Energy shock with a major twist

New York Times, Business Times 10 Nov 07;

For the first time, oil price surge is led by demand; and supply may not keep up

(NEW YORK) With oil prices approaching the symbolic threshold of US$100 a barrel, the world is headed towards its third energy shock in a generation. But today's surge is fundamentally different from the previous oil crises, with broad and longer-lasting global implications.

Just as in the energy crises of the 1970s and 80s, today's high prices are causing anxiety and pain for consumers, and igniting wider fears about the impact on the economy.

Unlike past oil shocks, which were caused by sudden interruptions in exports from the Middle East, this time, prices have been rising steadily as demand for petrol grows in developed countries.

'This is the world's first demand-led energy shock,' said Lawrence Goldstein, an economist at the Energy Policy Research Foundation, of Washington.

Forecasts of future oil prices range widely. Some analysts see them falling next year to US$75, or even lower, while a few project US$120 oil.

Virtually no one foresees a return to the US$20 oil of a decade ago, meaning that consumers should brace for an era of significantly higher fuel costs.

At the root of the stunning rise in the price of oil, up 56 per cent this year and more than four-fold in a decade, is a positive development: an unprecedented boom in the world economy.

Demand from China and India alone is expected to double in the next two decades as their economies continue to expand, with people there buying more cars and moving to cities to seek a way of life long taken for granted in the West.

But as prices rise, the global economy is entering uncharted territory. The increase so far does not appear to be hurting economic growth, but many economists wonder how long that would last. 'These prices are too high and will end up hurting everybody, producers and consumers alike,' said Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency.

Oil futures closed at US$95.46 on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Thursday, down nearly one per cent from the day before. But the price has become volatile, and many analysts expect the psychologically important US$100-a-barrel threshold to be breached sometime in the next few weeks.

'Today's markets feel like the crowds standing up in the final minutes of a football game shouting: 'Go! Go! Go!',' said Daniel Yergin, an oil historian and the chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consulting firm. 'People seem almost more relaxed about US$100 than they were about US$60 or US$70 oil.'

Oil is not far from its historic, inflation-adjusted high, reached in April 1980 in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution. At the time, oil jumped to the equivalent of US$101.70 a barrel in today's money.

For most of the 20th century, as it transformed the modern world, oil was cheap and abundant. Throughout the 1990s, for example, oil prices averaged US$20 a barrel.

'The concern today is over how will the energy sector meet the anticipated growth in demand over the longer term,' said Linda Z Cook, a board member of Royal Dutch Shell, the big oil company. 'Energy demand is increasing at a rate we've not seen before. On the supply side, we're seeing it is struggling to keep up. That's the energy challenge.'

More than any other country, China represents the scope of that challenge. Its economy has grown at a furious pace of about 10 per cent a year since the 1990s, lifting nearly 300 million people out of poverty.

But rapid industrialisation has come at a price - oil demand has more than tripled since 1980, turning a country that was once self-sufficient into a net oil importer. People there are demanding access to electricity, cars and consumer goods and can afford to compete with the West for these resources.

Today, China consumes only a third as much oil as the United States, which burns a quarter of the world's oil each day. By 2030, India and China together will import as much oil as the United States and Japan do today.

While demand is growing fastest abroad, Americans' appetite for big cars and large houses has pushed up oil demand steadily in the US, too. Europe has managed to rein in oil consumption through a combination of high petrol taxes, small cars and efficient public transportation, but Americans have not. Oil consumption in the United States, where petrol is far cheaper than in Europe, has jumped to 21 million barrels a day this year, from about 17 million barrels in the early 1990s.

If the Chinese and Indians consumed as much oil for each person as Americans do, the world's oil consumption would be more than 200 million barrels a day, instead of the 85 million barrels it is today.

No expert regards that level of production as conceivable. -- NYT

This article was also carried in the Straits Times, 11 Nov 07

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Third of Africa coastline at risk from climate change: UN

Yahoo News 8 Nov 07;

Around a third of Africa's existing coastline could be swallowed up by rising water levels brought on by global warming, the United Nations' top environment official said on Thursday.

Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN's Environmental Programme, told reporters at a press conference that the impact of climate change was already clearly in evidence and would become more serious in the coming years.

"By some projections, global warming could affect up to one third of Africa's coastal infrastructure by the end of this century," Steiner said at a press conference in Johannesburg.

"We know that we are on the course of having sea-levels rising from 20 (7.8 inches) to 60 centimetres (23.6 inches) in this century," he said adding that "port facilities, refineries will be affected."

The continent is already experiencing "major coastal erosion", calcification of shellfish under the increasing heat and dramatic shifts in currents as new climactic phenomena appear.

"Africa is in the midst of an accelerating process of depleting its natural capital, and that natural capital sustains many parts of Africa's economies, whether it is in agriculture, in fisheries, in tourism," said Steiner.

The worst affected by this process are rural communities which are poor and vulnerable and tend to depend more on these natural resources.

According to Steiner, Africa has long considered its natural resources to be inexhaustible, pushing back environmental questions while devoting itself to issues seen as more immediate.

"Politics is just beginning to catch up. African nations are realising that they are losing economic development opportunities by allowing their coast and marine resource-base to continue to be degraded."

Steiner said regional collaboration was necessary to deal with environmental threats.

"The environment, especially the marine and coastal environment, will need a pan-African response."

Steiner praised two conventions, signed in Abidjan and Nairobi, for the co-operation in protecting and developing the maritime and coastal environment, and called for them to be reinforced.

He was speaking at the end of a conference attended by 200 delegates from countries who are signatories to the conventions.

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Scientist: South Florida Will Be Water by End of Century

Associated Press, Fox News 7 Nov 07;

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Scientists and economists Tuesday warned lawmakers of consequences Florida faces from climate change, including more destructive hurricanes and a rising sea level, but they also said the state could be a leader in reducing global warming.

Harold Wanless, chairman of the University of Miami's Department of Geological Sciences, predicted a 1.5 foot rise in sea level in 50 years and a three- to five-foot increase by the end of the century.

"Three feet's going to get messy," he said. "Four feet becomes extremely difficult to live in South Florida and five feet probably impossible."

At two feet, South Florida would still be livable, Wanless said.

Three panels of experts spoke at a symposium held by the House Environmental Resources Council and three related committees.

Climate change will figure into comprehensive energy and environmental policy legislation the lawmakers will be considering during the 2008 legislative session, said Council Chairman Stan Mayfield, R-Vero Beach.

Some legislators, though, questioned whether Florida could do much to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses, spewed mostly from power plants and vehicle exhausts, that contribute to global warming. That's because Florida emits only 1 percent of those gasses worldwide.

"If Florida is the only group in the world doing anything you're not going to make a dent in this," acknowledged Judy Curry, a professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "But some of the things that Florida is doing really could lead the way."

Gov. Charlie Crist has attempted to put Florida in the lead by ordering that greenhouse gas emissions be reduced to 2000 levels by the year 2017, to 1990 levels by 2025 and 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

Economist David Montgomery, a business consultant from Washington, D.C., said Crist's goals will be difficult, if not impossible, to meet without a significant reduction in the demand for electrical power through such approaches as a carbon cap-and-trade system or carbon taxes. That's because other options for reducing emissions are limited, he said.

Nuclear power is one solution, but it's unlikely regulatory hurdles for building new plants can be overcome in time to meet Crist's goals, Montgomery said. Systems to capture and store carbon from coal-burning plants also are unlikely to be available to meet that schedule and Florida lacks a sufficient supply of natural gas or renewable fuels, he said.

Tufts University economics professor Gilbert Metcalf acknowledged Florida's contribution to global warming is "a drop in the bucket."

Metcalf said, though, that Florida and California, which also has a greenhouse reduction policy, can put pressure on the federal government to adopt a national program because businesses don't like the idea of dealing with a patchwork of different state requirements.

Martin Manning, director of a technical support unit with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said he thought solutions can be found but it'll take until the end of the century.

In the meantime, scientists said Florida can expect more frequent and destructive hurricanes, hotter weather and rising sea levels that could inundate coastal areas.

Scientists don't yet have a clear picture of whether climate change will make Florida wetter or drier, but either way the forecast is for heavier rains that are fewer and far between, creating a potential for flood and drought, said Brian Soden, an associate professor of meteorology and physical oceanography at the University of Miami.

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Shipping fuel fumes contribute to deaths

Cassie Biggs, Associated Press, Yahoo News 8 Nov 07;

Ships belching toxic fumes from diesel fuel contribute to the deaths of tens of thousands of people in Europe, Asia and the United States each year, claims a U.S. report released this week.

As many as 60,000 people living in coastal communities along major shipping routes died from lung and heart complaints as a result of high sulfate emissions from ships in 2002, according to the study released Wednesday by the American Chemical Society.

With international maritime trade on the rise and little regulation of ship emissions, that death toll could rise to as many as 82,000 by 2012, says the report to be published next month in ACS journal, Environmental Science & Technology.

People living in port cities like Hong Kong, Shanghai and Shenzhen were likely to be hit the hardest as most of the pollution occurred within 250 miles of their coasts, said the American researchers.

"Twenty-eight percent of the world's shipping container output passes through Hong Kong and Shenzhen," said Michele Weldon, environmental program manager at Civil Exchange, a public policy think tank in Hong Kong. "The significance of this study — that marine pollution has health impacts — cannot be ignored."

The study's U.S. authors said diesel-powered ships burn some of the dirtiest fuel on the planet today — on average, having almost 2,000 times the sulfur content of highway diesel fuel in the United States and Europe.

While air pollution from diesel trucks and buses has been reduced by more than 90 percent over the last few decades, emissions from ocean-faring ships — using the same diesel engine technology — have risen virtually unchecked, it said.

"Ship pollution affects the health of communities in coastal and inland regions around the world, yet pollution from ships remain one of the least regulated parts of our global transportation system," said Dr. James Corbett, co-author of the report and associate professor of marine policy at the University of Delaware.

"With more than half the world's population living in coastal regions and freight growth outpacing other sectors, shipping emissions will need to meet stricter control targets," he said.

The study was commissioned in part by Clean Air Task Force and Friends of the Earth International, which are negotiating with the U.N. International Maritime Organization for new regulations to reduce shipping emissions.

Weldon said ships could reduce pollution by cutting speeds near shores and switching to cleaner fuels as they approached ports. Already, port cities such as Rotterdam and Los Angeles have imposed their own strict emission standards on ships entering their waters.

Arthur Bowring, of the Hong Kong Ship Owners Association, said voluntary regulation was not the answer as cleaner fuels, such as distillate, were nearly double the cost of the fuel most ships currently use.

"International regulation is the only way to bring in the use of cleaner fuels and ensure there is no competitive disadvantage when using it," he said.

The researchers took estimated seafaring-ship emissions of particulate and other pollutants, including sulfate and nitrous oxide. Using global circulation models, they mapped out how emissions would drift over land. After folding in regional demographic data, such as population density, they pinpointed areas with a higher likelihood of deaths from cardiopulmonary and lung cancer that are attributable to exposure to emissions.

Alexis Lau, a mathematics professor at the Institute for Environment at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said the researchers used a standard method to estimate the health impact of pollutants. He said the ACS journal was respected and the estimated deaths the peer-reviewed study attributed to marine pollution were plausible.

The report said East Asia and South Asia were the most heavily impacted, each representing about one-fourth of the global impact.

One-third of all shipping deaths occurred in Europe; about one-tenth of global shipping deaths occurred in North America, the study said.

"There are a lot of observations made from data to suggest a very strong association between sulfur, air pollution, including marine pollution, and premature deaths from respiratory problems like chronic lung failure," T.W. Wong, professor of medicine at the Chinese University of Hong Kong told the AP.

"If ships switched to cleaner fuels, it would help save lives," he said.

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Seawater Treatment Plants Could Combat Climate Change

Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience.com, Yahoo News 9 Nov 07;

The seas themselves might be modified to combat global warming by absorbing climate-altering carbon dioxide from the air, research now reveals.

The new approach scientists have theorized—which ideally modifies seawater's chemical composition using treatment plants near volcanoes and coastlines—could also help benefit coral reefs worldwide, they suggest.

But they caution such a technique could potentially also have detrimental environmental impacts that need to be minimized.

Carbon dioxide is a "greenhouse gas" that traps heat from the sun. The oceans naturally both absorb and release carbon dioxide, and researchers have investigated whether they can make the seas capture more of the gas than normal to combat global warming.

One notion brought up in the past involves fertilizing the seas with iron to encourage the growth of plankton, which would absorb carbon dioxide during photosynthesis just as land plants do, "but a lot of them would just release carbon dioxide again," said Harvard geoscientist Kurt House.

Instead, House and his colleagues propose extracting acid from the seas. The less acidic the oceans are, the more they absorb carbon.

The scientists envision treatment plants that suck in seawater and remove hydrochloric acid. The oceans naturally contain hydrogen and chloride ions—the former is a component of water, while the latter is an ingredient of common salt—which together can make hydrochloric acid. A number of industrial processes can remove the acid from seawater, including ones used in the vitamin and chlorine industries.

"It's certainly an interesting approach," said Columbia University environmental engineer Frank Zeman, who did not participate in this study.

Speeding up nature

Ideally, these novel treatment plants would be located near volcanic coastlines, the researchers explained. The silicates in volcanic rocks could neutralize the extracted acid, while the volcano itself could generate the geothermal power needed to run such operations.

"If you used coal or some other combustion means to power the plants, that would just send more carbon dioxide into the air and defeat the entire point," House said.

In a way, this process resembles one means by which nature removes carbon dioxide from the air. The gas can dissolve in water to form weak carbonic acid. As this water percolates through silicate rock, the carbonic acid gets neutralized, forming bicarbonate, the most plentiful and innocuous form of carbon in the oceans.

"We have found a way to swap the weak carbonic acid with a much stronger one, hydrochloric acid, and thus accelerate the pace to industrial rates," House said. "Essentially, our technology dramatically accelerates a cleaning process that nature herself uses for greenhouse gas accumulation."

This method could also combat the acidification of the oceans that is now threatening coral reefs worldwide. The amount of carbon dioxide is growing in the atmosphere, increasing the amount of carbonic acid in the sea. Coral reefs and other structures made of calcium carbonate then become more vulnerable to dissolving.

Unwanted effects

Implementing this approach would require ambition. To attack 15 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, the researchers estimate roughly 100 facilities with capacities similar to large sewage treatment plants are needed.

The potential environmental impacts of this method need close scrutiny as well. The plants would all discharge alkaline water, "which could kill a lot of life local to the plant," House said. "Within a distance of a couple of hundred meters, there could definitely be some damage."

Another potentially unpleasant consequence of this process could be the production of organohalogens. These compounds helped create the hole in the ozone layer. In addition, seawater contains a variety of other ions and compounds that might readily spoil the process.

"More work is be needed to bring down the cost and minimize other environmental effects," said researcher Christopher House, Kurt House's brother and a geoscientist at Pennsylvania State University.

The most economic way to deal with carbon dioxide is to simply reduce the amount we now emit, House said, either through more efficient devices or with so-called "carbon dioxide scrubbers" on power plants. "But if things go really bad with the climate, at least we have technology we could scale up to decrease atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations," House said. "And unlike strategies that just reduce emissions, this can actually pull carbon dioxide back."

The scientists detailed their findings online Nov. 7 in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

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Schwarzenegger declares state of emergency over oil spill

Yahoo News 9 Nov 07;

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency on Friday to help fight the San Francisco oil spill that is threatening wildlife and several miles of pristine coastline.

Schwarzenegger signed an order directing all available resources be deployed to help the clean-up operation after inspecting the site of the 58,000-gallon (228,000 liter) spill, a statement said.

"I have signed an emergency proclamation, so all the state's resources can be coordinated to address this oil spill," Schwarzenegger said.

The Office of Spill Prevention and Response had also been instructed to "throw everything we possibly can at this without wasting a minute of time," Schwarzenegger added.

The order comes amid reports of criticism at the initial reaction to the spill, which occurred early Wednesday when a Cosco-Busan container ship struck the San Francisco Bay Bridge.

Authorities are battling to mop up the slick of heavy fuel that has been rapidly dispersed along the northern California coastline around San Francisco, forcing closure of several beaches and threatening wildlife.

The California Department of Fish and Game reported on Thursday that 26 birds covered in thick oil had so far been rescued and six had been found dead. Officials have warned that hundreds more were at risk.

The agency's assistant chief Steve Edinger described the spill as a "very significant event."

"This is one we're very concerned about," he said.

Officials said Thursday the slick had spread well beyond San Francisco Bay to around 13 miles (20 kilometers) north of the Bay Bridge.

It is the biggest oil spill to hit the region since 1996, when 10,000 gallons of fuel leaked out of a ship undergoing repairs.

The Coast Guard said a total of 11 skimmers had been deployed to try and recover the oil while protective booms stretching 18,000 feet (5,400 meters) had been put in place to try and protect beaches and wildlife.

A further 11,000 feet of log booms had been set up around the perimeter of the Cosco Busan although no more fuel was leaking from the vessel, a Coast Guard spokeswoman told local media.

Meanwhile the US Coast Guard said the crew and the pilot of the COSCO-Busan container ship had passed alcohol tests taken after the accident.

The size of the spill is small compared to some of the world's worst oil disasters. The tanker Exxon Valdez swamped a stretch of the Alaskan coastline with 11 million gallons of oil in 1989 causing catastrophic devastation to wildlife in the region.

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Surprise Contenders in Global Biodiesel Race

Sara Goudarzi, Yahoo News 8 Nov 07;
Special to LiveScience

Thailand, Uruguay and Ghana could become the leading producers of biodiesel, according to a new study that ranked the potential of 226 countries to generate large volumes of the fuel at low cost.

Not surprisingly, the researchers uncovered the United States—a top grower of soybeans—and Brazil, currently a major biodiesel producer, as major players in the field.

But they wanted to identify developing countries that already export significant amounts of vegetable oils but have not considered turning the oil into biodiesel.

Biodiesel—a promising renewable fuel that could become an alternative to fossil fuel—is made through a chemical reaction of alcohol and vegetable oil or animal fat. Although this fuel could be used in traditional diesel engines, proponents say that the use of biodiesel will significantly reduce environmentally harmful emissions.

Attracting investment

The study, detailed in the journal Environmental Science and Technology last month, ranked Malaysia, Thailand, Colombia, Uruguay and Ghana as developing countries likely to attract biodiesel investment.

"A lot of these countries don't have any petroleum resources and so they're having to import petroleum," said study co-author Matt Johnston of the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment at University of Wisconsin at Madison. "At the same time, they're exporting vegetable oil that they could be turning into biodiesel and using domestically."

Johnston witnessed this when he was visiting Fiji—an island nation in the South Pacific Ocean. He noted that the islanders used petroleum diesel brought to the island via boats—costing around $20 a gallon—to run their generators but were producing coconut oil and selling it for 50 cents per liter.

"The price disparity was just incredible and it prompted me to think about where else in the world countries might have this biofuels potential but not necessarily realize it," Johnston said.

“So, I wanted to do an inclusive study and look at every country equally and [see] which countries are most likely to be able to produce large quantities of biodiesel at low costs,” Johnston told LiveScience.

Grim outlook

The rise of oil prices and the grim outlook on the future of Earth has brought on a growing interest in biofuels over the past couple of years. Agencies such as the United Nations are, however, concerned that crops used for food in poor countries will now be used for fuel instead.

“I think one of the things that’s valuable with the study being inclusive across the world is that it allows us to see which countries and which feed stocks are to be affected as biofuels continue to be developed,” Johnston said.

Environmental organizations are also concerned about the impact of biofuels on nature. Demands for palm oil, for example, have led to increased deforestation in Southeast Asia. Boosting crop yields could also raise demands on water supplies for irrigation and increase nitrogen runoff from fertilizer use. But the researchers hope that the analysis will be used as a tool to foresee and mitigate potential impacts.

"We're not saying, 'There's all this potential out there, go get it,'" Johnston said. "Instead, we're looking at which vegetable oil feed stocks are most likely to be affected and which countries will most likely be doing this at a large scale. That way, we can anticipate some of the impacts, as opposed to having to react after the fact."

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Worst Drought in a Century Hurting Australian Farmers

Hope Hamashige, National Geographic News
8 Nov 07;

November on Rod Chalmers' farm in Wakool, Australia, shouldn't look like this.

It's springtime, and the wheat fields should be green and waist-high instead of mostly dead. There are no sheep are in sight either. The animals were sold long ago, because there is no grass for them to graze on.

Chalmers is among many farmers whose crops are withering in an unusual spring heat, following one of the warmest and driest winters on record.

In the seventh year of a crippling drought, much of Australia is in an unprecedented water crisis. The Big Dry, as Australians have dubbed the weather, is the worst in a century and has forced water restrictions on an entire nation.

But for the farmers, the consequences have been especially dire.

With 65 percent of the Australia's viable land declared in drought by the government, thousands have walked away from their farms in recent years. Those that stayed saw earnings dive an average of 70 percent last year because of drought-related losses.

In Wakool, located 495 miles (797 kilometers) southwest of the capital, Sydney, the number of dairy farms has dwindled from 16 to 5.

Chalmers took a hit of $200,000 Australian (about $187,000 U.S.) last year. As he heads into summer, 75 percent of the grain crop has already failed, and he is expecting to lose money again this year.

"Its hard to figure out whether we are going to be okay or not," Chalmers said. "We're trying to figure out now at what point the debt becomes unmanageable."

Dried-Up Rivers

Rain—and a lot of it—is the only thing that is going to turn things around for troubled farmers.

But when relief will come is a question that is confounding scientists, as Australia's typical weather patterns are not emerging.

A growing number of experts claim that climate change, while not responsible for the drought, is making the situation more severe. (Related: "Warming May Spur Extinctions, Shortages, Conflicts, World Experts Warn" [April 6, 2007].)

That may explain why the recent arrival of La Niña—a global weather pattern that in the past has led to greater-than-average rainfall in Australia—is bringing little relief this spring.

La Niña's unfulfilled promise of rain has hit the Murray-Darling River Basin in southeastern Australia especially hard. The area, roughly the size of France and Spain combined, is Australia's food bowl, with about 41 percent of the country's agricultural activities taking place there.

Tens of thousands of farms in three Australian states depend on the River Murray, which no longer carries enough water to flow to the ocean. By the end of the most recent winter, river flows and reservoir levels in some parts of the country were at all-time lows.

Even if La Niña does persist and bring heavy rainfalls, it will take several seasons for the catchments to fill up again.

Without water, some of the local farms have had at least two seasons of crop failure. Farm debt was $412,000 Australian, up from $150,000 in 1990, according to the National Australia Bank.

The South Australia Farm Federation said recently that crop failures could force 20 percent of the state's farmers off the land in the next year.

That's already hitting consumers in the wallet. Food prices are beginning to inch upward, and record high prices for grain are hitting the cattle industry, which has said consumers should brace for much higher beef prices.

The Australian government has spent 1.9 billion dollars in the last few years in what it calls "exceptional circumstances" payments to lend a hand to farmers still trying to till the soil. It also recently doubled an offer, to $150,000, to any farmer who decides to leave his or her land.

La Niña and El Niño

Australia is heavily influenced by weather patterns in the Pacific. Generally, Australia goes dry during El Niño cycles, a warming in the tropical Pacific that has worldwide consequences. La Niña, the opposite effect, tends to bring heavier-than-normal rainfall.

But the current La Niña phase has failed to deliver anything but patchy rainfall in Australia.

"Although we have some sort of La Niña out there, the sea-surface temperatures around the Australian coast have not warmed up yet," said Roger Stone, professor of climatology and water resources at the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba.

Many farmers had banked on the fact that La Niña was going to bring rain to reservoirs, dams, and other catchments that are basically dry.

"Also, interestingly, La Niñas over the past 30 years are not delivering rain like they used to in many regions," he said.

In fact, neither El Niño nor La Niña has had a predictable influence on Australian weather recently.

"El Niños have also been behaving strangely," noted Andy Pitman, director of the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. "There have been quite sustained patterns and we don't know why."

This drought has extended over both weather patterns, which is unusual, he added.

Ocean temperatures in the Indian Ocean also play a major role in Australia's rainfall patterns. These waters have been colder than normal in the past few months, exacerbating the problem, experts say.

Global Warming Issue

Droughts are normal and natural in Australia. A growing number of scientists, however, believe the severity of Australia's Big Dry can be blamed on global warming.

"Droughts are natural," Pitman said. "But the level of drought is worse now because of higher temperatures that are driving increased evaporation. At the moment we can't explain the higher temperatures except by global warming."

Neville Nicholls, professor of geography and environmental science at Monash University in Clayton, Victoria, added that the southern fringe of Australia has been getting drier, which also may be linked to global warming.

"Our climate models all suggest that this is the response you should get from increased greenhouse gases, so there is a developing consensus amongst climate scientists that human activities are partly responsible for this long-term rainfall decline," he said, adding that they expect this to continue.

What is happening in Australia, Pitman said, should be a cautionary tale to the rest of the world that it's important to prepare now for more severe drought.

"In some regions, as happened in Australia, global warming will lead to abrupt regional change," he said. "In Australia, it arrived. In other regions, too, the changes will be rapid and sudden and confronting."

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Dutch, British Coasts Face Serious Flood Threat

PlanetArk 9 Nov 07

AMSTERDAM/LONDON - The North Sea coasts of the Netherlands and Britain faced their worst flood threat for decades on Thursday from a storm-driven tidal surge.

Authorities compared the approaching conditions to those in 1953 when floods killed more than 2,000 people in both countries.

The flood defences of the entire Dutch coast were put on alert and three surge barriers are expected to be closed as the storm approaches. The transport ministry said it was the first time since 1976 that the whole coast had been put on alert.

Shipping traffic to and from Rotterdam harbour is due to be suspended from 2000 GMT, a port spokesman said. The suspension is expected to remain in place until 1700 GMT on Friday.

For the first time since its construction in the 1990s, a storm surge barrier protecting Rotterdam and its harbour is expected to be closed due to the approaching storm.

Large areas of Britain's Norfolk and Kent coasts are at risk of severe flooding, the government and environment agencies said.

"A tidal surge of up to three metres is making its way down the North Sea which could coincide with high tides," Environment Secretary Hilary Benn told parliament.

A special meeting was being held by Prime Minister Gordon Brown to coordinate the emergency response, a spokeswoman said.

"There is a risk of flood defences being overtopped on the coast and in tidal rivers especially in East Anglia, particularly the Norfolk Broads, the coast south of Great Yarmouth, including Lowestoft, and areas south of this as far as the coast of Kent," Benn said.

The Met Office said north-westerly winds exceeding 50 mph (80 kph) were coinciding with low pressure and high tides to produce the exceptional conditions. The Thames Barrier in London would be closed from 2000 GMT on Thursday, the agency said.

The floods in 1953 killed around 300 on the English east coast and more than 1,800 in the Netherlands. Two thirds of the Netherlands would have been permanently flooded but for an elaborate system of dikes and canals.

A Dutch transport ministry spokesman said the water level at the Hook of Holland was expected to rise to around 3 metres (9 ft 10 inches) above the mean sea level on Thursday night.

The level would be second only to the flood of 1953 when the water rose to 3.85 metres (12 ft 7 inches) above sea level.

"The storm conditions are very similar to 1953," the ministry spokesman said. The government weather service forecast force seven winds for parts of the Dutch coast.

Rotterdam, a major transit point for oil, coal, grains and other commodities, handles about 35 percent of European port traffic by tonnage. About 60 ships will be affected by any closure of the port.

(Reporting by Niclas Mika and Harro ten Wolde, Editing by Robert Woodward)

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Make recycling a must, fine those who don't

Letter from Muhammad Hazique Salahudin, Straits Times Forum 9 Nov 07;

I REFER to the article, 'Recycle or face fines, Malaysians warned' (ST, Oct 31). The problem Malaysians face is similar to ours, and much can be learnt from their actions.

Singapore is a First World country. Undoubtedly, we are doing much to improve our environment. Some measures taken include the use of catalytic converters in cars and constructing energy-efficient buildings.

However, the problem of solid waste needs to be addressed further. Currently we dump our waste offshore at Pulau Semakau but what will happen when the landfill is full in 2040?

One effective way, as South Korea has shown, is to recycle. Unfortunately, recycling is not widely practised here, despite government efforts to promote it.

To encourage recycling, we can take a leaf out of Korea's book. Fines are one of the most effective methods to encourage good habits and, over time, the unwanted behaviour would disappear and the people will practise what is encouraged naturally.

This has been proven to be true in Singapore. We have curbed problems of illegal parking, smoking and dumping via fines.

If we make recycling mandatory and impose fines on those who do not do so, Singaporeans would become accustomed to recycling in the near future.

Should imposing fines be seen as too radical a move, further promotion of recycling could be undertaken, through placing more recycling bins around an estate. Currently, in Choa Chu Kang, there is only one bin per precinct. This is not practical as residents have to walk a distance just to recycle their things. A bin should be placed at every block.

Secondly, campaigns such as the Bring Your Own Bag day should be extended, to, say, a week. By extending the period, it will soon become a habit with shoppers to use reusable bags. This will save tonnes of plastic bags each month.

As a world-class city, the Government has to do more to promote environmental-friendliness.

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The Dawn of E2K in India

Thomas L. Friedman, The Straits Times 9 Nov 07;

It's true, green is the colour of money

NEW DELHI - REMEMBER Y2K - the 'millennium bug' that threatened to melt down millions of computers when their internal clocks tried to roll over on Jan 1, 2000, because they were not designed to handle that new date?

And remember that the only country with enough software programmers to adjust all these computers so they would not go haywire, and do it at a reasonable price, was India. Also remember that it was this operation that launched the Indian outsourcing industry.

Well, remember this: There is a bigger opportunity than Y2K just round the corner. I call it 'E2K' - for all the energy programming and monitoring that thousands of global companies are going to be undertaking to either become carbon neutral or far more energy efficient than they are today. India is poised to get a lot of this work.

I first started thinking about this when I heard Mr Michael Dell declare that Dell Inc. would become 'carbon neutral' in its operations by the end of next year. He said Dell would take inventory of its total greenhouse gas outputs and then develop plans to cut, eliminate or offset those emissions.

With a carbon tax or cap-and-trade legislation looming, more and more companies will be doing the same thing. It is going to be the next big global business transformation. And it is going to require tonnes of software, programming and back-room management to measure each company's carbon footprint and then monitor the various emissions-reduction and offsetting measures on an ongoing basis. Guess who has the low-cost brainpower to do all that?

Some of the smartest Indian outsourcing companies are already positioning themselves for the E2K market. 'What did Y2K do?' asked Mr Nandan Nilekani, co-chairman of Infosys Technologies, a premier Indian outsourcing firm.

'It was a deadline imposed by the calendar and thus it had a huge ability to concentrate the mind. It became a drop-dead date for everyone. Making your company carbon neutral is not a date, but it is an inevitability,' he said.

When Y2K came along, some companies responded tactically, doing just the minimum reprogramming to keep their computers operational after Jan 1, 2000. Others took a more strategic path, saying: 'Since we're going to have to go through all our software anyway, why not just retire all the old stuff and upgrade to the newer, simpler systems that will make us more efficient.'

These companies went from seeing IT, or information technology, as a cost to looking for ways to make money from it - through data mining and using better information to cross-sell products, reduce cycle times for introducing new services and manage inventories more efficiently.

The key to winning E2K business for the Indian outsourcing firms, said Mr Nilekani, will be showing big global companies, like a Dell, how becoming more energy efficient or carbon neutral does not just have to be a new cost, but can actually be a strategic move that makes money and gives them an edge on the competition.

The strategic companies will use ET - energy technology - 'to reduce material costs, simplify logistics, drive down electricity charges and shorten supply chains'. As they start to do this, it will require a lot of data management, which companies will want to do as cheaply as possible.

'My impression is that there is certainly a significant opportunity for Indian outsourcing companies,' said Mr B. Ramalinga Raju, chairman of Satyam Computer Services, another top Indian outsourcing company, adding that the precise size of that business will depend on 'the speed and scale at which the carbon-neutral policies are adopted by the global companies'.

To better compete for such business, Mr Nilekani is installing solar systems and other efficiency technologies at Infosys' Bangalore campus. Satyam plans to do similar things at its verdant Hyderabad complex.

IBM seems to be moving into this space, too. Big Blue knows that even if Indian companies do a lot of the back-room work, there will be lots of front-end jobs nearer the customers.

So, mum, dad, tell your kids: If they are looking for a good, stable-growth career - green consultants, green designers, green builders are all going to be in huge demand. And if they can speak Hindi, all the better.

NEW YORK TIMES

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Poachers sighted in forested area near Tampines

Letter from Joyce Chng, Today Online 9 Nov 07;

I refer to recent reports on animal poaching.

I am shocked and disgusted to catch poachers in the act in a forested area near Tampines Avenue 9, which is next to Tampines North Primary School.

I am a nature lover and often take photos around the area because I live nearby.

Occasionally, I would head to the forested area in Tampines to photograph the rich flora and fauna.

However, I received a rude shock on Nov 2 when I found three suspicious-looking men with cages hiding among the bushes there.

One of them had covered his bicycle with army camouflage patterns.

I also noticed that he had also strapped several cages onto the bicycle.

When I stepped forward, he was unnerved and scrambled to retrieve a spotted dove nearby that had been used as bait.

There were two other men in front and they too were startled.

I hope that the relevant authorities, such as the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority and the National Parks Board will look into the issue.

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