Malaysia: Dialog, Vopak Sign Customers for Oil Storage Terminal

Chong Pooi Koon & Ann Koh Bloomberg 21 Dec 12;

Dialog Group Bhd., (DLG) Malaysia’s second-biggest oil and gas services provider, said it signed some customers for the 1.9 billion-ringgit ($620 million) storage terminal it’s developing with Royal Vopak NV. (VPK)

Talks with other potential clients are continuing, Dialog Executive Chairman Ngau Boon Keat said in an interview Dec. 18 at Pengerang, Malaysia’s southern Johor state neighboring Singapore.

Dialog, Vopak and local government are developing the site at Pengerang, with initial capacity of 1.3 million cubic meters, to meet rising demand for oil storage in Asia and as space in Singapore dwindles. The companies are betting on the terminal’s location to capture trade flow between China, India and Asia, Ngau said at the site.

“Our location is blessed with 24-meter deep natural berth able to bring in very large crude carriers,” said Law Say Huat, chief executive officer of the venture developing the Pengerang terminal. “We are offering an alternative to the crude oil traders, refiners, or the suppliers to be able to bring here to blend up, to break bulk or to make bulk.”

The tanks will be for clean products and crude oil and will begin operating from 2014, Ngau said. Clean products include fuels such as gasoline, naphtha, diesel and kerosene. The company has no immediate plans to build fuel oil tanks.

“At the moment, there is quite a lot fuel oil storage,” Ngau said. “We’re more targeting crude oil storage.”

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Indonesia: Tribe Fight Palm Oil Plans

SP/Sahat Oloan Saragih Jakarta Globe 20 Dec 12;

Pontianak, West Kalimantan. Supporters of the Uud Dhanum Dayak tribe in West Kalimantan’s Sintang district have called on local authorities to declare their land a cultural conservation area, in a bid to protect it from a planned oil palm plantation.

Syamsuni Arman, an anthropologist at Tanjungpura University in Pontianak, the provincial capital, said at a seminar that the land in question was considered sacred to the Dayak and there must be guarantees in place to ensure that it would not be taken over or the tribe evicted.

“Economic development policies around the area where the Dayaks intend to establish their cultural conservation area must take into consideration the traditions and cultural sensitivities of the locals, as well as the need to conserve the existing biodiversity,” he said.

The call was made in response to revelations that the district administration had granted a 1,000-hectare concession in the area to a palm oil company.

Rafael Samsudin, the head of the Uud Dhanum Dayak tribal association, said that the Sintang authorities were perfectly aware that the area in the Sakai River basin was considered by the tribe as ancestral land and therefore sacred.

The concession was issued to Sinar Sawit Andalan, which is currently applying for a land use permit with the National Land Agency (BPN).

Rafael said his association had sent a letter to the BPN head office in Jakarta as well as to its provincial and district offices, calling on the agency not to issue the land use permit.

He said the tribe was worried that once the permit was awarded and the company started clearing the land for the plantation, the water table in the area would drop, affecting not just the tribe but also the local plant and animal life.

He pointed out that the forested area was home to many protected species, including several varieties of toucans, and if the forest was logged and replaced by oil palms the wildlife would disappear.

The tribe also fears that a drop in the water table would diminish the water level in the Sakai River, where they hoped to build a small hydroelectric plant to provide power for the community.

Rafael stressed that the tribe had safeguarded the forest for generations and would not allow it to be destroyed now for mere commercial gain.

Syamsuni said that in addition to conserving the area, the district and provincial authorities should also start recognizing and incorporating the Dayaks’ age-old forest stewardship practices into their own conservation policies.

He argued that their sustainable brand of forest management had allowed them to live and farm in the forest for generations with no adverse affect on the local wildlife or the integrity of the forest.

A national conference of indigenous peoples earlier this year highlighted another branch of the Dayak, the Iban Dayak in Kapuas Hulu district, West Kalimantan, as gaining official recognition for their forest stewardship practices.

The tribe has since 1819 practiced a quota system for logging trees and mapped their own forest zones.

“We sustain our forest by designating zones for housing and for preservation,” Samay, an Iban member, said at the conference in North Maluku in April.

“For instance, we don’t touch water catchment areas because that’s our source of clean water. We also allow each family to cut down just five trees a year, and the wood may only be used to build a house.”

The Iban’s forest stewardship methods were certified in 2008 by the Indonesian Ecolabel Foundation as sustainable forest management, making it the first community forest to get the certification.

But the community’s efforts at forest zoning have still not been acknowledged by authorities in their home district.

“We’ve tried to get acknowledgment for our mapping since 1998 from the local government, but still nothing,” Samay said.

“We need that acknowledgment because we’re worried that our lands could be changed for other uses. It’s not for us, it’s for our children and grandchildren.

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Coral Reefs Could Be Decimated by 2100

Eli Kintisch, ScienceNOW Wired 21 Dec 12;

Nearly every coral reef could be dying by 2100 if current carbon dioxide emission trends continue, according to a new review of major climate models from around the world. The only way to maintain the current chemical environment in which reefs now live, the study suggests, would be to deeply cut emissions as soon as possible. It may even become necessary to actively remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, say with massive tree-planting efforts or machines.

The world’s open-ocean reefs are already under attack by the combined stresses of acidifying and warming water, overfishing, and coastal pollution. Carbon emissions have already lowered the pH of the ocean a full 0.1 unit, which has harmed reefs and hindered bivalves’ ability to grow. The historical record of previous mass extinctions suggests that acidified seas were accompanied by widespread die-offs but not total extinction.

To study how the world’s slowly souring seas would affect reefs in the future, scientists with the Carnegie Institution for Science in Palo Alto, California, analyzed the results of computer simulations performed by 13 teams around the world. The models include simulations of how ocean chemistry would interact with an atmosphere with higher carbon dioxide levels in the future. This so-called “active biogeochemistry” is a new feature that is mostly absent in the previous generation of global climate models.

Using the models’ predictions for future physical traits such as pH and temperature in different sections of the ocean, the scientists were able to calculate a key chemical measurement that affects coral. Corals make their shells out of the dissolved carbonate mineral known as aragonite. But as carbon dioxide pollution steadily acidifies the ocean, chemical reactions change the extent to which the carbonate is available in the water for coral. That availability is known as its saturation, and is generally thought to be a number between 3 and 3.5.

No precise rule of thumb exists to link that figure and the health of reefs. But the Carnegie scientists say paleoclimate data suggests that the saturation level during preindustrial times—before carbon pollution began to accumulate in the sky and seas—was greater than 3.5.

The models that the Carnegie scientists analyzed were prepared for the major global climate report coming out next year: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. The team compared the results of those simulations to the location of 6000 reefs for which there is data, two-thirds of the world total. That allowed them to do what amounted to a chemical analysis of future reef habitats.

In a talk reviewing the study at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union earlier this month, senior author and Carnegie geochemist Ken Caldeira showed how the amount of carbon emitted in the coming decades could have huge impacts on reefs’ fates. In a low-emissions trajectory in which carbon pollution rates were slashed and carbon actively removed from the air by trees or machines, between 77% and 87% of reefs that they analyzed stay in the safe zone with the aragonite saturation above 3.

“If we are on the [business as usual] emissions trajectory, then the reefs are toast,” Caldeira says. In that case, all the reefs in the study were surrounded by water with aragonite saturation below 3, dooming them. In that scenario, Caldeira says, “details about sensitivity of corals are just arguments about when they will die.”

“In the absence of deep reductions in CO2 emissions, we will go outside the bounds of the chemistry that surrounded all open ocean coral reefs before the industrial revolution,” says Carnegie climate modeler Katharine Ricke, the first author on the new study.

Greg Rau, a geochemist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, says the work sheds new light onto the future of aragonite saturation levels in the ocean, also known as “omega.” “There is a very wide coral response to omega—some are able to internally control the [relevant] chemistry,” says Rau, who has collaborated with Caldeira in the past but did not participate in this research. Those tougher coral species could replace more vulnerable ones “rather than a wholesale loss” of coral. “[But] an important point made by [Caldeira] is that corals have had many millions of years of opportunity to extend their range into low omega waters. With rare exception they have failed. What are the chances that they will adapt to lowering omega in the next 100 years?”

This story provided by ScienceNOW, the daily online news service of the journal Science.

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Great Barrier Reef's collapsing sea floor could trigger tsunami

Sharnie Kim ABC News 21 Dec 12;

Researchers mapping the sea floor near the Great Barrier Reef say they have found a giant slab of collapsing sea floor that could trigger a tsunami in the future.
Audio: Sharnie Kim reports from Cairns (AM)

Marine geologists at James Cook University say it is only a matter of time before the slab, known as the Noggin Block, collapses.

Dr Robin Beaman says the slab is the remains of an underwater landslide deep in the Great Barrier Reef.

"It's actually up on the top of the continental slope in about 350 metres of water," he said.

"This block, which is about one cubic kilometre ... is in the very slow, early stages of starting to break away from the edge of the Great Barrier Reef."

He says the Noggin Block is stable at the moment, but warns a collapse could be catastrophic.

"The only thing that we could find that would trigger a block breaking away on that scale [would be] a very large earthquake in the near vicinity. That is very unlikely," he said.

"If it were to break away catastrophically, that is break away really quickly, what that would do is it would create a surface wave above it. It would actually cause a tsunami.

"That tsunami would travel across the Great Barrier Reef, it's about 70 kilometres offshore, and it would impact the local area, the North Queensland area."

It would take about an hour for the tsunami to hit nearby coastal areas like Mourilyan Harbour and Clump Point.

Dr Beaman and his colleagues hope use their sonar mapping technique to find more underwater areas at risk of collapsing.

"We should be aware that these things exist," he said.

"We don't really know when such a block might collapse. All I can say is sometime it eventually will."

The research is published in the journal Natural Hazards.

Slab of Barrier Reef sea floor breaking off: scientists
Channel NewsAsia 21 Dec 12;

SYDNEY: A huge slab of sea floor near the Great Barrier Reef is in the early stages of collapse and could generate a tsunami when it finally breaks off, researchers warned Friday.

Marine geologists from Australia's James Cook University have been using advanced 3D mapping techniques on the deepest parts of the reef -- below diving depth -- since 2007 and have discovered dozens of sub-marine canyons.

On a recent trip, they came across the one cubic kilometre slab of sea floor, the remains of an ancient underwater landslide, which is perched on the continental shelf.

"Undersea landslides are a well understood geological process but we didn't know there were any on the Barrier Reef," geologist Robin Beaman told AFP.

"We found this one large block that stood out. It is sitting on top of a sub-marine canyon, cutting into the slopes and it is in the preliminary stage of collapse."

He stressed that no one knew when a collapse may occur, "whether tomorrow or even in our lifetime", but that people should be aware that it was there.

"It is slowly giving way although it remains stable under current conditions," he said.

"But it is absolutely going to collapse and when it does fall it will fall one kilometre into the adjacent basin.

"This will generate a localised tsunami that will affect the Queensland coastline, which is around 70 kilometres (40 miles) away.

"We're not trying to alarm people, but we need to know it is there and what could happen when it falls," he added.

The geologists who made the discovery, which was published in the journal Natural Hazards, were travelling on the Southern Surveyor, an Australian maritime research vessel.

This is the same ship on which scientist Maria Seton last month discovered that a South Pacific landmass identified on Google Earth and world maps as Sandy Island does not exist.

-AFP/fl

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2012: A Year of Weather Extremes

Becky Oskin LiveScience.com Yahoo News 21 Dec 12;

From unprecedented drought to killer cold, 2012 was a year of weather extremes.

In 2012, the United States suffered 11 weather-related events that cost $1 billion apiece, according to a preliminary list released Thursday (Dec. 20) by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Economic losses for Hurricane Sandy and the yearlong drought are still being calculated, but NOAA estimates 2012 will surpass 2011 in terms of aggregate costs for disasters (exceeding $60 billion).

Severe weather disasters hit beyond the United States, too, as super typhoons slammed into Asia and a cold snap froze Europe's rivers. Globally, countries battled heat waves and droughts.

The World Meteorological Organization projects 2012 to be the warmest year on record since 1850, even with the cooling effects of La Niña in the early months. And 2013 could be even hotter, the WMO estimates.

Cold lows and hot highs

Winter's extremes included January's record snowfall in Alaska, which hit as the rest of the country sauntered around in T-shirts. In February, Europe suffered through a cold snap that killed hundreds of people and froze the continent's rivers and canals, interrupting commerce.

An early, April start to tornado season raised fears of another devastating series of twisters, as happened in 2011. But this year, the funnels fizzled out. In the end, 2012 may go down as the year with the fewest tornadoes on record.

The combination of an ongoing drought and a crippling heat wave throughout the summer had lethal effects on people, animals and crops. Nebraska experienced its driest year since record keeping started more than a century ago, according to NOAA. Colorado suffered its worst fire season in more than a decade, with western wildfires charring 9.15 million acres (37,000 square kilometers) as of November, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. [2012: A Year of Weather Extremes]

Super storms

But 2012 may ultimately stand out in the history books mostly due to its continent-sized storms, which relentlessly pounded coastlines in the Atlantic and the Pacific.

In Asia, super typhoons swept across Korea, China and Japan like cars on a train, one after another, causing record flooding. Even into December, Super Typhoon Bopha destroyed homes in the Philippines, claiming more than 1,000 lives.

The Atlantic hurricane season produced 19 named storms, well above the yearly average of 12, according to a statement from NOAA. Two tropical storms, Alberto and Beryl, developed in Maybefore the season even officially began.

However, 2012 was the seventh consecutive year that no major hurricanes (Category 3, 4 or 5) hit the United States. But Hurricane Sandy showed it doesn't take a big hurricane to make a major impact. [Hurricane Sandy: Photos of a Frankenstorm]

Sandy, which was a post-tropical cyclone when it made landfall, will go down in the record books as the second-costliest storm in U.S. history. Its tremendous storm surge, coupled with a high tide, wreaked havoc along the New Jersey and New York coastlines. Sandy registered the lowest barometric pressure in the history of the Northeast.

A higher number of named storms and hurricanes than predicted hit the Atlantic basin, in large part because El Niño, which likely would have suppressed overall storm activity, never materialized as anticipated by many climate models, NOAA said in a statement.

Yet several storms this year went largely unnoticed because they stayed out over the Atlantic. A persistent jet stream pattern over the eastern portion of the country helped steer many of this season's storms away from the United States, according to NOAA.

Outlook for 2013

Instead of El Niño, NOAA predicts that the neutral phase of the El Niño/ La Niña Southern Oscillation (ENSO) index will prevail through spring. Jokingly called "La Nada," it is the middle ground between El Niño and La Niña (the pattern associated with cool water in the equatorial Pacific).

The lack of a reliable weather pattern to hang a prediction on makes forecasting harder. The temperature outlook through March indicates above-normal temperatures for the southern half of the continental United States, except for coastal southern California, Florida and part of the southeast coast, according to the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center.

The center also predicts colder-than-normal temperatures in the northern Rocky Mountains, northern Great Plains and southern Alaska.

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Best of our wild blogs: 21 Dec 12

Tears on a sea shawl
from The annotated budak

Animals help pollinate and disperse seagrasses
from teamseagrass

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LNG terminal to be operational by Q2 2013

Kristie Neo Channel NewsAsia 20 Dec 12;

SINGAPORE: Singapore will be powered by liquefied natural gas (LNG) by the second quarter of next year, to diversify energy sources, when Singapore's S$1.7 billion terminal is ready to begin operations.

Currently, 80 per cent of Singapore's electricity is generated from piped gas by Malaysia and Indonesia.

The first tranche of LNG is expected to arrive at its new terminal in Jurong Island in the second quarter of next year.

S Iswaran, second minister for trade and industry said: "We are always trying to strike a balance between three key considerations. One is energy supply resilience, second is in terms of our economic competitiveness and third is environmental sustainability. These are the key elements that we want to point together and achieve an equilibrium in, and is part of our energy strategy for Singapore.

"In that context, diversification is key to our competitiveness, resilience and sustainability because we really need to have as many options as possible available to Singapore that we can tap into to feed and meet our current and future energy requirements."

But experts are not upbeat that this will bring energy costs down overnight.

LNG prices will continue to be pegged to oil prices, which remain high.

This may be frustrating news for companies like Lanxess and Shell Chemicals, which in recent months have said that high energy costs have hurt "manufacturing economics and customers".

Gas prices in Singapore are also double that in Malaysia and Vietnam.

For now, the government said businesses can negotiate with power generating companies for contracts appropriate to their business, and practicing energy efficiency can also help.

Mr Iswaran said: "I think it is important for our businesses and indeed for our households to take energy efficiency seriously. In other words, invest in energy efficiency, invest in some of the upfront infrastructure, or upfront capital costs in order to have a sustained reduction in energy consumption and energy cost. This is is something that needs to be actively pursued by businesses as well. If you can do that right, that will be durable savings for businesses, regardless of what the price of energy is in Singapore."

He added: "If you think about it differently, if you can achieve a 10 per cent saving in Singapore's energy consumption, that is the equivalent of one plant. Our peak capacity and consumption is about 6 gigawatts. So if we save 10 per cent, that's 600 megawatts, which is basically the size about a plant these days that is being developed."

Experts also say there may be room for more competitive LNG pricing with more players in the market.

Currrently, only one company - BG Group - is responsible for sourcing and delivering LNG in Singapore.

BG Group is currently contracted to supply up to three million tonnes of LNG per annum to Singapore.

Ravi Krishnaswamy, the vice president of energy and power systems at Frost & Sullivan said: "What that could mean is that once you have more players in the domestic market supplying LNG, there is a possibility that this can provide a more competitively-priced gas, but then again this will only happen over the next couple of years, I would say."

Singapore will receive its first LNG shipment from Qatar, and may subsequently receive from markets such as Russia, Australia and the US.

- CNA/xq

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Vietnam Bear Rescue Centre faces eviction

Danny Aeberhard & Ly Truong BBC News 19 Dec 12;

A major bear rescue sanctuary in Vietnam is facing eviction from one of the country's national parks.

The international charity that runs the $2m centre says officials have told it that the land is needed for national security purposes.

But the charity suspects a different motive - profit.

It points to plans backed by the national park director for an eco-development by a company co-founded by his daughter.

The Vietnam Bear Rescue Centre is sited in a temperate, lowland valley in Tam Dao National Park - a swathe of lushly forested mountains to the north-west of Hanoi.

It houses more than 100 endangered bears rescued mainly from the illegal bile-farming industry.

In that industry, bears are kept caged. Digestive bile is forcibly extracted from their gall bladders, to be sold on the black market for use in traditional medicine.

Animal rights campaigners have long attacked the practice as barbaric, and it is banned in Vietnam.
'Living in fear'

Animals Asia, the charity which runs the sanctuary, says it would take two years to find a replacement location, and worries how it would care for the rescued bears during this time.

"It's no understatement to say that everyone is living in fear, considering that our bears and staff have all been given notice to quit with nowhere to go," says its founder, the British campaigner Jill Robinson.

It fears it would receive no compensation for lost infrastructure, and says 77 local staff would lose their jobs.

Animals Asia also claims the Vietnamese government would breach its legal obligations to the charity, under agreements both have signed.

It is calling on Vietnam's prime minister, Nguyen Tan Dung, to abandon the plans.

The country's Ministry of Agriculture, which oversees Tam Dao National Park, says the Ministry of Defence wants the land for national security purposes.

In October, Ministry of Agriculture officials told Animals Asia that they would be seeking the prime minister's approval for the eviction to go ahead.

The ministry is believed to have submitted its final report to the prime minister, for him to decide.

Animals Asia, however, questions the timing of the Ministry of Defence's push to have the rescue centre evicted.

It points to the fact that the director of Tam Dao National Park has backed a scheme to use at least part of the land demarcated for the sanctuary for a tourist development.

The park director's daughter, Do Thi Ngan, was one of the original founders of the company behind the proposed development, with 10% of its shares.

One state-run Vietnamese online newspaper, the Justice of Vietnam, has raised questions about the address that the company - the Truong Giang Tam Dao Joint Stock Company - has listed as its headquarters on its official registration document.

The property at the address is reportedly a convenience store, whose owner knew his nephew had registered the company there, but knew nothing about its activities.

The BBC was unable to contact the company for comment.
Conflict of interest?

Speaking to the BBC's Vietnamese Service at an early stage of the BBC's investigation in October, the director of the national park, Do Dinh Tien, confirmed that he had heard about the Ministry of Defence's stance.

But he said that no decision had been made on whether to relocate the bear sanctuary.

"We are just discussing all the possibilities and how to make this reasonable… to ensure national security, and at the same time, make sure that the centre can function normally."

Mr Tien also denied having received any requests from companies seeking to use the land on which the sanctuary is built.

"It's just gossip, only rumours," he said.

But evidence suggests this is not the case.

The BBC has subsequently seen a document in which Mr Tien specifically backs the company's bid to submit such development proposals to his ministry.

This would appear to be a conflict of interest.

A Ministry of Defence document also indicates there may have been direct contact with the park director's office on the subject of stopping the bear sanctuary from expanding on land that had been previously demarcated for the sanctuary, but which was also sought by the developers.

Mr Tien has said he would answer a list of questions sent to him by the BBC, but was unable to do so before our publication deadline.

Animals Asia says it fears that the national security argument is only a pretext for evicting the sanctuary.

The charity argues that - if the sanctuary were to be evicted - nothing would prevent the Ministry of Defence from subsequently lifting its national security restrictions.

This, it says, could clear the way for the approval of the tourist development.
Daughter linked

When the BBC asked the park director's daughter, Do Thi Ngan, about her apparent links to the development company, she seemed to deny being a shareholder, despite being listed as a co-founder on the official company registration document.

She then declined to answer more questions on the phone.

"It's personal information, I don't want to talk about it, unless you are in an investigation, with police, and show official documents then I'll answer," she said.

There is no suggestion that she is the subject of such a police investigation.

But it is not clear why she would appear to be involved in plans that require her own employers losing the use of land.

For - in a curious twist - Ms Ngan actually works as an administrative assistant at the bear sanctuary itself.

No official reasons have been given by the Vietnamese government as to why its Ministry of Defence has - seemingly out of the blue - decided that the land at issue is of importance to national security.

The ministry did not oppose the building of the sanctuary which was set up with full government approval.

The BBC was unable to contact any defence officials for clarification. And the Ministry of Agriculture failed to respond to a list of questions.

Meanwhile, Animals Asia has been campaigning hard to halt any eviction.

It has gained broad international support, pointing to letters signed by dozens of politicians worldwide, including members of the US Congress and British MPs.

A number of celebrities have also lent their support, including the comedian, Ricky Gervais and the actor and author, Stephen Fry.

And it would appear to have some support within the Vietnamese establishment.

One member of the country's National Assembly, Duong Trung Quoc, told the online newspaper Vietnamnet last month that eviction "would do harm to our country's image".

For now, the sanctuary's bears can socialise and enjoy the large outdoor enclosure of their new-found home.

But the prospect of eviction is - in Jill Robinson's eyes - one that is "too horrible to contemplate".

Having to re-cage rescued bears, she explains, risks re-activating the symptoms of their trauma, and all "because of a decision that has not one shred of morality behind it".

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Malaysia: Strong winds and high waves forecast in South China Sea

The Star 21 Dec 12;

PETALING JAYA: The world may not be ending soon, but life is starting to get a little less comfortable as weather patterns worsen.

Activities in the waters off the South China Sea are expected to be risky for at least a couple of days, due to very strong monsoon winds and rough seas.

“Very strong winds and rough seas are forecast in the east coast, Sabah and Sarawak, which is dangerous to all coastal and shipping activities, including fishing and small ferry services,” the Malaysian Meteorological Department said in a statement yesterday.

Strong northeasterly wind with a speed of 50kph to 60kph with waves up to 4.5m in height are expected to hit the waters off Kelantan, Terengganu, Samui, Con-dore, Reef North, Layang-Layang and Palawan until Jan 3.

In the same period, strong winds with a speed of 40kph to 50kph with waves up to 3.5m are forecast in waters off Pahang, East Johor, Tioman, interior of Sabah, the West Coast, Kudat and Sandakan in Sabah, Labuan, Sarawak, Bunguran, Reef South and Sulu.

Coastal areas in Kelantan, Tereng-ganu, Pahang and east Johor are also vulnerable to rising sea waters until next Wednesday.

Klang Valley residents are in for a rough few days, too, as rainy days are predicted.

Weather-forecast.com said Kuala Lumpur, Petaling Jaya, Shah Alam and Klang would experience heavy rain over the next seven days, with the heaviest rain in the later part of the week.

World Weather Online on its wesbite also predicted mostly rainy weather in the city until Jan 5, with generally light winds.

In Johor, flash floods have hit Kampung Baru Datuk Ghani Othman, worsened by an ongoing development project near the Pengerang area.

According to village head Tahir Aris, 59, the flood occurred at around 6.30pm on Wednesday evening after a downpour that lasted more than 30 minutes.

About 59 victims are now staying at Dewan Kampung Baru Datuk Ghani Othman.

“Most of the 34 houses in the village were affected,” he said.

Tahir blamed the flood on the ongoing relocation of residents affected by the Pengerang Integrated Petroleum Complex (PIPC).

He added that this was the first time in seven years the village had been hit.

“The reclamation around our village has caused the drains to be blocked,” he said.

Kota Tinggi deputy OCPD Dept Supt Law Hang Seng said the flood situation in the village was expected to improve in a few days time.

According to the National Secu-rity Council, Johor is the only state hit by floods so far with two relief centres being opened in Batu Pahat and Kota Tinggi.

There are 22 families seeking shelter at SK Sri Bandan and 15 at SK Kota Dalam both in Batu Pahat.

'Yellow' alert for east coast states
New Straits Times 21 Dec 12;

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysians on the east coast have been warned to prepare for possible floods, with long spells of heavy rain expected in the next three months.

Meteorological Department director-general Che Gayah Ismail said the first of such spells could occur this weekend, with the agency issuing a "yellow" alert on Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang and Sabah.

"The northeast monsoon, which started in October, usually brings humid weather and up to five long episodes of heavy rain.

"We are expecting the first episode to hit the east coast from tomorrow until Wednesday," she said yesterday.

According to the department's advisory, Sabah residents could expect intermittent, occasionally moderate, rain over the Kudat, Sandakan and Tawau divisions tomorrow and on Sunday.

Meanwhile, heavy showers have been forecast in Tumpat, Pasir Mas, Kota Baru, Bachok, Pasir Puteh, Machang, Besut, Setiu, Kuala Terengganu, Marang, Kuantan, Pekan and Rompin.

Thunderstorms and strong winds have also been forecast in Kedah, Perak, Selangor, Johor and Kuala Lumpur.

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Norway seeks to slow deforestation as climate "first aid"

Alister Doyle PlanetArk 20 Dec 12;

Norway, which has led developed nations by investing billions of dollars to slow tropical deforestation, announced plans on Wednesday to step up its efforts as part of "first aid" to slow climate change.

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, whose country is rich thanks to offshore oil and gas, said new measures to slow global warming were needed now because a new U.N.-led climate deal is due to be agreed only in 2015 and enter into force from 2020.

"In the meantime we must give the climate first aid," he told a news conference.

"The government will step up its efforts to slow deforestation and work to cut emissions that give the greatest climate effect in the shortest time," he said. Stoltenberg did not, however, announce fresh investments or targets.

Deforestation, often clearing land for farms, accounts for about 17 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from human sources. Forests, from the Congo to the Amazon, soak up carbon dioxide from the air as they grow and release it when they rot or burn.

Norway has been the most generous nation in giving aid to slow tropical deforestation with annual investments worth $500 million in recent years, funded from its own vast fossil fuel revenues.

It has $1 billion programs in both Brazil and Indonesia and smaller projects in nations including Guyana and Tanzania.

Stoltenberg said that other fast-acting measures that would qualify as first aid included cuts in industrial emissions of soot and methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, and reductions in subsidies for the use of fossil fuels.

Oil Change International, an environmental group campaigning for a shift towards cleaner energies such as solar or wind power, estimates that fossil fuel subsidies worldwide will reach $775 billion in 2012.

It also estimates that Norway itself handed out almost $700 million in fossil fuel subsidies last year.

U.N.-led talks in Qatar this month ended with a deal to extend the Kyoto Protocol, a weak pact that sets greenhouse gas goals for industrialized nations, until 2020.

That unblocked talks on the new, worldwide deal meant to be sealed in 2015. But world greenhouse gas emissions are rising, led by growth in emerging economies such as China and India.

(Reporting By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent; Editing by Michael Roddy)

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Best of our wild blogs: 20 Dec 12

Northern Expedition featured in NUS news
from Mega Marine Survey of Singapore

Random Gallery - Common Palmfly
from Butterflies of Singapore

Black-crowned night heron - Diversity of fish prey
from Bird Ecology Study Group

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It's about the quality of life for dolphins, not the length

Eric Ong Beng Kiong Today Online 20 Dec 12;

I refer to the letter, "Dolphins benefit from life parks: RWS", (TODAY, Dec 19).

While Resorts World Sentosa has met or exceeded international guidelines on the acquisition and care of its dolphins, it misses the point that forcibly capturing them from the wild has contributed to one of the threats to the dolphin population.

Is any among its team of animal lovers sure that dolphins thrive better in miniature pools compared to open oceans?

By saying that dolphins live longer in captivity than their counterparts in the wild, is RWS saying that it removed its 24 dolphins from the waters of the Solomon Islands so that they could lead long lives?

The quality of life for dolphins in the wild would be better than for dolphins faced with concrete walls, fed dead fish and unable to swim tens of kilometres daily in open waters. We should talk about this rather than length of life.

The Marine Life Park, with its size, can offer decent quality of life to most marine life in captivity apart from larger, more developed animals. Smaller sharks and manta rays, for instance, would do well in its enclosure.

I am not against the Marine Life Park, which I am sure will be a world-class attraction. RWS can still send a powerful conservation message to the international community by working with the relevant organisations to return the dolphins to the ocean.

Singapore should review evidence on dolphins
Jen Zhang Qinyan Today Online 19 Dec 12;

I refer to the letter, "Dolphins benefit from life parks: RWS" (Dec 19).

The Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums has stated that any collection of animals from the Solomon Islands would not adhere to its standards and guidelines.

How is it possible for RWS to now state that "the acquisition and care of our dolphins have met, will continue to meet and, wherever possible, surpass international guidelines"?

While RWS stated that "research shows that bottlenose dolphins thrive in zoological parks and live longer than their counterparts in the wild", this refers to the common bottlenose dolphin, a different species from the Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins RWS acquired.

Animal lovers are not against zoos or the Marine Life Park. The issue is the way these facilities operate.

Animal lovers are against the capture of dolphins from the wild, which pushes species closer to extinction, and the keeping of animals who cannot cope with captivity.

Other countries have outlawed this practice; it is time for Singapore to review the evidence and follow the progressive examples of others.

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