Baby whale dies after Australian mass beaching

Yahoo News 26 Mar 09;

PERTH, Australia (AFP) – A baby whale rescued after a mass beaching on Australia's west coast died Thursday after coming back ashore, leaving just three of the mammals alive, authorities said.

A group of 11 long-finned pilot whales were lifted onto trucks by cranes fitted with giant slings and driven to a safe harbour for release after they beached at Hamelin Bay, south of Perth city, on Monday.

Almost 90 of the whales and bottlenose dolphins came ashore, and most perished before they could be moved.

Of the 10 who made it to sea just three were still alive Thursday, with a baby whale becoming the seventh to die after re-beaching.

"We have had a report of a juvenile whale being washed up on the beach just east of Augusta," said John Carter, of the environment department.

"That one unfortunately didn't make it," he told AFP.

Authorities would continue aerially monitoring beaches in the area to ensure the survivors, who were believed to have made it to deeper water, did not return to shore, Carter said.

More than 400 whales have stranded around southern Australia and Tasmania in the past four months, including a mass beaching of almost 200 on King Island.

In November, more than 150 pilot whales died after beaching themselves on Tasmania's west coast and in January, 48 sperm whales died on a sandbar at the north of the island.

The phenomenon of whale strandings and the causes remain the subject of scientific debate.

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Toxic toads targeted in Australia's 'Toad Day Out'

Kristen Gelineau, Associated Press Yahoo News 26 Mar 09;

SYDNEY – For decades, the poisonous cane toad has plagued Australians, breeding rapidly, eating voraciously and bestowing death upon most animals that dare consume it.

So officials came up with a novel — and, some say, poetic — solution: hold a festive mass killing of the creatures and turn the corpses into fertilizer for the very farmers who've battled the pests for years.

On Saturday, residents of five communities in cane toad-plagued northern Queensland state will grab their flashlights and fan out into the night to hunt down the hated animals as part of the inaugural "Toad Day Out" celebration. The toads will be brought to collection points the next morning to be weighed and killed, with some of the remains ground into fertilizer for sugarcane farmers at a local waste management plant.

"It's just a circle of poetic justice!" Toad Day Out organizer Lisa Ahrens said. "Seventy-five years later, they're a benefit to the cane farmer."

The toads were imported from South America to Queensland in 1935 in a failed attempt to control beetles on sugarcane plantations. The problem? The toads couldn't jump high enough to eat the beetles, which live on top of cane stalks.

The ample amphibians, which grow up to 8 inches (20 centimeters) in length, bred rapidly, and their millions-strong population now threatens many local species across Australia. They spread diseases, such as salmonella, and produce highly toxic venom from glands in their skin that can kill would-be predators. The toads are also voracious eaters, chomping up insects, frogs, small reptiles and mammals — even birds. Cane toads are only harmful to humans if their poison is swallowed.

"The cane toad is probably the most disgusting creature and the most destructive creature," said Queensland politician Shane Knuth, a longtime loather of cane toads who came up with the Toad Day Out idea. "They're killing our native wildlife, they're taking over our habitat and they're hopping all through this country."

Knuth, who has been pushing a proposal to offer a 40 Australian cent ($0.28) bounty on the creatures since 2007, said each adult female cane toad can produce 20,000 eggs. "So if we're able to remove 3,000 female toads, we have the potential in the long run of removing 60 million toads from our environment," he said. No one knows exactly how many cane toads live in Australia.

Organizers are trying to woo thousands of people to take part in the hunt by offering prizes for those with the biggest toad and the highest total weight of toads. Goodies range from cane toad trophies (made of actual stuffed cane toads) to a gift certificate for a local resort.

An organizers' tip sheet gives advice on how to create toad traps — or "detention camps" — and recommends that participants "study detention techniques to ensure your own, as well as the toad's safety — they must be alive and unharmed for interrogation."

Live toads brought to the collection points will be examined by experts to ensure they're not harmless frogs and then killed, either by freezing or by being placed in plastic bags filled with carbon dioxide.

Haydn Slattery, manager of the SITA waste management plant in Cairns, said he's hoping to receive about 220 pounds (100 kilograms).

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has applauded the effort — with one caveat.

"We're only supportive of the plan if the toads are killed humanely — in other words, they're not hit with baseball bats or cricket bats and golf clubs," said spokesman Michael Beatty.

Amphibious warfare: Australians offered prizes in cane toad cull
Pests threaten native species, say Queensland authorities
James Sturcke and agencies, guardian.co.uk 26 Mar 09;

Introduced as part of a misguided attempt to control beetle infestation, the poisonous cane toad quickly supplanted its intended prey as one of the most destructive and hated creatures in Australia.

Now Queensland authorities believe the collective loathing in which they are held will galvanise residents into taking part in a mass cull on Saturday night.

Townsville council wants people to track down and bag up the toads, which breed rapidly, eat voraciously and kill most animals that dare to eat them.

The live animals should then be taken to a collection point the following day where they will be weighed and either frozen or gassed to death, with the carcasses turned into fertiliser.

Only unharmed animals will be accepted according to the rules of the Toad Day Out event.

"The cane toad is probably the most disgusting creature and the most destructive creature," said Queensland politician Shane Knuth, who came up with the Toad Day Out idea. "They're killing our native wildlife, they're taking over our habitat and they're hopping all through this country."

Knuth, who has been pushing a proposal to offer a 40¢ (19p) bounty on the creatures since 2007, said each adult female cane toad can produce 20,000 eggs every time it spawns.

The toads were imported from South America to Queensland in 1935 in a doomed effort to control beetles on sugar cane plantations – the toads could not jump high enough to eat the beetles, which live on top of cane stalks.

The amphibians, which grow up to 20cm (8in) in length, constitute an environmental menace, authorities say, which threaten many native species across Australia.

They spread bacteria such as salmonella and produce highly toxic venom from glands in their skin that can kill would-be predators. The toads are also voracious eaters, consuming insects, frogs, small reptiles and mammals – even birds. Cane toads are only harmful to humans if their poison is swallowed.

Toad Day Out organisers are offering prizes for people with the biggest toad and the highest total weight of toads. Goodies range from cane toad trophies – made of stuffed cane toads – to a gift certificate for a local resort.

Aware that an annual event may not be enough to satisfy local population control demands, the council offers advice on how to freeze the animals to death at home.

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has applauded the effort – with one caveat. "We're only supportive of the plan if the toads are killed humanely – in other words, they're not hit with baseball bats or cricket bats and golf clubs," said spokesman Michael Beatty.

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More than 19,000 seals culled in Canada

Yahoo News 26 Mar 09;

OTTAWA (AFP) – Sealers taking part in Canada's controversial yearly hunt have slaughtered some 19,411 seals so far this year, reaching their full kill-quota, fisheries officials said Thursday.

"It's been calm and orderly," said Phil Jenkins, a spokesman for Canada's fisheries and oceans department, describing the first leg of the annual commercial cull, which ended Wednesday.

Some 350 Canadian sealers in 20 vessels and on the shores of the Magdalen Islands have taken part in the annual seal kill.

Weather permitting, a small hunt of 1,500 animals around Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, will take place on Friday, Jenkins said.

Otherwise, the commercial hunt would resume next month off the west coast of Canada's island Newfoundland province and near Quebec's lower northshore, targeting some 63,000 seals.

Thereafter, the main hunt off the northeast coast of Newfoundland will kick off, said Jenkins. Some 188,600 seals are expected to be slaughtered during this phase.

Canada is home to the world's largest annual commercial seal hunt. Harp seals also are hunted commercially off the coasts of Greenland, Norway, the United States, Namibia, Britain, Finland and Sweden.

The seals are hunted mainly for their pelts, but also for meat and fat, which is used in beauty products.

The Canadian hunt has been fiercely criticized by animal rights groups, who say it is cruel.

The Canadian government countered that the 350-year-old hunt is crucial for some 6,000 North Atlantic fisherman who rely on the seal hunt for up to 35 percent of their total annual income.

In April, the European parliament is to vote on a proposed prohibition on seal products that would ban products derived from seals from being imported, exported or even transported across the 27-member bloc.

The measure still has to be approved by EU governments before it can be implemented.

Ottawa has said it would fight any curbs on the international trade of seal products.

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Farmers Face Growing Climate Change Dilemma: Scientist

David Fogarty PlanetArk 26 Mar 09;

SINGAPORE - Farmers of the future will have to use cattle and sheep that belch less methane, crops that emit far less planet-warming nitrous oxide and become experts in reporting their greenhouse gas emissions to the government.

Agriculture is a major source of greenhouse gases and globally that share will rise as demand for food from growing human populations also increases, scientist Richard John Eckard of the University of Melbourne said on Thursday.

But farmers are facing a near-impossible challenge: feeding the world while trying to trim emissions and adapt to greater extremes of droughts and floods because of global warming, he said.

In coming years, farmers will have to monitor and report emissions as more nations move toward emissions trading.

"We want agriculture to feed the world. We want farmers to be viable and continue to increase the rate of productivity growth. At the same time, we're telling them they are going to face a more harsh climate they need to adapt to.

"On top of that you impose a policy that you can now only emit a fraction of the emissions that you were emitting," he told Reuters from Perth, Western Australia, during a climate change conference.

Eckard said research into ways of trimming those emissions while maintaining production growth was not advanced enough.

Australia, a major beef, dairy, wheat and wool producer, is aiming to launch the world's most sweeping emissions trading scheme from mid-2010.

Emissions from agriculture will be exempt until at least 2015 in part because technology to curb farm emissions is still in its infancy but also because adding costs to farmers is unpopular.

But the government has said it is determined to tackle emissions from agriculture one way or another because they comprise 16 percent the nation's total. In New Zealand, about half of national emissions come from agriculture.

CLEVER CATTLE, SMART CROPS

Methane, which is about 20 times more powerful at warming the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, comes from the stomachs of ruminants, such as cattle and sheep. Nitrous oxide, about 310 times more powerful than CO2, comes from the soil in wheat, maize, rice and sugar cane crops.

Eckard, who also works for the Victorian state government, said Australia had launched a national effort to find ways of tackling methane and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions.

He leads a team that focuses mainly on intensive livestock systems and N2O emissions from wheat and grazing.

He said steps under development in Australia included dietary supplements and vaccines that curb methane production in livestock, as well as improving the rate, source and timing of nitrogen fertilizer use.

"We've evaluated oils and found out that for every one percent extra oil we put in the diet of a ruminant you get about a six percent reduction in methane," he said, referring to cottonseed and canola oil.

There was also a major project to breed a super variety of sheep and beef and dairy cattle that need less food to grow.

Scientists are also developing crop varieties that need less water and nitrogen fertilizer, Eckard said.

(Editing by Valerie Lee)

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Forest Fires Destroy Kenya's Key Water Catchments

UNEP 25 Mar 09;

Nairobi, 25 March 2009 - Extensive forest fires are affecting several of Kenya's key moisture reservoirs including the 400,000-hectare Mau Forest Complex, Kenya's largest forest and the source of water for at least twelve rivers. Important Rift Valley Lakes, including Lake Victoria, the source of the River Nile, depend on the rivers which are fed from the forest.

Noor Hassan Noor, the Rift Valley Provincial Commissioner said that between 25 and 35 per cent of the eastern Mau forest has been lost so far as a result of the fire.

Commenting on the situation, the co-ordinator of the UNEP-Kenya country program Henry Ndede , said "the forest fires will interfere with the already existing effects of deforestation. There will be changes in micro-climate that influence tea growing and other agricultural activities in the region and loss of topsoil transported as silt in the rivers during the rainy season will interfere with fish breeding in major Kenyan lakes."

In addition, Kenya's energy sector is suffering. A $260 million dollar hydro-electricity project was stopped because it was designed to depend on water from the forest complex. If the forest continues to be denuded the Mara River will also dry up, leaving large populations and rare wild animals at the mercy of drought.

In the next few days the Kenya Forest Working Group, of which UNEP is a partner, will put forward a series of recommendations to the Kenyan government, which will suffer losses of more than $300 million dollars a year from the tourism, tea and energy sectors if the forest continues to deplete.

Anne Kahihia, assistant director in charge of the affected area for the Kenya Wildlife Service, spoke to UNEP after visiting communities living on the burning forest's edge. "The Masaii there are not happy," she said. "They are having a big problem. All their rivers have dried up. The kids talk in Masaii about when the water was pure and clean and the water was sacred."

Kenya's normally most visited national park, Lake Nakuru Park, is also in danger. The forest should act as a sponge, regulating the flow of water into the lake from its source in Mau. But farming and an increased population are making the quality and quantity of water entering the lake unstable.

Kenya's minister for forests and wildlife, Dr Noah Wekesa told the media that the forest fires come at a time when the Kenyan government is deliberating how best to manage the forest, which is one of the country's five water towers.

With the forest intact, up to 60 per cent of Kenya's energy could be harnessed from the additional water flows, which could be crucial if Kenya is to survive any rises in oil prices.

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Climate change debunkers take stage in US Congress

Yahoo News 26 Mar 09;

WASHINGTON (AFP) – As President Barack Obama tries to green the United States by slapping limits on carbon emissions, Congress was told to ignore his plan because climate change does not exist.

"The right response to the non-problem of global warming is to have the courage to do nothing," said British aristocrat Lord Christopher Walter Monckton, a leading proponent of the "climate change is myth" movement.

The Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, who was an advisor to former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, argued before the Energy and Environment Subcommittee that for 14 years, contrary to broadly accepted scientific beliefs, "there has been no statistically significant global warming."

The House hearing, titled "Adaptation Policies in Climate Legislation," discussed ways to address President Barack Obama's cap-and-trade proposal in his 3.55-trillion-dollar budget plan, presented to Congress in February.

Obama's proposal would limit emissions of greenhouse gases for manufacturers, and permit companies to trade the right to pollute to other firms -- a similar cap-and-trade system to the European model.

The moves are now subject of intense political opposition in Congress, notably from lawmakers representing US states heavily invested in energy production through fossil fuels.

"Adaptation is at present unnecessary," said Lord Monckton at the hearing. "Mitigation is always unnecessary. It is also disproportionately expensive.

"Green jobs are the new euphemism for mass unemployment," he added.

Addressing the hearing on the "balanced Biblical view" for environment and development issues, Pastor Calvin Beisner -- national spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance, a coalition of clergy, theologians and religious leaders -- questioned proposed efforts to combat climate change.

"I am convinced that policies meant to reduce alleged carbon dioxide-induced global warming will be destructive," he said.

"The Biblical world view sees Earth and its ecosystems as the effect of a wise God's creation and ... therefore robust, resilient, and self regulating, like the product of any good engineer."

Beisner argued that policies to reduce carbon emissions would destroy jobs and be prohibitively expensive.

"The truth is that no alternative fuels can compete at present with fossil fuels for price," he said.

Congressman Joe Barton, from the oil-rich state of Texas, maintained that "mankind always adapts," and that "adaptation to shifts in temperature is not that difficult."

What will be difficult, he argued, was "adaptation to rampant unemployment and enormous, spontaneous and avoidable changes to our economy if we adopt such a reckless policy as cap-and-tax or cap-and-trade."

Facing down the non-believers, an array of government agency representatives and environmental organizations described the mounting threats to humanity from devastating climate change -- including rising sea levels, soaring temperatures and increasingly violent weather phenomena.

Tom Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), stressed mitigation would not suffice.

"While increased mitigation measures will likely reduce the need for future adaptation, the United States and the world will continue to experience changing climate conditions and resulting impacts," he said.

President of National Wildlife Federation, Larry Schweiger, urged lawmakers to back moves to tackle climate change, telling them that the United States "must invest now in safeguarding the natural world from the inevitable impacts of global warming."

Recalling the report from the Nobel Prize-winning UN intergovernmental panel on climate change, Schweiger warned that due to cataclysmic climate change, "in the lifetime of a child born today, 20 to 30 percent of the world's plant and animal species will be on the brink of extinction, if we don't take action now."

Many Republicans in Congress remain deeply skeptical about adopting a market-based mechanism to cut carbon emissions, fearing it may hit the competitiveness of US firms and products on global markets, particularly while China and India refuse to make concessions in tandem.

A recent study funded by the environmental group Greenpeace claimed the United States could reduce carbon emissions by 83 percent from 1990 levels by 2050 while sharply expanding employment, through dramatic increases in wind, solar and other green energies.

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Dust Responsible for Most of Atlantic Warming

LiveScience Yahoo News 26 Mar 09;

The warming of Atlantic Ocean waters in recent decades is largely due to declines in airborne dust from African deserts and lower volcanic emissions, a new study suggests.

Since 1980, the tropical North Atlantic has been warming by an average of a half-degree Fahrenheit (a quarter-degree Celsius) per decade.

While that number may sound small, it can translate to big impacts on hurricanes, which are fueled by warm surface waters, said study team member Amato Evan of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For example, the ocean temperature difference between 1994, a quiet hurricane year, and 2005's record-breaking year of storms (including Hurricane Katrina), was just 1 degree Fahrenheit.

Evan and his colleagues had previously shown that African dust and other airborne particles can suppress hurricane activity by reducing how much sunlight reaches the ocean and keeping the sea surface cool. Dusty years predict mild hurricane seasons, while years with low dust activity - including 2004 and 2005 - have been linked to stronger and more frequent storms.

In the new study, the researchers investigated the exact effect of dust and volcanic emissions on ocean temperatures. They combined satellite data of dust and other particles with existing climate models and calculated how much of the Atlantic warming observed during the last 26 years could be accounted for by simultaneous changes in African dust storms and tropical volcanic activity, primarily the eruptions of El Chichón in Mexico in 1982 and Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991.

The results: More than two-thirds of this upward trend in recent decades can be attributed to changes in African dust storm and tropical volcano activity during that time.

This was a surprisingly large amount, Evan said.

The results, detailed in the March 27 issue of the journal Science, suggest that only about 30 percent of the observed Atlantic temperature increases are due to other factors, such as a warming climate.

"This makes sense, because we don't really expect global warming to make the ocean [temperature] increase that fast," Evan said.

This adjustment brings the estimate of global warming's impact on the Atlantic more in line with the smaller degree of ocean warming seen elsewhere, such as the Pacific.

Of course, this doesn't discount the importance of global warming, Evan said, but indicates that newer climate models will need to include dust storms as a factor to accurately predict how ocean temperatures will change.

Satellite research of dust-storm activity is relatively young, and no one yet understands what drives dust variability from year to year. And volcanic eruptions are still relatively unpredictable.

"We don't really understand how dust is going to change in these climate projections, and changes in dust could have a really good effect or a really bad effect," Evan said.

More research and observations of the impact of dust will help answer that question.

Less Dusty Air Warms Atlantic, May Spur Hurricanes
Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 26 Mar 09;

OSLO - A decline in sun-dimming airborne dust has caused a fast warming of the tropical North Atlantic in recent decades, according to a study that might help predict hurricanes on the other side of the ocean.

About 70 percent of the warming of the Atlantic since the early 1980s was caused by less dust, blown from Saharan sandstorms or caused by volcanic eruptions, U.S.-based scientists wrote in the journal Science.

Clouds of dust can be blown thousands of kilometers (miles) and reflect some of the sun's rays back into space.

"Since 1980 tropical North Atlantic Ocean temperatures have been rising at a rate of nearly 0.25 Celsius (0.45 F) per decade," they wrote on Thursday.

In the past, the rapid temperature rise had been blamed on factors such as global warming or shifts in ocean currents. Warmer temperatures may spur more hurricanes, which need sea surface temperatures of about 28 Celsius (82.40F) to form.

A sea temperature difference of just one Fahrenheit separated 1994, a quiet hurricane year, from a record 2005 when storms included Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans, according to a University of Wisconsin-Madison statement.

"We were surprised" by the big role of dust on Atlantic temperatures, said Ralf Bennartz, a professor at the university and a co-author of the study written with experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

COOLER

In past decades "there was much more dust blowing from (Africa) onto the Atlantic and cooling the sea and ... potentially suppressing hurricane intensity," he told Reuters. No other ocean receives so much dust.

More droughts in Africa in the 1980s, for instance, meant more dust in the air, he said of the study of satellite data and climate models. Annual emissions of dust from North Africa have been estimated at between 240 million and 1.6 billion tonnes.

Bennartz said the scientists were trying to work out, for instance, if wet weather in North Africa could mean less dust and in turn point to fewer hurricanes battering the United States or Caribbean islands.

Big volcanic eruptions were El Chichon in Mexico in 1982 and Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991. Both dimmed the sun.

The study suggests that only 30 percent of the warming of the Atlantic can be explained by factors other than dust, for instance global warming blamed by the U.N. Climate Panel on emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.

"This makes sense, because we don't really expect global warming to make the ocean (temperatures) increase that fast," said Amato Evan, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was lead author.

Bennartz said it was unclear how climate change might affect overall dust amounts blown from Africa this century.

(Editing by Janet Lawrence)

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Sydney Summers By 2060 Could Be Deadly: Scientist

David Fogarty, PlanetArk 26 Mar 09;

SINGAPORE - The forecast for Sydney in summer 2060 is hot, polluted and deadly to the elderly.

Rising summer temperatures due to global warming, drier weather and smog from transport and bushfires will make Australia's lifestyle capital a health hazard, a scientist told a major climate change conference on Wednesday.

Most at risk will be the increasing number of elderly from heat stress and anyone with asthma or heart complaints, said Martin Cope of the state-funded Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.

"We're talking about tripling the number of hospital admissions due to respiratory conditions," he told Reuters from Perth in Western Australia, which is hosting the Greenhouse 2009 conference.

"There will be more warmer days, more warmer nights and an older population. It's certainly something we want to plan ahead for," he said, adding the picture might not be so grim if Sydneysiders embraced low-carbon lifestyles and industry.

Cope's team at the CSIRO's Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research used computer models to generate urban weather forecasts for Sydney to test the effects of temperature increases of 1 to 4 degrees Celsius over the current annual maximum.

Higher temperatures caused increased heat stress in the elderly but also helped intensify air pollution, he said.

"From the modeling, we were looking at a 20 percent increase in the number of days above 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) ... You can be looking at a 100 percent increase of the small number of extreme temperature days," he said, referring to temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius.

Cope said the number of people aged 65 and over were expected to double by 2060, increasing the numbers at risk from heat and rising pollution in Sydney.

"That has the biggest effect on the changes in mortality from heat stress. We are talking about roughly a doubling of heat-stress related deaths. If you then factor in a change in the demographic, you could be talking about a doubling again," he said. Sydney's air would also become more toxic during summer because of higher temperatures and the interaction between sunlight and the chemicals released by burning fossil fuels, even from painting, grass cutting and eucalyptus trees.

"A lot of these emissions are temperature dependent. As things warm up then you get more of the gases being released from the liquids," Cope said.

Add to this the carbon monoxide from tailpipes and ozone created in the smog that blankets the city and "it's a big soup," he said.

By 2060, the projections for Sydney would also be drier with potentially more drought, more dust storms, more high-fire risk weather, he added, further adding materials to the smog mix.

Cope said the computer models also showed how to trim the worst of the impacts, for example, improving household insulation and reducing the city's heat-island effect.

Shifting to electric or hybrid cars would also help.

"That's really the key. The steps that we will take to reduce carbon emissions will also be beneficial to reducing air pollution."

(Editing by Dean Yates)

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India is stealing water of life, says Pakistan

Thousands of Punjab farmers suffer as river Chenab runs dry
Andrew Buncombe and Omar Waraich, The Independent 26 Mar 09;

Crucial, coveted and increasingly scarce, water has become the latest issue to stoke tensions between India and Pakistan, with farmers in Pakistan's breadbasket accusing Delhi of reducing one of the subcontinent's most important rivers to little more than a trickle.

A group of more than 20 different UN bodies warned earlier this month that the world may be perilously close to its first water war. "Water is linked to the crises of climate change, energy and food supplies and prices, and troubled financial markets," said the report.

"Unless their links with water are addressed and water crises around the world are resolved, these other crises may intensify and local water crises may worsen, converging into a global water crisis and leading to political insecurity and conflict at various levels."

The crisis in the agricultural heartland of Pakistan relates to the Chenab, one of a series of waterways that bisect the Punjab, which means 'five rivers'. The Chenab is fed with glacial meltwaters from the Himalayas and for centuries has provided crucial irrigation for the region. But last summer farmers began to notice the levels of both the river and groundwater begin to fall.

Pakistan blames India, saying it is withholding millions of cubic feet of water upstream on the Chenab in Indian-administered Kashmir and storing it in the massive Baglihar dam in order to produce hydro-electricity. Its Indian neighbour, Pakistan declares, is in breach of a 1960 treaty designed to administer water use in the region. After initial talks to try and resolve the issue, the matter has been put on hold since the Mumbai attacks last November in which 165 people were killed, fuelling tensions between the two quarrelsome neighbours.

Pakistan's president Asif Ali Zardari warned: "The water crisis in Pakistan is directly linked to relations with India. Resolution could prevent an environmental catastrophe in South Asia, but failure to do so could fuel the fires of discontent that lead to extremism and terrorism."

The farmers who make their livelihoods along the banks of the Chenab are quick to blame India for their misery. When Mohammed Babar and other villagers close to the town of Wazirabad sunk a well several years ago, they discovered water just 50ft beneath the surface; now the water table lies at around 100ft down. "To irrigate our crops it used to cost about 200 rupees (£2.71) worth of diesel," said Mr Babar, standing amid fields lush with rice and winter wheat. "Now it costs 250 or 300."

From where Mr Babar and his neighbours live, it is just a few hundred yards to the Chenab. Once a strong-flowing river, it is now a slow-flowing trickle. Locals say the river once came up close to the top of the road bridge but now it dribbles past, metres below.

Abdul Hamid and his family make their living cutting reeds for thatching on the east bank of the river. They have watched the level of the water fall, and with it, the supply reeds from which they make their living.

"There has been a big difference. It doesn't even look like a river anymore, it looks like a puddle," said 40-year-old Mr Hamid, who has eight children. "When there is no water, there are no reeds and then no money. My whole family works doing this. We used to earn 500 rupees a day. But now it's down to 300 because there are less reeds." Asked why the Chenab had fallen, Mr Hamid had a ready answer: "It has been cut off by India."

The Chenab is one of five main rivers that pass through the Punjab, all ultimately joining the Indus, which reaches the sea south of Karachi. The 1960 Indus Water Treaty allocated the river waters between Pakistan and India, which is also allowed to make some use of them for power generation. Pakistan complained in 2005 to the World Bankabout the operation of the Baglihar dam. An independent expert upheld some objections, but dismissed others.

Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for President Zardari, said Pakistan was "paying a high price", but India has denied breaching any conditions of the 1960 treaty. Delhi said it had invited Pakistan's water commissioner to visit the dam to see that the Chenab's flow was naturally low.

India's Ministry of External Affairs declined to comment, but an official said: "The entire peace process and discussions we have been having for the past three or four years have been put on pause. It is not the right climate for these talks when we know that there are threats against our safety and security emanating from Pakistan."

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Tesla unveils groundbreaking electric car

Rob Woollard Rob Woollard Yahoo News 26 Mar 09;

LOS ANGELES (AFP) – US automaker Tesla Motors unveiled Thursday its state-of-the-art five-seat sedan, billed as the world's first mass-produced, highway-capable electric car.

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk said the company, which last year released its breakthrough two-seat Roadster, aims to have its sleek Model S sedan roll off assembly lines by 2011.

The futuristic zero-emission vehicle will be powered by lithium-ion battery packs capable of traveling between 160 and 300 miles (257 and 482 kilometers) per charge.

The car has an anticipated base price of 57,400 dollars but will cost less than 50,000 after a federal tax credit of 7,500 dollars, Musk said.

While the price tag is steep compared to other mass-market sedans, Tesla has stressed that tax incentives, relatively inexpensive maintenance and the lack of fueling costs will make the car competitive with cheaper rival sedans.

Musk told reporters he hoped the car would lead a new generation of vehicles that would help the auto industry wean itself off foreign oil.

"What we really wanted to show the car industry is that it is possible to create a compelling electric car at a compelling price ... We hope the industry will follow our lead," Musk said.

"It's incredibly important that we wean ourselves off oil as soon as possible and that we make the transition to electric vehicles rapidly."

Musk said Tesla aimed to manufacture around 20,000 units per year from an undisclosed factory location in Southern California and said the vehicle could be charged at home in just four hours.

"Even at 20,000 cars per year, we won't come close to affecting the electricity grid and you will be able to charge this car at home," he added.

"It's capable of taking a wide range of currents and voltages, and the charge is built into the car so you don't have to worry about 'Is there a charger at the destination that I'm driving to?'"

Tesla said its new model would become the "car of choice for environmentally conscious and discriminating drivers throughout North America and Europe." It expects to roughly split initial sales between the two continents before expanding into Asia in 2012.

Tesla's other zero-emission car, the two-seat Roadster, is on sale in Europe and the United States.

The company said last year it had ramped up production of the high-performance vehicle, which has a price tag of about 100,000 dollars, due to soaring demand.

Founded in 2003, Tesla specializes in the environmentally-friendly, electric cars that several car manufacturers are starting to produce.

Troubled automotive giant General Motors is developing its own electric sedan, the Chevrolet Volt, which it expects to go on sale in 2011 for about 40,000 dollars a unit.

Thursday's unveiling came against the backdrop of a teetering US auto industry while President Barack Obama has said his administration wants to see a million electric cars on the roads by 2015.

Auto industry analysts were cautious about whether Tesla's Model S suggested that electric vehicles were the future of the US auto industry, saying hybrid vehicles and low fuel prices could stymie their growth.

Jim Hossack of California-based AutoPacific Consulting said Tesla's latest prototype was "something of a technical marvel" but questioned whether it could revolutionize the US auto industry.

"The problem is our fuel price. If you're going to launch an electric vehicle you probably want to do it in a market where fuel prices are high," Hossack told AFP.

"At the moment in the US, they're cheap, a quarter of what they are in Europe or Japan. Hybrids might be better positioned to be the dominant technology."

While Model S production would demonstrate that an electric car can be mass produced, Hossack noted that "we can also put a man on the moon. And it turns out it's expensive."

Tesla Unveils Four-Door Electric Sedan
Nichola Groom, PlanetArk 27 Mar 09;

HAWTHORNE - Electric car start-up Tesla Motors Inc unveiled its newest, cheapest vehicle on Thursday, a four-door sedan that can carry five adults and could travel up to 300 miles per charge.

The Model S will cost $49,900, after a U.S. government tax credit of $7,500, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said at the car's unveiling. It is slated to go into production in 2011 and will be manufactured in Southern California.

In his remarks, Musk billed the Model S as the first mass-market, highway-ready electric vehicle. And, he said, the price is comparable to that of a $35,000 gasoline-powered car such as a Ford Taurus, assuming gas prices of about $4 a gallon.

"Would you rather have this car, or would you rather have a Ford Taurus?" Musk asked the crowd of journalists.

Tesla plans to produce 20,000 Model S sedans a year. The company expects to receive funding from the Department of Energy this year to support the Model S program.

Tesla, which ran into a series of cost overruns and production delays with its Roadster sports car that forced it to cut 24 percent of its staff, said last month that it should be profitable by the middle of this year.

The more than $100,000 Roadster is well beyond the reach of most car buyers, with owners including Hollywood celebrities and corporate titans such as actor and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Google Inc founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

With the Model S, Tesla is aiming for a broader range of customers, Musk said, saying the company was making the car "as affordable as possible." He expects the car to appeal to buyers of mid-range to premium sedans.

The Model S base price will include a battery with a 160-mile range, Musk said. Customers will have the option to upgrade to a battery with a 300-mile range.

The Model S has a top speed of 130 mph and can get to 60 mph in 5.5 to 6 seconds.

(Editing by Gary Hill)

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IT solutions offer cost and climate benefits

WWF 26 Mar 09;

Washington, DC – Existing information technologies (IT) can produce dramatic reductions in harmful CO2 emissions while fully meeting the demands of today’s corporations, two new WWF reports are demonstrating.

Virtual Meetings and Climate Innovation in the 21st Century highlights the significant impact employee travel makes on a company’s total carbon footprint – accounting for 50% or more among non-manufacturing companies.

“Creating a global network of more than 4,000 high quality videoconferencing studios in cities around the world would help build a new infrastructure for the 21st century and would cost less than one and a half airplanes,” said Dennis Pamlin, a WWF-US Policy Advisor and co-author of the reports.

From Workplace to Anyplace highlights opportunities to employ existing technologies that enable one or more individuals to work or collaborate remotely. This would create new efficiencies and cut emissions created by daily commuting or business air travel.

In the report’s “smart world” scenario, where policies and IT industry users contribute to a climate smart future, roughly one billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions are avoided through tele-work in year 2030–an amount equivalent to the total current annual carbon dioxide emissions from the United Kingdom and Italy combined.

By the year 2050, tele-work could reduce almost 3.5 billion tons of emissions–equivalent to more than half of the United States’ current CO2 emissions.

The report also says that developed countries may deliver the majority of greenhouse gas emissions with increased tele-working in the short term, but developing countries can deliver the bulk of the reductions in the long term.

According to the reports, which were independently authored by WWF together with leading academic experts and with funding support from HP and Microsoft, collaboration is fundamental. Business and policy makers can deliver a low carbon future, but they must work together to achieve meaningful results

“IT can be a significant driver of greenhouse gas reductions, but we need strong global climate policy to ensure these solutions are implemented at the speed and scale necessary to make a difference,” said Pamlin.

“This research tells us that if relatively simple measures are implemented globally, we can achieve annual emissions reductions equal to at least half of current U.S. total annual emissions by 2050.

“But we must start to walk in the right direction now, before it’s too late.”
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As part of this research, a carbon calculator for policymakers and businesses was developed and is available online at www.worldwildlife.org/carbonprojector.

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Greenwash: Shell betrays 'new energy future' promises

The energy company has sold out on its renewable investments, claiming they are 'not economic'
Fred Pearce, guardian.co.uk 26 Mar 09;

Shell, I have to report, is the new Exxon. The company that back in December was filling this and other newspapers with double-page adverts promoting its conversion to a "new energy future" of wind farms, hydrogen fuels, fuel made from marine algae and much else, has pulled the plug.

In the 1990s Royal Dutch Shell set its boffins on finding new green fuels, such as forest plantations to make biofuels. I remember them at the Earth Summit in Rio back in 1992. Not long after, Shell was for a time the world's second largest manufacturer of solar panels. In 2004, it opened the world's largest grid-connected solar park.

The company seemed to embrace the idea that a modern global oil company could and should transform itself into a green energy company. But, to rewrite its old advertising slogan, you can never be sure of Shell.

Just as the other European oil giant, BP, flattered to deceive when it began to call itself Beyond Petroleum, so too with Shell.

At a time when new bosses at Exxon in the US are making overtures to Barack Obama's idea of a new green deal to fight climate change, Shell is going back to the bad old days.

Last week, this and other papers reported: "Shell will no longer invest in renewable technologies such as wind, solar and hydropower because they are not economic."

In recent years, Shell has invested more than $1bn in the most commercial of the new renewable industries, wind power. It claims to have more than 500MW of wind power capacity altogether — the equivalent of half a regular power station.

It was chicken feed for them. But many hoped for more. Then last year, Shell pulled out of what would be the world's largest offshore wind farm in the Thames estuary. The London Array would have tripled its wind capacity.

The company claimed at the time that it was going to concentrate its renewables business in the US. Now that promise has quietly disappeared. Last week, its head of gas and power, Linda Cook, told reporters: "We do not expect material amounts of investment [in wind and solar] going forward." Biofuels will still get cash. Everything else is back into cold storage.

Why? "They continue to struggle to compete with other investment opportunities we have in our portfolio." In other words, oil prices are back down and Shell is in this for the short term.

We are left with those, shall we say unfulfilled, ads. "Tackling climate change and providing fuel for a growing population seems like an impossible problem, but at Shell we try to think creatively," said one. If you keep old newspapers, you'll find it across the centrefold of the Guardian on 15 December. If not, a version is still on their web site.

But now we know the creative thinking had more to do with advertisement copywriting rather than energy technology.

The ad continues: "It won't be easy. Innovative solutions rarely are. But when the challenge is hardest, when everyone else is shaking their heads, we believe there is a way." Do smile, amid your tears.

Shell was busted last year by the UK Advertising Standards Authority for an ad claiming that its $10bn investment in sucking oil from tar sands in Canada was a contribution to a sustainable energy future.

Clearly it hasn't been chastened. Those pre-Christmas ads were more greenwash. But, for anyone who has watched the company over the years, what has happened is not so much a cynical misrepresentation of its policies as an outright betrayal of past promises.

In the race for a greener future, Shell could have been a contender. Now it is on the canvas, flat out cold.

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