China market may be breeding ground for deadly viruses

Joseph Chaney, Yahoo News 10 Dec 07;

Scorpions scamper in bowls, water snakes coil in tanks and cats whine in cramped cages, waiting to be slaughtered, skinned and served for dinner.

Welcome to the Qingping market in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, where everything from turtles to insects are sold alongside fowl and freshly caught fish.

An outbreak of the SARS virus in 2002 resulted in a local gourmet favorite -- the civet -- being banished to the black market. The raccoon-like animal was blamed for spreading SARS, which infected 8,000 people globally and killed 800.

But exotic wildlife and squalor have returned to the Qingping market, making health officials worried that another killer virus could emerge.

"We face similar threats from other viruses and such epidemics can happen because we continue to have very crowded markets in China," said Lo Wing-lok, an infectious disease expert in Hong Kong.

"Even though official measures are in place, they are not faithfully followed. We are not talking about just civet cats, but all animals," he added.

Ever since Severe Respiratory Disease Syndrome (SARS) virus emerged in China, authorities have fought to rectify the country's image and clean up it's market.

Civets, which are a delicacy in southern China, are now banned for sale and consumption, and a nine-storey traditional medicine plaza has replaced Qingping's wild animal market.

"The market is much different now," said He Zhiquan, an official from Guangdong's foreign affairs office.

"Civet cats are forbidden, and sanitation is an important issue. Most live animals are sold on the city's outskirts. You can see it's more of a normal market now."

Propaganda posters such as "Everyone should honor the policy of paying attention to product safety," hang everywhere at Qingping.

Still, sights abound that would send even the most ardent carnivores running.

In a dark shop near the new medicine mall, feces and urine drip like goo through stacked cages of squawking chickens and meowing cats.

"The Qingping market is dirty," said a Guangzhou-born taxi driver, surnamed Mo. "It's dirty because it's old, and the government is unwilling to put up enough money to fix it."

WET FLOORS, HIDDEN BEASTS

In wealthy Guangzhou, rising incomes and fear of diseases are sending well-heeled consumers to supermarkets in search of packaged and branded goods.

Yet outside of China's glitzy marquee cities of Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou, traditional wet markets still account for the bulk of fresh food sales in China.

"The concept of buying food once a week and putting it in your fridge doesn't really exist in China yet. It's produced today, bought today, and eaten later today," said John Chapple, general manager for China-based food analysis laboratory Sino Analytica.

And dangerous tastes persist under the radar.

Although Guangdong authorities culled thousands of civets in January 2004, investigators recently found the animals, as well as badgers and pangolins, on the black market and in Guangdong's "wild flavor" restaurants, where diners hope exotic meats will bring good fortune.

Health inspectors found 14 frozen and one live civet cat, and 22 kilograms of civet cat meat from 18 animals in a sweep of restaurants across the province, the People's Daily newspaper reported earlier this year.

"You can't say something else won't come up," said Li Jib-heng, general specialist at the Department of Health in Taiwan.

The odds of another human catching SARS from a sick civet cat were next to none, Li said, but added a new disease could emerge from close contact with sick wild animals.

Keeping clear of wild animals could prove difficult for some locals, who are known for their eclectic palettes.

Among Qingping's cats and chickens were tiger paws, turtles, insects of myriad varieties, and bundled strips of shredded toads -- some food, others medicine.

"You can eat anything with four legs except the dinner table," says one local expression.

(Additional reporting by Ralph Jennings and Ee Lyn Tan)

Read more!

Whatever Happened to Solar Power?

Michael Schirber, LiveScience.com, Yahoo News 10 Dec 07;

Editor's Note: This article is part of an occasional LiveScience series about ideas to ease humanity's impact on the environment.

Solar energy is the light alternative to a carbon-rich energy diet, and it may be the only renewable energy that can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, engineers say.

"Wind can play some role, as can biofuels and geothermal, but they are all too small," said Erin Baker of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. "The three really big players are solar energy, nuclear power and carbon capture and storage ."

Over the course of a day, the amount of energy in sunlight striking the continental United States is more than 2,500 times the amount of the nation's daily electricity consumption. Despite this potential, solar power is far behind other renewables, making up just 0.07 percent of the U.S. energy portfolio, according to the Department of Energy.

"Solar energy would have to provide 20 percent of the energy supply to have a climate change impact," Baker told LiveScience. "We'd like it to be more than that."

In a report released earlier this year, Baker and her colleagues looked at the technologies that might bring solar out into the full light.

Sand in demand

Solar panels contain photovoltaic cells that turn light into electricity without releasing any greenhouse gases. One of the attractive features of solar panels is that they can be relatively easily added to a home, as opposed to the bigger construction projects typically associated with wind turbines or other energy-gathering setups.

Almost all cells in current use are made of silicon. Although silicon is abundant in sand, it must be processed to make it usable in solar cells and computer chips. In fact, the current high demand from the electronics industry for silicon wafers has caused a shortage of high-grade silicon, which means the solar industry could have even more trouble trying to become competitive.

For a typical home's electricity needs, the cost of solar panels is several tens of thousands of dollars. Over the lifetime of the panels, this works out to about 30 cents per kilowatt hour, three times what most utilities charge.

To reduce this price, much of the current engineering effort is focused on making solar cells from thin films that either use less silicon or replace it with other photovoltaic materials. Baker said that many experts think this should be the first goal of research and development.

"We could fund a lot of people to look for other materials," she said.

Solar on the horizon

There are other ideas as well, such as organic solar cells based on cheap, flexible plastic. However, organic cells are currently inefficient at converting sunlight into electricity, and what's worse, said Baker, "they tend to fade and breakdown in the sun."

Some researchers are working on future "third generation" solar cells, which could employ a number of new technologies, such as lenses, chemical dyes, multi-layer cells or tiny quantum dots that trap more of the incoming sunlight.

But even if highly efficient solar panels could be made cheaply, they can't make electricity at night or on a cloudy day.

"The biggest problem for solar is the intermittency of supply," Baker said.

For solar to be a major energy provider, there will need to be better electricity storage. Giant flywheels or improved batteries could help smooth out the power flow.

Diversify

None of the technological options are sure to work, so Baker thinks policy makers and the solar industry should fund research into several possibilities, much like a diversified stock portfolio.

"You don't invest all your money in Google; instead you buy 10 or 100 different stocks," she said.

Interestingly, Google just announced plans to invest tens of millions of dollars next year in the development of a gigawatt of power from renewables, enough to supply roughly a million households. One of the companies selected by Google is eSolar Inc., which specializes in solar thermal power.

Solar thermal technology "provides a very plausible path to providing renewable energy cheaper than coal," said Larry Page, Google co-founder and president of products, in a company statement.

Solar thermal is different from photovoltaic technology, in that the sun's energy is focused to boil water or another fluid. The resulting steam can then be used to turn a generator as is done in traditional coal or nuclear power plants.

Although seemingly less direct than solar panels, solar thermal converts roughly 30 percent of the sun's energy into electricity, which is twice the efficiency of most silicon-based solar cells. Moreover, some of the heat can be stored and used at night to keep the electricity supply more constant.

Several concentrated solar power plants have been built using this technology in places such as Spain and the Mojave Desert. The required sun-tracking mirrors are far too unwieldy to ever conceivably go on a person's roof, but similar systems could be used to provide warm water for a home.

Read more!

Light Up Your Holiday, Not Your Electrical Bill

Sara Goudarzi, LiveScience.com, Yahoo News 10 Dec 07;

For those dreaming of a green Christmas this year, there’s some good news on at least three fronts.

In New York City, the incandescent lights that have adorned the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree were replaced this year with 30,000 energy-efficient bulbs; in Paris, the trees lining the Champs-Elysees are shining brighter while using less energy; and in Washington, D.C., the White House will spend less on electricity to light its tree on the lawn this season.

All these trees are now beaming with light-emitting diodes (LEDs) instead of the traditional incandescent bulbs.

“The LED lights use much much less energy than the bulbs,” said Jerry A. Simmons, program manager for Solid State Lighting R&D at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. “For the mini-size [bulbs], the LEDs put out equal amounts of light and use less than one-fourth the energy.”

Try this at home

Incandescent bulbs—the old-fashioned approach still used by many U.S. households—work by running electric current through a filament that heats up so much it glows.

“It’s exactly the same principal of taking a hot poker and putting it in a fire,” Simmons told LiveScience. “It’s inefficient because in addition to sending out light, it’s sending out heat as well.”

LEDs are basically semi-conductor chips. There are two wires that go into an LED. Electrons flow into one side and positive charge carriers—known as holes—flow into the other side. Electrons and holes are opposites and when they meet they annihilate each other and produce a light particle.

“The nice thing about LEDs is that you can make them so they emit light only in the visible [range] of the electromagnetic spectrum and no heat comes out,” Simmons explained.

According to a Consumer Reports evaluation, mini-LED strings cost some $6 more than the same length of incandescent string. But the operating cost saves the consumer about $1 per holiday season. So it might take more than a few 90-day seasons for the typical user to see some monetary payoff. But given the extreme durability of LEDs, expect them to burn for about 4,000 hours and last at least 13 seasons.

What it means to the planet

Assume that a typical family uses 50 feet of light strings each holiday season and keeps them on for some 300 hours, Simmons explains. “If the lights were mini-sized, then about 9 kilowatt-hours of $1 would be saved in electricity costs per family.”

“With perhaps 100 million families in the U.S., then the savings would be 900 million kilowatt-hours,” he said. “This would be worth about $100 million, using the 11-cents per kilowatt-hour average cost of electricity cited by Consumer Reports.”

The switch, according to Simmons’ calculations, would result in a reduction of carbon emissions of 144,000 tons.

“This is the low estimate and assumes that everyone uses 50 feet of mini-sized lights,” Simmons said. A more accurate estimate would be obtained if we guess that about half of the above families use mini-sized lights and the other half uses the C7 or C9 size—C7 and C9 bulbs are larger than mini-lights and are typically used for outdoor holiday lighting.

In that case, Simmons estimates the nationwide savings to reach $375 million, resulting in carbon emission reductions of as much as 470,000 tons.

So what else can you do to make the holidays green?

Simmons suggests putting a timer on your holiday lights to avoid unnecessary energy usage and making a list and checking it twice to purchase all your gifts in as few trips as possible. Both suggestions help your wallet and the environment.

Read more!

Nobel joy but negotiation dismay at UN climate talks

Richard Ingham and Shaun Tandon Yahoo News 10 Dec 07;

On the eve of the Kyoto Protocol's 10th anniversary, campaigners voiced joy here Monday as the Nobel peace award nailed climate change to the top of the political agenda. But there was also dismay over setbacks towards a new pact to tackle global warming as new disputes emerged.

The 2007 Nobel ceremonies in Oslo, Norway were telecast live to the December 3-14 Bali meeting on climate change, capping a year that has made the greenhouse-gas crisis an inescapable priority for political leaders everywhere.

In an air-conditioned room, more than 100 delegates on the Indonesian island watched the ceremony on big screens, some taking pictures or sipping wine offered by the Norwegian delegation.

The crowd broke into applause as Al Gore and Rajendra Pachauri, head of UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), arrived for their joint award.

"I'm so very happy at this recognition and what it brings to this issue," said beaming French delegate Amy Dahan.

On Tuesday, the UN conference was to take the celebratory tone a notch higher with a birthday cake in honour of the Kyoto Protocol, the pact on curbing greenhouse gases that was inked in Kyoto, Japan, on December 11, 1997.

Yet there were also reminders of the problems that have dogged Kyoto throughout its life, as new disputes emerged over how to strengthen its pollution-cutting action beyond 2012.

From Wednesday, environment ministers from nearly 190 countries will strive to agree a blueprint for negotiations that will both step up curbs on greenhouse gases and channel help to poor countries in the line of the climate juggernaut.

It will essentially be a three-way game of poker.

In one corner are the European Union (EU) and other industrialised supporters of Kyoto.

In another, there is the United States, which remains outside Kyoto, objecting to the cost of meeting its mandatory emissions curbs and arguing that emerging giant economies, led by China, should also sign up to binding limits.

And in the third is the bloc of developing countries, which oppose being dragged into Kyoto's binding emissions-cutting pledges.

They say unbridled burning of fossil fuels by rich countries have caused today's warming, so it is up to these privileged economies to slash their emissions first.

Efforts to craft a compromise for ministers that will satisfy all three parties have been a stumbling, stuttering affair.

Gore on Monday lashed out at the United States and China, the world's number one and number two emitters, which together account for roughly half of all of the planetary emissions of greenhouse gases.

"Both countries should stop using the other's behaviour as an excuse for stalemate and instead develop an agenda for mutual survival in a shared global environment," Gore said in an advance copy of his acceptance speech.

A fresh setback, meanwhile, emerged over crafting a Bali compromise text.

A previous commitment by Kyoto's industrialised countries, which sketched the "ambition" of reducing their carbon emissions by between 25 and 40 percent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, was weeded out in a new version of the text.

Similar text was under threat in a second document, this time in a group that would include the United States. Its chief delegate, Harlan Watson, told reporters that such figures would "pre-empt" negotiations.

Green activists said that these changes, if endorsed by ministers, could have a crippling effect on negotiations likely to unfold over the next two years with the goal of framing a post-2012 treaty.

At a stroke, it would ease pressure on the two big emitters to make concessions of their own, and it would undercut expert opinion that a major early cut in greenhouse gases is needed within the next decade or so.

"It would be incomprehensible, on the day that the IPCC and Gore get the peace prize, that a bunch of backroom negotiators in Bali strip out figures based on the best scientific evidence," said WWF's Hans Verolme.

"It's going to be very hard to keep these numbers in the text. There's going to be a fight about it," predicted Greenpeace's John Coequyt.

Thelma Krug, a negotiator with the Brazilian delegation, said it was vital for industrial countries to make a clear and meaningful offer.

"If they are not showing the willingness, matters start to became very complicated. If nobody shows the willingness to deal with the reduction of carbon emissions to a manageable level, then what are we doing here?" she said to AFP.

In its latest assessment on the global-warming question, the IPCC predicted that by 2100 global average surface temperatures could rise by between 1.1 C and 6.4 C (1.98 and 11.52 F) compared to 1980-99 levels.

More powerful storms, droughts, floods and rising sea levels are among the risks that will escalate in coming decades, lead to hunger and homelessness for millions.

In a new report issued on Monday, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) bluntly warned that in some regions, climate change could fuel tensions, unrest and even war.

Northern and southern Africa, the Sahel and South Asia are among "regional hotspots" most at risk.

Read more!

Finance ministers in Bali count climate costs

Gde Anugrah Arka, Reuters 10 Dec 07:

JIMBARAN, Indonesia (Reuters) - Forty nations held unprecedented talks about ways to slow global warming without derailing world economic growth on the margins of U.N. climate talks in Bali on Monday.

Deputy finance ministers met on the fringes of December 3-14 U.N. climate talks where more than 10,000 delegates are trying to lay the groundwork for a broader treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol global warming pact beyond 2012.

"Having this meeting...having the finance ministers meeting..itself is a breakthrough," Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said. The meeting will prepare for talks by about 20 finance ministers in Bali on Tuesday.

Trade ministers also met at the weekend, the first time the annual U.N. climate talks have expanded beyond environment ministers in a sign that combating climate change will require big economic shifts in coming decades.

The trade ministers failed to ease splits between Brazil and the United States over "green" exports.

David McCormick, U.S. Under Secretary for International Affairs, said the talks were a crucial first step.

"The very start of this conversation among finance ministers is a real step forward and as we think about the agenda for our treasury in the coming years, we think that this issue, the environment, will be a central issue."

Gabriel Kuhne, deputy director of Germany's Finance Ministry said the talks did not aim to decide anything. He said he was told the main purpose was to convince skeptical finance officials of the need to act swiftly to tackle global warming.

"It is a huge problem. We have to take action immediately, not in 20 years. The window of opportunity will close in about 10 years, and so we are convinced that action has to be taken."

The U.N. Climate Panel, which will collect the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday in Oslo along former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, has said that the strictest measures to offset warming will slow annual world growth by 0.12 percentage point at most.

"The role of the finance ministers is to lead this discussion so that we have wider policy options," Indrawati said, referring to taxes or incentives for green technologies such as wind, solar power or "clean coal."

ENERGY

Karim Alloui, a vice president of the Islamic Development Bank, said issues raised in the meeting would have broad implications for lenders because they cut across many industrial sectors such as mining, energy and forestry.

A U.N. study projected that net annual investments of $200-$210 billion by 2030 were needed in cleaner areas, such as renewable energies, in a gigantic shift from dirtier fossil fuels.

Funding is expected to come from government budgets and multilateral organizations but a substantial amount would come from the private sector.

Building protective barriers against sea level rise around 50 of the coral islands making up the Maldives in the Indian Ocean alone could cost $1.5 billion, according to Angus Friday, head of a group representing small island states.

The 190-nation climate talks are seeking to agree on the ground rules for launching two years of negotiations on a broader climate change pact involving all nations to succeed or replace the Kyoto Protocol from January 1, 2013.

-- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on:

blogs.reuters.com/environment/

(With extra reporting by Emma Graham-Harrison and Rob Taylor in Canberra; editing by David Fogarty and Alister Doyle)

Read more!

South Korea counts cost of national park oil spill

Jack Kim, Reuters 10 Dec 07;

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea was on Monday tallying the environmental and economic cost of the worst oil spill in its history as thousands of workers struggled to protect an area known for its nature reserve and vibrant marine economy.

The slick spread from a very large crude carrier on Friday after it was holed by a barge. Oil has now washed up along more than 40 km (25 miles) of coastline in the Taean region on the Korean peninsula's west coast, about 150 km southwest of Seoul.

The region is home to the Taean maritime national park, famous for its sandy beaches popular with tourists, marine farms and oyster beds.

"We don't have an estimate on the cost of the damage yet," a maritime ministry official said by telephone. "The focus now is to minimize the damage."

The government has declared parts of Taean county "a special disaster area" and will release an initial fund of 6 billion won ($6.5 million), Minister for Home Affairs Park Myung-jae was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency.

Some 10,500 tons of crude is estimated to have spilled from the Hong Kong-registered Hebei Spirit and the cost of cleaning up was expected to far surpass the 96 billion won it cost South Korea to deal with a 1995 spill on the south coast, when about half that much oil was released.

The total cost from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, which was about three times bigger, was an estimated $9.5 billion including clean-up and settlement of claims.

A spokesman for the tanker's owner Hebei Ocean Shipping Co. of China said its offer to swiftly unload the cargo after the spill has been turned down by the receiver, Hyundai Oilbank, as it did not want the oil in small batches.

Hyundai officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

MONTH TO CLEAN UP

As the slick spread along the coastline, the government raised to 8,800 the number of police, troops and workers in the clean-up efforts. The coast guard had 138 vessels at work, deploying containment fences and oil skimmers.

The clean-up was expected to take more than a month, Maritime Minister Kang Moo-hyun has said.

A spokesman for Samsung Heavy Industries, which owned both the barge carrying a large crane that drifted and punched holes in the tanker's hull and the tug boat that was pulling the unpowered vessel, said the company was cooperating with the clean-up but declined to comment on compensation.

Samsung Heavy declined to identify the insurer of the two vessels, but the maritime ministry has said it was Samsung Fire and Marine Insurance.

Shares of Samsung Heavy Industries closed 6.4 percent lower at 39,300 won, compared with a 1.4 percent decline in the broader Korea Composite Stock Price Index.

The slick washing up at Mallipo beach, where one of the largest patches of oil had spread, appeared to thin slightly but the crude is threatening to spread further along the west coast.

Residents of Taean and environmentalists said the spill was a devastating blow to the local fisheries industries and to the nature reserve along the coastline.

"It is an area that is considered to have very great conservation value, particularly for landscapes and with relations to fisheries," said Nial Moores, director of the conservation group Birds Korea.

"It is a massive spill and it's going to have enormous impacts on the local ecology."

The government has come under criticism that its slow response to the spill led to the extensive damage. The maritime ministry said in its initial report on Friday that it would likely take about 48 hours for the slick to reach the coast.

(Additional reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Kim Yeon-hee in Seoul and Jo Yong-hak in Taean; Editing by Keiron Henderson and Alex Richardson)

Read more!

Indonesia vows to protect endangered orangutans

Sugita Katyal, Reuters 10 Dec 07;

NUSA DUA, Indonesia (Reuters) - Indonesia launched a program on Monday to save its dwindling orangutan population, the last of Asia's great apes, from the brink of extinction by protecting its vast tropical rain forests.

Orangutans once ranged the region, but the shaggy brown primate's population in Indonesia has been decreasing rapidly as its habitat in Borneo and Sumatra has been disrupted by illegal logging, forest fires and the illegal pet trade.

A recent WWF report said climate change would add to the pressure already caused by human-induced activities such as massive conversion of forests into plantations by reducing the orangutans' food stock. Thousands will be driven out of forests into villages and plantations to look for food.

"In the last 35 years about 50,000 orangutans are estimated to have been lost as their habitats shrank. If this continues, this majestic creature will likely face extinction by 2050," President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at the launch of an orangutan conservation plan at the climate talks in Bali.

"The fate of the orangutan is a subject that goes to the heart of sustainable forests ... To save the orangutan we have to save the forest."

As part of the orangutan conservation plan developed by the forestry ministry and NGOs, Indonesia will aim to stabilize orangutan populations and habitat from now until 2017 and return orangutans housed in rehabilitation centers to the wild by 2015.

A 2004 survey showed there were around 60,000 orangutans left in the jungles of Borneo and Sumatra. Some ecologists say the country has lost 3,000 orangutans a year since the 1970s and the species could eventually become extinct.

"As much as 1 million hectares of orangutan habitat scheduled for conversion to oil palm will be saved through the plan's implementation," Erik Meijaard, a scientist with The Nature Conservancy which will help implement the plan, said in a statement..

"This could lead to 9,800 orangutans being saved and prevent 700 million tons of carbon from being released."

Indonesia is one of few countries that still has swathes of rainforests left, and is pushing a proposal to make emission cuts from protecting forests eligible for carbon trading.

Even though it has lost an estimated 70 percent of its original frontier forest, it still has a total forest area of more than 225 million acres, with a host of exotic plants and animals waiting to be discovered.

Indonesia's forests are a massive natural store of carbon, but environmentalists say rampant cutting and burning of trees to feed the pulp, timber and palm oil sectors has made the country the world's third-largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions.

"If payments for avoided deforestation become an official mechanism in global climate agreements, then carbon buyers will likely compensate Indonesia for its forest protection," said The Nature Conservancy's Meijaard.

"Protecting orangutans will then lead to increased economic development in this country. Such a triple-win situation is not a dream. With some political will, it can soon be reality."

(Editing by Roger Crabb)

Indonesia begins plan to save orangutans
Yahoo News 10 Dec 07;

Indonesia has begun a 10-year program to save endangered orangutans from extinction by protecting tropical jungle habitat from logging, mining and palm oil plantations, its president said Monday.

The plan, revealed on the sidelines of the Bali climate change conference, aims to preserve up to 2.5 million acres of forest on the Indonesian half of Borneo island.

As many as 50,000 orangutans have been lost over the past 35 years due to shrinking habitat, and "if this continues, these majestic creatures will likely face extinction by 2050," Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said.

"To save orangutans, we must save the forests," he said.

Two thirds of Borneo's 74 million acres of primary forest have already been destroyed and environmental groups say the remainder is disappearing at a rate of 300 football fields per hour.

The Nature Conservancy, a coalition of non-governmental groups, pledged $1 million to the program, which "could lead to 9,800 orangutans being saved," said Erik Meijaard, a senior ecologist for the coalition.

As of January 2004, about 6,650 Sumatran orangutans and 55,000 Borneo orangutans remained in the wild, while rapid deforestation has directly and indirectly led to around 3,000 orangutan deaths every year since 1970, the organization said.

Read more!

'The biggest environmental crime in history'

Cahal Milmo, The Independent 10 Dec 07;
The Canadian wilderness is set to be invaded by BP in an oil exploration project dubbed ...
'The biggest environmental crime in history'

BP, the British oil giant that pledged to move "Beyond Petroleum" by finding cleaner ways to produce fossil fuels, is being accused of abandoning its "green sheen" by investing nearly £1.5bn to extract oil from the Canadian wilderness using methods which environmentalists say are part of the "biggest global warming crime" in history.

The multinational oil and gas producer, which last year made a profit of £11bn, is facing a head-on confrontation with the green lobby in the pristine forests of North America after Greenpeace pledged a direct action campaign against BP following its decision to reverse a long-standing policy and invest heavily in extracting so-called "oil sands" that lie beneath the Canadian province of Alberta and form the world's second-largest proven oil reserves after Saudi Arabia.

Producing crude oil from the tar sands – a heavy mixture of bitumen, water, sand and clay – found beneath more than 54,000 square miles of prime forest in northern Alberta – an area the size of England and Wales combined – generates up to four times more carbon dioxide, the principal global warming gas, than conventional drilling.

The booming oil sands industry will produce 100 million tonnes of CO2 (equivalent to a fifth of the UK's entire annual emissions) a year by 2012, ensuring that Canada will miss its emission targets under the Kyoto treaty, according to environmentalist activists.

The oil rush is also scarring a wilderness landscape: millions of tonnes of plant life and top soil is scooped away in vast open-pit mines and millions of litres of water are diverted from rivers – up to five barrels of water are needed to produce a single barrel of crude and the process requires huge amounts of natural gas. The industry, which now includes all the major oil multinationals, including the Anglo-Dutch Shell and American combine Exxon-Mobil, boasts that it takes two tonnes of the raw sands to produce a single barrel of oil. BP insists it will use a less damaging extraction method, but it accepts that its investment will increase its carbon footprint.

Mike Hudema, the climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace in Canada, told The Independent: "BP has done a very good job in recent years of promoting its green objectives. By jumping into tar sands extraction it is taking part in the biggest global warming crime ever seen and BP's green sheen is gone.

"It takes about 29kg of CO2 to produce a barrel of oil conventionally. That figure can be as much 125kg for tar sands oil. It also has the potential to kill off or damage the vast forest wilderness, greater than the size of England and Wales, which forms part of the world's biggest carbon sinks. For BP to be involved in this trade not only flies in the face of their rhetoric but in the era of climate change it should not be being developed at all. You cannot call yourself 'Beyond Petroleum' and involve yourself in tar sands extraction." Mr Hudema said Greenpeace was planning a direct action campaign against BP, which could disrupt its activities as its starts construction work in Alberta next year.

The company had shied away from involvement oil sands, until recently regarded as economically unviable and environmentally unpleasant. Lord Browne of Madingley, who was BP's chief executive until May, sold its remaining Canadian tar sands interests in 1999 and declared as recently as 2004 that there were "tons of opportunities" beyond the sector. But as oil prices hover around the $100-per-barrel mark, Lord Browne's successor, Tony Hayward, announced that BP has entered a joint venture with Husky Energy, owned by the Hong Kong based billionaire Li Ka-Shing, to develop a tar sands facility which will be capable of producing 200,000 barrels of crude a day by 2020. In return for a half share of Husky's Sunrise field in the Athabasca region of Alberta, the epicentre of the tar sands industry, BP has sold its partner a 50 per cent stake in its Toledo oil refinery in Ohio. The companies will invest $5.5bn (£2.7) in the project, making BP one of the biggest players in tar sands extraction.

Mr Hayward made it clear that BP considered its investment was the start of a long-term presence in Alberta. He said: "BP's move into oil sands is an opportunity to build a strategic, material position and the huge potential of Sunrise is the ideal entry point for BP into Canadian oil sands."

Canada claims that it has 175 billion barrels of recoverable oil in Alberta, making the province second only to Saudi Arabia in proved oil riches and sparking a £50bn "oil rush" as American, Chinese and European investors rush to profit from high oil prices. Despite production costs per barrel of up to £15, compared to £1 per barrel in Saudi Arabia, the Canadian province expects to be pumping five million barrels of crude a day by 2030.

BP said it will be using a technology that pumps steam heated by natural gas into vertical wells to liquefy the solidified oil sands and pump it to the surface in a way that is less damaging than open cast mining. But campaigners said this method requires 1,000 cubic feet of gas to produce one barrel of unrefined bitumen – the same required to heat an average British home for 5.5 days.

A spokesman for BP added: "These are resources that would have been developed anyway."

Licenses have been issued by the Albertan government to extract 350 million cubic metres of water from the Athabasca River every year. But the water used in the extraction process, say campaigners, is so contaminated that it cannot be returned to the eco-system and must instead be stored in vast "tailings ponds" that cover up to 20 square miles and there is evidence of increased rates of cancer and multiple sclerosis in down-river communities.

Experts say a pledge to restore all open cast tar sand mines to their previous pristine condition has proved sadly lacking. David Schindler, professor of ecology at the University of Alberta, said: "Right now the big pressure is to get that money out of the ground, not to reclaim the landscape. I wouldn't be surprised if you could see these pits from a satellite 1,000 years from now."

Read more!

US plan to cut greenhouse gases by 70 per cent signals change of heart on climate change

Geoffrey Lean, The Independent 9 Dec 07;

Key measures to tackle global warming have been approved in the US Congress, signalling the first crack in the granite face that the Bush administration has set against cutting the pollution that causes climate change.

Both the Senate and the House of Representatives last week advanced Bills that would drastically reduce US carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, raise fuel economy in US vehicles and set radical targets for increasing renewable energy production.

US government representatives last week suggested for the first time that they may agree to binding international targets for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.

On Wednesday the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee voted 11-8 to cut emissions by about 70 per cent by 2050. This would make the US a world leader in tackling global warming.

The Bill – put forward by the former Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman and Republican Senator John Warner – would limit businesses' gas emissions, but allow those companies that exceeded them to buy allowances from those that overshot targets.

The second Bill – passed by the House of Representatives by a 235-181 vote on Thursday – would force the country's cars, small trucks and SUVs to achieve an average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020, cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 192 million tons a year, equivalent to taking 28 million vehicles off the roads.

The Bill would also require electricity utilities to produce 15 per cent of their power from renewable sources by 2020, cutting annual emissions by another 180 tons. By 2022, cars would also have to be using 36 million gallons of biofuels, and nearly half of these must be second-generation fuels, derived from wood, weed and other crops that do not compete with food supplies. The Bill will also ban conventional light bulbs.

Although President Bush has vowed to fight the Bills, both of the front-running Democratic contenders for the White House, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, have signalled that they intend to embrace the climate change agenda, suggesting Capitol Hill is already looking ahead to life after the president's departure.

The measures would be financed by repealing a $13bn (£6.4bn) tax break for big oil companies.

Read more!

Protestors Gather at Georgia Aquarium After Whale Deaths

Julia Harding, Fox Atlanta 9 Dec 07;

ATLANTA (FOX 5) – After the death of a fourth animal at the Georgia Aquarium, protestors were calling for protection of the large fish Sunday.

As people walked out of the Georgia Aquarium Sunday they were greeted by protestors from the Georgia Animal Rights and Protection group.

The group was asking patrons to boycott the aquarium after Marina the beluga whale died on December 1.

Protestors said they protested after each of the aquarium deaths.

This year, two whale sharks and two beluga whales have died. The most recent was Marina last week.

Marina, the second beluga whale to die at the aquarium this year, was on loan from New York's aquarium. Staff members said they noticed Marina was sick on Thanksgiving.

"She lost her appetite and became disoriented to the point where she would hurt herself," said Dave Santucci of the Georgia Aquarium.

Early results from Marina's necropsy showed she appeared to be older than her estimated age of 25, but it could take months for scientists to analyze the tissue samples and determine an exact cause of death.

Another beluga whale, Gasper, was 17 years-old when he was euthanized in January after suffering from a bone disease.

Two of the Georgia Aquarium's whale sharks have also died this year. Ralph died in January and Norton died in June.

After their deaths, protestors gathered outside the aquarium saying captivity wasn't right for the large fish.

Back in June, aquarium CEO Jeff Swanagan disagreed saying, "In one sense, we are very saddened by this. We wear our hearts on our sleeves, but we're also committed to the education and conservation."

Early findings of beluga whale's death at US aquarium inconclusive
The Associated Press, International Herald Tribune 3 Dec 07;

ATLANTA: Early results from a necropsy performed on a beluga whale that died at the Georgia Aquarium produced no conclusive findings on the cause of death, officials said Monday.

Marina had fallen ill at the aquarium and died early Saturday morning.

It may take months for scientists to analyze the whale's tissue samples and determine a cause of death, said spokesman Dave Santucci.

Scientists from the aquarium, the University of Georgia and the University of Florida began the medical examination into Marina's death on Saturday,

The whale's central nervous system will continue to be a focus of the investigation, Santucci said. Officials previously said the whale increasingly showed disorientation in her swimming behavior and she stopped eating on Nov. 22.

The initial examination did reveal that Marina appeared to be much older than her previously estimated age of 25.

"She was in a late stage of life," Santucci said. "Age is not a cause of death but it is a major factor in the body's ability to fight" disease and injury.

Marina was the second-oldest of four beluga whales at the aquarium. Marina was among three beluga whales that were transferred in November 2005 from Wildlife Conservation Society's New York Aquarium.

RELATED ARTICLE

Ill beluga whale at US aquarium dies
Associated Press, International Herald Tribune 1 Dec 07;

Read more!

Dutch debate building Tulip Island in North Sea

Emma Thomasson Yahoo News 10 Dec 07;

The Netherlands wants to redraw the map of Europe -- literally.

Dubai has built Palm Island. Now the world leaders in land reclamation are considering an island in the shape of a tulip to fight overcrowding and shield the coastline from the rising sea.

Supporters of the scheme say it will give Dutch companies a chance to showcase water management skills that are increasingly in demand due to global warming, but critics say the plan will be prohibitively expensive and harm delicate ecosystems.

While a poll in October by research company TNS NIPO with the Red Cross showed the Dutch are more afraid of flooding than a terrorist attack, many have a strong faith in Dutch expertise and technology to protect them from the water.

The Dutch parliament has asked a commission on coastal development to look into the idea of building islands in the North Sea that could be used for housing, farming or a nature reserve, while at the same time helping to protect the coast.

"People live on top of each other in the Netherlands," said Christian Democrat politician Joop Atsma, who sponsored a parliamentary motion on building in the North Sea. "We are hungry for land. A huge area is needed for building."

Atsma says high land prices threaten the country's position as the world's third biggest exporter of agricultural products, and make a 100,000 hectare island potentially worth 10 billion euros ($14.69 billion) -- enough of a return to fund the project.

A government body set up to promote innovation has drawn up proposals for an island about 50 km long, sparking fierce debate which inspired one blogger to joke that a cannabis leaf may be a more suitable shape than the tulip on the formal plans.

"The Netherlands has a lot of know-how in terms of water. It exports this knowledge but it is missing out on innovation. More experiments are needed in the fields of alternative energy, tides and wind," said Maria Henneman of Innovation Platform.

"Of course it is an expensive investment but with current technology a lot is possible."

NO WET FEET

The Netherlands -- literally the Low Countries -- has a long history of pioneering technology to help it claw back land from the sea and fight recurrent flooding.

U.S. officials sought advice from Dutch experts on water management after floods devastated New Orleans in 2005, and Dutch firms have been central in major coastal developments worldwide.

Dutch firm Boskalis developed techniques during the Zuiderzee and Delta projects to become the world's largest dredger, helping build the island for Hong Kong's airport and now working on Oman's "Wave" project -- a huge resort added to the coast.

Dubai's island, that juts into the shallow waters of the Gulf in the shape of a palm tree, was built by Dutch marine contractor Van Oord using more than 100 million cubic meters of sand.

"I live far below sea level and I have never had wet feet at home," Atsma said. "So much can be done with water management."

One of the world's most densely populated countries with 16 million people living in an area about half the size of Scotland , a quarter of the Netherlands is below sea-level and it lies on the flood plains of three big rivers.

The country's earliest inhabitants built their homes and farmsteads on mounds to protect them from flooding. From around 1300, windmills were developed to pump water off low-lying land. Steam-driven pumps accelerated the process in the 19th century.

In 1932, work was completed on a mammoth 32-km dike that closed the Zuiderzee off from the North Sea and allowed 1,650 square km of land to be drained.

After devastating floods in 1953 killed more than 1,800 people, the Dutch launched one of the world's largest construction schemes -- the Delta project -- to raise dikes, close sea estuaries and build a huge storm-surge barrier.

Scientists expect global warming to raise sea levels along the Dutch coast by up to 85 cms in the next century, and cause more severe storms that could make rivers more likely to flood.

NORTH SEA CHALLENGE

"Funny shapes like tulips, clogs and windmills are a good way to start a debate, but they should not be considered as realistic," said Bert Groothuizen, spokesman for Van Oord, the builder of the Dubai palm island.

While Dubai's Gulf rarely sees waves above two meters high, the North Sea is much stormier with waves of up to 10 meters.

"The seaward protection must be stronger than in the Arabian Gulf which means that construction costs are greater," he said, adding it might be more realistic to extend current Dutch beaches into the sea or move the main airport onto a new island.

That idea was already floated after a plane crashed into an apartment block in Amsterdam in 1992, but it was shelved due to cost and environmental concerns. Nature-lovers have also scuppered plans to drain more land onshore.

Independent environmental group the North Sea Foundation notes that an artificial island could disrupt shipping, fishing and migrating birds.

"The North Sea is not a wasteland where you can do whatever you want. Especially the coastal zone is one of the most fertile seas in the world. An island would do a lot of damage to the animal life," said the foundation's Lisa van der Veen.

Given rising sea levels, Van der Veen said it made more sense to protect existing land than build a new island:

"If you build houses on it you would have to build it really high to protect it from storms and waves. Building an island is a huge investment and you could much easier fortify the dikes."

(Editing by Sara Ledwith)

Read more!

Balinese Farm Coral to Boost Fish Catch, Income

Emma Graham-Harrison, PlanetArk 10 Dec 07;

SERANGAN, Indonesia - Algae-covered lumps of cement would make a strange catch for most fishermen, but they have helped revive a Bali fishing village devastated by reckless tourist development and "mining" of reefs for building materials.

Seaside Serangan has become a modest center for the unusual coral-farming trade, with thousands of the formations growing in offshore iron grids. They are sold for export or used to reconstruct reefs that nurture fish and draw diving tourists.

Beside the farmed coral, cement chunks that are shaped like the rocks that line the ocean and reefs, are picking up a patina of natural growth that turns them into valuable decorations for aquariums from Australia to the United States.

"Before reclamation, the fish here were not so plentiful. Also, the numbers of different kinds of fish were lower," said Nyoman Sopi, leader of the fishermen who set up the farm and who previously worked in the tourist center of Kuta.

Once a small island off Bali's shore, the area was claimed in the 1990s by a developer who planned to build a huge resort, and set about expanding it to six times its original size, and linking it to the mainland.

To do this, giant pumps sucked filler from the sea floor, pulverizing corals they vacuumed up with the sand, said Asyma Sianiapar, Program Assistant at the Global Environment Facility, which is also supporting the venture.

Combined with traditional "mining" of coral for building houses and temples, which was officially banned around 2002, and damaging fishing practices, the reefs that supported the local fishing industry were decimated.

The resort was never built, hit by the Asian financial crisis and the domestic turmoil that accompanied the end of former President Suharto's reign in 1998. But the damage was done.

Catches fell by half, and the seaweed banks that the women used to walk around the island harvesting for food and to sell disappeared, fishermen and their families said.

Earnings fell and children were forced to drop out of school.

"If you don't make an alternative income source for the families, what will they eat, what will they put on the table for their children?" said Nael Ginting, manager of the project for NGO Telapak, which promotes sustainable fishing in poor communities.

"Many people in Indonesia are only thinking about the present ... because they need some money to live off."

CLIMATE RISK

Now they have about 800 square metres (8,600 sq feet) of cultivated coral, including the farms and new reefs and sell around 20,000 pieces a year, for around US$3 to $5 each.

The nearly 40 families, about 10 percent of the village, who are involved in the farm make US$50 a month, an important supplement to other income from fishing and tourist work.

Coral farming seems surprisingly simple. All you have to do is break off a branch from a living coral, glue it to the cement bases that anchor it in the off-sea cages, and leave them in a shallow, clean, wave-swept part of the sea.

A hard coral in a month can grow to the size of a toddler's hand, and in a year it can expand to the span of a large adult hand, with fingers fully stretched.

Plucked from the farm and held by their long cement stems, the corals, which range from purple and white to green and orange, look like bouquets of surrealist flowers.

But the village's new-found income faces a serious risk from a source that 190 nations have gathered to discuss at UN-led climate talks less than an hour's drive along the coast.

Hotter seas have been causing "bleaching," a mass die-off. Experts say 16 percent of the world's coral was wiped out in 1998 when global warming and the "El Nino" weather phenomenon combined to cause the highest sea temperatures ever recorded.

And while Serangan has so far been untouched, the nearby West Bali National Park has been badly hit, with many soft corals disintegrating altogether -- making loss of reefs, or coral farms, another danger for poor seaside communities already at risk from rising seas and storm surges linked to climate change.

"If the reality of climate change brings bleaching of corals we must be prepared because we don't want to lose our income," said Telapak's Ginting. (Editing by David Fogarty)

Read more!