World must cut CO2 to India levels: top scientist

Michael Szabo, Reuters 28 May08;

LONDON (Reuters) - Rich nations need to cut per-capita greenhouse gas emissions to India's current levels by mid-century to avoid devastating climate change, Britain's former chief scientific adviser said on Wednesday.

Global carbon dioxide (CO2) levels from burning fossil fuels were already rising quickly and rich nations needed to quickly figure out how to maintain economic growth while committing to deep cuts in emissions, said David King.

"If you (don't want) run-away climate change, you need to be at about 350 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 ... We're currently at 387 ppm CO2, going up at 2 per annum," said King, director at Oxford University's Smith School of Enterprise and Environment.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most common greenhouse gas, and atmospheric levels are sometimes measured as CO2 in parts per million. Collectively, all greenhouse gases can also be expressed as CO2 equivalent (CO2e).

King said that maintaining atmospheric CO2 levels at 450 ppm risked a 20 percent chance of global temperatures rising nearly 4 degrees Celsius.

"If you include all greenhouse gases, we're at around 420 ppm CO2e," he said, speaking at a climate change workshop hosted by Thomson Reuters in London.

He said Europe needed to reduce its annual per-capita emissions by 80 percent, or from 11 tons of CO2e, to India's current level of 2.2 tons per person by 2050.

The United States, emitting an average of 27 tons of CO2e per person every year, also needs to fall to these levels if the world is to avoid a dramatic rise in temperatures, he said.

"I think that encapsulates the challenge, to move from where we are now to where the Indians are today, while growing the global economy at the same time," said King.

RISKING DISASTER

Failure to do so courted environmental disaster, he said, explaining that melting Arctic sea ice heated up the ocean in the far north much faster because ice reflects a large portion of the sun's radiation, while open ocean absorbs the sun's heat.

A rise of several degrees Celsius could also mean the Amazon rainforest drying out, turning it into a big source of carbon dioxide emissions rather than a vast sink for the gas as it is now.

The first round of the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, which seeks to cut greenhouse gas emissions from 37 industrialized nations, expires in 2012 and governments are scrambling to agree a successor agreement by the end of 2009 at a U.N. meeting in Copenhagen.

If governments fail to reach consensus, King thinks another solution to climate change might be so-called geo-engineering, which uses technology to deliberately modify the environment and to promote human habitability.

"We need to remove the carbon dioxide, I suspect not from the atmosphere because it's too expensive ... but possibly from the oceans as they are acidifying," King said.

Oceans absorb large amounts of CO2 but increasing levels of the gas in the atmosphere is causing oceans to become more acidic, threatening the food chain and marine ecosystems such as coral reefs.

Making geo-engineering profitable for the private sector by establishing a market price for carbon dioxide might promote research and development in the new technology.

"I haven't worked out what the price of carbon dioxide would have to be to encourage companies to start pumping it out of the oceans, but that is the way we need to move forward."

(Editing by David Fogarty)

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Melting of methane ice triggered long-ago warming surge: study

Yahoo News 28 May 08;

Melting of methane ice unleashed runaway global warming some 635 million years ago, according to a study released Wednesday that has implications for today's climate-change crisis.

Release of the potent greenhouse-gas, at first in small amounts and then in massive volumes, brought a sudden end to the planet's longest Ice Age, its authors believe.

During the "Snowball Earth" era, Earth froze over completely, with glaciers that crept down into the tropics and possibly even reached the equator.

The chill was self-sustaining, because the ice formed a brilliant white shell that reflected the Sun's rays, preventing the surface from warming.

After a frozen slumber lasting 155 million years, Earth warmed dramatically.

How this happened has been fiercely disputed, although all agree that the event changed the planet's climate system and ocean chemistry forever.

Publishing in the weekly British journal Nature, scientists in the United States and Australia point the finger at methane clathrates -- methane-rich ice that forms under ice sheets at specific temperatures and pressures.

The researchers believe that the ice sheets on Snowball Earth became unstable, which released pressure on the clathrates.

They began to evaporate, releasing the methane, which helped to warm the planet slightly. This thawed more clathrates and fuelled the warming and so on, creating a vicious circle or "positive feedback" in scientific parlance.

Methane is a prodigious greenhouse gas, being 30 times more efficient than CO2 in trapping solar heat.

Martin Kennedy, a geologist at the University of California Riverside who led the study, said the evidence comes from hundreds of marine sediment samples taken in South Australia.

Analysis of them for oxygen isotopes gave a signature of melting waters in ice sheets and destabilisation of clathrates by the meltwater.

Kennedy says the findings have a bearing on a much-feared positive feedback today -- the release of methane from frozen soil in Canada, Siberia and Alaska, and from clathrates that are below sea level, at the continental margins of the ocean.

Billions of tonnes of methane are locked up in these reservoirs, and the big worry is that it could take a relative small rise in temperature to start unleashing the gas, which would then trigger an unstoppable warming cycle.

"One way to look at the present human influence on global warming is that we are conducting a global-scale experiment with Earth's climate system," said Kennedy.

"We are witnessing an unprecedented rate of warming, with little or no knowledge of what instabilities lurk in the climate system and how they can influence life on Earth."

If the end of Snowball Earth is a guide, positive feedbacks, "once initiated, change the climate to a wholly different state," he observed.

If the mechanism for clathrates' feedback is now clearer, the scientists have still to explain how much forcing was needed for the vicious circle to set in motion -- and whether we are approaching any similar threshold today with the CO2 from fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, other research, also published in Nature, explains a mysterious fall in temperature which was noted in 1945 and has irked climate investigation for decades.

The fall was not due to a sudden cooling as some have suggested, but to different ways in which sea temperatures were measured by ocean-going ships, it says.

Runaway Global Warming 635 Million Years Ago
LiveScience.com Yahoo News 28 May 08;

A sudden and extreme case of runaway global warming 635 million years ago was caused by an abrupt release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, scientists said today.

The methane seeped from ice sheets that covered much of the planet toward the end of a frigid era called Snowball Earth. The gas escaped gradually at first and then very quickly from clathrates, or methane ice that forms and stabilizes beneath water ice sheets. As the water ice melted, pressure was relieved on the clathrates and they began to de-gas.

The transition represents one of the earliest known cases of what scientists now call a climatic tipping-point.

The big question scientists are now pondering: Could it happen again?

"Our findings document an abrupt and catastrophic global warming that led from a very cold, seemingly stable climate state to a very warm, also stable, climate state - with no pause in between," said geologist Martin Kennedy of the University of California at Riverside, who led the research team.

"What we now need to know is the sensitivity of the trigger," Kennedy said. "How much forcing does it take to move from one stable state to the other - and are we approaching something like that today with current carbon dioxide warming?"

Also called marsh gas, methane is a colorless, odorless gas. As a greenhouse gas, it is about 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Methane clathrates still exist in Arctic permafrost and beneath the oceans at continental margins. Kennedy said it's possible that very little warming could unleash this trapped methane, potentially warming the planet by tens of degrees.

Kennedy and colleagues collected hundreds of marine sediment samples in South Australia for stable isotope analysis, an important tool used in climate reconstruction. They found the broadest range of oxygen isotopic variation ever reported from marine sediments, which they attribute to melting waters in ice sheets as well as destabilization of clathrates by glacial meltwater.

"Today we're conducting a global-scale experiment with Earth's climate system," Kennedy said, "and witnessing an unprecedented rate of warming, all with little or no knowledge of what instabilities lurk in the climate system and how they can influence life on Earth."

He said Nature did a similar experiment 635 million years ago, "and the outcome is preserved in the geologic record. We see that strong forcing on the climate, not unlike the current carbon dioxide forcing, results in the activation of latent controls in the climate system that, once initiated, change climate to a completely different state."

The research, detailed in the May 29 issue of the journal Nature, was supported by the National Science Foundation and NASA's Exobiology Program.

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Whales, lizards inspire hi-tech bio-mimicry

Alister Doyle, Reuters 28 May 08;

OSLO (Reuters) - Whale hearts hold clues to making pacemakers and lizard skins are showing how to cut friction in electrical appliances as companies mimic nature to develop high-tech goods, a U.N.-backed report said on Wednesday.

Among other advances that could save hundreds of millions of dollars, the wings of desert beetles could improve water collection and the drought-resistant African "resurrection plant" indicates ways to store vaccines without refrigeration.

"Biomimicry is a field whose time has come," said Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) in a statement issued to coincide with a May 19-30 U.N. conference on protecting the diversity of animals and plants in Bonn, Germany.

The project, called "Nature's 100 Best", points to environmentally friendly advances mimicking natural solutions evolved over almost 4 billion years.

"Life solves its problems with well-adapted designs, life-friendly chemistry and smart material and energy use," said Janine Benyus and Gunter Pauli, creators of the Nature's 100 Best project. "What better models could there be?"

Nature has been a blueprint for human inventions throughout history -- such as flight inspired by birds -- but the project identifies 100 less obvious modern spinoffs.

Humpback whales pump six bathtubs of blood around their bodies and regulate the beats with electrical signals passing through thick non-conductive blubber shielding the heart from cold.

A cheap operation for humans that bridged damaged heart muscles by mimicking the tiny "wiring" could cut demand for battery-powered pacemakers in humans, based on research at the Whale Heart Satellite Tracking Program in Colombia, it said.

Fitting a new pacemaker costs up to $50,000 per patient and the world market is projected at $3.7 billion by 2010.

SANDFISH LIZARD

The sandfish lizard, which lives in North Africa and the Arabian peninsula, could also give clues to cheaper ways to cut friction in mechanical and electrical devices than costly silicon carbide or crystalline diamond.

Studies by German scientists showed that the skin is covered with microscopic spikes. "A grain of Sahara sand rides atop 20,000 of these spikes, spreading the load and providing negligible levels of friction," UNEP said.

A consortium of three German companies were working with scientists to try to imitate the keratin-based skin.

And it said that bumps on the wing cases of the Namib desert beetle enabled it to gather water droplets from frequent fogs in a region where only about 1 cm (0.5 inch) of rain falls a year.

A team from the University of Oxford and British defense research group QinetiQ were producing a beetle-like film to capture water vapor from cooling towers.

The invention could help save water and energy in a world facing stresses on water supplies because of climate change.

And the African resurrection plant has sugars called trehaloses that allow it to dry to a crisp during droughts and then flourish again. Indian company Panacea Biotech is making trials to see if similar the sugars could be used to store vaccines without refrigeration.

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Best of our wild blogs: 28 May 08

Sentosa walks with the Naked Hermit Crabs
announcing the upcoming June walks on the adventures with the naked hermit crabs blog

Cyrene Impressions
shared by winner of the "I Want to Go Cyrene" blogging contest, on the glorious birds blog

East Coast: Bodies of Evidence
extrapolations on the lazy lizard blog

Sightings on Chek Jawa
during the walk on the ubin volunteers blog

Clean up on our shores
USA Girl Scouts at Sarimbun and 39th SAF Command and Staff cohort at Pasir Ris on the News from the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore blog

Asian Glossy Starlings at Changi
on the wonderful creations blog

Noisy Miners harassing a Spotted Dove
on the bird ecology blog

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Sir David calls it a day: and comments on Singapore

Acclaimed naturalist David Attenborough ends his five-decade-long career with a series on reptiles and amphibians
Tara Tan, Straits Times 23 May 08;

BEADY eyes stare. A forked tongue tastes the air. Then, as quick as lightning, the mangrove snake coils around a startled crab and rips off its limbs one by one.

All this drama took place in swamps right here in Singapore.

And it was captured on camera as part of Life In Cold Blood, the latest - and last ever - documentary series by renowned naturalist Sir David Attenborough, and which will be shown on Arts Central from Nov 26.

At 81, Sir David has decided to call it quits on his globe-trotting TV activities that have captivated millions.

As for his visit to Singapore, Sir David, one of the world's most acclaimed natural history presenters, says it left him impressed with some of the environmental work done here.

He says in a phone interview from his home in London: 'There are some very active people in Singapore who look after the Singapore natural history with enormous success.

'With those around working hard to protect the areas, you do have some very precious parts in the few remaining areas where there is wildlife in Singapore.'

His career spans five decades and includes landmark documentaries The Living Planet (1984) and Planet Earth (2006).

It comes as no surprise that no effort was spared for Life In Cold Blood, which had a team of 17 cameramen filming over 100 species of amphibians and reptiles in 18 countries, including Madagascar, Brazil, Australia and Japan.

For his final project, Sir David turned to a species he had kept as a child. He recalls: 'As a boy, I used to keep chameleons and I have actually watched the birthing process.'

He adds with a laugh: 'They are not poisonous, which helps.'

One of the most exciting things he saw during the filming of his latest series was pygmy chameleons in Madagascar.

'The tiny pygmy chameleon is only the size of my little finger nail, but has all the organs of a larger lizard - eyes and stomach and brain and hands and so on - and lives on tiny little fruit flies,' he says excitedly, his voice taking on that familiar tinge of passion and wonderment.

'I was absolutely knocked out. I thought they were marvellous.'

His career has taken him to most places on earth and he has witnessed some of nature's most extraordinary sights.

However, he is happy to take a backseat from now on: 'I am now coming up to my 82nd birthday and I don't feel the urge to climb trees before breakfast as I used to do.'

If he hadn't become a naturalist, he would most probably have been a palaeontologist (an expert in fossils). He says: 'I adore fossils and fossils were my first love. I get a great thrill from them, they are wonderful and romantic, beautiful things.'

His elder brother, Academy Award-winning Lord Richard Attenborough, acted in Jurassic Park as eccentric developer John Hammond in 1993. And fossil-fanatic Sir David notes: 'He made a mistake; he didn't understand some of the names.'

Of all the nature he has seen, he would choose to relive watching birds of paradise in the mountains of New Guinea: 'That is just one of the extraordinary, amazing, rare, beautiful, real unforgettable sights in my lifetime.'

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It's all about green power and helping firms cut costs

Alex Lau and Charles Ong started a company to help the environment at a time when the industry was still budding. Last year, their venture earned revenue of $2m
Ong Bi Hui, Straits Times 28 May 08;

BACK in 2002, when the green energy movement had barely sprouted, platoon mates Alex Lau and Charles Ong conceived a business plan during reservist training in a forest in Lim Chu Kang.

They were inspired by the sounds and smells of the forest to set up an enterprise that would help the environment.

Both men were also driven by a desire to leave their jobs as civil servants to set up their own firm.

Today, that plan has materialised into Anacle Systems, a local company that specialises in green technology and energy optimisation for buildings.

Their timing has been perfect, considering the rapid rise in interest in all things green. Indeed, Anacle is now on the cusp of expanding overseas.

Mr Lau, 35, admits with a laugh that although green energy is the flavour of the moment, their business probably sounds a little dull.

'I know our business is rather boring and we are dealing in relatively esoteric stuff, but basically what we do is help businesses cut down on energy wastage and save on power bills.'

Joint owner, Mr Ong, also 35, is equally self-deprecating: 'We know that we are a boring business, but Warren Buffett himself said that he invests only in boring businesses.'

Anacle was set up in February 2006 but came into its own only last year, when it attracted more than 20 new customers.

It posted a 23 per cent increase in profits to $300,000, and generated revenue of about $2 million last year.

It has also worked with many big names, including Sentosa Development Corporation and the PUB.

Entering a budding industry

WHEN they hatched their business plan, Mr Ong was still a civil servant with the Defence Science and Technology Agency while Mr Lau worked with the Ministry of Defence.

They were armed with chemical engineering degrees, contacts they had built up from years of working in related industries, and experience gleaned from stints with various companies.

'We set out to start a business that we felt would be socially responsible, as well as related to what we had been doing for the past few years,' says Mr Ong.

Mr Lau adds: 'Moreover, one of the reasons why we entered this market was that the industry was still budding and, hence, we would have little competition within Singapore and even in the region.'

Despite the pressures of setting up a new business, the two men remain good friends both at work and outside working hours.

They run different aspects of the business according to their strengths. For example, the more gregarious Mr Lau handles public relations while meticulous Mr Ong is in charge of operations and management.

Surge in green awareness

MR LAU says that while they had long seen the potential of green technology, they had no inkling then of the sudden surge in the sector's popularity brought on by awareness of climate change and especially rising oil prices.

According to his 'conservative estimate', Singapore's green technology market is worth at least $200 million to $300 million a year.

With oil prices having breached US$135 per barrel, energy conservation is becoming increasingly important to many companies.

Anacle helps companies save on energy bills by looking at inefficient aspects of a building, such as air-conditioning units that vent to walls, or heat-trapping sources like glass enclosed spaces. They then recommend solutions to help cut down on electricity use.

One such solution would be pre-cooling a building in the early hours of the morning. This allows it to retain the coolness throughout the day without the need to have its air-conditioning switched on during the entire working day.

Green technology is a key part of the business but Anacle has other strings to its bow, which helps the company to boost its bottom line.

'Asset management, which is ensuring that customers' equipment does not fail, still makes up at least half of our business,' says Mr Lau.

Looking beyond Singapore

THE two men say an important contributor of their success is having a strong business plan, and the fact that they were able to take this blueprint to government agencies to seek vital start-up funding.

They first received funding of $250,000 from Spring Singapore's Start-up Enterprise Development Scheme, an equity financing scheme that meant that the duo did not have to fork out a single cent to start their company.

Though small, the company has had no problems getting industry recognition. It bagged an Asia Pacific ICT Alliance Award for Industrial Applications last year, because it was the only participant in that category.

Anacle is now looking to the international market. Mr Lau says: 'As much as we had an easy start, like many businesses in Singapore, the crucial step for us is to make the transition from an SME to larger things.'

Anacle is currently looking to enter the more mature markets of the European Union, Japan and North America, and has already set up an office in California.

'In places like the European Union, there is a greater respect for the environment and, business-wise, companies are more willing to invest in green technology as it contributes to their brand image. In Singapore, instilling corporate social responsibility is still a budding trend,' says Mr Lau.

'Singapore is a good test bed, but it lacks the laissez-faire environment of more mature capitalist markets that will enable a business to really flourish.'

For entrepreneurs keen on starting their own businesses, the duo has this piece of advice: 'Just go for it.'

They say the process is much easier than it sounds. But for those who want to take the plunge into the nascent green technology market, they caution that market study, data gathering and analysis are of utmost importance. They also believe in taking care in hiring staff.

'Once you get the right people into the team, the business runs itself,' says Mr Ong.

As for the duo, they are still living the dream they dared to imagine back in the Lim Chu Kang forest.

Read more!

Can Singapore be a salad bowl, teens ask Vivian

Yes, nation welcomes individuals' uniqueness, says minister to SMS queries from students
Jane Ng, Straits Times 28 May 08;

ABOUT 600 pre-university students had a chance to lob questions at a minister yesterday on the broad topic Global City, Home For All. And they did - via SMS.

Even the shyer ones got their queries in during the 90 minutes Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports Vivian Balakrishnan gave them at the annual Pre-University Seminar.

The questions - typographical errors and all - were flashed on the big screens on stage. It was the first time the seminar took this format.

The questions posed covered a broad range of topics - from global issues such as the rise in food and oil prices and income inequality, to local issues like why Singlish is not 'allowed', as well as controversial ones like whether Singapore should be more tolerant of homosexuals and opposition parties.

On Singlish, Dr Balakrishnan said the decision was a pragmatic one because Singaporeans needed to communicate with the world in a language universally understood.

The students also asked whether, instead of being a melting pot, Singapore could instead be a 'salad bowl', where each individual could retain his own uniqueness.

The minister agreed with the analogy, saying that Singapore was an open society which welcomed individuals' uniqueness.

Turning to opposition politics, he said the Government was not stopping anyone from going into it, but advised those contemplating it: Go into it because it is something you believe in, not because you want change for the sake of change.

To a student who asked what the Government was doing to help citizens amid the world food crisis and the American financial meltdown, he said the answer lay not in subsidies but in everyone working hard and smart to ensure that 'our goods and services are worth more than the food we eat, so we don't starve'.

Students also shared their aspirations when the minister asked them what their dreams were and what would make them happy and fulfilled. Their aspirations included being an aesthetic surgeon, a teacher, a top drummer and an astronaut.

To give more participants a say, the traditional keynote address was dropped in favour of short presentations by student panellists. These covered topics like whether Singapore was the place to live their dreams, and whether it would continue being a home for all.

Dr Balakrishnan said it was a 'great challenge' for him to respond to the text messages and presentations without a prepared script, and added: 'But I hope it was a more spontaneous session, a session which more truly reflected the concerns, ideas and dreams of the students.'

Victoria Ong, 17, a first-year student of Meridian Junior College, said she gained insights into what youth today thought and why the Government made certain decisions.

'We all have our own personal complaints and questions about what the Government does. I see better now why it makes certain decisions, even if I don't always agree with them.'

Minister Balakrishnan cautions against promoting use of Singlish
Channel NewsAsia 27 May 08;

SINGAPORE: Community Development, Youth and Sports Minister Vivian Balakrishnan has cautioned against promoting the use of Singlish.

Speaking at the Pre-University Seminar 2008 on Tuesday, Dr Balakrishnan said the move to promote the lingo is a "pet project" by "linguistic elites" that can cause more harm than good.

He said those championing the local lingo are mostly highly educated individuals who are able to effortlessly switch from Singlish to proper English.

"But very few of us, to be honest with you, really have the ability. For most of us, we can only speak one way. So I've often felt there's a bit of intellectual snobbery on the part of people who push Singlish," Dr Balakrishnan said.

Some 600 students from more than 20 institutions attended the dialogue session at Nanyang Technological University.- CNA/so

Launchpad for dreams, or just a workplace?
Students engage Minister on identity, political space and dual citizenship
Loh Chee Kong, Today Online 28 May 08;

FROM the word “go”, the flurry of SMSes flooded onto the giant screen — spelling out aspirations ranging from “world class rock drummer” and astronaut, to United Nations official and journalist exposing “the glaring inequities and corruption in the world”.

Such staunch idealism, expressed by young participants at the Pre-University Seminar yesterday, was matched only by their anxiety over whether their dreams could be fufilled from a “little red dot” some deemed too pragmatic and “narrow-minded”.

It was the first time that students at the annual event, :held this year at the Nanyang Technological University, had their SMSed thoughts projected onstage in real time.

And doing his best to assure the :590 youths from junior colleges, polytechnics and the Millennia Insitute that they could “change the world” with Singapore as the “launchpad”, was Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports.

The students wanted to know if Singapore was merely a great place to work and chase after material comforts, rather than a home. Could we be a global city and a home at the same time? :

Dr Balakrishnan told them: “We will send you out into the world, if need be, into outer space at some point in time, But we must always be a place from which you, your children and descendants, are launched from.”

In fact, he believes Singaporeans are better placed than many other peoples to ride the globalisation wave. A case in point: Quite a few Singaporeans are working for Google, and a number were, in fact, behind the creation of Gmail, saidDr Balakrishnan, recounting his recent visit to the Google headquarters in California.

And while some Singaporeans who succeeded overseas have criticised the “Singapore system”, the minister argued that it is this “tough, rigorous and pushy system” that gives citizens a “headstart”.

The Singapore of the past might be guilty of “forcing people to make choices too early” but things are different now, with “many more options — both in terms of scholarships, jobs and education courses”, he noted.

If :we welcome intellectual diversity however, students asked, why can’t we give more space for opposition politics or homosexuals? Dr Balakrishnan said social norms and “political rules, if need be” would continue to evolve.

Raffles Junior College’s John Chew pointed out: “In terms of religions and races, we know that we need to be tolerant. However, when it comes to political differences, it’s not just about me tolerating you. Is there any attempt on the part of the Government to include this segment of the population?”

Dr Balakrishnan said politics had to be “rough and tough ... because it is about lives”. He added: “These are issues in many parts of the world people are settling through blood, violence and wars. Here, all we do is argue with each other and you say we are intolerant.”

Another student lamented how, while Americans can talk about the “American Dream”, Singaporeans’ identity markers revolve only around mundane things such as chicken rice and the Merlion.

Dr Balakrishnan pointed out that some common values “underpin our society”, including “fairness and justice for all”, multiracialism, self-reliance and familyresponsibility.

While heartened that the youth “cared about each other” and “want to make a difference”, Dr Balakrishnan was worried about the risk of globalisation diluting Singaporeans’ sense of belonging, as the Republic sends its people out into the world and opens its doors to foreigners for economic expediency.

He urged the students: “Singapore must look, smell, feel in our hearts, like a home. If it is not, then all the success in the world would mean nothing for the future because there will be no Singapore.”

Read more!

Container transport is the most energy-friendly way of moving goods

AP Moller goes green and spreads the news
David Hughes, Business Times 28 May 08;

DANISH shipping giant AP Moller-Maersk made a lot last week of its efforts to become more environmentally friendly. The company says that increased energy efficiency led to a significant decrease of the CO2 emissions from its fleet. It says that this applies to both container vessels and tankers.

In six years, from 2002-2007, the average CO2 emissions for transport of a container has decreased by 8.9 per cent.

Last year alone, the decrease was about 3 per cent, according to the newly published 'Environmental Report 2007 AP Moller-Maersk Vessels'. Based on its experience so far, Moller-Maersk container shipping arm Maersk Line has increased its previous target decreasing CO2 emissions by 5 to 10 per cent.

Moller-Maersk is not alone among the major shipowners in attempting to improve its environmental performance, and 'reduce its carbon footprint'. But there is no doubt that the company is taking green issues very seriously.

The report covers a total of 323 owned vessels, but not chartered vessels. The report also describes the AP Moller-Maersk environment management, the results for 2007 and the continued effort to minimise the fuel consumption and air emissions from the vessels.

'The less fuel we use, the less CO2 we emit. This is good for the environment and economically beneficial to us, as environmental initiatives often go hand in hand with commercial advantages,' says company technical director Robert Pedersen.

With heavy fuel oil prices of over US$600 a tonne, companies hardly need any further incentive to save fuel. For Moller-Maersk, a reduction in fuel consumption in just its container business of 5 per cent would mean a saving of 1.5 billion Denmark kroner (S$430 million) at current fuel prices and exchange rates.

While Moller-Maersk's fuel savings are very welcome it should be realised that we are not, generally, talking about making existing ships use less fuel. Partly, we are talking about new ships coming into service with more efficient machinery. The Moller-Maersk fleet is getting younger, which generally means increased energy use.

In 1970, 30 newbuildings joined the company's fleet. Most of all, we are talking about economies of scale.

Targeted effort

The company claims that decreased CO2 emission is the result of a 'targeted innovative effort' but it adds, 'so far it is particularly the use of larger vessels and a continued renewal of the fleet which results in the improvement'.

'The environment is a focus area for us, and therefore we have, among others, set up an innovation team, which is working on more than 100 projects targeting increased environmentally friendly shipping. These include optimising hulls, propellers and paint.'

The company claims that its largest container vessels, the PS-class ships such as Emma Maersk which can carry 11,000 TEU (twenty foot equivalent units), have set a new standard for energy efficiency. These ships, the company says, emit only half as much CO2 per container transported as the considerably smaller 3,700 TEU L-class vessels.

Put another way, an L-class ship uses 1KW to carry one tonne about 43 km. An S-class ship takes the same weight some 72 km using the same energy. Those figures underline the fact that container transport represents by far the most energy- friendly way of transporting goods.

A Boeing 747, according to Maersk, carries a tonne of cargo some 6 km on 1KW while a truck manages about 15km and a diesel railway locomotive around 26km.

These comparisons explain why industry representatives get frustrated when politicians, especially EU ones, attack shipping for not doing enough to reduce its carbon footprint.

And it also explains why, like Moller-Maersk, shipping lines are now more willing to publicise what they are achieving.

Read more!

Highway on Jurong Island diverted for petrochem cracker

Charmian Kok, Business Times 28 May 08;

JURONG Island will go to great lengths to accommodate the petrochemical industry - as shown by the near-$100 million Jurong Island Highway diversion project.

About a kilometre of highway was diverted so that ExxonMobil could build a second cracker next to its current site. This way, the new cracker needs only 11 ha of land instead of 30 ha had it been built elsewhere on the island. This saves the company capex and operational costs - and saves Singapore precious space.

The director of the specialised parks development group at JTC Corporation, Heah Soon Poh, said that if further petrochemical projects require road diversion, JTC would consider it if their investment would benefit Singapore. 'One third of our manufacturing GDP comes from chemicals,' he said. 'We can safely say the bulk of that comes from Jurong Island. If it is an investment that is important to the Singapore economy and adds to the whole value chain, I don't see why we would not divert roads to accommodate it. We need to look at the bigger picture.'

The ExxonMobil project also required the diversion of pipelines on Jurong Island - a complex procedure that involved more than 17 pipes carrying natural gas, industrial water and carbon monoxide. In all, 25 companies on the island were affected.

The road diversion works, which started in January 2006, are expected to be completed by August this year. Pipeline diversion works started in November 2006 and were completed in January this year.

Read more!

Greenpeace campaign success and the "media mind bomb"

The campaign group: Greenpeace
Brian Wheeler, BBC News 27 May 08;

Few campaign groups can boast the global reach and influence of Greenpeace.

Whether pursuing Japanese whaling ships across the Antarctic, demonstrating against logging in the Amazon or storming oil rigs in the North Sea to protest against global warming, Greenpeace activists grab headlines around the world.

They have perfected the art of using high profile media events to exert pressure on politicians and big business.

Greenpeace founder, Bob Hunter, believed in the idea of the "media mind bomb" - reaching the public consciousness through dramatic, photo-friendly opposition to perceived environmental crimes.

But the organisation is not without its critics.

It has been accused of employing alarmist, even scaremongering, tactics in some of its campaigns and of undermining its serious message on climate change with its trademark publicity stunts.

'Direct action'

In the UK, Greenpeace was most recently in the headlines when four protesters breached security at Heathrow airport to protest against a third runway.

Greenpeace UK's executive director, John Sauven, says such examples of "direct action" are an important part of the group's overall lobbying effort.

"I think the action at Heathrow and what the protesters did on the roof of the House of Commons, are quite important moments actually, in actually raising the issue.

"It has put the government on the back foot on something they thought they were going to just railroad through. This is no longer going to be the case. It is going to be quite a hot political potato for them."

Mr Sauven, who cut his teeth protesting against logging in the rainforests of British Columbia, says much of Greenpeace's work - its scientific research and relentless arm-twisting in board rooms and the corridors of power - goes unreported.

"Sometimes you can slap a big, thick report on the desk and it has the impact you want and sometimes you need to do a direct action to raise the profile, or sometimes you need to use an artist or somebody else from the creative industries."

People join Greenpeace, he says, because in an age when politics seems to have been drained of values and meaning, with politicians becoming increasingly "cut off" from the public and obsessed with media manipulation, it seems to stand for something.

"I think there are certain core values that Greenpeace and other groups stand for, that is attractive to people.

"And that gives a sense of purpose or a sense of belonging, a sense of actually standing for something - or standing up for something."

Core beliefs

Greenpeace was founded in Vancouver in 1971 to protest against underground nuclear testing. It now has 27 national and regional offices around the world and claims a campaigning presence in 41 countries.

In the UK, Greenpeace employs about 100 people, in a former animal testing laboratory in the back streets of Islington, North London ("we had to change the karma of the building," jokes Mr Sauven).

Like a political party, its supporters sign up to a raft of different campaigns based around core beliefs and values.

But - unlike a party - they have no direct input into policy formation. There are no leadership elections or conference debates.

Most national offices elect a board of directors, who make decisions on local campaigns, but global objectives and budgets are decided by Greenpeace International, which owns the Greenpeace name and has its headquarters in Amsterdam.

"Globally, the organisation decides on its priorities, through a joint programme meeting, where the campaigners representing the offices around the world meet once a year to decide on priority campaigns, so that's where our big global campaigns are decided, collectively by offices from China to Russia, to Europe, North America and so on," explains Mr Sauven.

'Frightening facts'

But, he argues, Greenpeace does not gain its legitimacy from the number of people it represents - the size of its membership - but from the strength of its arguments, its independence and willingness to speak up for its beliefs.

"I hold my beliefs and I will always take the consequences of what I stand for," he says.

Crucially, he adds, it receives no direct funding from governments or business - adding to the sense that it is an independent voice.

But what about the accusation - made by, among others, Guardian journalist Nick Davies in his recent Flat Earth News book - that it can sometimes be guilty of overstating the threat posed by nuclear energy or climate change in order to grab headlines?

In one video clip on the Greenpeace website, entitled "Friday 13th - watch your worst nightmares unfold", a family trip to the beach ends in horror when a passenger jet crashes into a nuclear power station.

The accompanying press release contains a list of "frightening facts" on the risk of nuclear installations being targeted by terrorists.

'Big issues'

Such shock tactics are justified if they can be supported by facts, argues Mr Sauven, pointing to a US report on the risk of terrorists flying a plane into a nuclear plant.

"Some of this is slightly artistic license in terms of...these are short films made to grab attention, create a stir and so on and so forth, but I think that they are legitimate in the sense that these are big issues."

He adds: "I am not saying that we never have got our facts wrong. I am not saying we never make mistakes - sometimes we do - but certainly getting our facts right is critical for me."

It seems the internet is posing a particular challenge to Greenpeace when it comes to editorial standards.

If you trawl through the "vast amounts of information" put out by the organisation across the world, Mr Sauven concedes that you will probably be able to "pick out things that were inaccurate or have been overstated".

He is "not happy about that", he says.

"It does pose certain issues for us, in terms of how we guarantee the same kind of quality of standard in the new media area that we have done traditionally."

'Tough decisions'

A large part of Mr Sauven's time is taken up with political lobbying - he has "constant" meetings with senior ministers.

But few, with the possible exception of David Miliband, seem to take the issue of global warming as seriously as Greenpeace, he argues.

"I don't think any of them have really got the seriousness of the issue of climate change in their DNA. It's not that they don't mouth it, it's not that they don't talk about it, it's not that they don't say it's an absolute global priority.

"But you don't get the sense when you talk to them that this is a really critical issue, we have got to do something about it - come hell or high water we are going to make some tough decisions."

He believes Prime Minister Gordon Brown's unwillingness to halt the construction of a third runway at Heathrow and a new coal fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent, speaks volumes about the prime minister's true priorities.

"Brown will say to you, he's said to me before: 'What are you doing to mobilise the public? Why aren't you getting the public on board? Why aren't you opening up the political space?'

"And you think, well why don't you make it easier for us to do that?"

'Vested interests'

He is cautiously optimistic about the Conservative Party: "There are some people definitely within the Tory Party, where there is climate change in their DNA. They definitely get it. They see it as one of their key issues".

But he says leader David Cameron will have to be prepared to take on some "powerful vested interests" if he is to deliver on the pledges included in the party's recent Quality of Life Commission report ("a "really excellent study, a fascinating document to read. I was very surprised that it came out of the Tory Party").

And he remains unrepentant about Greenpeace's buccaneering, publicity-grabbing approach to campaigning.

"I am not unhappy with the situation that exists because it's a bit like an iceberg, you see the tip of it but 90% of the work goes on underneath."

GREENPEACE
Founded: 1971
Leading figures Gerd Liepold, executive director, Greenpeace International; John Sauven, executive director, Greenpeace UK
Aims: Defend the natural world and promote peace through action
Funding: Donations from individuals, grants from foundations
Legal status: Greenpeace UK is a limited company, operating under licence from Greenpeace International, in the Netherlands, which owns the name
Membership: About 2.8 million worldwide

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East coast horseshoe crabs poised for recovery

Jon Hurdle, Reuters 27 May 08;

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Restrictions by U.S. east coast states on harvesting horseshoe crabs, whose eggs provide food for endangered migrating shore birds, have boosted the animal's population after years of over-fishing, experts say.

Some experts have linked a decline in migratory shore birds to the over-fishing of horseshoe crabs, which come ashore every spring to lay their eggs, so Delaware, New Jersey and other nearby states turned their attention to boosting crab numbers.

Until the last few years, the crabs were harvested in their millions by commercial fishermen who used them as bait for conch and eel. But with ornithologists warning that the red knot, a robin-sized shore bird, was in imminent danger of extinction because of the lack of crab eggs, the states where the crabs spawn have banned or restricted the harvest.

New Jersey imposed a two-year moratorium on the crab harvest and then banned it altogether earlier this year, while Delaware allows only males to be harvested, and restricts those numbers.

The population of male crabs on Delaware beaches has now risen to 4.22 per square meter (11 square feet) from 2.50 in 1999, while female numbers have risen to 0.89 from 0.77, said Stewart Michels, a fisheries scientist at the Delaware Division of Fish and Wildlife.

"We are very optimistic that the significant increase is a good sign of things to come," Michels said.

Delaware's crab harvest declined to around 77,000 in 2007 from 487,000 in 1995, while the numbers taken on the East Coast as a whole, dropped to 817,000 in 2007 from around 3 million in 1995, Michels said.

The crabs are also used by biomedical companies that use their blood to extract a substance used to detect fever-causing bacteria in humans.

The number of red knot stopping over on Delaware Bay beaches during their 10,000-mile (16,000-km) migration from south America to Arctic Canada each spring has dropped in recent years to around 15,000, a number that scientists say is below that needed to sustain the species.

Scientists hope that if they can save the red knot, they will also be able to help other species such as ruddy turnstone and semi-palmated sandpiper, whose numbers have also declined because of the dwindling number of crab eggs.

(Editing by Michelle Nichols and Sandra Maler)

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Caribbean nations plan marine parks to aid economy

Alister Doyle, Reuters 27 May 08;

OSLO (Reuters) - Caribbean islands will create new protected areas for fish and coral reefs under a $70 million plan announced on Tuesday that will help safeguard tourism-backed economies.

"This is a trust fund for the future benefit of society," Bahamas Minister of Works and Transport Earl Deveaux told Reuters of the project. "Our economy is based on tourism and our greatest natural resource is our environment."

Inspired by a 2006 plan to protect part of the Pacific Ocean and a "Coral Triangle" project launched in 2007 for southeast Asia, nine Caribbean nations agreed to extend protected areas to 10 percent of their marine and coastal habitats by 2012.

The Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, St. Kitts and Nevis, Dominica, Saint Lucia, Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines aim to set aside about (32,000 square km (12,500 sq miles), according to the U.S.-based Nature Conservancy which is advising Caribbean governments.

That area is roughly the size of Belgium or the U.S. state of Maryland. The Bahamas will be the largest contributor of protected areas under the "Caribbean Challenge" and aims to set aside 20 percent of marine habitats by 2020.

"In many Caribbean nations at least 50 percent of gross domestic product is derived from tourism," said Rob Weary of the Nature Conservancy. "Countries are realizing the need to invest in protected areas so tourism can remain the economic engine."

BIODIVERSITY

Other Caribbean nations would be asked to join.

The Nature Conservancy said the three Caribbean, Pacific and Coral Triangle projects together spanned 83 percent of the world's coral biodiversity and 82 percent of mangrove species and had potential to aid the livelihoods of 130 million people.

Deveaux said the project could have wider spinoffs since five percent of the world's coral reefs were in the Bahamas.

"Whatever contribution they are likely to make to medicine, pharmaceuticals, biodiversity, the preservation of these ecosystems is vitally important to people well beyond the borders of the Bahamas," he said.

The plan was launched on the sidelines of a May 19-30 U.N. meeting on biodiversity in Germany, which is seeking ways to safeguard animals and plants. Only 0.5 percent of the world's marine areas are protected against 12 percent of land areas.

The Nature Conservancy said that about seven percent of the Caribbean's marine resources now have protected status but only a tenth of these were considered properly conserved.

The $70 million cost would comprise $40 million in a trust fund and $30 million for expanding protected areas, Weary said. Among major donors, the Conservancy would provide $20 million and Germany was considering $8.6 million.

The project illustrates a widening belief that natural systems, such as forests, wetlands or glaciers, provide free services that are undervalued by conventional economic theory.

Protected corals, for instance, can raise overall fish catches by acting as nurseries for fish that later swim to other waters. Intact reefs also draw tourists and can shield beaches from storm surges or tsunamis.

Deveaux said that steps to bolster Caribbean economies would also help them in the longer term to resist threats such as climate change or rising world food prices.

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