Singapore taxis cruising empty waste $73m in fuel every year

Christopher Tan, Straits Times 11 Dec 07;

HERE'S another reason why cabs should stop cruising for passengers - it can help save the earth.

Each of the 23,000 taxis here covers at least 300km a day - many, 500km - and they are cruising empty up to one-third the time.

If empty cruising can be eliminated, Singapore stands to save on 175 million kg of carbon dioxide emission a year - as well as loads of other pollutants.

If that does not grab you, it will also potentially save $73 million in wasted fuel every year.

A multi-ministerial work group is targeting this wasteful practice.

Last month, the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) published the National Energy Policy Report, with inputs from other ministries such as Transport, Finance and Environment and Water Resources.

Under the land transport section, the report zeroed in on empty cruising by taxis.

'Due to the high mileage of taxis, diesel taxis contribute a significant amount to our CO2 and PM2.5 emissions,' it read, referring to carbon dioxide and ultra-fine particulate matter produced by diesel engines. 'To address this, we are exploring ways to reduce the empty cruising of taxis and increase the proportion of green taxis.'

When asked to elaborate on its plans to tackle empty cruising, MTI directed the query to the Transport Ministry which directed it to the Land Transport Authority.

An LTA spokesman said the authority will build more taxi stands. By the end of this year, it will erect 15 more taxi stands in the Central Business District. There are currently 80 taxi stands in the CBD.

The thinking is that with more taxi stands, cabbies will be less likely to wander aimlessly looking for fares.

But the LTA declined to elaborate on how it would tackle cabbies who leave their engines running while at these taxi stands. Nor did it provide details on other ways to address empty cruising.

Its spokesman, however, pointed out that cab operators are required to cater to a high percentage of call bookings.

Cabby L. S. Chew, 37, said that of the 300km he clocks a day on a 12-hour shift, he gets 20 to 25 fares. Each fare averages 10km. Which means he cruises 50 to 100km a day without a passenger.

'Every 10km we go without a passenger, it's $1 down the drain,' Mr Chew said.

On average, if the cabs are empty one-third of the time, it works out to at least $10 of wasted fuel per cabby per day.

Leading taxi company ComfortDelGro agrees that empty cruising is wasteful and detrimental to the environment.

'To minimise empty cruising, we have put in place a technologically advanced call booking system,' ComfortDelGro spokesman Tammy Tan said.

'We are constantly looking at ways to make it more efficient so that commuters will be encouraged to book a taxi instead of resorting to street hail.'

In places such as Europe and Australia, hailing a cab from the street is rare. Commuters either phone for one or go to a taxi stand.

The authorities have long sought ways to encourage the practice here.

Singapore Environment Council's executive director Howard Shaw said one way this could be done would be to drop the booking charges.

'Maybe we should reduce charges on bookings and make it more accessible and convenient to book a cab,' he said.

Mr Shaw also suggested a centralised booking system, where commuters dial only one number to get a cab from any of the six taxi companies here. This would shorten the waiting time and thus encourage more to book a cab by phone, he said.

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Something to beach about: ZoukOut on Sentosa

Why do people brave the elements to be at ZoukOut every year?
PHIN WONG realises that it's a matter of national pride
Today Online 11 Dec 07;

I am not what you might call an "outdoorsy" person.

Some people love the feel of sand between their toes and the wind blowing in their hair. I would rather my toes stay in my shoes, while a gentle breeze from an air-conditioning unit rustles my hair a tad.

Yet, year after year, I find myself choosing to battle our dastardly humid climate on a beach in Sentosa for ZoukOut. Why would someone allergic to Mother Nature and her allergen-filled arsenal willingly put himself in the middle of harm's way? It just doesn't add up.

My mother doesn't get it either. And judging by her recent adventures in whittling down price tags in Bangkok, she's really good at math.

Having read sordid reports splashed across the papers about the drunken shenanigans that happened at last Saturday's ZoukOut at Siloso beach, she wondered aloud — in the patented Chinese-mother style that elicits immediate guilt from anyone listening — why anybody would attend such a hedonistic event filled with booze, skin and public make-out sessions.

Even though I had groped only my plastic cup of vodka, I was immediately cloaked with guilt from having shamed my entire clan just being at the scene of the crime, sandy evidence still caked in the rubber crevices of my soles.

I reassured her the sin reports were exaggerated and that I didn't witness any more amorous frolicking than one would see at an 18-year-old's all-night soiree at an East Coast park chalet. "Still," she tsk-ed, signalling more guilt ahead, "Fun, meh?"

Ordinarily, I would never entertain the thought of slumming it outdoors with a cargo-load of strangers. More than 23,000 people showed up on Saturday — an all-time attendance high. That's 3,000 more sweaty bodies that transferred their cooties to me compared to last year.

There were drunk louts getting on the general public's collective nerves and random young people vomiting on trees and other unfortunate foliage.

And let's not forget the attention-seeking girls in their attention-seeking bikinis and cheap shoes — chest out, stomach in, and intelligence bared naked for all to see by wearing high heels at the beach.

And I had a blast.

It took what could be the end of ZoukOut as we know it to make me understand why I've been venturing out of my comfort zone of walls, a roof and an artificially enhanced climate all these years. Because the party might have to move to the city due to the rapid development of Sentosa, "ZoukOut as we know it might never be the same," said Zouk marketing manager Tracy Phillips.

So, maybe it was with these fresh eyes that had just received bad news that I saw my epiphany. I haven't been showing up at ZoukOut every year because of the music. No, I'm a little more rock 'n' roll than I am into the bleeps and blips of electronic music. Neither had I shown up to "be seen". Trust me, I'd rather be seen dry and smelling of roses. I have stuck it out every ZoukOut because it actually stirs up some nationalistic pride.

Check out this party on my beach, on my tourist-bait of an island, in my country.

Last year, more than 7,000 people flew in from the rest of the world to party in my home — yes, my home known more around the world for our ban on chewing gum than having fun. Saturday's figures haven't been released yet, but it sure looked like the party tourists came to pay a visit again.

We've got a lot to be proud about in Singapore, but a lot of it has to do with science and numbers and buildings and things. You can't love a bio-hub, or take a picture of a low crime-rate and post it on your blog. ZoukOut has a heartbeat. You can touch, smell and taste it. It lives on in silly digital photos snapped on mobile phones and, more important, in memory, which is a lot more than a statistic can do — no matter how spiffy your pie charts.

I'm going to miss ZoukOut as we know it. I like it on the beach. I know it's just Sentosa, but it feels like escapism. Having it in an urban environment will just remind me of the work waiting for me tomorrow. Though there is a certain consolation knowing that I was there all those years when ZoukOut was a beach party before it becomes Swing Singapore 2008 — you can't put a price on bragging rights.

Also, if ZoukOut leaves the beach, I can't be blamed for no longer venturing outside to play in Mother Nature's garden of bugs and humidity. It's the IRs' fault coming in and cutting the beach in half. I am the first victim of legalised gambling.

That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

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Empowering the poor, saving the planet: interview with Ashok Khosla

Today Online 11 Dec 07;

He's an environmental thinker and one of the world's leading experts on sustainable development. Dr Ashok Khosla taught Harvard University's first undergraduate course on the environment back in the '60s.

For the last 25 years, he has been chairman of Development Alternatives, a non-profit organisation that develops and promotes environmentally-friendly and commercially viable businesses. These include companies that manufacture low-cost roofing tiles and transform agricultural waste to fuel.

In 2002, he was awarded the United Nations-Sasakawa Environment Prize — the Nobel Prize of the environment world.

He spoke to Esther Ng (estherng@mediacorp.com.sg) recently about his passion for the green movement at Indochine's roundtable talks on corporate social responsibility.

What was it like to champion the green cause way before it became popular?

My professor, Roger Revelle, was the first person in the world to discover the effects of global warming as early as 1958.

But because the study was very early, it was something unfamiliar, and therefore something that people didn't quite relate to. But what was known was that species were beginning to disappear; DDT (Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane) was getting into the bodies of penguins in the South Pole; and pollution from factories was affecting the quality of our air and land.

You've been described as "an individual who personifies the hopes and dreams of billions trapped in the indignity of acute deprivation". Give us an idea of what this "acute deprivation" is?

Living in Singapore, it's hard to imagine the kind of poverty some 2 or 3 billion people live in. They face hunger, crime and marginalisation. Many people die from malnutrition and disease.

The fact is half the people in the world live on less than $3 a day — it's very hard to live on that anywhere in the world.

You're one of the few academics who put what they teach into practice. Tell us what you have done for the rural poor.

I set up Development Alternatives 25 years ago. We've developed technologies that have enabled communities to set up small businesses to supply things that everyone needs like roofing tiles, unfired bricks, recycled paper, toilets and energy.

How is your development scheme different from the Grameen Bank?

The Grameen Bank is about giving microcredit of say, $500, for people to set up a cottage industry.

Our work is the next level up from the Grameen Bank. We help small entrepreneurs generate eight to 10 jobs and profit to improve their business.

How do you go about convincing governments and businesses that it is in their interest to implement environmentally sustainable practices?

It's been pretty hard to create not just the awareness but the intention to make a change in those sectors.

I wouldn't say every government feels the same way, but I think in the next 10 years this is going be a major commitment of every government.

Part of it is because these issues are more visible simply because things are getting worse — you can't hardly avoid seeing the problems of managing waste and pollution — and part of it I think is we are beginning to be more demanding about the quality of our lives.

What are the stumbling blocks for sustainable development?

I'd say greed and short-term self interest. Having said that, I believe we can make this world a better place with the help of the media.

What do you think about your former student, this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore's efforts in raising environmental consciousness on a global scale?

He's done a terrific job — I think he's single-handedly gone out and proselytised and preached for a better world.

But I do think that we need other Al Gores to deal with issues of loss of species and the lives of the poor. The biggest problem I think today continues to be the existence of poverty and we do need to address this.

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Knocking Out Top Predator May Not Save Prey - Study

PlanetArk 11 Dec 07;

HONG KONG - Removing what appears to be a predator at the top of the food chain may not necessarily save an endangered prey, a study in New Zealand has shown.

The study involved the Cook's petrel, a burrowing seabird on New Zealand's Little Barrier Island which faced extinction from the late 1990s after being hunted by cats and rats brought in by settlers from as early as the 10th century.

The island decided to get rid of its cats in 1980 but instead of reversing the declining numbers of petrels, their population dwindled further, the researchers wrote in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

While 32 percent of breeding burrows fledged a chick when both cats and rats were around, only 9 percent produced chicks after cats were removed from their breeding areas.

"The cats were suppressing the rat numbers, so the removal of the cats allowed rat numbers to increase and as rat numbers increased ... they (hunted) petrels more heavily," Matt Rayner at University of Auckland's School of Biological Sciences said in a telephone interview.

The island finally got rid of its rats in 2004 and the breeding rates of petrels shot up to 59 percent.

But at lower altitudes, petrel breeding rates were little changed even after the rats were removed -- which the researchers attributed to the availability of other food sources for the rodents lower on the slopes.

Cook's petrels used to be found everywhere in New Zealand, but they disappeared from the mainland in the 19th century due to encroaching human developments.

The size of pigeons, petrels are now found in only one other island in New Zealand, on Whenua Hou at the southern tip.

"They are poorly adapted to predation by mammals but can live up to 30 years. They live a long time but breed very slowly ... one egg every couple of years," Rayner said.

It was important for conservationists to fully understand ecological systems before carrying out eradication exercises, Rayner said.

"You had better be sure that you understand what is going on in the community ecology between introduced predators and native prey. In a lot of cases, these introduced species have been introduced for quite some time, so they have been here for 50 to 150 years ... the result could be quite unpredictable," he said. (Reporting by Tan Ee Lyn, Editing by Rosalind Russell)

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Indonesian Pulp Output Hit by Logging Curbs

PlanetArk 11 Dec 07;

JAKARTA - A drive to clamp down on illegal logging in Indonesia could cut supplies of raw materials to the pulp and paper industry and slash output by two-thirds next year, an industry official said on Monday.

Environmentalists blame timber groups in the country for illegal logging and the destruction of forests. The pulp and paper groups have denied that they use illegally logged timber.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said last month that illegal loggers and their financial backers were "common enemies" and must be brought to justice.

Muhammad Mansur, chairman of Indonesia's pulp and paper association, cited cases where firms had got permits from the forestry ministry to cut down trees in a concession but had then been targeted by the police for illegal logging.

"The conflict between the forestry department and the police department has hurt raw material supplies," Mansur told Reuters.

Since the start of the year, police have tried to catch illegal loggers in areas including forest concessions owned by companies supplying wood to PT Indah Kiat Pulp & Paper and PT Riau Andalan Pulp and paper in Sumatra island, a director at a parent firm said previously.

Mansur said pulp producers were expected to produce 1.68 million tonnes of pulp next year, down from an estimated of 5.2 million tonnes this year and 5.67 million tonnes in 2006.

He said that in order to ensure supplies, the companies had been cutting down immature trees on their plantations, but he estimated this would only be possible until the end of the first quarter of 2008.

Indonesia has 84 integrated pulp and paper mills, with a total capacity of 6.5 million tonnes, according to data from the association.

The country exports about half of its production to Asia, including China and South Korea.

Indah Kiat is a unit of Asia Pulp and Paper, part of the Sinar Mas group, while Riau Andalan is a subsidiary of APRIL, which is part of the Raja Garuda Mas (RGM) International group.

The two companies account for 65 percent of the country's total output of pulp and require a total of 9 million tonnes of wood per year.

According to Greenpeace, Indonesia had the fastest pace of deforestation in the world between 2000-2005, with an area of forest equivalent to 300 soccer pitches destroyed every hour. (Reporting by Mita Valina Liem, editing by Ed Davies)

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Researchers find new deep water coral

Yahoo News 11 Dec 07;

Researchers have discovered what they believe is a new deep water coral and sponge beds found several thousands of feet below the ocean surface, officials said Monday.

The a lemon-yellow bamboo coral tree and a giant sponge were discovered last month in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument by the Pisces V submersible operated by the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL).

Samples of the corals and sponges were collected for taxonomic identification and DNA analysis. They were found in depth from 3,000 to 6,000 feet.

Christopher Kelley, the principal investigator of the project, said the monument is potentially protecting so many new species and new records of species that many will not be revealed for decades to come.

The vast national monument, nearly 100 times larger than Yosemite National Park, was created by President Bush last year out of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, which stretch out 1,000 miles from the main Hawaiian Islands.

"Most of the monument is below scuba diving depths," said Randy Kosaki, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research coordinator for the monument. "It's important to find ways to explore these deep water ecosystems where the inhabitants are virtually unknown."

Researchers returned from their 22-day expedition on Nov. 19.

HURL was established by NOAA and the University of Hawaii to study deep water marine processes in the Pacific Ocean.

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Saving tigers needs more global money

Ashok Sharma, Associated Press, Yahoo News 11 Dec 07;

Saving the world's remaining tigers will require as much as $500 million a year, but average annual international funding only comes to $5 million, a conservation group said Monday.

Most of this was given to non-governmental organizations, while governments of 12 countries with tiger populations were expected to come up with funding themselves, S. C. Dey, secretary-general of Global Tiger Forum, told reporters.

While Russia and India get up to 20 percent of money they spend annually on tiger conservation from international funding, for other countries it was as low as 1 percent, Dey said after the release of action plans for 12 countries with wild tiger populations.

"As the world's wild tigers have dwindled to as few as 3,000, it is time for a concerted effort to save the big cat from extinction," a Wildlife Trust of India statement said.

Fred O' Regan, president of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said the tiger was facing one of the worst periods of its existence.

"Having these national action plans in one document will make it easier for conservation organizations around the world to understand the requirements of range countries," he said in a statement.

The 12 countries where tigers live in the wild are Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam.

While Nepal and Bhutan did not require much international funding, countries like Russia, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia each need up to $20 million annually for their efforts to save the tiger, Dey said.

India alone needs $200 million to relocate thousands of people from the vicinity of tiger reserves, Dey said.

"China has been demanding compensation for stopping commercial farming of tigers for their parts," he said. Tiger parts are prized in traditional Chinese medicine.

In India, the wild tiger population is roughly half of what it was estimated to be five years ago, a government study has found.

India's tiger population may be in the range of 1,300-1,500, according to a survey by the Wildlife Institute of India. The institute's last study, in 2001-2002, estimated 3,642 tigers were left in India's jungles and reserves.

Wildlife experts have long warned that poaching and encroachment on the big cats' habitat has savaged their population, which a century ago was believed to number in the tens of thousands.

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How Desert Dust Feeds the World's Oceans

Pien Huang, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
LiveScience.com, Yahoo News 9 Dec 07;

Given the dearth of iron in the Southern Ocean, some have even suggested adding a fourth, artificial source of iron. Earlier this fall, a conference at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution spotlighted “iron-seeding” as a potential vehicle for carbon sequestration.

In mid-February, at the height of Austral summer, the sun in the Antarctic never sets. Nor did the work ever stop for University of Hawaii oceanography professor Chris Measures and his team of trace-metals oceanographers, who worked around the clock measuring dust from the decks of the Scripps Insitution of Oceanography research vessel Roger Revelle.

The researchers affixed bouquets of trumpet-shaped filters to the ship’s mast to trap dust from the air, and for every degree of longitude, they sampled the sea, plunging a contraption of cylindrical bottles to the depths of the upper ocean, screening water for remnants of dissolved dust and the trace amounts of iron and aluminum they contain.

Measures is taking part in a leg of the Climate Variability-CO2 repeat hydrography program (CLIVAR), a series of cruises funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration seeking to document and comprehend the ocean’s role in climate change.

CLIVAR research cruises have surveyed representative sections of the ocean on a decadal scale since the 1990s, focusing primarily on better understanding the carbon cycle. In collaboration with William Landing at Florida State University, Measures is running an adjunct program for trace metals on CLIVAR. Since receiving NSF support in 2003, Measures and Landing have led dust-measuring teams on six CLIVAR cruises in the Atlantic, Pacific, Southern and Indian oceans.

Which all begs the question, what exactly does dust have to do with carbon?

Unlike land plants, aquatic plants can permanently remove carbon dioxide from atmospheric circulation; some sink to the ocean floor after death, and the carbon in their bodies remains subsumed in the deep ocean for thousands of years. Dust, as a process, holds a place in the ocean carbon cycle as a source of iron for those plants.

As chemical oceanographers, Measures and Landing are interested in how chemicals enter and cycle through the oceans. They are particularly interested in iron, a micronutrient necessary for plant growth. Just as pill supplements are a way to get vitamins into human bodies, dust from continental deserts is one way to get iron into the oceans, where phytoplankton use the dissolved form of iron, along with inputs like carbon dioxide, to process sunlight and make food for themselves.

In quantifying dust deposition, the researchers hunt for trace amounts of iron and aluminum in the water column. Aluminum is not directly used by plants, but it exists in proportion to iron in desert dust, and its presence in the oceans shows the origins and the paths of iron, long after the iron has been absorbed by plants.

For all the effort the researchers spent collecting water and running samples in their shipboard laboratory, not much iron or aluminum was to be found off of Antarctica. Even by trace metal standards, where concentrations are measured in nanograms (billionths of a gram) per liter, there were only the slightest traces of iron. Low iron levels have long been suspected of limiting productivity in the Southern Ocean; as a region, it has an unusual excess of general nutrients that are, in most oceans, completely consumed by plants.

It’s not the amount of iron that matters to Measures’ team, so much as what the existing iron can illuminate about process. While inland Antarctica receives rains sparse enough to qualify as the world’s largest desert, much of the continent’s dirt is locked under ice, and prevented from becoming dust.

What iron exists in these waters comes from two additional sources. In shallow sections, iron may be churned up from underwater plateaus and continental shelves. Throughout the ocean, iron can be recycled from the breakdown of dead materials. Knowing the sources of iron, and how much each contributes, helps in creating accurate climate prediction models.

Given the dearth of iron in the Southern Ocean, some have even suggested adding a fourth, artificial source of iron. Earlier this fall, a conference at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution spotlighted “iron-seeding” as a potential vehicle for carbon sequestration.

The theory is simple: dump iron in the ocean where plant productivity is iron-limited, and it will encourage plant growth. More plants would take in more carbon dioxide and, on death, more carbon dioxide will sink out of the reach of atmospheric circulation. While greater ocean productivity has coincided with major drops in CO2 during past ice ages, iron-seeding experiments are so far yielding more caveats than green lights. Adding iron has stimulated plant production, but it has also altered other parts of the biological pump. In iron-saturated conditions, for instance, the dominant phytoplankton use less silica; being lighter, they sink less directly, throwing off the efficiency of the carbon pump.

Some members of CLIVAR’s trace metals team have worked on iron-seeding experiments, but their work on CLIVAR cruises focuses on the existing world. From the CLIVAR series, and from an upcoming cruise series for chemists called GEOTRACES, Measures, Landing and colleagues are pooling efforts to create an unprecedented map that shows the distribution of chemicals in the oceans.

For weeks, the team plodded through their time at sea. They raised and lowered the air filters in a daily ritual, ran vials of seawater through yards of plastic tubing. They warmed their stiff fingers over mugs of espresso, entranced by a perpetual dusk that faded to blue-black nights as they steamed north. Every so often, they found minute traces of earth metals which, while invisible, hold one in a set of many keys to understanding how people are changing the planet.

This Behind the Scenes article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation.

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China market may be breeding ground for deadly viruses

Joseph Chaney, Yahoo News 10 Dec 07;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WET FLOORS, HIDDEN BEASTS

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

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

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

And dangerous tastes persist under the radar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Additional reporting by Ralph Jennings and Ee Lyn Tan)

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Whatever Happened to Solar Power?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sand in demand

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

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

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

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

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

Solar on the horizon

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

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

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

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

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

Diversify

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Light Up Your Holiday, Not Your Electrical Bill

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

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

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

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

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

Try this at home

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

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

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

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

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

What it means to the planet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Nobel joy but negotiation dismay at UN climate talks

Richard Ingham and Shaun Tandon Yahoo News 10 Dec 07;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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