integrated island complex. And so far, 95 investors have ploughed in more than S$31 billion there so far.
But already, some companies which had earlier postponed investments because of the global downturn will be resuming their projects soon, JTC chairman Cedric Foo said last week, without citing names.
Germany's Lanxess recently indicated that it expects to start building its over S$800 million synthetic rubber plant around mid-2011. India's GMR also hopes to restart the long-stalled S$1.2 billion Island Power cogeneration project once it secures gas feedstock, while Jurong Aromatics Corporation's US$2 billion petrochemical complex should be underway, once it completes its financing.
Meantime, oil trader Hin Leong is still in discussions with JTC on its expansion plans for the S$650 million Universal Terminal, while Tuas Power and Sembcorp Cogen plan to build more cogeneration capacity to provide utilities like steam and power.
Mr Foo said that to optimise land use there, JTC has gone underground to build the S$890 million first phase of the Jurong Rock Cavern to store oil and 'will soon be going out to sea' as it is exploring building very large floating structures (VLFS) also for oil storage.
JTC's Phase 1 studies, completed in late 2007, showed such floating storage to be technically feasible and comparable in cost to land-based oil storage.
And it will now decide whether to build the VLFS depending on the outcome of the Phase 2 study which will be completed next March, the JTC spokeswoman said yesterday.
Phase 2 covers possible sites, environmental impact, engineering design, business model and security of the VLFS - each of which would store as much oil as a very large crude carrier (VLCC).
'We will continue to explore various options,' the spokeswoman said, when asked what JTC intends next, should the floating storage idea prove a no-go.
While she declined to elaborate, one option is understood to include further land reclamation - as petrochemical investors would still want to be located on Jurong Island to enjoy all the synergies like raw materials and infrastructure available from the integration there.
As for floating oil storage, JTC's Phase 1 studies showed that for a VLFS to be viable, it should have a minimum storage of 300,000 cubic metres - equivalent to the capacity of a big tanker. A VLFS would comprise two rectangular modules, each measuring 180m by 15m and with 150,000 cu m of storage. Preliminary cost estimates came to at least S$180 million.
Meanwhile, construction proper of the first phase of Jurong Rock Cavern is starting this year, with the first two caverns providing 480,000 cu m expected to be ready in the first half of 2013. The entire Phase 1, comprising five caverns, will provide 1.47 million cu m of storage when completed in 2014.
Related link
More reclamation at Jurong Island? from wild shores of singapore with more links to the issues.
Robin Chan, Straits Times 1 Oct 09;
SHIPPING tycoon Ow Chio Kiat has given his backing to an innovative fuel-saving technology produced in Singapore.
Mr Ow's mainboard-listed Singapore Shipping Corporation is to market the technology from Singapore-based Neftech to 10 shipping lines, following the signing of an agreement yesterday.
The deal means that up to 1,200 ships could potentially benefit from the new fuel system, thereby shaving a combined US$600 million (S$845 million) a year off their fuel costs, according to Neftech.
Russia-led Neftech is backed by prominent Singapore investors, including former Neptune Orient Lines (NOL) deputy chief executive Lim How Teck, GK Goh chairman Goh Geok Khim and former transport minister Yeo Cheow Tong.
Two weeks ago, the company secured an agreement to install its fuel system on 20 of NOL's vessels.
Potential customers include Eukor Car Carriers as well as Mitsui OSK Bulk Shipping, who had representatives present at the signing ceremony at Bistro Du Vin.
'Mr Ow is very well known in the shipping industry...This will help us to roll out our breakthrough fuel-saving technology at a much faster rate than if we had to do it ourselves,' said Neftech chairman Victor Levin. The fuel system uses a proprietary technology called cavitation, which enables fuel to burn more efficiently and produce less pollution.
'The shipping industry spends over US$150 billion a year on fuel oil,' Mr Levin said. 'We can save 10 per cent of that.'
He added that the company expected turnover to hit US$1 billion within five years and that total costs incurred would not be more than 20 per cent of revenue per ship.
Neftech, SSC team up to market fuel-saving technology
Vincent Wee, Business Times 1 Oct 09;
(SINGAPORE) Neftech yesterday sealed an exclusive marketing deal with Singapore Shipping Corporation (SSC) to push its fuel-saving technology to 10 selected shipping lines.
This follows Neftech's 20-ship deal with Neptune Orient Lines container unit APL two weeks ago.
Neftech chairman Victor Levin said: 'We are delighted to collaborate with another major shipping player in Singapore. SSC is a well-established shipping group that has extensive relationships with shipping lines worldwide and we are confident that SSC's business associates will reap tremendous benefits from Neftech's tested proprietary technology.'
Based on SSC's current principals' and partners' existing and targeted pool of up to 1,200 ships, potential fuel savings of up to US$600 million per annum may be achieved using Neftech's technology, assuming average savings of about 10 per cent. Neftech is, meanwhile, also approaching other clients on its own and has a five-year revenue target of US$1 billion per year, said Mr Levin.
SSC executive chairman Ow Chio Kiat said: 'Partnering with Neftech sharpens our focus on the provision of niche, high value-added shipping services and solutions. We are delighted as Neftech's technology not only promises to reduce fuel and operating costs for the shipping industry, it also contributes positively to the environment by reducing carbon dioxide emissions and other pollutants. We look forward to bringing such benefits to all of our partners and principals in the global maritime industry.'
He declined to say how much SSC would make out of the deal but revealed that the effects of the agreement would not be seen in the current financial year. He said that the marketing arrangement would leverage on SSC's relationships with its partners and principals built up over the years, some of which, such as Mitsui OSK and Eukor, were represented at the launch.
'I believe that this is such a great technology and we should roll it out as quickly as possible and I think it makes sense that we reach out to those people who are already doing business with us.'
Neftech, SSC team up to market fuel-saving technology
By VINCENT WEE
(SINGAPORE) Neftech yesterday sealed an exclusive marketing deal with Singapore Shipping Corporation (SSC) to push its fuel-saving technology to 10 selected shipping lines.
This follows Neftech's 20-ship deal with Neptune Orient Lines container unit APL two weeks ago.
Neftech chairman Victor Levin said: 'We are delighted to collaborate with another major shipping player in Singapore. SSC is a well-established shipping group that has extensive relationships with shipping lines worldwide and we are confident that SSC's business associates will reap tremendous benefits from Neftech's tested proprietary technology.'
Based on SSC's current principals' and partners' existing and targeted pool of up to 1,200 ships, potential fuel savings of up to US$600 million per annum may be achieved using Neftech's technology, assuming average savings of about 10 per cent. Neftech is, meanwhile, also approaching other clients on its own and has a five-year revenue target of US$1 billion per year, said Mr Levin.
SSC executive chairman Ow Chio Kiat said: 'Partnering with Neftech sharpens our focus on the provision of niche, high value-added shipping services and solutions. We are delighted as Neftech's technology not only promises to reduce fuel and operating costs for the shipping industry, it also contributes positively to the environment by reducing carbon dioxide emissions and other pollutants. We look forward to bringing such benefits to all of our partners and principals in the global maritime industry.'
He declined to say how much SSC would make out of the deal but revealed that the effects of the agreement would not be seen in the current financial year. He said that the marketing arrangement would leverage on SSC's relationships with its partners and principals built up over the years, some of which, such as Mitsui OSK and Eukor, were represented at the launch.
'I believe that this is such a great technology and we should roll it out as quickly as possible and I think it makes sense that we reach out to those people who are already doing business with us.'
Cheryl Lim, Channel NewsAsia 30 Sep 09;
SINGAPORE: A slight haze has returned to Singapore. Several people called the MediaCorp hotline about hazy conditions islandwide with some saying they were experiencing visibility of up to 3 kilometres.
According to the National Environment Agency, the 24-hour Pollutant Standards Index at 4pm stood at 53 which is in the moderate range.
The NEA said dry weather conditions in the southern part of Sumatra have caused persistent fires last week.
The latest satellite picture showed 20 hotspots in the province of South Sumatra.
The low hotspot count was due to partial satellite coverage over South Sumatra.
It said winds have brought some smoke haze from the fires to Singapore and that there will be brief periods of slightly hazy conditions here for the next two days.
A PSI reading of between 1 and 50 means ambient air quality is still good while a reading of 51-100 means the level of air pollutants in the air is in the moderate range.
Mid-September saw PSI readings hitting a high of 64.
For more air quality updates, you can visit the NEA website. - CNA/vm
Amresh Gunasingham, Straits Times 1 Oct 09;
THE earthquake which hit Sumatra yesterday was one of the worst this year, said a top geologist.
And the escalating intensity of quakes in the region in recent years will eventually be followed by a massive quake. This will be on the scale of the one which caused the 2004 tsunami, said Professor Kerry Sieh, 58, an expert in seismology.
'The Sumatran earthquakes of the past 10 years are really quite unusual,' said Prof Sieh, director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore at the Nanyang Technological University.
Nothing as intense or energetic has been seen in 200 years, he said.
Yesterday's earthquake was particularly worrying, explained Prof Sieh, because it was right on the edge of a 400km rock patch - known as the Sunda megathrust - which is under great stress from the movement of two tectonic plates constantly grinding against each other beneath the sea.
'This patch is where we think the next great earthquake will be generated within the next three decades,' he said.
The magnitude 7.6 quake stuck the city of Padang in Sumatra's west coast, a belt of intense seismic activity known as the 'Pacific Ring of Fire' - one of the world's most active faultlines.
Geologists have long said Padang may one day be destroyed by a huge earthquake. Since 2005, it has been hit by more than five major earthquakes measuring 6.5 or higher on the Richter scale.
Geologist Danny Hilman Natawidjaja of the Indonesian Science Institute told The Straits Times that a stronger quake could be devastating for Padang.
'We are very worried...that the accumulated energy in one quake of magnitude 8.9, for example, could see a tsunami reaching 7m high hitting the coast.'
Such a tsunami would affect more than a million people living along the coastline.
He added that the decade-long sequence of quakes meant government officials were making adjustments to infrastructure and educating the people in preparation for the inevitable stronger earthquake and tsunami.
Indonesian Meteorology and Geophysics Agency technical chief Suharjono said that up to 6,000 quakes of a magnitude over 4.5 hit Indonesia every year.
However, researchers are unable to pinpoint exactly when the 'big one' will occur.
Said senior seismologist D. Srinageswar of India's National Geophysical Research Institute: 'Prediction of a quake in time is not possible. The process will need data going back hundreds or even thousands of years.'
While yesterday's earthquake caused major damage in Padang, its residents were spared a tsunami because the quake was not intense enough and its epicentre was too deep below the sea's surface.
Oceanographer Pavel Tkalich, principal investigator at the National University of Singapore's Tropical Marine Science Institute, said that water levels had been raised only 30cm yesterday, and that it would take an earthquake of at least 8.0 in magnitude to cause a tsunami stretching across the region.
Additional information from Agence France-Presse
Sumatra quake: Tremors felt in Singapore and KL
Teh Joo Lin in Singapore & Elizabeth Looi in Kuala Lumpur
Straits Times 1 Oct 09;
IT WAS a regular day at work, until accountant Kelvin Ng's office began to sway.
The 26-year-old ran nine flights down from his Bencoolen Street building to the road outside.
'It was so bad it gave my friend a headache,' he said.
He was among thousands in Singapore and Malaysia who had a fright when they felt tremors in the wake of the 7.6-magnitude earthquake that struck off Padang, Sumatra.
For up to two minutes, people in Singapore reported seeing curtains sway, grilles rattle and chairs shake in buildings from Choa Chu Kang to Changi.
Workers and residents streamed out of some buildings in areas such as Raffles Place and Changi, and officers from the Building and Construction Authority were out inspecting buildings last night.
The authorities received some 170 calls about the tremors, but no casualties were reported.
The police said there was no cause for alarm.
'Buildings in Singapore are designed to established building codes and are sufficiently robust to withstand tremors caused by distant earthquakes,' said a spokesman.
The Foreign Affairs Ministry said last night that it is monitoring the situation, but so far there were no reports of Singaporeans affected by the earthquake.
In KUALA LUMPUR, the landmark Petronas Twin Towers, the 28-storey Wisma IMC office building which houses the New Zealand High Commission, and the JayaOne Complex shopping mall in Petaling Jaya were among the buildings affected.
Media relations manager Dalilah Ibrahim told The Straits Times that she felt dizzy and disorientated when her office in Cyberjaya, Malaysia's equivalent of Silicon Valley, shook for about 10 seconds.
'I could see my Hari Raya greeting cards shaking on the wall,' she said. 'We were asked to evacuate the building for about 15 minutes although my office is on the ground floor.'
Bank officer Delren Douglas, 39, said he could feel the tremors in his first-floor office.
'It lasted for about a minute and I could see the plants in my office were swaying,' said the Klang-based worker.
People in Penang also felt the tremors.
A factory executive in the northern state said her third-floor office shook for more than a minute.
'My colleagues and I were dizzy and nauseous after the tremors,' she said. 'It all happened so quickly.'
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre issued a tsunami alert for Indonesia, Malaysia, India and Thailand, but withdrew it at 7.30pm last night after the quake generated no significant waves.
The Malaysian Meteorological Department did not issue a warning as it believed the waves would not reach Malaysia, but the department would continue monitoring the situation, The Star reported.
The devastating tsunami of December 2004 hit Penang and Kedah following a powerful 9.6-magnitude earthquake in Indonesia.
Tremors in various parts of Singapore following quake in Indonesia
Asha Popatlal, Channel NewsAsia 30 Sep 09;
SINGAPORE: Singaporeans island-wide literally felt the earth move under their feet on Wednesday evening as tremors shook various parts of the island - from Redhill in central Singapore to Pasir Ris in the northeast.
This came after a powerful earthquake of magnitude 7.6 hit Indonesia.
Singapore's Meteorological Services confirmed that the earthquake struck at about 6.15pm on Wednesday in the waters off Southern Sumatra, about 530 kilometres from Singapore.
Minutes later, MediaCorp's news hotline started ringing as Singaporeans reported feeling tremors that lasted anywhere between 30 seconds and a few minutes.
The Police and SCDF said they received more than 150 calls about the quake.
Videos sent in by viewers showed chandeliers swaying, as were other objects.
The calls came from across the island - Ang Mo Kio in the central north, Marine Parade in the east, Punggol in the northeast and Raffles Place in the central business district.
Callers said that some workers in the Suntec area and Changi Business Park were evacuated.
One man said: "There were a lot of office people on the roadside. We felt it for about five to ten minutes." Others said their neighbours were screaming and shouting.
Rajakumar Choppa who works at Expo Changi Business Park, said: "Around 6pm, we felt some kind of a building shake. I felt it three times actually and then we all stood up and rushed downstairs because there was some fire alarm in the building.
"When we got downstairs, there was a crowd. We were all watching and not knowing what was happening. I was able to see the building literally shaking."
Callers also reported jams in the Causeway area as the bridge was shaking.
Experts MediaCorp spoke to said the situation was bad.
Professor Kerry Sieh, professor of Geology, Earth Observatory of Singapore, NTU, said: "It's definitely getting worse. The earthquake sequence began in 2000 with a 7.9 about 800 km away from the south of Singapore. You haven't felt this big of a sequence of earthquakes that is many large earthquakes for at least 175 years."
A tsunami warning was initially issued after the quake but later withdrawn. - CNA/vm
What The Police Say
Today Online 1 Oct 09;
The public is advised that there is no cause for alarm. Buildings in Singapore are designed to established building codes and are sufficiently robust to withstand tremors caused by distant earthquakes.
Should cracks or other structural defects develop, residents or occupants in public housing estates should call the HDB's Essential Maintenance Service Unit's 24-Hour Hotline at 6275 5555 or 6354 3333. Those in private buildings should call the Building and Construction Authority at 6325 7191 or 6325 7393.
Panic across Singapore
Leong Wee Keat, Today Online 1 Oct 09;
SINGAPORE - The scene "felt like a Jurassic Park moment", according to one Shenton Way executive. The workday was winding down at around 6.15pm, when Mr MH Farik's chair began shaking. Then, the water in his mug began to slosh around.
As more items in his office started shaking vigorously, first giddiness, then panic set in among some colleagues. They abandoned their 13th-storey office at Keck Seng Tower, near Cecil Street. When Mr Farik got to the ground floor, "hundreds" were already downstairs. "It felt really scary to see items around us shaking so badly," he said.
Across Singapore, many had similar tales as they felt the tremors from the earthquake off Sumatra island 590km away.
Hundreds of callers to the MediaCorp and emergency hotlines reported tremors as far north as Woodlands, Sembawang, Yishun and Choa Chu Kang, sharing accounts of how fans, chairs, chandeliers, fish tanks and ceiling lights were swaying. Some even heard neighbours screaming and running down the stairs to escapef from the building.
Typically, reports of tremors felt tend to be limited to the southern parts of Singapore. But those who experienced yesterday's rumbles said the after-shocks felt stronger and lasted longer than in previous tremors.
Instead of just "one to two minutes", Marine Parade resident Wendy Sng said these lasted "three to four minutes". "My wind chime also sounded loudly - only thing was, there wasn't any wind blowing," added the retiree.
The last time after-shocks were reported here was in February last year, when the police received 60 calls from the public. And the last time the business district saw scenes similar to yesterday's was in Sept 2007.
Mr Aaron Yeo, who works in the Suntec area, was among 500 office workers who vacated his building even though there were no public announcements. "We were all sitting at our desk and then we felt some giddiness, and when we stayed still, we realised that it wasn't us shaking but the whole building."
In the housing estates, the sights were of shaking lights, swaying mid-autumn festival lanterns and "a loud cracking sound", in the words of Woodlands Crescent resident YL Chua, who had just arrived home from work. "The last time tremors felt so strong was during the Asian Tsunami (in 2004)," he added.
Over at Potong Pasir, Ms Tan Su Yan was chatting on the phone when she felt the tremors. She and her neighbours ran out of their homes and gathered at an open field. "I felt giddy even sitting in the open field," she said.
Professor Kerry Sieh, head of the Earth Observatory of Singapore at Nanyang Technological University, warned that the earthquake situation around the Pacific Ring of Fire is getting worse.
The 40,000-km stretch across the Pacific Ocean has a continuous belt of active volcanoes and experiences frequent tectonic plate movements.
"The earthquake sequence began in 2000 with a 7.9 (magnitude) about 800km to the south of Singapore," said Prof Sieh. "You haven't felt this big a sequence of earthquakes - that is, many large earthquakes - for at least 175 years."
Sara Webb, PlanetArk 1 Oct 09;
JAKARTA A powerful earthquake, which struck near the city of Padang on Indonesia's Sumatra island on Wednesday, has killed between 100 and 200 people, a disaster agency official said early on Thursday morning.
Priyadi Kardono, spokesman for the national disaster agency, said about 500 houses had caved in and around 100 people were buried under the rubble, according to officials in the area.
The 7.6 magnitude quake hit Padang, West Sumatra, on Wednesday afternoon. Initially thousands of people were believed trapped under collapsed houses and other buildings, but with communications to the area cut, officials have struggled to get details of casualties and damage.
The death toll was likely to rise as many buildings in the city of 900,000 people had collapsed, Vice President Jusuf Kalla told a late night news conference in Jakarta.
TV footage showed piles of debris and smashed houses after the earthquake, which caused widespread panic across the city.
Rustam Pakaya, the head of the health ministry's disaster center in Jakarta, said on Wednesday evening that "thousands of people are trapped in the rubble of buildings."
The main hospital had collapsed, roads were cut off by landslides and Metro Television said the roof of Padang airport had caved in. Thousands were expected to spend the night in the open while a full assessment of the damage would need to wait until daybreak.
The disaster is the latest in a spate of natural and man-made calamities to hit Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago of 226 million people.
Kalla said the government was preparing for an emergency response of up to two months.
Welfare Minister Aburizal Bakrie said authorities should prepare for the worst. The damage could be on a par with that caused by a 2006 quake in the central Java city of Yogyakarta that killed 5,000 people and damaged 150,000 homes, he said.
"Hundreds of houses have been damaged along the road. There are some fires, bridges are cut and there is extreme panic here," said a Reuters witness in the city, adding that broken water pipes had triggered flooding.
His mobile phone was then cut off and officials said power had been severed in the city.
The quake was felt around the region, with some high-rise buildings in Singapore, 440 km (275 miles) to the northeast, evacuating staff. Office buildings also shook in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center canceled an earlier tsunami alert.
A resident called Adi told Metro Television: "For now I can't see dead bodies, just collapsed houses. Some half destroyed, others completely. People are standing around too scared to go back inside. They fear a tsunami."
"No help has arrived yet," he said. I can see small children standing around carrying blankets. Some people are looking for relatives but all the lights have gone out completely."
Sumatra is home to some of the country's largest oil fields as well as its oldest liquefied natural gas terminal, although there were no immediate reports of damage to those facilities.
PADANG LONG SEEN AT RISK
Padang, capital of Indonesia's West Sumatra province, sits on one of the world's most active fault lines along the "Ring of Fire" where the Indo-Australia plate grinds against the Eurasia plate to create regular tremors and sometimes quakes.
A 9.15 magnitude quake, with its epicenter roughly 600 km (373 miles) northwest of Padang, caused the 2004 tsunami which killed 232,000 people in Indonesia's Aceh province, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, and other countries across the Indian Ocean.
The depth of Wednesday's earthquake was 85 km (53 miles), the United States Geological Survey said. It revised down the magnitude of the quake from 7.9 to 7.6.
A series of tsunamis earlier on Wednesday smashed into the Pacific island nations of American and Western Samoa, and Tonga killing possibly more than 100 people, some washed out to sea, destroying villages and injuring hundreds.
Geologists have long said Padang may one day be destroyed by a huge earthquake because of its location.
"Padang sits right in front of the area with the greatest potential for an 8.9 magnitude earthquake," Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, a geologist at the Indonesian Science Institute, said in February.
"The entire city could drown" in a tsunami triggered by such a quake, he warned.
Several earthquake-prone parts of the country hold tsunami practice drills, and the national disaster service sends alerts via telephone text messages to subscribers.
But experts have long said Indonesia needs to do more to reduce the risk of catastrophe.
(Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)
Yahoo News 30 Sep 09;
PARIS (AFP) – Huge earthquakes can weaken seismic faults on the other side of the world, scientists in California said on Wednesday.
Their study coincided with a major 8.0-magnitude quake in the Pacific, unleashing a tsunami that killed scores of people in the Samoan islands and Tonga.
Seismologists led by Taka'aki Taira of the University of California at Berkeley found that the 9.1 monster that struck west of Sumatra in December 2004 weakened a closely-monitored segment on California's San Andreas fault, 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) distant.
Their investigation is based on a scan of 22 years of data from the Parkfield area, a district so studded with borehole seismometers and other gauges that it has been dubbed "the earthquake capital of the world."
The monitors found that areas of fluid-filled fractures lie within this section of the fault.
Driven by seismic pressure, the fluid migrates along the fault like spidery veins in marble, acting as a lubricant that enables shocks to pry open the rock, they believe.
Proof of this suspicion came with the finding that repetitive background quakes became smaller and smaller during periods of fluid shift -- in other words, as the fault slowly weakened, less energy was needed to shake it.
But the most remarkable finding was unexpected impacts from two big, distant quakes -- a 7.3-magnitude shake near the Californian town of Landers in 1992 and the 2004 Sumatra behemoth that unleashed the Indian Ocean tsunami.
Almost five days after Sumatra event -- one of the biggest quakes in recorded history -- sensors noted dynamic stress on the Parkfield fault at a depth of five kilometres (three miles).
The study, published by the British weekly science journal Nature, provides compelling support for a novel theory that very big quakes can have a cascade effect elsewhere, sometimes months afterwards, say the researchers.
"The long-range influence of the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake on this patch of the San Andreas fault suggests that many of the world's active faults were affected in the same way, thus bringing a significant number of them to failure," the study says.
"This hypothesis appears to be supported by the unusually high number of quakes of magnitude eight or above occurring in the three years" after the 2004 event, it said.
"No other large earthquake, of magnitude eight or more, since 1900 was followed by as many for a comparable period," it observed.
The team hopes their work will yield a technique for assessing the strength of a seismic fault -- testing whether it has the strength to resist a shock or rip apart and threaten human life.
Discreet changes in the seismic wave, corresponding to periods when the numbers of small earthquakes intensifies, can be quantified into a means of pinpointing faults that are likely to fail, Taira believes.
Predicting when earthquakes will strike remains an over-the-horizon prospect, although strides have been made into assessing how stress builds up in a fault deep underground.
"Earthquakes are caused when a fault fails, either because of the buildup of stress or because of a weakening of the fault," said Taira in a press release.
"Changes in fault strength are much harder to measure than changes in stress, especially for faults deep in the crust. Our results open up exciting possibilities for monitoring seismic risk and understanding the causes of earthquakes."
Earth Shakes Twice: Is the Planet On a Roll?
Andrea Thompson, livescience.com Yahoo News 30 Sep 09;
Between the earthquakes that struck the Samoas and Indonesia yesterday and the temblor that devastated L'Aquila, Italy earlier this year, it might seem like Earth has been particularly shaky this year.
But that's not the case: "This is not out of the ordinary as far as the year goes," said John Bellini, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
While it's not unusual to have several large quakes in any given year, these rumblings of the Earth can have different profiles, occurring on different types of faults and triggering varying series of events, including tsunamis possibly even other earthquakes.
Scientists said it's possible the two quakes this week are related, but they don't know yet. Meanwhile, researchers have some preliminary explanations as to why the Samoan temblor generated a deadly tsunami but the Indonesian quake did not.
A year in earthquakes
More than a million earthquakes are estimated to shake the Earth's surface every year, though most of these are minor tremors, barely perceptible to humans if at all.
As you go up in earthquake magnitude (a measure of a quake's strength), these events become rarer: About 17 magnitude 7.0 to 7.9 quakes occur around the globe each year, while on average only one magnitude 8.0 or higher strikes over the period of a year. (The logarithmic nature of the magnitude scale means that an 8.0-magnitude quake is 10 times stronger than a 7.0-magnitude.)
The underwater quake that struck of the coast of Samoa and American Samoa yesterday measured about 8.0, according to the USGS. The quake off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia came in at an estimated 7.6 magnitude. (The L'Aquila quake, which struck in April, was only a 6.3-magnitude quake.)
The occurrence of all these earthquakes falls entirely within the average for a given year. "We're just having a busy week," Bellini said.
Different effects
While the Samoan earthquake generated a large tsunami that rushed ashore on the South Pacific islands, leveling towns with waves estimated to be 10 foot (3 meters) or higher and killing scores, the Indonesian quake sprouted only a small local tsunami. The shaking did most of the damage in the Indonesian event.
The damage done by a quake - and how it is done - isn't just a matter of how strong the quake is, it's "dependent on how the fault breaks," Bellini told LiveScience.
The shift in Earth's crust off the coast of Sumatra occurred at a depth of about 50 miles (80 km). The Samoa tsunami-generating quake occurred much closer to the surface at 11 miles (18 km).
"You need a shallow earthquake to generate a tsunami," Bellini said.
The type of fault that ruptures to produce the earthquake also influences whether or not a tsunami develops and how big it becomes. The Samoan quake occurred along a normal fault, where one chunk of a tectonic plate lifts upward, acting as a paddle and transferring energy to the overlying water.
But sometimes this "paddle effect" is minimal, or the fault moves side-to-side instead of up and down.
The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was generated by a colossal 9.3-magnitude quake. An 8.7-magnitude earthquake in 2005 originating at the same location failed to produce a tsunami. It was certainly large enough to generate one, scientists say. The exact reasons it did not remain mysterious.
Related quakes?
One curious aspect of yesterday's events is how close in time and space they occurred to each other. This proximity can fuel speculation that the first earthquake triggered the second.
"I wouldn't say it's impossible," said Leonardo Seeber, a senior researcher at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York.
In recent decades, scientists have shown that one earthquake can trigger other seismic events far away, Seeber said.
For example, a 2008 study did find that monstrous earthquakes can trigger much smaller tremors in distant locations around the globe. Another study from last year found that so-called "earthquake doublets" - where one large quake triggers another of similar magnitude (versus aftershocks which are weaker than the original quake) - can also occur, though they are rare.
But, "it's not easy to prove one way or the other," Seeber told LiveScience. It's also possible that the closeness of the quakes in time was a matter of chance, "because there's enough earthquakes around" to have two occur in the same region around the same time, Seeber said.
However, it's too early for seismologists to know one way or the other, though Bellini agreed it's possible they were related. "They're on the borders of the same plate," he explained, so the stresses could have transferred down the fault.
"That's not something that can be determined overnight," Bellini said.
Asian quake could trigger California's big one
New Scientist 1 Oct 09;
IT'S a kind of geological butterfly effect. Fenglin Niu of Rice University in Houston, Texas, and colleagues believe they have found two clear cases where remote events weakened the San Andreas fault near Parkfield, California. The finding suggests powerful earthquakes - like the one that has just hit Sumatra - may trigger further quakes worldwide.
The first changes to the San Andreas occurred in 1992 after a 7.3-magnitude earthquake several hundred kilometres to the south. The second took place in 2004 after a quake of magnitude 9.1, also in Sumatra, 8000 kilometres away. In both cases, there were distinct changes in the movement of fluids and an increase in the frequency of micro-earthquakes deep within the fault below Parkfield (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature08395).
Niu and colleagues believe these changes are linked to a weakening of the fault, and that monitoring them could lead to more accurate earthquake forecasts. They suggest that very large quakes might push faults all round the world closer to the point of failure, and so lead to a temporary increase in global seismicity.
Rumble relation?
So does Niu's finding suggest the two quakes that struck the Pacific on 30 September were linked?
The magnitude-8.0 rumble that sent a tsunami towards the Samoan islands on Wednesday was followed within a matter of hours by the magnitude-7.6 quake on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. However, other scientists have been quick to rule out a link between the two, pointing out they occurred on separate fault systems.
Niu says this may have been too hasty. "It's possible that the Samoan earthquake did trigger Indonesia's earthquake," says Niu, not least because the epicentres are geographically close.
However, he concedes that the Samoan tremor may not have been big enough to produce the same kind of fault weakening his team observed.
Were This Week's Pacific Earthquakes Connected?
Richard A. Lovett, National Geographic News 2 Oct 09;
In the past four days there've been at least five substantial earthquakes—and a tsunami—in the same general region, the tectonically rambunctious Ring of Fire in the Pacific Ocean.
Coincidence? Maybe yes, but probably not, scientists say.
The Ring of Fire jaggedly circles the Pacific and cuts roughly beneath Samoa, American Samoa, and Tonga—the region where Tuesday's magnitude 8.0 undersea earthquake triggered the tsunami that killed at least 180 people and where a magnitude 6.3 quake struck today.
Also along the ring are Indonesia—where a magnitude 7.6 quake Wednesday and a 6.3 temblor on Thursday may result in a death toll in the thousands—and Peru, where a 5.9 quake struck a remote region on Wednesday.
While new evidence says earthquakes can aggravate far-away fault lines, scientists are reluctant to say that the Samoa, Indonesia, and Peru quakes are linked.
To begin with, earthquakes aren't that infrequent.
Earthquakes the size of the event in Peru, for example, occur about a hundred times a year, said Emile Okal, a geophysics professor at Northwestern University in Illinois.
This means that, on average, there's a quake that powerful somewhere about every three days, Okal said. "It's the normal way of things."
Even the one-two punch of the Tuesday's Samoan and Wednesday's Indonesian earthquakes isn't unprecedented. On average, temblors that size occur once a month.
"The odds of [two quakes on] back-to-back days are not terribly bad," Okal said.
Seth Borenstein, Associated Press Yahoo News 1 Oct 09;
WASHINGTON – Because of a lethal combination of geology and geography, the people of American Samoa didn't stand much of a chance. Almost every condition that triggers bad tsunamis was in place this time, generating waves that raced toward the island territory at speeds approaching 530 mph, or as fast as a 747 jumbo jet. And there was almost nothing to slow the water down.
It all started with a type of earthquake that tends to generate strong tsunamis because of the angle at which the ground breaks. Also, the quake was extremely powerful, with a magnitude of 8.0. It struck just below the ocean floor, which means very little lost energy. And it happened in deep water, which means bigger waves.
The deeper water also meant the tsunami sped along the ocean faster. American Samoa happened to be close to the epicenter, about 125 miles, and at just the right angle, with almost no shallow water to slow the speeding waves down.
Put that all together and there was less than 25 minutes, maybe as little as 13 minutes, between the ground shaking and the first tremendous waves swamping Samoa.
And it didn't help that an international computerized system, designed for relief agencies to figure out if they needed to respond, had a computer failure that caused it to pooh-pooh the tsunami's wrath initially.
"This is the kind of earthquake one would expect to be very destructive in the areas close to the epicenter, and unfortunately it was," said Stuart Weinstein, deputy director at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach, Hawaii.
The shaking at the weather service office in Pago Pago, the capital of American Samoa, was so bad that one official immediately called the tsunami warning center in Hawaii, while the island's chief meteorologist phoned homeland security to activate the warning system. Just before 7 a.m. local time, bulletins were issued and alerts aired on TV and radio.
But there wasn't enough time. Four sets of waves 15 to 20 feet high hit. As of Wednesday afternoon, the death toll had climbed well over 100.
"It's one of those heart-wrenching situations where you have some time, but what can you do? It's not much time," said Eric Geist, a tsunami specialist and geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif.
Tsunamis are towering waves triggered by earthquakes. They can top 100 feet, and can stick around for as much as an hour, recede violently, then come back hours later.
In some ways, the geological conditions were even worse for Tuesday's tsunami than they were during the devastating 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami that killed more than 150,000 people in Asia in 2004. But this time, there were fewer people in harm's way in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
The key factor this time was the type of earthquake. It was an "outer rise" quake — one that breaks the sea floor in a way that concentrates the energy and pushes up at the water to create a wave, said Bruce Jaffe, an oceanographer and tsunami specialist at USGS in Santa Cruz, Calif. Strong quakes are usually a different type, called a thrust event.
The area where it hit is no stranger to quakes, getting a few magnitude-6-to-7 ones per year, said Peggy Hellweg, a geophysicist at the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory. Because quakes are measured on a logarithmic scale, a magnitude-8 is 1,000 times stronger than a magnitude-6 in terms of energy released, Hellweg said.
Tuesday's quake was the fourth-strongest outer rise on record, Geist said.
This quake was also relatively shallow in the ground, only 11.2 miles under the sea floor. That's important because the closer the quake is to the surface of the ocean, the less energy dissipates as it travels through the ground.
It was also in deep water. Initial estimates are that there was well over 3 miles, maybe even 4 miles, of water above the shaking ground, Geist said. That means more water displaced, and thus bigger waves. If there had been only 1 mile of water above the quake, the waves would have been about 11 feet smaller, Geist estimated.
That deep water also was responsible for the blinding speed of the tsunami. The deeper the water, the faster a tsunami travels.
This water was so deep that the tsunami could have been zipping along at 530 mph, Geist said. Usually, a tsunami slows down when it hits shallow water. Around the United States, for example, the shallow continental shelf slows downs waves dramatically.
Samoa didn't have that protection until just before the tsunami reached the shore. And by the time it hit, it was still coming at 30 mph.
And by the time you see a tsunami, "it's usually too late to outrun it," Geist said.
___
Associated Press writer Mark Niesse contributed to this story from Honolulu.
____
NOAA animation of the Sept. 29 tsunami: http://nctr.pmel.noaa.gov/samoa20090929.html
NOAA tsunami safety information: http://www.noaa.gov/features/protecting(underscore)0409/tsunami.html
U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Information Center: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/
Samoa 'too close to epicentre' for long warning
Hannah Devlin, Times Online 30 Sep 09;
The tsunami that that swept the South Pacific islands was caused by a powerful subsea earthquake.
A sophisticated network of seismometers around the world pinpointed the location and strength of the quake within minutes of it occurring and sent out a tsunami alert.
But the proximity of Samoa and American Samoa to the epicentre meant that it was only a matter of minutes before their coastlines were hit by 3m-high waves, giving villagers little time to escape to higher ground.
“These islands are right on the subduction zone, which means the official warnings don’t always come soon enough,” said Professor John McCloskey, a geophysicist at the University of Ulster.
Instead, he said, there has been an increased focus on educating people to move immediately to higher ground and stay there for several hours if they feel a tremor that lasts for more than around 30 seconds.
Unconfirmed reports from Samoa and American Samoa suggest that in some places people did heed the indicators of an imminent tsunami and that many evacuated their homes. At other locations farther from the quake, the warnings were broadcast on TV and radio.
Seismometers recorded the initial earthquake event at 6.48am Samoa time (5.48pm GMT) this morning. The US Geological Survey’s rapid reporting system registered the quake at magnitude 8.1. Others put it slightly higher at 8.3 or slightly lower at 7.8. The complexity of the calculation involved in determining the strength of an earthquake means that some uncertainty is to be expected.
Three minutes later, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii sent out a “tsunami watch” warning to islands in the vicinity, including Samoa, American Samoa, the Cook Islands and Fiji, predicting that an earthquake of this size was likely to result in a tsunami.
Computer modelling allowed the centre to predict arrival times and the likely height of incoming waves. It warned that American Samoa, which is around 200km (124 miles) from the epicentre, was likely to be hit by 3m waves within ten minutes and Samoa within 20 minutes of the quake.
Several minutes later, the centre updated the warning saying that local sea-level readings confirmed that a tsunami was taking place.
The quake occurred at the north end of a large north-south tectonic plate boundary, close to the 10,000m-deep Tonga-Kermadec Trench. Where the two plates meet, the Pacific Plate is being driven under the Australian Plate, a phenomenon known as subduction happens.
Early calculations suggest that the rupture was around 200-300km long and that the plates moved around 4-7m. Scientists expect an event of this magnitude to occur around once or twice a year.
The earthquake was considerably smaller than the Indian Ocean quake on Boxing Day in 2004, which had a Magnitude of 9.3.
“The earthquake magnitude and deformation were much less than in the rare huge earthquakes of magnitude 9.0 and higher, such as that off Chile in 1960, and the Boxing Day 2004 earthquake off Sumatra,” said Gary Gibson, the chairman of the executive committee of the International Seismological Centre.
“The fault length for those was greater than 1,000km, and the plates moved 10-20m or more relative to each other.”
Whether a tsunami is triggered by an earthquake depends on a number of factors, but primarily the amount of movement of the plates. The depth of the sea determines the speed with which the tsunami moves towards the shore. In this case, the tsunami is believed to have reached up to 430mph (692km/h).
Earthquakes frequently result in secondary quakes and scientists are currently calculating the likelihood of a second event.
New Sumatra quake takes seismologists by surprise
Yahoo News 1 Oct 09;
PARIS (AFP) – The huge earthquake that hit Sumatra occurred at a deep, unexpected location, illustrating the dangerously complex geological mosaic in this area, a seismologist told AFP on Thursday.
The 7.6 magnitude quake struck on Wednesday 80 kilometers (50 miles) beneath the sea, 45 kilometers northwest of the city of Padang, according to US Geological Survey (USGS) data.
The fault line where this happened runs parallel to Sumatra and is called the Sunda Trench.
It marks a "subduction" zone, where one plate of Earth's crust rides on top of the other.
To the west is the Australia plate, which is moving northeast at about five centimetres (two inches) a year).
The Australia plate is being forced under, or subducted, by the Sunda plate, which lies to the east.
Scientists had long feared a major earthquake would occur on the part of the trench near Padang.
They considered it vulnerable to a so-called quake "cascade" that began with the notorious 9.1 quake of December 26, 2004 that unleashed the Indian Ocean tsunami.
"Cascade" events can occur in long, badly-stressed faults. The stress of a large earthquake causes the next section of a fault to weaken and then rupture, in a domino-like effect.
But Sandy Steacy, a professor at the Environmental Sciences Research Institute at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland, said Wednesday's quake was not part of this chain reaction.
"The event yesterday was kind of strange, it wasn't what we would have expected," she said.
"It appears if the most recent earthquake didn't occur on the interface of the subduction zone. It occurred within the plate that is being subducted, the part that's going down beneath the interface."
Steacy said that seismologists were working hard to calculate what had happened, but her bet was that the quake had occurred deep below the seabed on the tongue of the Australian plate, contorting as it was forced under the Sunda plate.
"Clearly you are going to get faults in that kind of situation, because you're taking a slab, you're bending it, you're pushing it down, so you're going to get material breakage there," she said.
"I think once calculations are done, they will show that the stress had increased along that structure," she said.
"I suspect that structure, nobody even knew it was there. We don't have any way of mapping the faults in the subducting slab because it's so deep. It's only by having earthquakes on it that gives you an indication."
French expert Robin Lacassin, of the Institute of the Physics of the Globe in Paris, agreed that an "as-yet unknown mechanism" had unleashed Wednesday's quake.
"It happened at some depth, around 80 kilometres. It appears to have occurred in the subducted plate, beneath the face where the two plates meet," he said.
Ho Binh Minh and Raju Gopalakrishnan, PlanetArk 30 Sep 09;
HANOI/MANILA, - A powerful typhoon slammed into central Vietnam on Tuesday, killing 32 people and flooding towns and villages along the country's long coastline after leaving a trail of destruction in the Philippines.
The death toll in the Philippines from Typhoon Ketsana rose to 246 while the economic cost was nearly $100 million, officials said. Philippine authorities braced for another storm that could hit later this week.
Truong Ngoc Nhi, deputy chairman of the People's Committee in Vietnam's Quang Ngai province, said on state-run television the typhoon was the worst in more than three decades.
The official said workers were trying to restore electricity to the Dung Quat oil refinery, which had been due to get back on line on Wednesday after an outage shut the plant last month.
The refinery had been on track to resume operations at 65 percent capacity on Wednesday, officials had said, before reaching full capacity of 140,000 barrels per day next month. It first became operational in February. [ID:nHAN418998]
Many areas of central Vietnam were inundated, including parts of the port city of Danang, state-run Vietnam Television (VTV) footage showed. Homes were damaged and phone lines were down.
At least 32 people were killed in seven coastal and central highland provinces, VTV said. Around 170,000 people were evacuated before the typhoon made landfall. Ketsana hit the Philippines at the weekend.
National carrier Vietnam Airlines cancelled all fights to Danang and schools in the affected area were closed. The airline said it would resume service on Wednesday.
The central Vietnam region hit by Ketsana lies far north of the country's Mekong Delta rice basket. Rain dumped on the Central Highlands coffee belt could delay the start of the next coffee harvest by up to 10 days but exports would not affected, traders said. [ID:nHAN499944]
NEW PHILIPPINE STORM
Meanwhile, forecasters said a new storm forming in the Pacific Ocean was likely to enter Philippine waters on Thursday and make landfall later on the northern island of Luzon.
Ketsana dumped more than a month's worth of average rainfall on Manila and surrounding areas in one 24-hour period. About 80 percent of the city of 15 million was flooded.
The Philippine government has come in for scathing criticism for its response, with many calling it inadequate and delayed.
Authorities estimated damage from the storm so far at around 4.69 billion pesos ($98.5 million). More than 1.9 million people were affected and 375,000 had abandoned their homes and taken refuge in evacuation centres.
The Philippine death toll could rise further once reports come in from remote areas, disaster officials said.
"For casualties, the increase will be not as great, but the damage figures may increase," Defence Secretary Gilbert Teodoro told a news conference.
Several foreign governments and U.N. agencies have pledged nearly $2 million in rice and relief supplies, Teodoro told reporters, adding he met lawmakers from both houses of Congress to seek emergency funds for rehabilitation work.
The typhoon destroyed more than 180,000 tonnes of Philippine paddy rice, or nearly 3 percent of projected fourth-quarter output, but was unlikely to prompt more imports, a senior government official said. [ID:nSP503820]
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has called the typhoon "an extreme event that has strained our response capabilities to the limit".
Analysts say the floods have worsened the reputation of Arroyo, who has been accused of corruption and poll fraud, and that it could affect the prospects of Teodoro, the administration candidate, in the May 2010 presidential election.
(Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
David Fogarty and Thin Lei Win, Reuters 30 Sep 09;
BANGKOK (Reuters) - The Philippines urged rich nations at U.N. climate talks on Wednesday to toughen emissions cuts, saying the typhoon that hit the country this week was a taste of future effects of climate change on poor nations.
Typhoon Ketsana killed 246 people and triggered widespread flooding in the capital Manila. The storm, which has also killed 32 in Vietnam, dumped a month's worth of rain in 24 hours in Manila, overwhelming rescue services.
Residents have been scathing in their criticism of the government's disaster response in the crowded city of 15 million where sewers are notoriously blocked by rubbish.
The storm has become a focus of marathon climate talks in Bangkok this week, with developing nations and green groups saying it is an example of the type of climate disaster poor nations could face in a warmer world.
"Ketsana is clearly a manifestation of the consequences of global inaction in addressing the immediate impacts of creeping climate change," chief Philippine climate negotiator Heherson Alvarez told reporters.
He said rich nations must act urgently "to moderate these storms and spare the whole world from the impoverishing and devastating impacts of climate change."
Delegates from about 180 countries are meeting in the Thai capital trying to narrow differences on emissions reduction targets, climate finance and transfer of clean-energy technology before a December deadline to seal a tougher pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol.
"Unless we have deep and early cuts -- we have asked for cuts of 30 to 40 percent -- it will continue to deliver these destructive typhoons," he said.
The U.N. climate panel says rich nations need to cut their emissions by 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to help limit the rise in planet-warming carbon dioxide levels. Pledges by most rich nations to date fall below that recommendation.
"TERRIBLE WARNING"
Developing countries are demanding rich nations pay for steps to help them adapt to predicted rising seas, increases in the intensity of storms, greater extremes of floods and droughts and changing river flows from melting glaciers.
They say rich nations are responsible for the bulk of mankind's greenhouse gas pollution in the atmosphere over the past two centuries and largely to blame for climate change impacts to date.
"What happened in the Philippines is a terrible warning of what we might be experiencing in the future if action is not taken immediately," said Kim Carstensen, head of conservation group WWF's global climate initiative.
"The tragic events in the Philippines are a reminder for all negotiators here in Bangkok," he added.
Alvarez said the government was caught off-guard.
"It was an unusual event because the velocity of the storm was fairly mild compared to the aggressive storms that we have been experiencing."
About 20 typhoons hit the Philippines annually and Alvarez said wind speeds have increased over the past 30 years.
"It's been ranging initially about 30 years ago, 100 kilometer-per-hour storms. It's been growing in aggressiveness from 100 to 150 and of late, the storms have been close to 200 kilometer per hour."
Despite the relatively mild velocity of Ketsana it carried heavy rains. Experts say more intense rains are an expected effect of global warming.
(Editing by Jerry Norton)
Ruben Sario, The Star 1 Oct 09;
KOTA KINABALU: Sabah got a “pat on the back” from a United Nations climate expert for its approach in managing ecologically sensitive areas such as Mount Kinabalu and the diving haven of Pulau Sipadan.
Gabor Vereczi, the UN Development Programme regional technical advisor for Climate Change Adaptation in the Pacific, said the move to limit visitors to such sites would ease any stress these areas could face due to climate change.
Borneo would not escape the effects of global warming due to climate change, Vereczi said in an interview yesterday.
It was just a matter of time, said Vereczi who was one of the speakers on the issue at the three-day Tourism Promotion Organi-sation for Asia Pacific Cities (TPO) general assembly here.
Earlier, Sabah Tourism chairman Datuk Tengku Zainal Adlin Engku Mahamood told the participants that the state was limiting the number of daily visitors to Mount Kinabalu to 146 and 120 to Sipadan as part of its management plan for these areas.
To a question from the floor, Tengku Adlin said the effects of climate change on places like Sipadan was negligible, adding that there were no significant signs of coral bleaching.
However, Vereczi said that the effects of climate change would be felt throughout Asia from low-lying coastal plains to mountainous areas.
“We are already seeing more intense flooding in river deltas such as the Mekong,” he said.
He added that as global warming became more apparent, plant and animal species from the low areas would be seen more frequently at higher altitudes.
He said the most vulnerable to climate change in the Asia-Pacific area were an estimated 634 million people living in coastal areas from Bangladesh to Shanghai in China, noting that sea levels had increased by between 2.5cm and 23.5cm.
Vireczi said the world was locked into climate change: “Even if we have a magic button that would instantly stop all carbon emissions, we would still be on track for global warming.”
He said it was not all gloom as far as climate change was concerned as there were technical solutions and what was needed was the will to use them in a systematic manner.
Erwida Maulia, The Jakarta Post 30 Sep 09;
The House of Representatives passed on Wednesday the amendment of the five-year-old fishery law, now allowing sea patrols to shoot-on-sight vessels found poaching in Indonesia's sea waters.
The ministry's director general for surveillance and control Aji Sularso said it needed the law to legitimize its "firing and drowning" actions on poachers and to discourage them from repeating similar actions in the future.
"Firing and drowning can now be done under certain conditions, and we will immediately prepare for operating procedures to carry out the measures," said Aji, who is also the head of the government's working committee for the fishery law revision.
He added that the sea patrols, however, would only be allowed to shoot at vessels not sailors as they must respect human rights.
"The implementation of the ruling shall not breach human rights and international law," Aji said in a press conference after the endorsement of the law revision.
He said the move was important to protect the sovereignty of Indonesia.
The revised law also grants the authority to investigate alleged poachers in Indonesia's exclusive economic zone to civilian patrols from the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry in addition to the Navy, which was previously the sole authorized institution to do so.
Indonesia Sinks Foreign Fishers’ Prospects
Arti Ekawati, The Jakarta Globe 30 Sep 09;
Desperate to combat illegal fishing, the government finally issued legal protection to permit authorities to destroy foreign vessels found fishing illegally throughout the nation’s exclusive economic zone.
The new rule is part of the fisheries law, which was passed by the House of Representatives during a plenary session on Wednesday in Jakarta.
The law allows patrollers who seize illegal foreign fishing vessels to burn and sink the ships — after taking the crew aboard.
“Further regulations to implement the new law will be issued as soon as it comes into effect,” Aji Sularso, the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries director general of fishery supervision, said on Wednesday. Aji headed the drafting committee for the law.
The plan to allow the destruction of illegal foreign fishing vessels was introduced in mid-2008. At that time, the ministry raised the idea as shock therapy to stop illegal fishing, Aji said.
The ministry believed the move would be effective to help prevent illegal fishing activity. It was also considered more efficient than hauling the vessels in and letting special tribunals settle the matter, which could take months. However, until now there has been no legal umbrella for authorities to sink vessels.
“Once it’s proven that a vessel illegally entered the Indonesian economic zone, officers can decide to burn it or sink it or even bring it to the harbor,” Aji said.
He stressed that not all illegal vessels would be destroyed, saying it will depend on the ship’s condition. If the officers who seized a vessel believed it carried diseases or other harmful matter, then it should be burned.
Riza Damanik, the secretary general for the People’s Coalition for Fishery Justice (Kiara), stated that the government should be cautious in drafting implementing regulations. “If it’s not, the regulation could be used by some parties to threaten any vessels in the ocean,” Riza said.
Illegal fishing has been a serious issue for the nation for many years. The ministry believes thousands of foreign fishing vessels are operating illegally in Indonesian waters every year, but only small number of them are ever seized.
The illegal fishers mostly hail from China, Thailand, Vietnam and Taiwan.
The ministry predicted that each, the country suffered losses of around Rp 30 trillion ($3.12 billion) due to illegal fishing activities.
The losses include the depletion of natural resources and the environmental damage caused by trawl-net fishing.
Other aspects to the law include the setting up of fisheries tribunals to hear cases of illegal fishing and sizable rewards to law enforcement officers who successfully detect and bring to justice illegal fishers.
James Hookway, The Wall Street Journal 30 Sep 09;
BANGKOK – Thai government officials Wednesday said they would appeal a court ruling to suspend dozens of projects at the country's largest industrial estate because of pollution concerns, arguing that the order could alarm investors as Thailand shows signs of emerging from the global economic slump.
Thailand's Administrative Court late Tuesday ordered 76 industrial projects at the Map Ta Phut estate on Thailand's eastern seaboard to temporarily shut down while government investigators examine whether they had disregarded environmental health regulations. The projects include some run by the country's largest corporations, national oil and gas company PTT PCL and industrial conglomerate Siam Cement PCL.
The court suspension order reflects growing concerns in Thailand over the threat of pollution after decades of rapid growth that has transformed a mostly agrarian economy into a major exporter of automobiles, electronics and consumer goods to the global economy. It also represents a setback to Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who recently returned from a trip to the United States in part to drum up investor confidence in Thailand.
Mr. Abhisit on Wednesday ordered Thailand's industry ministry to appeal the court order, said government spokesman Puttipong Punnakan, who added that the ruling was having "a psychological impact on investors."
Supavud Saicheua, an economist with one of the country's largest brokerages, Phatra Securities PCL, said the combined investment value of the projects in Map Ta Phut was around 400 billion baht, $11.9 billion, or about 4.5% of Thailand's gross domestic product. "They comprise strategic investments that define Thailand's long-term competitiveness in manufacturing," Mr. Supavud said. A lengthy delay, he said, "could have a material impact on investor confidence and affect Thailand's long-term growth potential."
Environmental activists argued that the 76 projects at Map Ta Phut allegedly violated the Thai constitution's requirement that the government safeguard the right of ordinary people to live in a healthy environment. That, the environmentalists said, is because government agencies had failed to verify the safety of the various industrial projects in the area.
Siam Cement informed the Stock Exchange of Thailand that the ruling could affect a new naphtha cracker plant being constructed by its unit, SCG Chemicals, as well as a number of joint venture operations. The company said it would work together with the government to find a solution. It shares fell 5 baht or 2.2% to close at 222 baht a share.
PTT, meanwhile, which has 25 projects on the Map Ta Phut estate, said in a statement that it strictly complies with international standards and is already cooperating with government agencies to reduce chemical emissions in the area. Its shares closed 3 baht or 1.6% higher at 262 baht amid late bargain hunting Wednesday, while the broader Stock Exchange of Thailand Index rose 0.25% to 717.07 points.
Michael McCarthy, The Independent 1 Oct 09;
Britain’s naturalised parrot is now officially a pest. Forty years after it first bred on the outskirts of London, the ring-necked parakeet today joined gulls, crows and magpies on the short list of birds which can be legally shot without special permission.
The tropical parakeet, whose native range stretches from Africa to the Himalayas, has become an increasingly familiar sight in south London and Surrey in recent years and its numbers are mushrooming, with one roost in a Surrey sports ground sometimes holding several thousand birds.
Many people are charmed by its brilliant, iridescent-green plumage and exotic screech. But growing fears that it may damage native wildlife and crops – in the tropics it is widely considered a pest – today led Natural England, the Government’s wildlife watchdog, to add the bird to the “general licence” of species which can be controlled (that is, culled) without individual permission, if damage is being done.
Three other non-native birds joined it on the list today – the monk parakeet from South America, of which a few species breed in the northern home counties, the Canada goose and the Egyptian goose. All are considered to pose a threat in one way or another either to native wildlife, public health or public safety.
Their addition to the list does not mean it is open season on the birds, with a shooting free-for-all in prospect. But it does mean that if a landowner or any other “authorised person” has good reason to believe the birds are causing a specific problem, he is free to shoot them without seeking an individual licence to do so, as would have been necessary in the past.
The world’s most widespread wild parrot species, the ring-necked parakeet was first recorded successfully breeding in the wild in England in 1969. A population is believed to have been established with birds that escaped from aviaries and others released by sailors returning from the tropics. The British breeding population is now estimated to be 4,700 pairs and it is expanding steadily; the bird has reached as far north as the Scottish border.
Concerns about it have long been voiced. Aggressive, and a hole-nester, it is thought it might drive out British hole-nesting species such as woodpeckers. It also causes major crop damage, especially to fruit trees, on its native range. Tony Juniper, the former director of Friends of the Earth who is one of the world’s leading authorities on parrots, once said it had the potential to be “the grey squirrel of the skies.”
Natural England said today the parakeet and the other three birds had been added to the “general licence” as a precautionary part of its non-native species strategy. “This is not about telling people to go out and kill them but it is about facilitating people to control them if they've got a good reason to do so,” a spokesman said. “This is acknowledging that these are birds which can cause problems.”
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds today displayed what might be described as an uncomfortable acceptance of the move. “We can see why Natural England have put these species on the general licence, for good conservation reasons,” said Dr Mark Avery, the RSPB’s conservation director. “Non-native species cause problems for native wildlife across the globe, sometimes leading to species extinctions. At the moment these species aren’t causing conservation problems in the UK, but they might in future. However, you still need a legitimate reason under the general licence to kill them."
A virus brought on by loss of habitat is wiping out an Australian icon
Tanalee Smith, The Independent 1 Oct 09;
The koala, Australia's star symbol, is dying of stress. The marsupial is found only along the coastal areas of eastern Australia where it feeds off the leaves of the eucalyptus tree. But, as more and more people move to the region, koalas are finding themselves with fewer trees, researchers say. The stress brings out a latent disease, called chlamydiosis, that infects 50 to 90 per cent of the population.
"Koalas are in diabolical trouble," says Frank Carrick, the researcher who heads the Koala Study Programme at the University of Queensland. "Even in their stronghold, koala numbers are declining."
Chlamydiosis is a virus that breaks out in koalas in times of stress – like cold sores in humans – and leads to infections in the eyes and urinary, reproductive and respiratory tracts. It can cause blindness, infertility and death.
The problem came to worldwide attention during the wildfires that swept across south-eastern Australia this summer when Sam the Koala, who became a celebrity after being rescued from the fires, was photographed drinking from the water bottle of a firefighter in a smouldering forest.
The koala was in such obvious pain that veterinarian John Butler decided to operate. But her organs were too scarred to complete the surgery, and Sam was euthanised.
Deborah Tabart, chief executive of the Australian Koala Foundation, has urged the government to follow up on Sam's case by classifying koalas as a threatened species and implementing policies to preserve their habitat.
The United States already considers the koala a threatened species, and the Australian Koala Foundation estimates there are fewer than 100,000 left in Australia, down from the millions that were alive when Europeans started to settle in the late 1700s.
Mr Carrick and other experts think the numbers are slightly higher, but regional counts have shown a huge drop. There is clear evidence that some local populations have become extinct because of chlamydial disease, Mr Carrick said.
The majority of koalas hug a stretch of eastern coastline in the states of Queensland and New South Wales. They are most abundant on the so-called Koala Coast, a 155 square-mile swath of semi-rural coast in south-eastern Queensland. Mr Carrick urged the federal government to get involved. "If koalas are not of national significance, I don't know what on earth would be," he said. "Koalas are right up there as an international wildlife icon with China's pandas."
Peter Aldhous, New Scientist 30 Sep 09;
A high proportion of the whale meat on sale in Japan comes from a population of north Pacific minke whales that some fear is under serious threat.
The finding, from a forensic DNA study of meat bought on Japanese markets, suggests that either Japan's scientific whaling programme is taking more animals from this population than previously estimated, or accidental "by-catch" of the whales in fishing nets is larger than officially reported.
Vimoksalehi Lukoschek of the University of California, Irvine, and Scott Baker of Oregon State University in Newport, along with their colleagues, bought samples of whale meat in Japan and used DNA analysis to determine in each case not only the species of whale, but also which population it came from.
They found that a disturbingly high proportion came from a population of north Pacific minke whale that was selected for protection by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in the 1980s, before the wider moratorium on commercial whaling came into effect.
Scientific whaling
Much of the whale meat on the Japanese market comes from a different species of minke whale, caught in the Antarctic by the nation's controversial scientific whaling programme. But a smaller scientific hunt also targets north Pacific minkes, killing 169 of the animals in 2008. Most of those killed are thought to come from a relatively abundant population to the east of Japan called the "O" stock. However, some are thought to come from the protected "J" stock, which mostly lives in the Sea of Japan.
To find out exactly where the whale meat on sale in Japan was caught, the researchers analysed 1200 samples of Japanese whale meat between 1997 and 2004. They found that 250 of the samples came from 201 north Pacific minke whales. An alarming 46 per cent of these appeared to be from the protected J stock.
"That would mean that either by-catch is higher, or more J stock is being caught in the scientific hunt," says Lukoschek. Both O and J stock whales can be caught in fishing nets as by-catch, in which case they can be sold for meat.
Hit from two sides
The numbers are worrying, says Baker, because the J stock is being hit from two sides. He has previously shown that this population is also being depleted by heavy by-catch from South Korean fishing.
Luis Pastene, director of the research division at the Institute of Cetacean Research in Tokyo, which runs Japan's scientific whaling programme, rejects the findings, calling studies based on meat purchased in markets "not reliable".
Pastene adds that the status of the J stock is currently being assessed by the IWC's scientific committee . "It is important to avoid speculations on its status in the meantime," he says.
But the scientific committee's assessment could take several years to complete, and some committee members claim that Japan is delaying the process by failing to provide information from its own whale DNA registry. "They say that Baker's data are wrong, but they don't provide us with anything solid to critique the analysis," says Phil Clapham of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle.
Journal reference: Animal Conservation, vol 12, p 385
Braden Reddall, Reuters 30 Sep 09;
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A green power building spree is on the way, and much of it will be brought to you by the same people who built the nuclear and coal-fired power plants that keep the lights on now.
What might strike casual observers or radical greens as odd can be explained by good business sense; with few other power plants in the works, big U.S. engineering and construction companies have heartily embraced renewable energy projects.
Next year, in particular, is setting up to be a banner year for clean energy, with the political winds blowing in the right direction and utilities scrambling to meet renewables targets.
But moving from solar panel installations on the roofs of the eco-minded to utility-scale projects that will power the homes of thousands requires far more planning expertise and capital, which will play into the hands of the big engineers.
"If you don't have nine figures of cash on the books, people are more scared off," said Heiko Ihle, an analyst at Gabelli & Co. "Especially these big projects, where there's only a handful who can do it in an efficient manner, and you don't have to worry about them running away with your money."
Ihle wondered why midsized players such as, say, Foster Wheeler Ltd and KBR Inc, had not formed joint ventures capable of taking on projects costing several billion dollars.
"You don't see that very much," he added. "It generally boils down to the Fluors and Jacobs and Bechtels doing it."
Steven Chan, chief strategy officer of Suntech Power Holding Co Ltd, said his company was working with a few as-yet undisclosed engineering contractors, and saw the big players entering the solar business as only a positive trend.
"They can bring to bear a lot of other powerful things that are within their arsenal," Chan told the Reuters Global Climate and Alternative Energy Summit this month, citing their employee numbers, and their purchasing power in driving down costs.
CLEANTECH TRACK RECORDS
Privately held Bechtel, the largest U.S. engineering group, says it has been involved in renewable energy for 25 years, including the first utility-scale photovoltaic solar plant and operating the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
But the San Francisco-based company only set up a renewable unit a year ago, and this month it won the contract from BrightSource for a 440-megawatt solar-thermal project in the California desert, in which Bechtel will take an equity stake.
"We view it as a very attractive equity investment for us. That's simply what it is," Ian Copeland, president of Bechtel Renewables and New Technology, said in an interview, clarifying that equity stakes would not necessarily be part of future deals, even if the industry could use the financing.
Like many executives, he expects 2010 to be great for clean energy, simply because many permitting hurdles will have been cleared, on top of the loans flowing more freely from banks.
"I believe that a number of projects that are in train will come to fruition next year," Copeland said.
He noted that somewhere in the range of 40 percent of new U.S. power capacity in the past few years had been wind farms. As for solar, research firm iSuppli expects installations to grow by 54 percent globally in 2010 after a weak 2009.
To capture some of the renewable energy money now flowing in Silicon Valley, Pasadena, California-based Jacobs Engineering Group Inc has been touting its services at cleantech conferences in the area out of its San Jose office.
Fluor Corp, the biggest publicly traded U.S. engineering company which carved out a renewables arm in May, sees green energy as a big part of its power revenue in the coming years given the dim outlook for other new power plants.
"Renewables will be the one where we fully expect, as the market does, future growth," Dave Dunning, group president for power at Irving, Texas-based Fluor, told the Barclays Capital Global Renewables Conference in Zurich this month.
In a possible sign of the times, Fluor was addressing the clean energy confab in Switzerland while many of its rivals gathered for an annual engineering and construction conference in San Francisco, where "green" was also a topic on the table.
John Fees, chief executive of Houston-based McDermott International Inc, said apart from its capabilities in solar thermal and biomass, the cleaner energy push would lead to plenty of revenue opportunities in power plant retrofits.
"We don't see the onslaught of environmental regulation as necessarily a negative," he told the D.A. Davidson conference.
(Reporting by Braden Reddall, editing by Matthew Lewis)
Elisabeth Rosenthal, PlanetArk 30 Sep 09;
"Are there taxis?" I inquired, trying hard to forget the reminders on the Arlanda website that trains are "the most environmentally friendly" form of transport, referring to taxis as "alternative transportation" for those "unable to take public transport."
"Yes, I guess you could take one," he said, dripping with disdain as he peered over the edge of the counter at my single piece of luggage.
I slunk into the cab, paid about $60 and spent the 45-minute ride feeling as guilty as if I'd built a coal-fired plant in my back yard. (Note: the cabs at Arlanda are hybrids.) Two days later, although my flight left at 7 a.m., I took the Arlanda Express. It cost half as much and took 15 minutes to the terminal.
Europe, particularly northern Europe, is far more environmentally conscious than the United States, despite Americans' sincere and passionate resolution to be green. Per capita CO2 emissions in the U.S. were 19.78 tons according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, which used 2006 data, compared to 9.6 tons in the U.K., 8.05 tons in Italy, and 6.6 tons in France.
Why have Americans made so little headway on an issue that so many of us feel so strongly about? As a U.S. journalist traveling around Europe for the last few years reporting on the environment, I've thought a lot about this paradox.
There is a fair bit of social pressure to behave in an environmentally responsible manner in places like Sweden, where such behavior is now simply part of the social contract, like stopping at a stop sign or standing in line to buy a ticket. But more important, perhaps, Europe is constructed in a way that it's pretty easy to live green. You have to be rich and self-absorbed, as well as environmentally reckless and impervious to social pressure, not to take the Arlanda Express.
In Europe it is far easier to channel your good intentions into action. And you feel far worse if you don't. If nearly everyone is carrying a plastic bag (as in New York City) you don't feel so bad. But if no one does (as in Dublin) you feel pretty irresponsible.
Part of the problem is that the U.S. has had the good fortune of developing as an expansive, rich country, with plenty of extra space and cheap energy. Yes, we Americans love our national parks. But we live in a country with big houses. Big cars. Big commutes. Central Air. Big fridges and separate freezers. Clothes dryers. Disposable razors.
That culture - more than Americans' callousness about the planet - has led to a lifestyle that generates the highest per capita emissions in the world by far. Per capita personal emissions in the U.S. are three times as high as in Denmark.
But even as an American, if you go live in a nice apartment in Rome, as I did a few years back, your carbon footprint effortlessly plummets. It's not that the Italians care more about the environment; I'd say they don't. Butthe normal Italian poshy apartment in Rome doesn't have a clothes dryer or an air conditioner or microwave or limitless hot water. The heat doesn't turn on each fall until you've spent a couple of chilly weeks living in sweaters. The fridge is tiny. The average car is small. The Fiat 500 gets twice as much gas mileage as any hybrid SUV. And it's not considered suffering. It's living the dolce vita.
My point is that the low-carbon footprints depend on the infrastructure of life, and in that sense Europeans have an immediate advantage. To live without a clothes dryer or AC in the United States is considered tough and feels like a sacrifice. To do so in Rome - where apartments all include a clothes-drying balcony or indoor rack and where buildings have thick walls and shutters to help you cope with the heat - is the norm.
In many European countries, space has always been something of a premium, forcing Europeans early on to live with greater awareness of humans' negative effects on the planet. In small countries like the Netherlands, it's hard to put garbage in distant landfills because you tend to run into another city. In the U.S., open space is abundant and often regarded as something to be developed. In Europe you cohabit with it.
Also, in Europe, the construction of most cities preceded the invention of cars. The centuries-old streets in London or Barcelona or Rome simply can't accommodate much traffic - it's really a pain, but you learn to live with it. In contrast, most American cities, think Atlanta and Dallas, were designed for people with wheels.
Still, I still marvel at the some of the environmental strategies I've witnessed in Europe.
In old Zurich, for example, to discourage waste and reduce trash, garbage collection has long been limited to once a week (as opposed to three times a week in much of New York); recyclables like cardboard and plastic are collected once a month in the Swiss city. Since Zurich residents live with their trash for days and weeks at a time, they naturally try to generate less of it - food comes with no packaging, televisions leave naked from the store.
As I nosed around the apartment of a Swiss financial planner, she showed me the closet for trash. A whole week of her life created the same amount as the detritus of one New York takeout Chinese meal.
Likewise, in Germany, I've seen blocks of townhouses that are "passive" houses - homes so efficient they do not need to be heated. And an upscale suburb that had banned cars from its streets; you could own a car, but it had to be kept in a garage at the edge of town where parking spaces cost over $30,000 a year, meaning that few people owned cars and those who did rarely used them for small daily tasks like shopping.
Both were upper-middle-class neighborhoods, but I was struck by how different these German suburbs felt compared to their U.S. socioeconomic counterparts. Houses are smaller and few are detached. A passive house has to be under 2,000 square feet and basically box-like in order to make it energy efficient. "If someone feels like they need more than 2,000 square feet to be happy, well that's a different discussion," a passive house architect said.
Many Americans regard these kinds of approaches as alien, feeling we could never go there. I'm not sure. The Europeans I meet in these places are pretty much just like me, inclined to do the right thing for the environment, but insistent on a comfortable life.
There is nothing innately superior about Europe's environmental consciousness, which certainly has its own blind spots. In Italy, where people rail against genetically modified food, people routinely throw litter out of cars. In Germany, where residents are comfortable in smaller energy efficient homes, there is still a penchant for cars with gas-guzzling engines and for driving fast on the autobahn.
I believe most people are pretty adaptable and that some of the necessary shifts in lifestyle are about changing habits, not giving up comfort or convenience. Though I initially railed about the hassle of living without a dryer or air conditioning in Rome, I now enjoy the ritual of putting laundry on the line, expect to sweat in summer, and look forward to the cool of autumn.
Posts
visitors since Nov 07