US pledges carbon emissions cuts

BBC News 25 Nov 09;

President Barack Obama is to pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the US in several stages, beginning with a 17% cut by 2020, the White House has said.

The offer will be made at December's UN climate talks in Copenhagen, which Mr Obama will attend.

But he does not plan to be there for the crucial last days, when delegates including other world leaders are hoping to pull together a deal.

The talks aim to draw up a new treaty to supplant the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

UN climate chief Yvo de Boer said his attendance could be vital for a deal.

"It's critical that President Obama attends the climate change summit in Copenhagen," he told journalists.

The cuts Mr Obama has proposed are similar to those included in a bill passed by the US House of Representatives in June.

But with legislation currently stuck in the Senate, correspondents say the president will be unable to commit to any of the figures he is proposing at the summit.

So far more than 60 world leaders have said they will attend.

Observers say the presence of such figures as Mr Obama will raise hopes for action on climate change, although the talks are not expected to result in a new treaty.

'Momentum for talks'

Officials said the US would pledge a 17% cut in emissions from 2005 levels by 2020, 30% by 2025, 42% by 2030 and 83% by 2050.

Mr Obama will outline a "pathway" towards the US goals at the summit, a White House statement said.

It described the cuts as "a significant contribution to a problem that the US has neglected for too long".

But most other countries' targets are given in comparison with 1990 figures.

BBC environment correspondent Richard Black says that on that basis the US figure amounts to just a few percentage points, as its emissions have risen by about 15% since 1990.

This is much less than the EU's pledge of a 20% cut over the same period, or a 30% cut if there is a global deal; and much less than the 25-40% figure that developing countries are demanding.

The US president will be in the Danish capital on 9 December, a day before receiving his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo.

But he does not plan to return for the key last stages of the 7-18 December summit.

Major priority

Responding to the announcement, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said: "I welcome that President Obama has committed to come to Copenhagen. HAVE YOUR SAY I'm sure the event in Copenhagen will be beneficial for Planet Earth Juan Leonidas Vega G, San Salvador

"I have made clear that we need as many world leaders present as possible. I hope that others will follow suit."

Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen, the host of the talks, said he hoped Mr Obama could "contribute to an ambitious global deal in Copenhagen".

The announcement was also welcome by environmental group Friends of the Earth.

"Obama's pledge to go to Copenhagen is a welcome and significant development - but he must adopt a 'Yes we can' attitude in the UN climate talks if he is to earn his Nobel prize," spokesman Tom Picken said.

"The US is the world's biggest per capita polluter. It has a moral responsibility to take the lead in securing a strong and fair agreement."

The decision follows intense speculation about whether the US president would go at all.

Delegations from 192 countries will be attending the summit.

Leaders saying they will attend include UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva.

Hu Jintao, president of the world's largest polluter, China, is yet to commit to attending.

The US is the second largest polluter after China.

Mr Obama has made climate change a major priority for his administration, after previous incumbents had failed to ratify the Kyoto treaty.

A bill to cap US emissions and establish a national carbon trading scheme is currently stuck in the Senate and is not expected to pass before the end of the year.

But Senator John Kerry, co-sponsor of the Senate bill, said Mr Obama's move could have an impact on domestic politics.

"This could be one hell of a global game changer with big reverberations here at home," he said.

Correspondents say most nations have given up hope of a legally binding treaty because of uncertainty about the US position.

CUTS ALREADY PLEDGED
# EU - 20% cut from 1990 levels, rising to 30% in the event of a global agreement
# Australia - 25% from 2000 levels
# Japan - 25% from 1990 levels

Obama to head to Copenhagen with climate pledge
Shaun Tandon Yahoo News 25 Nov 09;

WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama will head to next month's Copenhagen climate summit to offer the first US plan to cut carbon emissions, officials said Wednesday, reviving hopes the closely watched meeting will succeed.

The Obama administration offered to curb US emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 -- less than calls by the European Union, Japan and UN scientists but the first numbers on the table by the world's largest economy.

"The president going to Copenhagen will give positive momentum to the negotiations and we think will enhance the prospects for success," Carol Browner, Obama's top aide on climate policy, told reporters.

Obama will address the meeting in Copenhagen on December 9, the day before he heads to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mike Froman, the deputy national security adviser, said Obama decided to go after sensing progress in talks with China, India and other emerging economies, which rich nations are pressing to do more on global warming.

A carefully worded White House statement said Obama was putting on the table the US offer "in the context of an overall deal in Copenhagen that includes robust mitigation contributions from China and the other emerging economies."

The White House said Obama would lay out a longer term plan for a 30 percent reduction of US emissions from 2005 levels by 2025, a 42 percent reduction by 2030 and an 83 percent cut by 2050.

Browner said the near-term offer was "in the range" of 17 percent depending on legislation in the deeply divided US Senate, which has delayed action on climate change until next year.

Foreign leaders and environmentalists hailed Obama's presence, hoping it would breathe new life into the December 7-18 conference meant to draft the successor to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, whose obligations expire in 2012. Carbon emissions curbs: How key countries line up

UN climate chief Yvo de Boer said that if the US offer was clear-cut, it can "help pave the way for a successful outcome at Copenhagen."

But he also said that developed nations needed to come forward on another key part of negotiations -- pledging financing to help poorer nations cope with climate change.

"If the president comes in the first week to announce that, it would be a major boost to the conference," said de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in charge of the conference.

Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen said he was "pleased" Obama would come to his country and hoped the visit would "contribute to an ambitious global deal in Copenhagen."

France's environment minister Jean-Louis Borloo, who was on his way to China, hailed Obama's offer and said it would help persuade Beijing.

"It's an extremely encouraging first response," Borloo told AFP.

Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of charity Oxfam America, said Obama had lived up to election pledges by showing he is "ready to roll up his sleeves to make a climate change deal happen."

"Today's announcement flies in the face of predictions of failure in Copenhagen well before the conference even begins," he said.

Obama campaigned on promises to fight global warming, a sharp reversal from his predecessor George W. Bush, who disputed evidence on climate change until late in his presidency and called the Kyoto Protocol unfair to rich countries.

But the US Congress has yet to complete legislation to mandate cuts in emissions, amid staunch opposition from many members of Bush's Republican Party.

Obama's offer reflects a bill narrowly passed by the House of Representatives in June that envisages cuts of 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 and by 83 percent by 2050.

A slightly more ambitious bill before the Senate talks of a 20 percent reduction from 2005 levels by 2020.

Senator John Kerry, who has spearheaded the bill, said Obama's announcement could sway not only other nations but also US lawmakers. Related article: Climate action 'can avert health crisis'.

"This could be one hell of a global game changer with big reverberations here at home," Kerry said.

"The Obama administration is now undeniably mustering bona fide leadership on climate change, not merely departing from Bush administration intransigence and ideology," said Kerry, who unsuccessfully challenged Bush for the White House in 2004.

Compared with the 1990 benchmark used by almost every other country, the US target only amounts to something like a four percent reduction in emissions of the gases blamed for global warming.

The European Union has vowed to reduce its emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels before 2020, raising the target to 30 percent in the event of an international agreement. Japan has offered 25 percent, but attached conditions.

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Science Untarnished By "Climategate", UN Says

Gerard Wynn, Yahoo News 27 Nov 09;

LONDON - The head of the U.N.'s panel of climate experts rejected accusations of bias on Thursday, saying a "Climategate" row in no way undermined evidence that humans are to blame for global warming.

Climate change skeptics have seized on a series of e-mails written by specialists in the field, accusing them of colluding to suppress data which might have undermined their arguments.

The e-mails, some written as long as 13 years ago, were stolen from a British university by unknown hackers and spread rapidly across the Internet.

But Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), stood by his panel's 2007 findings, called the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). "This private communication in no way damages the credibility of the AR4 findings," he told Reuters in an email exchange.

This report helped to underpin a global climate response which included this week carbon emissions targets proposed by the United States and China, and won the IPCC a share of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

The e-mails hacked from Britain's University of East Anglia last week showed scientists made snide comments about climate skeptics, and revealed exchanges about how to present the data to make the global warming argument look convincing.

In one e-mail, confirmed by the university as genuine, a scientist jokingly referred to ways of ensuring papers which doubted established climate science did not appear in the AR4.

Pachauri said a laborious selection process, using only articles approved by other scientists, called peer review, and then subsequently approving these by committee had prevented distortion.

"The entire report writing process of the IPCC is subjected to extensive and repeated review by experts as well as governments," he added in a written statement to Reuters.

"There is, therefore, no possibility of exclusion of any contrarian views, if they have been published in established journals or other publications which are peer reviewed."

"This thoroughness and the duration of the process followed in every assessment ensure the elimination of any possibility of omissions or distortions, intentional or accidental."

In another e-mail, according to news accounts, Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, wrote: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." The revelation of the e-mails was more embarrassing than serious fodder for doubts about the causes of, or basis for climate change, scientists responded this week.

"It is unfortunate that an illegal act of accessing private email communications between scientists who have been involved as authors in IPCC assessments in the past has led to several questions and concerns," said Pachauri.

(Editing by David Stamp)

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Securing the future in a connected planet: the role of science

Dr Megan Clark, Science Alert 26 Nov 09;

For the first time in our history, science is making predictions of how our actions will affect the world 50 and 100 years from now.

In this future we face the reality that we are all connected. Our choices in one area, such as water, impact on other areas, such as food security.

Martin Luther King warned us that we are all joined through an “inescapable network of mutuality”. We are now beginning to understand what he really meant. We all want a prosperous and healthy society, but we face significant challenges to securing our food, water and energy needs in a world of finite resources.

We have significant pressures on global systems – such as population growth, rapid urbanisation and climate change. These national and global challenges are connected. They cannot be dealt with in isolation.

Individuals, communities, industry and nations are seeking to understand this connectivity and the inevitable trade-offs necessary to achieve a sustainable society.

Science must change if we are to help inform governments, communities and industry how choices in one area impact on another area – particularly in a world where water, carbon and biodiversity will have prices and markets.

I am now nine months into my new role as Chief Executive of CSIRO and I would like to share my vision of what you can expect of your national science organisation.

Climate change

You have been saturated with the fact that over the past several decades our climate has been changing. You also know climate change is not new. So what is the essence of what is different this time? Simply the rate of change.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are now well outside the range experienced during recent ice ages. They are now at values not experienced for millions of years. They are increasing at a rate we have not seen before.

One of the best indicators of this rate of change is sea level. We have been measuring sea level since 1870 and it has been rising about 10 times faster than the average rate of rise over the previous 2000 years. Since 1993 the average rate of rise is almost double the 20th century average.

All nations are connected in this change. So are our latest measurements confirming this rate of change? Yes. Let me give you just two examples.

First, our observations of ocean temperature off eastern Tasmania over the past 60 years have revealed that winter water temperatures were 1.5˚C above normal, due to strengthening of the southward-flowing East Australian Current. Sea urchins, normally found off eastern mainland Australia, are now happily colonising Tasmanian waters and millions of them are eating their way through extensive kelp forests and threatening the biodiversity and key abalone and rock lobster fisheries of the region.

The second example is rainfall. Our modelling is increasingly predicting reduced rainfall in south-eastern Australia, the main generating area for the River Murray. The predictions range from little change in the mean annual rainfall up to a decline of 15 per cent for each degree of global warming. Such a rainfall reduction could mean a more than 35 per cent reduction in run-off as the rain soaks into dry soils.

Run-off is what feeds our rivers. The Murray–Darling system has more than 50 per cent of all irrigated land in the country. It is linked to our food security.

All our communities need better predictions. We are making increasingly accurate and granular observations of what is happening.

We have 60 ocean probes, three ships taking continuous measurements, four seagliders, and satellites taking physical and biological measurements of our deep Southern Ocean. We have deployed a $1 million measuring system south-west of Tasmania that will monitor the carbon cycle in the top 400 metres of the Southern Ocean.

With the Bureau of Meteorology, we track every single rain event over the Murray–Darling Basin and look at its intensity, how much water it has, how frequent these rain events are and measure the run-off. We are working to understand where the water is coming from and how much will flow because this information is critical to future decisions.

We are also contributing on a global scale. More than 100 of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientists are Australian, and more than 20 are from CSIRO. The work they and their international colleagues are doing measuring temperature, acidity and currents in places like the deep Southern Ocean is a vital part of the emerging global picture of climate change.

Food production

One area that we have to adapt to quickly is the production of food. In the next 50 years we will need to produce as much food as has been consumed over our entire human history.

Humans have met this challenge once before – from 1960 to 2000 world food production doubled through a combination of new technology and investment in agriculture. But this time two things are different.

First, we will need to achieve this where carbon and water have a price. We can no longer simply clear more forest and farm even more marginal land.

Second, this is happening at a time when we are seeing the greatest migration of our species to urban centres.

We will see profound shifts in the trade and transport of food. We are already seeing the impact on global, sea-borne trade of food. Cereal exports, the highest volume globally traded food commodity, have risen at a rate double that of population growth. Trade volumes of milk, meat and beans have risen at even faster rates.

Australia has a strong interest in global food security. We produce 93 per cent of all food consumed in Australia, one per cent of all food consumed in the world and three per cent of the global sea-borne trade. So right now we feed 60 million people.

Increase in global sea-borne trade of food presents an opportunity for Australia but Australian agriculture is also highly exposed to climate change – we have significant constraints on irrigation water availability. Our agriculture is also 16 per cent of our national greenhouse gas.

Our science has potential for Australia to produce an even greater proportion of the sea-borne trade. We are making wonderful and exciting scientific developments in new drought-tolerant crop varieties, high-yielding wheat, greater nitrogen-use efficiency and improved grain nutritional benefits.

CSIRO’s role

Living in a world where carbon has a value and irrigation water is restricted means new choices and trade-offs.

At the start of the 21st century, it was clear that the Murray–Darling was in trouble. A whole-of-basin water assessment was required. CSIRO was given the challenge in November 2006 to lead the world’s first rigorous assessment of the potential impacts of climate change on surface and groundwater availability across a major river basin.

It was the most comprehensive and technically challenging water-modelling project ever undertaken in Australia, and possibly the world. It provides governments, industry and communities with an unprecedented level of water information to guide their future planning and investment.

We are working with our research partners to extend this work to the river basins of northern Australia, south-west Western Australia and Tasmania. This means Australia will lead the world in building a national model of its water.

This is exactly what a national research organisation should do – bring together all the smartest research and researchers across the nation to catalyse a national response to some of the biggest challenges we face.

I believe we need to similarly take on the challenge of building a national picture of our carbon footprint and assessment of future energy options. The approach will require not only the best multi-disciplinary teams of scientists from CSIRO and our universities, but also our best economists from places like Treasury and the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE), Federal and State policy makers, the community and industry.

This platform will be vital in supporting Australia’s need for new national infrastructure suited to a new low-carbon economy.

The role of CSIRO is to provide the science and help catalyse the development of the ‘integrated assessment’ platform that will be needed for good decision-making. Such a comprehensive picture will allow us to achieve maximal emissions reduction while maintaining economic growth and prosperity.

As we adjust to a world where carbon has a value, adopting a low-carbon pathway will require Australia to look at its land and water resources in a fundamentally different way. We stand ready as an organisation to help Australia tackle these very difficult assessments.

We cannot secure Australia’s future unless our science works on challenges that face all nations.

CSIRO aims to be one of the most respected R&D organisations in the world. Our strategy remains to focus on these major challenges that face humankind and our nation. We will do this through our 10 National Research Flagships.

We will continue to step up to the plate to work with universities and other research agencies and organisations like the Bureau of Meteorology to integrate our knowledge into comprehensive pictures of our national water resources, carbon footprint and our biodiversity.

We aim to make an impact in three areas: a sustainable environment (which I’ve discussed), the community and industry.

Our communities need help facing the challenges of the future. We will continue to develop foods that can improve health, provide nutrition advice to children and adults, and help make sense of how to make a difference in a carbon world.

Three targets

We will continue to bring a cross-disciplinary approach to tackle three of the largest health issues that face our nation – obesity, Alzheimer’s disease and colorectal cancer.

Australians trust CSIRO to bring excellent science to help them with the challenges of today and tomorrow. But these challenges are not just of interest to governments and communities. We are seeing increased investment from our industry partners as well.

We will help Australian businesses access the breadth and depth of our organisation and our networks to be more competitive. We are helping CSL develop safe vaccines, BHP Billiton to better understand the performance of products in downstream processing, Telstra enable the house of the future and AGL build the power industry of the future.

To build whole new industries we will continue to build platform and breakthrough technologies such as wireless LAN, which is now in more than a billion wireless devices; next-generation space technology; polymers to build printable electronics and solar cells; and gene technology for new drugs, proteins and plants.

As an organisation with goals and values that go beyond our science, we know we will be successful when our people always go home safely at night and share a sense of discovery; our collaborators and partners realise lasting value from our science and describe working with us as a pleasure; and we remain a trusted adviser to the people of Australia.

We remain committed to the integrity of our science, which has been a foundation for CSIRO since our beginnings more than 80 years ago.

We live in a connected world. Science needs to work on challenges that face all nations to secure a future for humankind. Only then can we secure a future for Australia.

(This article is an edited version of a recent address to the National Press Club.)

Dr Megan Clark FTSE, Chief Executive, CSIRO, is a member of the St Vincent’s Hospital Foundation Board, the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council, and the Automotive Industry Innovation Council. She began her career as a mine geologist and subsequently worked in mineral exploration, mine geology, research and development management, venture capital and technical strategy areas with Western Mining Corporation for 15 years. More recently she was Vice-President Technology and Vice-President, Health, Safety, Environment, Community and Sustainability with BHP Billiton. Dr Clark served on the Expert Panel for the Review of the National Innovation System.

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Climate change to cost trillions, say economists

Richard Ingham Yahoo News 26 Nov 09;

PARIS (AFP) – Estimates vary widely on the costs of damage from climate change, easing these impacts and taming the carbon gas stoking the problem, but economists agree the bill is likely to be in the trillions of dollars.

Figures depend on different forecasts for greenhouse-gas emissions and the timeline for reaching them. In addition, key variables remain sketchy.

How will rainfall, snowfall, storm frequency and ocean levels look a few decades from now? How will they affect a specific country or region? And how fast will nations introduce low-carbon technologies, carbon taxes and other policies that alter energy use?

Despite these uncertainties, economists share a broad consensus: climate change will ultimately cost thousands of billions of dollars, a tab that keeps rising as more carbon enters the atmosphere.

"The cost of climate impacts goes up with the delay on emissions mitigation," said Sam Fankhauser of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics (LSE).

"On the cost of adaptation, there's a timing issue. For instance, there's no point building sea walls now if the sea levels are only going to rise gradually over the next 50 years. But we do know that costs of adaptation will go up non-linearly, in other words exponentially, with the degree of warming that we have."

Following is a snapshot of the main items on the tab.

-- IMPACTS: Warming of between two to three degrees Celsius (3.6-5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times would inflict a permanent loss in global world output of up to three percent, according to the 2006 Stern Review, authored by British economist Nicholas Stern.

But this would rise to an average of five to 10 percent loss of GDP with warming of five to six C (9.0 F), with poor countries suffering costs "in excess" of 10 percent of GDP.

On current trends, Earth is headed for an average increase of 4 C (7.2 F) this century, to which 0.74 C (1.33 F) of warming from the 20th century must be added, according to the so-called A1F1 emissions scenario of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

-- MITIGATION: Action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases focuses on more efficient use of coal, oil and gas and a switch to clean renewable sources.

The European Union (EU) and others have set the target of limiting overall warming to 2C (3.6 F), which entails stabilising carbon concentrations in the atmosphere at 450 parts per million (ppm).

Attaining this would require 10.5 trillion dollars in energy-related investment by 2030, which would be additional to money committed under existing policies, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says.

The largest increase -- 4.7 trillion -- is in transport, mainly to purchase more efficient, but more expensive, vehicles.

Investment to make buildings more energy-efficient would cost an additional 2.5 trillion dollars by 2030 while a switch to clean or low-carbon power generation would notch up another 1.7 trillion.

-- ADAPTATION: Estimates of the cost of protecting against water stress, flood, extreme storms, rising sea levels and other ills vary widely, from four billion a year to 109 billion annually over the next 20 years.

A widely-regarded estimate put forward in 2007 by the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) suggested the bill by 2030 could be between 49 and 171 billion dollars annually, of which 27-66 billion would be needed in developing countries.

The figure is based on the need to climate-proof infrastructure; help agriculture; protect water supplies; defend coastal zones; and treat malnutrition, diarrhoea and malaria, which are among the diseases likely to be amplified by climate change.

But this is only half, or even just a third, of the likely cost, as it does not factor in protecting ecosystems, energy, tourism, manufacturing and mining, according to a paper published in August by Martin Parry of Imperial College London.

By way of comparison, the EU estimates developing nations will need 100 billion euros (150 billion dollars) per year by 2020, for both adaptation and mitigation.

Trillions spent in mitigation and adaptation will have an economic benefit and create new jobs, although exactly how far they will ease the cost of impacts is -- once more -- hard to calculate, say economists.

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Past climate anomalies explained

BBC News 26 Nov 09;

Unusually warm and cold periods in Earth's pre-industrial climate history are linked to how the oceans responded to temperature changes, say scientists.

The researchers focused particularly on intervals known as the "little ice age" and "medieval warm period".

In the journal Science, they report that these climate "anomalies" were likely caused by changes to El Nino and the North Atlantic Oscillation.

They say studying the past in this way could help refine climate models.

"We reconstructed patterns of [the Earth's] surface temperature during those two intervals," explained Professor Michael Mann from Pennsylvania State University in the US, who led the study.

He and his colleagues reconstructed 1,500 years of the Earth's climate - collecting clues from "proxies" such as ice cores, tree rings and coral. These can be used to track hundreds of years of climatic changes.

He explained that the data allowed the team to estimate how natural factors, including volcanic eruptions and changes in the Sun's output, altered the climate in the past.

"We then put these estimates into the climate models," he told BBC News.

The models revealed that these natural factors altered the Earth's surface temperature, which kick-started feedback mechanisms - El Nino or the North Atlantic Oscillation (NOA).

This produced the regional patterns in climate associated with the medieval climate era and the little ice age.

"El Nino and the NOA are dynamical patterns that can lead to shifts in rainfall and drought patterns, and influence hurricane activity," explained Professor Mann.

"They redistribute heat around the globe, leading to warming in one region [of the planet] and cooling in another."

Feeding back

The findings have allowed the team to assess which models might be missing some of the "regional mechanisms" that influence the climate.



A key thing the team discovered was that, in the past, when the planet has been warmed by natural factors it has responded with another feedback mechanism known as the La Nina effect.

This can be thought of as the opposite of El Nino - a sort of "colder phase" of El Nino phenomenon.

Professor Mann explained that a "La Nina-like climate" brings colder than normal temperatures in the eastern and central tropical Pacific and drier than normal conditions in the desert southwest of the US".

Most climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) show that the Earth will respond in an El Nino-like way to global warming.

But a few of the models do recreate this dynamic "La Nina effect", and suggest that that when you heat the Earth's surface, the climate system tries to offset and cool.

"If the response of the Earth in the past is analogous to the temperature increase caused by greenhouse gases... it could lend credence to this counterintuitive notion of a La Nina response to global warming," said Professor Mann.

But, he added, that the Earth's response to greenhouse-gas-induced global warming might be more complex than "natural" warming.

"What this gives us is an independent reality check," said Professor Mann.

"There is still a fair amount of divergence among the various models - in terms of how El Nino changes in response to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations.

"Some of the best clues we can get are by going back to the distant past and seeing how the Earth actually responded."

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Best of our wild blogs: 26 Nov 09

Dairy farm road
from Singapore Nature

Oriental Magpie Robin’s failed nesting
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Sharing about Nature Blogging
from wild shores of singapore

Green Buddy Award 2009
from Water Quality in Singapore

Biodiversity and REDD at Copenhagen (Current Biology)
from The Biodiversity crew @ NUS

We want to live in a place not a plan
from Reclaim Land

Grey-headed Canary Flycatchers in a bird wave
from Bird Ecology Study Group

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Will we ever have enough wealth?

Robert Skidelsky, Straits Times 26 Nov 09;

THE economic downturn has produced an explosion of popular anger against bankers' 'greed'. This has accompanied a wider critique of 'growthmanship' - the pursuit of economic growth at all costs, regardless of the damage it may do to the earth's environment or to shared values.

John Maynard Keynes addressed this issue in 1930, in his little essay Economic Possibilities For Our Grandchildren.

Keynes predicted that in 100 years - that is, by 2030 - growth in the developed world would, in effect, have stopped because people would 'have enough' to lead the 'good life'. Hours of paid work would fall to three a day - a 15-hour week. Human beings would be more like the 'lilies of the field, who toil not, neither do they spin'.

Keynes' prediction rested on the assumption that, with a 2 per cent annual increase in capital, a 1 per cent increase in productivity, and a stable population, average standards of living would rise eight times on average. This enables us to work out how much Keynes thought was 'enough'.

Gross domestic product (GDP) per head in Britain in the late 1920s was roughly £5,200 (S$12,000) in today's value. Accordingly, he estimated that a GDP per capita of roughly £40,000 - or US$66,000 ($91,600) - would be 'enough' for humans to turn their attention to more agreeable things.

It is not clear why Keynes thought eight times the average British national income per head in the 1920s would be 'enough'. Most likely he took as his standard of sufficiency the bourgeois rentier income of his day, which was about 10 times that of the average worker.

Eighty years on, the developed world has approached Keynes' goal. In 2007, the International Monetary Fund reported that average GDP per head in the United States stood at US$47,000, and at US$46,000 in Britain. In other words, Britain has had a five-fold increase in living standards since 1930 - despite the falsification of two of Keynes' assumptions: 'no major wars' and 'no population growth' (Britain's population is now 33 per cent higher than it was in 1930).

The reason we have done so well is that annual productivity growth has been higher than Keynes projected: about 1.6 per cent in Britain, and a bit higher for the US. Countries like Germany and Japan have done even better, despite the hugely disruptive effects of war. It is likely that Keynes' 'target' of US$66,000 will be achieved for most Western countries by 2030.

But it is equally unlikely that this achievement will end the insatiable hunt for more money. Let's assume that we are two-thirds of the way towards Keynes' target. We might therefore have expected hours of work to have fallen by about two-thirds. In fact, they have fallen by only one-third - and have stopped falling since the 1980s.

This makes it highly improbable that we will reach the three-hour working day by 2030. It is also unlikely that growth will stop - unless nature itself calls a halt. People will continue to trade leisure for higher incomes.

Keynes minimised the obstacles to his goal. He recognised that there are two kinds of needs, absolute and relative, and that the latter may be insatiable. But he underestimated the weight of relative needs and, of course, the power of advertising to create new wants. As long as consumption is conspicuous and competitive, there will continue to be fresh reasons to work.

Keynes did not entirely ignore the social character of work. The wealthy had a duty to help the poor. The goal of global poverty reduction has imposed a burden of extra work on people in rich countries, both through foreign aid and, more importantly, through globalisation, which increases job insecurity and holds down wages of the less skilled in the developed world.

Moreover, Keynes did not really confront the problem of what most people would do when they no longer needed to work. He writes: 'It is a fearful problem for the ordinary person, with no special talents, to occupy himself, especially if he no longer has roots in the soil or in custom or in the beloved conventions of a traditional economy.' But since most of the rich have 'failed disastrously' to live the 'good life', why should those who are currently poor do any better?

Here I think Keynes comes closest to answering the question of why his 'enough' will not, in fact, be enough. The accumulation of wealth, which should be a means to the 'good life', becomes an end in itself because it destroys many of the things that make life worth living. Beyond a certain point - which most of the world is still far from having reached - the accumulation of wealth offers only substitute pleasures for the real losses to human relations that it exacts.

Finding the means to nourish the fading 'associations or duties or ties' that are so essential for individuals to flourish is the unsolved problem of the developed world, and it is looming for the billions who have just stepped onto the growth ladder.

George Orwell put it well: 'All progress is seen to be a frantic struggle towards an objective which you hope and pray will never be reached.'

The writer, a member of Britain's House of Lords, is Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Warwick University.

PROJECT SYNDICATE

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Monkeys outside reservoir area

Letter from Chin Kee Thou, Today Online 23 Nov 09;

IN THE past, monkeys have been seen in Toa Payoh Rise near the Singapore School of the Visually Handicapped, some distance away from the MacRitchie Reservoir catchment area.

On Saturday at 7am, a monkey was seen in Toa Payoh on the railing of the pedestrian overhead bridge leading from Block 236 - across Lorong 6 - to Block 211.

Could regular park maintenance work of pruning and cutting down of trees, as well as the second phase makeover project at the MacRitchie Reservoir Park, be the reasons why these primates are being forced to seek refuge away from their natural habitat?

Monkey smell, monkey come
Letter from Sharon Chan Asst Director (Central Nature Reserve), National Parks Board
Today Online 26 Nov 09;

WE REFER to the letter, "Monkeys outside reservoir area" (Nov 23).

Mr Chin Kee Thou suggests that tree pruning and construction work at MacRitchie have driven monkeys into housing estates. From our observations, the availability of food sources is the main culprit.

Feeding monkeys alters their natural behaviour, and makes them too familiar with humans. Hence, we have strict regulations prohibiting monkey-feeding in our parks and nature reserves. Feeding makes the monkeys a nuisance, even to visitors who do not give them food.

Should residents spot any monkeys in their estate, please do not encourage this behaviour by feeding them. Left-over food should also be kept in covered dustbins so it is not accessible to monkeys. Let them return to their natural habitat to forage.

We thank Mr Chin for his feedback. For further clarification, he is welcome to contact us at our 24-hour helpline at 1800 471 7300.

Related links
More about the impact of feeding monkeys on the wildsingapore website.

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'VIP trees' symbols of commitment to Garden City

Neem tree planted this month by PM Lee among latest in a tradition started by MM Lee in 1963
Shuli Sudderuddin, Straits Times 25 Nov 09;

THERE are trees, and there are 'VIP trees'.

A neem tree, planted earlier this month by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, is among the latest, joining a tradition here that is over 40 years old.

PM Lee was at his Constituency Tree Planting Day held at Lorong Tanggam Park, off Jalan Kayu.

The first tree planting campaign was launched in 1963 by then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, now the Minister Mentor.

MM Lee has planted a tree here every year since. This year, he planted a tree sapling at Henderson Heights for Tanjong Pagar GRC's Tree Planting Day.

The evergreen neem tree planted by PM Lee is among the more than 350 trees that will be planted this year in conjunction with the Clean and Green Singapore campaign.

Said a National Parks Board spokesman: 'The symbolism of planting a tree can take on several diverse meanings. When tree planting is done by our leaders, it shows their commitment to the Government's Garden City vision.'

Each town council also holds tree planting day activities with its own MPs.

A spokesman for Bishan-Toa Payoh Town Council said its tree planting day was held earlier this month, when five trees were planted by its five MPs.

Some VIP trees are protected, even when everything around them changes.

The 50-storey Pinnacle@Duxton is being built on the same site as an earlier generation of 12-storey public housing flats. Two trees on the site were planted many years ago by MM Lee.

A Housing Board spokesman said that the trees were transplanted from the construction site into a nursery for temporary care.

They will be replanted at the sitewhen Pinnacle@Duxton is completed at the end of this year.

There are also areas where foreign VIPs get to plant trees.

Two parks in Jurong, both owned by JTC Corporation, have gardens of fame boasting about 50 trees planted by foreign VIPs over the years as part of visits to the JTC's amenities and facilities.

The first, Jurong Hilltop Park, built in 1974, has tembusu and pong pong trees planted by VIPs such as Sir William McMahon, Australia's prime minister in 1971.

The second, at Jurong Town Hall, built in 1979, has trees like the tembusu planted by VIPs like Mr Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, president of the Maldives until last year.

Tree planting for foreign VIPs has since been replaced by visits to sites like the Fusionopolis and One North.

Said a JTC spokesman: 'The existing trees in the gardens of fame are maintained each month by us. It includes weeding, fertilising and pruning if necessary.'

Trees planted by local VIPs get the same care as other trees, town councils said.

A spokesman for Jurong Town Council said: 'The trees are taken care of by our horticulture department. In general, saplings need additional care as they are more vulnerable during the beginning of their lifespans.'

Two parks in Jurong have gardens of fame boasting about 50 trees planted by foreign VIPs over the years. Above, the VIP trees in Jurong Hilltop Park. MM Lee has planted a tree in Singapore every year since the first tree planting campaign was launched in 1963.

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Grain of hope for rice research

Fund will help raise output, ensure there is no shortage that may send prices soaring
Victoria Vaughan, Straits Times 26 Nov 09;

A FUND to support research into rice - a food staple for half the world - has been launched in Singapore.

The money will go towards continuing research into securing the supply of rice, rice genetics and climate change.

The ultimate aim is to ensure that rice output does not plateau and to forestall shortages that will send rice prices rocketing again like they did last year.

The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) headquartered in the Philippines is behind this fund-raising effort, the first major one for rice.

It aims to raise US$300 million (S$416.5 million) by 2012 from individuals, organisations and companies, and hopes to appeal to young wealthy Asians interested in philanthropy, said IRRI's director-general Robert Zeigler.

The fund has so far secured US$59 million, including $50 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; a further $20 million to $25 million from other donors is in the pipeline.

Dr Zeigler said the not-for-profit IRRI has, in the last 50 years, been working quietly behind the scenes to raise rice output.

Its research areas include developing rice varieties that can resist flooded conditions, droughts, pests and disease.

Half the world's rice is dependent on rainfall, and the other half, on irrigation. When rice stands in water, the greenhouse gas methane is produced. IRRI has been trying since the early 1990s to come up with a way to reduce the amount of methane produced.

A research collaboration between IRRI and the National University of Singapore (NUS) is being planned; funds will have to be secured for this early next year.

The researchers, also to be drawn from the Temasek Life-Sciences Laboratory, will study drought- and flood-resistant rice varieties and look into raising the yield as well as the plant's resistance to fungal disease.

Professor Prakash Kumar of NUS' department of biological sciences, the liaison person for the collaboration, said: 'This fund is timely as investment in rice research has been dwindling in the last decade. Governments have all realised that in the next 20 to 30 years, we must increase food production by 50 per cent, which will be impossible without investment.

'Scientists think that with funding, we can get that increase and the IRRI can see that through.'

President S R Nathan and Minister for National Development Mah Bow Tan attended the launch.

The minister pointed out that because Singapore was not a rice-producing nation, it should not take its supply lightly.

'Rice plays a fundamental role in Singapore - economically, culturally and socially. Between 2005 and 2008, our rice consumption rose by about 40 per cent, from 197,000 tonnes to 275,000 tonnes,' he noted.

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Indonesian government in the dark on how to cut emission

Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 25 Nov 09;

If Indonesia can reduce forest fires in peat lands by 75 percent, it would cut nine percent of its emissions.

The government remains unclear on how to meet President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s October declaration to voluntarily cut Indonesia’s carbon emissions by 26 percent by 2020 using the state budget.

The Forestry Ministry admitted it had not yet issued any data on emissions cuts targets from the forestry sector, believed to be the Indonesia’s largest emissions contributor.

“We are still discussing it,” Nur Masripatin, a senior ministry official dealing with negotiations on forestry emissions cuts, told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

State Minister for the Environment Gusti Muhammad Hatta announced Monday the forestry sector’s emissions cuts were expected to contribute about 14 percent of the 26 percent target, while energy and waste management sectors could cut emissions by 6 percent each.

“I don’t know how such [large] emissions cuts by the forestry sector will be made,” Nur said.

Earlier, Hatta was confident Yu-dhoyono’s pledge of 26 percent emissions cuts could be met with cuts by only the forestry and energy sectors.

Hatta’s office then revised the plan by incorporating a slash in emissions from waste management.

Nur warned that calculating emissions cuts should be discussed carefully because they would require a huge budget to resolve the main drivers of deforestation: rampant illegal logging and forest fires.

“If there are no significant changes in budget allocation, we will not be able to cut forestry emissions.

We cannot seek foreign aid to fund emission cuts in this sector,” she said.

A document made available to the Post showed that by planting 33.2 million hectares of trees and undertaking REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation) programs, Indonesia could slash about 15 percent of its emissions.

The document says that if Indonesia can reduce forest fires in peat lands by 75 percent, it would cut nine percent of its emissions.

Yudhoyono made his pledge at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in October. He further committed to slash emissions by 41 percent if developed nations provided financial aid.

With the announcement, Indonesia — one of the countries most vulnerable to the impact of climate change — became the first developing nation to declare an emissions cuts target.

Negotiators from all over the world will gather in Copenhagen in December to discuss emissions cuts targets to mitigate the impacts of global warming.

The existing climate treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, binds only developed nations to cut emissions by 5 percent by 2012 from 1990 levels. The treaty expires in 2012.

The Environment Ministry released its emissions report Monday, which showed the country’s emissions stood at about 1.4 million tons in 2000, the forestry sector alone contributed up to one million tons of emissions.

Energy and waste management each contributed about 333.540 tons and 151.578 tons.

If Indonesia can reduce forest fires in peat lands by 75 percent, it would cut nine percent of its emissions.

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Indonesian government may allow mining of protected forests

Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post 25 Nov 09;

The government has revealed plans to amend the law on natural resource conservation, which could pave the way for mining companies to exploit the country’s rich mineral resources in protected forests.

Director general for forest protection and natural conservation at the Forestry Ministry, Daruri, said that many mineral resources, including coal or geothermal sources were located in conservation forests.

“We are now reviewing articles prohibiting mining activities in conservation forests,” Daruri told a workshop Wednesday.

The 1990 Natural Resources Conservation Law prohibits the mining sector from exploiting mineral resources in conservation areas.

Meanwhile, the 1999 Forest Law stipulates that non-forest activities can only be conducted in both protected and production forests.

Daruri, however, immediately warned environmental activists not to politicize the plans.
“We will only change the law if there is guarantee that mining activities will not damage conservation forests,” he said.

“But we need a law as an umbrella for conserving the forest.”

He said that about 70 percent of geothermal sources were located below conservation forests.

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