Best of our wild blogs: 5 Dec 10

Blooming seagrasses on oil-slicked Tanah Merah shore
from wild shores of singapore

A Re-visit To A Park Connector @ Mandai
from Beauty of Fauna and Flora in Nature

Pulau Ketam on 4 Dec 2010
from Soaring c-eagle

Hunt for the Grey Plover
from Biodiversity Singapore

Observing the Orange Emigrant
from Macro Photography in Singapore

Finding the Knot at Sungei Buloh
from Biodiversity Singapore

Baya Weaver’s failed attempt at nest building
from Bird Ecology Study Group

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Singapore is 'happiest place in Asia'

US author picks city-state based on factors like tolerance, equality and security
Tracy Quek Straits Times 5 Dec 10;

Washington: When American explorer and author Dan Buettner began researching Asia's cheeriest spot for a book on the world's happiest places, he had assumed he would be boarding a plane for spiritual Tibet, exotic Fiji or mysterious Bhutan.

Instead, he found himself in a country some Americans would consider a restrictive nanny state, known more for caning criminals and banning chewing gum than for its sunny disposition.

Singapore is one of four places that Minneapolis-based Mr Buettner profiles in his recently launched book, Thrive, Finding Happiness The Blue Zones Way.

The title references an earlier book, The Blue Zones, the author's 2008 New York Times bestseller about the places where people live the longest and have the highest quality of life in the world.

Mr Buettner bills Thrive, his sixth book, as 'story-driven science that ends with a handbook with how to be happier'.

In it, the 50-year-old single father of three shares lessons on well-being and happiness he gleaned from visiting the happiest places on each of the four continents.

Besides Singapore, he travelled to the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark, Monterrey in Mexico, and San Luis Obispo in California. The book, backed by National Geographic, took five years to research and write.

To identify the happy spots, Mr Buettner relied on data from Gallup, the World Values Survey and the World Database on Happiness which have done comprehensive polls and studies over the past seven decades examining factors that directly impact happiness.

While there are many happiness indices out there, the data from the three organisations are 'by far the most authoritative and authentic', he told The Sunday Times.

Statistics from all three sources pointed to Singapore as the happiest place in Asia, although the city-state may not initially fit in with some people's notion of happiness, he noted.

'Known as a society of workaholics, Singapore has also become famous for its paternalistic government, which strictly enforces laws on the most trivial of infractions, from chewing gum in public to failing to flush a toilet,' he wrote in Thrive.

But Mr Buettner credits one of his chief consultants, sociologist Ruut Veenhoven, who is director of the World Database of Happiness and editor of the Journal of Happiness Studies, for steering him away from the 'usual places'.

Dr Veenhoven advised him that 'the places we imagine as paradises don't measure up when it comes to basic prerequisites for happiness, such as decent food, basic shelter, adequate health care, and mobility', he wrote.

What correlate with happiness on a worldwide level are tolerance, status equality, security, trust, access to recreation and financial security - all of which Singapore has, said Mr Buettner.

In Singapore, people of different ethnicities feel they belong and fit in. Citizens are able to trust their Government and police. Unemployment is low, home ownership is high. The country gives people access to green spaces despite having one of the highest population densities in the world.

As for security, Singapore shows that feeling secure is more important than freedom when it comes to happiness, he said.

'In Singapore, you cannot freely buy pornography, it is harder to start a political party, but if you're a woman, you can walk down the street any time of the day and you can be pretty sure no one is going to bother you.'

For insights on Singapore and the other places he visited, Mr Buettner interviewed a wide range of people, including social scientists, economists, politicians and even comedians, to try to pin down what makes people in each locality so joyful.

He made two trips to Singapore, about a year apart, staying four weeks in all.

In the book's chapter on Singapore, he details interviews with Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew as well as experts who have done studies on happiness including sociologist Dr Tan Ern Ser of Singapore's Institute of Policy Studies and Dr Ho Kong Weng, an economist at the Nanyang Technological University.

He also speaks to private investor turned jewellery designer Celina Lin, chairman of the Community Chest Jennie Chua, as well as Sakae Sushi founder Douglas Foo. Mr Ahmad Nizam Abbas, a 39-year-old lawyer and Madam Noridah Yusoh, a 43-year-old housewife, also get a mention.

Of his choice of interviewees, Mr Buettner said he tried to find 'people who were emblems of the characteristics of happiness. They weren't necessarily the happiest people in Singapore, but they illustrated facets of Singaporean happiness'.

In the book, he describes how he went to great lengths to speak with MM Lee, whom he calls Singapore's 'happiness architect' for putting in place policies that became the building blocks for Singaporeans' happiness.

'I wanted to speak to him because I knew that he was a major player in what has made Singapore what it is today. I wanted to know if he accidentally did it or if he was thinking about it,' said the author.

A scheduled 30-minute meeting turned into a 11/2-hour conversation.

'I was incredibly impressed with Mr Lee. That was a man who had a very good idea of what his people's values were and he is a man of integrity. I know that he has made some tough decisions that have been unpopular, but he has a keen instinct of how to create well-being for people,' said Mr Buettner.

There is no question that Singapore shows that happiness can be manufactured or engineered through government policy, he added.

'When it comes to manufactured happiness, I don't know anybody else on the planet who has done a better job than (MM Lee) has, and I know there will be lots of people laughing at me right now but all you have to do is to look at the well-being indices and the data will back me up on that.'


Seven ways to happiness
Straits Times 5 Dec 10;

Mr Dan Buettner, author of Thrive, gives some tips on happiness.

1 Sleep between 71/2 and 81/2 hours every night. Sleeping less than six hours means you are probably 30 per cent less happy than you should be.

2 Working around 37 hours a week appears to be optimal and having at least six weeks of holiday each year is ideal.

3 Eat a plant-based breakfast. If you eat a meaty, saturated fat-laden breakfast, the oxygen that reaches your muscles and brain is diminished. You will feel sluggish.

4 Exercise for at least half an hour every day. Half an hour of physical activity provides a 12-hour increase in well-being. Time your physical activity before noon.

5 Volunteer more. People who volunteered their time reported higher levels of well-being than those who did not.

6 Socialise at least six hours a day. Hanging out with friends and family correlates with feelings of happiness.

7 Money cannot buy happiness but in the United States, people should strive for an annual income of about US$75,000 (S$98,000) for a family of four.

Beyond that, happiness levels plateau. People who are making a lot more money typically have more stressful jobs, spend too much of their day working, and do not pay attention to their families. They are not socialising or volunteering in general.

Tracy Quek

A complaint about complainers
Tabitha Wang Today Online 10 Dec 10;

Okay, I want to know who took American author Dan Buettner around when he visited Singapore. Whoever it was, the Singapore Tourism Board should hunt them and offer them a job.

They must have done one heck of a great job selling the Lion City to Buettner for him to conclude that it is the happiest place in Asia in his new book, Thrive, Finding Happiness The Blue Zones Way.

Yes, Singapore. Not even Bhutan, famously known for its Gross National Happiness index.

Buettner says Singapore has all it takes for happiness: Tolerance, status equality, security, trust, access to recreation and financial security.

He based his findings on interviews with Singaporeans from all walks of life - from Community Chest chairman Jennie Chua to housewife Noridah Yusoh.

I don't doubt that his interviewees told him they were happy. But are Singaporeans really happy people?

Just look at all those letters of complaint in the newspapers. Just take a peek at the posts in blogs and responses to online news. These are not exactly all sweetness and light, are they?

I remember once complimenting a store manager about how well her shop was run. She said: "Can you put it down in writing in our feedback slip?"

Apparently, if people were satisfied, they never bothered to fill the slip. But if something annoying were to happen, no matter how infinitely minor, you can be sure those feedback forms would be filled, even posted if necessary.

I think Singaporeans are never happy unless we have something to be unhappy about. Our slogan should be: We moan, therefore we bond.

Try asking a Singaporean: "So how's business/your children/your work/your family?"

The answer is invariably: "Okay lah, can be better."

Coffeeshop talk is never about how wonderful life is. It's always about how badly a chosen English Premiership team is doing, how much money one has lost playing 4D, how the "gahmen" should be doing this, that or the other ...

Nothing can make us happy. If property prices are low, we fret about going into negative equity and how we may never have enough money to retire on. If property price are high, we complain we can't buy a roof over our heads or can't afford that investment home.

If we have a job, we complain about how we're overworked and underpaid. But lose our jobs and we moan even louder.

We have security in the form of low crime rates but still whine that the police can do more. We have access to recreation but grumble that the facilities are not up to scratch.

Maybe it's because there's some superstitious Asian bit of us that never likes to admit how well things are going in case some malevolent spirits take notice and decide to cause mischief.

Or perhaps we, like Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, are worried about being too happy because, as he told Buettner: "Then I would be complacent, flabby, and walk into the sunset."

Looking at the blurb for Thrive in Amazon.com, though, I think I have found why Singapore is considered the happiest place in Asia.

It states: "According to Buettner's advisory team, the average person can control about 40 per cent of his or her individual happiness by optimising life choices. They fall into three categories that make up the way we live our lives: The food we eat, the way we exercise, and the social networks we foster."

So simple. It's food.

I'm not sure about the exercise and social network bit but we've always enjoyed our food. For sure, finding the ultimate char kway teow or chicken rice puts me in a good mood for days.

Maybe life's happiness can really be as simple as that.

Tabitha Wang will see you at the kopitiam. You can complain about anything all you like as long as you buy her a fluffy prata telur bawang.

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What's that smell?

The Sunday Times investigates the odours of Singapore's neighbourhoods
Lin Yang , Alexandra Jen Wong and Kon Xin Hua Straits Times 5 Dec 10;

Underneath the Boon Lay MRT station every morning, Mr Ho Boon Han serves fragrant drinks to commuters rushing to catch trains to the city.

But on some mornings, his customers are overpowered by another type of aroma: that of burnt cocoa.

'We're used to it,' said Mr Ho, 57, supervisor at Hockhua Herbal Tea. 'We don't think it's dangerous to our health.'

Last Monday, residents in northern and eastern Singapore caught a whiff of a strange chemical smell, the source of which the National Environment Agency (NEA) still has not determined.

The agency received more than 100 calls during that one day.

But for years, Singaporeans in some neighbourhoods, especially those close to certain industries, have had to live with strong, sometimes pungent odours permeating their walls on a regular basis.

That burnt cocoa smell in the Boon Lay air, for instance, has been a signature scent for 21 years.

Mr Ho said the smell comes every four to five months, and sometimes can last for several days in a row.

The culprits: two cocoa factories about 1km south of the MRT station - Cadbury and ADM Cocoa.

Ms Joanna Ng, head of corporate affairs for Kraft Foods, the parent company of Cadbury, explained that the smell comes from roasting cocoa beans to open their shells, making them easier to grind into cocoa powder.

The NEA has kept track of the number of complaints about this smell, which peaked at 40 in 2003.

In 2004, the agency worked with Cadbury to install an odour control system.

'Our system eliminates over 90 per cent of the odour,' said Ms Ng.

ADM Cocoa also claims to have an odour abatement system, and that the NEA is 'satisfied that it is working properly', said ADM's spokesman Beth Chandler.

NEA said there will still be occasional complaints due to residual odours. So far, only three have been logged this year.

Still, student Keith Lian, 15, who lives in Boon Lay, had a whiff of the smell on Tuesday night.

'It smelled like someone ate chocolate, and then smoked a cigarette,' he said.

In other neighbourhoods, food factories bombard residents with a plethora of odours. Several of these factories are clustered in Bedok while others are located in the Pandan Loop area south of Clementi.

Mr Just Wang, 22, a Bedok resident, said a roasted 'otah' smell had been around for the past couple of years, referring to the spicy, barbecued fish snack. 'It isn't unpleasant,' he said.

A spokesman for the East Coast Town Council said no complaints have been filed so far this year.

But Pandan Loop residents have voiced their displeasure.

Ms Amy Chan, 50, who lives near the factories, spoke of vanilla, chocolate and sometimes pepper scents so strong, 'it makes me want to throw up'.

The NEA logged 57 complaints in 2007 in Pandan, and has asked three factories - two which produce food flavouring and one that waxes defeathered ducks - to install odour scrubbing equipment. Since then, complaints have dropped. Only six people have complained so far this year.

Choa Chu Kang residents do not have it any better: they have had to live with the smell of chicken dung coming from the poultry farms in Sungei Tengah.

Madam Sundari Rangasamy, 52, said that the smell of chicken waste is 'very strong', especially on windy days after the rain.

'I have avoided inviting guests to my home because of the smell,' she said.

Three of the four poultry farms moved out of the area in 2002. The final one, Seng Choon Farm, was relocated last month because it failed to take effective measures to eliminate the odour, according to an NEA spokesman.

NEA received 57 complaints last year regarding the unpleasant smell, down from 136 the year before. Mr Chris Koh, senior group director at property agency Dennis Wee Group, said that despite the smell there, property prices have not been affected.

'People buy based on location and amenities, and not on the occasional smell. Demand still outstrips supply,' he said.

But some property agents tell clients they are familiar with not to buy.

Ms Chen Shu Yun, 58, was discouraged from buying a home in Choa Chu Kang in 2006.

'My agent told me the chicken smell was really bad,' she said.

She purchased a five-room flat in Bukit Panjang instead.

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Cities should step up climate change fight: World Bank

* Cities can act more easily than nations
* Many big cities have more economic clout than nations
Alister Doyle Reuters AlertNet 4 Dec 10;

CANCUN, Mexico, Dec 3 (Reuters) - Cities should play a much bigger role in fighting global warming and can act more easily than governments struggling to agree on a U.N. climate accord, the World Bank said on Friday.

"The 10 biggest cities in the world emit more greenhouse gases than Japan," Andrew Steer, the World Bank's special envoy for climate change, told Reuters. He urged reforms including changes to carbon markets to help cities become greener.

A World Bank study said that urban areas, home to just over half the world's population and responsible for two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions, could help by shifting to greener transport, clean energy or better trash recycling.

"Cities are the most important cause of climate change and cities are the most important potential solution to climate change," Steer said. And they have huge economic power.

The report said that the world's 50 biggest cities had a combined gross domestic product behind only that of the United States, ahead of China. It listed Tokyo and New York as having bigger economies than Canada or Turkey.

"When you have 194 countries in the world it's not always easy to get consensus," he said of U.N. climate talks, which are seeking to agree a modest package of measures to slow global warming at Nov. 29 to Dec. 10 talks in Cancun.

More than 1,000 U.S. mayors, for instance, signed on in 2008 to targets to cut greenhouse gases in line with the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, an accord binding almost 40 nations to curb emissions until 2012 but never ratified by Washington.

SEA LEVELS

And many of the world's biggest cities, such as Tokyo, Shanghai, New York or Buenos Aires, are near coasts or rivers and so have compelling reasons to act to limit risks of floods or sea level rise.

He said the World Bank favored an overhaul of a U.N. market mechanism that encourages investments in individual projects in developing nations, such as solar panels in Morocco or hydropower in Honduras, to allow a broader, city-wide scale.

Such a reform of the U.N.'s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) would allow mayors to get money and allow them to invest in areas ranging from flood barriers to hydrogen-powered buses, rather than getting each individual project approved.

"Our view is that measurement challenges are not overwhelming for cities as a whole," he said. The CDM allows companies to invest in green projects in developing nations and claim credits back home for the averted emissions.

Steer also said that city-dwellers' views of where it was best to live were shifting -- in past decades, when industrial air pollution was high, areas downwind such as the east side of London were home to the poor.

In future, the poor would live in low-lying areas at risk of river floods or rising sea levels. (Editing by Eric Walsh)

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As climate talks drag on, more ponder techno-fixes

Charles J. Hanley Associated Press Yahoo News 4 Dec 10;

CANCUN, Mexico – Like the warming atmosphere above, a once-taboo idea hangs over the slow, frustrating U.N. talks to curb climate change: the idea to tinker with the atmosphere or the planet itself, pollute the skies to ward off the sun, fill the oceans with gas-eating plankton, do whatever it takes.

As climate negotiators grew more discouraged in recent months, U.S. and British government bodies urged stepped-up studies of such "geoengineering." The U.N. climate science network decided to assess the options. And a range of new research moved ahead in America and elsewhere.

"The taboo is broken," Paul Crutzen, a Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric scientist, told The Associated Press.

Whatever the doubts, "we are amazingly farther up the road on geoengineering," Crutzen, who wrote a 2006 scientific article that sparked interest in geoengineering, said by telephone from Germany.

But environmentalists are asking: Who's in charge? Who gets to decide whether to take such drastic action, with possibly unforeseen consequences for people worldwide?

"This is really a risky, dangerous option," said environmentalist Silvia Ribeiro, here for the two-week negotiating session of parties to the 193-nation U.N. climate treaty.

Just a few years ago, geoengineering was regarded as a fringe idea, a science-fiction playground for imaginative scientists and engineers.

Schemes were floated for using aircraft, balloons or big guns to spread sulfate particles in the lower stratosphere to reflect sunlight, easing the warming scientists say is being caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted by industry, vehicles and agriculture.

Others suggested assembling gargantuan mirrors in orbit to fend off the solar radiation. Still others propose — and a German experiment tried — seeding the ocean with iron, a nutrient that would spur the spread of plankton, which absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Sky, sea and land — the ideas vary, from spraying ocean clouds with sea salt to make them brighter and more reflective; to planting vast arid lands with agave, the "tequila plant," which stores carbon for years and grows where climate-friendly forests can't; to developing the chemistry and machines to suck in CO2 from the air and store it.

Specialists regard the stratospheric sulfates proposal as among the most feasible. The U.S. government's National Center for Atmospheric Research has undertaken computer modeling to assess its effect, for one thing, on the protective ozone layer.

The Colorado center also is researching the brightening of maritime stratocumulus clouds with seawater droplets. The center's John Latham, a British physicist, has drawn up plans for a field trial, although he said they're not yet funded.

Funding may not be far off.

In September, the U.S. Government Accountability Office recommended in a 70-page report that the White House "establish a clear strategy for geoengineering research" within its science office.

A month later, a report from U.S. Rep. Bart Gordon, a Democrat from Georgia who chairs the House Science and Technology Committee, urged the government to consider climate-engineering research "as soon as possible in order to ensure scientific preparedness for future climate events."

The U.S. panel had collaborated in its study with a British House of Commons committee.

"We may need geoengineering as a `Plan B,'" the British report said, if nations fail to forge agreement on a binding treaty to rein in greenhouse gases.

Perhaps most significantly, the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, the global authority on climate science, agreed in October to take on geoengineering in its next assessment report. Its hundreds of scientists will begin with a session next spring.

"You have to understand its potential. We also have to understand the downside," IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri said in an interview with the AP. Of the proposed sulfate layer, he asked, "What might be some of the implications of making that change in the atmosphere?"

Skeptics point to implications: For one, blocking the sun could itself suddenly shift the climate, especially precipitation patterns. For another, it would do nothing to keep the atmospheric CO2 buildup from acidifying the oceans, a grave threat to marine life.

But the science and engineering may be the easier part, says Britain's national science academy.

"The greatest challenges," the Royal Society said in a 2009 report, "may be the social, ethical, legal and political issues associated with governance."

Activist Ribeiro's Canada-based ETC organization accuses Washington of taking a "coalition of the willing" approach to geoengineering, going ahead with its British ally and perhaps others, disregarding the rest of the world.

Ribeiro said the United Nations must be in control: "It can't be voluntary schemes outside the U.N. when you're talking about manipulating the climate."

Critics suggest the Americans, whose resistance to mandatory emissions reductions has long helped block a global climate deal, view "Plan B" as a "Plan A," to avoid having to rein in emissions.

The U.S. and British parliamentary reports seem to diverge on governance. The House of Commons committee concluded, "The U.N. is the route" to a regulatory framework. The U.S. report never mentions the U.N.

The ETC campaigners scored a coup in October at a biodiversity treaty conference in Japan, where the parties adopted a vague moratorium on geoengineering experiments that might endanger biodiversity. One problem: The U.S. is not a party to that treaty.

"Can anything be meaningful if the U.S. is not a party to it?" Scott Barrett asked rhetorically.

Barrett, an environmental policy expert at New York's Columbia University, helped organize a geoengineering conference last March in California. He said he wants to see emissions slashed, not climate manipulation. But he opposes research bans.

"What happens if we discover we're on the precipice of a runaway greenhouse effect, and the only thing we can do is geoengineering? Are people going to say you can't do it?" he asked.

He believes geoengineering controls should be negotiated under the U.N. climate treaty. Pachauri agrees.

"If they feel there are risks involved, then it's up to them to decide how best to monitor them," the IPCC chief said of the treaty parties.

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