Don’t feed elephants in Bangkok

The Star 13 Jul 10;

BANGKOK: You can still feed elephants in Thailand's bustling capital - but it could cost you.

Bangkok authorities said Monday anyone caught handing bunches of bananas or sugar cane to the hulking beasts - proffered by their handlers to make money - faces a 10,000 baht (RM1,025) fine.

Thailand has about 2,400 domestic elephants. There is little demand these days for the animals' traditional skills in logging and other labor, so owners sometimes loan them for begging from tourists and locals in major cities.

"The ordinance is issued to prevent untidiness or danger toward properties and lives of Bangkok residents," said Manit Techa-apichoke, deputy director of the City Law Enforcement Department, adding there had been cases of elephants hurting people and falling into drains.

Friends of the Asian Elephant, a Thai nongovernment group which cares for injured or mistreated elephants, called the fines a good start.

"I've been asking for them to do this for 15 years," said its founder, Soraida Salwalla, adding that she hoped other Thai cities would follow suit. "It's not the total solution, but it's a help."

Previously, mahouts - as elephant handlers are known - and their accomplices were fined for bringing an elephant into Bangkok, but those feeding the animal escaped punishment. Typically a tourist would pay 20 baht ($0.62) for the privilege of handing a bunch of fruit or vegetables into the elephant's trunk.

Manit said those caught feeding the animals would be fined, though they may be warned first.

He said authorities had caught 30 elephants in Bangkok the past four months, but none since the new ordinance took effect July 1, although handlers were finding ways to circumvent the crackdown.

"Mahouts have adopted a new tactic of using baby elephants and taking them from place to place on a pickup truck," he said.

"They now work in the suburbs, instead of camping right in the heart of the city as they used to."

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U.S. Eyes Geothermal For Exim Bank's $1 Bln Indonesia Credit

Sunanda Creagh PlanetArk 13 Jul 10;

Part of a $1 billion credit facility backed by the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Exim Bank) for Indonesia should be used to help develop clean energy projects such as geothermal power, a senior U.S. official said on Monday.

The U.S. Exim Bank announced in late June it had pre-approved 11 Indonesian banks to receive funds under the scheme, which aims to make credit available to public and private sector businesses under low or fixed-interest rates.

"Indonesia must continue on its growth path and if it does, business as usual is not a viable option," Walter North, mission director for USAID in Indonesia, told a Jakarta conference of clean energy developers and investors.

"The US Export Import bank, for example, is going to provide financial support of over $1 billion for credit facilities in Indonesia, including for geothermal."

He told Reuters the fund was meant to boost U.S. investment in Southeast Asia's largest economy and that he would like to see geothermal project developers take advantage of the credit facility.

"My sense is that it was an eligible use and one we would like to see used to extent possible," he said.

Indonesia and the U.S. in April signed a new agreement broadening the types of protection offered to U.S. overseas investors by the Overseas Private Investment Corp (OPIC), which insures against certain risks, including political risk.

U.S. companies currently have $18 billion worth of investment in Indonesia, which boasts the potential to produce an estimated 27,000 megawatts of electricity from geothermal sources.

U.S. energy major Chevron Corp is among firms that have bid for a geothermal power project in Indonesia, as the country seeks to boost erratic power supply and cut its greenhouse gas emissions.

However, geothermal energy production is expensive and struggles to compete in Indonesia, where fossil fuels are heavily subsidized.

(Editing by Neil Chatterjee)

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Natural gas a 'bridge' fuel, says energy firm

Growing global interest in cleaner fossil fuel
Jessica Cheam Straits Times 13 Jul 10;

NATURAL gas will be the 'bridge' or transition fuel as the global economy moves from fossil fuels to renewable and alternative energy over the next century, said Chesapeake Energy Corp executive vice-president Marcus Rowland yesterday. The company is the third-largest natural gas producer in the United States.

Speaking to The Straits Times during a visit to Singapore, Mr Rowland said the long-term growth prospects of the energy source is reflected in the investor interest the company has received recently.

Natural gas is a fossil fuel containing mostly methane, which burns more cleanly than other fossil fuels - it emits 44 per cent less carbon dioxide than coal. Singapore relies heavily on natural gas, which powers 80 per cent of its energy needs.

Sovereign wealth funds from Singapore, China and South Korea and two private equity firms last month agreed to invest a total of US$900 million (S$1.25 billion) in New York-listed Chesapeake. Out of this, Singapore's investment firm Temasek Holdings has injected a total US$600 million, disclosed Mr Rowland, who is also the firm's chief financial officer.

Mr Rowland said yesterday that energy firms are increasingly wooing Asian investors as the region's appetite for resource investments appears unquenchable. And as the world population increases and emerging economies develop, energy prices will only go up in the long term, he noted.

Even in the US, demand is set to rise as dirtier fuels such as coal get replaced. Natural gas accounts for 23 per cent of US electricity generation, while coal still provides 50 per cent, he said.

'Countries like China and India are aggressively investing in resources because as energy prices rise around the world, their investment becomes a natural hedge against that.'

Natural gas is trading at about US$4.50 per 1,000 cu ft, a sharp drop from the US$14 levels it traded at in 2008, just before the world financial crisis, he added.

'Prices won't go back to those levels for a long time, but it has potential for growth as demand for the fuel grows. The fuel is abundant at reasonable prices and as the world moves towards renewables and other technologies, it will be a bridge fuel - here to stay for at least the next five generations.'

Chesapeake, with annual revenues of more than US$7 billion, started talks with Asian investors only six months ago but has managed to raise US$1.5 billion in capital from investors in the region in that short time, said Mr Rowland.

Most of the capital raised went towards paying the company's debt, accrued from the aggressive expansion over the past five years in shale gas sites.

Mr Rowland was in town to speak to Singapore-based banks in order to extend the firm's credit facilities into the region. The firm is shifting its focus into oil and natural gas liquid production to complement its natural gas business.

Compressed natural gas, for example, is regarded by industry analysts as having tremendous potential. Besides being relatively safe to transport, it also reduces the environmental impact.

In the longer term, the company may also look into exporting liquified natural gas (LNG) as demand around the world increases. Singapore, for example, is building a $1.5 billion LNG terminal in a bid to diversify its energy sources.

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Cash for Conservation: Threats and Promises of Paying Communities for Their Biodiversity

With global biodiversity continuing to decline, conservationists have started paying people to leave forests, watersheds and wildlife intact
Brendan Borrell Scientific American 12 Jul 10;

EDMONTON, Alberta—Nyungwe National Park in Rwanda is one of the largest expanses of montane rainforest in East Africa. It is also one of the most endangered: poaching, forest fires, mining and human settlements are all threatening to tear apart this key water catchment in one of the continent's most densely populated countries.

Last year, a group of ecologists at the University of East Anglia (U.E.A.) began a radical experiment: offering cash payments to communities who help conserve it. Week by week, rangers patrol the area and count snares, tree-felling, mining and other destructive activities; the communities with the fewest infractions will grow richer in the next two years.

Sounds like an ethical minefield? Payments for environmental services, or PES, is one of the most controversial areas of conservation. Large environmental organizations have been criticized for long ignoring, and sometimes exacerbating, the plight of the world's poor. But over the last decade, The Nature Conservancy, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and other organizations have helped launched PES projects to protect, for instance, watersheds in South America and Africa. Furthermore, PES is going to play an even bigger role as the international community debates schemes to pay countries for the carbon stored by avoiding deforestation, an approach taken by the U.N. Development Programme called REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries).

The issue took center stage this week here at the International Congress for Conservation Biology when Neil Burgess, a conservation biologist at the University of Copenhagen who has worked with the WWF in Tanzania, projected a cartoon that conservationists there used depicting a montane landscape with and without PES. "When you have a payment scheme in place where industries are providing money back to resources and catchments, everything is nice and the sky is blue and everybody is smiling," he said facetiously, describing the cartoon. Without PES, the forest is being cut down and the topsoil is running off hills. "Everything is going to shit, basically."

Well, that's the theory. The ReDirect Rwanda project is unique in that it is a controlled experiment to test the effectiveness of PES. "The promise of PES is a big promise," says Nicole Gross-Camp, a U.E.A. ecologist monitoring the project, "and there has not been a rigorous examination of it to achieve both its conservation and development objectives." One of Gross-Camp's colleagues had calculated that the forest around Nyungwe provides about $25 worth of forest products to every household each year.

Armed with a $1.25-million research grant from the European Research Council, the ReDirect Rwanda team calculated they could afford to pay about four "cells" surrounding the park that contain between 300 and 2,000 households each. Then, each of those "cells" is paired with a control "cell" that is not getting paid; by comparing the adjacent forests, Gross-Camp and her colleagues hope to assess whether the payments are actually working. "The question is whether we can reduce people's impact on the park without making their situations [economically] worse," she says.

But no matter how successful ReDirect is, there are still enormous hurdles to scaling up PES schemes and finding voluntary partners that purchase their environmental services through direct payments or development efforts. Burgess has seen how a deal brokered by the WWF has Coca-Cola and a municipal water company in the Tanzanian capital, Dar es Salaam, paying local communities to protect their watershed, but he doubts such schemes can be self-supporting, especially in areas with few downstream users. "You can't have two or three vehicles going up and down mountains to distribute $200," he says, referring to the transaction costs of manually distributing payments in regions where bank accounts are uncommon.

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Africa's national parks failing to conserve large mammals, study shows

Populations of zebra, buffalo and lion have fallen by an average of 59% since 1970, according to research
David Adam guardian.co.uk 12 Jul 10;

Africa's extensive network of national parks is failing to stem the decline of large mammals, according to a new study that highlights biodiversity loss across the continent.

Populations of large mammals such as zebra, buffalo and lion have declined by an average of 59% since 1970, according to the research, which collated data from parks including popular tourist safari destinations such as the Masai Mara in Kenya and the Serengeti in Tanzania.

The study warns that urgent efforts are needed to better protect the animals and secure the future of the parks, which draw millions of tourists each year and provide much-needed income.

Ian Cragie, a conservation scientist at the University of Cambridge who led the study, said: "Although the results indicate that African national parks have generally failed to maintain their populations of large mammals, the situation outside the parks is undoubtedly worse. Many species like rhino are practically extinct outside national parks."

The team of scientists, including experts from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the United Nations environment programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Cambridge, compiled population records of 69 key species, including lion, wildebeest, giraffe, zebra and buffalo, inside 78 protected areas across Africa from 1970 to 2005. More than half the records came from aerial surveys, the most accurate but also the most expensive way to monitor.

The results show an average decline of 59%, though the results varied significantly from region to region. Eleven parks in west Africa were the hardest hit, with a decline of 85%. Mammal species populations across 43 protected areas in east Africa fell by more than half, while those in 35 reserves in southern Africa showed an increase of 25%. The scientists say they cannot break down the results to show the change in numbers in individual parks because of confidentiality agreements with data providers.

Publishing the results in the journal Biological Conservation, the scientists say: "Protected areas are the cornerstone of global conservation efforts but their performance in maintaining populations of their key species remains poorly documented. These results indicate that African protected areas have generally failed to mitigate human-induced threats to African large mammal populations, but they also show some successes."

The scientists say the severe decline in animal populations in west Africa is probably down to the lack of money and people needed to police the parks, high rates of habitat degradation and the growing bushmeat trade. Southern African parks are better funded and have more staff, which has contributed to their success.

Jonathan Baillie, the director of ZSL conservation programmes, said: "The results are far worse than we imagined, but the increasing population trends in southern Africa provide hope and demonstrate that protected areas can be very effective for conserving large mammals if properly resourced."

The scientists caution that the results do not indicate a blanket failure of the parks to protect the animals as intended. The study does not assess populations outside the parks. "One important implication of this is that while we say overall there have been large population declines inside protected areas, we are not able to say that protected areas are having no effect in mitigating the effects of human activities on biodiversity, because the rates of decline could be more extreme outside."

Animals such as wildebeest that migrate or have very large home ranges can spend significant time outside the protected areas, where they are known to be more vulnerable, the scientists add. This means the declines found in the study may reflect changes outside the protected areas as well as inside.

Despite the severe losses, the study showed that the rate of decline has slowed over time, which could indicate that management of the protected areas has improved in recent times.

Africa's Game Parks Rapidly Losing Animals, Study Finds
Tim Cocks Reuters 14 Jul 10;

Africa's game parks have lost well over half of their big mammals, such as the lions and buffalos that draw millions of tourists each year, to rampant hunting and farming since 1970, a study has found.

The continent-wide study by specialists, including from the London Zoological Society and U.N. environment program (UNEP), late Monday found big mammal populations inside national parks declined 59 percent between 1970 and 2005.

"These results illustrate that African PAs (protected areas) have generally failed to mitigate human-induced threats to African large mammal populations," the report in Biological Conservation journal said.

Elephants and rhinos were not included in the study because of special trade restrictions relating to them.

"It's perhaps not (surprising)," UNEP spokesman Nick Nuttal said Tuesday. "Africa has undergone a large population increase since that period of time. There's incredible pressure from hunting for food."

Another pressure was conversion to agricultural land.

Nuttal said a comparative study would be needed on wildlife loss outside national parks to determine if they'd at least managed to slow the decline of mammal populations.

At a wildlife conference in 2002, governments around the world agreed to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss, but no government had achieved that target, Nuttal said.

African leaders are increasingly becoming aware of the economic value of the animals in their parks -- especially the "big five" mammals -- lions, rhinos, elephants, leopards and buffalos -- that are favorite tourist attractions. But tackling poachers in the vast stretches of savannah, woodland or forest that parks protect has proved tough.

(Editing by Jon Loades-Carter)

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Staggering tree loss from 2005 Amazon storm

American Geophysical Union EurekAlert 12 Jul 10;

WASHINGTON—A single, huge, violent storm that swept across the whole Amazon forest in 2005 killed half a billion trees, a new study shows.

While storms have long been recognized as a cause of Amazon tree loss, this study is the first to produce an actual body count. And, the losses are much greater than previously suspected, the study's authors say. This suggests that storms may play a larger role in the dynamics of Amazon forests than previously recognized, they add.

Previous research had attributed a peak in tree mortality in 2005 solely to a severe drought that affected parts of the forest. The new study says that a single squall line (a long line of severe thunderstorms, the kind associated with lightening and heavy rainfall) had an important role in the tree demise. This type of storm might become more frequent in the future in the Amazon due to climate change, killing a higher number of trees and releasing more carbon to the atmosphere.

Tropical thunderstorms have long been suspected to wreak havoc in the Amazon, but this is the first time researchers have calculated how many trees a single thunderstorm can kill, says Jeffrey Chambers, a forest ecologist at Tulane University, in New Orleans, and one of the authors of the paper, which has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

In 2005, there was a spike in tree mortality in the Amazon. Previous studies by a coauthor of this new paper, Niro Higuchi of Brazil's National Institute for Amazon Research (INPA), showed the second largest upsurge recorded since 1989 for the Manaus region. Also in 2005, large parts of the Amazon forest experienced one of the harshest droughts in the last century. A study published in the journal Science in 2009 pointed at the drought as the single agent for a basin-wide increase in tree mortality. But a very large area with major tree loss (the region near Manaus, in the Central Amazon) was not affected by the drought.

"We can't attribute [the increased] mortality to just drought in certain parts of the basin—we have solid evidence that there was a strong storm that killed a lot of trees over a large part of the Amazon," Chambers says.

From January 16 to January 18, 2005, a squall line 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) long and 200 kilometers (124 miles) wide crossed the whole Amazon basin from southwest to northeast, causing several human deaths in the cities of Manaus, Manacaparu and Santarem. The storm's associated strong vertical winds, with speeds of up to 145 km/hour (90 mi/hour), uprooted or snapped in half trees that were in their path. In many cases, the stricken trees took down some of their neighbors when they fell.

The researchers used a combination of Landsat satellite images, field-measured tree mortality, and modeling to determine the number of trees killed by the storm. By linking satellite data to field observations, the researchers were able to take into account smaller tree blowdowns (less than 10 trees) that otherwise cannot be detected through satellite images.

Looking at satellite images for the area of Manaus from before and after the storm, the researchers detected changes in the reflectivity of the forest that they suspected are indicative of tree losses. Undisturbed forest patches appear as closed, green canopy in satellite images. When trees die and fall, a clearing opens, exposing wood, dead vegetation, and surface litter. This so-called "woody signal" only lasts for about a year in the Amazon; the time it takes for vegetation to re-grow and cover the exposed wood and soil. Thus, the signal is a good indicator of recent tree deaths.

After seeing disturbances in the satellite images, the researchers established five field sites in one of the blowdown areas, and counted the number of trees that had been killed by the storm–researchers can usually tell what killed a tree from looking at it.

"If a tree dies from a drought, it generally dies standing. It looks very different from trees that die snapped by a storm," Chambers says.

In the most affected plots, near the centers of large blowdowns (contiguous patches of wind-toppled trees), up to 80 percent of the trees had been killed by the storm.

By comparing their field data and the satellite observations, the researchers determined that the satellite images were accurately pinpointing areas of tree death, and they calculated that the storm had killed between 300,000 and 500,000 trees in the area of Manaus. The number of trees killed by the 2005 storm is equivalent to 30 percent of the annual deforestation in that same year for the Manaus region, which experiences relatively low rates of deforestation.

The team then extrapolated the results to the whole Amazon basin.

"We know that the storm was intense and went across the basin," Chambers says. "To quantify the potential basin-wide impact, we assumed that the whole area impacted by the storm had a similar level of tree mortality as the mortality observed in Manaus."

The researchers estimate that between 441 and 663 million trees were destroyed across the whole basin. This represents a loss equivalent to 23 percent of the estimated mean annual carbon accumulation of the Amazon forest.

Squall lines that move from southwest to northeast of the forest, like the one in January 2005, are relatively rare and poorly studied, says Robinson Negrón-Juárez, an atmospheric scientist at Tulane University, in New Orleans, and lead author of the study. Storms that are similarly destructive but advance in the opposite direction (from the northeast coast of South America to the interior of the continent) occur up to four times per month. They can also generate large forest blowdowns, although it's infrequent that either of these two types of storms crosses the whole Amazon.

"We need to start measuring the forest perturbation caused by both types of squall lines, not only by the ones coming from the south," Negrón-Juárez says. "We need that data to estimate total biomass loss from these natural events, which has never been quantified."

Chambers says that authors of previous studies on tree mortality in the Amazon have diligently collected dead-tree tolls, but information on exactly what killed the trees is often lacking, or not reported

"It's very important that when we collect data in the field we do forensics on tree mortality," says Chambers, who has been studying forest ecology and carbon cycling in Amazon since 1993. "Under a changing climate, some forecasts say that storms will increase in intensity. If we start seeing increases in tree mortality, we need to be able to say what's killing the trees."

###

This work was funded by NASA and Tulane University.

Amazon Storm Killed Half a Billion Trees
Livescience.com Yahoo News 13 Jul 10;

A violent storm ripped through the Amazon forest in 2005 and single-handedly killed half a billion trees, a new study reveals.

The study is the first to produce an actual tree body count after an Amazon storm.

An estimated 441 million to 663 million trees were destroyed across the whole Amazon basin during the 2005 storm, a much greater number than previously suspected.

In some areas of the forest, up to 80 percent of the trees were killed by the storm. A severe drought was previously blamed for the region's tree loss in 2005.

"We can't attribute [the increased] mortality to just drought in certain parts of the basin - we have solid evidence that there was a strong storm that killed a lot of trees over a large part of the Amazon," said forest ecologist and study researcher Jeffrey Chambers of Tulane University in New Orleans, La.

From Jan. 16 to Jan. 18, 2005, a squall line - a long line of severe thunderstorms - 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) long and 124 miles (200 km) wide crossed the whole Amazon basin. The storm's strong winds, with speeds of up to 90 mph (145 kph), uprooted or snapped trees in half.

When trees die, they release their stored carbon into the atmosphere, which contributes to climate change. In a vicious cycle, these storms could become more frequent in the future due to climate change.

To calculate the number of trees killed by the storm, the researchers used satellite images, field studies and computer models. They looked for patches of wind-toppled trees, which allowed them to distinguish from trees killed by the drought.

"If a tree dies from a drought, it generally dies standing. It looks very different from trees that die snapped by a storm," Chambers said.

The storm wiped out between 300,000 and 500,000 trees in the area of Manaus, Brazil, alone. The number of trees killed by the 2005 storm was equal to 30 percent of the total human-caused deforestation in that same year for the Manaus region. The researchers used the tree loss in Manaus to estimate the tree loss across the entire Amazon basin.

"It's very important that when we collect data in the field we do forensics on tree mortality," Chambers said. "Under a changing climate, some forecasts say that storms will increase in intensity. If we start seeing increases in tree mortality, we need to be able to say what's killing the trees."

The study, funded by NASA and Tulane University, will be detailed in a future edition of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

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Ecosystem damage to show true cost of Gulf spill: expert

Marlowe Hood Yahoo News 12 Jul 10;

PARIS (AFP) – The Gulf of Mexico oil disaster is likely to cost far more than cleanup and compensation for lost income once damage to ecosystems is factored in, a top expert said Tuesday.

In an interview coinciding with a UN-sponsored report on the link between business and biodiversity, economist Pavan Sukhdev said the BP debacle underscores the need for a sea change in how the "natural capital" upon which human wellbeing depends is measured and valued.

"The economic invisibility of ecosystem services and biodiversity -- clean air, fresh water, healthy oceans, fertile soil, stable climates -- must be addressed with urgency," he said from London by phone.

"We have to move into a society where both public and private wealth are recognized as important. But today, how many people understand 'natural capital' as compared to financial capital?"

Part of the problem is not knowing how to quantify things that have long been assumed to exist in unlimited quantities.

"We cannot manage what we do not measure, and we are not measuring either the value of nature's benefits or the costs of their loss," said Sukhdev, lead author of the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) for Business report.

A growing number of CEOs understand that they can no longer take for granted these "free" services, he said.

But industrialisation and a global population headed toward nine billion people by mid-century have created terrible strains.

Each year, the world's 3,000 largest companies are causing 2.2 trillion dollars (1.75 trillion euros) worth of environmental damage, said Sukhdev, citing a soon-to-published companion report prepared by Britain-based consultancy TruCost.

"It is not the individual CEOs or the companies that are to blame. They are following the path that was created for them, where corporations can externalise all these costs to society," he said.

The BP oil spill, which has been dumping an estimated 60,000 barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico every day, has emerged as a case study of how not to protect nature's precious assets.

Had government required a "holistic economic assessment" before drilling was allowed, the potential liability might have pushed BP to take more stringent safety measures, he argued.

As things stand, "we only think about them after there is a problem, and then scurry about and chase our tails for a bit," said Sukhdev, pointing to the aftermath of the Valdez Exxon, the supertanker that fouled Alaska's once pristine Prince William Sound with some 11 million gallons of oil.

The BP gusher has been spewing an equivalent amount every four or five days since April 20, according to a US government estimate.

Putting a price tag on the value of affected ecosystems also changes the estimate of losses.

BP has put forward a figure of 20 billion dollars for cleanup and compensation.

"But what about the cost to the economy of lost utility -- eco-tourism loss, fisheries stocks that represent future losses to industry, the inability to fish in the area," Sukhdev said.

The oil could also kill hundreds of square kilometres of coastal mangrove forests that are nurseries for commercial marine species and a bulkhead against hurricane damage.

Even thousands of yacht owners could have a legitimate claim.

"People have invested in yatchs, including a license fee to moor it, people to caretake it. When the time comes to use or rent it, they can't -- that's lost utility. Is anyone putting a number on that?"

The crisis of collapsing ecosystems will only be addressed when the value of nature's services are fully reflected in political and business decision making, Sukhdev said.

"We are about half way there in terms of developing the toolkit. For people understanding that the toolkit exists and should be used, we are at three-to-five on a scale of 10," he said.

"As for actual implementation -- between zero and two."

The TEEB report, supported by the UN Environment Programme, was launched by the European Commission in 2007 after G8 and major emerging economies called for a global study on the economics of biodiversity.

The full study will be unveiled later this year at the Convention on Biodiversity in Nagoya, Japan.

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Top China miner pollutes river: report

Yahoo News 12 Jul 10;

BEIJING (AFP) – Pollution from a mine owned by a top gold producer has severely contaminated a river in southeastern China, leading to a massive fish kill, the government and state media said Monday.

Seepage from a mining waste pond owned by the Zijinshan Copper Mine has contaminated the Ding River and a reservoir in Fujian, the province's environmental protection bureau said in a statement.

The leak was first detected on July 3, prompting the bureau to issue an emergency order to begin monitoring it, the statement said.

Xinhua news agency said the mine is owned by the Hong Kong-listed Zijin Mining Group Co, China's largest gold producer.

Pollution from the sludge pond has killed or poisoned 1.89 million kilogrammes (4.2 million pounds) of fish on the Ding River and in the Mianhuatan reservoir, the report said.

The smell of dead fish was discernible 10 kilometres (six miles) from the reservoir, it added.

"The county government has issued a circular asking residents to turn in poisoned fish for collective disposal," the report quoted local villagers as saying, adding that villagers would be compensated for the fish they collect.

One villager said he lost 25,000 kilogrammes of fish that he was raising on his fish farm, it said.

Neither the government statement nor Xinhua made mention of any possible impact the spill was having on local drinking and irrigation water.

Years of unbridled economic growth have left most of China's lakes and rivers heavily polluted. More than 200 million Chinese currently do not have access to safe drinking water, according to government data.

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Scientists Quantify Global Warming's Threat to Public Health

From heat stress to sewage overflows, climate change promises to bring extreme weather that will challenge the ill-prepared U.S. public health infrastructure
Douglas Fischer and The Daily Climate Scientific American 12 Jul 10;

Extreme weather induced by climate change has dire public health consequences, as heat waves threaten the vulnerable, storm runoff overwhelms city sewage systems and hotter summer days bake more pollution into asthma-inducing smog, scientists say.

The United States – to say nothing of the developed world – is unprepared for such conditions predicted by myriad climate models and already being seen today, warn climate researchers and public health officials.

"Climate change as it's projected will impact almost every aspect of public health, both in the developed world and – more importantly – in the developing world," said Michael McGeehin, director of the Environmental Hazards and Health Effects division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"A flood is a major public health disaster," he added. "A flood takes us back to the 1890s as far as the public health system is concerned."

Last week, as the East Coast stewed its way through the first heat wave of the summer, researchers at Stanford University published a study suggesting exceptionally long heat waves and extreme temperatures could be commonplace in the United States within 30 years – sooner than expected.

"I did not expect to see anything this large within the next three decades," Noah Diffenbaugh, assistant professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford and lead author of the study, said in a statement. "It was definitely a surprise."

The report was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Using some of the highest-resolution computer models to date, Diffenbaugh and Moetasim Ashfaq, a former Stanford postdoctoral researcher now at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, were able to simulate daily temperatures across small sections of the country.

They found an intense heat wave – equal to the longest on record from 1951 to 1999 – could hit western and central United States as many as five times between 2020 and 2029.

The study buttresses other recent findings concluding that the heat scorching the eastern United States last week – or that killed tens of thousands in Europe in 2003 – is likely to be the new norm.

"The current state of heatwaves could be the harbinger of things to come," said David Easterling, a climatologist with the National Climatic Data Center.
And it's not just heat.

Easterling and McGeehin spoke at a briefing last week arranged by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Climate disruption, they said, is also bringing more floods and drought.

"A flood is a major public health disaster," McGeehin said. "A flood takes us back to the 1890s as far as the public health system is concerned."

There is, however, a silver lining: Tackling global warming is also a public health opportunity, said Jonathan Patz, director of global environmental health at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who also participated in the UCS briefing.

Avoiding the worst of the heat waves, sewage overflows and droughts has obvious benefit, Patz said. But many climate mitigation efforts also bring health benefits: Using less fuel improves air quality; walking or biking to work reduces obesity.

Patz is in the process of quantifying those savings, but preliminary results suggest that if Americans could reduce their car travel by 20 percent – essentially not driving one day a week – the largest cities across the Midwest could save hundreds of lives, avoid hundreds of thousands of hospital admissions and trim several billion dollars from health care spending, he said.

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Global population study launched by Royal Society

BBC News 12 Jul 10;

The UK's Royal Society is launching a major study into human population growth and how it may affect social and economic development in coming decades.

The world's population has risen from two billion in 1930 to 6.8 billion now, with nine billion projected by 2050.

The society acknowledges it is delving into a hugely controversial area, but says a comprehensive and scientific review of the evidence is needed.

It is led by Nobel laureate Sir John Sulston of Human Genome Project fame.

"This is a topic that has gone to and fro in the last few decades, and appears to be moving back up the political agenda now," he told BBC News.

"So it seems a good moment for the Royal Society to launch a study that looks objectively at the scientific basis for changes in population, for the different regional and cultural factors that may affect that, and at the effects that population changes will have on our future in term of sustainable development."

The burgeoning human population is acknowledged as one of the underlying causes of environmental issues such as climate change, deforestation, depletion of water resources and loss of biodiversity.

The working group includes experts on the environment, agriculture, economics, law and theology drawn from a mix of rich and poor countries including the UK, China, Brazil and the US.
Green growth

In the 1970s, with disastrous food shortages routine in regions of Asia and Africa, the world's apparently dwindling capacity to feed its rapidly growing population was an issue high on the political agenda.

New crops developed during the Green Revolution and other advances in agriculture, combined with economic progress, seemed to allay these fears in subsequent decades.

In addition, some people in developing countries argued that western nations raised the issue as a means of distracting attention from the rising and unsustainable consumption in the west.

Recently, however, population has started to re-emerge as an issue of discussion among people working on environment and development issues.

High-profile champions such as Sir David Attenborough have spoken of its importance and the threats it may pose.

However, some economists and policymakers consider population growth a good thing, as it produces a swelling workforce capable of producing more goods and continued economic growth.

Jonathon Porritt, founder and director of the UK think tank Forum for the Future and a member of the Royal Society's working group, suggested the review could shed some objective light on the issues under dispute.

"What it can do is shed some light on the different interpretations that people draw from the underlying trends," he said.

"Why do some people say it doesn't matter and is all welcome, while others such as me say it is likely to have a greater impact on the future of humanity than some of the other issues we are talking a lot about?"

Policymakers needed such objective studies, he said, in order to make effective choices - for example, deciding whether and how to support family planning policies in the developing world.

The Royal Society's study is launched on World Population Day, and is expected to conclude in early 2012.

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La Nina To Form In July As Storm, Drought Fears Flare

Rene Pastor PlanetArk 12 Jul 10;

A La Nina weather anomaly, the opposite number of its more infamous cousin El Nino, will ramp up in the equatorial Pacific in July and August, the Climate Prediction Center forecast on Thursday.

La Nina would boost hurricane formation in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico and pose a threat to crops in the U.S. Midwest and in countries like agricultural powerhouses Brazil, Argentina and India.

"La Nina conditions are likely to develop during July-August 2010," the CPC, an office under the U.S. National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), stated in its monthly update.

"The majority of (computer) models now predict La Nina conditions ... to develop during June-August and to continue through early 2011," the Center explained.

La Nina spawns colder-than-normal waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. In contrast, El Nino is an abnormal warming of those waters. Both wreak havoc in the weather from the U.S. to India and occur every three to four years.

El Nino means "little boy" in Spanish and was named after the Christ child because it was first noticed by anchovy fishermen in Latin America one Christmastime in the 19th Century.

The moderately strong El Nino of 2009 has just wound down and this La Nina is kicking up hard on its heels.

OIL RIGS IN GULF A TARGET

The emergence of a La Nina is of particular concern to the oil industry in the Gulf, already reeling from the massive oil spill caused by a leaking BP well.

Several forecasters have said the number of hurricanes striking the United States increases sharply during La Nina years and shrinks when El Nino hits.

Increased wind shear in an El Nino tends to rip apart embryonic storms in the Atlantic basin and Caribbean Sea. But those winds are limited in a La Nina year, allowing storms to flourish.

Last May, NOAA predicted this Atlantic storm season could be the worst since the record-breaking 2005, when Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, Hurricane Wilma slammed into Florida's citrus groves, and Hurricane Rita hit hard the oil rigs in the Gulf and refineries along the Gulf Coast.

NOAA forecast up to 23 named storms, of which 14 could power up to hurricanes. A record 15 hurricanes struck in 2005. June has already produced the first hurricane in 15 years, Alex, which dissipated in Mexico last weekend.

Storms are a particular concern in the Gulf, which holds about 27 percent of the U.S.'s oil and 15 percent of its natural gas, according to the federal Department of Energy.

U.S. FARMERS FRET OVER DRY WEATHER

For American farmers, La Nina increases the chance of a dry spell in the Corn Belt, especially during the critical pollination stage of the crop in July.

Rain is vital in this month for corn yields. And those showers are also needed in August for soybeans when they go into pod setting, which contains the beans and affects the yield of the crop.

The United States is the world's largest producer and exporter of corn and soybeans, and any production problem could lead to higher feed prices across the globe.

Worldwide, the effect of a La Nina would spread into countries like Brazil, one of the world's top agricultural powers, and India, a major producer and consumer of everything from sugar to oilseeds.

In a La Nina, CPC said drier-than-normal weather can occur from southern Brazil all the way to central Argentina during their winter.

Aside from sugar cane, that may also affect coffee production in Brazil, the world's top producer. The Latin American country is the world's second biggest exporter of soybeans. Argentina is the biggest exporter of soymeal and soyoil.

For Brazil, heavy rains during an El Nino in 2009 hampered the harvesting of its sugar cane. But this could turn into a prolonged dry spell as La Nina strengthens.

CPC said the Indian monsoon, which weakened in 2009 to its worst level in more than 30 years, tends to be greater than normal especially in the northwestern part of the country in a La Nina year.

In between, a La Nina tends to increase rainfall over Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and northern Australia. All these countries suffer from severe drought when an El Nino hits.

(Editing by John Picinich)

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Big Chunk of Ice Breaks Off of Greenland Glacier

Livescience.com Yahoo News 12 Jul 10;

A huge chunk of ice about one-eighth the size of Manhattan has broken off of Greenland's Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier, NASA scientists report.

A 2.7-square-mile (7-square-kilometer) section of the glacier broke up on July 6 and 7 and was spotted in NASA satellite images.

Greenland's ice sheet, which is 2 miles (3.2 km) thick and covers an area about the size of Mexico, has been losing ice mass at an accelerating rate over the last decade. The ice sheet discharges much of its ice through fast moving glaciers that flow into the sea, with large chunks breaking off into the ocean.

The breakup last week pushed the calving front - where the ice sheet meets the ocean - back nearly a mile (1.5 km) in one day. The front is now farther inland than at any time previously observed.

Research teams led by Ian Howat of the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University and Paul Morin, director of the Antarctic Geospatial Information Center at the University of Minnesota have been monitoring satellite images for changes in the Greenland ice sheet and its outlet glaciers.

While the recent breakup itself is not unusual, Howat noted, detecting it within hours and at such fine detail is a new phenomenon for scientists.

The breakup could be connected to global warming as climate change has resulted in warmer Arctic Ocean waters.

"While there have been ice breakouts of this magnitude from Jakobshavn and other glaciers in the past, this event is unusual because it occurs on the heels of a warm winter that saw no sea ice form in the surrounding bay," said Thomas Wagner, cryospheric program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. "While the exact relationship between these events is being determined, it lends credence to the theory that warming of the oceans is responsible for the ice loss observed throughout Greenland and Antarctica."

Jakobshavn Isbrae is located on the west coast of Greenland at 69 degrees north latitude and has retreated more than 27 miles (45 km) over the past 160 years - 6 miles (10 km) in just the past decade. As the glacier has retreated, it has broken into a northern and southern branch. The breakup this week occurred in the north branch. Scientists estimate that as much as 10 percent of all ice lost from Greenland is coming from Jakobshavn, which is also believed to be the single largest contributor to sea level rise in the Northern Hemisphere.

Scientists are more concerned about losses from the south branch of the Jakobshavn, as the topography is flatter and lower than in the northern branch.

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