Revisiting Pasir Ris
from Water Quality in Singapore
Damselfly (28) - Agriocnemis Nano
from Nature Photography - Singapore Odonata
sungei buloh
from into the wild and pink-necked green pigeon
Feeding of Spotted Dove: 9. Her partner has returned
from Bird Ecology Study Group
NSS Kids' Fun at ACRES Wildlife Rescue Centre
from Fun with Nature by Fun
Veggie Thursday in Singapore
from EcoWalkthetalk
Channel NewsAsia 16 Sep 10;
SINGAPORE: Transport Minister Raymond Lim said various agencies here are now finalising their investigations into the oil spill that took place in May and its long-term impact on marine and coastal life.
In May, two vessels collided with each other off south-eastern Singapore.
An oil tanker and a bulk carrier collided with each other 13 kilometre southeast of Changi East, releasing about 2,500 tonnes of light crude oil.
Response teams were immediately deployed to mop up the spill and protect nearby fish farms and the Chek Jawa wetlands reserve.
The Marine and Ports Authority also informed Malaysian and Indonesian authorities on the progress of the clean-up.
Mr Lim said while containment efforts will always be hampered by weather conditions, it is important that agencies do their best to minimise the impact of oil coming onshore, and if it does, to ensure a quick clean-up. - CNA/fa
Quick action prevented major damage to beach
Esther Ng Today Online 17 Sep 10;
SINGAPORE - Quick action by the relevant agencies prevented any major damage to the environment following the oil spill which occurred when two ships collided off Changi on May 25.
Transport Minister Raymond Lim told Parliament yesterday that while some marine life at Changi Beach were affected, the damage was not extensive.
There was also "minimal immediate impact" to coastal and marine life in Chek Jawa because the National Parks Board (NParks) had deployed protective oil booms.
He said the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore had also deployed canvas skirting at fish farms in the East Johor Straits to act as barriers to the oil slick.
Responding to a question from MP for Holland-Bukit Timah GRC, Christopher de Souza, Mr Lim said the National Environment Agency and other agencies used a combination of oil dispersants, absorbent materials, non-toxic and biodegradable cleaning agents and vacuum suction trucks to clean up the oil spill.
More than 495 workers were mobilised.
East Coast Beach and Changi Beach eventually re-opened for water activities on June 4.
The House was also told that the Maritime and Port Authority is "finalising its investigation" into the cause of the collision. ESTHER NG
Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 16 Sep 10;
Indonesia called on parties to the UN biodiversity convention to stop receiving illegally traded endangered species, or loss of biodiversity would continue.
A senior official from the Forestry Ministry warned that Indonesia’s measures to protect endangered species, such as tigers and orangutans, by restoring their ailing habitats could be futile if foreign countries took no serious action to deal with illegal trade.
“It is similar to illegal logging. We could not rub it out if countries like Malaysia and China still accept illegal wood from Indonesia,” Darori, the ministry’s director general for forest protection and nature conservation, told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
The two countries could be entry points for transfer of illegal timber from Indonesia to other nations, he added.
Darori made the statement as negotiators from 193 countries to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) are preparing for a two-week summit in Nagoya, Japan, to seek solutions on how to protect biodiversity.
The tenth conference of parties (COP) to the CBD would be held on Oct. 18 to Oct. 29, with the closing three days slated for ministerial meetings.
International demand for rare species is still high, Darori said.
“We recently seized three tiger skins being exported at prices between Rp 50 million [US$5,550] and Rp 100 million per pelt,” he said.
Indonesia once had Javanese and Balinese tigers, but they are now extinct. The ministry predicted there were only 500 Sumatran tigers left in the wild.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature named the Sumatran tiger as critically endangered, while the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora placed it in Appendix I, prohibiting its trade.
“We want the upcoming CBD summit to discuss illegal trade of endangered species to protect biodiversity,” Darori said.
The three big outcomes of the COP10 meeting in Nagoya would be global agreement on a new strategy, the mobilization of finance, and a new legally-binding protocol on access and benefit sharing, a statement by the secretariat of CBD said on Wednesday.
“The decisions we take now will affect biodiversity for the coming millennium. We can’t have one outcome without the others. The COP10 meeting is all or nothing,” the Convention on Biological Diversity executive secretary Ahmed Djoghlaf said.
The CBD statement specifically elaborated on biodiversity issues in Indonesia. Indonesia was labelled as one of seventeen “megadiverse” nations, and has more biodiversity than any country other than Brazil, and is home to 10 percent of the world’s flowering plant species and 12 percent of all mammals. Many of Indonesia’s species — and more than half of the archipelago’s endemic plant species — are found nowhere else on Earth.
This biodiversity provides many natural goods and services to people of Indonesia, but it faces direct threats from human activities.
Since 1997, the rate of deforestation has reached 2.4 million hectares per year, mostly due to logging, conversion for agriculture and forest fires, the statement said.
This has contributed to the increase of the items on Indonesia’s list of threatened species, which now includes 140 species of bird and 63 species of mammal.
Hundreds of sacks of ammonium nitrate seized
Andi Hajramurni, The Jakarta Post 16 Sep 10;
The South Sulawesi Police have seized 489 sacks of ammonium nitrate, a chemical used in explosives and fertilizers, that were brought into the country from Malaysia and the Philippines on ships, a senior police figure says.
The sacks, each containing 25 kilograms of ammonium nitrate, were seized near Taka Bonerate National Park in Selayar Islands regency last week and were transported to Makassar on Tuesday.
It is thought the chemicals were to be used to make explosives for fishing.
The sacks had been transported from Malaysia and the Philippines to Indonesia on two ships from the Selayar Islands, the police’s marine unit director Sr. Comr. Agus Sutikno said.
He said the police were holding the captains of the ships as suspects. They were identified as Hasanuddin, captain of KLM Dewi Anjani, and Sukri, captain of KLM Fajar Islam.
KLM Dewi Anjani was reported to have been carrying 2,000 sacks from Malaysia but the police seized 257 sacks. Some 232 sacks were confiscated from a reported total of 1,800 sacks brought from the Philippines on the ship KLM Fajar Islam.
“They had been selling the sacks to locals on their way to Bonerate Island,” Agus said.
The captains of the two ships tried to evade arrest by entrusting their dossiers to local people, Agus said.
However, the police, assisted by the commander of the local military district command, persuaded the crew of the ship to hand over the ammonium nitrate.
The suspects confessed that the explosives had been purchased from Kuantan, Malaysia, and the Philippines at a price of Rp 250,000 per sack. They had sold them to locals around the Selayar Islands for between Rp 600,000 and Rp 1.5 million per sack.
Ammonium nitrate is used as a fertilizer, especially for oil palm trees, and is readily available and legally traded in Malaysia and the Philippines, Agus said.
However, the chemical is banned in Indonesia to prevent it from being used to make explosives.
A kilogram of ammonium nitrate can produce up to four explosive devices suitable for fishing, Agus said.
The 3,311 sacks that the fishermen had already sold could produce 3 millions bombs, he continued.
“You can imagine how enormous an impacts the bombs could have on the environment,” Agus said.
The police are also concerned that ammonium nitrate might fall into the hands of terrorists, Agus said
Importers' strategies of diverse sourcing and forward buying help shield consumers from price hikes
Neo Chai Chin Today Online 16 Sep 10;
SINGAPORE - Flour distributors and bakeries will feel the pinch of high global wheat prices from today, with Singapore's largest wheat importer Prima raising its prices by 5 to 10 per cent.
But retail customers will not be affected for now, as prices of its wheat flour in supermarkets remain unchanged, said Ms Lim Wee Ling, Prima's group marketing manager.
Global wheat prices are at a two-year high, after Russia imposed a grain export ban till next year because drought and wildfires destroyed much of its wheat stock.
Prima imports its wheat from the United States, Canada and Australia, but because "the cost of wheat has surged over the past three months, we now have to increase our prices to our distributors and institutional customers", said Ms Lim, responding to MediaCorp's queries.
The price hike came as no surprise to the Singapore Bakery and Confectionery Trade Association president Liow Kian Huat, who had been "mentally prepared" for an eventual increase since July.
Mr Liow, who runs two bakeries in Yishun and is a customer of Prima, said he would not pass on the increased cost to customers, adding that the latest increase is bearable as wheat prices had dipped by about 10 per cent late last year to $26 per 25kg.
"Wheat is just one of the cost pressures we are facing," said Mr Liow.
Sugar and butter prices have doubled in the last 12 to 24 months, and shop owners take into account all costs including rentals when pricing their offerings, he said.
While Singapore's consumer price index rose 3.1 per cent in July, some consumers said the cost of their daily necessities remain unchanged.
Homemaker and mother-of-three, Ms Lau Mui Ai, 39, has maintained the average cost of a home-cooked meal at $10 to $12.
Being flexible in food choices is the key, she said.
"If prawns are more expensive, then I'll just not eat them," said Ms Lau, who shops twice weekly at wet markets and supermarkets.
Retiree Michael Choy, 64, ensures reasonable prices by patronising the same wet market stalls regularly.
While he has not noticed any change in the cost of chicken, fish and vegetables, the price of rice has increased by about $2 to $15 for a 5kg pack.
"But we don't eat much rice, so it's okay," said Mr Choy, who goes marketing three times a week.
Supermarket chain NTUC FairPrice said diversified sourcing and forward buying have kept prices of basic products affordable.
For instance, its housebrand rice prices have remained unchanged for the past 12 months, said its managing director of group purchasing, merchandising and international trading, Mr Tng Ah Yiam.
Diversification has also worked for wet market stallholders.
"Our suppliers are very smart. If the supply from China is disrupted, they'll source from Vietnam instead," said Holland Drive vegetable seller Ang Hock Leong.
Flour price goes up but consumers are spared
Wheat shortage drives up prices by up to 10% for manufacturers but retail prices unchanged
Fiona Low Straits Times 17 Sep 10;
MANUFACTURING costs for the bulk of Singapore's bakeries and confectionery manufacturers have risen as flour prices increase following a global shortage of wheat. But the added cost is unlikely to be transferred to consumers.
Prima, Singapore's only flour miller and largest flour supplier, yesterday increased its prices by between 5 per cent and 10 per cent.
This increase will affect the company's distributors and customers, including bakeries, food manufacturers and hotels.
But people who buy from supermarkets will not be affected much by the move, as the company will not be increasing the
retail prices of its wheat flour sold in stores.
Prima - which supplies about half of the flour used in Singapore - imports wheat from the United States, Canada and Australia, which is then milled into flour. The company accounts for about 95 per cent of the wheat imported into Singapore.
Supermarket chain FairPrice confirmed yesterday that it has no plans to change its flour prices. In addition to buying flour from Prima, it imports from Australia, Malaysia and Turkey.
Its spokesman said there has been no increase in flour prices from any of its suppliers.
Global production of wheat has plummeted since last month, following a drought in Russia - one of the world's largest wheat exporters - which led to an export ban from the country.
A spate of bad weather affecting crops in Kazakhstan, the European Union and Canada further worsened global shortage of the grain.
Although Singapore does not import wheat directly from Russia, the impact is still tangible as prices have been driven up all over the world by the reduced supply.
But despite the increase in costs, Singapore Bakery and Confectionery Trade Association president Liow Kian Huat said that most of its 150 members are unlikely to raise consumer prices.
'We knew there had been weather problems, and prices had been increasing in other countries. We expected that there would be a rise in prices in Singapore eventually as well,' said Mr Liow in Mandarin.
He now pays $28 for a 25kg bag of wheat flour from Prima, up from $26 previously.
The impact will not be too significant as the price increase is quite minimal, said Mr Liow. As a result, most businesses are unlikely to pass on the additional cost to consumers, choosing instead to absorb it.
Consumers are glad that prices are set to remain the same.
Said Ms Penny Ong, 50, a manager in a trading company who buys about 1kg of flour a week to bake recreationally: 'It is a relief for me that flour prices are not going up because that will help me save some money.'
Mustafa Shafawi Channel NewsAsia 15 Sep 10;
SINGAPORE: The Building and Construction Authority's (BCA) flagship R&D project which is almost a year old, generates enough electricity not to just power its own needs.
In fact, the Zero Energy Building (ZEB) on Braddell Road has generated enough surplus electricity to power 35 HDB five-room flats.
The ZEB, a super energy efficient building, is the first existing building in Southeast Asia to be fully retrofitted with green building design features and technologies.
To achieve net zero energy power consumption, the building has to produce its own electricity.
This is done through solar panels on the roof, covering an area larger than an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
A two-step, integrated design approach was employed to ensure that the ZEB was 40-50 per cent more efficient than a typical office building.
Through 'Passive Design', the project team managed to minimise heat transfer via design features such as greenery systems, light shelves and sun-shading devices.
This was followed by a well conceived installation of 'Active Solutions' such as energy efficient air-conditioning system, high efficiency lighting including motion sensors and carbon dioxide sensors.
A team member of the project, Associate Professor Stephen Wittkopf, said the main target of the project was to demonstrate that the concept of a zero-energy building is possible even in the tropics, where high air-conditioning loads make up more than 50 per cent of the electricity consumption of buildings.
He said after almost one year of energy monitoring, the team is happy to report that the target has been achieved.
The building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) systems have generated a surplus of electricity which is fed back into the BCA premise grid".
BCA said the ZEB has drawn interest from 7,000 visitors from various local and international academia, corporates, government organisations and the public since its opening. - CNA/fa
BCA's green building achieves zero power consumption
Business Times 16 Sep 10;
(SINGAPORE) The Building and Construction Authority's (BCA) zero energy building (ZEB) has succeeded in achieving zero power consumption, and a surplus of 16.3 MWh (megawatts/ hour) of electricity just one year after its launch.
As a gauge, the power surplus is roughly savings of about $3,900 per month for 35 units of HDB 5-room flats at residential electricity tariffs pegged at 24.13 cents/kWh (kilowatts/ hour).
A BCA press statement yesterday said that its flagship research and development project is on track to achieve its target of net zero energy consumption next month.
The ZEB, located at the BCA Academy in Braddell, is the first existing building in South-east Asia to be fully retrofitted with green building design features and technologies.
Passive design and active solutions, a two-step, integrated design approach was employed to ensure that the ZEB was 40-50 per cent more efficient than a typical office building.
Through 'passive design', the project team comprising researchers from The National University of Singapore (NUS) and practitioners from the private sector, managed to minimise heat transfer through the building envelope via design features such as greenery systems and sun-shading devices. This was followed by the installation of 'active solutions' such as energy efficient air-conditioning systems and high efficiency lighting including motion sensors.
To achieve net zero energy power consumption, the building has to produce its own electricity. Through an EDB-funded solar power system, about 1,540 square metres of solar energy (photovoltaic) panels, or a combined area bigger than an Olympic-sized swimming pool, were installed on ZEB's roof and other prominent areas to tap the sun's energy.
John Keung, BCA's CEO, said that the ZEB placed Singapore favourably in the world green building map.
Putri Prameshwari Jakarta Globe 15 Sep 10;
Jakarta. The government needs to manage its rich biological diversity better if it expects to get international help in the conservation effort, an expert says.
Dedi Darnaedi, the director of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences’ (LIPI) biological research center, said that among the most urgently needed solutions was the training of more qualified taxonomists, so the country would be able to compile a directory of its biodiversity.
“We haven’t been managing our own biodiversity very well,” Dedi said on Wednesday. “How can we scream for world protection while we continue to fail to protect our own species?”
Dedi urged the government to get its act together in time for next month’s UN Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity.
One of the items on the agenda at the conference will be access and benefit-sharing (ABS), which allows countries that are signatories to the convention to determine access to genetic resources in areas within their jurisdiction and take appropriate measures to share the benefits.
“The question is: how can countries that are rich in biodiversity benefit from the scheme?” Dedi said.
Astatement released by the CBD said governments around the world have failed to significantly reduce the rate of biodiversity loss, mainly because they do not address the underlying causes.
“[These failures include] lack of awareness of the true value of biodiversity and a failure to include the true costs of biodiversity loss in policies and plans,” the statement read.
According to the CBD, Indonesia, one of the 17 “megadiverse” nations in the world, is home to 10 percent of the world’s flowering plant species and 12 percent of all mammal species. Many of Indonesia’s species — and more than half of the archipelago’s plant species — are found nowhere else on Earth.
However, the CBD said that since 1997 the country’s deforestation rate has reached 2.4 million hectares per year. It said Indonesia’s list of threatened species now included 140 species of bird and 63 species of mammal.
Marine biodiversity is also at risk from destructive fishing practices, which left 40 percent of the archipelago’s coral reefs damaged in 2006.
Dedi said certifying more taxonomists could help Indonesia overcome these failures and “take a step forward in participating in a worldwide agreement.”
“It will take a lot of commitment from the government to empower its researchers,” he said. “The efforts we make now still don’t sufficiently cover the wealth of resources that we possess.”
Young scientists, Dedi said, were now key to protecting the country’s biodiversity and they should be able to compile a comprehensive catalogue of species.
Besides the ABS scheme, the Nagoya conference will also discuss a global agreement on a new strategy for conservation and the mobilization of the funds needed to make it happen, said Ahmed Djoghlaf, the executive secretary of the CBD.
“The decisions we take now will affect biodiversity for the coming millennium,” he said.
Antara 15 Sep 10;
Pekanbaru, Riau (ANTARA News) - As many as 58 fire hotspots have formed in Sumatra forests as detected by the NOAA satellite, chief analyst at Pekanbaru`s Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), Marzuki, said here Wednesday.
"There are at least 58 fire hotspots in Sumatra now. Most of them are located in South Sumatra and Jambi provinces, namely 20 in each of them, and eight in Jambi province," Marzuki said.
Five of the fire hotspots appeared in Rokan Hilir, one in Bengkalis and two in Pelalawan, he said.
"The fire hotspots have formed due to the hot weather, with the temperature reaching 34.3 degrees Celsius in Riau," he added.
Marzuki predicted more fire hotspots would form in the days ahead due to the low precipitation. In Riau there was still some rainfall but when and where it would hapen was hard to predict.
There was more rainfall in Western Riaum, namely in the Kampar, Rokan Hulu and Kuantan Singingi regions, he said, adding that travelers from West Sumatra should stay alert because the rains could cause landslides in those regions any time.
"There are some cliff-side roads that are prone to landslides, especially at the border between Riau and West Sumatra," he said.
IUCN 15 Sep 10;
Worldwide application of a new standard for sustainable harvesting of wild medicinal, aromatic, dye and food plants and trees is charting new ways to protect the species and their habitats and benefit the communities that depend on them, according to a new report from world wildlife trade monitoring network, TRAFFIC, a joint programme of IUCN and WWF.
Wild for a cure: ground-truthing a standard for sustainable management of wild plants in the field details projects ranging from South America to Southern Africa and South-East Asia where new methods were devised to protect key natural resources from the wild while improving the livelihoods and benefits for local people through application of guidelines on sustainable wild collection.
In Karnatka, India, it is now possible to collect the resin of the White Palle tree used in traditional Indian medicine and incense without removing the bark and killing the trees that provide it. In Cambodia, a new co-operative has boosted returns to medicinal plant harvesting communities through better harvesting, drying and marketing.
In Brazil, a women’s co-operative in Amazonia State and a major natural cosmetics company are aiming to co-operate on the marketing of sustainably harvested products. In Lesotho and South Africa, a harvesting and management strategy for Kalwerbossie, whose tubers are used to treat digestive disorders, will ensure sustainable harvest of the plant, thus providing long term benefits to communities.
“With around 15,000 of the estimated 50,000 to 70,000 plant species used for medicine, cosmetics or dietary supplements threatened, the need for developing practical guidelines to ensure supplies are sustainable has never been more urgent,” says Anastasiya Timoshyna, TRAFFIC’s Global Medicinal Plants Programme Leader and co-author of the report.
The project demonstrated sufficient flexibility in the guidelines to allow them to be adapted to meet local conditions, including a variety of governance and land tenure systems in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Cambodia, India, Lesotho, Nepal, and South Africa.
The report notes the importance of ensuring all local stakeholders - from collectors to local organizations, resource management authorities and businesses - are involved in partnership from the outset, and that clear and realistic market openings should be identified for harvested products and with ways devised to give “added value” to products and a fair share of benefits to the owners of traditional knowledge.
Adequate resources should be allocated for training of local project workers in wild plants’ resource assessment, harvest monitoring, collection and processing techniques and most importantly for protection of their traditional knowledge and benefit-sharing.
“The BMZ-funded ‘Saving Plants that Save Lives and Livelihoods’ project has taken an important step in bridging the gap between words and action to manage wild plants for the future of humankind,” says Dirk Niebel, Germany’s Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).“We are glad to demonstrate just ahead of the forthcoming Convention on Biological Diversity that, by supporting TRAFFIC, we were able to contribute to the conservation of key natural plant resources from the wild, while improving the livelihoods of and benefits of local people.”
The International Standard for Sustainable Collection of Wild Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (ISSC-MAP), evaluated in this study has now been combined with an existing FairWild Foundation standard aimed at ensuring trade in medicinal and aromatic plants is conducted fairly. The new FairWild Standard version 2.0 for the sustainable management and trade in wild-collected natural ingredients came into effect on 8 September (see note 1 below).
“Germany’s continued commitment to helping guarantee the sustainable use of medicinal plant resources, particularly in countries that depend on them the most, is a model example for integration of conservation and development aid policies.” says Dr Carlos Drews, Director of WWF’s Global Species Programme.
“The newly developed FairWild guidelines are an invaluable tool to support sustainable harvesting and management regimes, a worldwide challenge facing the conservation community” says Jane Smart, Director, IUCN Biodiversity Conservation Group.
Edward Norton IPS News 16 Sep 10
SEPTEMBER 2010, 2010 (IPS) - If the world has been reminded of anything through the tragedy of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, it is that biodiversity and the health of ecosystems is not an abstract concept of scientists or the pet project of the 'green' elite.
Biodiversity and healthy ecosystems are the vital underpinnings of human society. Food and energy production on land and from the sea, medicine, tourism, real estate, these industries and many others have been shown to be starkly vulnerable to the destruction of marine and terrestrial ecosystems.
And yet, while the link between biodiversity and human well-being is better understood now than ever before, the news from the front lines of the global effort to preserve the world's biodiversity is bleak.
The web of life that we all rely on for our very survival is being torn apart at an increasingly alarming rate and action to address this global crisis is still distressingly lacking and slow, writes Edward Norton, actor and United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for Biodiversity.
Our failure to act might be attributed, in part, to the misperception that preserving the world's biodiversity is a legacy issue, one to be addressed in the future. But the conclusions of the third edition of the Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO3), a major assessment report issued in May of this year under the Convention of Biological Diversity, put that misapprehension to rest. Drawing on 120 national reports from Parties to this unique legal treaty aimed at protecting life on earth, it soberly warns that without collective action, our earth's ecosystems will approach tipping-points, putting human lives and livelihoods, as well as such irreplaceable services as air and water purification, the renewal of soil fertility, and climate stabilization at risk of irreversible degradation and collapse.
This autumn, there are two important moments in our attempt to create a new paradigm for a global response to the world's biodiversity challenges. On 22 September, in observance of the International Year of Biodiversity, world leaders will have a unique opportunity to provide leadership in shaping and implementing a new biodiversity strategy, calling for the introduction of sustainable practices in land and resource use, an increase in protected areas around the world, and implementing plans to reconcile development with conservation. For the first time at the United Nations, Heads of State and Government and officials from its 192 Member States will meet at a high-level event exclusively devoted to the biodiversity crisis. In October, the Nagoya Biodiversity Summit will take place in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. There, the 193 Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity will adopt a New Strategic Plan for the period of 2011-2020, containing new targets for 2020 and a new biodiversity vision for 2050.
Meaningful success in this effort will require the full commitment of all nations, and here, the United States is sadly short of the mark. As of today, the US is, inexcusably, one of only three countries that have not ratified full acceptance of the Convention.
(*) Edward Norton is United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for Biodiversity, appointed by Secretary-General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon.
Buried crude and undersea plumes suggest oil will persist.
Joel K. Bourne, Jr., National Geographic News 15 Sep 10;
Deciphering the unseen, underwater effects of the Gulf oil spill.
Nearly five months after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico (map), causing the worst oil spill in U.S. waters, BP is set to permanently cap the damaged well as soon as this week.
But the discovery of widespread oil on the seafloor and studies of remnant undersea oil plumes suggests that the debate over the ecological impact and ultimate fate of the Gulf oil spill—which released an estimated 4.9 million barrels of crude—is just warming up. (One barrel equals 42 gallons, or 159 liters.)
In early August, a high-level U.S. government official asserted that more than three-quarters of the oil from the Gulf spill was "gone"—based on preliminary National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates. Since then a fiery backlash has erupted from independent scientists who have been tracking and studying the spill.
"The oil budget NOAA came out with was just a joke, a fairy tale scenario," said Samantha Joye, a marine biogeochemist from the University of Georgia and one of the first researchers to detect and measure the deep plumes of oil.
"I understand why people want it to disappear, but who in their right mind would believe that? It makes absolutely no sense."
Gulf Oil Buried in Seafloor
Joye, who has been taking sediment cores in the Gulf aboard the research vessel Oceanus for the past month. So far she's discovered layers of oil in ten sediment cores taken around a mile (1.6 kilometers) deep and up to 80 miles (129 kilometers) north of the well.
In some places, the oil layer was up to two inches (five centimeters) thick, she found.
Though further analysis would confirm if the oil is from the Gulf spill, Joye said the cores are unlike those taken near natural oil seeps, in which the oil is distributed throughout the core.
In one core sample, the oil layer covered dead organisms such as shrimp and marine worms.
In addition, Joye notes, the plumes have also changed since they were first detected. They're much more diffuse, with lower methane gas concentrations and very active microbial communities.
"The oil is not gone," Joye said in a recent email from Oceanus. "You only find it, however, if you look in the right place. The sediment signal is robust. Water column is patchy, but that is not surprising."
Methane Gas Ignored in Oil Estimates?
The contribution of methane gas to the oil estimates is another bone of contention for Joye and her colleague Ian MacDonald, a marine microbiologist at Florida State University.
"All the reports of the pollutant load discharged from the well have been issued in barrels—a unit of liquid volume—and have ignored the gas," MacDonald testified before the U.S. Congress in August.
"In fact, if calculated in equivalent units of weight [mass] or energy [barrels of oil equivalents], the magnitude of the oil plus the gas is equal to 1.5 times the oil alone," MacDonald said.
In other words, if 4.1 million barrels of oil escaped into the Gulf, the total discharge of liquid oil plus gas, would be equivalent to more than 6 million barrels of oil.
While methane is less toxic than oil and breaks down faster, bacteria still need oxygen to degrade it—creating another oxygen sink in the system, Joye said.
"It would take four times the [oxygen] volume of the plume to consume the gas," she said.
"That gets you to low, low oxygen levels in a large chunk of water."
And when oxygen levels are low, it takes much longer for microbes to break down the oil. (Read more about how nature is fighting the oil spill.)
For instance, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution researchers are still finding layers of oil in low-oxygen sediments from a 1969 barge spill in Massachusetts' Buzzards Bay (map). The team has also documented lingering impacts of that spill on marine life.
Low-oxygen levels are a serious concern for Gulf biologists, especially since fertilizers and sewage flowing down the Mississippi River contribute to an annual, low-oxygen "dead zone" in the Gulf that this summer was as large as Massachusetts.
But so far NOAA researchers sampling the water column outside the annual dead zone have not found evidence that the oil is having a severe impact on dissolved oxygen levels in the Gulf: There are reduced oxygen levels, but none too low to support fish.
Toxic Oil Harming Marine Life
A recent study from the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory suggests that most of the undersea plume has already dispersed or degraded, though that claim is contested by other researchers.
One of those is chemical oceanographer David Hollander of the University of South Florida. In mid-August, he and fellow researchers found oil in sediments and the water column up to 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of the well, including the DeSoto Canyon, a critical spawning area for commercial fish species on the West Florida Shelf.
Though Hollander is still two weeks away from chemically fingerprinting the oil, he said he's "100 percent sure" it's from the Gulf oil spill.
"Everywhere we went east of the wellhead we found it," Hollander said. "It's not like a blanket, but a settling of fine microdroplets so small you can't see them. Under UV light it looks like a constellation of stars in the southern sky. They are pinpricks, but there is plenty of it there."
The lighter gases and short-chain hydrocarbons such as methane and benzene are mostly gone, leaving more complex, longer chain hydrocarbons that are harder for microbes to break down, Hollander noted.
"After about 24 carbon molecules, bacteria just give up," Hollander says. "And there they sit at 200 to 500 parts per billion. It's below acute toxicity levels, but it's still there."
Perhaps more concerning is that Hollander's colleague John Paul, also of USF, found the remaining oil is still toxic to marine organisms, such as tiny microscopic plants called phytoplankton and bacteria.
In microbial assays using Gulf water sampled from the surface, at 820 feet (250 meters), and at 902 feet (275 meters) deep, Paul found the oil may be causing bacteria to mutate.
Paul suspects the mutations may be due to residual polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from the oil, which are known carcinogens.
"The impact on commercially important larvae that are bathed in this stuff is hard to say," Paul said.
"We might see groupers with tumors three years from now. It's a long process."
Bright Spots for Gulf Oil Spill Recovery
There's some encouraging news from the Gulf, however. For instance, the impact on wildlife appears to be far lower than during the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, when 3,100 marine mammals and more than a hundred thousand birds succumbed in Alaska's Prince William Sound.
By contrast, more than a thousand turtles, 70 marine mammals, and 4,000 birds have died so far from the Gulf oil spill, according to NOAA.
Winds and currents kept most of the oil away from critical wetlands, and the dense marsh grasses themselves prevented much of the oil from penetrating far inland. (See pictures of oil seeping into Louisiana marshes in May.)
And so far, Gulf Coast seafood has been deemed safe to eat: U.S. Food and Drug Administration tests of more than a thousand fish samples taken from areas closed to fishing during the spill have found only a small fraction contaminated with PAHs. The levels detected have been a hundred to a thousand times lower than levels of known risk.
Long-Term Effects Still a Concern
But it's the long-term effect on the food web of the Gulf that still remains a worrisome unknown, experts say.
"My fear is that [the public will] say, Hallelujah, the oil is gone!" the University of Georgia's Joye said.
"People will forget about it and walk away and we'll never learn what is happening," she said.
"Clearly we didn't learn anything from Exxon Valdez. ... We can do much better than this. If you can do better and choose not to, it's inexcusable."
Last year, $3.4bn was invested in the dirtiest fossil fuel despite international commitments to cut emissions
Juliette Jowit guardian.co.uk 15 Sep 10;
Record sums were invested last year in coal power - the most carbon intensive form of energy on the planet - by the World Bank, despite international commitments to slash the carbon emissions blamed for climate change.
The World Bank said this week that a total of US$3.4bn (£2.2bn) - or a quarter of all funding for energy projects - was spent in the year to June 2010 helping to build new coal-fired power stations, including the controversial Medupi plant in South Africa. Over the same period the bank also spent $1bn (£640m) on looking and drilling for oil and gas.
However, the Bank Information Centre, which examined the spending, disagreed and said the figure invested in coal was $4.4bn in the fiscal year 2009-10.
The discrepancy is due to the World Bank not including in its figure a $1bn project in India which is funding power transmission networks for coal-fired power stations rather than the stations themselves.
Environmental campaign groups said spending on coal in that period was 40 times more than five years ago, and claimed there was an "incoherence at the heart of the World Bank's thinking about energy" that would damage long term attempts to cut emissions of carbon and other greenhouse gases from such plants.
"At the same time as the bank is seeking to gain control of the billions which will be channelled to developing countries to help them cope with global warming, the bank is still lending staggeringly large and growing sums to finance coal-fired power," said Alison Doig, senior advisor on climate change for the charity Christian Aid.
"We know that coal is the dirtiest of all the fossil fuels - the one which most exacerbates the climate crisis which is having devastating effects on the lives of people living in poverty. We also know that by financing the building of coal power stations the bank is locking countries into coal use for the next 40 to 50 years [the life expectancy of the plants]."
The World Bank defended its payments saying that the figures for 2010 were distorted by two major coal projects in Botswana and South Africa, while over the five year period from 2005 the bank had spent US$4.5bn on coal power, and $12.5bn on renewable energy and energy efficiency - including a record year for these sectors also last year.
Coal plants were only subsidised when there were "exceptional circumstances where countries have few or no prospects for other energy sources," said Roger Morier, a World Bank spokesman.
"Our energy portfolio is increasingly oriented to renewable energy and energy efficiency," added Morier. "We are fulfilling our mandate of responding to the urgent needs of our client countries for access to efficient, reliable, affordable electricity, while also helping those countries to get on a low-carbon development path as soon as possible."
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