Aposematism in Butterflies
from Butterflies of Singapore
Eyes for you
from The annotated budak
Last Weekend of November @ MNT
from Beauty of Fauna and Flora in Nature
A snake and a barbet in a hole
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Songs and calls of the Tiger Shrike
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Sleeping next to activists in Copenhagen
from Reuters Environment blog
Straits Times 13 Dec 09;
Once a month, intrepid nature lover Ben Lee, 48, leads 10 to 25 volunteers to patrol nature areas such as Bukit Batok Nature Park and Pulau Ubin, and nature reserves like Bukit Timah.
Their quarry: poachers or illegal wild animal trappers.
Mr Ben Lee (above) pointing out waterbirds in the swamp to Terence Goh on a nature appreciation trip. He believes that many people would like to take ownership and do the right thing. -- ST FILE PHOTO
In 2000, Mr Lee founded the group, Nature Trekker Singapore, to provide a platform for nature conservation and appreciation.
He said: 'In 2000, I was at Khatib Bongsu when I saw people trapping birds and netting fishes without anyone stopping them.
'If nothing is done to stop such activities, the public may perceive them as legal, which is not right.'
Mr Lee leads patrols every month for three to four hours each time.
He said that Nature Trekkers Singapore now has more than 3,000 members, up from 2,968 in June last year.
One success story Mr Lee cited was his discovery of four to five big animal traps on Pulau Ubin over two years from 2005. It led to their removal.
He has seen the rise of similar citizen patrols since he started his group, with many small nature or environmental groups being formed.
He said: 'I believe that many people would like to take ownership and do what they feel is right instead of simply relying on the authorities.
'An individual can't do much but a non-profit organisation is better positioned to take action.'
Shuli Sudderuddin
Tracking down cat abusers
Shuli Sudderuddin, Straits Times 13 Dec 09;
News that yet another cat has been viciously killed by an animal abuser is always a call to action for Ms Pauline Tan.
The 36-year-old financial consultant, together with two like-minded friends, has taken to patrolling neighbourhoods where cat abuse cases have been reported.
They hand out fliers asking for help in looking for the culprit, who is typically someone from the area.
Four years ago, Ms Tan and her two friends started a group, Paw Pledge, to help catch and sterilise stray cats.
Around that time, they also noticed that cat abuse was on the rise.
They decided to take the initiative to start anti-cat abuse patrols, and to help the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals distribute fliers to create public awareness about such abuse.
The fliers cite actual incidents and sometimes offer a reward for information.
Each patrol lasts a few hours and takes place whenever abuse is reported.
Paw Pledge also catches, neuters and releases cats in the neighbourhoods.
Said Ms Tan: 'We started with the aim of raising funds for sterilisation, but the number of abuse cases seems to be rising rapidly.
'Cats cannot fight back when attacked, so we are fighting on their behalf.'
Added Paw Pledge member Fiona Yuen, 35, who works in sales: 'When abuse happens in a neighbourhood, we can't afford to have kittens running around any more as they may be next. So we get the cats in the area sterilised.'
Robin Chan, Straits Times 12 Dec 09;
"The Government had been aware of the project's environmental impact before it made its carbon emissions proposals"
SHELL'S multi-billion-dollar integrated petrochemicals complex came a step closer to realisation yesterday, with the official launch of a new chemical plant on Jurong Island.
The mono-ethylene glycol (MEG) plant is Shell's largest, with a production capacity of 750,000 tonnes a year.
It is also the first to use a more efficient process that converts ethylene to MEG in a more environmentally friendly way, consuming less steam and producing less carbon dioxide and by-products.
Trade and Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang told the opening ceremony: 'Against the backdrop of the Copenhagen summit, such environmentally friendly processes will increasingly become a necessity.'
The Government pledged last week to cut carbon emissions by 16 per cent from its 'business as usual' levels if a deal is reached in Copenhagen. This is despite Singapore contributing only 0.2 per cent of the world's global carbon emissions.
Shell Chemicals' vice-president for new business development and ventures, Mr Iain Lo, told a press conference that the Government had been aware of the project's environmental impact before it made its carbon emissions proposals.
'Specifically for this project, we have already done an environmental assessment study,' Mr Lo said. 'That has been provided to the Government, so it's quite apparent the impact this project has on total emissions in Singapore.'
Mr Lo said Shell had already reduced its own emissions levels to 30 per cent below its 1990 levels.
'A lot of programmes around reducing flaring, increasing energy efficiency, are things we are doing to reduce our own carbon footprint,' he said.
Plans for a second styrene monomer/propylene oxide (SMPO) plant also seem to be on hold for now.
Mr Lo said: 'The downturn has clearly affected the timing of investments. We'll have to wait for the investment outlook to improve before we make a decision.'
While declining to say at what capacity the MEG plant will be running, Mr Lo said Shell was comfortable that it has 'sufficient customers to lift the capacity of the plant'.
The chemical MEG is widely used in manufacturing - from making the polyester used in shirts, to plastic bottles.
It will be exported mainly within the region, where 70 per cent of the world's output is consumed and is growing at 6 per cent a year. Global demand last year was 18 million tonnes.
The MEG plant, which began operations last month, will pipe its own ethylene from nearby Pulau Bukom to Jurong Island upon completion of the Shell Eastern Petrochemicals Complex's (SEPC) main facility - an 800,000 tonne ethylene cracker plant on Bukom on track for a first quarter of next year completion.
The SEPC is Shell's largest investment in Asia and includes upgrading of Shell's Bukom refinery, as well as a new 155,000 tonnes a year butadiene plant on Bukom.
While Shell has declined to state the exact value of its investment in the SEPC beyond 'a few billion dollars', unofficial figures value it at US$3 billion (S$4.1 billion).
Shell has had a presence in Singapore for more than 120 years.
Shell opens new mono-ethylene glycol plant on Jurong Island
Rachel Kelly, Channel NewsAsia 11 Dec 09;
SINGAPORE : Petrochemical giant Royal Dutch Shell on Friday said it will operate its new mono-ethylene glycol (MEG) plant in Singapore at reduced rates, in line with weak demand for petrochemicals.
But it expects to ramp up capacity at the so-called "MEG plant" early next year, when remaining parts of the Shell Eastern Petrochemicals Complex come on stream.
Shell would not say how much the complex costs, but reports have estimated it could be several billion US dollars.
Demand for MEG in the region has been growing at around 6 per cent annually, along with increasing consumer spending.
Shell believes its new MEG plant, which is part of the Shell Eastern Petrochemicals Complex, will position it to meet that demand.
Most of the MEG produced in Singapore will be consumed in the Asia Pacific, which accounts for 70 per cent of global consumption.
Ben Van Beurden, executive vice president, Shell Chemicals, said: "Together, our investment here and in China reinforces Shell's strategy to selectively grow our chemicals business to meet the needs of our Asia-Pacific customers."
The annual MEG production capacity of the plant is 750,000 tonnes, which is enough to produce over two million tonnes of polyester - or the equivalent of 7 billion shirts.
Shell said the plant will be the first to implement its patented processing technology which boosts commercial yields of MEG from ethylene in more environmentally-friendly ways.
Shell estimates that the process uses 20 per cent less steam and produces 30 per cent less waste water compared with traditional thermal conversion MEG plant with the same capacity.
Officiating at the opening of the MEG plant, Trade and Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang said Singapore is committed to widening its lead as a global chemicals hub.
Mr Lim said: "Singapore is pressing ahead with investment in infrastructure to further enhance the integration of our energy and chemical industry ecosystem. We will enhance the robustness of operations on Jurong Island and optimise the use of precious resources such as energy, land and water."
Shell is among the largest foreign investors in Singapore. Its massive Shell Eastern Petrochemicals Complex includes the new MEG plant, a new Ethylene Cracker Complex, a butadiene plant, and modifications to the existing Pulau Bukom Refinery. - CNA/ms
Shell cautiously optimistic over $3b petrochem complex
Its ability to use feedstock from Bukom refinery makes it competitive
Ronnie Lim, Business Times 12 Dec 09;
SHELL Chemicals is 'cautiously optimistic' on market prospects for its new US$3 billion Singapore petrochemical complex that will be fully operating by the first quarter of next year, its London-based chief told BT yesterday.
While the Singapore project will run smack into a supply overhang, as new petrochemical complexes in the Middle East and China start up next year, global economies, especially China, are starting to recover, Shell executive vice-president Ben van Beurden told BT in an interview. 'There are plenty of signs for optimism. We can conclude that the worst is behind us.'
Shell is also confident that its new Shell Eastern Petrochemicals Complex (SEPC) here - its single biggest chemical investment and its biggest complex in this region - will be competitive given its ability to use cost-advantaged feedstock from Shell's Bukom refinery, with which it is highly-integrated.
This will give SEPC the flexibility to use different feedstock, from the heaviest and cheapest hydrowax to liquefied petroleum gas, as the economics shift.
SEPC will further strengthen Singapore's position as Shell's largest oil/petrochemicals manufacturing centre in the Asia-Pacific and 'underlines our intent to remain a leading petrochemical producer in this region', said Mr van Beurden.
He spoke to BT following the official opening of Shell's 750,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) mono-ethylene glycol (MEG) downstream plant on Jurong Island - an integral part of the SEPC investment.
Giving an indication of the MEG project's scale, he said that the plant can, for example, make sufficient intermediate feedstock to produce more than two million tpa of polyester - enough to make almost seven billion shirts. MEG also goes into making furnishings, polyethylene bottles, anti-freeze and coolants among other products.
'There's no market risk for MEG,' Shell Chemicals vice-president Iain Lo said at a press conference. Global MEG demand is expected to grow 1.5 per cent annually and 5.6 per cent in China in the coming five years, he said. Most of the MEG produced in Singapore is destined for the Asia-Pacific.
But the MEG plant will account for only about half the ethylene output from Shell's new 800,000 tpa cracker.
While Shell continues discussions with other downstream parties to make use of the remaining ethylene and propylene produced by the cracker, 'they are saying they need to wait a bit to see what happens (with markets)', Mr van Beurden said.
'Still, we are basically sold out for next year and are confident the plant will run at high utilisation,' he said, adding that some ethylene will go to local users, including returns to ExxonMobil under a swap deal, while some will be exported to north-east Asia next year and in 2011.
'But our objective is to keep the ethylene in Singapore (for other future downstream plants at SEPC) for the project's long-term robustness,' Mr van Beurden said.
Reflecting the still-uneven market recovery for various petrochemicals, Mr Lo said that the economic downturn has affected the timing of another planned investment by Shell - a potential US$500 million styrene monomer/propylene oxide (SMPO) plant that can use some of the feedstock from the SEPC cracker.
'Singapore remains a possibility for the project, but while there is some demand pick-up, we have to be confident about the outlook (for SMPO) first,' he said.
Some of the cracker's other product streams - such as isobutene and raffinate 1 - were also supposed to have been taken up by Germany's Lanxess for its planned synthetic rubber plant on Jurong Island, but that project has been delayed too.
'But this won't affect us immediately,' Mr van Beurden said, as alternative customers have been found. Lanxess last indicated that it will start building its 400 million euro (S$818.5 million) plant here around mid-2011 - a two-year delay.
Shell moves to start a chain reaction here
Its investments may attract new players; LPG terminal for Qatar gas possible
Ronnie Lim, Business Times 14 Dec 09;
(SINGAPORE) Shell Chemicals is looking at more value-added, downstream investments in Singapore which will be a catalyst for a significant, new 'high-purity chemicals corridor', and potentially attract more supporting players here, its London-based head said.
An example of a downstream investment is the production of high-purity ethylene oxide (or EO, used for making detergents and soaps).
Disclosing this in an interview, Ben van Beurden, its executive vice-president, also confirmed that Shell and its new Qatari partners in its earlier Petrochemical Corporation of Singapore joint venture, together with other parties here and the Singapore government, are looking at a possible LPG terminal here, to import the gas feedstock from Qatar, for the petrochemical industry here and the region.
'For Shell, Singapore is an absolute key, strategic site - which becomes ever more integrated and robust, and a platform to attract additional investments,' he told BT.
Mr van Beurden was here last Friday to officiate at the opening of the group's latest mono-ethylene glycol (MEG) plant - part of its new US$3 billion Singapore petrochemical complex, which will be fully operational by Q1 next year.
What Shell intends to do is to add value to this just-started MEG plant or an earlier ethylene glycols plant here. ' . . . we are studying the option of making higher-purity EO' at one of the plants, he said.
'There is a very clear market for high purity EO - which through ethoxylation, or putting EO on alcohols - is used for products like detergents or soaps. This is a very important region for doing this, because the alcohols come from palm-grown oil, so a lot of players are looking for high purity EO and facilities to do that.'
While he declined to give any investment numbers, he said that the overall payback will be significant. 'You are talking of very significant investment in this new cluster . . . because besides trade and employment etc, it attracts many small- and medium-sized industries as well.'
Furthermore, EO is also used to make polyols (a natural oil derived from vegetable oil and used to make polyurethanes), he added, and this ties in with the propylene oxide produced at its Seraya Chemicals plant here.
'We can also look at more things to do with the propylene oxide out of Seraya . . . So you see, once you have strong foundations, you find good reasons to add more things to it.'
Last month, state-owned Qatar Petroleum International (QPI) - with which Shell has a lot of dealings - took a half-share in Shell's stakes in Petrochemical Corporation of Singapore and The Polyolefin Company. BT later reported that this had to do with the possibility of Qatari liquefied petroleum gas being supplied to Singapore.
Confirming this, Mr van Beurden said that 'there have been a number of discussions with all parties concerned . . . Qatar, other market players here and the Singapore government on how it will make sense to bring in LPG from Qatar as a feedstock for the petrochemicals industry and it certainly looks extremely attractive for all parties concerned.'
'It is an extremely difficult thing to pull off . . . but we are all talking, and figuring how this should look like.
'We will need to aggregate demand from a number of players for it to have sufficient scale to make sense for an LPG import facility to be built and for it to be a very attractive and strategic outlet for the Qataris. But everybody is directionally in agreement that we should work on this,' he added.
While it is still early days, the Shell Chemicals chief added that such a terminal could potentially also service the wider Asian region, with Singapore becoming an important LPG hub.
Jessica Cheam, Straits Times 13 Dec 09;
Copenhagen: The principles behind making�a home�green are not rocket science. Turning off the power mains, using sustainable materials and furniture, installing energy-efficient applian-ces, and recycling as much as possible are but some fundamental rules to follow.
In the near future, however, green homes will be ultra-smart, enabling households to save as much as 30 per cent in energy bills, said Mr Martin Manniche, chairman and chief technology officer of Singapore-based GreenWave Reality.
In that future, smart software will determine exactly how much energy each household appliance is using and when an appliance is getting old and starts using more energy than usual.
A computerised home energy system will automatically charge appliances during off-peak periods, when energy is cheaper.
Such innovations and more were discussed during a forum last week at the Smart Green Home Symposium in Copenhagen.
The impact of a smart green home system on a country's reduction of emissions is profound, said Mr Manniche. Households contribute about 30 per cent to an average country's emissions.
And Singapore has caught on.�
Chairman of A*Star's Science and Engineering Research Council, Mr Charles Zukoski, told The Sunday Times that the agency is driving research into such technologies and working with companies such as GreenWave on commercialisation.
'The potential for energy saving is huge, and Singapore will be able to reduce its carbon footprint. A lot of policies have been put in place to pursue this,' said Mr Zukoski, who also spoke at the forum.
Trials of GreenWave's smart home systems are set to reach Singapore next June, under the the Energy Market Authority's multi
million-dollar test-bedding project to build Singapore's first smart grid.
GreenWave, which originated in Denmark, is a partner under the scheme, and Mr Manniche is optimistic of its success in Singapore.
'Singapore's strong IT and grid infrastructure makes it ideal to test this out, Singaporeans also love their gadgets and are tech-savvy, I think they will catch on,' he said.
Bhagyashree Garekar, Straits Times 13 Dec 09;
Washington - Al Gore likes to walk in with his daughter. The Clintons drop in now and then. 'We are waiting for the Obamas,' says Ms Nora Pouillon with the confidence that becomes the chef and proprietress of America's first and the capital's only true-blue organic restaurant.
As a conscientious guardian of that label, Ms Pouillon does daily what most restaurants do four times a year - change her menu. She is legally bound to feature what is seasonal, fresh and at hand. At this time of the year, root vegetables are plentiful, so turnips, parsnips and carrots are on her recycled paper menus. Asparagus, a spring vegetable, is banned from the kitchen for now. If it is the weekend, duck is on. Maybe scallops and crabs. Steaks and ribs are regulars.
In a year when the world is the closest it has ever come to a global pact on curbing climate change, the fervour for a low-carb - as in low-carbon - diet is growing. Restaurants that call themselves 'green' and offer eco-friendly menus are sought after and springing up to fill the gap. Under House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Green the Capitol project, the Congress cafeteria includes sustainable seafood and organic, locally grown produce. Served on compostable plates with cutlery to match.
Still, a truly green restaurant is the stuff of myths. Many claimants have but a limited range of sustainably produced offerings, and often what is advertised as 'green' has dubious credentials.
Restaurant Nora comes fairly close to the ideal. For starters, its organic�fruits, vegetables, meats, coffee, chocolate, salt and sugar all come from producers who�do not use synthetic fertilisers, pesticides, antibiotics or hormones which harm the environment.
Water flows from taps with filters, not ecologically unfriendly plastic bottles. Carpets are recycled. The paint on the walls is non-toxic; termite control is through approved organic chemicals. Dishes are washed in bio-degradable detergents. Waiters wear organic clothing, and the laundry is done on the premises for fear that outsourcing it may bring in uninvited showers of non-organic chemicals.
'Where I don't squeeze is electricity,' says Ms Pouillon. 'I have museum-quality antique Amish quilts on the walls, and we like to project that, so we don't do dim-wattage bulbs.'
To be greener, should she not eschew oranges from Florida or pay for their haulage in carbon offsets? And should she not feature only a little meat, for is that not more energy-intensive to produce than vegetables? She agrees, but adds that any portion of animal protein served in her restaurant comes with at least three vegetable portions.
And vegetarian choices are plentiful on the menu. A diner can, in other words, customise his degree of green. Ms Pouillon has been ahead of the game and is ready to meet him more than halfway.
'When I applied for certification 12 years ago, they had to invent the rules and the standards for certifying restaurants as organic. It took them two years to do that, and I got my label in 1999,' she says.
Since then, she has opened up her doors and books, year after year, to inspectors from Oregon Tilth, a non-profit�organic certifier in the United States. What that process�guarantees is that at least 95 per cent of all the food served is organic, with the US Department of Agriculture defining what constitutes organic produce. Those are stringent criteria to meet, and it is no wonder that hers is among just four or five certified organic restaurants in all of the US.
'It is difficult, the trouble I have to take to source my supplies, plan my menu,' she says.
Much less of a science is green certification of restaurants, which would mean it serves only what is locally and sustainably produced in order to minimise global warming-causing carbon emissions in the transport, storage, refrigeration and waste disposal processes involved. For now, there are no universal definitions, no industry or government standards for what makes a restaurant green.
And when it comes to it, is it only the food that has to be green for a restaurant to be so described? Must not the backend restaurant practices also be so? Is it reasonable to expect that a green restaurant is efficient in its use of energy, has eco-friendly waste disposal practices and packs food in biodegradable containers?
And how far is it the responsibility of the restaurant to verify how green its suppliers really are, given that there are no standard definitions of what constitutes green farming practices either?
Thus, for instance, when the menu says the produce was sourced from a family farm, it may conjure up the vision of a small, non-polluting farmstead. But by some definitions, family farms include multi-million-dollar businesses that are run off thousands of acres. They can be as polluting as factory farms that foul the air with methane and the water with poor waste management practices.
Animals could be mainly fed corn that�requires large amounts of fertiliser and pesticides, both of which are manufactured from fossil fuels. And eating corn increases cattle's methane emissions from flatulence because these animals did not evolve to subsist on it.
The reality, at least here and now, is that most restaurants that claim to be green are only somewhat so. But that is better than nothing.
Many Brevard cases involve younger sea cows
Jim Waymer, Florida Today 12 Dec 09;
A record 105 manatees died in Brevard County this year, almost twice as many as the next highest county and a quarter of the manatees to perish statewide.
Brevard has more habitat; therefore, more manatees tend to live and die here than in any other Florida county.
But biologists are worried about the high numbers that keep dying young. Along the Space Coast, almost half died within a year of birth.
Statewide, 413 sea cows have died this year, putting the species on pace to break the previous record of 417 deaths, set in 2006.
"It's virtually certain that's going to happen," said Pat Rose, executive director of Save the Manatee Club, an advocacy group based in Maitland. "I would love it if that did not happen."
Brevard's total surpassed the previous county record of 87 manatee deaths, also set in 2006, by 20 percent.
Thirteen died here because of cold snaps.
Boats killed six manatees, only 5 percent of the county's overall death toll, and 91 manatees statewide, or 22 percent.
But "perinatal" deaths topped the causes with 48 in Brevard, or 45 percent, and 114 statewide, about 28 percent.
Florida defines perinatal deaths as those that happen before the manatee grows to be 5 feet long -- typically, within a year of birth. The category can include deaths caused by complications with birth and disease.
Boaters against go-slow manatee zones attribute this year's high death toll to a growing manatee population. The record deaths came in the same year the state counted a record 3,802 manatees statewide. The boaters say slow zones do little to protect a species they see thriving.
Manatee conservationists chalk up the statewide deaths from boat strikes and record overall deaths as proof that the species is in peril.
Rose acknowledges that the record perinatal deaths in Brevard may be evidence of robust manatee numbers here.
"But it can't really explain the magnitude of that," he said. "I think it's a really bad year. You don't get these kind of spikes in perinatal deaths without something bad happening."
(2 of 2)
But state biologists don't know what that is. They, like Rose, say the high statewide perinatal deaths can't be explained by population growth alone.
The 101 perinatal deaths last year, however, represented an even higher portion of the overall deaths, almost 30 percent. A total of 337 manatees died statewide in 2008.
This year, the biggest portion of deaths deemed perinatal was in animals too decomposed to tell what killed them.
"It's really hard to say something really statistical about those perinatal deaths because they are really based on the size of the manatee, so it has a big mix of causes," said Martine DeWit, associate research scientist at the Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg.
This year's perinatal deaths in Brevard nearly tripled the previous 20-year average of about 17.
DeWit suspects that the increase may signify more manatees being born this year. But she stops short of declaring a "recovery."
"I wouldn't call it the species recovering. It could be that the population numbers are growing," she said. "That doesn't mean the population is recovering because there are so many threats to manatees."
Those include red tide, declining warm water springs and seagrass disappearance.
"The overall numbers are relatively high this year. And nothing is really jumping out. We didn't have a big red tide die-off this year," DeWit said. "But what was really obvious this year is that we had really strange cold weather peaks."
The state attributes 54 manatee deaths, about 13 percent, to cold stress in 2009, including 13 deaths in Brevard. That was the second highest on record in the county. The highest was 28 cold stress deaths in 1990.
(AFP) Google News 12 Dec 09;
HANOI — Southeast Asia and Japan have endorsed plans to reduce transport pollution, especially on the region's congested roads, according to documents released after a two-day meeting in Vietnam.
Transport ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) "agreed to implement measures to mitigate climate change especially in the land transport sector and promotion of energy efficiency and sustainable urban transport in ASEAN cities," they said in a joint statement.
Ministers ended the annual talks in Hanoi on Friday.
Southeast Asian cities are notoriously congested with motor vehicles. Jakarta and Ho Chi Minh City are among the region's major metropolises that lack urban rapid transit networks.
In a separate statement after talks with a senior Japanese transport official, the ministers said they had also endorsed an action plan for environmental improvement in the transport sector, to be implemented from 2010 to 2014.
It will provide a framework for the 10 members of ASEAN and Japan to systematically "realise low-carbon and low-pollution transport systems for achieving sustainable social and economic development."
Senior officials are to finalise ways of implementing the plan, the statement said.
Vietnam assumes the rotating chairmanship of ASEAN at the beginning of next year.
Ray Lilley, Associated Press Yahoo News 12 Dec 09;
WELLINGTON, New Zealand – Countries that manage Antarctica plan tough new controls on ships visiting the southern oceans and the fuels they use to reduce the threat of human and environmental disasters as tourist numbers rise, officials said Saturday.
The new code will reduce the number of ships carrying tourists into the region by requiring that all vessels have hulls strengthened to withstand sea ice. Officials and ship operators said a ban on heavy fuel oil will effectively shut out big cruise ships.
Experts from among the 47 signatory nations to the Antarctic Treaty — the world's main tool for managing the continent — and the International Maritime Organization discussed plans to impose a mandatory Polar Code to control all shipping in the region at a meeting in the New Zealand capital, Wellington.
The safeguards are seen as necessary to limit accidents in the region, where blinding sleet, fog, high winds and treacherous seas pose major dangers for ships and huge problems for rescuers located thousands of miles (kilometers) from remote Antarctic waters.
The code will cover vessel design, safety equipment, ship operations and crew training for ice navigation, meeting chairman and New Zealand Antarctic policy specialist Trevor Hughes said.
The nearly completed Polar Code is expected to be in place by 2013, he said. Once approved, it would operate on a voluntary basis until it is ratified by treaty states and becomes legally binding.
While existing rules bar tourists or tour operators from leaving anything behind — like garbage or human waste — and require protection of animal breeding grounds, there are no formal codes on the kind of vessels that can use the waters or the kinds of fuel and other oil products they can carry.
In March, the International Maritime Organization, the United Nations' shipping agency, is to ratify a ban on the carriage or use of heavy fuel oil in Antarctica. It is to come into effect in 2011.
The moves follow a huge growth in tourist traffic as people flock to see the world's last great wilderness.
Annual tourist numbers have grown from about 10,000 a decade ago to 45,000 last year. Tourists can pay between $3,000 and $24,000 for a two-week trip. Some travel on ships carrying up to 3,000 passengers that also take many tons of heavy fuel oil, chemicals and garbage that can pollute the region.
Nathan Russ, operations manager of Antarctic eco-tourism company Heritage Expeditions, said the proposed heavy fuel ban "will most likely regulate the biggest cruise ships out of Antarctic operations" because of the costs involved in switching to lighter fuel.
The Antarctic Treaty, first signed in 1959, is the main tool for regulating what is the world's only continent without a native human population. New Zealand is one of the dozen founding members of the treaty, along with the United States, Russia and Britain. The treaty now has 47 signatories.
As negotiators in Copenhagen work to complete a global agreement, how much are they taking science into account?
David Biello, Scientific American 12 Dec 09;
COPENHAGEN—One thing is clear under this city's low, leaden skies: a ton of carbon dioxide emitted in India is the same as a ton of carbon dioxide emitted in the U.S. And while some notable contrarians are present here at the United Nations' climate summit, their presence is not felt as all those countries that do not rely on oil accept the basic physics of a molecule of carbon dioxide trapping heat in the atmosphere. But what is less clear is how the various negotiators from 193 countries are incorporating new developments in the scientific understanding of climate change and its progress, particularly as various draft texts of what an agreement might look like circulate through the crowded halls of the Bella Center.
"Our starting point is the environment," says Karl Falkenberg, director general of the environment at the European Commission. "What we're looking for here is an outcome that effectively deals with climate change and the consequences of climate change that we are seeing everywhere on the globe."
The general consensus seems to be that global emissions of greenhouse gases must be cut by 50 percent from 1990 levels by 2050 with developed countries and bodies such as those in the European Union (E.U.), Japan and the U.S. making larger cuts to allow developing countries, such as China and India to grow. "Different commitments we can accept but they need to be verified in a coherent manner," Falkenberg says. "Continued carbon-based economic growth in developing countries is contributing to poverty not alleviating it."
But under previous agreements, such as the original United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change agreed upon in 1992, developed countries' emissions were supposed to peak in 2000 and thereafter decline. Instead, "emissions have risen since 2000," notes Indian ambassador Chandrashekhar Dasgupta. In fact, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rise by roughly 2 parts-per-million a year, having reached roughly 387 ppm to date. And some scientists, such as NASA climatologist James Hansen, argue that anything above 350 ppm is dangerous, given impacts such as melting Arctic sea ice that are happening much faster than scientists had anticipated.
"We need to have targets that are science-based," Falkenberg says. The E.U. has settled on targets of keeping warming from exceeding a 2 degree Celsius rise in average temperatures (average temperatures have already warmed 0.7 degree C), which roughly equates to CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere of 450 ppm.
Of course, many scientists feel that on present efforts the world will greatly exceed 450 ppm. "The world is going to have to create a carbon pie eventually and divide it up," says geochemist Wallace Broecker of Columbia University's Earth Institute. "A total amount of CO2 that each country will be able to add to the atmosphere."
And that's where the argument really starts. "For developed countries, when it comes to emissions space, their fundamental attitude is what is mine is mine. What I've taken away from you I've got to keep," says Yu Qingtai, ambassador from China. "For us, the developing countries, our position is our emissions space is under occupation and we want them back."
Of course, China emits the largest amount of greenhouse gases of any nation in the world, but on a per person basis it lags well behind the U.S., E.U. and Japan. "Every human being has an equal right to the resources of the atmosphere," says Dasgupta, arguing for a per person emissions limit. "How will this resource, which for the first time in history has become a resource which is limited in supply, how is to be divided in the global community?"
Of course, scientists such as Stanford University climatologist Stephen Schneider note that the impacts of climate change will fall most heavily on the poorest countries, which have the least capacity to adapt. Already, argues Quamrul Islam Chowdhury, the negotiator for Bangladesh, some 5 to 10 percent of his country will be washed away by climate change. "It will have also a huge impact not in terms of development but also in terms of human rights, migration and displacement."
"We are on the front lines of climate change," adds Crispin Gregoire, climate negotiator from Dominica. "Some of our islands will disappear. We accept that. We want an agreement that will address our survival."
And that means emissions cuts for everyone. "The question is not whether it is desirable to reduce the rate of growth of emissions in developing countries. Of course it is," Dasgupta says. "The question is who pays?"
The European Union, for its part, hopes that it's example might prove instructive with the launch of an emissions trading regime that has put a price of roughly 11 EU$ on every metric ton of carbon dioxide emissions. "The EU economy has been delinked effectively from the growth of further CO2 emisions," Falkenberg notes, pointing to economic growth of roughly 2.5 percent in 2007 paired with a decline in emissions of roughly 4 percent.
But it remains unclear how often words about commitments to combat climate change match real actions. "In international cooperation to fight climate change there is no shortage of legally binding documents. We have the Convention, we have the Kyoto Protocol," Yu says. "If you look at these basic documents there have been a list of commitments that have gone by without being met. So if we are going to have a positive outcome from Copenhagen it must make a difference when it comes to taking real action to match what we promise as sovereign nations."
Marlowe Hood Yahoo News 13 Dec 09;
COPENHAGEN (AFP) – Tens of thousands of activists demanding a planet-saving climate deal blazed a path to the door of the UN talks on Saturday in a raucous, festive rally that was also marked by sporadic violence and more than 960 arrests.
In a four-hour march to the Bella Center, where the conference was underway, a crowd estimated by police to number more than 30,000 pounded out calls for carbon cuts, social justice and a taming of global capitalism.
One protestor dressed as Santa Claus held up a banner saying global warming was occurring twice as fast in the Arctic as the rest of the world.
"My Rudolf cannot take it any more," he said, referring to the red-nosed reindeer of the famous Christmas song.
Other demonstrators sported banners that read: "There is no planet B," "Change the politics not the climate," and "Nature does not compromise".
"Each year 300,000 people are dying because of climate change," Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace International, told the marchers. "This is not about adaptation, it is about survival."
"We cannot allow carbon traders to damage the world," added Nigeria's Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International.
"There is no such thing as clean coal or clean crude. Leave the oil in the soil, leave the coal in the hole," he said, leading a chant.
Police estimated the turnout at more than 30,000, while Danish television put the estimate at up to 100,000.
Climate Justice Action, a group involved in organising Saturday's demonstration, accused police of "violating human rights by detaining people in bitter cold, cuffed and forced into seated positions on the ground".
Rally organisers had repeatedly urged the crowd to remain non-violent.
But within minutes of the start, a disciplined band of hundreds of masked youths dressed head-to-toe in black threw bricks and firecrackers, smashing windows in the city centre.
Police moved in quickly, arrested a handful of the agitators, later identified as members of militant groups from northern Europe known as Black Blocs.
"Black Blocs members were seen at 1:41 pm picking up cobblestones that they later hurled near the former Stock Exchange, at several foreign ministry windows" and a bank, a police statement said.
Over the course of the day a total of 968 protesters were taken into custody, police said.
Four hundred were Black Blocs militants and most of these were foreigners, "showing that there was a hard core of activists who came to Copenhagen to sow disorder," a police spokesman told AFP.
About 150 people were released from custody late Saturday after questioning, the police statement said.
Later Saturday, a police officer was injured and four cars were burned out during clashes at a squat in Christiania, in central Copenhagen.
Related article: US, China face off at talks
Within the congress hall, Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu led children in creating "a sea of candles" representing a call from generations imperilled by climate change.
The march capped demonstrations scheduled in 130 cities around the world aimed at stoking pressure on leaders called to seal a landmark deal on climate change in the Danish capital next Friday.
Australia, the developed world's highest per-capita polluter, kicked off the chain with up to 50,000 people taking to the streets nationwide, organisers said.
In Indonesia, activists rallied outside the US embassy in Jakarta to urge the superpower to support developing nations.
In the Philippines, hundreds of protesters wearing red shirts banged on drums and sang songs outside Manila's City Hall demanding global action on climate change.
Connie Hedegaard, a former Danish climate minister who is chairing the 12-day Copenhagen marathon, said the demonstrations reflected a public mood that politicians could not ignore.
"It has taken years to build up pressure that we see around the world, and that we have also seen unfolding today in many capitals around the world," she said.
"That has contributed to making the political price for not delivering in Copenhagen so high that I am absolutely convinced that leaders consider very carefully whether they want to pay that price."
Nearly 1,000 held after Copenhagen climate rally
Reuters 12 Dec 09;
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Police detained nearly 1,000 people in Copenhagen on Saturday during mass demonstrations to demand that negotiators at U.N. talks agree a strong treaty to fight global warming.
Tens of thousands of people marched through the city as part of a global "Day of Action" of climate rallies from Australia to the United States, but violence flared at one stage when demonstrators smashed windows and set fire to cars.
Riot police detained more than 900 people around the Danish capital after black-clad activists threw bottles and smashed windows. A police spokeswoman said the number had climbed to 968 shortly after 10 p.m. (2100 GMT).
Police said four cars were set on fire during the evening. One policeman was hurt by a stone and a Swedish man injured by a firework.
"You don't have to use that kind of violence to be heard," said Connie Hedegaard, the Danish minister presiding at the U.N. talks. She condemned rioters after welcoming the main march at a candlelit vigil outside the conference center.
One activist group accused the police of abuse after they detained around 400 black-clad demonstrators at the back of the march and forced them to sit on a road for hours in near-freezing temperatures, hands bound behind their backs.
The main demonstration was led by dancers, drummers and banners proclaiming: "There is no planet B" and "Change the politics, not the climate." Some activists were dressed as penguins with signs reading: "Save the Humans!"
They marched to the conference center on the outskirts of the city, where negotiators from 192 nations are meeting from December 7-18 hoping to agree a new U.N. climate pact.
Organizers said up to 100,000 people took part in the march, hoping their rally and others round the world would put pressure on a concluding summit of 110 world leaders on Thursday and Friday.
SNOWMAN
In the main march, some held a giant inflatable snowman as a symbol of the threat of largescale melting icecaps and glaciers.
The U.N. panel of climate scientists says the accelerating loss of vital masses of ice, caused by rising temperatures resulting mainly from burning fossil fuels, will lead to rising sea levels, floods, desertification and heat waves.
The demonstration won wide praise.
"They marched in Berlin, and the Wall fell. They marched in Cape Town, and the wall fell," South African Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu told a candlelit vigil. "They marched in Copenhagen -- and we are going to get a real deal."
"There is a lot to fight for in the remaining week of negotiations," said Kumi Naidoo, chair of the organizing group "TckTckTck." Activists want the talks to agree a full legal treaty -- a goal most governments say is out of reach.
Elsewhere, thousands of Australians held a "Walk Against Warming." Naidoo said 4,000 events, such as marches or candlelit vigils, were being held from Fiji to Nepal to show support for deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
In Copenhagen, Caroline, a Danish girl aged 7, carried a homemade sign saying: "Look after our world until I grow up."
"Mountains are changing, glaciers are melting," said Nepalese Sherpa Pertamba, who came to Denmark to demonstrate with a group of 30 mountaineers. "Now is the time to think about future generations."
In Sydney, protesters carried placards reading: "I like clean energy and I vote," "No meat, no heat" and "No new coal mines," a reference to Australia's status as one of the world's leading exporters of coal.
Inside the conference hall in Copenhagen, delegates claimed progress on some fronts but the hardest decisions on sharing out curbs on greenhouse gas emissions and funding to help the poor are likely to be left for the summit.
"We have made considerable progress over the course of the first week," said Denmark's Hedegaard. She said she would hold talks on Sunday with 48 environment ministers. "We still have a daunting task in the next few days," she added.
Hedegaard said negotiators had made progress with texts such as defining how new green technologies like wind and solar power can be supplied to developing nations, and in promoting the use of forests to soak up greenhouse gases.
But delegates said there were deep splits on raising funds for poor nations and sharing the burden of CO2 cuts.
Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said he hoped for more action by all.
"China is calling on the United States to do more. The United States is calling on China to do more. I hope that in the coming days everyone will call for everyone to do more."
(Additional reporting by Sunanda Creagh, Erik Kirschbaum, Laure Bretton, writing by Alister Doyle; editing by Tim Pearce)
968 detained at climate rally urging bold pact
John Heilprin, Associated Press 13 Dec 09;
COPENHAGEN – Tens of thousands of protesters marched through the chilly Danish capital and nearly 1,000 were detained Saturday in a mass rally to demand an ambitious global climate pact, just as talks hit a snag over rich nations' demands on China and other emerging economies.
The mostly peaceful demonstrations in Copenhagen provided the centerpiece of a day of global climate activism stretching from Europe to Asia. Police assigned extra officers to watch protesters marching toward the suburban conference center to demand that leaders act now to fight climate change.
Police estimated their numbers at 40,000, while organizers said as many as 100,000 had joined the march from downtown Copenhagen. It ended with protesters holding aloft candles and torches as they swarmed by night outside the Bella Center where the 192-nation U.N. climate conference is being held.
There have been a couple of minor protests over the past week, but Saturday's was by far the largest.
Police said they rounded up 968 in a preventive action against a group of youth activists at the tail end of the demonstration. Officers in riot gear moved in when some of the activists, masking their faces, threw cobblestones through the windows of the former stock exchange and Foreign Ministry buildings.
A police officer received minor injuries when he was hit by a rock thrown from the group and one protester was injured by fireworks, police spokesman Flemming Steen Munch said.
Earlier, police said they had detained 19 people, mainly for breaking Denmark's strict laws against carrying pocket knives or wearing masks during demonstrations.
Inside the Bella Center, the European Union, Japan and Australia joined the U.S. in criticizing a draft global warming pact that says major developing nations must rein in greenhouse gases, but only if they have outside financing. Rich nations want to require developing nations to limit emissions, with or without financial help.
Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren, representing the 27-nation EU, told The Associated Press that "there has been a growing understanding that there must be commitments to actions by emerging economies as well."
He said those commitments "must be binding, in the sense that states are standing behind their commitments."
Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said his country — the world's No. 5 greenhouse gas polluter — will not offer more than its current pledge to slow its growth rate of emissions. It has offered to cut greenhouse gases measured against production by 20 to 25 percent by 2020.
"National interest trumps everything else," Ramesh told the AP. "Whatever I have to do, I've said in my Parliament. We'll engage them (the U.S. and China). I'm not here to make new offers."
China has made voluntary commitments to rein in its carbon emissions but doesn't want to be bound by international law to do so. In China's view, the U.S. and other rich countries have a heavy historical responsibility to cut emissions and any climate deal in Copenhagen should take into account a country's level of development.
Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists told the AP that rich nations are trying to re-negotiate the deal they reached two years ago on the island of Bali, calling on developing nations to limit emissions with financial help.
"It's going to blow up in their faces," he said. "The rich countries are trying to move the goal posts. And developing countries are not going to agree to that, no matter how loudly the rich countries demand it."
The tightly focused negotiating text was meant to lay out the crunch themes for environment ministers to wrestle with as they prepare for a summit of some 110 heads of state and government at the end of next week.
U.S. delegate Jonathan Pershing said the draft failed to address the contentious issue of carbon emissions by emerging economies.
"The current draft didn't work in terms of where it is headed," Pershing said in the plenary, supported by the European Union, Japan and Norway.
But the EU also directed criticism at the U.S., insisting it could make greater commitments to push the talks forward without stretching the legislation pending in Congress. Both the U.S. and China should be legally bound to keep whatever promises they make, Carlgren said.
Thousands also marched in a "Walk Against Warming" in major cities across Australia and about 200 Filipino activists staged a festive rally in Manila to mark the Global Day of Action on climate change. Dozens of Indonesian environmental activists rallied in front of the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta.
Environmentalists staged stunts and protests in 100 piazzas across Italy, from Venice's St. Mark's Square to a historical piazza in downtown Rome. They carried banners that read "stop the planet's fever" and asked passers-by to sign a petition calling on world leaders to reach a deal to reduce emissions.
In Copenhagen, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace laureate, and Greenpeace leader Kumi Naidoo were among those ratcheting up the pressure for a fair, ambitious and binding treaty.
Naidoo exhorted politicians to act bravely by crafting a fair, ambitious and binding treaty, so they can later "look their children and grandchildren in the eyes" and tell them they did the right thing. "Failure to do so will be the worst political crime that they would have committed," he said.
At a candlelight vigil on the conference grounds, Tutu compared the mass demonstrations outside to other popular movements that made a mark in history.
"We want to remind you that they marched in Berlin and the wall fell," Tutu said. "They marched in Cape Town and apartheid fell. They marched in Copenhagen and we are going to get a real deal."
Demonstrators chanted and carried banners reading "Demand Climate Justice," "The World Wants A Real Deal" and "There Is No Planet B," navigating for miles along city streets and over bridges past officers in riot gear, police dogs and the flashing lights of dozens of police vans.
Inside the Bella Center, delegates gathered around flat-screen TVs showing both the larger peaceful rally and the police crackdown on the young activists. Riot police tied them up with plastic cuffs and made them sit down on a closed-off street before busing them to a detention center set up for the climate conference.
Britain's Ed Miliband, the climate change secretary, said dealmakers have a long ways to go. "There are difficult issues to overcome," he said, "around emissions, around finance, and around transparency and they are all issues we need to tackle in the coming days."
But conference president Connie Hedegaard sought to reassure people that world leaders have come to seriously confront climate change.
"It has taken years to build up the pressure ... that we're also seeing unfolding today in many capitals around the world," Hedegaard said. "And I believe that that has contributed to making the political price for not delivering in Copenhagen so high."
___
Associated Press writers Jan M. Olsen, Karl Ritter and Arthur Max contributed to this report.
Charles J. Hanley, Associated Press 12 Dec 09;
COPENHAGEN – The cuts in greenhouse gases offered at the 192-nation climate conference are "clearly not enough" to assure the world it will head off dangerous global warming, a key U.N.-affiliated scientist said Saturday.
Such projections, moreover, don't even account for the "potentially hugely important" threat of methane from the Arctic's thawing permafrost, other researchers said.
Midway through the two-week U.N. conference, richer nations are offering firm reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases ranging from 3-4 percent for the U.S. to 20 percent for the European Union, in terms of 2020 emission levels compared with 1990.
One authoritative independent analysis finds the aggregate cuts amount to 8-12 percent. But the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes (IPCC), the U.N.-sponsored science network, recommends that reductions average in the 25-40-percent range to keep global temperature increases below 2 degrees C (3.6 F) above preindustrial levels and head off the worst of global warming.
"I think it is clearly not enough," the IPCC's Thomas Stocker said of the numbers discussed here. "We are by far short of having security that the 2-degree target will be met."
The Swiss physicist heads the IPCC's Working Group I, the climate science group that, among other things, assesses the impact that emissions — from fossil-fuel burning, deforestation and other sources — have on concentrations of global-warming gases in the atmosphere and then on temperatures.
Stocker told reporters the IPCC-recommended target "may be too much to ask at this stage" — too politically daunting to achieve in the current annual conference. But he suggested climate talks should aim at longer-term commitments, over decades, not the short commitment periods envisioned in the annual conferences.
Even limiting the temperature rise to 2 degrees C would not forestall serious damage, the IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, told reporters. "We would get sea-level rise, through thermal expansion alone, of 0.4 to 1.4 meters" (1.3 feet to 4.5 feet), he said.
Climate science co-chair Stocker acknowledged that IPCC projections do not include the potential "tipping point" addition of trapped methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that would be released as permafrost thaws in the far north.
Plant and animal matter entombed in that frozen Arctic soil for millennia would decompose as it thaws, attacked by microbes, producing carbon dioxide and — if in water — methane, many times more powerful than CO2 in warming the atmosphere. Other methane would be released as the oceans warm deposits of methane hydrates, ice-like formations deep underground and under the seabed in which methane molecules are trapped in crystals of frozen water.
"It is potentially hugely important," Richard Betts of the Met Office Hadley Center, Britain's climate science center, said of the latent methane in another news briefing. "The size of the reserves are not fully known and are not captured fully in our models" — the supercomputer simulations used to project climate change.
Russian researchers in Siberia, in particular, have expressed alarm about methane's potential, warning of a possible surge in emissions in the north, where Earth is warming most, adding several degrees to global temperatures and causing unpredictable consequences for the climate. Others say massive seeps of methane might take centuries.
"We don't really know enough yet about methane feedback," Hadley Center climatologist Vicki Pope told reporters.
The British institution says intensive research on Arctic methane may allow it to be included in Hadley climate predictions within five years. Last year six U.S. national laboratories launched a joint investigation of rapid methane release, and last July the IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, asked his scientific network to focus on "abrupt, irreversible climate change" from thawing permafrost. The IPCC's next periodic assessment report is due in 2013.
We're "walking toward a cliff in the dark," Betts said of such unknowns in climate. "It's out there somewhere, you don't know where, and so it makes sense to stop."
UN faces 'major setback' if failure at climate talks: Pachauri
Yahoo News 12 Dec 09;
COPENHAGEN (AFP) – The head of the Nobel-winning UN panel of climate scientists warned on Saturday that failure at the Copenhagen talks on tackling global warming would deal a heavy blow to the nation-state system.
Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told reporters in response to question that the talks were "an important test" of whether nations could join together to fight a common threat.
"There's no question about it," he said.
"I think if we are able to get a good agreement, this would clearly create an enormous amount of confidence in the ability of human society to be able to act on a multilateral basis.
"If we fail, I don't think everything is lost, but certainly it will be a major setback."
Pachauri was speaking after a press conference where he spelt out the main findings of the IPCC's 2007 Fourth Assessment Report, which spurred political action leading up to the Copenhagen conference.
The study found for the first time that evidence for man-made warning was "unequivocal."
The impacts were already visible, indicated especially by glacier shrinkage, disruption to snowfall and rainfall patterns and changes to the timing of seasons.
Responding to the so-called Climategate affair, in which the IPCC's neutrality was attacked after the leak of emails from among some of its scientists, Pachauri said the panel had a top-class peer review system for assessing data for fairness and objectivity.
"This is a very robust process and it has stood the test of time," he said.
More than 1,200 scientists were involved in the exhaustive process, which was also vetted and approved by the world's governments, he noted.
"These are clearly the most outstanding scientists and with the highest level of expertise," said Pachauri.
Efforts by climate sceptics to exploit the hacked emails had had "absolutely no impact" on the December 7-18 talks, Pachauri added.
Alister Doyle, Reuters 12 Dec 09;
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - U.N. climate talks have made progress at the half-way mark but many of the toughest issues such as greenhouse gas emissions targets for 2020 are deadlocked, delegates said on Saturday.
"We have made considerable progress over the course of the first week," Connie Hedegaard, the Danish cabinet minister who presides over the December 7-18 meeting in Copenhagen, told delegates trying to work out a new pact to slow climate change.
Delegates said negotiators had advanced on texts such as defining how new green technologies such as wind and solar power can be supplied to developing nations and in promoting use of forests to soak up greenhouse gases.
"We see the contours of a technology mechanism emerging, " said Michael Zammit Cutajar, who chairs negotiations on new goals for all nations.
But delegates said there were deep splits on issues such as raising funds for poor nations and sharing out the burden of greenhouse gas emissions curbs before a closing summit of more than 110 world leaders on December 17-18.
The Pacific Island of Tuvalu, fearing that rising sea levels could wipe it off the map, stuck to its calls for consideration of a radical new treaty that would force far deeper cuts in greenhouse gases than those under consideration.
"The fate of my country rests in your hands," Ian Fry, leading the Tuvalu delegation, told the meeting.
"I make this as a strong and impassioned plea...I woke this morning and I was crying and that was not easy for a grown man to admit," he said, his voice choking with emotion.
TUVALU
Hedegaard said she wanted more consultations until next week on the Tuvalu proposal, which has been opposed even by some developing nations led by China and India. Fry said that Tuvalu's fears were widely shared by small island states.
The European Union offered 7.3 billion euros ($10.8 billion) of climate aid over the next three years on Friday.
The United Nations wants to raise $10 billion a year from 2010-12 in quick-start funds to help the poor cope with global warming and move away from fossil fuels. But few other nations have offered quick-start cash.
In the longer term, the United Nations estimates the fight against global warming is likely to cost $300 billion a year from 2020, largely to help developing nations adapt to impacts such as droughts, floods and heatwaves.
A panel of U.N. climate experts said in a 2007 scenario that rich nations would have to cut emissions by about 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to avoid the worst of global warming.
Offers by rich nations for cutting emissions, mostly from greenhouse gases, so far total about 14-18 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
Developing nations such as China, the number one emitter ahead of the United States, are expected to slow the rise of their emissions without absolute cuts. They say they need to burn more energy to help end poverty.
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