Best of our wild blogs: 21 Nov 09

Some Interesting Critters@USR
from Beauty of Fauna and Flora in Nature

Oriental Honey-buzzard visits KC Tsang yet again
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Venus drive - Finally get to see mygalomorphs
from Singapore Nature

Macaranga bancana and spiderhunters
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Fireworks and more coastal works at Sentosa
from wild shores of singapore

Soil investigation works near Pulau Jong until Jan 10
from wild shores of singapore

Works near Pulau Hantu until Dec 09
from wild shores of singapore

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Deluge in Singapore a 'once in 50 years' event

Diversion canal could not cope; drainage work to be sped up, says Yaacob
Amresh Gunasingham & Ang Yiying, Straits Times 21 Nov 09;

THURSDAY'S deluge which submerged parts of Bukit Timah was a 'freak' event that occurs once in 50 years, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Yaacob Ibrahim said yesterday.

'What happened was very unusual,' he said. 'The intensity was tremendous.'

Shortly after 1pm the skies opened and in the next two hours, almost 110mm of rain fell - almost half the average monthly rainfall for November.

When a diversion canal from the main Bukit Timah canal burst its banks, flood waters rose knee-high, partially submerging ground-floor buildings and cars and causing untold damage.

'We knew the diversion canal was not big enough to take this,' the minister said about the three decade-old canal which stretches more than 3km, from Sixth Avenue to Sungei Ulu Pandan.

It was built in 1972 as part of the Bukit Timah Flood Alleviation Scheme, a major government project aimed at diverting water away from Bukit Timah - a low-lying area with a history of flooding stretching back to the 1930s.

A second diversion canal built in the 1990s near Whitley Road runs into Sungei Kallang and the Marina Reservoir.

The minister said yesterday that plans to widen and deepen drainage networks in the area will be sped up.

PUB, the national water agency, has called for tenders for an engineering consultant to widen the canals in the Bukit Timah area in anticipation of increased stormwater run-off from upcoming developments in the area, a spokesman said.

Construction is expected to start by the third quarter of next year.

Dr Yaacob urged patience as reinforcement work is carried out.

The current north-east monsoon season is usually the wettest time of the year, with almost 48 per cent of the year's rainfall occurring between November and January.

But even thorough planning is not always enough to deal with extreme weather, the minister said.

'It is not possible... to plan for every event. Thursday's weather... occurs once in 50 years. If we design for the largest rainfall or highest tide, then we are going to have huge canals in Singapore.'

The most important thing is to have an adequate drainage system that is continuously upgraded, he said.

Before the canal was built, the area saw about 12 floods a year, with waters rising up to 0.7m. Since then, it remained relatively flood-free until Thursday.

Since the early 70s, more than $2 billion has been spent on building new canals and drains, including the Marina Reservoir, which in the event of a storm can pump 6.3 billion gallons of stormwater out to sea, alleviating flooding in the city area.

It was never used on Thursday as the diversion canal which broke drains into Sungei Ulu Pandan, and the Pandan Reservoir, not the Marina Reservoir, Dr Yaacob noted yesterday.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines as he sent off a group of haj pilgrims at Changi Airport, the minister promised assistance to those affected, saying: 'We will look to do whatever we can to help.'

Mr T.C. Chua, an engineer who was involved in a project to upgrade the Bukit Timah canal in the 1980s, told The Straits Times that development activity in the Upper Bukit Timah area could have contributed to the floods.

'The clearing of shrubs and trees could increase the surface run-off into the canal as there is no build-up to constrict the flow,' he said.

According to the National Environment Agency, moderate to heavy showers with thunder can be expected in the next few days, mainly in the afternoons.

Damaged cars towed out of carpark
Carolyn Quek & Lim Wei Chean, Straits Times 21 Nov 09;

ONE by one, cars left the Tessarina condominium in Wilby Road yesterday - not driven, but towed to workshops for repairs.

They had been almost fully submerged in water for hours on Thursday after heavy rain rushed down the ramps of the condominium's entrance and into its underground carpark.

PUB contractors worked feverishly through the night to pump out the water, so that the stranded cars, including luxury vehicles such as a Ferrari and a Porsche, could be removed.

The total cost of the damage is not known, but with about 100 vehicles parked inside the 500-lot carpark, it is expected to run into millions of dollars.

The Tessarina's basement carpark was one of two along Bukit Timah Road to be affected by the sudden downpour.

The other carpark, at the 6th Avenue Centre, had four vehicles submerged in water.

The flash floods affected a wide stretch of Bukit Timah: from Coronation Road to Third Avenue; Wilby Road to Blackmore Drive; and the Sixth Avenue junction.

But the Tessarina's basement carpark appears to have taken the worst hit.

Mr C. Lee, a Tessarina resident, watched as his Lexus was towed to a car workshop. He had been overseas on Thursday, returning at 7pm.

'It could have been worse - most of the cars had been driven to work,' said the 43-year-old, who works in finance.

He added that the management should have started advising residents to move their cars as soon as they noticed the carpark was flooding.

The intense downpour saw the water rise to knee-high levels in the Wilby Road area at around 2pm, according to a report from the condominium's managing agent, Chambers International Property Consultants.

Within 20 minutes, the waters were chest-high at the lowest point of the carpark.

The water also filled the lift shafts and flowed into one of two switch rooms in the basement, causing a power outage in a few of five apartment blocks there.

Electricity was restored late last night but the lifts were still being repaired.

Taking no chances, Chambers International will be barricading the switch rooms with sand bags in case of flash floods in the coming days.

Insurers told The Straits Times that only comprehensive motor insurance policies cover flooding. Those that cover third party damage will not protect against flood damage.

But car workshops, which reported a surge in business to have cars towed or repaired, say that whether a waterlogged car can be repaired or not depends on the damage.

A staff member at Nissan Service Centre said that if the water reaches only the bottom of the car, the damage, if any, will be minimal, affecting only the electrical circuit boards and the car's carpet, which can be easily replaced.

Cars submerged in water are almost certain to see more extensive damage to their electronic wiring, not to mention damage to the engine, transmission, seats and more, he added. Repair works for such waterlogged cars can start from $10,000 to $20,000, depending on the make of car and the availability of parts, and can take up to a month, said workshops.

Thursday's floods an event that occurs once every 50 years
Asha Popatlal, Channel NewsAsia 20 Nov 09;

SINGAPORE: A big clean-up is underway on Friday in many areas across Singapore which were flooded due to the heavy rainfall on Thursday.

Environment and Water Resources Minister Yaacob Ibrahim said that work is ongoing to improve the structure of the drains to cope better with such events.

The wet season, due to the northeast monsoon, could well spill over into January. Authorities here said they are planning to upgrade some facilities in phases.

Dr Yaacob said: "I hope the public will have more patience with us because it will take us some time to enlarge those drains. But having said that, it is not possible for us to plan for every event.

"Yesterday's event, I was told by the PUB, occurs once every 50 years. It could be tomorrow. But we have to plan accordingly. Most importantly, we have to have a proper drainage system... (that is) being continually upgraded, and a proper response system."

The damage in affected areas, such as an underground carpark at Sixth Avenue Centre, is still being calculated. Residents told MediaCorp that workers toiled through most of the night to pump out the flood waters, which apparently came up to about 2 metres.

Workers were still pumping out debris that had swept into the drainage areas on Friday. Some residents said they were still in shock after seeing their cars float away from their lots.

At Eng Neo Avenue, the Zhang residence looks none the worse for wear. But that was after a massive clean-up into the night as flood waters had caused the pond to overflow and damage the wooden floors.

Myrna Morales, a domestic worker, said the flooding was so bad that carpets had to be removed to mop up the water.

Amidst the clean-up, car workshops have reported increased business for repair works that range from drying out cars to repairing engines, costing over S$10,000.- CNA/so

Related post
Bonfires of Trust, Flash-floods of Pain: Bukit Timah Floods 2009
from You run, we GEOG

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Measuring Singapore's mental well-being

Economic prosperity no longer the best indicator of societal happiness
Chong Siow Ann & Janhavi Vaingankar, Straits Times 21 Nov 09;

A FEW months ago, France's President Nicolas Sarkozy announced his government's intent to include happiness and well-being as a reflection of economic performance - eschewing the gross domestic product as the indicator of a country's progress and prosperity.

The GDP was originally meant to be a measure of market economic activity: the total output of goods and services a country produces for its own citizens or for sale to other nations. With time, this narrow measure became blurred and grew into an indicator of societal well-being.

In human psychology, there is a concept - espoused by American psychologist Abraham Maslow - called the Hierarchy of Needs. It postulates that within every individual, there is a strong desire to achieve something greater once his basic needs have been met.

Maslow depicts this as a pyramid where the base is the 'basic needs' of food and water. The next level is 'security and stability'. The third level is 'love and belonging'.

Once the individual has these needs satisfied, he would look to accomplish more. The peak of the pyramid is 'self-actualisation' - a state of harmony and understanding, and the realisation of one's potential.

At the collective level, as a nation moves beyond poverty and grows richer, it too would look for the other aspects of what would contribute to a better quality of life.

When this happens, the GDP loses its relevance as a metric of the country's well-being.

Governments and policymakers in developed countries have realised that the rise in their economic output has not and cannot guarantee a rise in life satisfaction and productivity of its people.

Studies have consistently shown that while money does buy happiness, this is only up to a point when it comes to 'positional goods' such as income, material goods, and a sense of one's relative position in society.

People work hard to afford things that they think will make them happy, relishing them only for a time while they think that these goods are limited and they have them while others do not. However, with time, they grow accustomed to what they have, or discover that more and more people have these goods, and in losing that sense of exclusivity, they also lose a sense of contentment.

In the scramble up society's ladder, they also force others to run faster to keep up. Everything is relative in this economic 'arms race'. A survey has found that three decades of economic growth in the United States have not made Americans any happier.

The pursuit of happiness as a policy is, of course, not new: it is enshrined in the US Declaration of Independence as one of three inalienable rights, and in Singapore's National Pledge. Bhutan famously has a measure of GNH, or gross national happiness.

A nation which aspires for its citizenry to attain human fulfilment and mental well-being would need to align the metrics of well-being with what really contributes to better quality of life, which would include not only happiness and life satisfaction but also mental health.

In 2007, Singapore launched its First National Mental Health Policy and Blueprint. Among its lofty goals are the promotion of mental well-being and building of resilience among its population.

Mental health is more than just the absence of mental illness. The World Health Organisation defines mental health as a state 'of well-being in which the individual realises his or her abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to the community'.

A group of researchers at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) in Singapore, working with the Ministry of Health, Nanyang Technological University and US think-tank Rand Corporation, is developing a culturally appropriate scale to measure the level of positive mental health in Singapore.

Assessing and measuring mental well-being - that ephemeral state of mind and emotion - is decidedly challenging.

In the late 19th century, the utilitarian economist Francis Y. Edgeworth anticipated the invention of a 'hedonimeter' - a sort of psychophysical barometer that records the fluctuations of a person's mood. There is no such machine as yet, but the burgeoning body of recent research in happiness has devised various ways of studying and measuring it.

The simplest way is simply by asking. In most instances, we do know and can report how we feel at a particular time and can place our mood along a scale of zero to 10.

Beyond mere asking, tools such as electroencephalography (EEG), which measures electrical activities in the brain, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which uses radio waves to measure blood flow in the various regions of the brain, have been used.

But to be a useful measure across a country, there must be a broader and easier to use metric that condenses the inter-individual subjective valuations into an overall statistic.

Working on the premise that positive mental health is more than happiness - which is transient and subject to frequent change with external influences - IMH researchers view positive mental health to be akin to an 'ability': something that is more stable, and which is shaped and moulded by the person's innate qualities and forces in his or her environment.

It is more than a current emotional and psychological state; it is an estimate of the capability and potential of an individual to be mentally healthy.

The concept of positive mental health refers to a range of emotional and cognitive attributes that are associated with a sense of well-being and coping skills.

Two philosophies have dominated this field of research - the hedonic and the eudaimonic views. While the hedonistic approach refers to the pursuit of pleasure or happiness, eudaimonia lies in the actualisation of human potential and conveys the belief that well-being consists of fulfilling one's true nature.

The two traditions - hedonism and eudaimonism - are founded on distinct views of human nature and of what constitutes a good society. Dimensions reported under the two have included autonomy, personal growth, environmental mastery, resilience, satisfaction and happiness.

In the work that led up to the development of this scale, the researchers worked with a series of focus groups from among the various ethnic groups in Singapore. What emerged as key to positive mental health were: personal growth and autonomy, close and confiding relationships, good and adaptable coping skills and strategies for life's vicissitudes, personal characteristics like calmness and serenity, and perhaps something that is distinctly Eastern - spiritual beliefs and practices.

To assess the full range of the quality of life of a population would be necessarily complex as it would include the state of the environment, security as well as access to education and health, which are practically impossible to assess with a single indicator.

However, this scale that the IMH researchers are developing could augment the traditional GDP. The additional assessment of mental health would enable us to go beyond economic health, and do a better job of measuring our collective general well-being and welfare.

The writers are from the Institute of Mental Health. Associate Professor Chong is the vice-chairman of the Medical Board (Research), and Ms Vaingankar is a health service researcher.

IMH researchers view positive mental health to be akin to an 'ability'... It is more than a current emotional and psychological state; it is an estimate of the capability and potential of an individual to be mentally healthy.

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Panel on Clean Energy identifies key areas of focus for Singapore

Dylan Loh, Channel NewsAsia 20 Nov 09;

SINGAPORE: The International Advisory Panel (IAP) on Clean Energy has identified three key areas of focus for Singapore to differentiate itself in the energy market.

They are to promote innovation in the application of clean energy, develop ways to integrate innovations into various systems, and leverage on the country's expertise in sustainable development for commercial purposes.

To promote innovation, the panel recommends that Singapore move fast to exploit opportunities from the potential of electric vehicles, eco-friendly buildings and the conversion of waste-to-energy.

On integration of innovations into systems, the expert panel noted that the government's S$31 million trial programme to incorporate energy-producing solar panels into housing estates is a right step in this direction.

The panel concluded that Singapore's efforts to develop a thriving industry for clean energy puts the country in a good position to attract investments.

Singapore has previously set aside S$350 million for clean energy research and development. - CNA/vm

Smart grid may hold the answer
Lin Yan Qin, Today Online 21 Nov 09;

SINGAPORE - Consumers could soon be using energy in a more efficient way.

They could be able to use household appliances that switch themselves off during peak periods when electricity prices are higher.

They could even be able to buy electricity at competitive prices in an open retail market. And they could have even more choices when renewable energy sources like solar power - when they are ready for mainstream use - are added to the power grid.

This could be a reality if the Energy Market Authority's (EMA) pilot testing of a "smart grid" delivers promising results.

To be conducted over two to three years, the project will involve several thousand smart metres - indicating electricity use - being placed in households and commercial buildings, and the testing of various systems to manage demand and energy supplies from a range of sources.

"The current design of the grid results in sub-optimal outcomes for all," said EMA chief executive Lawrence Wong as he unveiled the project at the Smart Grids 2009 Summit yesterday.

Consumers and power companies alike currently lack information on the use and transmission of electricity, while the grid is not ready to handle the use of renewable power, or potential demand from electric cars.

"With this pilot, we will bring the capabilities of our power grid to the next level and ensure our electricity grid is ready for the future," said Mr Wong.

Called the Intelligent Energy System (IES), the pilot project follows the just-concluded Electricity Vending System (EVS) trial, which saw 400 households try out smart meters and different tariffs for different hours of use.

If the trial garners good results, EMA will work with Singapore Power to implement the system on a bigger scale, and it will serve as a platform to open up the retail market to competition.

On Wednesday, EMA announced plans to develop a micro-grid on Pulau Ubin to supply electricity and test clean technologies. Solutions developed from this micro-grid could be exported into the IES.

Interested industry players can participate in a pre-qualification exercise, and tenders will be called by middle of next year.

The project will be based mainly at Nanyang Technological University and neighbouring areas such as the upcoming CleanTech Park.

Before "widespread adoption", however, adjustments and refinements will be needed.

"The benefits of smart grid technologies scaled up to a national level have not been evaluated ," said Mr Wong.

Mr David Rouls, managing director of Accenture Smart Grids Services - which is keen on undertaking the project - said Singapore's grid system was up-to-date and well placed for conversion into a smart system.

The trial will help determine which are the best technologies, given that smart grids are a very expensive prospect which can run into "hundreds of millions" - though such costs are hypothetical given no full-scale grids have been set up, he said.

EMA did not give a cost estimate, beyond saying that bidders will submit their estimations after needs had been evaluated.

Nearly all the households in the EVS trials opted for differentiated price plans over a flat electricity tariff.

They also shifted about 10 per cent of their usual electricity load from peak to off-peak periods. Overall electricity consumption dropped by two per cent. Shifting energy demand from peak periods will mean that power companies need not build extra power plants.

Overhead costs will come down and there will be lower carbon emissions, said Mr Wong.

Singapore gets top marks for clean energy effort
International Advisory Panel also recommends industries that the Republic can focus on
Joyce Hooi, Business Times 21 Nov 09;

THE International Advisory Panel (IAP) on Clean Energy gave Singapore the thumbs-up for the country's blueprint on clean energy, after meeting for the last two days in Singapore.

Alf Bjorseth, one of the panellists and the chairman of Scatec - a Norwegian renewable energy development firm - made the observation that Singapore is a prime place for the use of electric vehicles and development of solar energy technology.

'The strategic move that Singapore has taken to start the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (Seris) is a very wise move,' Dr Bjorseth told BT yesterday.

Seris is expected to develop new technology in the solar energy field that will lower the cost of solar energy, bringing it closer to parity with conventional grid energy sources.

'In certain sunbelt areas in the United States, solar energy is already cheap enough to be in competition with grid electricity,' said Mr Bjorseth.

The panel also made several recommendations for areas that Singapore can focus on, including test-bedding electric vehicles, smart grids and green buildings and developing a framework for commercialising Singapore's expertise in sustainable development.

'These industries have a good fit with Singapore's strong interdisciplinary capabilities and will bring with them a substantial amount of economic and environmental benefits,' said Ron Oxburgh, co-chairman of the IAP.

The panel also singled out the Housing Development Board's $31 million solar test-bed programme to build solar energy capabilities through trials at 30 HDB precincts for praise, and recommended that projects conducted under similar 'living laboratory' conditions be increased.

'The panel's endorsement of Singapore's progress in clean energy is very encouraging. Their recommendations on new growth areas for Singapore will help us accelerate our efforts to be a leader in clean energy and sustainable development, and create new opportunities for companies based here, and for our workers,' said IAP co-chairman, Leo Yip.

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Electric cars to run here next year

Vehicles will debut as part of three-year study to test infrastructure
Maria Almenoar, Straits Times 21 Nov 09;

Mitsubishi wiill be bringing in up to 50 i-MiEV models (above) for use in $20 million study. The cars are about $100,000 more expensive than their petro-powered version. -- ST PHOTO: LEE NIAN TJOE

ELECTRIC cars will start plying Singapore roads from September next year, as part of a three-year study to test the infrastructure needed to keep them running here.

Japanese car maker Mitsubishi is bringing in up to 50 i-MiEV models for use in the $20 million study, and more cars from Renault-Nissan are expected in 2011.

The Energy Market Authority (EMA) and the Land Transport Authority will also call for tenders from companies interested in building charging stations for these vehicles.

Singapore can reduce up to 4 per cent of its land transport sector's carbon emissions by 2020 if just 2 per cent of the vehicles here were electric-powered, said EMA. That would mean a total of 16,000 full-electric cars here.

Said EMA's deputy chief executive David Tan yesterday at the Plug-In Singapore conference: 'Singapore is an ideal location for such a test-bed with its size, compact urban environment, robust power grid and infocomm technology infrastructure.'

Mitsubishi will sell its electric cars to any company willing to take part in the study for between $80,000 and $90,000, lower than the $160,000 estimated retail price.

Participants will need to collect data on the mileage clocked and the frequency and ease of plugging in and recharging, among other things.

High upfront costs of owning an electric car have hobbled its sale elsewhere. Mitsubishi's make, at $160,000, is about $100,000 more expensive than the petrol-run version.

Inconvenient access to a charging station is another factor.

The EMA is working with the Housing Board and town councils on building charging stations to serve HDB residents and taxi drivers.

Private home owners can buy their own charging device which costs about US$200 (S$278).

The announcement made at the conference aroused much interest from delegates who were makers of electric vehicles and parts, and charging station builders from around the world, as well as academics.

The vice-president of corporate development for United States-based ECOtality, Mr Colin Read, said his company was considering putting in a tender bid to build charging stations.

His company is working on technology that allows electric vehicles to draw power from the grid, or power network that delivers electricity, during off-peak hours and to sell the power back to the grid during peak periods.

Detroit Vehicles' chief executive Albert Lam said he was willing to bring in 500 electric cars for sale here by next year and set up an educational store to explain electric vehicle technology to motorists.

'The fact is that electric vehicles are not something in the future and don't need to be tested. They are ready, they are here and they are now,' he said.

He added that Detroit Vehicles' models, which include a sedan and sports model, can cost as low as US$26,000 because he is mass producing batteries and parts to lower costs.

Batteries, which are generally the costliest part of electric vehicles, can also be leased to users to minimise upfront costs, he said.

Globally, the US is the leader in electric car use with about 10,000 electric vehicles and 750,000 hybrid-electric vehicles on the road.

EMA is considering more incentives to encourage motorists to go electric.

Currently, owners of hybrid, compressed natural gas and electric cars get a 40 per cent cut in the Additional Registration Fee, which is the main car tax.



Singapore can reduce up to 4 per cent of its land transport sector's carbon emissions by 2020 if just 2 per cent of the vehicles here were electric-powered, said EMA.

Key facts on the i-MiEV

# Top speed is about 140kmh

# Can accelerate to 100kmh in about nine seconds

# Can cover 80km under a single charge

# Costs about four cents per km to run, compared to just over 11 cents per km for the petrol-powered version.

# Produces one-third the carbon dioxide of a petrol-powered version.

First batch of 50 electric vehicles to arrive next year
Channel NewsAsia 20 Nov 09;

SINGAPORE: Singapore will receive its first batch of electric vehicles (EVs) next year as part of a national EV test-bedding programme.

The Energy Market Authority (EMA) said on Friday 50 Mitsubishi EVs will make their way here from September.

EMA's deputy chief executive, David Tan, said the authority is now looking for companies to participate in the programme and be an early adopter of EVs in Singapore.

They will be required to collate data on the performance of the EVs. These include their driving range between charges, ease of charging, annual mileage and total costs of operation.

The data collected will be key in evaluating the costs and benefits, and overall feasibility of the future adoption of EVs here.

Mr Tan said a multi-agency EV Taskforce will also be rolling out a small network of charging stations. A competitive tender will be launched next year.

On top of that, a study will be carried out to determine the number of EV charging stations and their specific locations. Most of the charging is expected to be done overnight in the car parks of the EV users' homes or offices.

The deployment of these EV charging stations will be timed to coincide with the actual take-up of EVs under the testbedding programme.

The programme, which will run for three years from next year, will be driven by the EMA and the Land Transport Authority.

Mr Tan said he expects the use of EVs to pick up from 2015 and become fully commercially viable and ready for the mass market after 2020.- CNA/so

Electric dream to be a reality next year
Ong Dai Lin, Today Online 21 Nov 09;

SINGAPORE - Electric cars will finally power their way to Singapore roads next year, in not one but two separate - and quite contrasting - experiments.

On one side: Team Mitsubishi and the Energy Market Authority (EMA). This national electric vehicle test-bed project involves bringing in some 50 electric cars, selling them to companies keen to test them out, collating data on vehicle performance, and basically ironing out the kinks before - possibly - going fully mass market in 2020.

On the other side: Team Detroit Electric. Betting on market forces instead of controlled test-bedding, the Netherlands-based company has daring plans to hit the Singapore market next year with 500 electric cars, with ideas to educate and win over consumers along the way.

From next September, the 50 Mitsubishi I-MiEV cars will be available here, and EMA deputy chief executive David Tan is looking for interested companies to take part in the three-year project.

They will need to buy the car, which costs between $89,000 and $99,000, as well as collate data such as the vehicle's annual mileage, ease of charging and total costs of operation. This will be vital in evaluating the costs, benefits and overall feasibility of adopting electric vehicles here.

Another car-maker, Renault-Nissan, will also send its electric cars to Singapore for the test-bedding programme once its vehicles are ready for commercial sale in 2011.

The $20-million programme to study the feasibility of introducing electric vehicles here was first announced in May.

Giving more details on Friday, Mr Tan said a small network of charging stations would be rolled out, with the EMA launching a tender next year for an infrastructure service provider.

Mr Tan expects most of the charging to be done overnight in the car parks of the drivers' homes or offices. As there is no commonly-accepted global standard for the power-charging cable, the EMA will work on a public charging systems guide.

Detroit Electric, on its part, will launch its first electric vehicles by the end of next year in Europe, priced at between US$23,000 ($32,000) and US$33,000.

Company chairman and CEO Albert Lam intends to introduce 500 electric cars each to Singapore and Hong Kong, and build a "Detroit Experience Centre" here to educate consumers.

He said he was negotiating with shopping malls to rent a floor of their parking lots to install charging points.

While he described the Government's plans as "very encouraging", he didn't see the need for a wait-and-see study.

"Three years later, there will be new devices, new energy sources and new batteries," said Mr Lam. "To me, electric cars are ready now, why not let market forces drive demand?"

But whether Singapore drivers are convinced of the electric car's merits remains to be seen.

Gentlemen, charge up your vehicles
Electric vehicle charging stations planned with Mitsubishi cars on their way
Samuel Ee, Business Times 21 Nov 09;

A SMALL network of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations could be in place by 2012 here, as the first batch of up to 50 Mitsubishi i-MiEV cars arrives from September 2010 onwards.

It is part of a $20 million programme to support infrastructure development and test-bed EVs in Singapore. This test-bed - starting next year - will run for three years, that is, until 2012, and will be driven by the multi-agency EV Taskforce, co-chaired by the Energy Market Authority (EMA) and the Land Transport Authority (LTA).

'We will launch a competitive tender next year to select an EV infrastructure service provider,' David Tan, EMA deputy chief executive announced in a speech yesterday at the Plug-In Singapore 2009 alternative energy vehicle conference.

He said a study will be carried out to determine the number of EV charging stations required and their specific locations. Although he did not reveal the exact number of stations, it is understood that there will be at least 50, or one for each of the electric Mitsubishi cars. The total number will depend on the results of the study.

In addition to Mitsubishi, the EV Taskforce is also working with other car manufacturers to secure a supply of EVs for Singapore. Renault-Nissan, for example, will make its EVs commercially available in 2011.

Mr Tan added: 'In general, we expect most of the charging to be done overnight in the car parks of the EV users' homes or offices. The deployment of these EV charging stations will be timed to coincide with the actual take-up of EVs under the test-bed.'

He said interested companies are invited to participate in the test-bed and be early adopters of EVs in Singapore.

The national EV test-bedding programme was launched in May to provide an open platform for all car manufacturers and technology companies to examine the infrastructure requirements of an EV system.

The test-bed also aims to test the performance of EVs under local road conditions and in the tropical environment, and to identify related industry and R&D opportunities.

Mr Tan said several factors make Singapore an ideal location to launch such a test-bed. As a small and densely built-up urban city-state, average driving distances are short at less than 55km per day, or well within a fully charged EV's 90-160km range.

The Republic also has a robust power grid, and information and communication technologies infrastructure, as well as technology and research expertise in electronics, power and precision engineering.

According to Mr Tan, the global use of EVs is expected to pick up from 2015 and become fully commercially viable and ready for the mass market after 2020.

He added that EMA is also interested in the concept of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) power, where V2G solutions allow EVs to draw power from the grid during off- peak periods and sell power to the grid during peak periods.

'This will make load levelling possible and allow for a more efficient operation of the power system,' he said.

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Fish scientist key player in genome study

Aim of international project: To reconstruct evolutionary history
Chang Ai-Lien, Straits Times 21 Nov 09;

HE IS a scientist whose hunting grounds span the high seas, whose collaborators are fishermen, and whose dissection centre can be a chopper and makeshift table at the roadside.

Fish expert Byrappa Venkatesh, of the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB), has spent decades searching out and studying the weird and wonderful of the fish world. These include the deadly pufferfish, with skin and organs 20 times more poisonous than cyanide; and the oddball elephant shark, which last shared an ancestor with humans 500million years ago.

Now, he has been selected to lead part of an international team which aims to decode the genetic make-up of 10,000 animals - the most ambitious endeavour since the Human Genome Project mapped the DNA of humans in 2003.

The latest project, Genome 10K, will allow scientists to see evolution in action by comparing animal and human genomes to reconstruct their evolutionary history, as well as predicting how animals will respond to challenges such as climate change and pollution.

Professor Venkatesh's chance involvement happened during a visit earlier this year by Dr Stephen O'Brien to the Agency for Science, Technology and Research institute. Dr O'Brien, chief of the genomic diversity laboratory at the US National Cancer Institute, was one of three scientists behind Genome 10K, and when he learnt of Prof Venkatesh's role in decoding genomes of key fish, he made an immediate decision.

'He told me, you're the person I'm looking for,' said Prof Venkatesh, who is the only person from Asia chairing a section of the project. He will lead the charge to put the genomes of 4,000 fish under the microscope.

The US$50 million (S$69 million) international effort is expected to start in two years, after enough money has been raised, and taking into consideration that the costs of genetic sequencing will plummet.

Prof Venkatesh, part of the team that won the National Science Award in 2004 for pioneering work in identifying and sequencing the fugu genome, explained that the cost of sequencing a genome has shrunk from US$300 million to US$4,400 in less than a decade as techniques have improved.

The project is expected to yield invaluable information in areas such as animal physiology, adaptation and conservation.

'It will help all aspects of biology. Just like the human genome revolutionised medicine, this is going to revolutionise biology.'

He has set his sights on creatures like the primitive bichir, whose lineage gave rise to all fishes. Other candidates include the largest bony fish - the simple mola mola, a giant silver disc which is basically brains, stomach and gonads; and fish with extreme adaptive features such as the seahorse, which mates for life, with the male bearing young.

To collect such samples, his travels have taken him to the seas off South Africa, Japan and Tasmania, for example. And just like any other angler, he wakes up at 5am to set off with fishermen, only to sometimes spend days shivering in freezing weather and coming up empty.

When his net is full however, he needs to act fast before the fish DNA degrades. Hence, the trained zoologist also has to have some of the talents of a sashimi chef. He generally sets up shop the moment the boat reaches shore, skilfully carving out slices of liver, heart and other organs, as well as drawing blood. The specimens are immediately dipped by chopstick into liquid nitrogen in a flask to preserve them.

Lucky catches, as well as tissue donated by museums, researchers and aquariums have added up to several hundred precious DNA samples in his freezers, carefully frozen at minus 80 deg C.

Another surprising treasure trove has proven to be fish shops here, which have yielded rare species such as the air-breathing lungfish and the salamander.

When contacted, the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority said the sale of such creatures was prohibited, and that shops could be fined and prosecuted if caught during its spot checks and inspections.

The animal-loving 56-year-old has even ventured beyond fish in his genomic adventures, saving a baby python caught at his institute, and releasing it at Bukit Timah Nature Reserve after drawing some blood for sequencing.

Formerly a fisheries development officer in India, he came to Singapore in 1987 as a zoology research scholar and joined the IMCB four years later.

He and his wife Mangala, 49, a housewife, are originally from Bangalore, although both are now Singapore permanent residents.

His love of science has also been inherited by his only child, a Singapore citizen. Daughter Aparna Venkatesh, 24, won a scholarship to the University of Milan in Italy to do her PhD in immunology, he let on proudly.

Recounting one hair-raising experience in his 18-year career at IMCB, he said he had been collecting pufferfish in Japan when he was bitten. The fish is notorious for its poisonous organs and skin which are lethal if ingested.

'I panicked and tried to tell the fisherman, who spoke no English,' he said.

'Finally he understood and gestured that the toxin is not in the teeth. Nonetheless, I felt a tingling sensation on my finger where I was bitten.'

But it's not once bitten twice shy for the professor, who is currently on an expedition in Hokkaido, Japan.

He is there to search for the hagfish - a primitive slime-producing creature with an eel-like body which has four hearts and two brains.

$69m project to decode 10,000 species
Straits Times 21 Nov 09;

THE Genome 10K project is a massive international effort which aims to sequence the genomes of 10,000 vertebrate species - one in six of all known creatures with backbones. The US$50 million (S$69 million) project has roped in 68 scientists and is split into six groups - mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and policy decisions.

Capturing the genetic diversity will create an unprecedented resource for the life sciences and for worldwide conservation efforts, say researchers. The results will be freely available to researchers.

Genome 10K aims to compare the vast database from the upcoming genetic zoo with that of humans. This will help in the understanding of human diseases and allow species' evolutionary history to be reconstructed.

Read more!

Biodiversity loss is Earth's 'immense and hidden' tragedy, Darwin's 'natural heir' warns

Problem of biodiversity loss has been 'eased off centre stage' by focus on climate change, according to Prof Edward Wilson, the ecologist described as 'Darwin's natural heir'
James Randerson, guardian.co.uk 20 Nov 09;

The diversity of life on Earth is undergoing an "immense and hidden" tragedy that requires the scale of global response now being deployed to tackle climate change, according to one of the world's most eminent biologists.

Prof Edward Wilson, an ecologist who has been described as "Darwin's natural heir" and hailed by novelist Ian McEwan as an "intellectual hero" and "inspirational" writer, told the Guardian that the threat was so grave he is pushing for the creation of an international body of experts modelled on the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The IPCC, which is credited with convincing world leaders that the threat from climate change is real, includes about 2,500 scientific expert reviewers from more than 130 countries and was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2007 along with Al Gore. Wilson's proposed organisation – which he names the Barometer of Life – would report to governments on the threats posed to species around the world.

Wilson said the problem of biodiversity loss had been "eased off centre stage" because of the focus on climate change.

"We don't hear as much public concern, protestation and plans by political leaders to save the living environment. It doesn't get anything like the attention the physical environment has," he said.

Since the beginning of the last century, 183 species are known to have become extinct, including the Tasmanian tiger, the Caribbean monk seal and the toolache wallaby. But this number is a gross underestimate of the true number of extinctions, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature species programme.

Wilson was speaking ahead of the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species on Tuesday. The 80-year-old scientist will deliver a lecture via video link to an audience at London's Royal Institution on Darwin's legacy and "the future of biology".

The extent of scientific ignorance about the diversity of life on Earth is vast. Scientists have catalogued about 1.9 m species, but estimate there are about 20m-30m in total (excluding microbes).

Wilson said the scale of the mass extinction now under way was even harder to comprehend.

At the start of the Neolithic period – about 9500BC – scientists estimate that species were becoming extinct at a rate of 20-30 per year. Since the population explosion of modern humans, that is estimated to have increased to 20,000-30,000. Most have never been documented by scientists. And in a couple of decades, Wilson reckons this will have increased to 200,000-300,000. Wilson's proposed international initiative, which he has developed with Simon Stuart, the chairman of the Species Survival Commission, would document this species loss and work out how to tackle it.

"Darwin would be simply appalled by what humanity had done to the richness and diversity of natural life," said Randal Keynes, one of Darwin's great-great-grandsons, who is helping to coordinate the 150th anniversary with the British Council. "He would be in the lead of campaigning on the preservation of biodiversity."

Some of the species that played a central role in the formulation of Darwin's theoryof evolution by natural selection are now either extinct or severely threatened. The Floreana mockingbird, that lives on the island of the same name in the Galapagos, was one of a handful of related species that first gave Darwin the idea that species could change (it is a myth that finches were the crucial group).

Reflecting on the similarities and differences between mockingbirds on different islands and on the mainland, Darwin gave the first vague hint of his later theory in his notes on the Beagle voyage that "such facts would undermine the stability of species".

Today, the Floreana mockingbird is classed as "critically endangered" and exists in two populations numbering 200 and 49. The giant tortoise that Darwin encountered on the same island – Geochelone elephantopus – was driven extinct by hungry whalers who enjoyed eating its meat in soup.

Wilson said conservation efforts around the world were far from adequate. "Right now we are just piddling around with efforts here and there, some of them strong and dedicated, the aggregate of which is not even close to what we need.""The benefits for humanity [of a concerted international effort on biodiversity] would be enormous ... the discovery of the rest of life on Earth and fuller evaluation of it is going to result in all sorts of very valuable knowledge," said Wilson, pointing at new crops, products and biotechnology advances.

A year of celebration of Darwin's achievements (and his 200th birthday) is drawing to a close and will segue neatly into the International Year of Biodiversity in 2010.

"The public recognition of the importance of biodiversity as an issue is very poor, very low," said Kenyes, "I think Darwin would want everyone to pick up that agenda and give it all the support they can."

Read more!

Bali nature conservation agency confiscates illegal pangolins

Ni Komang Erviani, The Jakarta Post 20 Nov 09;

The Bali Nature Conservation Agency seized 15 pangolins at an abandoned warehouse in Abian Tuwung, Tabanan, about 30 kilometers north of Denpasar, Bali.

The agency is also holding the owner of the warehouse, Ketut Dharma, for illegally planning to distribute the protected animals to the black market.

“We obtained information from his neighbors about his involvement in the black market.

“We cased the warehouse for about a week before we found the animals located inside,” agency chief Istanto said Wednesday.

Pangolins have an armored appearance with hard scales made of keratin.

They also have a protective strategy of curling up into a ball when disturbed.

Their appearance resembles more a reptile than a mammal.

Commonly known as the “scaly anteater”, they have powerful, curved and blunted claws for digging into and tearing open ant and termite nests.

Pangolins are toothless, but have long, sticky tongues to capture their prey.

Their natural habitats are in the tropical forests of Indonesia, Malaysia and Indochina.

“The pangolin is not categorized as an endangered species,” Istanto said.

“But the mammal is strictly protected. There is the danger of extinction and it is under the threat of illegal poachers.”

Pangolins are reportedly one of the most sought-after animals in many black markets in Asian countries.

People believe that the pangolin’s meat and scales prevent aging. People also consume pangolin meat as it is considered an aphrodisiac.

In some Indonesian, Malaysian, Thailand and Hong Kong black markets, pangolin meat can reportedly fetch up to Rp 1 million (US$112) per kilogram.

In numerous restaurants in Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and China, pangolin meat costs about $210 per kilogram.

Pangolin scales are sold at Rp 9,000 ($1) per piece.

The scales of pangolins are used as raw material for crystal methamphetamine.

The high value of pangolin meat and scales has allegedly prompted people to illegally take the animals from their natural habitats.

People across Indonesia hunt the animals and ship them to domestic and foreign black markets.
In Indonesia, Palembang in South Sumatra is known as a pangolin black market center.

Istanto said Ketut Dharma might only be one of many illegal animal poachers.

Poachers are said to have both nationwide and international networks.

Istanto also said the agency might find other people who were believed to have links with Dharma.

Illegal sales and pangolin trafficking is against the 1990 Animal Conservation Law in Indonesia.

Dharma may face five years in jail and a Rp 100 million fine for allegedly breaking this law.

In addition to confiscating the pangolins, the agency also seized two protected cockatoos belonging to an expatriate residing in Tibubiyu, Kerambitan, in Tabanan.

Read more!

Policeman dies as devastating deluge strikes Britain

Four bridges collapse, main roads are blocked and hundreds are evacuated as 12 inches of rain falls in Cumbria in 24 hours
Helen Carter, guardian.co.uk 20 Nov 09;

A policeman swept away and killed during the devastating flooding that hit north-west England was trying to save lives by directing motorists off a bridge across a swollen river.

PC Bill Barker, who would have been 45tomorrow , was praised by the prime minister, Gordon Brown, as a "very heroic, very brave man" who had given his life saving others after Cumbria was struck by what the Environment Agency described as "unprecedented" rainfall.

Severe flooding in the county was driven by a combination of heavy rain, saturated ground and swollen rivers.

Hundreds were evacuated from their homes, four bridges collapsed and main roads were blocked after 314mm (12.4in) of rain fell in 24 hours – a record for England.

Flooding was also reported in north-west Wales and Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland, but Cumbria was hardest hit.

Workington MP Tony Cunningham said the flood was "of biblical proportions" and he was astonished by the destruction of the Northside bridge, which led to PC Barker's death.

"The force of the river was absolutely incredible. This is a stone bridge. To wash away a bridge of that size and dimension is incredible."

Fifty people were evacuated by RAF helicopters from Cockermouth, where the river Cocker joins the Derwent, after flooding cut off the town centre.

Police said PC Barker, a father of four, had gone out on foot to direct motorists off the Northside bridge, which crosses the Derwent in Workington, when it gave way and swept him into the water at 4.40am .

Jerry Graham, the assistant chief constable of the Cumbria constabulary said: "Members of the public were trying to cross the bridge, it was obvious they were going to put themselves in danger.

"So PC Barker went out on to the bridge on foot to try and protect them. Unfortunately when they were on the bridge, it gave way just due to the volume of water and PC Barker went into the water and was swept away."

One local claimed PC Barker had gone to the aid of a driver who had got stuck on the stone bridge as it collapsed, but this was not confirmed by police.

Robin Taylor, 50, a maintenance engineer from Workington, said: "I was told the police officer had responded to an emergency call and gone to the bridge to help a car that had become stuck and, as he was leading them away, the pavement side of the bridge collapsed first and he was gone. It is really sad, I thought it was absolutely shocking.

His body, still in uniform, was found washed up on a beach .

His widow, Hazel, described him as her best friend and an "amazing dad". She said: "I have the comfort of knowing that Bill died doing the job he loved, and the fact that he was helping others is just typical Bill."

Evacuated residents spent last night in emergency reception centres across Cumbria. Red Cross worker Ian Rideout said many of those rescued in Cockermouth were suffering from shock.

He said: "The centre of Cockermouth looks like it has been completely destroyed – I've never seen anything like it. The water has caused so much damage that many of the homes here are completely ruined.

"We've been working non-stop and between the Red Cross and RNLI we've rescued in the region of 200 people from their homes. Last night, I went up in one of the helicopters to get an idea of the full scale of the disaster and where we should focus rescue efforts. Almost straight away we found four people on the roof of their home who needed to be winched to safety.

"Most of the people we've rescued have been in shock. One minute it's raining heavily, then the next their home is filling with water and they're being evacuated by the Red Cross."

Water was feared to have seeped into the cellar at Wordsworth House in Cockermouth, the poet's birthplace, potentially damaging valuable archives.

The death of PC Barker highlighted the dangers for rescue workers. RNLI lifeboat operations manager, Brian Ashbridge, said a "massive current" sweeping down the Derwent made conditions challenging for crews searching the river basin.

"It's absolutely horrendous. There is a huge amount of debris around in the water at the moment as well, which adds to the difficulties."

The environment secretary, Hilary Benn, who was in Cockermouth to assess the flooding, said defences built after the 2005 floods that were designed to withstand a "one-in-100-years flood" were unable to cope with the volume of water.

Benn said: "What we dealt with last night was probably more like one-in-1,000 so even the very best defences, if you have such quantities of rain in such a short space of time, can be overtopped."

The heavy rainfall was caused by a slow-moving front of air which rolled in from the Atlantic, according to the Met Office.

A spokesman said: "It was warm air coming from the Azores, so being warm it had the potential to hold a lot of water. When it hit land it was forced to rise and then cool, to produce the heavy rain."

Experts warned of a funding shortfall that could thwart official plans to prevent future floods. Nick Reeves, executive director of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, said he welcomed the flood and water management bill, announced in the Queen's speech on Wednesday, which gives local authorities responsibility for surface water flooding for the first time and puts the Environment Agency in overall charge of flooding.

But he said: "Our concern at the moment is that most local authorities don't have the additional resources needed to tackle this at local level. The bill doesn't guarantee any additional cash. In six months we are going to have a general election and this government hasn't committed to additional funding.

"Lessons should be learned from the 1997 floods. We know that climate change will bring warmer and wetter winters so we need to plan now."

The flood bill is the government's response to Sir Michael Pitt's report into the 1997 floods.

Stormy outlook

Cumbria was due a brief respite from the heavy rain last night and early this morning, but experts predicted further rain and unsettled weather into the start of next week. A Met Office spokesman said: "There will be more rain from mid to late morning, clearing in the late afternoon. We are expecting about 15-40mm, which is normal for Cumbria. The outlook is unsettled and the rain won't help the clear-up but I would expect river levels to subside over the next two to three days."

It will be very windy on Sunday, with gales or severe gales in west Cumbria, which could cause structural damage, he said. "There will be blustery showers and we could see that for the next week but no prolonged period of rain like we saw on Wednesday and Thursday." Wet and windy conditions were expected over most of the UK today, starting in the south and moving east and west to cover all areas.

Karen McVeigh

Cumbria floods: history of recent storms
The floods which have hit Cumbria following record amounts of rainfall are the latest in a series of severe flooding events to hit Britain in recent years.
The Telegraph 20 Nov 09;

* In August 2004, heavy rain caused two rivers to burst their banks, leading to flash flooding in the village of Boscastle, on the coast of north Cornwall.

Some 150 people had to be airlifted to safety by rescue helicopters and millions of pounds of damage was done to the picturesque village, which lies in a deep coomb where two valleys meet. Miraculously nobody was killed.

* In January 2005, more than 1,000 houses and businesses in Carlisle in Cumbria were swamped by water when the city suffered its worst floods since the 1820s.

Thousands abandoned their homes and a power cut plunged Carlisle into darkness after the county was battered by heavy rain and winds gusting at up to 90mph. Three people died in the floods.

* In June 2007, weeks of rain were topped off by a deluge that hit Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Wales and saw flooding in towns and cities including Sheffield, Doncaster and Hull.

Rivers burst their banks, surface water caused flash flooding and the Ulley Dam in south Yorkshire threatened to breach, with potentially devastating consequences.

* In July 2007, more torrential rain swept across the country, causing further flooding, this time centred on the Midlands and the West Country.

Thousands of people in the region were left without power or water as critical infrastructure was hit. Among the worst-hit towns were Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire and Upton upon Severn in Worcestershire.

The floods of summer 2007 were linked with 13 deaths, affected 48,461 homes, 6,896 businesses and around 850 schools and prompted a high-level review of how the country deals with flooding.

Cumbria floods: there's more where that came from
The flooding in Cumbria is part of a pattern of weather which shows that global warming is occurring faster than anyone expected, says Geoffrey Lean.
Geoffrey Lean, The Telegraph 20 Nov 09;

Comments 85 | Comment on this article

It seems unfair, if you are already officially the wettest place in Britain, to be dowsed with the most rainfall ever to fall over 24 hours. But that's what has just happened to the hamlet of Seathwaite, in Cumbria's Borrowdale, where, incredibly, over a foot of water bucketed down between 9pm on Wednesday and the same time on Thursday.

If it's any consolation, it may have to give up the distinction before long. For such torrential downpours are happening more and more often in Britain as global warming takes hold. Research at Newcastle University has established that rainstorms have got twice as intense over the last 40 years, while the Environment Agency predicts that days of heavy rainfall will become three to four times more common over the next decades, increasing flooding tenfold.

Three factors cause heavier storms as the climate heats up. As it gets hotter, more energy is injected into the climate. There is a sharper contrast between land and the sea (which warms more slowly), causing stronger winds and greater instability. And as the seas do heat, more water evaporates from them – and comes down as heavier rain.

But experts are surprised it is happening so soon. The Newcastle team said that predictions of the effects of climate change had suggested it would not reach this stage until the end of the century – one more piece of evidence that global warming is occurring faster than anyone expected.

Read more!

'Catastrophic' warning as fires flare in Australia

Amy Coopes Yahoo News 20 Nov 09;

SYDNEY (AFP) – Australian firefighters battled dozens of bush blazes on Friday as record-breaking hot weather sparked "catastrophic" warnings in two states, just months after the country's worst ever wildfire disaster.

Major lightning storms set off about 100 blazes in South Australia alone, most of which had since burned out, according to the state's Country Fire Service.

Emergency crews also battled scores of fires in the most populous state of New South Wales, some on the outskirts of Sydney, the Rural Fire Service (RFS) said.

More than a quarter of the state was considered at catastrophic risk and lightning strikes set two homes in the city ablaze.

"We have seen more than 80 fires across New South Wales today," said RFS commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons.

"The biggest challenge today and into the weekend is the continuing of this hot air mass dominating much of the state," he added.

Hundred-year records tumbled this week as the south and southeast of Australia sweltered through a heatwave which dried out vast tracts of bush and farmland already in the grip of a decade-long drought.

Flights were delayed due to the unseasonable heat, thunderstorms, strong winds and the effects of smoke on visibility, air traffic officials said.

The first "catastrophic" or "Code Red" warnings -- a new category introduced after February's deadly Black Saturday fires -- were declared in parts of the two states, under which residents are strongly advised to flee their homes.

Code Red conditions are considered on a par with those experienced ahead of Black Saturday, Australia's worst disaster of modern times which killed 173 in the state of Victoria and razed more than 2,000 homes.

"Homes are not designed and planned to withstand conditions typically with this sort of rating," said Fitzsimmons.

"The very hot temperatures we've seen across New South Wales right throughout this last week are simply breaking hundred-year records," he added.

Residents cannot be forcibly evacuated but are strongly advised to leave their property on a Code Red day, which signifies a high risk of death or injury and destruction.

More fires spread across rural parts of Victoria state and have consumed more than 200 hectares (more than 490 acres) of bushland.

Australia is facing its worst fire danger in four years, with hotter and windier conditions and earlier than normal outbreaks forecast, according to government analysis published Friday.

"What we saw on (Black Saturday) was an extraordinary day from a weather point of view. We are starting to see those sort of days more frequently," said fire expert Kevin Tolhurst.

Read more!

El Nino intensifies Latin America drought

Yahoo News 20 Nov 09;

MONTEVIDEO (AFP) – From a devastating food crisis in Guatemala to water cuts in Venezuela, El Nino has compounded drought damage across Latin America this year.

The occasional seasonal warming of central and eastern Pacific waters upsets normal weather patterns across the globe and occurs on average every two to five years.

Typically lasting around 12 months, El Nino reappeared once again in June.

Guatemalan authorities blamed it for the nation's worst drought in 30 years, which has left almost 500 people dead from hunger since the start of the year.

Around 36,000 hectares (90,000 acres) of corn and bean crops were lost, officials said.

"El Nino prolonged the period of drought, which provoked a reduction... in agricultural production, affecting around 2.5 million people," said Elisabeth Byrsla, spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Further south, Ecuador saw its worst drought in 40 years, officials said.

The government declared a 60-day state of emergency in the hydro-electric sector after water levels sunk in power station reservoirs.

Ice cream sellers in the capital Quito were among those hit as their produce melted during daily five-hour power cuts linked to an energy crisis set off by the drought.

To the east, Venezuela's water supplies dropped 25 percent below the population's needs, forcing restrictions -- including cuts of 48 hours per week -- until May, when the rainy season is forecast to return.

President Hugo Chavez asked Venezuelans to take three-minute showers and carry a torch, instead of switching on a light, during nighttime visits to the bathroom.

The drought has affected between 70 and 80 percent of key crops, including maize and rice in the heart of Venezuela's cereal production, according to Vicente Figuera, head of the Guarico Association of Cereal Producers and Cattle Breeders.

In Bolivia, at least 11,000 head of cattle died in recent weeks after some 20,000 hectares of crops, including maize and potatoes, were destroyed in the south, authorities said.

Farmers in Bolivia complained of going eight months without rain.

Water levels in Titicaca, the world's highest navigable lake, fell by 4.5 meters (five yards), according to Hernan Tuco, deputy civil defense minister.

Authorities dispatched massive water trucks in the worst hit provinces of the Andean nation.

Elsewhere, some 6,000 families were affected by the drought in the Chaco region of Paraguay, particularly indigenous populations, authorities said.

In neighboring Argentina, fires lasting several weeks burned through some 70,000 hectares of land during the worst drought in 50 years, according to officials in the central and northern Cordoba and Catamarca regions.

El Nino also contributed to an especially calm Atlantic hurricane season -- a welcome respite for Caribbean and southeastern US residents still recovering from a 2008 pounding.

Read more!

SIA chief warns of 'green tax' risk to travel

Aviation industry not out of the woods yet
Karamjit Kaur, Straits Times 21 Nov 09;

TRAVELLERS from Singapore to London will have to pay as much as £100 (S$229) more per round trip compared to someone flying a shorter distance if Britain increases its departure tax next year as planned.

The charge, which currently ranges from £11 to £110, is set based on class of travel and distance flown, with premium long-haul passengers paying the highest.

Such a system is 'clearly unfair and discriminatory' against long-haul travellers, said Singapore Airlines' chief executive officer Chew Choon Seng at the annual meeting of the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA), held at the Conrad Centennial Singapore yesterday.

Urging the 17 member carriers to unite against such injustice, he said: 'We should not acquiesce meekly...Let us support the AAPA in shouting loudly, if not impolitely, against rule-making that discriminates.'

The British tax is touted as a green initiative, designed to reduce the aviation industry's greenhouse gas emissions by deterring travel.

Several other countries, including Australia, are considering introducing similar charges.

Departure and other taxes imposed by governments already make up about 15 per cent of the average ticket price, said the AAPA.

And there are new waves of taxation in the pipeline, often deceptively packaged as green initiatives, said the association.

One which has got the industry up in arms is the European Union's plan to include the aviation industry in its emission trading scheme in 2012.

Again a distance-based scheme that penalises long-haul travellers, all carriers that fly to Europe will have to keep to a stipulated amount of carbon emissions based on a set schedule, or pay extra.

Conference delegates are arguing that a global approach led by the United Nations' International Civil Aviation Organisation (Icao) over piecemeal measures is needed if environmental issues are to be tackled effectively.

With the next international conference on climate change taking place in Copenhagen, Denmark, next month, the AAPA urged governments to resolve the differences that exist between developed and developing nations, to overcome political obstacles, and to accelerate their decision-making processes within Icao.

The European Union is prepared to accept a global solution too if there is one, said Mr Olivier Onidi, the body's head of unit for air transport, who also attended the meeting.

Apart from green issues, airline representatives also discussed other challenges facing the industry.

While the current business downturn seems to have bottomed out, with demand for air travel returning and airlines filling more seats, yields are still down more than 20 per cent compared to a year earlier.

Last month, Asian carriers carried 11.1 million international passengers, a slight improvement over the previous month but still 3 per cent below levels seen a year ago.

On yields picking up, Cathay Pacific expects a long and slow recovery, said its chief executive officer, Mr Tony Tyler.

'It is very unlikely things will be as good as they were in 2007 for some time to come.' Then, the airline enjoyed profits of HK$7 billion (S$1.2 billion).

But while there is recovery, the question is whether it will be a sustained resumption of growth or a false dawn, said Mr Chew.

Other issues on his mind: Will the global economy continue to mend as the first wave of government stimulus packages runs out? Will oil and fuel prices continue to rise? Will the H1N1 flu virus disrupt travel plans over winter?

According to AAPA director-general Andrew Herdman, airlines will continue to face an 'extremely challenging operating environment'.

'AAPA leaders have to steer a difficult course over the next year, both tightly managing costs and closely monitoring what may well be a fragile economic recovery,' he said. 'It will take time to nurse battered balance sheets back to full health.'

Read more!

Curbs to ship pollution would stoke global warming, study says

Alister Doyle, Reuters 20 Nov 09;

OSLO (Reuters) - Shipping is slowing climate change by spewing out sunlight-dimming pollution but a clean-up needed to safeguard human health will stoke global warming, experts said Friday.

"So far shipping has caused a cooling effect that has slowed down global warming," Jan Fuglestvedt, of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research Oslo (CICERO), told Reuters.

"After some decades the net climate effect of shipping will shift from cooling to warming" because of cleaner fuels, he and colleagues in Germany, Britain and Norway wrote in this week's edition of the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

Toxic sulphur dioxide emitted by burning bunker fuel accounted for the deaths of an estimated 60,000 people worldwide in 2001 through cancer and heart and lung disease, according to a previous study. A clean-up would save thousands of lives.

But sulphur pollution from the fast-growing shipping industry also helps create clouds by providing tiny seeds around which droplets form. Clouds have a cooling effect since sunlight bounces off their white tops.

The scientists argued against deliberate use of pollution from ships as part of possible schemes to shield the planet from sunlight, saying it was too risky and outweighed by the impact on human health.

CLIMATE COOLING

"The available evidence suggests that 'climate cooling' by continued shipping emissions of sulphur dioxide would not be advisable," they wrote.

A clean-up of sulphur from ships will have a "double warming" effect -- there will be more sunlight with less pollution and there will be ever more carbon dioxide, the non-toxic greenhouse gas emitted by burning fuel.

Shipping accounts for about 3.3 percent of world carbon dioxide emissions from human sources, emissions the U.N. Climate Panel says will cause more droughts, floods, heatwaves, rising sea levels and disease.

Some scientists, such as Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen, have suggested dumping sulphur in the upper atmosphere to slow global warming, one of several proposals for deliberate "geoengineering" to alter the climate system.

A U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen next month will consider new measures to penalize carbon dioxide emissions by both international shipping and aviation -- both are outside the existing Kyoto Protocol for slowing emissions until 2012.

Fuglestvedt's study estimated that it would take roughly 70 years for shipping to become a net contributor to global warming if sulphur dioxide emissions were quickly cut by 90 percent and all other fuel-related emissions stayed at 2000 levels.

The International Maritime Organization is seeking cuts in the sulphur content of bunker fuel to a maximum of 3.5 percent by 2012 and then to 0.5 percent by 2020.

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Hacked E-Mails Fuel Climate Change Skeptics

Andrew C. Revkin, The New York Times 20 Nov 09;

Hundreds of private e-mails and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.

The e-mails, attributed to prominent American and British climate researchers, include discussions of scientific data and whether it should be released, exchanges about how best to combat the arguments of skeptics, and casual comments — in some cases derisive — about specific people known for their skeptical views. Drafts of scientific papers and a photo collage that portrays climate skeptics on an ice floe were also among the hacked data, some of which dates back 13 years.

In one e-mail exchange, a scientist writes of using a statistical “trick” in a chart illustrating a recent sharp warming trend. In another, a scientist refers to climate skeptics as “idiots.”

Some skeptics asserted Friday that the correspondence revealed an effort to withhold scientific information. “This is not a smoking gun, this is a mushroom cloud,” said Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist who has long faulted evidence pointing to human-driven warming and is criticized in the documents.

Portions of the correspondence portrays the scientists as feeling under siege by the skeptics’ camp and worried that any stray comment or data glitch could be turned against them.

The cache of e-mails also includes references to journalists, including this reporter, and queries from journalists related to articles they were reporting.

Officials at the University of East Anglia confirmed in a statement on Friday that files had been stolen from a university server and that the police had been brought in to investigate the breach. They added, however, that they could not confirm that all the material circulating on the Internet was authentic.

But several scientists and others contacted by the Times confirmed that they were the authors or recipients of specific e-mails included in the file.

The revelations are bound to inflame the public debate as hundreds of negotiators prepare to hammer out an international climate accord at meetings in Copenhagen next month, and at least one scientist speculated that the timing was not coincidental.

The documents will undoubtedly raise questions about the quality of research on some specific questions and the actions of some scientists. But the evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so broad and deep that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument.

In several e-mail exchanges, Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and other scientists discussed whether a string of recent years of relatively stable temperatures undermined scientific models that predict long-term warming.

“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t,” Dr. Trenberth wrote.

Other scientists went on to rebut him, saying that the fluctuations were not inconsistent with a continuing warming trend.

Dr. Trenberth said Friday that he was appalled at the release of the e-mails, which he said were private discussions.

But he added that he thought the revelations might backfire against climate skeptics. If anything, he said, he thought that the messages showed “the integrity of scientists.”

Still, some of the comments might lend themselves to sinister interpretations.

In a 1999 e-mail exchange about charts showing climate patterns over the last two millennia, Phil Jones, a longtime climate researcher at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, said he had used a “trick” employed by another scientist, Michael Mann, to “hide a decline” in temperatures.

Dr. Mann, a professor at Pennsylvania State, confirmed in an interview that the e-mail was real but said the choice of words was poor. The term “trick” referred to a technical adjustment that was standard procedure and did not affect the results, he said.

“It sounds incriminating, but when you look at what you’re talking about, there’s nothing there,” Dr. Mann said.

Dr. Jones, writing in an e-mail, declined to be interviewed and pasted in the university’s statement.

Stephen McIntyre, a blogger who has for years been using his Web site, climateaudit.org, to challenge data used to chart climate patterns and came in for heated criticism in some e-mails, called the revelations “quite breathtaking.”

But several scientists whose names appear repeatedly in the e-mails said they merely revealed that scientists are human beings, and did nothing to undercut the body of research on global warming.

“Science doesn’t work because we’re all nice,” said Gavin A. Schmidt, a climatologist at NASA whose e-mail exchanges with colleagues over a variety of recent climate studies were included in the cache. “Newton may have been an ass, but the theory of gravity still works.”

He said the breach at the University of East Anglia was discovered after hackers who had gained access to the correspondence sought Tuesday to hack into a different server supporting realclimate.org, a blog unrelated to NASA that he runs with several other scientists pressing the case for global warming.

The intruders sought to create a mock blog post there and to upload the full batch of files from Britain – nearly 200 megabytes’ worth.

That effort was thwarted, Dr. Schmidt said, and scientists immediately notified colleagues at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit. Nearly all the material in the hacked files, which quickly spread to a variety of servers, originated with or was sent to climate scientists at the school.

The first posts that revealed details from the files appeared on Thursday at The Air Vent, a Web site devoted to skeptics’ arguments. Almost instantly readers there and elsewhere began posting excerpts that they felt illustrated scientific bias or dishonesty.

At first, said Dr. Michaels, the climatologist who has faulted some of the science undergirding the global warming consensus, his instinct was to ignore the correspondence as “just the way scientists talk.”

But on Friday, he said, after reading more deeply, he felt that some exchanges reflected a concerted effort to block the release of data for independent review.

He said that some e-mails mused about a way to discredit him by challenging the veracity of his doctoral dissertation at the University of Wisconsin by claiming he knew his research was wrong.

“This shows these are people willing to bend rules and go after other people’s reputations in very serious ways,” he said.

Hackers leak e-mails, stoke climate debate
David Stringer, Associated Press Yahoo News 21 Nov 09;

LONDON – Computer hackers have broken into a server at a well-respected climate change research center in Britain and posted hundreds of private e-mails and documents online — stoking debate over whether some scientists have overstated the case for man-made climate change.

The University of East Anglia, in eastern England, said in a statement Saturday that the hackers had entered the server and stolen data at its Climatic Research Unit, a leading global research center on climate change. The university said police are investigating the theft of the information, but could not confirm if all the materials posted online are genuine.

More than a decade of correspondence between leading British and U.S. scientists is included in about 1,000 e-mails and 3,000 documents posted on Web sites following the security breach last week.

Some climate change skeptics and bloggers claim the information shows scientists have overstated the case for global warming, and allege the documents contain proof that some researchers have attempted to manipulate data.

The furor over the leaked data comes weeks before the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen, when 192 nations will seek to reach a binding treaty to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases worldwide. Many officials — including U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon — regard the prospects of a pact being sealed at the meeting as bleak.

In one leaked e-mail, the research center's director, Phil Jones, writes to colleagues about graphs showing climate statistics over the last millennium. He alludes to a technique used by a fellow scientist to "hide the decline" in recent global temperatures. Some evidence appears to show a halt in a rise of global temperatures from about 1960, but is contradicted by other evidence which appears to show a rise in temperatures is continuing.

Jones wrote that, in compiling new data, he had "just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline," according to a leaked e-mail, which the author confirmed was genuine.

One of the colleague referred to by Jones — Michael Mann, a professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University — did not immediately respond to requests for comment via telephone and e-mail.

The use of the word "trick" by Jones has been seized on by skeptics — who say his e-mail offers proof of collusion between scientists to distort evidence to support their assertion that human activity is influencing climate change.

"Words fail me," Stephen McIntyre — a blogger whose climateaudit.org Web site challenges popular thinking on climate change — wrote on the site following the leak of the messages.

However, Jones denied manipulating evidence and insisted his comment had been taken out of context. "The word 'trick' was used here colloquially, as in a clever thing to do. It is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward," he said in a statement Saturday.

Jones did not indicate who "Keith" was in his e-mail.

Two other American scientists named in leaked e-mails — Gavin Schmidt of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, and Kevin Trenberth, of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Colorado — did not immediately return requests for comment.

The University of East Anglica said that information published on the Internet had been selected deliberately to undermine "the strong consensus that human activity is affecting the world's climate in ways that are potentially dangerous."

"The selective publication of some stolen e-mails and other papers taken out of context is mischievous and cannot be considered a genuine attempt to engage with this issue in a responsible way," the university said in a statement.

___

Associated Press Writer Meera Selva in London contributed to this report

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Climate change survey says 83% in the UK willing to make sacrifices

Peter Woodman, Press Association, The Independent 20 Nov 09;

More than 80 per cent of people believe climate change is a serious threat and are willing to make sacrifices to combat it, a survey by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) showed today.

Just 17 per cent of the 1,000 people polled were not prepared to change their travel habits to tackle the climate change problem.

Of the rest, all thought that climate change was either a serious or very serious threat to the British way of life.

The poll found:

* 9 per cent were prepared to make significant changes to their travel habits, such as getting rid of their car altogether or cutting out air travel completely;

* 38 per cent were happy to make moderate changes, such as investing in a green car, starting a car-share scheme or limiting air travel;

* 36 per cent would make minimal changes, such as taking public transport or riding a bike more often.

The survey coincided with the release of the ICE's report, State of the Nation - Low Carbon Infrastructure, which explained why infrastructure, alongside behaviour change and political action is fundamental to creating a low-carbon society.

The report concluded that to meet ambitious carbon targets, new and existing transport, energy, waste and water networks needed to be adapted and developed to minimise emissions and highlighted the role this infrastructure had to play in changing individual and collective behaviours.

Among the short-term solutions identified in the report were rail electrification, which had the potential to reduce the carbon impact of the railways, onshore and offshore wind farms, an upgrade of the energy grid and combined heat and power plants.

ICE president Paul Jowitt said: "Delivering cuts in emissions on the scale needed and within the time restraints that exist will require radical changes in behaviour and society.

"However, public behaviour is restricted by the choices available to them. We need to transform the infrastructure that makes up the fabric of society and underpins economic activity so that the only choices we make are low carbon ones."

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