Calm Before The Spawn: Climate Change And Coral Spawning

ScienceDaily 4 Nov 09;

What's the point of setting up marine reserves to protect coral reefs from pollution, ship groundings and overfishing if climate change could cause far more damage? A study published this week in London in Proceedings of the Royal Society B provides the answer.

For decades researchers have known that corals synchronize their release of eggs and sperm into the water but were unsure of how and why. Robert van Woesik, a biologist at the Florida Institute of Technology, explains why corals spawn for just a few nights in some places but elsewhere string out their love life over many months.

The study shows that corals spawn when regional wind fields are light. When it is calm the eggs and sperm have the chance to unite before they are dispersed. Corals off the coast of Kenya have months of light winds so they can reproduce for much of the year. On the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, calm weather is short-lived and the coral reproductive season is brief.

The results of the study are critically important for effective reef conservation.

According to van Woesik: "Coral reproduction is a very local event. This means local conservation efforts will maximize reproductive success and give reef systems a chance to adapt to global climate change."

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El Niño Cycles Threaten Some New World Monkey Populations

A new study explores how El Niño weather patterns impact fruit- and leaf-eating primates in Central and South America

Carina Storrs Scientific American 4 Nov 09;

El Niño conditions in the Pacific Ocean wreak havoc on monkey populations, either in the midst of the periodic hot and dry spells or in their chilly aftermath, according to the results of a new study.

The study, published in the October 28 issue of Biology Letters, explored the correlation of El Niño years—when cyclical oceanic-atmospheric oscillations warm the tropical Pacific to above-normal temperatures, affecting global weather patterns—with fluctuations in monkey populations and the abundance of their food resources. It is the first report on the impact of El Niño on monkey species that live in Central and South America, many of which are threatened or endangered. The study focused on four species: red howler monkeys (Alouatta seniculus), which subside primarily on leaves, along with two species of woolly monkeys (Brachyteles arachnoides and Lagothrix lagotricha), and a variety of spider monkey (Ateles geoffroyi), all of whose staple diet is fruit.

"I thought it was interesting when I got [the] results that the howlers were declining in the same year [as an El Niño], and the other three species were declining the same year" that followed El Niño events, says Ruscena Wiederholt, a graduate student of ecology at The Pennsylvania State University's Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, and first author on the study.

To chart population levels, Wiederholt and her adviser, biologist Eric Post, used data from annual surveys of monkeys from the last several decades. Four groups of primatologists had taken surveys at sites in Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia and Panama. In a period of extreme decline a population of 20 monkeys could lose as many as four members in a year.

Wiederholt and Post also called on another set of surveys dating back to 1987: the annual abundance of fruits and plants on Barro Colorado Island in Panama. These surveys gave the researchers an idea of how abundant food would have been for monkeys, because the vegetation there is representative of the areas where the population surveys were done, Wiederholt says.

As other ecologists have found, Wiederholt and Post saw that fruit supplies went from plentiful during a hot and dry El Niño year to scarce in the cold and wet La Niña period (the cooling phase of the El Niño oscillation) that typically follows. This pattern coincided with rises and falls in populations of fruit eaters. Conversely, whereas leaves were scarce during El Niños, they flourished in the wet periods, as did the populations of leaf-eating howlers.

These findings suggest that El Niño–related weather changes affect Central and South American monkey populations, and point to differences in food abundance as the cause of the population changes. Overall, the numbers of fruit-eaters dropped more than those of leaf-eaters, which Wiederholt attributes to slower reproduction rates.

Although the researchers only studied four sites, Wiederholt expects that the food supply–to-population pattern would hold for other areas of Central and South America. "I would imagine it would be widespread because El Niño has widespread effects on these areas," she says.

The study also suggests that multiple groups of each fruit-consuming species were declining at the same time, one year after the end of an El Niño period. Such synchronized contraction could pose an extinction threat: Whereas if some groups of a threatened species remained more numerous, "the larger populations could send out migrants to 'rescue' the declining populations and save them from going extinct," Wiederholt notes. Instead, each group is shrinking in synchrony, jeopardizing their ability to reproduce and survive.

This study also predicts that the drops in monkey populations could worsen if global warming leads to more intense El Niño weather patterns.

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At least 90 die in Vietnam floods

Channel NewsAsia 4 Nov 09;

HANOI: At least 90 people have been killed in flooding in central Vietnam sparked by Tropical Storm Mirinae, which slammed into the country after pummelling the Philippines, officials said on Wednesday.

A further 22 people were reported missing after the storm struck on Monday, destroying hundreds of homes, according to regional officials who asked not to be named and local reports.

Television pictures from the provinces of Phu Yen and Gia Lai, which were among the worst hit regions along with Binh Dinh, showed rescuers in boats helping desperate residents escape some of the worst flooding there in decades.

Water in places reached the rooftops of buildings, where some residents had sought refuge.

"It is the most devastating flooding in more than 30 years in Phu Yen," the national disaster committee said in a statement, after part of the province's system of dykes was overwhelmed.

Vietnamese television reported on Wednesday evening that thousands of people were stranded in pagodas, schools and other public buildings in Phu Yen, unable to reach their homes.

Local authorities in the province had asked Hanoi for thousands of instant food sachets as food and drinking water started to run low.

Two thousand soldiers had been deployed to help with the rescue effort.

Mirinae destroyed 900 homes and damaged more than 14,000 others while some 18,000 hectares of rice land was flooded, according to a UN report that cited Vietnamese authorities.

More than 50,000 people fled the coastal provinces before the storm, which battered the Philippines as a typhoon, was downgraded to a tropical depression and made landfall late on Monday.

Mirinae also killed two people in Vietnam's neighbour Cambodia and left 27 people dead in the Philippines, where almost 16,000 people were living in evacuation centres.

Danish media reported that Queen Margrethe of Denmark's aircraft was forced to make a diversion during a visit to Vietnam after being hit by strong winds.

The queen and her family, who arrived in Vietnam on November 2 for a five-day state visit, were on their way to the old imperial town of Hue.

But the aircraft they were travelling in was unable to land due to strong winds and it was forced to head instead to Da Nang, the Ritzau news agency and the TV2 News channel reported.

Queen Margrethe, Prince Consort Henrik and their children, Crown Prince Frederik and Princess Mary then continued their journey to Hue by bus.

Vietnam and the Philippines are frequently hit by tropical storms and flooding at this time of year and both were hit hard by Typhoon Ketsana in September.

Ketsana caused one of communist Vietnam's worst disasters in recent years, leaving more than 170 dead and hundreds injured.

It caused devastating floods, inundated hundreds of thousands of homes and damaged tens of thousands of hectares of rice and other crops. - AFP/so/de

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Climate talks resume but Copenhagen hopes fade

Richard Ingham Yahoo News 4 Nov 09;

BARCELONA, Spain (AFP) – Climate talks in Barcelona resumed on Wednesday after an angry spat but negotiators admitted chances for sealing a hoped-for UN treaty on global warming by year's end had almost vanished.

"The impasse that we had yesterday seems to have been overcome and we are indeed content with that," said Anders Turesson, chief negotiator for Sweden, which holds the European Union (EU) presidency.

Work on one of the twin tracks under negotiation slammed to a halt on Tuesday after African countries staged a boycott.

The bloc of some 50 nations accused rich counterparts of backsliding on promises to curb man-made carbon emissions blamed for global warming.

It demanded they slash their pollution by at least 40 percent by 2020 over 1990 levels.

The squabble blocked talks among countries that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the cornerstone pact of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

It did not affect the other path of the UNFCCC negotiations, which includes the United States, the big Kyoto holdout.

Under a behind-the-scenes deal, delegates agreed to devote more time to scrutinising emissions cuts in a panel under the Kyoto track.

"Work has resumed fully in the contact group," said Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping of Sudan, for the Group of 77 bloc of developing countries.

"We are guardedly optimistic, and indeed a degree of focus (on emissions reductions) is something we can record we have started to witness, and that's a very important indication."

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer told AFP the problem "has been temporarily settled."

He cautioned, though: "Unless we see some substantial movement from industrial countries on targets and finance, the problem will remain the same today as it was yesterday."

The twin-track process was launched in Bali in 2007 with the goal of concluding a post-2012 treaty among the UNFCCC's 192 parties at a December 7-18 showdown in Copenhagen.

But negotiations have been hamstrung over how to apportion emissions curbs between rich countries and developing giants.

Another headache is how to muster hundreds of billions of dollars to wean poor countries off carbon-intensive technology and strengthen their defences against climate change.

Artur Runge-Metzger, the European Commission's chief negotiator, said there was still only a "fragmented" view as to what countries were offering in these extremely complex issues.

"We will probably only have the full picture in the last days of Copenhagen, maybe even only during the last night... the (emission) numbers and the financial figures are probably, politically, the hardest part of the entire deal," he said.

Runge-Metzger insisted the EU "will still be pushing to come to a legally binding, or let's say a fully-fledged, treaty.

"But we hear more and more voices, including some of our political leaders, who say maybe time has run out and we need to look for something as a kind of a framework agreement which will allow for immediate action after Copenhagen, and then side by side you can continue to talk on the fully-fledged treaty and you can conclude that in the next year.

"I think these things that are being discussed openly at the present point in time," he said.

European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso said in Washington on Tuesday it was "obvious" that a "full-fledged binding treaty, Kyoto-type" could not be completed in Copenhagen.

He hoped for a framework agreement at Copenhagen that would then be fleshed out in later negotiations, but warned against a protracted process akin to the stalled Doha round of global trade liberalization talks.

Di-Aping, at a press conference, heaped scorn on any "political" deal that was devoid of legal teeth.

Developing countries had a well-founded suspicion about rich countries, he said.

"Tell me of any politician who delivers on his political manifesto," he asked. "Is it (British Prime Minister) Gordon Brown? Is it (Australian Prime Minister) Kevin Rudd?"

Nicholas Stern sees good chance for deal in Copenhagen
Dave Graham, Reuters 4 Nov 09;

BERLIN (Reuters) - World powers have a "very good chance" of reaching a political deal to target global curbs in carbon emissions at a U.N. conference in Copenhagen next month, British climate change expert Nicholas Stern said on Wednesday.

Stern, author of an influential 2006 report for the British government on the impact of global warming, said he did not expect a "formal treaty" to be signed in Copenhagen, partly due to resistance in the United States.

"But we can and should put together a strong and clear political deal. I think that a complete failure in Copenhagen would be very damaging. But I don't think that will happen.

"I think so many people want it to succeed that we've got a very good chance," Stern told a news conference before delivering a lecture at Berlin's Technical University.

A deal at the December 7-18 Copenhagen conference ought to contain a commitment to cutting global annual output of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions to 35 gigatonnes from almost 50 gigatonnes now, and to around 20 gigatonnes by 2050, he said.

"Those numbers are crucial. This is the first generation that through its negligence could destroy the relationship between human beings and the planet," said the 63-year-old Stern, a former chief economist of the World Bank.

"We must agree in Copenhagen to those maxima for 2030 and 2050," he added, noting that the numbers implied a reduction in emissions in Europe of around 80 percent per capita by 2050.

Failure to take the necessary steps would lead to major population shifts and create serious conflict, Stern said.

"The biggest difficulty I think will come in the U.S., but I think we've seen progress there as well," he added.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. President Barack Obama discussed climate change in Washington on Tuesday, with Obama saying the U.S. and the European Union had agreed to redouble their efforts to achieve success in Copenhagen.

Progress toward a climate deal has been hampered by obstacles in the U.S. Senate and at U.N. negotiations this week in Barcelona, Spain -- the last session before Copenhagen.

Stern said he felt the United States should spend more on helping developing economies to lower carbon emissions.

"If there is $50 billion per year to help the poorer parts of the world make their adjustments by 2015, I would hope that the U.S. would make a significant share of that -- maybe $15 or $20 billion, with a priority for adaptation in Africa and fighting deforestation," he said.

(Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Ban Ki-moon says detailed climate deal unlikely
Peter Griffiths, Reuters 3 Nov 09;

LONDON (Reuters) - Governments are unlikely to agree on all the details of a new global climate change deal when they meet in Copenhagen next month, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Tuesday.

While optimistic that the 192 countries will be able to reach some sort of political agreement, Ban warned it would not be the last word on a successor to the United Nations' carbon-cutting Kyoto Protocol.

"We need the political will because if there is the political will I am sure that there is a political way that we can conclude a binding agreement in Copenhagen," he said after talks with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London.

"I am reasonably optimistic that Copenhagen will be a very important milestone. At the same time, realistically speaking, we may not be able to have all the words on detailed matters."

Instead, countries should aim to agree on four points: the level of rich nations' emissions cuts; poor nations' plans to reduce their emissions; a financial package to help developing countries to adapt and a system for managing the process.

RICH AND POOR DIVIDED

Negotiations on a new treaty to cut greenhouse gas emissions in an attempt to slow global warming have faltered repeatedly since their launch in 2007.

Rich and poor nations are divided over how to share cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and over the amount of money developing countries need to adapt to global warming and how to raise it.

Speaking later at a conference on religion and the environment near London, Ban urged rich states to take the initiative.

"First and foremost, the developed countries should lead this campaign, considering all these historic responsibilities and also considering that they are the countries that have most of the capacities -- financial and technological," he said.

Failure to reach a deal will lead to more energy, food and water shortages and endanger millions of people, particularly those in poorer nations, he said.

Brown, who has said he will attend the talks in Copenhagen next month, said he and Ban were determined to make progress in the Danish capital.

"We believe it is possible to get an agreement on long-term targets and on intermediate targets and at the same time to get the finance in place that will allow developing countries to know that they are being given the proper protection when they take action to deal with climate change," he said.

In a sign of the divisions to be overcome, African nations boycotted U.N. climate talks in Barcelona on Tuesday in a protest to urge rich countries to set deeper 2020 cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

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Instant Expert: The Copenhagen climate change summit

It's being billed as the meeting that will determine the future of humanity. Come early December, we will be inundated with news from the Copenhagen summit. Can it really save us from climate catastrophe? Catherine Brahic and Fred Pearce sift through the mass of science and policy to pick out the key points to watch

Why this year?

Why this year? Two years ago in Bali, member nations of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which is convening the Copenhagen summit, agreed that they would accelerate their efforts and draft a long-term plan to avoid dangerous climate change. Their deadline for doing so is the close of this year's summit, on 14 December.

Hasn't the Kyoto protocol shown all this to be pointless? Not necessarily. The Kyoto protocol was always intended as a first step. There are a number of differences this time around, most notably that the US opted out of the Kyoto protocol but is very much engaged in the Copenhagen process.

Why 250,000 megatonnes? We have already emitted over 500,000 megatonnes of carbon - equivalent to about 1,800,000 megatonnes of carbon dioxide - mostly by burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests. This year, climate scientists calculated that if we emit no more than 750,000 megatonnes in total, we will have a 75 per cent chance of limiting global warming to 2 °C.

What is the significance of 2 °C? The objective of the UNFCCC is to prevent "dangerous" climate change. Although any amount of warming may have consequences - including biodiversity loss, changing weather patterns and disappearing coastlines - many climate scientists predict that some of those changes will be irreversible beyond 2 °C and others will pose a serious threat to millions of people. As a consequence, 2 °C has been adopted by politicians as the threshold for dangerous climate change.

Is 2 °C little enough? That all depends: little enough for what? No amount of warming is risk-free, and modelling studies indicate that at 2 °C an additional 1 billion people will suffer water shortages and most of the world's corals will be bleached. The world's poorest nations, which include a number of island states that are particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise, are campaigning to limit warming to 1.5 °C. Given the effort that is going to be required to reach the 2 °C target, this is unlikely to be achieved. Moreover, lags in climate systems, plus the removal from the atmosphere of the fine aerosol particles now cooling the world, mean past emissions are likely to result in a 1.9 °C warming.

What needs to be done?

There are no two ways about it: to have any chance of avoiding the disastrous consequences of exceeding our carbon budget, we must usher in a new era of low-carbon societies.

How this is done will depend on what deal can be reached between rich and developing nations. Both must agree to cut emissions according to their means and historical responsibility.

Developing nations will also need money and technology to green their industrialisation. Where this will come from will be a key preoccupation for the Copenhagen negotiators

THE HAVES...
must cut emissions by

BY 2020 BY 2050
NEED 25-40 % 80-95 %
AGREED SO FAR 10-24 % 40-80 %

AND HAVE NOTS
must cut emissions by

BY 2020
NEED 15-30 %
AGREED SO FAR 10-15 %

Money

It could cost the poorest nations hundreds of billions of dollars a year to curb their emissions and adapt to inevitable climate change.

Rich nations are responsible for most of the gases that are already heating the planet, and have a duty to help foot this bill. Negotiators in Copenhagen will have to agree on how.

Funds could be raised through taxes on emissions permits, for instance, or on international airline tickets. Or there could be a levy on all carbon emissions above certain national thresholds - as proposed by Switzerland.

The European Union agreed last week to push for a fund worth €100 billion a year by 2020.

Forests

Around 15 per cent of emissions come from deforestation. WWF believes this could be cut by three-quarters by 2020, but that requires giving governments, landowners and forest communities incentives to stop destroying their forests.

Two years ago, climate negotiators promised to sign such a deal - dubbed Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) - in Copenhagen.

The cash could come from rich nations buying carbon offsets to meet their emissions targets.

Brazil and Indonesia - which account for 60 per cent of emissions from deforestation - are keen. But close monitoring is essential to ensure loggers claiming cash for a forest do not continue chopping down individual trees or move their operations elsewhere.

Also, countries such as Costa Rica that have protected their forests say it unfairly rewards those who got rich destroying theirs.

Technology

Two billion people worldwide do not have access to mains electricity.

To bridge that gap and power industry in developing countries, the International Energy Agency says $13 trillion must be invested in the developing world in the next 20 years.

In Copenhagen, negotiators must seal a deal to ensure this goes mostly into low-carbon technologies - but how?

Western engineering firms want an open door to developing markets, perhaps secured by a "green free trade" deal. Countries like India and China want deals with rich nations that would give their own companies free access to western know-how.

Deal breakers

Who might thwart a deal?

The US may not be able to make credible promises if Congress has not passed a climate change bill in time.

If China and India think the US is not serious, they will hold back on pledges to green their own economic development.

Others might wield a veto, too. Some newly industrialised countries - Malaysia and South Korea for instance - now have emissions higher than many European countries. They may protest if asked to sign up to firm targets.

Malaysia's emissions are four times what they were in 1990 and, per head of population, equal to the UK's.

Saudi Arabia's emissions have doubled and, per head, now beat all European countries except Luxembourg.

Qatar's per-capita emissions are four times those of the US.

Gulf states tried to torpedo Kyoto because they felt it threatened oil exports. Copenhagen could threaten their internal industrialisation plans.

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TIMELINE: How the world found out about global warming

Reuters 4 Nov 09;

(Reuters) - A U.N. conference in Copenhagen next month is due to agree a new pact to combat global warming after mounting evidence that human activity is disrupting the climate.

The following is a timeline of the discovery of global warming.

300 BC - Theophrastus, a student of Greek philosopher Aristotle, documents that human activity can affect climate. He observes that drainage of marshes cools an area around Thessaly and that clearing of forests near Philippi warms the climate.

17th century - Flemish scientist Jan Baptista van Helmont discovers that gases different from normal air -- carbon dioxide -- are given off by burning charcoal.

17th century - The Industrial Revolution starts, bringing rising use of fossil fuels

1824 - Frenchman Joseph Fourier suggests that something in the atmosphere is keeping the world warmer than it would otherwise be -- a hint at the greenhouse gas effect.

1837 - Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz presents evidence of big past changes in Alpine glaciers -- pointing to ancient Ice Ages and showing that the climate has not always been stable.

1860s - Irish scientist John Tyndall shows that molecules of gases such as water vapor and carbon dioxide trap heat. He wrote that changes "could have produced all the mutations of climate which the researches of geologists reveal."

1896 - Sweden's Svante Arrhenius becomes the first to quantify carbon dioxide's role in keeping the planet warm. He later concluded that burning of coal could cause a "noticeable increase" in carbon levels over centuries.

1957-58 - U.S. scientist Charles Keeling sets up stations to measure carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere at the South Pole and at Mauna Loa, Hawaii. The measurements have shown a steady rise.

1965 - U.S. President Lyndon Johnson tells Congress: "This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through...a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels."

1988 - British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher tells the United Nations: "The problem of global climate change is one that affects us all and action will only be effective if it is taken at the international level. It is no good squabbling over who is responsible or who should pay."

1988 - The United Nations sets up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to assess the scientific evidence.

1992 - World leaders agree the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which sets a non-binding goal of stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions by 2000 at 1990 levels -- a target not met overall. 1995 - The IPCC concludes for a first time that humans are causing global warming, saying: "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate."

1997 - The Kyoto Protocol is agreed in Japan; developed nations agree to cut their greenhouse gas emissions on average by at least 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. The United States stays out of the deal.

2001 (January) - The IPCC concludes that it is "likely" -- or 66 percent probable -- that human activities rather than natural variations are the main cause of recent warming.

2001 (June) - President George W. Bush notes the U.S. National Academy of Sciences says greenhouse gases are rising "in large part due to human activity." He adds: "Yet, the Academy's report tells us that we do not know how much effect natural fluctuations in climate may have had on warming. We do not know how much our climate could, or will change in the future."

2007 - The IPCC says that it is "very likely" -- at least 90 percent certain -- that humans are to blame for most of the observed warming trend of the past 50 years. It also said that warming of the planet was "unequivocal."

2009 - Group of Eight leaders agree industrialized nations should cut emissions on average by 80 percent by 2050 and limit warming to a maximum of 2 Celsius above pre-industrial times.

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Best of our wild blogs: 4 Nov 09

The Boys In Khaki
from Fish, Respect And Protect

New record for Singapore! A sea cucumber at Changi
from wild shores of singapore

Butterfly of the Month - November 2009
from Butterflies of Singapore

We aim to be displeased
from The annotated budak

Baby croc call
from talfryn.net

White-bellied Sea Eagle
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Yellow-vented Bulbul eating terong pipit
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Construction of sea wall at Pulau Ubin, Nov 09 - Jan 10
from wild shores of singapore

How to Measure a Giant Squid Arm
from Tony Wu's Underwater Photography Blog

Green-billed Malkoha foraging on the ground
from Bird Ecology Study Group

International Day of Climate Action
from EcoWalkthetalk

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All this progress, but is it for the better?

Letter from Ronald Chan, Today Online 3 Nov 09;

I WATCHED with delight the recent advertisements for the Clean and Green campaign, that offer flashbacks into Singapore's past. The short film evokes beautiful memories of my childhood and the stories of my parents' childhood. However, the same film also highlights how quickly our dear Singapore is changing.

Singapore has undoubtedly changed for the better in certain ways. We have a cleaner environment, political and social stability, and economic prosperity. Yet, have these occurred at the expense of what may be more valuable in the long run? We may be becoming more modern and developed by the day, and we are integrating well into the globalised world, but what do sacrifice to gain all this?

Dialects have faded away to the extent that doctors now need to learn dialects from scratch just to communicate with the elderly, and fresh recruits today have no idea what the army slang they so eagerly pick up actually means in its literal form. Even Singlish has come under fire, accused of corrupting the English language and the international image of Singapore.

Is there a need to sacrifice our own mannerisms just to conform to this supposed standard form of the language? Does such a standard truly exist in the first place? Singlish might not be a culture, but it is certainly the peanut sauce to our beloved satay.

Our wet markets, too, could disappear.

What defines a country's soul? Is France memorable for the Eiffel Tower or for the romanticism on the streets of Paris? When you think of Taiwan do you think of Taipei 101 or the vibrant city life? Some emotions cannot be artificially created. No number of Formula 1 races, Singapore Flyers, Barrages or IRs is going to make Singapore more Singaporean than it already is.

Unfortunately, the long-gone National Library at Fort Canning and the Drama Centre have taken away a piece of Singapore with them. At the end of the day, what makes Singapore truly what we know it to be are brands like Tangs and Singapore Airlines that bore the brunt of hardship, the tembusu tree which has formed the backdrop of many a photograph, the pasar malams, the National Day Parades and the local sporting events, just to name a few.

Who really cares about the silver towers or the cash cows at the end of the day?

Change is perfectly fine. In fact, we should all be worried if Singapore hasn't changed since independence. But sometimes, I wonder if we are seeking change for the sake of change. Why import so many new ideas when we have good ones of our own? What happened to the Talentimes and Beauty Worlds of yesteryear? Why begin the teaching of Mandarin songs in class with Jay Chou's songs when we have our own Xinyao to tap on? Why dilute our culture with so many external influences when we can already hold our ground with some of our own?

At the rate we are going, what will Singapore have to call our own?

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Birds at Changi shot down only as a last resort

Straits Times Forum 4 Nov 09;

I REFER to the letters last Friday by the Nature Society ('Don't gun them down') and Miss Michelle Elizabeth Yin ('Heavy-handed') regarding Changi Airport Group's (CAG) efforts to manage the bird population in the airport vicinity.

The CAG administers a comprehensive bird control programme at Changi Airport. Our priority is to minimise the potential hazard that birds could pose to aircraft. We seek to discourage the presence of birds in the airfield as far as possible, rather than to remove them by shooting.

This programme, formulated through benchmarking with other airports, includes habitat modification and deterrence efforts to make the airfield unattractive to birds.

Environmental control measures include appropriate landscaping, such as keeping grass at appropriate lengths to prevent birds from hiding in it and not planting fruit trees. We also employ techniques to scare birds away such as using a system to emit distress calls of birds.

While these preventive measures do help, they do not keep birds away totally. One factor is the thick foliage in neighbouring properties around the airport that encourages birds to roost and nest. And as Changi Airport is by the sea, some birds do fly across flight paths to reach the sea in search for food.

Hence, the removal of birds is sometimes necessary. This is carried out as a last resort and we continue to take other measures, including working with surrounding property owners to reduce the attraction of their premises to birds.

The safety of passengers is the most important priority for CAG. Bird strikes, while fortunately rare, have occurred at Changi. Where large birds were involved, these resulted in damage to aircraft or their engines. The potential hazard to aircraft operations from bird strikes was exemplified by an incident on Jan 15 when a commercial aircraft experienced engine failure and ditched into New York's Hudson River after striking a flock of birds following take-off from LaGuardia Airport.

The CAG regularly seeks the advice of experts to ensure that its bird control programme remains consistent with international best practice.

We would be pleased to meet council members of the Nature Society to explain our programme and work with them to further reduce the need to remove birds, while continuing to ensure safe aircraft operations.

Yeo Kia Thye
Director (Airport Operations)
Changi Airport Group

Related articles
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Kimberly Spykerman, Straits Times 26 Oct 09;

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Clean coal/ biomass cogeneration plant on Jurong Island to go ahead

Stalled $2b plant set to steam ahead
Tuas Power gives go-ahead to unit to get a jump on its rivals
Ronnie Lim, Business Times 4 Nov 09;

(SINGAPORE) With the economy healing, China Huaneng - the new owner of Tuas Power - has decided to go ahead with building a $2 billion clean coal/ biomass cogeneration plant on Jurong Island.

BT understands that the project has just been given the green light on strategic grounds. Tuas Power apparently wants to be first-in, ahead of other competitors, at the island's new Tembusu sector to supply utilities such as steam and electricity to incoming petrochemical investors there.

Besides, electricity demand here - which had earlier been hit by the global downturn - has returned to a growth path since July. Latest October electricity demand numbers show a 5 per cent increase over the same month last year.

Another important plus is China Huaneng's financial clout, not to mention its experience with the fuel as China's biggest coal-fuelled power producer. The coal for the Singapore project is, however, expected to be sourced from around this region.

The 2,670-MW-capacity Tuas Power, the third largest generation company here, currently uses piped natural gas from both Natuna and Sumatra to fuel its plant. It had been planning the coal/biomass cogen project since 2006, even before its $4.2 billion sale by Temasek Holdings to China Huaneng in March last year.

But the genco in January this year decided to hold off building the project as potential customers such as Germany's Lanxess postponed investments here.

The brighter outlook now - including the possible resumption of yet another long-delayed project, the US$2 billion Jurong Aromatics Corporation - has clearly pushed China Huaneng into reversing that earlier move.

Sources said that China Huaneng intends to maintain the scale of the earlier planned stand-alone clean coal (80 per cent)/biomass (20 per cent) project.

When operational around 2012, Tuas Power's cogen project, which includes a 20 million gallons per day desalination plant and waste-water treatment facility - will produce mainly steam, at about 900 tonnes per hour.

It will also produce 180MW of electricity, half of which will be for Tuas Power's own consumption, with the remainder to be sold through the islandwide electricity grid.

In September last year, regulator Energy Market Authority (EMA) had already given Tuas Power the go-ahead to import a small quantity of coal for the project. EMA said then that it is banning the use of coal solely for power generation, or on a large scale, to avoid affecting Singapore's planned imports of liquefied natural gas, which will start in 2013.

When it first announced the project in September last year, Tuas Power also said that to address environmental concerns, it will transport the coal in covered barges to the Tembusu cogen plant.

There, the coal will be unloaded through fully enclosed conveyors and stored in covered silos.

The 'top' ash generated will be reused, while 'bottom' ash will be recycled into value-added products such as construction materials.

Meanwhile, the carbon-neutral biomass part of Tuas Power's cogen project will help reduce the CO2 emissions to a level comparable to that of an oil-fired plant.

Besides, the plant will enjoy 70 per cent operational efficiency versus the 50 per cent efficiency level of today's combined cycle gas turbine plants.

This means the Tuas Power plant will use less resources to produce the same unit of electricity, leading to less carbon emission.

China Huaneng has also embarked on a couple of cutting-edge carbon-capture pilot plants back in China, and may apply the technology here in future.

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R&D critical to energy sector, says Iswaran

Singapore also intends to be industry's thought leader
Ronnie Lim, Business Times 4 Nov 09;

SINGAPORE, which is already a major regional oil hub, intends to identify new growth opportunities to capitalise on the shift of the global energy market's centre of gravity to Asia, said S Iswaran.

By 2030, China and India alone are expected to consume almost a third of the world's energy, and Singapore must take a multi-pronged approach to enhance its position as Asia's premier energy centre, the Senior Minister of State (Trade & Industry and Education) told the Asia-Pacific Petroleum Conference yesterday evening.

This includes continued strengthening of the republic's trade infrastructure to better facilitate the oil trading hub here. Over 100 leading energy companies are already here, and the government will continue to build on existing trading platforms such as the TradeXchange and AsiaClear.

To respond to the fast-changing market place, Singapore also expects the oil refining sector here to upgrade and handle crude oil from more diverse sources and move into more complex and higher value products, Mr Iswaran added.

Jurong Island, with its integrated refineries and petrochemicals plants, is already a global chemical and energy hub, and the government will continue to diversify the range of activities there, he said.

Cutting-edge research, development and demonstration (RD&D) will also be critical, Mr Iswaran stressed.

'We are encouraging the development of higher value products and partnering research institutes in areas such as process optimisation, catalyst development, as well as marine and offshore engineering innovation.'

'We will enter fast-growing overseas markets, foster new partnerships, and build new capabilities in design and engineering,' he added.

Singapore also intends to be a thought leader in the energy arena by hosting events, such as the Apec conference and the annual Singapore International Energy Week, which offer forums for industry players to meet and discuss energy issues and strategies of the day.

Companies here must also start looking at opportunities in a carbon-constrained world, Mr Iswaran said. To achieve sustainable growth, the oil and gas sector must make energy-efficient design second nature, and begin to integrate carbon mitigation technologies into processes.

Here, the government will play an important complementary role in facilitating these changes, whether through the creation of a sound regulatory environment or directly supporting energy RD&D, he said.

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EMA: Saving energy for a brighter future

Business Times 4 Nov 09;

WHEN Singapore's Energy Market Authority (EMA) first flagged plans two years ago to let households choose the service provider they wanted to buy electricity from, there were not a few raised eyebrows as to how this vision could materialise. Would it mean more hassle for the consumer? Might it not end up being 'too high tech' for the older folk to understand?

It's a radical idea for Singaporeans long used to buying power at a regulated price from just one supplier. Yet EMA is compelled to explore such possibilities - and more - in its pursuit of energy efficiency, a major strategy to combat climate change and to create a sustainable future.

Among the various government agencies given the task of advancing Singapore's energy efficiency agenda, 'the thrust of EMA's efforts is aimed at promoting competitive energy markets', David Tan, deputy chief executive officer (energy planning and development) of EMA, said in an e-mail interview.

'We have gone a long way in restructuring and liberalising our electricity and gas markets. Energy, whether electricity or petrol, is priced properly and not subsidised. This ensures the right incentives to avoid over-consumption, and to economise on the use of energy,' he added. Industrial and commercial customers have been able to exercise choice in buying electricity since 2003.

Now, EMA is exploring how to fully open up the remaining 25 per cent of the retail electricity market - which comprises mainly households - through the use of new technologies including smart meters, said Mr Tan.

In countries such as Britain, households already enjoy such power purchasing freedom.

'Our aim is to allow consumers to purchase electricity from a range of retail packages offered by different suppliers. Consumers will then be in a better position to monitor, manage and optimise their electricity consumption,' Mr Tan said.

He added that consumers could, for instance, shift their non-essential electricity usage to off-peak periods when the electricity price is likely to be lower.

'This would help to level out the fluctuation of electricity demand throughout the day, and thereby improve the overall efficiency of the power system.'

Significant strides have already been made with the nation's power generators switching out of carbon-intensive oil-fired steam plants to cleaner technology such as natural gas- fired units.

Between 1990 and 2005, Singapore's energy intensity - which is a proxy for energy efficiency - improved by 15 per cent due to the adoption of better technology in power generation and the more productive use of energy in other sectors, according to the National Environment Agency.

Yet more can be done. EMA chief Lawrence Wong is expected to reveal some of the major efforts underway to initiate Smart Grids in Singapore, at a conference during the Singapore International Energy Week in November.

Smart Grids, which governments around the world, including the United States, are eager to set up, are touted as a more intelligent distribution of electricity to homes and businesses.

One feature of the high-tech system is, meters would become more responsive, allowing families to monitor consumption and hence cut their power bills. Also, alternative sources of energy - such as the unused power of electric cars, which EMA is test-bedding and hoping to see on the roads from 2010 - could be fed into the grid. The bottom line: Energy-saving and cost- saving.

The beginnings of a microgrid system with power-generating sources like solar, wind, and biomass could be implemented first on Pulau Ubin, a 1,020-hectare island just off the mainland. EMA is currently reviewing a consultancy's concept plan for the development and implementation of clean, renewable energy solutions for the rural island, said Mr Tan.

He added the agency was also seeking industry feedback to gauge the level of interest to participate in the Pulau Ubin project. 'We should be ready to announce more details towards the end of the year,' he said.

These developments are on top of EMA's efforts to set off more sparks in green research circles. Last year, EMA launched a $25 million Energy Research Development Fund, to be spent over five years, to facilitate the deployment of innovative energy solutions here, including in clean energy.

In 2007, the country's Research, Innovation and Enterprise Council announced that $170 million would be set aside to groom the clean energy sector as a key growth industry for Singapore.

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