Best of our wild blogs: 15 Feb 10

Chek Jawa check up with Dr Dan
from wild shores of singapore

Green HDB corridors
from Urban Forest

Unexpected Encounters Part 1
from Black Dillenia

Monday Morgue: 15th February 2009
from The Lazy Lizard's Tales

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New Conservation Initiatives Meant to Help Save Last of Indonesia’s Tigers

Ismira Lutfia, Jakarta Globe 14 Feb 10;

As the Chinese zodiac ticks over to the Year of the Tiger, renewed global efforts are aiming to wrest the animal itself back from the brink of extinction by doubling their population.

In Indonesia, the conservation drive has come about in a series of new initiatives to save the only remaining subspecies in the country, the Sumatran tiger, after having lost the Balinese and Javan tigers to extinction in the 1930s and 1980s, respectively.

Darori, the Ministry of Forestry’s director general of forest protection and nature conservation, told the Jakarta Globe on Sunday that nine Sumatran tigers had been released back into the wild as part of its latest push. They included two tigers that were released at the Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park in Lampung last month.

In January the ministry also revealed its controversial initiative to allow rich people to “adopt” captive tigers to help curb illegal hunting and trade. Under the plan, a pair of tigers could be rented for Rp 1 billion ($107,000).

Darori said the adoption scheme would pair male and female tigers to increase their chances of breeding. The adopted tigers, he said, would be classified as “on loan from the government,” and any cubs bred from the pair would belong to the state.

Enclosures of a minimum 10 meters wide by 6 meters long and 5 meters high would be required for the adopted tigers, which would also receive regular checkups by vets and ministry officials.

“We are just being realistic,” Darori said. “If they can be released back into the wild, we will do that — if they cannot, we’ll conserve them in captivity.”

The government’s efforts in tiger conservation were internationally recognized, Darori said, and has led to Indonesia being proposed as the host of the second Asia Ministerial Conference on Tiger Conservation in July ahead of a Heads of State Tiger Summit in Vladivostok, Russia, in September.

The first ministerial meeting for the 13 countries home to the endangered species was held in January in Thailand.

“They see Indonesia is serious about this and we have shown concrete action,” Darori said.

At a news conference on Friday to launch the World Wildlife Fund’s own Tiger conservation campaign, Darori said he appreciated the cooperation by a number of stakeholders to conserve the Sumatran tiger.

Kurnia Rauf, head of the Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park, told the Globe that lessons should be learned from the extinction of the Balinese and Javan tigers, and that much more still needed to be done to save the Sumatran tiger.

He said tiger conservation played an important role in safeguarding the rich biodiversity of Sumatra’s rainforests.

“If there are no tigers preying on wild boars, their population could explode and in turn become pests for humans,” Kurnia said.

Nazir Foead, WWF Indonesia’s director for policy and empowerment, said saving the tigers would also mean preserving their habitat, which would prevent them from encroaching on human settlements.

WWF Indonesia has said the ministries of forestry, home affairs, public works and environment, along with governors from across Sumatra, have committed to an ecosystem-based spatial planning initiative, which has identified areas throughout the island to become possible wildlife corridors.

Nazir said palm oil plantations, human settlements and land concessions had divided Sumatra’s rainforests into small clusters, isolating wild tigers from other breeding groups.

“We will restore the forests as the tigers’ natural habitat by establishing wildlife corridors to connect these clusters,” he said.

He added that programs were in place to reduce the chance of tigers coming into conflict with people living near the corridors.

“This is avoidable by learning the tigers’ living patterns and determining which areas they roam the most,” Nazir said. “We know which areas are the ‘red alert’ ones to avoid.”

The WWF has identified a number of areas across Sumatra in which to establish wildlife corridors, some encompassing multiple provinces, and has been facilitating meetings between local administration officials to coordinate their establishment.

Corridors that connect three of the island’s biggest national parks — Gunung Leuser National Park in the north, Kerinci Seblat National Park in the west and Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park in the south — are priority areas for the spatial planning program.

Kurnia said the wildlife corridors would help boost the Sumatran tiger’s dwindling population and increase their chances of finding a suitable mate from groups living in other forests.

There are an estimated 47 tigers remaining in Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park, Kurnia said.

“They would have a better chance to grow in population by mating with tigers from Gunung Leuser and Kerinci Seblat if the corridors are established to connect the three national parks.”

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Indonesian villagers chase away crop destroying monkeys

Antara 14 Feb 10;

Sukabumi (ANTARA News) - Some 100 residents of Cijurey village in Sukabumi district, West Java, on Sunday hunted wild monkeys for destroying their crops in an apparent revenge for the destruction of their habitat by people.

According to Cujurey village chief, Roni Mamahit, the monkeys that live in Curug Cisayang hills came down and destroyed the people`s crops in revenge.

"State-owned forest management company PT Perhutani is running a production forests in these hills, and frequent cutting of trees destroys the monkey`s habitat," he said.
As a result, hundreds of wild and upset monkeys destroyed people`s crops and plantations, Mamahit said.

The Cijurey villagers had been chasing away the monkeys to the Cisayang Curug hills since 9 am Sunday with rifles and other weapons.

The hunt was conducted after many villagers were upset that 20 hectares of rice and other crops were destroyed by the monkeys, Mamahit said.

Until Sunday afternoon, the hunt was not very successful because the monkeys always managed to escape to the hills, which are difficult to reach by the villagers.

He said destruction by the monkeys in the residential areas had been going on for the last three years, although the villagers have tried to chase them away.

"The villagers also managed to catch 30 monkeys roaming in their villages. And some of the villagers even pointed the monkeys by giving them poisoned banana," he said. Nevertheless, the monkeys kept coming back for their destruction spree.(*)

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Tiger Farms in China Feed Thirst for Parts

Andrew Jacobs, The New York Times 12 Feb 10;

GUILIN, China — The crowd-pleasing Year of the Tiger, which begins Sunday, could be a lousy year for the estimated 3,200 tigers that still roam the world’s diminishing forests.

With as few as 20 in the wild in China, the country’s tigers are a few gun blasts away from extinction, and in India poachers are making quick work of the tiger population, the world’s largest. The number there, around 1,400, is about half that of a decade ago and a fraction of the 100,000 that roamed the subcontinent in the early 20th century.

Shrinking habitat remains a daunting challenge, but conservationists say the biggest threat to Asia’s largest predator is the Chinese appetite for tiger parts. Despite a government ban on the trade since 1993, there is a robust market for tiger bones, traditionally prized for their healing and aphrodisiac qualities, and tiger skins, which have become cherished trophies among China’s nouveau riche.

With pelts selling for $20,000 and a single paw worth as much as $1,000, the value of a dead tiger has never been higher, say those who investigate the trade. Last month the Indian government announced a surge in killings of tigers by poachers, with 88 found dead in 2009, double the previous year. Because figures are based on carcasses found on reserves or tiger parts seized at border crossings, conservationists say the true number is far higher.

“All of the demand for tiger parts is coming from China,” said Belinda Wright, executive director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India. “Unless the Chinese change their attitude, the tiger has no future on this earth.”

Although conservationists say India must do a better job of policing its 37 tiger reserves, they insist that the Chinese government has not done all it can to quell the domestic market for illicit tiger parts. Anti-trafficking efforts are haphazard, experts say; China bans the use of tiger parts in traditional Chinese medicine but overlooks the sale of alcohol-based health tonics steeped in tiger bone.

It is a gray area that has been exploited by Chinese tiger farms, which raise thousands of animals with assembly-line efficiency.

If there is any mystery about what happens to the big cats at Xiongsen Tiger and Bear Mountain Village in Guilin, it is partly explained in the gift shop, where fuzz-coated bottles in the shape of a tiger are filled with “bone strengthening” wine. The liquor, which costs $132 for a six-year-old brew, is sold openly across the surrounding Guangxi region and beyond.

“This stuff works wonders,” said Zhang Hanchu, the owner of a spirits shop in Guilin. A daily shot glass of the rice-based alcohol, he said, can reduce joint stiffness, treat rheumatism and increase sexual vigor. With the Year of the Tiger nearing, demand has been soaring, he said.

Opened in 1993 with financing from the State Forestry Administration, Xiongsen is China’s largest tiger-breeding operation. Some of its 1,500 tigers roam treeless, fenced-in areas, while many others are packed in small cages where they pace agitatedly.

The park is a fairly dispiriting place. In addition to the tigers, there are hundreds of capuchin monkeys rattling in cages, awaiting their fate as fodder for medicinal elixirs or medical experiments. There are also about 300 Asiatic brown bears which are tapped for their bile, the main ingredient of a lucrative supplement said to improve eyesight.

Those who pay the park’s $12 entry fee are treated to an extravaganza of tigers jumping through rings of fire or balancing on balls; if the crowds are large enough, workers will place a cow and a tiger in an enclosure with predictably gruesome results.

Until a spate of negative press two years ago, Xiongsen proudly sold tiger steaks at its restaurant as “big king meat.” These days, the park takes a more low-key approach. The word “tiger” no longer appears on the wine packaging — “rare animal bones” is used instead — although those who sell the wine say the key ingredient remains tiger bone.

On a recent visit, a regular stream of cars, some with government license plates, pulled up to a building at the center of the park and drove away with their trunks full of Xiongsen’s wine tonic. A large sign in the building’s interior declares “Protecting Wild Animals is the Bounden Duty of Every Citizen.”

A woman who answered the phone at Xiongsen’s winery said the owner, Zhou Weisen, was not available to comment, but she insisted that tigers were not an ingredient in the 200,000 bottles a liquor produced each year.

In addition to overlooking the sale of tiger wine, the Chinese government has fueled the market in tiger parts by letting such farms exist, critics say. Although the State Forestry Administration reiterated its support for the ban on the trade of tigers last December, it reconsiders the restrictions each year, giving hope to the politically powerful owners of China’s 20 tiger farms.

If the ban were lifted, critics say, trade in farm-bred tigers would simply provide cover for poached tigers, which are far cheaper to harvest and bring in far higher prices because most Chinese believe the healing properties of wild tigers are greater than those raised in cages.

An employee at the forestry administration said the entire staff was away on a retreat and could not be reached.

Debbie Banks, who runs the tiger campaign at the Environmental Investigation Agency in London, said China’s stated resolve to help end the international trade in tigers was diluted by its ambivalent stand on domestic sales. “The government is stimulating and perpetuating demand, which is the real problem we’re facing,” she said.

Despite the grim news, conservationists say the coming year also presents an opportunity to raise awareness about the problem. All the hoopla surrounding the Year of the Tiger has captured the attention of many nations, especially China, whose government is sensitive to criticisms that it is encouraging the tiger’s extinction. In September, Russia and the World Bank will host a summit meeting on tigers that conservationists hope will yield a solid plan to restore plummeting tiger populations.

James Compton, Asia program director for TRAFFIC, which monitors the global wildlife trade, thinks the most important step would be for China and other nations to elevate the interdiction of tiger parts to that of illicit drugs. “It’s not rocket science to knock out the big traders,” he said, adding that bodies like Interpol and the World Customs Organization should take on the fight.

Guarded optimism aside, Mr. Compton cannot help but recall the last time the Year of the Tiger came around, in 1998. There was similar talk then of using the occasion to marshal the international community. He also has a vivid memory of the poster produced for the occasion. Its pitch: “Save the Last 5,000 Tigers.”

Xiyun Yang contributed reporting.

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War at home: The local eco-warriors making a big noise

The Independent 14 Feb 10;

Shivering atop a power-station chimney certainly makes a dramatic eco statement. But is direct action the best way to combat global warming? Robin Barton meets the climate-change campaigners who like 'big and bold' and the green communities who prefer 'slow and steady'

Most of us enjoyed a good night's sleep last night. A warm bed, soft pillow, that sort of thing. But for the past six months, during the harshest winter in decades, protesters against the proposed Mainshill opencast mine in South Lanarkshire have been sleeping in treehouses and tunnels on the site, risking their wellbeing, or at least frostbitten fingers. Last week the eviction process began. Somewhat reassuringly, after the recent cold spell, the activists were given a medical once-over to check they were well enough to be arrested.

From Scotland to the village of Sipson, the site of BAA's planned third runway at Heathrow, environmental activists are fired up. Frustration over December's COP15 cop-out has led many to abandon hope in state-led solutions on climate change and renewable energy. In a poll conducted by treehugger.com, the leading green blog, 48 per cent of respondents, by far the largest group, described the Copenhagen summit as "a big expensive waste of time that failed to deal with an urgent problem". So how best to get that view across?

"Direct action is a form of political engagement that's far more effective than other forms of protest I've tried," argues Ben Stewart. He was one of six Greenpeace protesters arrested after occupying the chimney of Kingsnorth power station in Kent in 2007 (see panel, right). But, heroic though abseiling down a chimney may be, is it the best way forward to a greener, cleaner environment? Or is the greatest progress being achieved in tiny steps that we can all take: cutting down on household waste, using less energy, reducing journeys. These are the seemingly mundane actions being taken by the Transition Town movement.

"The conclusion from Copenhagen is that we can't wait for governments to act," says Rob Hopkins, the Devon-based Transition Towns guru, "so communities need to make these things happen." What Hopkins has in mind are transition towns: communities that have become sustainable not only in energy but in areas including transport, public services, and economics. Some, such as Lewes (see panel, page 20) and the London neighbourhood of Brixton, have their own currencies, which encourage locals to support local enterprises. Since 2005, when the movement germinated in Totnes, it has spread across the world.

"The end of cheap energy is inevitable, and you can choose to look at that as a disastrous crisis, or as an extraordinary opportunity," explains Hopkins. "Transition Towns is a grass-roots movement that goes beyond self-sufficiency. It's a much deeper process than looking at carbon footprints. It's a chance for communities to become their own masters: to be their own banks, their own builders."

Chris Smedley of Transition Town Lewes agrees: "Activism doesn't change the fundamental model of society, whereas what Transition attempts to do is create a new model. Politicans and business leaders live within a set of rules that force a short-term view. Transition Towns can look long-term. The energy crisis won't hit for years. The urgency lies in starting to do something about it now."

Yet that urgency is shared by seasoned activists such as Greenpeace's Stewart (see page 19) and Tim Cowen of ' Conch (see page 21), a group campaigning against a proposed coal-fired powerstation in Ayrshire. "We can debate for years but direct action gets to the end point a lot quicker," says Stewart. "It speeds up the process of change. Direct action provides the crucible in which to have it out." The Kingsnorth protest may have lasted just one night but, after the six activists were charged with criminal damage, it played out in front of a jury in Maidstone Crown Court in 2008. After arguing that by preventing 20,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions they were protecting lives and property (the "lawful excuse"), the Kingsnorth Six were acquitted (the story is told in the Nick Broomfield film A Time Comes).

It wasn't the first time the daring defence had been attempted. "You can go all the way back to the Greenpeace GM crops case in 2000, which sent shockwaves at a political level," says Debbie Tripley, for six years head of legal at Greenpeace and now chief executive of the Environmental Law Foundation (see panel, below right). ELF works at a local level, contesting unglamorous cases involving pesticides, bypasses and waterways; it's a village-green preservation society, staffed by quick-thinking lawyers. "We're not a campaigning organisation; we don't take up causes," says Tripley. "Our aim is simply to improve access to environmental justice." One way ELF is doing that is by offering seminars and workshops in under-represented areas as part of its Sustainable Communities project.

Down in Lewes, "Transition Townies" visit schools and hold energy fairs. Ovesco, an Industrial and Provident Society for community benefit spun out of the town's energy group, has dispensed 200 grants for biomass-fuelled boilers, photo-voltaic panels and insulation. It sounds mundane but in the climate war's battle for hearts and minds, perhaps that's what matters.

It's something that Cowen, a leader of Conch, has considered: "A successful campaign has to be inclusive. Although I come from a campaigning background, most people didn't. They are farmers, beekeepers, businessmen, not stereotypical activists; we hosted free film screenings in Glasgow to engage with people who wouldn't normally be interested."

But all agree that there is a time and place for direct action. "Direct action is a mechanism for people to exercise their freedom of speech on issues that concern them," says Tripley. According to Stewart, peaceful, creative direct action exposes the hypocrisy at the highest level. And Cowen agrees: "The Scottish Government said nice things about their Climate Change Act in Copenhagen, but on the ground, nothing has happened to meet those targets. And they've changed planning rules to make it more difficult for people to object."

Both strands meet in the form of 19-year-old Joe Ryle and his six fellow Plane Stupid activists, who recently launched Transition Heathrow, and are bringing direct-action training to Sipson in preparation for a planning application due to be lodged by BAA later this year. "I have given up on governments taking the action which we need to see. I feel that empowering communities to create their own solutions to tackling climate change, directly controlled by those impacted on the ground, is much more important than trying to lobby the Government."

The protesters: The Kingsnorth Six

For someone without a head for heights, spending more than 24 hours on top of a chimney almost the height of Canary Wharf is an extreme way of making a point. But for Ben Stewart, far left, with three of his six fellow Greenpeace protesters who occupied the chimney of Kingsnorth power station in October 2007, it was worth every minute

"From the top of the chimney – a place you know you're not really allowed to be – we looked over a patchwork of green fields and saw a line of flashing blue lights of police van after police van. There was the sense of having quite an odd day.

"Kingsnorth was to be the first new coal-fired power station, under plans proposed by its owner E-ON. The idea of making Kingsnorth famous was proposed to us in a pub. I'm from the local area so I volunteered as a spokesperson. Our plan was to shut it down for as long as possible.

"It turned out to be much more difficult to get up there than we expected. We thought there'd be a staircase but it was a ladder up the inside of a tower as high as Canary Wharf. We had 50kg kitbags and instead of taking an hour, as I thought it would, it took nine.

"When it was all over, the charges were more serious than we expected: we were charged with causing £30,000 of damage and there was a danger of going to prison. Back in the pub afterwards, I thought something was up when Sarah North, Greenpeace's campaign director, bought me a drink. She broached the subject of pleading not guilty and outlined the idea of running a creative defence and putting the Government's energy policy on trial.

"I thought, why not? We had Keir Starmer QC on our defence team – until he was made director of public prosecutions three weeks before the case and had to pull out. So we were urgently casting around London for a defence lawyer and came up with Michael Wolkind. His previous clients included the nail bomber David Copeland and the Norfolk farmer Tony Martin. They had both lost – but he assured us he had a good feeling about this.

"The Nasa climatologist James Hansen electrified the courtroom with remarkable evidence in our trial; even we learnt a lot. We stopped 20,000 tonnes of emissions during the action and used the "lawful excuse" defence to argue that we were acting to protect property and lives around the world. It was my first time in front of a jury. A court room has a life of its own, there's an atmosphere. I went into court thinking I'd go to jail. But in the process of presenting our evidence, I felt we would get a hung jury and by the end, when the jury had been out for a long time, I thought we'd be acquitted. As Lord Devlin said, every jury is a little Parliament. At times, society has an audit and asks, 'Where are we on this issue?' That little Parliament spoke up.

"I'm 35 and felt that you can sit and wait forever for a government to do the obvious. All of us who take direct action have to face hostile reaction, not only from the police and talk-radio commentators but also friends and relatives. You're always having to answer for what you do. In response, it is gratifying to be able to say 'I haven't broken the law.'"

The community: Transition Town Lewes

The Transition Town movement aims to reduce dependency on fossil fuels and prepare for a low-carbon future. Chris Smedley, Chris Rowland and Oliver Dudok van Heel, speaking below, are three of the people behind the transformation of a whole town. Transition Town Lewes now has its own currency, the Lewes Pound, and about 20 working groups on transport, education, health and food

"We started with a few people who took up the Transition idea six months after Totnes in 2005. We work back from a date when fossil fuels will be unavailable – 2025, 2050 – to develop a community that has been weaned off its dependency. The first year was primarily spent raising awareness and explaining the issues behind fossil fuels.

"The working groups system puts people in touch with others who have a common interest. It's very good on a local, community level and reduces reliance on the local council. There's a can-do attitude about that attracts doers.

"The reason Transition Towns have been successful is that they haven't been militant. They're all-encompassing. Where the environmental movement tends to be 'against' things. Transition Towns are all about being 'for' something. To people of all political backgrounds, that's very appealing."

In Lewes, the Waste Group, led by Julia Waterlow, has, in alliance with the local council, trialled £100 Green Johanna home composters from Sweden. Both parties have subsidised the composters so they're free to local households. An industrial-scale composter, for commercial food waste, is also being trialled at County Hall. Waterlow is also in charge of the Evelyn Eco House on a Lewes estate, which highlights cheap, effective upgrades. The Transport Group, meanwhile, has introduced the car-sharing Silver Bean Car Club, which the district council is looking at introducing town-wide.

The lawyers: Environmental Law Foundation

Deborah Tripley is chief executive of the Environmental Law Foundation, a charity that helps people use the law to protect their local environment. She is a trained barrister and was head of legal at Greenpeace

"When ELF started in 1992, before the UN Convention on Climate Change had been passed, it was a pioneer. Back in those days we had to explain what environmental law was. A unique feature of ELF was establishing a national network of lawyers who pledged to provide a certain amount of time pro bono. Our Sustainable Communities project is a new way of working. We're going to marginalised, under-represented local communities and asking them about their concerns, then bringing in people to provide solutions. We get about 700 enquiries a year – about 80 per cent are planning-related and concerned with things going on in the locality. About 30 per cent become High Court challenges.

"Things haven't changed much over the past 20 years. People are still concerned with the same three issues: noise, habitat destruction and pollution. But more people are aware of their environmental rights then find they can't do anything. According to Lord Justice Jackson's Review of Civil Litigation Costs, litigation costs have increased; that's an issue for us and all environmental organisations.

"Is law the best mechanism for protecting the environment? Sometimes I feel people's expectations are too high. We advised the local community when Donald Trump wanted to build a vast golf course; they felt the development would destroy local coastline. The proposal was refused at a planning inquiry but Alec Salmond overruled them and granted it. Work securing the sand dunes began last October, but is still mired in legal challenges

"Campaigners want to change minds at a government level, but we work in a different context: we represent people on a local level. Sometimes you can get a change at a policy level but find it has no impact at all locally, or is not being enforced. You need ordinary people to protect the environment and environmental laws need to be enforced on the ground. We're just trying to get the best for their area. It's about small wins but important wins."

The campaigners: Conch (Communities Opposed to New Coal at Hunterston)

Formed in July 2009 to fight plans to build a new coal-fired power station at Hunterston, Conch is led by Tim Cowen (below, far right). Hunterston is a small coal terminal on the North Ayrshire coast. The no-new-coal campaign is one of the latest since the Kingsnorth protest

"We started in July, with a mix of people, and have had an awful lot of good news since then. Ayrshire Power's partner, Dong (Danish Oil and Natural Gas), pulled its funding in October, saying it needed to make cutbacks in its international portfolio. Conch would have been a factor in that decision. We have run a very vociferous local campaign and launched a legal challenge in September. There still has not been a planning application lodged.

"One critical lesson has been that campaigns don't usually start before plans are lodged; but as soon as we heard about the Hunterston proposal we got 120 people along to a public meeting on a wet and windy night. Because we succeeded in getting started early, we haven't had to resort to direct action yet. But we were boosted by news of the Kingsnorth acquittal. If the plan goes ahead, we will organise larger public meetings. We've done well to get information out to counter PR from Ayrshire Power. Another thing we've done is highlight what we believe are problems with technological issues surrounding carbon capture [using a filter to hinder emissions], which was part of Ayrshire Power's proposal.

"Networking with other campaign groups is vital. It's really important to build networks and share information. There's quite an active campaign against opencast mining in Scotland and they've shared health studies and fired off Freedom of Information requests. My advice to would-be activists: give it a go. You'll be surprised at the support you get. And have fun, keep people motivated. We had a fundraising gig in a barn."

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Greenland ice loss driven by warming seas: study

Yahoo News 14 Feb 10;

PARIS (AFP) – Greenland's continent-sized icesheet is being significantly eroded by winds and currents that drive warmer water into fjords, where it carves out the base of coastal glaciers, according to studies released Sunday.

The icy mass sitting atop Greenland holds enough water to boost global sea levels by seven metres (23 feet), potentially drowning low-lying coastal cities and deltas around the world.

At present, the ocean watermark is rising at around three millimetres (0.12 inches) per year, a figure that compares with 1.8mm (0.07 inches) annually in the early 1960s.

But Greenland's contribution has more than doubled in the past decade, and scientists suspect climate change is largely to blame, although exactly how this is occurring is fiercely debated.

Some theories point to air temperatures, which are rising faster in far northern latitudes than the global average.

A rival idea is that shifting currents and subtropical ocean waters moving north are eroding the foundation of coastal glaciers, accelerating their slide into the sea, especially those inside Greenland's many fjords.

Until now, however, these studies have been mainly based on mathematical models rather than observation.

A team of scientists led by Fiammetta Straneo of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts set out to help fill that data void.

Working off of a ship in July and September 2008, the researchers took detailed measurements of the water properties in the Sermilik Fjord connecting Helheim Glacier in eastern Greenland with the ocean.

They found deep water streaming into the fjord was 3.0-4.0 degrees Celsius (37.4-39.2 degrees Fahrenheit), warm enough to cut into the base of the glaciers and hasten their plunge into the sea.

Moored instruments left in the fjord for eight months showed that winds aligned with the coastline played a crucial role in the influx of these warmer waters.

"Our findings support increased submarine melting as a trigger for the glacier acceleration, but indicated a combination of atmospheric and oceanic changes as the likely driver," the researchers say.

In a separate field study, Eric Rignot of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California and colleagues tried to calculate the relative share of the causes of glacier loss.

Investigating the western side of Greenland, they took ocean measurements in August 2008 in three fjords at the base of four glaciers breaking off into the sea, a process known as calving.

Ocean melting, they found, accounted for between 20 and 75 percent of ice loss from the glacier face, with calving from the part of the iceberg exposed to air accounting for the rest.

Meanwhile, a study also published in the journal Nature Geoscience warned that oceans could become more acidic faster than at any time over the last 65 million years.

Andy Ridgwell and Daniella Schmidt of the University of Bristol, western England compared past and future changes in ocean acidity using computer simulations.

They found that the surface of the ocean is set to acidify even faster than it did during a well-documented episode of greenhouse warming 55.5 million years ago.

Accelerating acidification has already begun to take a toll on numerous marine animals that play a vital role in ocean food chain and help draw off huge quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere.

The calcium carapace of microscopic animals called foraminifera living in the Southern Ocean, for example, have fallen in weight by a third.

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Climate: Is the Copenhagen Accord already dead?

Marlowe Hood and Richard Ingham Yahoo News 14 Feb 10;

PARIS (AFP) – Less than two months after it was hastily drafted to stave off a fiasco, the Copenhagen Accord on climate change is in a bad way, and some are already saying it has no future.

The deal was crafted amid chaos by a small group of countries, led by the United States and China, to avert an implosion of the UN's December 7-18 climate summit.

Savaged at the time by green activists and poverty campaigners as disappointing, gutless or a betrayal, the Accord is now facing its first test in the political arena -- and many views are caustic.

Veterans say the document has little traction and cannot pull the 194-nation UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) towards a new global pact by year's end.

Political momentum is so weak that so far only two negotiating rounds have been rostered in 2010, one among officials in Bonn in mid-year, the other in Mexico at ministerial level in December.

Worse, the Accord itself already seems to have been quietly disowned by China, India and other emerging economies just weeks after they helped write it, say these sources.

"Publicly, they are being bubbly and supportive about the Copenhagen Accord. In private, they are urinating all over it," one observer, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP.

The Accord's supporters say it is the first wide-ranging deal to peg global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) and gather rich and poor countries in specific pledges for curbing carbon emissions.

And it promises money: 30 billion dollars for climate-vulnerable poor countries by 2012, with as much as 100 billion dollars annually by 2020.

Critics say there is no roadmap for reaching the warming target and point out the pledges are voluntary, whereas the Kyoto Protocol -- which took effect five years ago next Tuesday -- has tough compliance provisions for rich polluters.

Anger among small countries sidelined from the crazed huddle in Copenhagen was so fierce that the paper failed to get approval at a plenary session.

That meant the Accord's credibility rating is based on what happened on January 31, a self-described "soft" deadline set by the UNFCCC.

Under it, countries would register their intended actions for tackling carbon emissions and say if they wish to be "associated" with the agreement.

The roster on actions is nicely filled, but there are glaring gaps in the "association" side.

China (the world's No. 1 polluter), India, Brazil and South Africa, as well as Russia among the developed countries, have all failed to make this endorsement.

The US sees this as backsliding which could return negotiations to the finger-pointing and textual nitpicking that brought Copenhagen so close to disaster.

Its climate pointman, Todd Stern, said last Tuesday that he believed the big four developing countries "will sign on."

"The consequences of not doing so are so serious -- in a word, leaving the accord stillborn, contrary to the clear assent their leaders gave to the accord in Copenhagen."

The Chinese and Indian governments, questioned by AFP, declined to comment on specifics of their positions.

Michael Zammit Cutajar, former chairman of a UNFCCC negotiating group, said the Copenhagen Accord was flawed by "incoherence" as to how it should dovetail with the overall UNFCCC forum and parallel talks on extending Kyoto.

"Beyond the lack of clarity in its drafting, its main weakness is the lack of ambition and identifying responsibilities," he said in an interview.

"Who should do what, and when, in order to limit warming to 2C (3.6 F)?"

Saleemul Huq with the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in London, said the developing majors, by refusing to endorse the Accord, "are clearly signalling their view that the UNFCCC process is still the only game in town."

"This means that any impressions that anyone might have had that the Accord had succeeded in hiving off the 'main players' into a separate process to the UNFCCC are just a delusion."

So does the Copenhagen Accord have any real future? Or is it doomed to be consigned to a desk drawer?

"It's still too early to know," said Elliot Diringer of US thinktank, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

Seeking to breathe life into its provisions, the United States and others may launch a "friends of the Accord" process, running in parallel to the UN negotiations.

But in the likelihood that China and India will snub this move, the document may end up as "a political reference point" within the UN process, said Diringer, who summarised: "It's a messy situation."

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African crops yield another catastrophe for the IPCC

One more alarming claim in the IPCC's 2007 report is disintegrating under closer examination, says Christopher Booker
Christopher Booker, The Telegraph 13 Feb 10;

Ever more question marks have been raised in recent weeks over the reputations of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and of its chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri. But the latest example to emerge is arguably the most bizarre and scandalous of all. It centres on a very specific scare story which was included in the IPCC's 2007 report, although it was completely at odds with the scientific evidence – including that produced by the British expert in charge of the relevant section of the report. Even more tellingly, however, this particular claim has repeatedly been championed by Dr Pachauri himself.

Only last week Dr Pachauri was specifically denying that the appearance of this claim in two IPCC reports, including one of which he was the editor, was an error. Yet it has now come to light that the IPCC, ignoring the evidence of its own experts, deliberately published the claim for propaganda purposes.

One of the most widely quoted and most alarmist passages in the main 2007 report was a warning that, by 2020, global warming could reduce crop yields in some countries in Africa by 50 per cent. Dr Pachauri not only allowed this claim to be included in the short Synthesis Report, of which he was co-editor, but has publicly repeated it many times since.

The origin of this claim was a report written for a Canadian advocacy group by Ali Agoumi, a Moroccan academic who draws part of his current income from advising on how to make applications for "carbon credits". As his primary sources he cited reports for three North African governments. But none of these remotely supported what he wrote. The nearest any got to providing evidence for his claim was one for the Moroccan government, which said that in serious drought years, cereal yields might be reduced by 50 per cent. The report for the Algerian government, on the other hand, predicted that, on current projections, "agricultural production will more than double by 2020". Yet it was Agoumi's claim that climate change could cut yields by 50 per cent that was headlined in the IPCC's Working Group II report in 2007.

What made this even odder, however, was that the group's
co-chairman was a British agricultural expert, Dr Martin Parry, whose consultancy group, Martin Parry Associates, had been paid £75,000 by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) for two reports which had come to totally different conclusions. Specifically designed to inform the IPCC's 2007 report, these predicted that by 2020 any changes were likely to be insignificant. The worst case they could come up with was that by 2080 climate change might decrease crop yields by "up to 30 per cent".

British taxpayers poured out money for the section of the IPCC report for which Dr Parry was responsible. Defra paid £2.5 million through the Met Office, plus £330,000 for Dr Parry's salary as co-chairman, and a further £75,000 to his consultancy for two more reports on the impact of global warming on world food supplies. Yet when it came to the impact on Africa, all this peer-reviewed work – including further expert reports by Britain's Dr Mike Hulme and Dutch and German teams – was ignored in favour of a prediction from one Moroccan activist at odds with his own cited sources.

However, the story then got worse when Dr Pachauri himself came to edit and co-author the IPCC's Synthesis Report (for which the IPCC paid his Delhi-based Teri institute, out of the £400,000 allocated for its production). Not only did Pachauri's version again give prominence to Agoumi's 50 per cent figure, but he himself has repeated the claim on numerous occasions since, in articles, interviews and speeches –such as the one he gave to a climate summit in Potsdam last September, where he boasted he was speaking "in the voice of the world's scientific community".

Only last week, in an interview available on YouTube, Dr Pachauri was asked about errors in the IPCC's 2007 report and his own Synthesis Report, with specific reference to the loss of North African crops. His reply was that – aside from the prediction that the IPCC has now had to disown, that Himalayan glaciers could vanish by 2035 – the reports contained "no errors". Passages such as those on African crops were "not errors and we are absolutely certain that what we have said over that can be substantiated".

In the wake of all the other recent scandals, "Africa-gate" may be the most damaging of all, because of the involvement of Dr Pachauri himself. Not only is the reputation of the IPCC in tatters, but that of its chairman appears irreperably damaged. Yet the world's politicians cannot afford to see him resign because, if he goes, the whole sham edifice they have sworn by would come tumbling down.

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