Rising food prices a clear and present danger for Asia

Straits Times 8 Apr 08;

Economist warns: If left unchecked, inflation could lead to series of problems
TOKYO - FORGET Bear Stearns. Ignore what Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and United States Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson are up to. Take your attention away from which hedge fund is about to blow up. Think about rice.

The price increase of rice - the staple food for about three billion people - to a record last week is the real crisis in the fastest-growing region.

That's not all. 'Food is just the tip of the iceberg,' says Mr Ifzal Ali, chief economist at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in Manila. 'We see signs of overheating emerging everywhere in Asia.'

There are two other forces behind Asia's inflation surge, both of which have been building for years. One is asset-price gains that have their roots in low-interest-rate policies from Washington to Tokyo. The other is wages as Asians command higher pay and companies encounter skilled-labour shortages.

It's a kind of horror scenario. Yet what is most noteworthy about it is how surprised many investors and economists are.

Given how the Bank of Japan and the US Federal Reserve have trimmed interest rates over a number of years, these price trends were predictable.

Ditto for Asia's build-up of currency reserves, which are seeping into the money supply.

Also, given Asia's rapid growth, it stands to reason that wages would be rising. The ADB says Asian inflation may reach the highest in a decade this year.

What may surprise many is how rising food prices are less of a cyclical phenomenon than a secular one. For economists like Mr Ali, who have been warning about this for years, it is disheartening to see so little focus on increasing investments in agriculture techniques and technologies.

'The party with high growth and low inflation, the age of innocence, is over,' Mr Ali says. 'Governments now need to buckle down if they are to be able to fly higher again in the future. If this trend isn't arrested and reversed, it could well lead to the end of poverty reduction in Asia.'

Strong words, indeed. And yet, today's bout with inflation could markedly set back a region that has spent 10 years recovering from the Asian crisis. Central banks will have little choice but to raise interest rates, a dynamic that would slow growth and hurt equity markets.

Governments are in for a rougher time. The rise in commodities since the start of the decade has been largely masked by subsidies and export controls. That is becoming too expensive now as prices soar and leaders have a grim choice to make: vastly increase debt levels or let the public bear the brunt.

Food costs alone are a clear and present danger. In many Asian countries, Mr Ali says, food and edible oils account for 60 per cent of the consumer price index (CPI). Even before recent increases, Asian families on average shelled out 50 per cent of income on food. That portion is rising now.

Economists in the US and Europe often focus on 'core' inflation, which excludes food and energy. That's impossible in developing Asian economies. Looking at core CPI only masks what Mr Ali calls a 'pauperising effect' knocking back hard-won gains in living standards.

And then there are what he calls 'speed bumps to growth' that are fuelling inflation. Big increases in prices of everything from cement to steel will complicate Asia's need to improve roads, bridges, ports and telecommunications. It is an odd twist of fate that in improving infrastructure to restrain inflation, all that building activity could further fuel it.

'This inflation issue has a direct impact on basic well-being,' Mr Ali says. 'That's why it is so politically and socially explosive.'

BLOOMBERG NEWS

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Switch to LPG, Indonesians urged

Straits Times 7 Apr 08;

JAKARTA - INDONESIAN President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has asked people to switch from kerosene to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) as part of efforts to save the state budget amidst surging global oil prices.

People who were willing to use LPG were 'heroes', the President said during an interaction on Sunday with residents of Cempaka Baru in Central Jakarta, the Antara news agency reported.

He said the government would continue to intensify the implementation of the kerosene-to-gas conversion programme to reduce the fuel subsidy.

Global crude prices are hovering above US$100 (S$138 ) a barrel, well above the assumed oil price in the 2008 state budget.

The government is still subsidising certain types of fuel, and the surge in global oil prices is weighing down the state budget. The use of gas is expected to reduce the burden on the budget.

Dr Yudhoyono was quoted by Antara as saying that the use of gas was more economical and environment-friendly than using kerosene.

Jakarta governor Fauzi Bowo said nearly 95 per cent of low-income households in the capital had received free gas cylinders distributed under the kerosene-to-gas conversion programme.

SBY: Help the government, use LPG
Today Online 8 Apr 08;

JAKARTA — President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Sunday asked Indonesians to switch from kerosene to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) as part of efforts to prevent the state budget from ballooning amid surging oil prices, state media reported.

The people who were willing to use LPG were "heroes", the President said at a dialogue with residents in Central Jakarta, according to Antara news agency.

The Indonesian government is still subsidising certain types of fuel and this has put a burden on the state budget. Global crude prices are hovering above US$100 a barrel, well above the assumed oil price in the 2008 state budget.

The President said the government would continue to intensify the implementation of the kerosene-to-LPG conversion programme to reduce the cost of fuel subsidy. This would ease some of the burden from the state budget.

Besides, LPG is more economical and environment-friendly than kerosene, he said.

Since the programme was launched in Jakarta, the use of kerosene in the capital plunged six-fold to 600,000 kilolitres from 3.6 million kilolitres, SBY said.

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Bizarre Frog discovered in Borneo Has No Lungs

Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience.com Yahoo News 7 Apr 08;

The first lungless frog has been discovered lurking in the jungles of Borneo.

The enigmatic amphibian, dubbed Barbourula kalimantanensis, apparently gets all the oxygen it needs through its skin.

Scientists first saw one of these frogs 30 years ago, but due to their rarity, just one other specimen had been collected since then and neither had been dissected.

"No one thought to open them up - there was no real reason to believe that they could be lungless," said researcher David Bickford, an evolutionary biologist at the National University of Singapore. "Because these specimens were so rare, they had never been dissected. If you have just one specimen in your museum, you don't want to rip it open!"


The amphibians, no more than 2 inches long, have proven elusive because they live in cold, fast rivers in remote areas of the rainforests of Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo. Also, they are slippery "and can be surprisingly fast for short bursts," Bickford said. "We had a team of 11 people looking for these frogs and it took us almost two weeks before we found any."

He and his colleagues had no idea this frog would be lungless.

"I was just going to be happy if we simply rediscovered the frogs," Bickford said. "It had been 30 years of intermittent searching for this frog until we could put together a multinational team and get to the last remaining areas where it could realistically be found."

Frigid snorkeling for frogs

As Bickford and his colleagues went snorkeling in the rivers where the frogs live, the water proved so cold that "after just 45 minutes of snorkeling, I would have to stop because I was shaking uncontrollably, my lips were blue, and my breathing became too labored to actually snorkel effectively," Bickford told LiveScience. "This is lowland rain forest in Borneo, just off the equator, and I had hypothermia! That certainly was something I was not entirely prepared for."

"There are so many difficulties in field work, and yet it remains my biggest joy," Bickford added. "Having the undeniable privilege of going out to these remote sites, seeing some of the last and greatest treasures that exist in the wild, and then getting to study them - well, every day I feel lucky."

As the researchers were doing initial dissections of the frogs as they caught them in the field, they were surprised to discover these amphibians lacked lungs.

"At first I did not believe that the frogs had no lungs, but then, we just kept on seeing the evidence pile up. I was flabbergasted," Bickford said.

"The thing that struck me most then and now is that there are still major firsts - for example, first lungless frog! - to be found out in the field," Bickford added. "All you have to do is go a little ways beyond what people have done before, and - voila!"

Other organ weirdness

It appears that the rest of the internal organs in these frogs have shifted position to take up the space once filled by the lungs. "So we had the stomach, spleen and the liver up in the area where lungs are normally found," Bickford said. "Interestingly, we also discovered some abnormal cartilage around the area where the lungs should have been that we are still investigating."

The loss of lungs helped the frogs severely flatten their bodies. This in turn increased the surface area of their skin, which helps them absorb oxygen.

The researchers conjecture the loss of lungs might be an adaptation to the cold, fast rivers the frogs live in. Such waters naturally have high oxygen content. Also, the frogs would rather sink than float and get carried away in the water, so getting rid of lungs, which behave as flotation devices, would prove helpful.

Amphibians are also cold-blooded, "so their inherent energy requirements are very small - roughly 10 percent that of a similar sized mammal," Bickford said. "If you don't need as much oxygen anyhow, it might be easier to change, to lose lungs as the primary respiration organ."

More lungless animals

The family of frogs this novel amphibian belongs to ranks among one of the most primitive, if not the most primitive. The more primitive lineages could have an easier time switching to lunglessness, but "at this stage this is all conjecture," Bickford said.

The loss of lungs has been known to occur two other times in all the creatures with backbones that have waddled onto land across geologic time. Each time this loss has happened in amphibians - in a species of caecilian, a limbless beast resembling an earthworm, and in many species of salamanders. How and why this change evolved in these animals has been long debated, and the new frog could shed light on this curious phenomenon.

The closest relative of this frog, which dwells in the Philippines, has lungs.

"This basically means we know where the evolutionary change occurred and we roughly know when it could have happened - not before those two species split," Bickford said. "These are actually really important when you need to find out about how something evolves - context and timing. Specifically, we will need to do some comparative studies between the Borneo species and the Philippine species to help us understand the ecological, developmental and genetic mechanisms for this exciting evolutionary event."

Conservation challenge

Much remains unknown about these amphibians.

"We don't even know what they eat, although we have some good guesses from two full stomachs," Bickford said. "How do they locate and attract mates? What do their eggs look like? Do they even lay eggs, or do they have a more derived mode of reproduction where the eggs directly develop into small frogs? Do they have tadpoles? What are their habitat requirements? How many are left?"

The rarity of this frog could hamper further studies into it, Bickford added. The amphibian could become even more rare, given the increasing damage to its environment as the result of toxic metals used in mining and other unfortunate consequences of development on the island.

"The once cool and clear streams have mostly turned murky and warm, contaminated with human pollutants, run-off from agriculture and mercury from the gold mining," Bickford said. "This is an endangered frog that we know practically nothing about, with an amazing ability to breathe entirely through its skin, whose future is being destroyed by illegal gold mining by people who are marginalized and have no other means of supporting themselves. There are no simple answers to this problem."

One of the primary goals of the researchers now is to garner more support for conserving the last remaining wild spots in Borneo, "and I think we have a flagship species in these lungless frogs," Bickford said. "There is so much we do not understand about nature and at least part of the reason to protect it is to protect our own futures."

Bickford and his colleagues Djoko Iskandar and Anggraini Barlian will detail their findings in the journal Current Biology.

First Lungless Frog Found
John Roach, National Geographic News 7 Apr 08;

The first recorded species of frog that breathes without lungs has been found in a clear, cold-water stream on the island of Borneo in Indonesia.

The frog, named Barbourula kalimantanensis, gets all its oxygen through its skin.

"Nobody knew about the lunglessness before we accidentally discovered it doing routine dissections," study lead author David Bickford, a biologist at the National University of Singapore, said in an email.

His colleague Djoko Iskandar at the Bandung Institute of Technology in Indonesia first discovered two specimens of the frog in 1978.

"Each specimen was deemed so valuable that scientists did not want to sacrifice the animals for dissection," Bickford said.

But the biologist immediately partially dissected several frogs when he found the species on a recent expedition to Borneo.

The team describes the peculiar frog in the May 6 issue of the journal Current Biology.

(Read about other new species found in Borneo.)

Evolutionary Oddity

Previously the only four-limbed creatures known to lack lungs were salamanders.

A species of earthwormlike, limbless amphibian called a caecilian is also lungless.

Tetrapods, or four-limbed creatures, that develop without lungs are rare evolutionary events, Bickford and colleagues write.

The trait in amphibians is likely an adaptation to life between water and land and their ability to respire through the skin.

The researchers suggest lunglessness in B. kalimantanensis may be an adaptation to the higher oxygen content in fast-flowing, cold water.

"Cold water can hold more dissolved oxygen than warm water," Bickford explained.

The frog also has a low metabolic rate, which means it needs less oxygen.

What's more, the species is severely flat compared to other frogs, which increases the surface area of the skin.

"Along with the fact that having lungs makes you more likely to be swept away in a fast-flowing stream—because you would float—this [is] a very strong context for the evolution of loss of lungs," Bickford said.

Unsurprising Find

David Wake is a biologist and expert in amphibian evolution at the University of California, Berkeley.

He said the finding of a lungless frog is unsurprising since tailed frogs are already known for their greatly reduced lungs.

Wake added that for most amphibians, the majority of gas exchange happens through the skin. A low but significant amount of respiration occurs via simple, sac-like lungs.

Most species, he noted, have mating calls that require lungs.

So biologists are unsure why a few species have entirely gotten rid of the organs, Wake said.

"This species is so rare that we know next to nothing concerning its biology," he wrote in an email. "But it is aquatic and lives in cold streams and doubtless has low basal metabolic rate."

Thus loss of lungs as an adaptation to the cold, fast-flowing water "seems like a rational hypothesis to me," he said.

Rare Frog

Further studies of the frog to test the hypothesis, however, may be hampered by the species' rarity and endangered habitat, according to Bickford and colleagues.

For instance, the frog's cold-stream habitat is being destroyed by illegal gold mining, Bickford said.

The mining activity makes the water cloudy with sediment and contaminates it with mercury.

In addition, much of the surrounding habitat is under threat from legal and illegal logging, which increases runoff into the streams.

"Most of the frog's presumably original range is now completely uninhabitable," Bickford said.

Further threats, he added, may come from changes in temperature and precipitation patterns due to climate change.

"This frog has a grim future and it is entirely our fault," Bickford said.

"It is our responsibility to try and remedy the situation."

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Live animals found in luggage of Malaysian man at Changi Airport

Channel NewsAsia 7 Apr 08;

SINGAPORE: Immigration officers at Changi Airport found 12 frogs, 13 lizards and a clown fish in the luggage of a Malaysian man on Sunday.

X-ray screening showed nothing out of the ordinary, but officers searched his luggage when the man appeared uneasy.

He said the live animals were bought for S$1,300 at Chatuchak Market in Bangkok. He claimed that the frogs were for himself, while the geckos and clown fish were for his friends.

The critters were handed over to the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority for investigation.

For trafficking endangered species, offenders can face a fine of up to S$50,000 for each species, and/or a jail term of up to two years.

For smuggling non-endangered animals, offenders can be fined up to S$1,000 per animal. - CNA/ac

Busted trying to smuggle in geckos, frogs
Lim Wei Chean, Straits Times 8 Apr 08;

GECKOS, clown fish and frogs are not the usual souvenirs travellers bring home after a weekend in Bangkok.

But a 26-year-old Singaporean permanent resident was stopped on Sunday for attempting to smuggle 26 live fish and reptiles into the country.

The Malaysian man was caught at 3.50pm at Changi Airport with one clown fish, 13 geckos, six Madagascan burrowing frogs and six Madagascan climbing frogs, said the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA).

He said he bought the animals for $1,300 from the famous Bangkok weekend market, Chatuchak Market, according to the ICA.

He claimed he bought the frogs for himself and the clown fish and geckos for his friend.

The fish and reptiles failed to appear on X-rays but an ICA statement said the man's nervous behaviour alerted an officer, who then searched his luggage.

The animals have been handed over to the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority.

If they are found to be endangered, the man could be fined $50,000 and jailed two years for each species he tried to import.

If the animals are not endangered, he could still be charged under the Wild Animals and Birds Act and fined $1,000 for each animal.

Over 9,000 living creatures had been found smuggled into Singapore over the last three years.

They include coral, soft-shell turtles, chipmunks, scorpions, centipedes, arowana and hedgehogs.

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Endangered bears find refuge in new Vietnam center

Grant McCool, Reuters 7 Apr 08;

TAM DAO, Vietnam (Reuters) - A furry black bear cub playfully clasps a rubber pet toy between its paws and eats fruit in its new home -- Vietnam's first refuge for bears rescued from abusive traffickers of bile used in traditional medicines.

The bear is one of four 50 kg (110 lb) endangered Asiatic black cubs and two adults that were smuggled either from neighboring Laos or from southern Vietnam in the past seven months, and confiscated by the authorities.

They are now under the care of forestry authorities and international wildlife veterinarians at the Vietnam Bear Rescue Center in Tam Dao National Park, 70km (44 miles) north of Hanoi, which will eventually house 100 bears.

"It reaches across to people, acknowledging that we should be protecting bears for their own sake rather than how they can be benefiting humankind," said Jill Robinson, founder of Animals Asia Foundation, a Hong Kong-based animal welfare charity that is funding the bear rescue center.

"I think that's a very good message that we don't need bears today in traditional Chinese medicine," she said at Monday's opening of a quarantine area for bears, the first phase of the project in the green, forested hills of the park. "There are lots of herbal alternatives and synthetic alternatives too."

It is illegal in Vietnam to extract the bile from bears or to advertise the trade, yet authorities and wildlife groups estimate more than 4,000 "Moon Bears" as they are known for the white crescent mark on their chest, are caged and mistreated in farms across the country.

Tam Dao National Park director Do Dinh Tien said the new center has a role in trying to influence a cultural change in the Southeast Asian country, where wild animals are hunted and animal parts are still widely used in traditional medicines.

"This is a kind of model to educate all people so that they will not abuse the wildlife," said Tien, who noted that illegal deforestation and hunting had reduced the number of wildlife in his country, which has a long list of endangered species.

"It can be a tool to raise awareness about the laws and to enforce them effectively," Tien said.

Communist-run Vietnam has been a signatory to the Convention in International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES, since 1994, but wildlife groups have criticized the country for inconsistent enforcement. (Additional reporting by Nguyen Van Vinh; Editing by Valerie Lee)

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Indonesia failing to stop forest destruction: Greenpeace

Yahoo News 7 Apr 08;

Indonesia is failing to halt the destruction of its peatland forests despite promising to do so during last year's climate change conference in Bali, pressure group Greenpeace said Monday.

Greenpeace said its workers had witnessed two palm oil companies illegally clearing government-owned land on Sumatra island in March.

"Last month, a Greenpeace team revisited an area of Sumatra's Riau province where it had monitored palm oil expansion in 2007, to find that further large tracts of peatland forest had been destroyed inside (areas) which had not been granted permits," the group said.

Indonesia has one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world, driven by voracious demand for commodities and weak law enforcement.

Large swathes of peatland forest are being cleared to make way for the booming palm oil industry.

Emissions from deforestation, and in particular peatland -- which is made up of deep layers of semi-decomposed vegetation -- have made Indonesia the world's third-largest carbon emitter, behind the United States and China.

Greenpeace accused the government of sending out "mixed messages" on palm oil, saying forest destruction had been allowed to continue even though the agriculture minister had called for a halt to any new plantations on peatlands.

"We call on the government to give teeth to their Bali commitment to save the forests and tackle climate change by urgently putting in place measures to regulate the palm oil industry," said Greenpeace campaigner Hapsoro.

Agriculture ministry officials could not be reached for comment.

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Slowing deforestation may be worth billions: study

Alister Doyle, Reuters 7 Apr 08;

OSLO (Reuters) - A slowdown of deforestation from the Amazon to the Congo basin could generate billions of dollars every year for developing nations as part of a U.N. scheme to fight climate change, a study showed on Monday.

Burning of forests by farmers clearing land accounts for 20 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions. A 190-nation U.N. climate conference agreed in Bali, Indonesia, in December to work on ways to reward countries for slowing deforestation.

"Even with quite conservative assumptions, you can generate substantial amounts of money and emissions reductions," said Johannes Ebeling of EcoSecurities in Oxford, England, of a study with Mai Yasue at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

They said a 10 percent decline in the rate of tropical forest loss could generate annual carbon finance for developing nations of between 1.5 billion and 9.1 billion euros ($2.4 to $14.30 billion) assuming carbon prices of 5 to 30 euros a tonne.

Such curbs would represent about 300 million tonnes of avoided carbon dioxide emissions a year -- about the amount of heat-trapping gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels, emitted by Turkey, or half the total of France.

The United Nations wants reduced emissions from deforestation to be part of a new long-term climate treaty beyond 2012 to help avert more droughts, heatwaves, outbreaks of disease and rising seas.

Ebeling told Reuters that any credits for avoided deforestation would have to be matched by tough restrictions elsewhere, for instance forcing coal-fired power plants or cement factories to pay for right to emit carbon dioxide.

BRAZIL

The study, published in the British journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, said there were big challenges in designing a fair system.

So far, most focus in the U.N. debate had been on rewarding countries with high deforestation rates -- such as Brazil and Ecuador -- for slowing the losses.

But nations such as Guyana or Suriname, which have maintained high forest cover, or others like Costa Rica and Chile, which have slowed or reversed deforestation, would gain little.

There were also problems such as judging the rate of deforestation or creating controls to ensure that protecting one forest does not lead to logging or clearance of another.

And some poor countries that could benefit -- such as Liberia or Myanmar -- may simply lack controls needed to regulate land use.

Still, Ebeling said he was optimistic a system could be worked out because of a widening political willingness to address deforestation as part of a new treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2013.

(Editing by Mary Gabriel)

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Car makers try to copy green halo of Prius

Karey Wutkowski, Yahoo News 8 Apr 08;

When Tom Weatherbee swapped his minivan for a Toyota Prius hybrid two years ago, he was mostly hoping to save money at the gas pump.

But he was pleasantly surprised by both the requests from friends for a test drive and the grins its aerodynamic profile drew at the grocery store, and he basked in the attention.

"Even the people who own more expensive cars acknowledge the Prius as being pretty cool," said Weatherbee, 51, an electrical engineer who lives outside Traverse City, Michigan.

That, in a nutshell, is the challenge for Toyota Motor Co as it looks to build on the success of the Prius, the leading hybrid vehicle in the United states, and for rivals such as Honda Motor Co and General Motors Corp, which are seeking a share of the projected boom in greener cars.

Even with U.S. gas prices over $3 a gallon, up 50 percent in three years, marketing experts say U.S. buyers want hybrids that not only reduce fuel consumption and emissions but also make a statement about the driver's commitment to the environment.

The result is one of the biggest challenges to the U.S. auto industry since Detroit figured out how to market the hulking, gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles that dominated the market in the 1990s.

Toyota's Prius, with a list price of $21,100 and fuel consumption of 45 miles per gallon, commanded 51 percent of the U.S. hybrid market in 2007. Now the No. 1 Japanese automaker is considering extending the Prius line-up -- effectively making it a brand on its own.

GM, meanwhile, is focusing on its all-electric Chevrolet Volt in a bid to create its own "halo" car. Although GM will not sell the Volt until at least 2010, it has already started featuring it in TV ads.

GM invited over 200 Volt enthusiasts from all over the United States to the New York auto show to meet with designers and developers, building further buzz among a group of devotees who call themselves the "Volt Nation."

Honda, which beat Toyota to the U.S. market with the Insight hybrid in 1999 but withdrew it in 2006, is planning a more economical hybrid for 2009 that takes aim at the Prius. Honda's Civic hybrid, at $22,600 and with the same fuel consumption as the Prius, is the No. 2 hybrid but was outsold by the Toyota vehicle by more a more than 5-to-1 margin in 2007.

Hybrids, which shift between a battery and a combustion engine to boost fuel economy, made up just 3 percent of U.S. sales in 2007. But growth was 40 percent from the previous year, and there is plenty of room for that to continue, given that they account for just 0.3 percent of registered vehicles. Gas-thirsty SUVs, by contrast, account for more than 14 percent of vehicles on the road.

BUYERS ARE LIARS

Jon Osborn, research director at consulting and research firm J.D. Power & Associates, said automakers must tailor their message to a small but emerging market.

"Only about 6 percent of the U.S. population buys a new car each year," Osborn said. "It's not quite a needle in a haystack, but it's a small target to shoot for."

One complication for car makers has been inaccurate market research. In research groups, car buyers have said they would consider buying a car that looked just like established models, with just a badge on the back to identify it as a hybrid.

But George Peterson, president of consulting firm AutoPacific Inc in Tustin, California, said that is where everyone except for Toyota have missed the mark.

"Our respondents are lying through their teeth," Peterson said.

"The dramatically different look of the Prius is something that's appealing," he said. "The Ford Escape and Toyota Camry hybrid have not been as successful because they don't look as different."

Toyota questions that analysis.

"The buyer is not necessarily trying to make a statement," said Toyota spokeswoman Denise Morrissey. "They're trying to make a smart choice."

Ford Motor Co has also questioned the theory that drivers want a halo with their hybrids by playing up the fact that its Ford Escape hybrid looks the same as a regular Ford Escape SUV. But sales of the hybrid Escape, which costs $26,640 and gets 30 miles per gallon, pale in comparison with the Prius.

Toyota says Prius buyers are equally split between men and women with a median income between $60,000 and $80,000. It markets the Prius on its green credentials. One recent TV ad showed a gas station reduced to the status of a museum visited by tourists in a happy carbon-free future.

A study by J.D. Power released in March found hybrid buyers tend to have higher education levels and much higher income than the average new car buyer. They are also about four years older on average.

Wes Brown, an analyst at Los Angeles-based automotive marketing firm Iceology, said automakers could apply some of the lessons learned in marketing sport utility vehicles in the 1990s to the nascent boom in hybrids.

Brown said it took automakers years to realize that while car buyers were saying they wanted rugged, sporty trucks, what they really wanted was a vehicle that looked rugged and sporty.

SUVs didn't become the dominant vehicle on the road until manufacturers added luxury features and made them drive like cars instead of trucks -- while keeping what Brown calls a "get-the-hell-out-of-my-way" size and shape.

(Reporting by Karey Wutkowski; Editing by Eddie Evans)

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Gore convinced US will sign up to new climate treaty in 2009

Yahoo News 7 Apr 08;

Nobel Peace Prize-winner and former US vice president Al Gore said Monday that he believes Washington will sign up to a new climate change treaty in Copenhagen in 2009.

"The United States will definitely join the next treaty," Gore said at a conference on global warming and rising oceans in the Faroe Islands. "The good news is that after the next (presidential, November 2008) elections, we will have a new politics."

The United States was the only industrialised economy not to sign up to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, but a new deal has to be agreed in Copenhagen to cut greenhouse gas emissions when current commitments end in 2012.

Gore said everything required to make environmental progress was in place, "with a possible exception of political will".

"But we are free people," he added. "Political will is a renewable resource. Never before has our civilisation been at such risk," he told a gathering of transatlantic experts.

"A one-metre (yard) rise in sea-level worldwide would lead to one hundred million climate refugees. Six metres would mean 450 million," he added.

However, Gore said that if emissions were sufficiently cut and if enough people opt to use renewable energy sources, the world's economy would also benefit from more jobs.

Citing the need for China to play its part, he added that "the solution will come when people at the grassroots, mothers and fathers, think about their children (and) demand action".

"I think we are close to that point," he added.

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WHO: Climate change threatens millions

Hrvoje Hranjski, Associated Press Yahoo News 7 Apr 08;

Millions of people could face poverty, disease and hunger as a result of rising temperatures and changing rainfall expected to hit poor countries the hardest, the World Health Organization warned Monday.

Malaria, diarrhea, malnutrition and floods cause an estimated 150,000 deaths annually, with Asia accounting for more than half, said regional WHO Director Shigeru Omi.

Malaria-carrying mosquitoes represent the clearest sign that global warming has begun to impact human health, he said, adding they are now found in cooler climates such as South Korea and the highlands of Papua New Guinea.

Warmer weather means that mosquitoes' breeding cycles are shortening, allowing them to multiply at a much faster rate, posing an even greater threat of disease, he told reporters in Manila.

The exceptionally high number cases in Asia of dengue fever, which is also spread by mosquitoes, could be due to rising temperatures and rainfall, but Omi said more study is needed to establish the connection between climate change and that disease.

"Without urgent action through changes in human lifestyle, the effects of this phenomenon on the global climate system could be abrupt or even irreversible, sparing no country and causing more frequent and more intense heat waves, rain storms, tropical cyclones and surges in sea level," he said.

In the Marshall Islands and South Pacific island nations, rising sea levels have already penetrated low-lying areas, submerging arable land and causing migrations to New Zealand or Australia, he said.

Omi said poorer countries with meager resources and weak health systems will be hit hardest because malnutrition is already widespread, with the young, women and the elderly at particular risk.

He said unusual, unexpected climate patterns — too much rain or too little — will have an impact on food production, especially irrigated crops such as rice, and can cause unemployment, economic upheavals and political unrest.

Dr. John Ehrenberg, WHO adviser on malaria and other parasitic diseases, said unchecked human development has contributed to the problem. That includes deforestation and an unprecedented level of human migration. As people move, so do diseases.

Omi said governments need to strengthen current systems providing clean water, immunizations, disease surveillance, mosquito control and disaster preparedness.

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Earth in crisis, warns NASA's top climate scientist

Rita Farrell Yahoo News 7 Apr 08;

Global warming has plunged the planet into a crisis and the fossil fuel industries are trying to hide the extent of the problem from the public, NASA's top climate scientist says.

"We've already reached the dangerous level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," James Hansen, 67, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, told AFP here.

"But there are ways to solve the problem" of heat-trapping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, which Hansen said has reached the "tipping point" of 385 parts per million.

In a paper he was submitting to Science magazine on Monday, Hansen calls for phasing out all coal-fired plants by 2030, taxing their emissions until then, and banning the building of new plants unless they are designed to trap and segregate the carbon dioxide they emit.

The major obstacle to saving the planet from its inhabitants is not technology, insisted Hansen, named one of the world's 100 most influential people in 2006 by Time magazine.

"The problem is that 90 percent of energy is fossil fuels. And that is such a huge business, it has permeated our government," he maintained.

"What's become clear to me in the past several years is that both the executive branch and the legislative branch are strongly influenced by special fossil fuel interests," he said, referring to the providers of coal, oil and natural gas and the energy industry that burns them.

In a recent survey of what concerns people, global warming ranked 25th.

"The industry is misleading the public and policy makers about the cause of climate change. And that is analogous to what the cigarette manufacturers did. They knew smoking caused cancer, but they hired scientists who said that was not the case."

Hansen says that with an administration and legislature that he believes are "well oiled, our best hope is the judicial branch."

Last year Hansen testified before the US Congress that "interference with communication of science to the public has been greater during the current administration than at any time in my career."

Government public relations officials, he said, filter the facts in science reports to reduce "concern about the relation of climate change to human-made greenhouse gas emissions."

While he recognizes that he has stepped outside the traditional role of scientists as researchers rather than as public policy advocates, he says he does so because "in this particular situation we've reached a crisis."

The policy makers, "the people who need to know are ignorant of the actual status of the matter, and the gravity of the matter, and most important, the urgency of the matter," he charged.

"It's analogous to an engineer who sees that there's a flaw in the space shuttle before it is to be launched. You don't have any choice. You have to say something. That's really all that I'm doing," he explained.

Hansen was in Wilmington to receive a 50,000 dollar Common Wealth Award for outstanding achievement, along with the former prime minister of Australia John Howard, the US actress Glenn Close, and NBC news anchor Ann Curry.

The awards are provided by a trust of the late Ralph Hayes, a former director of Coca Cola and Bank of Delaware, now PNC. In 29 years, 165 former honorees in seven fields have included former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, former US newsman Walter Cronkite, French marine biologist Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Howard, who would not sign the Kyoto protocol when he was in office, told AFP: "I thought it was the right policy at the time because the major emitters" were not on board."

He added: "You need a new Kyoto protocol with all the major emitters committed to it. Then you are cooking with gas."

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Soot Plays Big Role in Global Warming

Andrea Thompson, LiveScience.com Yahoo News 7 Apr 08;

Black carbon, the stuff that gives soot its dirty color, could be the second most important contributor to climate change after carbon dioxide and a key to preventing warming, at least in the short-run, a new study suggests.

Black carbon is a type of aerosol - a small particle suspended in the atmosphere - that is produced in diesel exhaust and when wood, coal or other types of solid fuel are burned.

Like other aerosols, soot particles absorb and scatter the sun's radiation; black carbon is the absorbing component of soot. V. Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California and his colleagues reviewed recent studies of black carbon's warming contribution in the March 24 issue of the journal Nature Geoscience.

They also used data from satellites, aircraft and surface instruments to arrive at their own estimate of just how much warming black carbon causes. Their estimates are well above those in the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and suggest that black carbon has a bigger warming effect than previously thought.

Ramanathan suggests that tackling black carbon emissions might be an effective way to prevent some climate warming in the short term, while ways to battle rising carbon dioxide levels are sorted out.

Brown clouds

Aerosols are generally thought to have a cooling effect because many, such as sulfate droplets, reflect solar radiation that hits the Earth back out into space. Aerosols also act as the nuclei of cloud droplets, which also reflect the sun's radiation. So the more aerosols there are in the atmosphere, the more cloud droplets there are, and in this way aerosols can also indirectly have a cooling effect.

Black carbon can mix with other aerosols to form what are called atmospheric brown clouds, which have been observed in regional hotspots over China, India, Southeast Asia, Africa and parts of Central and South America. These brown clouds absorb incoming solar radiation and prevent it from reaching the surface, warming the atmosphere in the process.

Ramanathan's study found that black carbon had a warming effect of about 0.9 watts per meter squared (the average light bulb in a lamp is about 60 watts, so while this effect is a fraction of the heat from a light bulb, that little heater is widespread - there is effectively one on every square meter, about the area of the top of an office desk, across Earth's surface). The most recent IPCC assessment made a lower estimate of the warming effect, between 0.2 and 0.4 watts per meter squared.

Ramanathan and co-author Greg Carmichael of the University of Iowa said these estimates are conservative because they don't take into account the amplification of black carbon's warming effect that occurs when it mixes with other aerosols and because they don't account for warming differences at different altitudes.

The researchers found a significant warming effect at about 6,500 feet (2 kilometers) altitude, where black carbon absorbs not only sunlight, but the light reflected by clouds at lower altitudes. They say this effect is unaccounted for in model-based estimates used in most studies, meaning that black carbon's actual warming contribution has been underestimated. Its warming impact is more than some greenhouse gases, such as methane, Ramanathan contends.

"Overall, the net effect of the black carbon is to warm the climate system globally," Ramanathan said.

But atmospheric scientist Dorothy Koch of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who was not affiliated with the study, cautioned that the case wasn't that simple: "There's a lot of uncertainty with black carbon and that makes people kind of reluctant to put it on the table with the greenhouse gases," Koch told LiveScience.

Black carbon doesn't stay in the atmosphere for long, which means it might have a high effect in the short term, but greenhouse gases that stay in the atmosphere longer have a bigger long-term impact. There is also uncertainty as to just how much of the black carbon in the atmosphere comes from human activities, Koch said.

"There's a lot of 'ifs' in there before you can definitely say this is an important thing" in terms of global warming," Koch said.

Ramanathan agreed that there is significant uncertainty in just how much warming black carbon causes globally, but said that there is no doubt that it causes some degree of warming. There is also less uncertainty in the amount regional warming it causes, he said.

Ice melt and public health

Because of its warming impact in the atmosphere and the short time it lingers in the air, Ramanathan thinks that black carbon would make a good target to retard warming in the short term. If steps were taken to switch to cleaner energy sources for cooking fires and heating today to reduce black carbon emissions, "it'll be gone right away," Ramanathan said.

In developing countries such as China and India, many people use solid fuels such as wood, coal or cow dung to cook and heat their homes. Unlike the gas and electric ranges found in North America and Europe, these methods produce a lot of soot because the fuel is burned inefficiently at a low temperature.

The key though is to reduce black carbon without reducing other aerosols that have a cooling effect, at least for the time being, Ramanathan said. He is currently trying to get funding for a study that would provide clean fuel sources for cooking and heating to people in rural India and measure the effects on regional air pollution.

Black carbon has other effects besides adding to global warming. It is taken out of the air by rain and snow and can be deposited on ice surfaces. Scientists think it is contributing to ice melt, especially in the Himalayas, because it makes the ice darker so that it absorbs more radiation.

It also poses a public health risk: Previous studies have estimated that 400,000 deaths of women and children from respiratory diseases each year can be attributed to inhaling the smoke from cooking and heating fires that accumulates in poorly ventilated homes.

"How many more reasons can I give you to get rid of it?" Ramanathan told LiveScience.

Koch agreed.

"There's a lot of good reasons to reduce black carbon," she said, adding though that the impact the reduction would have on global warming is uncertain. She says that reducing black carbon should be investigated because it could be a way to reduce some warming in the short term.

Of course, any efforts to reduce black carbon wouldn't mean that we could ignore carbon dioxide, because it lasts much longer in the atmosphere and its effect will continue if its emissions aren't addressed. "We have to get rid of it," Ramanathan said. "We can't escape from it."

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