Japan agrees to free whaling activists: Australia

Yahoo News 16 Jan 08;

Japan has agreed to free two anti-whaling activists held captive after boarding a whaling vessel in Antarctic waters, Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said Wednesday.

"Late last night I was advised the Japanese had agreed to this and they had instructed the relevant whaling ship to return the men to the Steve Irwin," Smith told national radio.

The agreement to release Australian Benjamin Potts and Briton Giles Lane -- crewmen on the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society vessel the Steve Irwin -- came after Australian officials contacted the Japanese government, Smith said.

"The most important thing here is the safety and welfare of the two men concerned and we do as the Australian government want their immediate release.

"My most recent advice, which is in the last hour, is that that transfer has not yet occurred and I'm calling upon both parties, both the Steve Irwin and Sea Shepherd, and the Japanese whaling vessel, to effect immediately their safe return of the two men concerned."

The activists boarded the Japanese harpoon vessel Yushin Maru No 2 Tuesday to deliver a written demand that Japan stop killing whales.

Sea Shepherd said the men were assaulted and tied to the ship's radar mast, but Japan denied this, saying they were held in an office aboard the ship after boarding the vessel illegally.

Smith refused to be drawn on whether he considered the two men had been held hostage but said Australian Federal Police were investigating the incident.

"From the very first day I urged all parties in this matter to exercise restraint," he said. "It's quite clearly the case that restraint hasn't occurred here.

"If there is any illegal or unlawful activity in respect to this matter then not only do I not condone that, I condemn it."

The Japanese fleet, on a mission to kill around 1,000 whales in Antarctic waters this season, is being harassed by shipborne activists from Greenpeace as well as Sea Shepherd.

Australia's Federal Court on Tuesday ordered Japan to stop hunting and killing whales anywhere around its coastline or off Australian Antarctic territory.

However, the court noted that unless the Japanese whalers entered Australian jurisdiction where they could be seized, there was no practical way the order could be enforced.

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More of U.S. grain crop to be consumed by family car

Tom Doggett, Reuters 15 Jan 08;

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Almost a third of the U.S. grain crop next year may be diverted from the family dinner table to the family car as fuel, putting upward pressure on food prices, a leading expert warned on Tuesday.

Grain prices are near record levels as the United States produces more ethanol, now made mostly from corn, to blend with gasoline and stretch available motor fuel supplies.

Farmers, hoping to cash in, are expected to grow 30 percent of next year's grain crop for ethanol use as more refineries that process corn into fuel come online, according to Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute and long-time critic of using food grains for fuel.

"The price of grain is now tied to the price of oil," Brown said at the Reuters Global Agriculture and Biofuel Summit.

As a result, he said, prices will go up for poultry, beef and pork as well as dairy products because corn is the number one animal feed for farmers.

"Our refrigerators are stuffed with corn," Brown said. For example, feed prices make up about 40 percent of the cost of poultry alone, he said.

The pressure on food prices from ethanol will only get worse as the new energy law passed last month requires U.S. ethanol production to soar from about 9 billion gallons this year to 36 billion gallons by 2022.

"What we see are cars beginning to compete with people for world grain supplies," Brown said. "We could see a consumer revolt in this country."

Brown said that an SUV with a 25-gallon tank filling up with ethanol would use enough grain, about 560 pounds (254 kg), to feed the average person for one year.

However, the Renewable Fuels Association, a trade group that lobbies for ethanol producers, says corn demand for ethanol doesn't have a big effect on retail food prices.

The group cites government data that shows labor costs account for 38 cents of every dollar spent on food, with packing, transportation, energy, advertising and profits accounting for 24 cents. Just 19 cents can be attributed to the cost of food inputs like grains and oilseeds, the group said.

Still, rising ethanol demand helped cut world grain inventories last year to an all-time low of just 53 days of demand, compared with the 70 days of grain stocks many food experts say is normal.

Brown said higher corn prices may bring back the backyard-type Victory Gardens last seen in World War II, with rural homeowners planting small plots of corn to cash in on growing ethanol use.

(Editing by Walter Bagley)

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U.S. Automakers say other industries should help on climate

John Crawley, Reuters 16 Jan 08;

DETROIT (Reuters) - With stricter U.S. rules in place to sharply improve gas mileage and reduce tailpipe emissions, domestic automakers now want Washington to look elsewhere for help in achieving climate change goals.

Senior company and trade group executives interviewed this week at the North American International Auto Show believe they did enough in the 2007 energy legislation and now want lawmakers and regulators to tap other industries.

They declined to name the industries but environmentalists said fuel producers and utilities needed to be on the list.

Carmakers are lobbying Congress to approve incentives worth billions to help them retool their businesses and develop or improve fuel and battery technologies. These investments, industry says, will underpin its ability to meet the new requirement to improve fuel efficiency by 40 percent by 2020.

Struggling General Motors Corp, Ford Motor Co and Chrysler would benefit substantially from government investment that could help them compete against overseas rivals much better positioned on efficiency, like Toyota Motor Corp and Honda Motor Co.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, told reporters on Tuesday at the auto show that he wants to draft a climate bill as soon as possible and believes carmakers have gone far enough.

"We've had everybody else get practically a free ride and the auto industry has come up with a 40 percent increase in fuel efficiency. We'll try and see that the pain is shared evenly all around," Dingell said.

Dave McCurdy, chief executive of trade group representing major companies, agreed: "The challenge should be for Congress to look at other sectors of the economy."

Prospects are mixed that the House of Representatives and Senate will be able to finalize a climate bill in an election year. The White House opposes mandatory curbs of greenhouse gasses, arguing such steps would harm the economy.

Dingell said Congress would also consider helping U.S. automakers meet the tougher efficiency standards, but could not say if any proposals would be in his climate bill.

Automakers have said meeting the target would be costly for them and consumers. The requirements will add, on average, $6,000 to the price of GM vehicles sold in the United States, the automaker's vice chairman Bob Lutz said on Tuesday.

Potentially adding more costs and new uncertainty would be if California prevailed in its legal fight with the Environmental Protection Agency to impose its own emissions standards, a plan that would result in even more stringent mileage targets.

Dingell said U.S. carmakers could implode if that measure eventually clears the courts and regulators and is adopted by all states, a scenario he called worst case.

While campaigning for Michigan primary votes at the auto show, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain of Arizona said a bill he backs would offer billions in incentives for car companies, especially beleaguered Detroit giants.

"There is a need for pure research and development funding from the federal government for hybrids and hydrogen and other areas -- pure research and development. So we intend to go back and try to help them," McCain said.

Sen. Thomas Carper, a Delaware Democrat also at the auto show, told reporters it was not enough for Congress to say to Detroit: "Eat your spinach."

"We've got to help them develop new battery technology, help them use the government's purchasing power to commercialize new technologies," Carper said.

Michigan Democrat, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, said in an interview she wants to activate a low interest loan program and free up hundreds of millions of dollars for battery research.

Jim Press, who helped make Toyota the leader in hybrid technology before becoming co-president of Chrysler last year, said in an interview with Reuters the new fuel standards were not going away and it was up to industry to respond.

"The main thing we need to do is help ourselves," Press said. "We will meet them or exceed them with the best technology."

(Additional reporting by Jui Chakravorty Das. Reporting by John Crawley, Editing by Julie Vorman and Peter Bohan)

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World Bank pledges to save trees... then helps cut down Amazon forest

Daniel Howden, The Independent 13 Jan 08;

A month ago it vowed to fight deforestation. Now research reveals it funds the rainforest's biggest threat.

The World Bank has emerged as one of the key backers behind an explosion of cattle ranching in the Amazon, which new research has identified as the greatest threat to the survival of the rainforest.

Ranching has grown by half in the last three years, driven by new industrial slaughterhouses which are being constructed in the Amazon basin with the help of the World Bank. The revelation flies in the face of claims from the bank that it is funding efforts to halt deforestation and reduce the massive greenhouse gas emissions it causes.

Roberto Smeraldi, head of Friends of the Earth Brazil and lead author of the new report, obtained exclusively by The Independent on Sunday, said the bank's contradictory policy on forests was now clear: "On the one hand you try and save the forest, on the other you give incentives for its conversion."

There are now more than 74 million cattle reared in the Amazon basin, the world's most important eco-system, where they outnumber people by a ratio of more than three to one. Fuelled by massive illegal ranches, the South American giant has become the world's leading beef exporter, rearing more cattle than all 25 EU members put together. This industrial expansion comes despite international agreements to combat deforestation, and claims from the government of Brazil that it is succeeding in slowing the destruction of the world's largest standing forest.

"Land-use change in the Amazon is first and foremost a product of ranching. It is on the hooves of cattle, out on the forest fringe, where the repercussions are being felt," said Mr Smeraldi.

The new report, "The Cattle Realm", comes after a year in which deforestation was acknowledged as the second leading cause of carbon emissions worldwide and was included in the plan for a new global treaty to fight climate change. But the catastrophic destruction of the Amazon to make way for ranches is being funded by the same international institutions that have pledged to fight deforestation.

The World Bank, which unveiled a new programme to fund "avoided deforestation" at the UN climate summit in Bali last month, is at the same time pouring money into the expansion of slaughterhouses in the Amazon region. The new report estimates that the internationally funded expansion of Brazil's beef industry was responsible for up to 12 billion tons of CO2 emissions over the past decade – an amount comparable to two years of emissions from the US.

The World Bank, which British taxpayers help to fund, lent its backing to the inclusion of deforestation in the Bali "road map" signed by 180 countries last month. At the summit the bank unveiled its Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), aimed at reducing deforestation by compensating developing countries for carbon dioxide reductions realised by maintaining their forests. The pilot programme has received more than $160m (£82m) in funding from donor governments.

The World Bank's president, Robert Zoellick, claimed that the project "signals that the world cares about the global value of forests and is ready to pay for it. There is now a value to conserving, not just harvesting the forest." But the institution, set up to provide loans to developing countries aimed at reducing poverty, has been accused of hypocrisy as it talks up relatively low levels of funding on "avoided deforestation" while spending millions more on the industries – such as cattle ranching and soya production – that are the acknowledged drivers of forest destruction.

In a single project last year, the IFC – part of the World Bank group – handed $9m to Brazil's leading beef processor to upgrade its slaughterhouse operations in the Amazon, despite an environmental study, carried out for the IFC, which showed that expansion of a single slaughterhouse in Maraba would lead to the loss of up to 300,000 hectares of forest to make way for more cattle.

The project was signed off despite angry resistance from up to 30 NGOs in Brazil and the intervention of the influential US lobbying group the Sierra Club, all of which pointed out that the high-risk agricultural project contradicted the bank's stated aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

In the past three years Brazil's National Development Bank and the World Bank have poured funds into the southern Amazon, fuelling the expansion of the cattle industry with new slaughterhouses and four million additional head of cattle. "While governments insist they are doing their utmost to stop deforestation they have been putting in place incentives for the destruction of the forest. It is taxpayers' money fuelling this," said Mr Smeraldi.

Only the US rears more cattle than Brazil, which since 2004 has led the world in beef exports. The endangered eco-system of the Amazon basin has accounted for 96 per cent of all growth in the country's cattle industry. The ranchers are expanding as meat consumption soars both in Brazil and the rest of the world. Britain is the sixth largest importer of Brazilian beef, buying more than 80,000 tons in the year to November 2007.

The Amazon basin is home to one in 10 of the world's mammals and 15 per cent of land-based plant species. It holds more than half the world's fresh water, and its vast forests act as the largest carbon sink on the planet, providing a vital check on the greenhouse effect. This vital resource faces three main dangers: the expansion of the soya industry, driven by high prices for animal feed; the surge in sugarcane plantations to feed the sudden and insatiable global appetite for bio-fuels; and the traditional threat of cattle ranching, underestimated in recent years as soya and sugarcane have received more attention.

Since the "Save the Amazon" campaigns of the 1970s the role of illegal ranchers in the destruction of the rainforest has been widely known. Virtually non-existent government control has allowed ranchers to clear large areas of remote forest for pasture. But the land – while initially fertile – quickly erodes, spurring the need for new pasture and driving the chainsaws further into the forest, in a vicious cycle largely unchecked for decades. Carbon dioxide emissions from the fires set to clear the trees have helped to propel Brazil into the top four carbon polluters in the world, exceeded only by the US, China and Indonesia.

At the end of each dry season, in anticipation of the first winter rains, farmers and cattle ranchers throughout South America set fires to "renovate" pasture land. But this process has spun out of control as deforestation and climate change have created a tinderbox, leading to ever-larger blazes. Last October a record area of the rainforest went up in flames, choking vast areas of not just Brazil but Paraguay and Bolivia.

There are increasing signs that the strain placed on the Amazon's eco-system could lead to an irreversible breakdown Last month the WWF predicted that the combination of drought and fire could wipe out the Amazon by 2030, with disastrous consequences for the world.

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The Big Question: Can biofuel help prevent global warming, or will it only make matters worse?

Steve Connor, The Independent 15 Jan 08;

Why are we asking this question now?

The European Union is having second thoughts about its policy aimed at stimulating the production of biofuel – transport fuel derived from crops and other vegetation or organic waste. Stavros Dimas, the EU environment commissioner, admitted yesterday that the EU did not foresee the scale of the problems raised by Europe's target of deriving 10 per cent of its transport fuel from plant material. The rush to produce biofuels is reported to have increased the cost of food on the global market, destroyed tracts of rainforest in tropical countries and to have had little overall impact on reducing greenhouse gases.

"We have seen that the environmental problems caused by biofuels and also the social problems are bigger than we thought they were. So we have to move very carefully," Mr Dimas told the BBC. Yesterday also saw the publication of a report on biofuel by the Royal Society in London which had asked a committee of experts to examine the complex issues surrounding the technology. The report concluded that there is no simple answer to whether biofuels are good or bad for the environment, and that each type of biofuel – and how it is produced – has to be considered on its own merits.

What are biofuels and how are they meant to help fight global warming?

The principle behind biofuels is essentially the same as that behind fossil fuels such as oil. Both biofuels and fossil fuels have stored the energy of the Sun in the form of biologically-produced chemicals called hydrocarbons. The energy stored in the fuels results from the ability of plants to carry out photosynthesis – the manufacture of sugar, starch and other complex organic molecules using sunlight.

However, unlike fossil fuels, biofuels have the potential to be carbon neutral, meaning that the loss of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere caused by burning them is offset by the absorption of carbon dioxide by the biofuel plants when they are growing. (The carbon locked up in fossil fuels was put there by plants that lived and photosynthesised millions of years ago.)

If this were true – that there is a perfect balance between absorption and production of carbon dioxide – then burning biofuels would not cause an overall increase in levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, one of the principal greenhouse gases. Unlike fossil fuels, biofuels therefore have the potential to help to prevent global warming if they could replace the burning of oil-based fuels such as gasoline and diesel. They also have the added advantage over fossil fuels in that they are renewable.

It sounds like the perfect answer to all our worries

Yes it sounds like it, but the truth is not so straightforward. There are many problems with biofuel production that can significantly change the carbon balance sheet.

For a start, biofuel crops often need fertilisers and pesticides which are made from oil. The machinery used to grow, transport and process the crop is also often powered by fossil fuel. Then there are the tracts of pristine forests that are cut down to grow biofuel crops. This results in the loss of natural "carbon sinks" that are invaluable in the fight against climate change. In short, biofuels are not the universal panacea that some people believe them to be.

What can we use biofuels for?

Biofuels are mainly used for transport. This is important in the fight against climate change because, worldwide, transport accounts for something like 20 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions.

Carbon dioxide emissions from transport are also experiencing the highest growth of any energy-intensive sector. By 2030, it is predicted that carbon emissions from transport will be 80 per cent higher than current levels. So biofuels are seen as a critical element in the fight to offset these expected increases.

Biofuels can come in one of three varieties. The first is bioethanol, or alcohol, which is usually produced by the fermentation of sugars. The second is biodiesel produced from processing plant oils and the third is synthetic biofuels, which result in fuels identical to petrol, diesel and even aviation fuel.

What has gone wrong with the biofuel dream?

People have failed to look at the overall costs and benefits from the complete production process, from "farm to forecourt". This is sometimes known as life-cycle assessment and it involves taking into account all aspects of the carbon budget from one end of the production process to the other. When this is done, the simple assumptions that politicians and some environmentalists have made about the benefits begin to look hopelessly optimistic.

Take for example biofuels made from maize (in the US way) and from sugar (in the Brazilian way). The Worldwatch Institute estimates that the reductions in greenhouse gases on a life-cycle assessment resulting from ethanol produced in Brazil is about 80 per cent, compared with just 10 per cent from ethanol made from intensively-farmed maize in the US.

But the problem is not just about the efficiency of biofuel production. Britain will never be self-sufficient in biofuel and so other parts of the world will be expected to set aside land and water to supplement our needs. This has led to a growth in non-food crops in parts of the world where millions already go hungry. It has also put pressure on wildlife as forests are cut down to clear land for biofuel crops.

What can be done to retrieve the situation?

The Royal Society believes that current policy frameworks on biofuels in the EU and elsewhere must be changed so they encourage an overall reduction of greenhouse gases rather than being aimed simply at reducing reliance on imported oil. "As a result, there is no incentive to invest in the systems that would deliver low GHG [greenhouse gas] biofuels," says its report. Britain should, it says, set its own targets on reducing greenhouse gas emissions with biofuels – something that is not currently done with the Government's Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation, which comes into force this April.

So are biofuels good or bad for the environment?

The right sort of biofuel crops, grown in the right way and in the right place can be better for the environment in the longer term than burning fossil fuels. However, there are many things that can be overlooked and, in order to answer the question, people need to assess the entire life cycle of the production process, including its impact on local people and wildlife.

Is it right to set targets for biofuel use?

Yes...

* Without targets, there is nothing to aim for in terms of making biofuels compete with fossil fuels

* It would be impossible to quantify improvements in biofuel production without targets

* Targets stimulate ways of making biofuel even better for the environment

No...

* Targets emphasise short-term benefits at the expense of long-term gains

* Existing targets are aimed at reducing reliance on imported oil rather than lowering greenhouse gases

* There is no benefit in setting targets that are not met, or are not met everywhere in the world

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Anti-whalers detained on Japanese ship

Michael Perry, Reuters 15 Jan 08;

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Two anti-whaling activists were "taken hostage" and tied to a radar mast of a Japanese whaling vessel in the Southern Ocean on Tuesday, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said.

Australian Benjamin Potts and Briton Giles Lane, from the Sea Shepherd vessel Steve Irwin, had boarded the Japanese whaling ship Yashin Maru No. 2 to hand the captain a letter advising that the crew was "illegally killing whales," said the militant anti-whaling group.

"They were successful in delivering the message, but then they were not allowed to leave and return back to our vessel," Sea Shepherd spokeswoman Christine Vasic told local media.

"The Yushin Maru is now still moving ahead away from us and not responding to radio contact," she said.

Japan's Institute for Cetacean Research confirmed that the two men had been detained and were being held in a locked room on the whaling ship, but denied they were tied up.

"Any accusations that we have tied them up or assaulted them are completely untrue," the Institute's director-general, Minoru Morimoto, said in a statement posted on its Web site.

"It is illegal to board another country's vessels on the high seas. As a result, at this stage, they are being held in custody while decisions are made on their future," he said.

"The two boarded the Yushin Maru No. 2 after they made attempts to entangle the screw of the vessel using ropes and throwing bottles of acid onto the decks."

The Sea Shepherd group called on Australia and Britain to demand the immediate release of the two crew members.

The anti-whaling group had been searching for the Japanese whaling fleet in Antarctic waters and said it had discovered five whaling ships on Tuesday and started pursuing them.

"We will hound these poachers for as long as we can and when we catch up with them we will disable their equipment and do everything physically possible short of inflicting injury on the crew in order to stop their illegal activities," Steve Irwin captain Paul Watson said in a statement.

Watson last year threatened to ram the Japanese flagship and collided with a whale hunter.

COURT CASE

Environmental group Greenpeace, which has distanced itself from Sea Shepherd's more confrontational tactics, said on Monday it had chased the flagship of Japan's whaling fleet from hunting grounds near Antarctica.

An Australian fisheries ship is searching for the fleet to gather photographic evidence for an international court case aimed at stopping Japan's annual "scientific" hunt.

In a purely symbolic act, but one that could inflame bilateral ties, an Australian court ruled on Tuesday that a Japanese whaling company broke environment laws by killing whales in Australia's Antarctic waters.

But the Federal Court of Australia has no jurisdiction outside Australia and the Japanese government denied the whalers were doing anything illegal.

"According to the International Whaling Commission, what the Japanese whaling fleet is doing in the South Pacific and Antarctic region is legal," said Tomohiko Taniguchi, a spokesman at Japan's Foreign Ministry. An official at Japan's Fisheries Ministry declined to comment.

Japan plans to hunt almost 1,000 minke and fin whales for research over the Antarctic summer, but has abandoned the cull of 50 humpback whales after international condemnation and a formal diplomatic protest by 31 nations.

Humane Society International (HSI) launched legal action against Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha Ltd in 2004, seeking a federal court injunction against harvesting in the Australian Whale Sanctuary.

Federal court Judge Jim Allsop ruled on Tuesday the whaler had "killed, injured, taken and interfered with Antarctic minke whales and fin whales and injured, taken and interfered with humpback whales in the Australian Whale Sanctuary in contravention of...the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act."

But the judge conceded there was little chance his ruling could be enforced.

Japan has long resisted pressure to stop scientific whaling, insisting whaling is a cherished cultural tradition. Its fleet has killed 7,000 Antarctic minkes over the past 20 years.

(Additional reporting by Isabel Reynolds in Tokyo; Editing by Alex Richardson)

Japanese harpoon ship captures UK protester
Julian Ryall, The Telegraph 15 Jan 08;

Japanese whalers have captured two environmental campaigners, including a Briton, and are holding them on one of their harpoon vessels in waters just off Antarctica.

Giles Lane, 36, from Cuckfield in West Sussex, and Australian national Benjamin Potts have been held by the crew of the Yushin Maru No 2 since 6.30pm Tuesday local time (7.30am UK time), according to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

Sea Shepherd staff claim the men had been tied to the radar mast of the Japanese ship but the Japanese Whaling Association denied this.

The environmental group's vessel M/Y Steve Irwin has been shadowing the six-strong Japanese fleet for three days and, along with the Greenpeace ship Esperanza, had forced the whalers to leave their hunting grounds off Antarctica.

"They have been out there for a couple of hours already and it's freezing," said Jonny Vasic, international director of Sea Shepherd's operations, based in Melbourne.
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"It does not get really dark that far south at this time of year, but the wind will be getting to them and it will be very uncomfortable."

The two men are wearing one-piece luminous protective suits, but that will only protect from the elements for so long, Mr Vasic said.

"Their hands will be freezing and this is dangerous."

Mr Lane and Mr Potts took an inflatable craft from the Sea Shepherd to board the vessel carrying a letter that informed the captain that he was illegally killing whales in the Southern Whale Sanctuary, declared by Australia. The two men were allowed on board and not allowed to leave.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has informed the Australian Federal Police, and contacted the British Consul General in Canberra to inform officials that a UK national is being held against his will.

In the Federal Court in Sydney earlier Tuesday, Judge James Allsop banned Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha Ltd., the company that carries out the whale hunting, from operating within an area of the southern Pacific that Australia has declared to be a wildlife sanctuary.

Japan has stated that it will ignore any injunction against its whalers. In Tokyo, Makoto Ito, a spokesman for the Japan Whaling Association, confirmed that the two men were aboard the Yushin Maru but denied that they had been tied to a mast.

"It is a fact that none of the crew of the Sea Shepherd have been bound to the radar mast," he said.

"This is just propaganda by Sea Shepherd. I believe the two men are on the boat but we cannot give further details at this time.

"Sea Shepherd has been harassing our research vessels, but no-one is bound to the mast of the Yushin Maru."

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GM to make biofuel out of garbage

Reuters 14 Jan 08;

General Motors Corp. is planning on making biofuel with garbage at a cost of less than a dollar a gallon, the company's chief has said.

The US automaker has entered into a partnership with Illinois-based Coskata Inc. which has developed a way to make ethanol from practically any renewable source, including old tires and plant waste.

The process is a significant improvement over corn-base ethanol because it uses far less water and energy and does not divert food into fuel.

"We are very excited about what this breakthrough will mean to the viability of biofuels and, more importantly, to our ability to reduce dependence on petroleum," said Rick Wagoner, GM's chief executive officer, on Sunday.

GM, which was late in introducing gas-electric hybrids, is the industry leader in flex-fuel vehicles that can run on gasoline blended with up to 85 percent ethanol.

It is currently producing more than a million flex-fuel vehicles a year globally and is committed to making half its production flex-fuel by 2012.

It is also introducing 16 new hybrid vehicles over the next four years, including a plug-in hybrid which can run on electricity alone, and will soon have the world's largest fuel-cell test fleet when it delivers more than 100 Chevy Equinox fuel cell vehicles to customers in the United States, Europe and Japan.

But while these may be the vehicles of the future, flex-fuel is the best "interim" solution as it will take 12 years to replace most of the vehicles currently on the road, Wagoner told reporters at the Detroit auto show.

"There is no question in my mind that making ethanol more widely available is absolutely the most effective and environmentally sound solution," Wagoner said. "And it's one that can be acted on immediately."

Coskata's first pilot plant will be up and running in the fourth quarter of 2008 and the fuel will be used on GM test vehicles.

"We will have our first commercial-scale plant making 50 to 100 million gallons of ethanol running in 2011," said Coskata chief Bill Roe.

The prestigious Argonne National Laboratory analyzed Coskata's process and found it generates up to 7.7 times the amount of energy used and reduces CO2 emissions by up to 84 percent compared with a well-to-wheel analysis of gasoline.

The process also uses less than a gallon of water to make a gallon of ethanol compared to three gallons or more for other processes.

President George W. Bush's energy policy includes plans to increase the consumption of biofuels from 7.5 billion gallons in 2012 to 36 billion gallons in 2022.

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Nepal to run breeding centre to save vultures

Reuters 15 Jan 08;

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Nepal will open its first vulture breeding centre to try to save the birds from extinction, a leading conservation group said on Tuesday.

Of the eight species of vultures found in Nepal, the white-rumped and slender-billed vultures are categorized as critically endangered.

The numbers of both species have plunged in Nepal and India and scientists say the decline is largely due to farmers dosing their cattle with diclofenac, a drug used to treat inflammation, poisoning the scavenging birds.

The plan is to capture at least 10 breeding pairs of vultures for each of the critically endangered species and keep them initially in two aviaries at Kasara in Chitwan National Park, said Dev Ghimire, an official with Bird Conservation Nepal.

The park, located 80 km (50 miles) southwest of Katmandu, is popular for its rare Asian rhinoceroses.

"This is just a beginning and more pairs will be subsequently trapped and released," Ghimire said. "It is a very important project and needs long-term commitment."

Conservationists estimate the number of vultures in Nepal to have dropped to about 500 nesting pairs from 50,000 in 1990, primarily from eating dead cattle treated with diclofenac.

Bird Conservation Nepal has already set up a separate feeding centre west of Chitwan for white-rumped and slender-billed vultures offering them chemical-free carcasses.

The number of vultures at the centre has risen since the complex was opened last year.

Birds for the breeding program are to be caught in the wild from March during the breeding season when it is easy to trap them.

"We can use the techniques and expertise applied by conservationists in India which also has vulture breeding centers," he said.

"But it will take at least three or four years before we can expect to release the young birds bred at the centre into the wild."

(Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Editing by Krittivas Mukherjee and David Fogarty)

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Plague a growing but overlooked threat: study

Michael Kahn, Reuters 14 Jan 08;

Plague, the disease that devastated medieval Europe, is re-emerging worldwide and poses a growing but overlooked threat, researchers warned on Tuesday.

While it has only killed some 100 to 200 people annually over the past 20 years, plague has appeared in new countries in recent decades and is now shifting into Africa, Michael Begon, an ecologist at the University of Liverpool and colleagues said.

A bacterium known as Yersinia pestis causes bubonic plague, known in medieval times as the Black Death when it was spread by infected fleas, and the more dangerous pneumonic plague, spread from one person to another through coughing or sneezing.

"Although the number of human cases of plague is relatively low, it would be a mistake to overlook its threat to humanity, because of the disease's inherent communicability, rapid spread, rapid clinical course, and high mortality if left untreated," they wrote in the journal Public Library of Science journal PloS Medicine.

Rodents carry plague, which is virtually impossible to wipe out and moves through the animal world as a constant threat to humans, Begon said. Both forms can kill within days if not treated with antibiotics.

"You can't realistically get rid of all the rodents in the world," he said in a telephone interview. "Plague appears to be on the increase, and for the first time there have been major outbreaks in Africa."

Globally the World Health Organization reports about 1,000 to 3,000 plague cases each year, with most in the last five years occurring in Madagascar, Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The United States sees about 10 to 20 cases each year.

More worrying are outbreaks seem on the rise after years of relative inactivity in the 20th century, Begon said. The most recent large pneumonic outbreak comprised hundreds of suspected cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2006.

Bubonic plague, called the Black Death because of black bumps that sometimes develop on victims' bodies, causes severe vomiting and high fever. Victims of pneumonic plague have similar symptoms but not the black bumps.

Begon and his colleagues called for more research into better ways to prevent plague from striking areas where people lack access to life-saving drugs and to defend against the disease if used as a weapon.

"We should not overlook the fact that plague has been weaponized throughout history, from catapulting corpses over city walls, to dropping infected fleas from airplanes, to refined modern aerosol formulation," the researchers wrote. (Reporting by Michael Kahn; Editing by Maggie Fox and Ibon Villelabeitia)

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Beetles may wipe out Colorado lodgepole pines: "not cold enough"

Ivan Morena, Associated Press 14 Jan 08;

Susan Gray, group leader for forest health management with the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Region, said only 20-below-zero temperatures for a sustained period can kill the beetles.

Strands of distressed, red pine trees across northern Colorado and the Front Range are a visible testament to the bark beetle infestation that officials said will kill most of the state's lodgepole pine trees within 5 years.

The infestation that was first detected in 1996 grew by half-million acres last year, bringing the total number of acres attacked by bark beetles to 1.5 million, state and federal forestry officials said Monday.

"This is an unprecedented event," said Rick Cables, Rocky Mountain regional forester for the U.S. Forest Service.

The fire potential will increase as trees retain their needles for a couple of years after beetles attack, said Bob Kane, regional entimologist with the Rocky Mountain Region of the U.S. Forest Service. When the needles fall, the danger will decrease, and spike again when the trees fall in about 10 years, Kane said.

Officials said the infestation has been concentrated in five northern Colorado counties straddling the Continental Divide and has since spread to the Front Range and southern Wyoming. The counties affected are Boulder, Chaffee, Clear Creek, Gilpin, Lake and Larimer counties.

Boulder and Larimer counties, both east of the divide, had a 1,500 percent increase in the number of acres taken over by the beetles last year, which are preying on the tall, slender lodgepoles left vulnerable by warm winters and drought.

About 8 percent of forest landscape in Colorado are lodgepoles, said Ingrid Aguayo, forest entimologist with the Colorado State Forest Service. Aguayo said the epidemic doesn't mean it's the end for lodgepoles, but rather part of the regeneration process.

"A lot of people think this is the end of the forest, but as an entimologist, I see it as the beginning," she said, pointing out seedlings about five inches tall are already sprouting in parts where the beetles have run their course.

"It's not going to be a moon landscape like a lot of people think," she said.

In some cases entire mountainsides can be turned red as trees struggle to survive the infestation, affecting the scenic vistas along stretches of mountain highways. Eventually the trees will turn grey after the needles fall, Kane said.

It could be up to 50 years before lodgepoles return to their population before the bark beetle infestation, Aguayo said.

Jim Maxwell, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service, said the lack of trees will increase the water supply by 30 percent on National Forest Lands for about 20 years because trees will no longer be pumping water out of the soil.

Susan Gray, group leader for forest health management with the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Region, said only 20-below-zero temperatures for a sustained period can kill the beetles.

"Unfortunately, it hasn't been cold enough long enough," she said.

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Antarctica lost more ice in last 10 years: study

Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters 14 Jan 08;

Antarctica's contribution to global sea level rise was about 0.02 inch in 2006, compared to about 0.01 inch in 1996.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Antarctica lost billions of tons of ice over the last decade, contributing to the rising seas around the world, a climate researcher said on Monday.

The ice melted from two particular parts of the southern continent, according to Eric Rignot and colleagues, who wrote about the phenomenon in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Using satellites to monitor most of Antarctica's coastline, the scientists estimate that West Antarctica lost 132 billion tons of ice in 2006, compared to about 83 billion tons in 1996. The Antarctic Peninsula, which stretches toward South America, lost about 60 billion tons in 2006.

To put this in perspective, 4 billion tons of ice would be enough to provide drinking water to the more than 60 million people of the United Kingdom for a year, fellow author Jonathan Bamber of the University of Bristol said in a statement.

This ice loss is not from the so-called ice sheets that cover the water around the continent. This melting occurred in the glaciers that cover much of the Antarctic land mass, and when that melts, it contributes to sea level rise in a way that sea ice does not.

"One immediate consequence (of the melting Antarctic ice) is to raise sea level," Rignot, of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in an e-mail interview. Antarctica's contribution to global sea level rise was about 0.02 inch in 2006, compared to about 0.01 inch in 1996.

Rignot noted that the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change figured Antarctica would not contribute at all to sea level rise, and in fact predicted a growth of the big ice sheet the covers much of the continent from enhanced precipitation.

This prediction was supposed to come from increased evaporation from the oceans as the planet warmed up, but this has not been observed so far in Antarctica, Rignot said.

"In some regions the ice sheet is close to warm sources of water. ... The parts of Antarctica we are seeing change right now are closest to these heat sources," he said.

These findings are in line with what is happening to the Greenland ice sheet, which melted at a record rate last year, and with studies of Arctic sea ice, which ebbed to its lowest level ever measured in 2007.

A study last week by researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder found that older, thicker Arctic sea ice that lasts from year to year is giving way to younger, thinner sea ice that is more susceptible to melting.

(Editing by Jackie Frank)

Loss of Antarctic ice has soared by 75 per cent in just 10 years
Steve Connor, The Independent 14 Jan 08;

Parts of the ice sheets covering Antarctica are melting faster than predicted, with the net loss of ice probably accelerating in recent years because of global warming, a study has found.

A satellite survey between 1996 and 2006 found that the net loss of ice from Antarctica rose by about 75 per cent as the movement of glaciers towards the sea speeded up.

Scientists estimate that that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet lost about 132 billion tons of ice in 2006, compared with a loss of 83 billion tons in 1996. In addition, the Antarctic peninsula lost about 60 billion tons of ice in 2006.

"To put these figures into perspective, 4 billion tons of ice is enough to provide drinking water for the whole UK population for one year," said Professor Jonathan Bamber, of the University of Bristol. "We think the glaciers of the Antarctic are moving faster to the sea. The computer models of future sea-level rise have not really taken this into account."

Sea levels are estimated to have risen by 1.8mm a year on average during the 20th century, but data from the past decade or so suggest that the average rise is now about 3.4 mm per year.

Computer models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which predict that sea levels will rise by no more than about 50cm by 2100, are based largely on the stability of the Antarctic ice sheets. But many scientists now believe this forecast is too restrained. "I agree with a number of scientists who feel the IPCC is likely to have underestimated the upper bound of predicted sea-level rise by the end of the century – 50 cm is probably too conservative," Professor Bamber added.

There are two key factors in estimating the net loss of Antarctic ice. The first is the flow of glaciers towards the sea; the second is the build-up of snow over the vast landmass of the frozen continent. The IPCC models imply that global warming will increase the moisture content of the atmosphere and so may actually increase snowfall over Antarctica, much of which is too cold to be affected by rising global temperatures. This would suggest a net build-up of ice. However, Professor Bamber believes the IPCC's models have not taken into account the complex, dynamic interaction between the ocean and the ice shelves of West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula, which are warmer than East Antarctica.

Eric Rignot, who led the latest study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, said the findings indicated a rapid loss of ice to the sea rather than a net gain. "We have determined that the loss is increasing with time, quite rapidly at 75 per cent in ten years," Dr Rignot said. "We have also established that most of this loss, if not its entirety, is caused by glacier acceleration. The IPCC focussed on the surface mass balance component. We find this component is not indicative of the true mass balance."

The acceleration in ice loss over the past 10 years could increase in coming decades, he added. "As some of these glaciers reach deeper beds, their speeds could double or triple, in which case the contribution to sea-level rise from Antarctica could increase quite significantly beyond what it is now. Many people suspect Antarctic ice to be immune from changes. We are finding this is not the case.

"The future is the big question. The potential exists for ice speed to increase two or three times, which will result in a doubling of the mass deficit from Antarctica."

Melting into history

* July 1985: UK scientists detect hole in ozone layer

* January 1995: Larsen A ice shelf disintegrates

* July 1998: Evidence suggests future collapse of West Antarctic ice sheet

* March 2000: An iceberg 183 miles long and 22 miles wide breaks adrift

* February 2002: Larsen B ice shelf collapses

* October 2003: World's largest iceberg splits

* March 2006: Research shows shrinking ice has raised sea levels by 1.2mm

* September 2007: Sea ice covering Antarctica melts back to record low

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China warns of faulty dams danger, plans repairs

Reuters 15 Jan 08;

BEIJING (Reuters) - Just under half of China's nearly 90,000 dams are dangerously unstable and need urgent repair, the government said on Tuesday, unveiling a three-year plan to do just that costing 27 billion yuan ($3.7 billion).

"Over the last several years, dams have had a very important effect on socio-economic development," Deputy Water Resources Minister Jiao Yong told a meeting carried live on central government Web site www.gov.cn.

"But many of these dams were built between the 1950s and 1970s, under conditions at the time which restricted objectivity," he added.

"The design and construction quality of many of these dams contain congenital deficiencies, and they are now old and in serious need of repairs. A large number have hidden dangers."

Chairman Mao Zedong, who died in 1976, ordered the country to develop at any cost, putting special emphasis on large-scale projects such as steelworks and dams.

Mao declared "man must conquer nature," and during his time in power engineers were feted for ambitious projects that sought to remold the landscape in pursuit of economic progress.

But many projects were hastily and poorly built, with little regard for the environment. In 1975, tens of thousands of residents of Henan province in central China died after two dams collapsed. That disaster was revealed to the public only in recent years.

Jiao said that of the roughly 87,000 dams in China, more than 37,000 were in a dangerous state.

"As the global climate heats up, weather extremes like torrential rain increases and as society and the economy develops downstream of dams, the potential danger gets greater and greater," he said.

"The huge number of dangerous dams has already become a weak link and unstable factor in flood prevention," Jiao said.

Vice Premier Hui Liangyu added that over the next three years the government would spend an annual average of more than 9 billion yuan to fix the problem.

"The task is very arduous, and work highly strenuous," Hui said.

($1=7.244 Yuan)

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; editing by Roger Crabb)

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