Chek Jawa intertidal walks for whole 2011 open for booking from 1 Dec from wild shores of singapore
Aerial Chase of Tanimbar Corellas and Little Egrets
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Wagler's Pit Viper spotted!
from Macro Photography in Singapore
Basidiocarp
from The annotated budak
Seeram Ramakrishna for the Straits Times 17 Nov 10;
WHILE delivering the Singapore Energy Lecture during the annual Singapore International Energy Week recently, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that nuclear power is a clean source of energy and Singapore cannot afford to dismiss the option of nuclear energy. When a member of the audience pressed him for a definite timeframe for Singapore to consider building a nuclear power plant, he quipped: 'I would say possibly during my lifetime.'
Nuclear experts from around the world, who are observing developments in the region, said that these were wise words for the following reasons:
Opting for a nuclear power plant is a long-term commitment - a 100-years decision, in fact. A typical nuclear power plant is designed to generate electricity for six to eight decades; the time needed to build, commission and decommission a nuclear reactor spans a few decades.
Countries that have harnessed nuclear energy successfully tend to meet 20-40 per cent of their respective national electricity needs from nuclear power, with the remainder from diversified energy sources including coal, natural gas, hydro, solar and wind.
Singapore's electricity need is in the range of 6,000 megawatt electrical (MWe) to 6,500MWe, and is expected to grow by 2-4 per cent annually. Going by the experience of other countries, Singapore may consider harnessing nuclear energy approximately in the range of 1,000MWe to 2,500MWe.
Over the years, the capacity of a single nuclear power reactor has increased substantially, so it is possible to benefit from the economies of scale. For instance, the most recent European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) has an electrical power output of 1,650MWe.
Though a single such reactor may meet Singapore's needs, back-up arrangements would be necessary to take care of the electricity needs during the down time of a nuclear power reactor. Finland is building an EPR in Olkiluoto with significant project delays and cost overruns for a host of reasons. The nuclear industry needs to wait for a few more years to fully assess the price competitiveness of electricity generated from such nuclear power plants.
Given Singapore's relatively modest total electricity needs, it is logical to consider small modular reactors (SMRs), whose capacities range from tens of MWe to few hundreds of MWe.
Nuclear organisations in the United States, South Korea, China, Russia, Japan and India have embarked on SMRs with objectives such as these:
# To meet the electricity needs of off-grid, remote places and smaller cities;
# To lower the upfront substantial financing burden a large reactor would entail;
# To site a nuclear power reactor below the earth's surface;
# To be nuclear-proliferation-resistant;
# To meet the enhanced safety requirements of nuclear regulators and the public; and
# To generate water and hydrogen in addition to electricity.
These features of SMRs would be attractive to Singapore, considering the densely populated and geographically limited nature of the country.
But SMRs are now in different stages of design, analysis, demonstration, and regulatory review and licensing in different countries. It would be realistic to assume that it would take another two to three decades to prove the economic competitiveness and commercial viability of SMRs.
There are other major considerations that new nuclear nations need to consider: among them, the security of the nuclear fuel supply, and the safe management of used reactor fuel.
International discussions are ongoing to provide 'cradle to grave' service for nuclear fuels. In other words, an arrangement will likely emerge for suppliers to take back the used reactor fuel.
Such an arrangement would be desired by several new nuclear nations, since they would have limited scope and abilities to develop their own full nuclear fuel cycle capabilities. However, it would take several years for such a 'cradle to grave' arrangement to emerge and become an accepted international practice.
Taking all this into consideration, it is obvious that what appeared to be a light-hearted quip by PM Lee - 'possibly during my lifetime' - was indeed a realistic assessment.
The writer is vice-president (research strategy) at the National University of Singapore.
Tycoon wants the world to use turbines to reduce carbon footprint
Grace Ng, Straits Times 17 Nov 10;
MR TULSI Tanti, Time Magazine's Hero of the Environment, has an idea to make Singapore greener and draw more tourists at the same time.
Build a gigantic wind turbine the height of some 10 football fields in the sea. It would meet some of the island's electricity needs and double up as an offshore lookout tower for visitors.
'People can go by boat to the turbine, take the lift to the gallery and see Singapore from a 100m height,' said the chairman of Suzlon Energy, the world's third- largest wind energy player.
Having visited Singapore several times for family vacations as well as board meetings of SE Shipping, a family-owned company that handles logistics for Suzlon, Mr Tanti remembers it fondly as 'a very good tourist place'.
Since Singapore has limited land, the turbine can be put in the sea and double up as a tourist attraction, he said in a recent interview in his Beijing office.
This may seem like an unorthodox suggestion, since Singapore has relatively weak wind flows. But the entrepreneur, who has started 17 different businesses, is used to blowing old assumptions away with his forward-looking ideas.
'Entrepreneurship, going beyond what is (already) here, is in my DNA,' said the 52-year-old, who was in China to meet clients after attending September's World Economic Forum in the nearby city of Tianjin.
It was such out-of-the-box thinking that helped Mr Tanti, together with his three younger brothers, build the world's third-largest wind turbine maker Suzlon about 15 years ago.
In 1994, their textile business in Surat, western India, was plagued by frequent power blackouts and sky-high electricity bills.
Then Mr Tanti discovered the wonders of wind. 'We didn't have energy, so our first objective was to bring energy (security). The second thing was how we can do this at low cost. How can I hedge the power cost for the next 20 years?'
This was precisely what a wind turbine could do - and conventional electricity suppliers could not.
'If I go in and ask any power company, 'Can you give me the price in 20 years?', they won't know what the fuel price will be. But if anybody came to me and asked, 'What price will you give me in 2030?', I can give you a fixed price today.'
So he bought two wind turbines from the top manufacturer Vestas. At that time, he had little clue about how the machines worked - or that this would be the first step to starting a company in 1995 that would one day rival the Danish company.
All he knew was that to a customer, the system of having one company make a turbine, another install it and a third maintain it, was a mess.
So he devised a complete suite of wind services which would even allow customers to buy energy from a wind turbine they owned far away.
This concept was simple, and a big hit. By 1999, wind turbines were so popular in the Indian state of Maharashtra, where Mr Tanti and his brothers had set up Suzlon by scraping together US$600,000 (S$780,000), that a law was passed allowing companies to claim the costs of installing turbines as a tax deduction.
In 2001, Suzlon's sales crossed the US$100 million mark.
That set the stage for the company to pull off a successful US$340 million listing on the Indian stock exchange in 2005 and the largest acquisition by any Indian company in Germany in 2007.
But for Mr Tanti, 2001 was a turning point in a different way: He made it his mission to help save the world.
'I personally realised that the biggest challenge for the world is global warming and climate change...and we (Suzlon) can create a good impact on that,' he said.
With carbon emissions growing dangerously fast, the polar ice caps are melting, putting his favourite islands like the Maldives in danger of being submerged by rising sea levels.
'The sea level (is expected to) grow by 7m. This will hit Singapore too, not just the Maldives...Of course, it may take many years (before this happens), but we must ask ourselves, What are we giving to our grandchildren?'
Mr Tanti, whose son and daughter are both studying for their master's degrees in finance, does not have grandchildren yet.
But he can already imagine how they would react to his crusade: 'They will know... if I will do a good job, they will be very happy.'
His own grandfather had made a deep impression on him when he was a 21-year-old.
He had tried to sell surplus underground water sourced from beneath his father's cold storage factory during a water crisis in 1978, but was sternly rebuked.
'I sold water from a big tank, and within seven days, my grandfather came to know. Immediately, he said, 'You cannot sell water, give it free to the people.''
So while entrepreneurship is in the DNA of the Tanti family, the 16 members running Suzlon have grown up learning that doing business is about being a 'good human being'.
It is such family values of integrity and good humanity that Mr Tanti says drive him to travel as many as 300 days a year around the world persuading people to use more giant fans.
'I hope to communicate to the common people, the governments, the decision makers that we are growing the economy but at the same time our actions are destroying the environment.'
Sceptics may view this as a savvy plug for more wind turbines to help Suzlon - which took a hit during the global financial crisis - expand its 10 per cent global market share and reverse its net loss by the end of this year.
This time, Mr Tanti is in China pushing Suzlon's expansion in the world's largest wind energy market, which may include offshore wind projects using its 6MW turbines.
Still, Mr Tanti, named 'Champion of the Earth 2009' by the United Nations Environment Programme, would rather reduce his carbon footprint than live it up as the 69th richest man in India with more than US$1 billion in assets.
That includes having no private jet and no power-guzzling mansion. He lives in a three-bedroom rented apartment in Pune, a city in western India, and took the hour-long train ride from Tianjin to Beijing instead of driving.
He is also sticking to his 20-year vision for Suzlon that started in 2001 when he feared for the fate of sinking islands.
The first step was for Suzlon to expand its capacity rapidly. 'From 2002 to 2010, our growth was nearly 60 per cent because we believe we (must) put more wind turbines to reduce the world's carbon footprint.
'Today you ask me, what is the next level? By 2020, we want maximum geography.'
Suzlon is already in 25 markets. But with demand in the United States and Europe faltering, it is aggressively expanding in developing countries.
'We are concentrating heavily in the short term on emerging markets: India, China, South Africa and South America. These markets are growing, they have hunger for energy and are looking to more...(green) job creation,' he said.
'Maybe I can put some wind turbines offshore in Singapore too.'
The island, which houses key wind energy research centres for Vestas and Siemens, is already experimenting with vertical wind turbines on land. But the feasibility of offshore turbines is unclear.
But Mr Tanti seemed so taken by the idea that he continued talking even as he headed out of the door to his client meeting: 'Maybe we can recommend to the Singapore Government. Suzlon has the technology for it.'
After all, even small islands count in his 2020 vision. 'The more megawatts of wind power, the more energy security and green jobs,' he said.
Power to the people, minus the emissions
Straits Times 17 Nov 10;
# Why are you interested in wind energy?
Going forward, energy needs will increase considerably: The world has a population of six billion right now, of which 1.5 billion don't have access to electricity.
By 2030, the population will likely grow to around nine billion, and by that time, the world will need almost double the energy that it needs today.
So in this context, one thing is clear: We need to provide access to electricity for everybody, and this electricity should be low-cost and not damage the climate.
Wind energy players such as Suzlon can help meet this need and develop a low-carbon economy. At the same time, we are contributing to more green jobs.
# You attended the Copenhagen Summit in December last year. What is your take on global efforts to cut carbon emissions?
We have a great opportunity to reshape the world's energy consumption patterns of today, and to make energy cleaner, more accessible and more sustainable.
Acting now will mean a better world for us and for all of our children. At the Copenhagen summit, 192 countries agreed to keep the Earth's temperature increase below 2 deg C.
However, we still need to establish a global governance framework on climate change that ensures enforcement so that all countries will follow it strictly. Such a framework takes time to agree upon though, and maybe it would take one or two more years to get that established.
Richard Black BBC News 16 Nov 10;
A search for frogs believed to be extinct has instead led scientists to discover some new ones. Three species hitherto unknown to science have been found in Colombia.
They include a poison-secreting rocket frog and two toads. All three are tiny and tend to be most active in daytime, which is unusual for amphibians.
However, the same expedition to Colombia failed to find the species it was hoping to rediscover, the Mesopotamia beaked toad.
The disappointment provoked by that non-discovery turned to glee when the conservation scientists came across the three new species.
The 3-4cm red-eyed toad, discovered at an altitude of 2,000m, evoked particular fascination.
"I have never seen a toad with such vibrant red eyes," said Robin Moore from Conservation International, the scientist who set up the rediscovery project.
"This trait is highly unusual for amphibians, and its discovery offers us a terrific opportunity to learn more about how and why it adapted this way."
The other new toad is also tiny - less than 2cm long - with a beak-shaped head that Dr Moore compared to the snout of Montgomery Burns, the villain of The Simpsons TV series.
George Meyer, a long-time Simpsons writer and amphibian enthusiast, commented: "The toad's imperious profile and squinty eyes indeed look like Monty Burns."
The reason why it has not been identified previously is probably because the species skips the tadpole stage, instead producing toadlets that resemble the fallen leaves of the forest floor in which they live.
The third newcomer is a rocket frog, a member of the poison dart family - though not as poisonous as many of its cousins.
The amphibian search, co-ordinated by Conservation International along with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, began in August and is the first co-ordinated attempt to look for species believed to be extinct.
Expeditions have been mounted in 19 countries in search of 100 lost species.
So far, three have been found: a Mexican salamander not seen since its discovery in 1941, a frog from the Ivory Coast last observed in 1967, and another frog from Democratic Republic of Congo not seen since 1979.
Despite the discoveries and rediscoveries, the team emphasises that overall, the global outlook for amphibians is still bleak.
The remainder of species targeted by the current search have remained undetected, suggesting that they are indeed extinct.
And the latest Red List of Threatened Species, released during the UN biodiversity summit last month, put 41% of amphibians on the danger list, with most of the threats continuing to intensify.
Yahoo News 16 Nov 10;
JAKARTA (AFP) – Indonesia has declared a vast sanctuary for sharks, turtles and manta rays in a region known as one of the world's richest sources of marine biodiversity, officials and conservationists said Tuesday.
The sanctuary covers 46,000 square kilometres (17,760 square miles) of waters around the Raja Ampat islands in eastern Indonesia, part of the so-called Coral Triangle region of Southeast Asia.
Sharks, manta rays, mobulas, dugongs and turtles are fully protected within the sanctuary, and destructive practices including reef bombing and the aquarium fish trade are banned, local officials said.
"Sharks, as apex predators, play a vital role in regulating the health of important commercial fish species, population balance, and coral reefs," conservation group Shark Savers and the Misool Eco Resort, which are supporting the sanctuary, said in a statement.
"Despite this importance, up to 73 million sharks are killed annually with some shark populations declining by as much as 90 percent, mostly for shark fin soup.
"In Raja Ampat, three fourths of its shark species are threatened with local extinction."
Peter Knights, executive director of US-based conservation group WildAid which is backing the project, said: "It?s tragic that so much of Raja Ampat?s biological treasure is destined for consumers who are unaware of the impact.
"Sharks are being killed for their fins, mantas are being killed for their gills, and rare reef fish are being caught for aquariums," he said.
Raja Ampat marine and fishery office head Yohanis Bercmans Rahawaryn could not provide figures on shark numbers in the area, but said their numbers had "dropped steadily in the past few years".
"Divers rarely find big sharks around Raja Ampat. That's the main indicator," he said.
Pascale Trouillaud Yahoo News 16 Nov 10;
BEIJING (AFP) – Maritime incidents in the East and South China Seas, such as the one that sparked a major row between China and Japan, could intensify in a fight over dwindling fish stocks, experts say.
Past incidents have been sparked by regional competition for strategic sea routes and the search for oil, but fishermen from Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines and Vietnam are increasingly heading outside their own territorial waters -- and into disputed areas -- to earn a living.
Beijing and Tokyo are still at odds two months after a Chinese trawler collided with two Japanese coastguard vessels near a contested island chain in the East China Sea -- seen as a harbinger of further conflicts.
"Fish stocks are depleting very rapidly in eastern Asia and there is a scramble for fish," Jonathan Holslag, a researcher at the Brussels Institute of Contemporary Chinese Studies, told AFP.
"We have gas and oil people involved as well and this is politically the most sensitive issue, but... fishing companies bring a greater risk of incidents or tensions," Holslag added.
The industry -- which is vital in Japan, the region's key consumer -- has the "great potential of becoming a political problem," he warned.
In both the East and South China Seas, white tuna is the most plentiful, and as Holslag explains, the price per kilo -- about 13.50 dollars, five times the average price of the most popular fish in China -- makes it "worth the risk".
Fish has become "a kind of new gold in Asia", he said.
Chinese fishermen ply the waters near the mainland, but also travel as far away as the Pacific islands of Fiji and Tonga, or the waters off east African nations such as Kenya and Tanzania, which have given them special concessions.
But in the East and South China Seas, they are treading on the competing territorial claims of more than a half-dozen Asian countries, most of which involve tiny island chains that are potentially resource-rich.
Yves Tiberghien, a visiting professor at the National Chengchi University in Taiwan, says fish stocks were at the heart of the recent China-Japan clash.
"It's clear that tensions are mounting in a region where resources are fewer and fewer, and demand is on the rise," Tiberghien said.
"China is consuming more and more fish, and global fish stocks are down, especially in that region -- it makes perfect sense that Chinese boats are going to go farther and farther" and into disputed waters, he added.
In August and September, he said, more than 80 boats from coastal Fujian province headed to the islands at the heart of the China-Japan dispute -- known as the Diaoyus in China and the Senkakus in Japan, and also claimed by Taiwan.
Chinese fishermen have been working there for generations, but in recent years, Japan's coastguard has been increasingly active, confronting Taiwanese and Chinese boats in a similar fashion to the September 7 incident.
That collision led to the captain's arrest, sparking outrage from Beijing. Despite a few brief meetings between the Chinese and Japanese premiers in the interim, ties are still fraught with complications.
"The Japanese coastguard was initially mild in its dealings with the Chinese fishermen. In the last two years, they have become more strict," one veteran Chinese fisherman told the website sinovision.net.
"There are a lot of fish around the Diaoyus," said another fisherman quoted by the website. "This is not just a question of patriotism -- our sole motivation for going there is to fish."
China's fisheries department has sent patrol boats to the area around the disputed islands to "protect the rights of the fishermen" -- an act which Tokyo has protested.
Since the start of the year, the department says it has offered assistance to more than 400 fishing expeditions in the South China Sea near the Spratlys -- also claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.
Despite the increased tensions, fishermen say they will not allow politics to interfere with their daily lives.
After the arrest by Tokyo of Chinese captain Zhan Qixiong, who was later released, one fisherman told sinovision: "No one said, 'We won't go to the Diaoyu anymore.'
"Even Captain Zhan said he would go fishing in the Diaoyus again."
Antara 16 Nov 10;
Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Marine and Fishery Affairs Minister Fadel Muhammad has called on Asia and Pacific nations to fight illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing practices.
"Illegal fishing can cause economic, social and ecological losses, as well as undermine a nation`s sovereignty," Minister Fadel Mohammad said according to a press statement here Tuesday.
The minister made the statement when speaking at the Asia Pacific coordinating meeting on "Combating Illegal Fishing and Promotion of the Maritime Economy" in Phuket, Thailand, Monday (Nov 15).
IUU fishing was an organized transnational crime seriously harming Indonesia and other Asia and Pacific countries, he said.
Fadel said Indonesia would retirelessly fight and punish whoever engaged in illegal fishing in its territorial waters, he stated.
The Indonesian government would also practice sustainable fishery management based on the the Minapolitan concept, he said.
Fadel said his ministry had developed the Minapolitan concept which aimed to promote sustainable fishery productivity and cooperativeness to boost the fishery industry.
"With Minapolitan, the fishery industry can be managed in an integrated way , namely covering the pre-catchment, catchment, processing up to marketing phases," he said.
Last June 2010, Indonesia`s marine and fishery affairs ministry announced that it would allocate funds amounting to Rp200 billion to build 28 Special Economic Zones (KEK), fisheries or Minapolitan.
Meanwhile, Secretary General of the People`s Coalition for Fishery Justice (Kiara) Riza Damanik said recently that over the past 15 years, Indonesian waters had been encroached on by illegal fishermen from 10 countries, including six ASEAN member countries.(*)
Yahoo News 16 Nov 10;
PARIS (AFP) – Four major non-governmental organisations called Tuesday for an outright ban on industrial fishing of bluefin tuna in the eastern Atlantic and "ranching" of this fast-dwindling species in the Mediterranean.
The joint appeal came on the eve of a meeting in Paris of the 48-nation International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT), which sets the rules and quotas for tuna fishing in both seas.
"Bluefin tuna fishing does not have a future unless ICCAT shuts down purse-seine fishing and farming," Maria-Jose Cornax, an expert with advocacy group Oceana, told journalists.
In the Mediterranean, the vast majority of captured bluefin are trapped during spawning season by 30-to-40 metre (100- to 150-feet) ships, using floating drawstring nets that can enclose more than 2,000 fish at once.
The tuna, still in the water, are then hauled to coastal "farms" where they are fattened before being shipped mainly to Japan, which consumes 80 percent of the annual catch.
Eastern Atlantic bluefin stocks have dropped by 85 percent in 30 years, which "should be a warning sign to governments," said Remi Parmentier, a consultant for the Washington-based Pew Environment Group.
Along with Greenpeace and WWF International, Pew and Oceana called in a joint statement for ICCAT to close industrial purse-seine fishing and farming.
Spawning grounds in both the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Mexico -- where the impact of the BP oil slick on bluefin reproduction remains unknown -- must also be protected, they said.
A top open-water predator, the bluefin tuna migrates across the Atlantic up to 8,000 kilometres (5,000 miles) to gather in these spawning grounds, where it becomes an easy target for industrial trawlers.
France and Spain have the largest fleets of purse-seine ships, while the biggest fattening farms are in waters off Malta, Croatia and Spain.
A bid to protect Atlantic bluefin through a UN international trade ban failed earlier this year, leaving the fate of the species in the hands of ICCAT, which meets until November 27.
The organisation's scientific committee has calculated that maintaining the current annual quota of 13,500 tonnes over the next three years will give the species a 60-percent chance of achieving a so-called "maximum sustainable yield" by 2022.
"That's like asking a passenger to get on an airplane knowing that there's a 40 percent chance it will crash," said Sergi Tudela of WWF.
Conservationists also point to high rates of illegal and unreported fishing, notably in 2007 when actual catches exceeded quotas by nearly 100 percent, according to ICCAT scientists.
Industry spokesmen say industrial fisheries have cracked down on fraud in the last three years by adding independent on-board inspectors and an improved ship-to-market monitoring system.
ScienceDaily 16 Nov 10;
Coral reefs suffered record losses as a consequence of high ocean temperatures in the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean in 2005 according to the most comprehensive documentation of basin-scale bleaching to date. Collaborators from 22 countries report that more than 80 percent of surveyed corals bleached and over 40 percent of the total surveyed died, making this the most severe bleaching event ever recorded in the basin.
The study appears in PLoS ONE, an international, peer-reviewed, open-access, online publication.
Satellite-based tools from NOAA's Coral Reef Watch Program guided site selection for field observations conducted across the greater Caribbean region from June to October 2005. Field surveys of bleaching and mortality in this study surpass prior efforts in both detail and extent.
This study also substantially raised the standards for documenting the effects of bleaching and for testing satellite and forecast products. Coral bleaching occurs when stress causes corals to expel their symbiotic algae, or zooxanthellae. If prolonged or particularly severe, it may result in coral death.
"Heat stress during the 2005 event exceeded any observed in the Caribbean in the prior 20 years, and regionally-averaged temperatures were the warmest in at least 150 years," said C. Mark Eakin, Ph.D., coordinator of NOAA's Coral Reef Watch Program. "This severe, widespread bleaching and mortality will undoubtedly have long-term consequences for reef ecosystems, and events like this are likely to become more common as the climate warms."
Through this survey, several species and localities reported bleaching for the first time, including the first known bleaching of any kind in Saba, the first documented mass bleaching at the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, and the first reported mass bleaching in Virgin Islands National Park of Acropora palmata, a species listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act in 2006.
The Caribbean is suffering severe bleaching again this year, and in some locations, this bleaching event is worse than the event in 2005. Not only are temperatures causing further damage to reefs hit hard during the 2005 event, but new locations have also been impacted.
The decline and loss of coral reefs has significant social, cultural, economic and ecological impacts on people and communities throughout the world. As the "rainforests of the sea," coral reefs provide economic services -- jobs, food and tourism -- estimated to be worth as much as $375 billion each year.
This research was supported by the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program. Its research and monitoring program covers all shallow-water and deep-water coral reef ecosystems under the jurisdiction of the United States and is intended to inform resource managers, scientists, policymakers and the public.
Journal Reference:
1. C. Mark Eakin, Jessica A. Morgan, Scott F. Heron, Tyler B. Smith, Gang Liu, Lorenzo Alvarez-Filip, Bart Baca, Erich Bartels, Carolina Bastidas, Claude Bouchon, Marilyn Brandt, Andrew W. Bruckner, Lucy Bunkley-Williams, Andrew Cameron, Billy D. Causey, Mark Chiappone, Tyler R. L. Christensen, M. James C Crabbe, Owen Day, Elena de la Guardia, Guillermo DÃaz-Pulido, Daniel DiResta, Diego L. Gil-Agudelo, David S. Gilliam, Robert N. Ginsburg, Shannon Gore, Héctor M. Guzmán, James C. Hendee, Edwin A. Hernández-Delgado, Ellen Husain, Christopher F. G. Jeffrey, Ross J. Jones, Eric Jordán-Dahlgren, Les S. Kaufman, David I. Kline, Philip A. Kramer, Judith C. Lang, Diego Lirman, Jennie Mallela, Carrie Manfrino, Jean-Philippe Maréchal, Ken Marks, Jennifer Mihaly, W. Jeff Miller, Erich M. Mueller, Erinn M. Muller, Carlos A. Orozco Toro, Hazel A. Oxenford, Daniel Ponce-Taylor, Norman Quinn, Kim B. Ritchie, Sebastián RodrÃguez, Alberto RodrÃguez RamÃrez, Sandra Romano, Jameal F. Samhouri, Juan A. Sánchez, George P. Schmahl, Burton V. Shank, William J. Skirving, Sascha C. C. Steiner, Estrella Villamizar, Sheila M. Walsh, Cory Walter, Ernesto Weil, Ernest H. Williams, Kimberly Woody Roberson, Yusri Yusuf, Tamara Natasha Romanuk. Caribbean Corals in Crisis: Record Thermal Stress, Bleaching, and Mortality in 2005. PLoS ONE, 2010; 5 (11): e13969 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0013969
A multi-agency effort to nail down the social cost of carbon emissions ignores wrenching climate impacts such as ocean acidification and makes efforts to curb emissions seem disproportionately expensive, economists say
Douglas Fischer and The Daily Climate Scientific American 16 Nov 10;
All those insults and changes resulting from climate disruption add up quickly: $15 billion for Midwest farmers staring at a year of crop loss and rebuilding as the Mississippi River floods; 600 deaths and 1,000 hospitalizations as a heat wave bakes Chicago; and $147 million gone as Alaska's king crab fishery succumbs to acidification and changing prey/predator structures.
The list touches virtually every human endeavor - forestry, health, tourism, energy production, city planning, agriculture, commerce, even culture.
The total cost of climate change seems impossible to pin down, given the uncertainties. But an assortment of climate researchers and economists are now chasing after that sum, attempting to arrive at a bottom line.
In February an inter-agency workgroup released the administration's best guess of what each ton of carbon dioxide dumped in the atmosphere costs society: $21, plus or minus, or roughly $121 billion worth of damages annually as a result of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.
Until this summer, the exercise was mostly academic. No more. The death of cap-and-trade and the shift in Congress following the mid-term elections means that bottom line has the potential to shape U.S. climate policy for the foreseeable future.
As federal agencies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency take the lead to limit emissions, their proposals must balance the cost of new restrictions against benefit of avoiding climate change impacts.
That's because the costs of averting global change are also steep: Trillions of dollars to rework energy infrastructure, change habits, upgrade housing stock and capture and sequester planet-warming emissions, just to start.
The lower the estimated cost of disruption - known as the "social cost of carbon" - the less action the Obama Administration can justify. And several economists and scientists fear that the Administration has low-balled the figure, handicapping its ability to curb emissions.
"It's like a volume dial on regulation," said Kristen Sheeran, executive director for the Economics for Equity and the Environment Network. "The higher the social cost of carbon, the more stringent those regulations can be."
"My fear is that they're going right back to the exact same models that have provided a lot of grist for the justification of inaction in the first place."
Those models provide the best information to date, said Richard Tol, a research professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin, Ireland, who developed one of the three impact models used by the federal government.
More research will help narrow the range of uncertainty, he said, but the numbers the federal government has picked reflect established, peer-reviewed science. "The number is not precise, but it's not a crazy number."
The $21 figure came from an inter-agency effort consisting of representatives from 12 federal agencies. It has become the default value for government benefit-cost analyses; efforts by individual agencies to assess the value of emissions reductions have largely ceased. In recent months the Department of Energy has cited that figure to assess the impact of new air conditioning efficiency standards, and the EPA cites it in the agency's analysis of greenhouse gas emissions from light trucks, among others.
But the figure is low, critics say - a danger that will become apparent as the administration tries to justify additional and more ambitious mitigation efforts. If capturing carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants - a technology that does not exist commercially today - ends up costing only $30 per ton of carbon dioxide yet the benefit of keeping each ton out of the atmosphere is worth just $21, carbon sequestration would fail the benefit-cost test.
"If $21 a ton actually drove policy, where would we end up? Well, we'd end up with a whole lot more warming," said a former EPA official who declined to be identified because of his continuing work with federal agencies on the effort. "$21 a ton doesn't really justify much."
The U.S. Global Change Research Program backs that up. To limit atmospheric carbon levels to 450 parts-per-million using the least-expensive technologies available, carbon dioxide emissions would need to be valued between $36 and $88 per ton, it concluded in a 2007 report. Current atmospheric carbon levels are near 385 ppm, about 35 percent higher than pre-industrial levels. Science is not clear what level poses a threat, but some research suggests higher risk of dire consequences if atmospheric carbon were to increase above the 450 ppm threshold.
The federal value underestimates the impact in large part, economists say, because unknowns are unvalued in the analysis. Local and regional impacts? Ocean acidification? Catastrophic floods and wildfires? All are ignored in scenarios used by the administration. The science behind the models isn't precise enough.
"We don't have any numbers for any of these things," said David Weisbach, University of Chicago law professor and director of the school's law and economics program. "You can say lots of things - that it's a wild-assed guess - but it's sort of crazy to say this is how we're going to decide what we're going to do about climate change."
"It's trillions of dollars in decisions; we're going to remake our entire energy system, based on that?"
To be sure, the inter-agency group issued a range of numbers with its report in February: $5, $21, and $35 per ton of carbon dioxide. It also proposed a worst-case scenario - $65 per ton - meant to represent higher-than-expected impacts from temperature change. It also made clear that it will continue to revise its figures as the science improves.
The federal values are about a quarter of the range cited in one of the most oft-quoted economic analyses on climate change, the Stern Review, commissioned by the British government and authored by UK economist Sir Nicholas Stern. But the Stern Review, though rigorously reviewed, relied on unconventional and innovative analysis to arrive at a mid-range figure of about $85 per ton. Germany's environmental ministry pegs the value at about $95 per ton.
The Obama administration stuck with a more conventional accounting, one that, some economists say, is biased downward at every turn.
In a statement, Office of Management and Budget spokeswoman Meg Reilly said the cost estimates developed by the interagency working group "are presented as a range with acknowledgement of the many uncertainties involved. Agencies should calculate the social benefits of their regulations using the entire range identified in the document." Those estimates, the agency added, will be revisited within two years "or at such time as substantially updated models become available."
The EPA declined to make any experts available to speak on the record about the issue. It is holding a pair of invitation-only events in Washington, D.C., to explore the issue - one later this week to explore difficulties modeling and valuing climate impacts, the second in January to review research on impacts to such areas as agriculture, human health and ocean acidification, among others.
"The interagency process asked a bunch of very, very straight-laced and middle-of-the-road economists, and they came up with some ridiculous answers," said Jim Barrett, chief economist of the Clean Economy Development Center. "If you tweak a handful of those parameters ... the answer comes out to be radically different."
And that hints at a larger issue: That climate change simply does not lend itself to cost-benefit analysis. It is a moral and political issue, similar to abortion or human rights, say some economists. The political questions dominate the economic ones.
For example, asks Jonathan Masur, assistant professor of law at the University of Chicago, what if China, the world's largest carbon-dioxide emitter, seizes on the United States' effort to curb emissions as an opportunity to burn more coal? Or the opposite - what if the world, heartened by America's restraint, agrees on a global treaty to curb greenhouse gases?
"You can't just put a bunch of economists in a room and get an answer out of them," said Masur, "As a purely technical matter, this number, $21.40, might very well be off by a factor of 10 in either direction."
But others who support cost-benefit analysis say this uncertainty can be overcome. "We cannot produce perfect benefit-cost analyses of carbon control," said John Graham, who headed the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under President George W. Bush and now is dean of the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs.
"But that does not mean the regulators should be banned from seeing cost-benefit information," he added. "That is a straw man created by zealots who think climate policy can be determined without considering costs and benefits."
Even a wide range of estimates offers enough information to favor some policies and rule out others, he said.
And that's exactly what keeps Tol working on his models.
"We have to do this. We have to come up with an estimate. The alternative is to provide no guidance whatsoever to the policy process."
DailyClimate.org is a nonprofit news service covering climate change.
* U.N. talks in Mexico aim to agree green fund to aid poor
* Meeting seeks some elements of U.N. treaty; no final deal
* Costs of tackling global warming rising due to delays-IEA
Alister Doyle, Reuters AlertNet 16 Nov 10;
OSLO, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Almost 200 nations meet in Mexico this month to try to agree a "green fund" for poor countries and other steps toward an elusive climate treaty amid warnings that inaction is driving up the costs of tackling global warming.
After failure to agree a treaty at last year's summit in Copenhagen, ambitions for 2010 have been lowered to a modest package that includes a fund to manage aid to poor nations, new ways to share clean technology and to protect tropical forests.
"Countries have realised since Copenhagen that there is no one big solution," Christiana Figueres, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said of the U.N.-led talks in Mexico's Caribbean beach resort of Cancun from Nov. 29 until Dec. 10.
"We need to take the process one step forward," she said.
"Everything tells me that there is a deal to be done," she said of negotiations to slow a creeping rise in global temperatures that the U.N. panel of climate scientists says will bring ever more floods, droughts, heat waves and rising sea levels.
But even a limited deal at Cancun -- where only environment ministers will meet rather than world leaders who went to Copenhagen -- is a tall order after a year of bickering between China and the United States, the top greenhouse gas emitters.
Each says the other should do more, taking the focus off other nations' inaction at a time when budgets in developed nations are tight and opinion polls show many people are far more worried by high unemployment.
"China and the United States being stuck in a deadlock is a very comfortable mode of failure for everyone involved," said Shane Tomlinson, director of development at the E3G climate think-tank in London.
$1 TRILLION
Underscoring a need for urgency, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report last week the costs of a strong assault on global warming by 2030 had risen by $1 trillion to $18 trillion simply because of delays in 2010.
"If there is still no agreement in Cancun and South Africa (host of the next U.N. talks in late 2011), this cost will increase further and this will make it even less likely that we ever have an agreement," IEA chief economist Fatih Birol said.
"It will definitely be an increase in the order of hundreds of billions of dollars," he told Reuters of extra costs to shift from fossil fuels towards wind, solar and other clean energies.
Temperatures are on track for 2010 to be the warmest year since records began in the 19th century. The year saw floods in Pakistan and drought in Russia. BP plc's
The Cancun negotiations are seeking to extend and widen the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, which obliges industrialised nations except the United States to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.
Developing nations say the rich have to agree an extension of Kyoto, with deeper cuts. Kyoto backers say others, including Washington, must then take on binding commitments.
But U.S. President Barack Obama will be unable to legislate planned cuts in emissions announced in late 2009, after the Republicans won control of the House of Representatives in mid-term elections earlier this month.
Still, Figueres said Washington should reiterate what she calls Obama's "pledge" in Copenhagen to cut emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, or 3-4 percent from 1990.
China, India, Brazil and other emerging nations say they need to burn more fossil fuel energy to end poverty. Beijing says it is investing heavily in green energy, but is resisting U.S. calls for international oversight of its climate pledges.
ISLANDS, OPEC
Analysts say the talks in Cancun will be a test of the U.N.'s ability to stay relevant when all decisions require unanimity -- from Pacific island states worried by rising seas to OPEC producers who fear a loss of oil and gas revenues.
"The stakes are quite high for the U.N. in Cancun," said Jennifer Morgan, director of the climate and energy programme at the World Resources Institute in Washington.
The planned package including a green fund, measures to protect tropical forests that soak up carbon dioxide and help the poor adapt to climate change would help rebuild trust.
Failure could undermine the role of the United Nations on climate change, with talks drifting for years like the Doha round of trade talks. Or the United Nations could be reduced to handling aid, rather than an overhaul of the world economy.
"The U.N. process needs to show it is off the life support mechanisms it has been on this year," Tomlinson said.
Rich and poor countries are also locked in disputes about $30 billion of "fast start" aid promised in Copenhagen to help poor nations shift to greener energies and adapt to impacts of global warming from 2010-12. [ID:nLDE6AD0I6]
Some aid is starting to flow, but poor nations say it is insufficient and much of it rebranded from previous promises rather than "new and additional" as promised in Copenhagen.
"There are serious question marks on the additionality factor," said Farrukh Iqbal Khan, a Pakistani official who chairs the Adaptation Fund board, a U.N. source of funds to help countries cope with the impacts of climate change.
Developed nations also promised in Copenhagen that aid, to help the poor shift from fossil fuels and adapt to a warmer world, would rise to $100 billion a year from 2020. The money would be overseen by the green fund.
Figueres calls climate aid the "golden key" to progress in Cancun. Fast start aid promises, led by Japan with $15 billion for 2010-12, add up to $30 billion. The European Union said it had fulfilled a promise to give 2.2 billion euros ($3.07 billion) in 2010. [ID:nLDE6AE1MR] (Additional reporting by Gwladys Fouche; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
The Copenhagen Accord: climate guide or too weak?
Reuters AlertNet 16 Nov 10;
Nov 16 (Reuters) - U.N. climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, from Nov. 29 to Dec. 10 will discuss steps to combat climate change after a summit in Denmark in 2009 came up with only a non-binding Copenhagen Accord. [ID:nLDE6AF0FB]
The United States favours using the 3-page Accord as a guide for Mexico, which aims to work out measures to slow global warming that fall short of a binding treaty. Some developing nations say it is a weak, flawed blueprint and should be scrapped.
SUPPORT - About 140 of 194 U.N. members including all top emitters led by China, the United States, Russia and India have signed up to the Accord since Copenhagen. Strong opponents include Bolivia, Sudan and Venezuela.
TEMPERATURES - The Accord says governments will work to combat climate change "recognising the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below 2 degrees Celsius" (3.6 Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times. Temperatures have already risen by 0.7C since before the Industrial Revolution.
GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS - The text merely urges "deep cuts in global emissions" to achieve the 2C goal. The United Nations says existing plans for cuts in emissions are too weak and will mean a temperature rise of about 3C.
ADAPTATION - The Accord promises to help countries adapt to the damaging impacts of climate change such as droughts, storms or rising sea levels, "especially least developed countries, small island developing states and Africa." But it also says all nations face challenges of adapting to "response measures" -- OPEC nations, for instance, argue they should be compensated if this means a shift from oil to renewable energy.
2020 TARGETS - In an annex, rich nations have this year listed their national goals for cuts in greenhouse gases and developing nations set out actions to slow the rise of emissions by 2020.
VERIFICATION - Developed nations will submit emissions goals for U.N. review. Developing nations' actions will be under domestic review if funded by their own budgets but "subject to international measurement, reporting and verification" when funded by foreign aid. In Copenhagen, China resisted foreign review while the United States said it was vital.
DEFORESTATION - The text sees a "crucial role" for slowing deforestation -- trees store carbon dioxide as they grow.
MARKETS - Countries will "pursue various approaches, including opportunities to use markets".
AID - Developed nations promise new and additional funds "approaching $30 billion for 2010-12" to help developing countries. In the longer term, "developed countries commit to a goal of mobilising jointly $100 billion a year by 2020". A panel of experts concluded this month that the goal was "feasible but challenging" and hinged on wider pricing of carbon emissions.
GREEN FUND - Countries will set up a "Copenhagen Green Climate Fund" to help channel aid. It will also set up a "Technology Mechanism" to accelerate use of green technologies. Agreement on a new green fund is among goals for Cancun, but will not have the "Copenhagen" name attached.
REVIEW - The accord will be reviewed in 2015, including whether the temperature goal should be toughened to 1.5C. An alliance of about 100 least developed countries and small island states want temperatures to rise less than 1.5 degrees. (For a link to U.N. material on the Copenhagen Accord, click on: http://unfccc.int/home/items/5262.php) (Compiled by Alister Doyle in Oslo, Editing by Janet Lawrence)
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