Malaysian National Ocean Policy To Be Ready In Six Months

Bernama 18 Jun 09;

PORT KLANG, June 18 (Bernama) -- Science, Technology and Innovation minister Datuk Dr Maximus Ongkili today said the National Ocean Policy (NOP)being drafted by the ministry is expected to be ready in six months.

"The cabinet had agreed for the preparation of the draft and once ready, it will be tabled in the cabinet," he said after launching the Premier Scientific Exploration Expedition at National Hydrographic Centre (NHC) in Pulau Indah here Thursday.

Dr Ongkili said the NOP would comprise components of the country's maritime realm, including social, economic, environmental and biological components, development of marine-related activities and to regulate the functions of the respective agencies involved.

The drafting of the policy is being headed by the National Oceanography Directorate, an agency under the ministry, he said.

He said it was his wish to see people living in the coastal areas to enjoy a similar lifestyle like those in countries like Australia, especially fishermen who are among the rich in the country.

Dr Ongkili added that one of the objective of the expedition was to gather and compile data and information that can be used as a guideline to draft the NOP.

"Information gathered will be analysed to identify the marine resources, flora and Fiona, marine life, climate change, sediments and tide," he said.

The maiden expedition to the Sulu and Sulawesi Sea is expected to bring about a new dimension in exploration to the country's Oceanography.

The expedition launched today would involve 54 explorers from agencies under the ministry, Prime Minister's Department, Marine Department, Fisheries Department, Department of Environment and Marine Park, Mineralogy and Geosciences Departments.

Apart from the department's representatives from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Universiti Malaya, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Universiti Industri Selangor, Universiti Malaysia Sabah and Universiti Malaysia Terengganu are also part of the 52-day expedition, he said.

-- BERNAMA

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Manila OKs foreign firm to plant biofuel coconut

Reuters 18 Jun 09;

TOKYO (Reuters) - Pacific Bio-Fields Holdings Plc said it has received approval to use 400,000 hectares of land to plant coconut trees in the Philippines to make alternative auto fuel, which it aims to sell to Japanese users in five years.

The company, which plans to list on the London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market (AIM) later this year, said on Thursday the agreement allows it exclusively to cultivate unused public land on the northern main island of Luzon for free for up to 50 years.

The project will provide local jobs and involve the construction of local refinery infrastructure.

"It is the first time the Philippines' government has allowed any local or foreign company to use land for a coconut oil-made biodiesel project," Yuji Taniguchi, head of the U.K.-based holding company with its main operations in Japan and the Philippines, told a group of reporters.

In the Philippines, the world's biggest coconut oil exporter, local biodiesel producers have increasingly been using coconut oil as feedstock now that a 2 percent mixture of plant-origin fuel in diesel for auto use is mandatory.

Coconut and coconut oil production have been centered in the southern part of the Southeast Asian island nation.

Coconut oil is traditionally used in food and cosmetics.

Competition with food is not an issue for this project, whose location is in the northern part of Luzon, where fields are largely abandoned after once-dominant tobacco production receded, Taniguchi said.

Also, coconut trees do not require particularly fertile land, like palm trees do, he said.

"Coconut trees can grow on wasteland, and we rely on DENR where to plant them," he said, referring to the role of Department of Environment and Natural Resources of the Philippines, which gives approval of areas to plant after environmental assessment by another government agency.

The IPO in the second half of 2009, arranged by Arbuthnot Securities of Britain, is set to raise an estimated 5 billion yen ($52 million), the proceeds to be used for investment in coconut tree planting.

The company, now with capital of 30 million yen, plans to start operations at its first crushing plant with capacity of 2,000 metric tons of oil per month in northern Luzon by August, with oil initially for sales to local biodiesel makers.

By 2014, the company plans to build five other crushing plants with similar capacity each as well as a refinery plant to turn the feedstock into 300,000 metric tons of biodiesel a year, part of which is targeted at exports to Japan, Taniguchi said.

The project of building these facilities and needed infrastructure is partly financed by loans from government-backed Japan Bank for International Cooperation, he added.

($1=95.73 Yen)

(Reporting by Risa Maeda; Editing by Keiron Henderson)

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Don’t Be So Quick to Sell Off the Farmland

Rivandra Royono, Jakarta Globe 18 Jun 09;

This decade has witnessed the advent of what some refer to as the third wave of outsourcing. Following manufacture and information technology, many countries — those that are richer yet short on fertile land — are beginning to subcontract farmland abroad.

Britain, the United States, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are already renting farmland in Africa, Latin America and Russia. Rich or populous Asian countries like China, India and South Korea have also relied on rented foreign land to ensure their food supply.

The International Food Policy Research Institute, a Washington-based think tank, estimates that an area of 15 million to 20 million hectares of farmland in poor countries have been in transactions or associated with talks with foreign investors since 2006. The value of such investment is estimated at up to $30 billion.

As one of the most fertile agricultural lands in the world, Indonesia is naturally on investors’ radars. As a matter of fact, Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Binladin Group nearly signed a $4 billion deal to grow rice on 500,000 hectares of land here.

The project is currently on hold, but the deferred investment may not necessarily be a bad thing for Indonesia. Large-scale agricultural investment, as lucrative as it may seem at the moment, carries serious risk. For one, it certainly has environmental consequences.

What we need to understand is that farmland is not only about land; it’s also very much about water. Truth be told, water shortage is the main reason why countries are renting farmland abroad.

Saudi Arabia was able achieve self-sufficiency for a time by investing massive amounts of money to grow crops in the desert. The water needed for plantations was pumped out of aquifers below the Arabian sand. But that water source was non-replenishable, and it was little surprise when farmers sucked out the water from under their feet to a point of environmental disaster.

Even countries like China and South Korea, which are not usually associated with water shortages, have pretty much drained their water sources with their aggressive agricultural expansion.

The environmental consequences don’t stop at water use. Massive use of pesticides may disrupt the ecological balance and poison wildlife. Fertilize the land too much and you can ruin it. Farmland has also been known to build up silt in the riverbeds, leading further to numerous environmental problems. True, these risks apply to all farmland, but the massive scale of foreign farmland investment and the lure of big cash would very conceivably exacerbate them.

Land concession is another problem. A factory complex covers only several hectares, while farmland — the kind that the investors are interested in — would cover hundreds of thousands. Land concessions of that scale are prone to be unfair. Host governments may claim that the lands up for lease are state-owned or vacant. However, such “vacant” lands may easily support families who have been using them for generations as farms or grazing areas. Such customary rights are unlikely to be recognized by law, especially when foreign investment is in the picture.

Having said all that, we should note that leasing farmlands to foreign investors also carries huge benefits. Most obviously, it can reverse the decline of public investment in agriculture in developing countries like ours. Research and development in the sector can be boosted, new technologies can be introduced and new jobs would be created. The country’s agricultural sector could be revitalized.

Furthermore, typical deals usually involve some fringe benefits. Investors in Africa have pledged schools, clinics and roads — things that the investors themselves also need. Such facilities and infrastructure would most definitely be appreciated by locals.

If Indonesia decides to go ahead with leasing farmland, it should do so with caution, keeping an eye on both the risks and the opportunities. We need to understand that we have a very strong bargaining position: Other types of foreign investment are still available, and agricultural reform can still be carried out without having foreigners plowing our lands. In other words, Indonesia is not in desperate need of this particular type of investment, while investors like China or the Gulf states may be.

In many host countries, farmland deals involve mainly the land, while the right to withdraw the water comes automatically. Water, perhaps the most essential part of the deal, ironically comes as a freebie. Indonesia would do well to make sure that water use enters the investment’s equation.

Customary rights must be respected, and this would be consistent with Indonesia’s commitment to recognize traditional community laws. Contracts must include stipulation for investors to share benefits with and recruit locals as workers. Insurance must be embedded in the agreement; for instance, investors can only export back to their countries if the crop yield is above a certain threshold, thus ensuring domestic food production. Cooperation with national research agencies and individual researchers in agriculture R&D must be carried out, ensuring transfer of knowledge and technology.

The postponed Saudi investment is a good thing not because Indonesia should not enter international farmland investment deals, but because it gives us time to better prepare. We have ample time to learn from existing practices and develop carefully drafted contracts and codes of conduct. Good practice in this form of foreign investment may well lead to large revenue, revitalization of the agricultural sector and empowerment of local communities at a manageable risk. We should not rush, but we would do well to press forward.

Rivandra Royono is executive director of the Jakarta-based Association for Critical Thinking and a consultant for the World Bank’s education division.

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Haze could get worse in Malaysia: Experts

New Straits Times 18 Jun 09;

PUTRAJAYA, Thurs: THE haze currently experienced in the country can worsen if the open burning in the country and abroad is left unchecked, according to an environmental expert.

Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) Environmental Sciences Department head Assoc Prof Dr Ahmad Makmom Abdullah said the haze would return occasionally until September due to the El Nino phenomenon.

As such, he said immediate action to monitor and control open burning activities, as stipulated in the Regional Haze Action Plan ratified by Asean member countries, should be implemented to prevent the situation from worsening to that in 1997, he told reporters here today.

Dr Ahmad Makmom said that apart from affecting health, the haze had also incurred losses for the government, especially in the tourism, agriculture and livestock-breeding sectors.

He said that according to a study, the country lost RM420 million in palm oil production and another RM40 million in the fish-breeding sector during the three-month haze in 1997.
The total loss suffered by Southeast Asian countries during the 1997 haze was estimated at US$9 billon (US$1 = RM3.53), he said.

Meanwhile, UPM Environment Management Department chief Assoc Prof Dr Mohd Bakri Ishak said Asean member countries should sit together to find a more systematic approach to ensure that the haze did not recur.

He said that though a treaty on cross-border haze pollution had been signed in 2002, it had failed to avert a recurrence of the problem.

"If we look at the treaty, the country which causes the haze is not held responsible to the country which suffers the consequences. If, for example, Malaysia wants to tackle the haze which originates from open burning activities in Sumatra, Indonesia, we will have to get their permission first.

"This will surely create a conflict or a polemic as time-consuming meetings would have to be convened," he said.

Dr Mohd Bakri also said that Malaysia could actually take legal action against the country which causes the haze but it would go against the Malaysian principle of good neighbourliness as well as the Asean partnership concept. - Bernama

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Indonesia mud volcano may last 30 years: expert

Yahoo News 18 Jun 09;

SYDNEY (AFP) – Indonesia's devastating 'mud volcano' could keep spewing for the next 30 years, filling the equivalent of 50 Olympic-size swimming pools every day, a top Australian expert warned.

Curtin University of Technology's doctor Mark Tingay, who has just returned from the disaster site in East Java, said about 100,000 people remained under threat from subsidence three years after the volcano first erupted.

"In effect, the whole region around the vent hole is sinking by about two to five centimetres each day due to the rising mud level, causing more damage to suburban villages and triggering frequent bursts of flammable gas around homes," he said, according to a Geological Society of Australia statement.

Tingay added that damage caused by the mud, which has been devouring land and homes in Sidoarjo district since May 2, 2006, was estimated at about 4.9 billion dollars.

The volcano has buried 12 villages, killed 13 people, displaced more than 42,000 residents and wiped out 800 hectares (1,977 acres) of densely populated farming and industrial land.

He said the volcano could produce enough scalding mud to fill Sydney Harbour twice over in the next 30 years but admitted the time-scale was only an estimate.

"The high flow-rate may only continue for two to three years, or it might continue for hundreds of years," Tingay said.

"And like other mud volcanoes, Lusi will probably be in existence for thousands of years, even if its flow-rate subsides," he added.

Australian oil and gas giant Santos, which was drilling in the area when the volcano erupted, by September had declared previsions of just 88.5 million dollars to cover the clean-up cost.

In December, Santos exited the project and said it would pay an Indonesian firm 22.5 million US dollars "to support long-term mud management efforts" at the site.

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Large 2009 Gulf Of Mexico 'Dead Zone' Predicted

ScienceDaily 18 Jun 09;

University of Michigan aquatic ecologist Donald Scavia and his colleagues say this year's Gulf of Mexico "dead zone" could be one of the largest on record, continuing a decades-long trend that threatens the health of a half-billion-dollar fishery.

The scientists' latest forecast, released June 18, calls for a Gulf dead zone of between 7,450 and 8,456 square miles—an area about the size of New Jersey.

Most likely, this summer's Gulf dead zone will blanket about 7,980 square miles, roughly the same size as last year's zone, Scavia said. That would put the years 2009, 2008 and 2001 in a virtual tie for second place on the list of the largest Gulf dead zones.

It would also mean that the five largest Gulf dead zones on record have occurred since 2001. The biggest of these oxygen-starved, or hypoxic, regions developed in 2002 and measured 8,484 square miles.

"The growth of these dead zones is an ecological time bomb," said Scavia, a professor at the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment and director of the U-M Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute.

"Without determined local, regional and national efforts to control them, we are putting major fisheries at risk," said Scavia, who also produces annual dead-zone forecasts for the Chesapeake Bay.

The Gulf dead zone forms each spring and summer off the Louisiana and Texas coast when oxygen levels drop too low to support most life in bottom and near-bottom waters.

The Gulf hypoxia research team is supported by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research and includes scientists from Louisiana State University and the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.

The forecast for a large 2009 Gulf hypoxic zone is based on above-normal flows in the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers this spring, which delivered large amounts of the nutrient nitrogen. In April and May, flows in the two rivers were 11 percent above average.

Additional flooding of the Mississippi since May could result in a dead zone that exceeds the upper limit of the forecast, the scientists said.

"The high water-volume flows, coupled with nearly triple the nitrogen concentrations in these rivers over the past 50 years from human activities, has led to a dramatic increase in the size of the dead zone," said Gene Turner, a lead forecast modeler at Louisiana State University.

Northeast of the Gulf, low water flows into the Chesapeake Bay shaped Scavia's 2009 forecast for that hypoxia zone.

The Bay's oxygen-starved zone is expected to shrink to between 0.7 and 1.8 cubic miles, with a "most likely" volume of 1.2 cubic miles—the lowest level since 2001 and third-lowest on record. The drop is largely due to a regional dry spell that lasted from January through April, Scavia said. Continued high flows in June, beyond the period used for the forecasts, suggest the actual size may be near the higher end of the forecast range.

"While it's encouraging to see that this year's Chesapeake Bay forecast calls for a significant drop in the extent of the dead zone, we must keep in mind that the anticipated reduction is due mainly to decreased precipitation and water runoff into the Bay," he said.

"The predicted 2009 dead-zone decline does not result from cutbacks in the use of nitrogen, which remains one of the key drivers of hypoxia in the Bay."

Farmland runoff containing fertilizers and livestock waste—some of it from as far away as the Corn Belt—is the main source of the nitrogen and phosphorus that cause the Gulf of Mexico dead zone.

Each year in late spring and summer, these nutrients make their way down the Mississippi River and into the Gulf, fueling explosive algae blooms there. When the algae die and sink, bottom-dwelling bacteria decompose the organic matter, consuming oxygen in the process. The result is an oxygen-starved region in bottom and near-bottom waters: the dead zone.

The same process occurs in the Chesapeake Bay, where nutrients in the Susquehanna River trigger the event. In both the Gulf and the Bay, fish, shrimp and crabs are forced to leave the hypoxic zone. Animals that cannot move perish.

The annual hypoxia forecasts helps coastal managers, policy makers, and the public better understand what causes dead zones. The models that generate the forecasts have been used to determine the nutrient-reduction targets required to reduce the size of the dead zone.

"As with weather forecasts, the Gulf forecast uses multiple models to predict the range of the expected size of the dead zone. The strong track record of these models reinforces our confidence in the link between excess nutrients from the Mississippi River and the dead zone," said Robert Magnien, director of NOAA's Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research.

U.S. Geological Survey data on spring river flow and nutrient concentrations inform the computer models that produce the hypoxia forecasts.

The official size of the 2009 hypoxic zone will be announced following a NOAA-supported monitoring survey led by the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium on July 18-26. In addition, NOAA's Southeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program's (SEAMAP) is currently providing near real-time data on the hypoxic zone during a five-week summer fish survey in the northern Gulf of Mexico.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Michigan.

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Ecosystem Management Key to Long-term Climate Change Adaptation and Risk Reduction

UNEP 18 Jun 09;

Geneva, 18 June 2009 - Sustainable management of ecosystems, as an integral part of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction plans, must be at the centre of all development activity, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), WWF-International, IUCN and ISDR.

Speaking at the second Global Platform on Disaster Risk Reduction (GP09) Geneva, Switzerland, UNEP's Director of Division of Environmental Policy Implementation and chair of the session, Ibrahim Thiaw, called for greater integration of ecosystem management in climate change adaptation and disaster preparations and response.

"At the local, national, regional and international, political commitment is urgently needed to raise the profile of ecosystems," he said.

Richard Munang, UNEP's Deputy programme manager for climate change. described ecosystems management as a moral imperative and social responsibility calling for a new vision and approach to development. "The world lacks neither the financial resources nor the technological capabilities to act, - what is missing is a sense of urgency, human solidarity and collective interest based on shared values and a shared interest," he said.

Patterns of disaster risk are changing and the critical ecosystems that support community resilience are being lost at an alarming rate due to human mismanagement of natural resources.

Speaking at the panel, EU Parliamentarian Anders Wijkman, said: "Although our well-being depends entirely on the services of nature, in the majority these goods have no markets and consequently no prices. We ought to be aware, however, that by destroying these natural resources, life-supporting systems could collapse. It is time that we grasped the consequences of our actions and start acting today. Everyone from all walks of life needs to be a player in addressing this challenge. Closing the gap between science-policy and advocating action is imperative."

Jim Leape, the Director General WWF-International, underlined the importance of different ministries in all countries to develop good communication with stakeholders. "Maintaining healthy ecosystems generates multiple returns. Well managed forests and wetlands, for instance, mitigate carbon emissions by acting as carbon sinks and enhance community resilience by providing natural defence barriers against hazards and supporting local livelihoods," he said.

Both Neville Ash (IUCN Ecosystems Manager) and Prof. Sam Hettiarachi (Head of Delegation, Government of Sri Lanka) said the importance of ecosystems needs to be recognised and greater research capacity is need to integrate across scientific disciplines to understand how ecosystems function. "Ecosystems are difficult to repair/restore so recognising a problem too late means that it will be extremely costly (socially and economically) to achieve sustainable ecosystem resource after damage has occurred," they said.

In response to the discussions, participants called for increased financial investment for integrating ecosystems with risk reduction, climate change, food security and poverty alleviation priorities. Indeed, the poor are among the most vulnerable to disaster impacts and will be the first to benefit from investment in an ecosystems-based disaster risk reduction strategy.

Ecosystems services are the benefits that we derive from nature for free, from timber and food to water regulation and climate regulation. As the world's leaders work towards a new international climate change agenda, it is clear that without a deep and decisive post-2012 agreement and major concerted effort to reduce disaster risk, the Millennium Development Goals will remain elusive. A concerted political commitment at the highest level will be needed to raise the profile of ecosystems on the global risk reduction agenda.

In its issues paper, UNEP strongly recommended that adequate financial, technological and knowledge resources be allocated correspondingly for integrating ecosystem management in the climate change and disaster risk reduction portfolios, including in national policy-setting and awareness raising, capacity building, planning and practices, particularly in developing countries vulnerable to climate change impacts and increased risks of climate-related disasters.

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Polar Bear And Walrus Populations In Trouble, Stock Assessment Report Suggests

ScienceDaily 18 Jun 09;

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has released reports documenting the status of polar bears and Pacific walrus in Alaska. The reports confirm that polar bears in Alaska are declining and that Pacific walrus are under threat. Both species are imperiled due to the loss of their sea-ice habitat due to global warming, oil and gas development, and unsustainable harvest.

“Polar bears and walrus are under severe threat, and unless we act rapidly to reduce greenhouse pollution and protect their habitat from oil development, we stand to lose both of these icons of the Arctic,” said Brendan Cumming, oceans program director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

The reports, issued pursuant to the Marine Mammal Protection Act, summarize information on population abundance and trends of polar bears and walrus, threats to the species, and include calculations of human-caused mortality and whether that mortality is sustainable.

There are two polar bear populations in Alaska: a Southern Beaufort Sea stock, which is shared with Canada, and a Chukchi/Bering Sea stock which is shared with Russia. The Pacific walrus occurs in the Bering and Chukchi seas and is shared with Russia.

For the Southern Beaufort Sea polar bear stock, the Fish and Wildlife Service estimated a minimum population of 1,397 bears and an annual human-caused mortality of 54 animals, well above the calculated sustainable rate of 22 animals per year. The stock assessment states that “the Southern Beaufort Sea population is now declining.”

For the Chukchi/Bering Sea polar bear stock, the Service estimated a minimum population of 2,000 bears and an annual human-caused mortality of 37 animals from Alaska and between 150-250 bears killed per year in Russia. The calculated sustainable rate of harvest is 30 animals per year. The stock assessment states that “the population is believed to be declining” and is “reduced based on harvest levels that were demonstrated to be unsustainable.”

For the Pacific walrus, the Service estimated a minimum population of 15,164 animals and an annual human-caused mortality of between 4,963 and 5,460 animals. The calculated sustainable rate of harvest is 607 animals per year.

Of the three population estimates, only the estimate for the well-studied Beaufort Sea polar bears is considered reliable. The Chukchi/Bering Sea polar bear population is based on incomplete data and could be an overestimate, while the walrus estimate is an underestimate as it only represents surveys in about half of the walrus habitat and does not account for walrus not counted because they were in the water rather than hauled out on ice.

“These reports publicly confirm what scientists have known for several years: Polar bear and walrus populations in Alaska are in trouble,” added Cummings. “And even if the population numbers are not precise, we know that without their sea-ice habitat they are likely doomed.”

The Marine Mammal Protection Act requires that the secretary of the interior and the secretary of commerce prepare stock assessments for marine mammals. The assessments are meant to be used as the basis for management decisions such as permitting the killing or harassment of the animals from commercial fisheries, oil and gas exploration, boating and shipping, and military exercises.

To ensure that decision-makers have the most accurate information, stock assessments are supposed to be revised every year for endangered marine mammals and every three years for other species. While the National Marine Fisheries Service – the agency responsible for whales, dolphins, and seals – has largely complied with this requirement, the Fish and Wildlife Service, responsible for polar bears, walrus, sea otters, and manatees, had completely ignored it.

In 2007 the Center sued the Wildlife Service and obtained a court order requiring the release of updated reports. Stock assessments for the Florida manatee were released last week, while sea otter reports were issued last year.

The polar bear is currently listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act as a result of a petition and litigation by the Center for Biological Diversity. The Fish and Wildlife Service is under court order to make a finding on the Center’s petition to protect the Pacific walrus under the Endangered Species Act by September 10, 2009.

A copy of the stock assessments released June 18 can be found at http://alaska.fws.gov/fisheries/mmm/reports.htm

Adapted from materials provided by Center for Biological Diversity.

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Uganda's oil quest seen as threat to biodiversity

Reuters 18 Jun 09;

KAMPALA (Reuters) - Uganda's oil finds in the Albertine Graben, involving Britain's Tullow Oil, threaten biodiversity there, an environmental body said.

Foreign companies continue to make hydrocarbon finds in western Uganda on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, with estimated reserves of two billion barrels and $500 million invested by the end of 2008.

There are four companies exploring for crude in the area with four blocs still open.

"Although environment impact assessments have been undertaken, and mitigation measures proposed, the current activities are already having impact on wildlife, the ecosystem and the human environment," the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) said in its 2008 annual report published on Thursday.

The Albertine Graben has mountain gorillas and monkeys, the golden monkey and 42 bird species as well as Murchison Falls, Queen Elizabeth, Rwenzori Mountains and other national parks, the semi-autonomous body said.

In March, NEMA approved an early production scheme by Tullow Oil after moving the proposed site 2 km (1.2 miles) from the Kabwoya Wildlife Reserve.

Early production of crude has been a bone of contention between the government and oil explorers, observers say. Uganda has said it wants to build a large refinery and use the oil domestically before considering exports.

Analysts say a refinery would cost billions of dollars and take years to construct. Any export of Uganda's waxy crude would also require a heated pipeline, they say.

(Reporting by Jack Kimball; Editing by William Hardy)

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Nuclear fusion power project to start in 2018: official

Yahoo News 18 Jun 09;

PARIS, France (AFP) – An experimental reactor that could harness nuclear fusion, the power that fuels the Sun, will begin operation in southern France in 2018, the project's governing body announced Thursday.

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) should be fully operational in 2026, the ITER Council said in a communique after a meeting in Japan.

The seven-nation council endorsed a "phased" completion of the multi-billion-dollar reactor, with a target date for "first plasma" by the end of 2018.

ITER is designed to produce 500 megawatts of power for extended periods, 10 times the energy needed to keep the energy-generating plasma -- a form of radioactive gas -- at extremely high temperatures.

It will also test a number of key technologies for fusion including the heating, control and remote maintenance that will be needed for a full-scale fusion power station.

Preliminary trials would use only hydrogen. Key experiments using tritium and deuterium that can validate fusion as a producer of large amounts of power would not take place until 2026.

Launched in 2006 after years of debate, the pilot project at Cadarache, near Marseille, has seven backers: the European Union (EU), China, India, South Korea, Japan, Russia and the United States. Kazakhstan is poised to become the eighth member.

Nuclear fusion entails forcing together the nuclei of light atomic elements in a super-heated plasma, held in a doughnut-shaped chamber called a tokamak, so that they make heavier elements and in so doing release energy.

The process, used by the Sun and other stars, would be safe and have negligible problems of waste, say its defenders.

In contrast, nuclear fission, which entails splitting the nucleus of an atom to release energy, remains dogged by concerns about safety and dangerously radioactive long-term waste.

Four years ago, ITER was priced at around 10 billion euros (13.8 billion dollars today), spread among its stakeholders, led by the EU, which has a 45-percent share.

Five billion euros (6.9 billion dollars) would go to constructing the tokamak and other facilities, and five billion euros to the 20-year operations phase.

Last month, the British science journal Nature said construction costs "are likely to double" and the cost of operations "may also rise."

"We are in the process of calculating the final cost of the project," ITER spokesman Neil Calder told AFP. "The financing plan will be presented in November at the next meeting of the council."

If ITER is a success, the next step would be to build a commercial reactor, a goal likely to be further decades away.

Fusion falters under soaring costs
Matt McGrath, BBC World Service 17 Jun 09;

An international plan to build a nuclear fusion reactor is being threatened by rising costs, delays and technical challenges.

Emails leaked to the BBC indicate that construction costs for the experimental fusion project called Iter have more than doubled.

Some scientists also believe that the technical hurdles to fusion have become more difficult to overcome and that the development of fusion as a commercial power source is still at least 100 years away.

At a meeting in Japan on Wednesday, members of the governing Iter council reviewed the plans and may agree to scale back the project.

'Size of a battleship'

On a windy construction site in the south of France, the lofty scientific goal of developing nuclear fusion as a power source is starting to take on a more substantial form.

Covering an area of more than 400,000 square metres, workers have built a one-kilometre-long earthen platform on which the experimental reactor will sit.

"This is going to be the world's biggest science experiment," says Neil Calder, Iter's head of communications.

"This is a vast global project to show the scientific feasibility of fusion as a limitless source of energy.

"On top of this platform we are going to build 130 buildings. The main building will contain the Iter machine itself.

"It will be huge - the size of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris - and it'll weigh about the same as a battleship - 36,000 tonnes of metal and instrumentation."

Controlling fusion

Iter was formally launched in 2006 as collaboration between the European Union, the United States, Russia, Japan, China, India and South Korea. The plan was to build the world's most advanced fusion experiment within 10 years for a budget of $6bn (£3.6bn).

But the grand scheme has been dogged by soaring costs caused by more expensive raw materials and increases in staff numbers. Emails seen by the BBC indicate that the total price of constructing the experiment is now expected to be in excess of $16bn (£10bn).

Professor Sebastien Balibar is research director for the French national research laboratory in Paris. He says that if the rising price of Iter is met by cutting back other research programmes that would be a disaster for science.

"If Iter is built on money having to do with energy or oil, that is perfectly good, I hope it works and in one hundred years I hope we know how to control a fusion reaction. But if it is taken from the public support of research in physics or biology then I would be very upset," says Professor Balibar.

'Different road'

Costs are not the only problem; Iter is also beset by huge technical challenges.

Fusion takes place when a superheated gas called a plasma reaches a stage called ignition, where hydrogen atoms start to fuse with each other and release large amounts of energy. Iter aims to achieve this but only for a few minutes at a time.

MIT professor Bruno Coppi has been working on fusion research in Italy and the United States for many decades. He believes that Iter is the wrong experiment; it is too costly, will take too long and may not deliver fusion. He says we should be looking at other options.

"We are pressed for time, the climate situation is worse. I think we should go with a faster line of experiments. Iter should admit its limitations and it will give a limited contribution to fusion, but to get to ignition you need to follow a different road," he says.

Another huge hurdle is how to contain gases that are 10 times hotter than the Sun. The materials required simply haven't been invented yet.

Professor Balibar explained: "The most difficult problem is the problem of materials. Some time ago I declared that fusion is like trying to put the Sun in a box - but we don't know how to make the box.

"The walls of the box, which need to be leak tight, are bombarded by these neutrons which can make stainless steel boil. Some people say it is just a question of inventing a stainless steel which is porous to let these particles through; personally I would have started by inventing this material."

Failure a possibility

In Provence, the scientists working on Iter say they have faith that the project will deliver the most effective path to fusion.

Dr Norbert Holtkamp is the man tasked with building the machine.

"Iter is a step that will demonstrate whether fusion is viable. But whether it is easy then depends on the cost of energy at that time on the cost of oil, but certainly Iter has the potential.

Dr Holtkamp recognises that Iter is a scientific experiment - and as such it has the possibility of failure.

"Any project can fail, especially if it's one of a kind or the first of its kind. It would be irresponsible for any scientist or project manager to say that in a science project it cannot fail."

Long-term plan

The rising costs of construction and technical challenges are to be reviewed at a meeting of the Iter council in Japan on Wednesday and Thursday. It is possible that by the end of this year, a new scaled-down version of Iter will be agreed.

Dr Holtkamp says the view that the project is to be scaled down is wrong.

"Fusion is not going to be the alternative in the next 20, 30 or 40 years, that is correct. But there needs to a long term plan; 40 years is little more than a generation. We need to think about the next generation and the many after that."

Professor Balibar says that the end result of the ballooning costs and increasing technical challenges will be a further slowing of the path to fusion.

"The consequence of all these difficulties is that it's not going to be tomorrow that one succeeds with fusion. But the energy problem and the climate problem are urgent," he says.

"The global warming is now - one needs to find a solution immediately, one cannot wait 100 years. The solution to the climate and energy problem is not Iter, (it) is not fusion."

While fusion offers a long-term hope of securing energy supplies, the changing climate and the pressing need for greener energy may ensure that renewables get greater political support in the short to medium term.

Ultimately fusion may be a technological dream that is just too hard to turn into reality. And Iter, in a beautiful setting in the south of France, may become the graveyard of a good but impossible idea.

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CO2 Levels Highest in Two Million Years

Maggie Koerth-Baker, National Geographic News 18 Jun 09;

What happens when carbon dioxide levels skyrocket? Most climate scientists think they know the answer: global warming.

But to determine just how high temperatures may climb and how climate patterns may shift, researchers may need to pinpoint, for comparison, a time in our planet's past when a similar carbon dioxide jump happened.

Doing that may have just gotten a lot tougher—a new study says atmospheric carbon dioxide levels haven't been this high in more than two million years.

Fuzzy But Far-Reaching New View

Carbon dioxide, or CO2, is a naturally occurring greenhouse gas that is also released into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels, for example in cars and power plants (causes of global warming).

"We really don't know how high CO2 has been in the geologic past. Thus we don't know how sensitive the surface temperature of the Earth is to CO2," said Don DePaolo, head of the Earth Sciences Division at the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory in California.

Most global warming predictions are based on fluctuations in CO2 levels and temperature that happened between a relatively recent series of ice ages, said DePaolo, who was not involved in the new study, which will appear in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science.

Chemicals in ice cores, for example, can show how CO2 levels have changed over time, down to five-year intervals.

But ice core records only go back about 800,000 years.

By studying chemicals in long-dead, single-celled plankton called foraminifera, though, the team behind the new study was able to extend the climate record back 2.1 million years (prehistoric time line).

The method doesn't provide as much detail, but it does give a pretty clear picture of what was going on at roughly thousand-year intervals.

Though he'd like to see the study results replicated for good measure, DePaolo is impressed by the report. For dates where the ice-core and plankton data overlap, the CO2 levels match, which suggests the new data for older time periods is accurate too.

Ice Age Theory Debunked?

The study team, led by geochemist Bärbel Hönisch, found evidence disproving the theory that the longer, stronger ice ages that kicked in about 850,000 years ago were caused by a steady, ongoing drop in CO2. Instead, CO2 levels seesawed over the 2.1 million years, dropping during ice ages then bouncing back.

What's more, the average CO2 level during warm periods was 38 percent lower than the average we see today.

That's significant, because it means that scientists will have to look back even further in time to find global warming answers.

Hönisch's next goal is to do just that.

"We know from the geologic record that, around 55 million years ago, the deep-sea temperature suddenly rose by 8 degrees C [14 degrees F]," said Hönisch, of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York.

"It's a time that we would like to study, because it's probably the closest thing we'll find to what's happening today. And that's the best way to make estimates for our future."

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Global warming braked less than expected by haze

Alister Doyle, Reuters 18 Jun 09;

OSLO (Reuters) - Air pollution, dust and other tiny particles that can bounce sunlight back into space are braking global warming less than previously believed, a Norwegian study said.

The report, which helps understand how climate change works, said scientific estimates of light-reflecting airborne particles had underestimated a fast build-up of black airborne soot, which has the opposite effect by soaking up heat.

"The black carbon, or soot, emissions have increased fastest," said Gunnar Myhre of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research, Oslo (Cicero) of the report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

Soot comes from burning vegetation, such as forest fires to clear farmland from the Amazon to Indonesia, and from burning fossil fuels.

Adjusting for soot and other smaller factors, airborne particles dim sunlight by about 0.3 watts per square meter, less than 0.5 watts estimated by a U.N. panel of climate scientists in a 2007 overview.

That offsets roughly a tenth of the heat-trapping impact of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels, of about 2.7 watts per square meter, Myhre told Reuters.

The main sunlight-reflecting particles from human activities include sulphates emitted by burning fossil fuels in factories, power plants or cars.

Myhre said that tougher pollution laws might lead to cleaner air and so accelerate warming that the U.N. panel says will cause more floods, droughts, rising sea levels, heatwaves and extinctions of plant and animal species.

COOLING

"The direct aerosol effect may have contributed to a cooling in the mid 20th century and may have masked a considerable degree of current global warming," he wrote.

That could potentially lead "to more rapid warming in the future owing to stricter controls on aerosol emissions."

More than 190 governments have agreed to work out a new U.N. pact to fight global warming at a meeting in Copenhagen in December, mainly by cutting use of fossil fuels.

Myhre said his study reconciled big differences between satellite data and estimates based on computer models. Satellites, for instance, were not good at gauging dimming over bright surfaces such as deserts. Clouds also block sunlight.

"This reduces the range of uncertainty ... about the scattering of solar light," Myhre said.

Human-caused aerosols add to natural particles including dust from volcanic eruptions, sandstorms from the Sahara desert or salt from sea spray that dominated before widespread use of fossil fuels began in the 18th century.

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