Blooming seagrasses on oil-slicked Tanah Merah shore
from wild shores of singapore
A Re-visit To A Park Connector @ Mandai
from Beauty of Fauna and Flora in Nature
Pulau Ketam on 4 Dec 2010
from Soaring c-eagle
Hunt for the Grey Plover
from Biodiversity Singapore
Observing the Orange Emigrant
from Macro Photography in Singapore
Finding the Knot at Sungei Buloh
from Biodiversity Singapore
Baya Weaver’s failed attempt at nest building
from Bird Ecology Study Group
US author picks city-state based on factors like tolerance, equality and security
Tracy Quek Straits Times 5 Dec 10;
Washington: When American explorer and author Dan Buettner began researching Asia's cheeriest spot for a book on the world's happiest places, he had assumed he would be boarding a plane for spiritual Tibet, exotic Fiji or mysterious Bhutan.
Instead, he found himself in a country some Americans would consider a restrictive nanny state, known more for caning criminals and banning chewing gum than for its sunny disposition.
Singapore is one of four places that Minneapolis-based Mr Buettner profiles in his recently launched book, Thrive, Finding Happiness The Blue Zones Way.
The title references an earlier book, The Blue Zones, the author's 2008 New York Times bestseller about the places where people live the longest and have the highest quality of life in the world.
Mr Buettner bills Thrive, his sixth book, as 'story-driven science that ends with a handbook with how to be happier'.
In it, the 50-year-old single father of three shares lessons on well-being and happiness he gleaned from visiting the happiest places on each of the four continents.
Besides Singapore, he travelled to the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark, Monterrey in Mexico, and San Luis Obispo in California. The book, backed by National Geographic, took five years to research and write.
To identify the happy spots, Mr Buettner relied on data from Gallup, the World Values Survey and the World Database on Happiness which have done comprehensive polls and studies over the past seven decades examining factors that directly impact happiness.
While there are many happiness indices out there, the data from the three organisations are 'by far the most authoritative and authentic', he told The Sunday Times.
Statistics from all three sources pointed to Singapore as the happiest place in Asia, although the city-state may not initially fit in with some people's notion of happiness, he noted.
'Known as a society of workaholics, Singapore has also become famous for its paternalistic government, which strictly enforces laws on the most trivial of infractions, from chewing gum in public to failing to flush a toilet,' he wrote in Thrive.
But Mr Buettner credits one of his chief consultants, sociologist Ruut Veenhoven, who is director of the World Database of Happiness and editor of the Journal of Happiness Studies, for steering him away from the 'usual places'.
Dr Veenhoven advised him that 'the places we imagine as paradises don't measure up when it comes to basic prerequisites for happiness, such as decent food, basic shelter, adequate health care, and mobility', he wrote.
What correlate with happiness on a worldwide level are tolerance, status equality, security, trust, access to recreation and financial security - all of which Singapore has, said Mr Buettner.
In Singapore, people of different ethnicities feel they belong and fit in. Citizens are able to trust their Government and police. Unemployment is low, home ownership is high. The country gives people access to green spaces despite having one of the highest population densities in the world.
As for security, Singapore shows that feeling secure is more important than freedom when it comes to happiness, he said.
'In Singapore, you cannot freely buy pornography, it is harder to start a political party, but if you're a woman, you can walk down the street any time of the day and you can be pretty sure no one is going to bother you.'
For insights on Singapore and the other places he visited, Mr Buettner interviewed a wide range of people, including social scientists, economists, politicians and even comedians, to try to pin down what makes people in each locality so joyful.
He made two trips to Singapore, about a year apart, staying four weeks in all.
In the book's chapter on Singapore, he details interviews with Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew as well as experts who have done studies on happiness including sociologist Dr Tan Ern Ser of Singapore's Institute of Policy Studies and Dr Ho Kong Weng, an economist at the Nanyang Technological University.
He also speaks to private investor turned jewellery designer Celina Lin, chairman of the Community Chest Jennie Chua, as well as Sakae Sushi founder Douglas Foo. Mr Ahmad Nizam Abbas, a 39-year-old lawyer and Madam Noridah Yusoh, a 43-year-old housewife, also get a mention.
Of his choice of interviewees, Mr Buettner said he tried to find 'people who were emblems of the characteristics of happiness. They weren't necessarily the happiest people in Singapore, but they illustrated facets of Singaporean happiness'.
In the book, he describes how he went to great lengths to speak with MM Lee, whom he calls Singapore's 'happiness architect' for putting in place policies that became the building blocks for Singaporeans' happiness.
'I wanted to speak to him because I knew that he was a major player in what has made Singapore what it is today. I wanted to know if he accidentally did it or if he was thinking about it,' said the author.
A scheduled 30-minute meeting turned into a 11/2-hour conversation.
'I was incredibly impressed with Mr Lee. That was a man who had a very good idea of what his people's values were and he is a man of integrity. I know that he has made some tough decisions that have been unpopular, but he has a keen instinct of how to create well-being for people,' said Mr Buettner.
There is no question that Singapore shows that happiness can be manufactured or engineered through government policy, he added.
'When it comes to manufactured happiness, I don't know anybody else on the planet who has done a better job than (MM Lee) has, and I know there will be lots of people laughing at me right now but all you have to do is to look at the well-being indices and the data will back me up on that.'
Seven ways to happiness
Straits Times 5 Dec 10;
Mr Dan Buettner, author of Thrive, gives some tips on happiness.
1 Sleep between 71/2 and 81/2 hours every night. Sleeping less than six hours means you are probably 30 per cent less happy than you should be.
2 Working around 37 hours a week appears to be optimal and having at least six weeks of holiday each year is ideal.
3 Eat a plant-based breakfast. If you eat a meaty, saturated fat-laden breakfast, the oxygen that reaches your muscles and brain is diminished. You will feel sluggish.
4 Exercise for at least half an hour every day. Half an hour of physical activity provides a 12-hour increase in well-being. Time your physical activity before noon.
5 Volunteer more. People who volunteered their time reported higher levels of well-being than those who did not.
6 Socialise at least six hours a day. Hanging out with friends and family correlates with feelings of happiness.
7 Money cannot buy happiness but in the United States, people should strive for an annual income of about US$75,000 (S$98,000) for a family of four.
Beyond that, happiness levels plateau. People who are making a lot more money typically have more stressful jobs, spend too much of their day working, and do not pay attention to their families. They are not socialising or volunteering in general.
Tracy Quek
A complaint about complainers
Tabitha Wang Today Online 10 Dec 10;
Okay, I want to know who took American author Dan Buettner around when he visited Singapore. Whoever it was, the Singapore Tourism Board should hunt them and offer them a job.
They must have done one heck of a great job selling the Lion City to Buettner for him to conclude that it is the happiest place in Asia in his new book, Thrive, Finding Happiness The Blue Zones Way.
Yes, Singapore. Not even Bhutan, famously known for its Gross National Happiness index.
Buettner says Singapore has all it takes for happiness: Tolerance, status equality, security, trust, access to recreation and financial security.
He based his findings on interviews with Singaporeans from all walks of life - from Community Chest chairman Jennie Chua to housewife Noridah Yusoh.
I don't doubt that his interviewees told him they were happy. But are Singaporeans really happy people?
Just look at all those letters of complaint in the newspapers. Just take a peek at the posts in blogs and responses to online news. These are not exactly all sweetness and light, are they?
I remember once complimenting a store manager about how well her shop was run. She said: "Can you put it down in writing in our feedback slip?"
Apparently, if people were satisfied, they never bothered to fill the slip. But if something annoying were to happen, no matter how infinitely minor, you can be sure those feedback forms would be filled, even posted if necessary.
I think Singaporeans are never happy unless we have something to be unhappy about. Our slogan should be: We moan, therefore we bond.
Try asking a Singaporean: "So how's business/your children/your work/your family?"
The answer is invariably: "Okay lah, can be better."
Coffeeshop talk is never about how wonderful life is. It's always about how badly a chosen English Premiership team is doing, how much money one has lost playing 4D, how the "gahmen" should be doing this, that or the other ...
Nothing can make us happy. If property prices are low, we fret about going into negative equity and how we may never have enough money to retire on. If property price are high, we complain we can't buy a roof over our heads or can't afford that investment home.
If we have a job, we complain about how we're overworked and underpaid. But lose our jobs and we moan even louder.
We have security in the form of low crime rates but still whine that the police can do more. We have access to recreation but grumble that the facilities are not up to scratch.
Maybe it's because there's some superstitious Asian bit of us that never likes to admit how well things are going in case some malevolent spirits take notice and decide to cause mischief.
Or perhaps we, like Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, are worried about being too happy because, as he told Buettner: "Then I would be complacent, flabby, and walk into the sunset."
Looking at the blurb for Thrive in Amazon.com, though, I think I have found why Singapore is considered the happiest place in Asia.
It states: "According to Buettner's advisory team, the average person can control about 40 per cent of his or her individual happiness by optimising life choices. They fall into three categories that make up the way we live our lives: The food we eat, the way we exercise, and the social networks we foster."
So simple. It's food.
I'm not sure about the exercise and social network bit but we've always enjoyed our food. For sure, finding the ultimate char kway teow or chicken rice puts me in a good mood for days.
Maybe life's happiness can really be as simple as that.
Tabitha Wang will see you at the kopitiam. You can complain about anything all you like as long as you buy her a fluffy prata telur bawang.
The Sunday Times investigates the odours of Singapore's neighbourhoods
Lin Yang , Alexandra Jen Wong and Kon Xin Hua Straits Times 5 Dec 10;
Underneath the Boon Lay MRT station every morning, Mr Ho Boon Han serves fragrant drinks to commuters rushing to catch trains to the city.
But on some mornings, his customers are overpowered by another type of aroma: that of burnt cocoa.
'We're used to it,' said Mr Ho, 57, supervisor at Hockhua Herbal Tea. 'We don't think it's dangerous to our health.'
Last Monday, residents in northern and eastern Singapore caught a whiff of a strange chemical smell, the source of which the National Environment Agency (NEA) still has not determined.
The agency received more than 100 calls during that one day.
But for years, Singaporeans in some neighbourhoods, especially those close to certain industries, have had to live with strong, sometimes pungent odours permeating their walls on a regular basis.
That burnt cocoa smell in the Boon Lay air, for instance, has been a signature scent for 21 years.
Mr Ho said the smell comes every four to five months, and sometimes can last for several days in a row.
The culprits: two cocoa factories about 1km south of the MRT station - Cadbury and ADM Cocoa.
Ms Joanna Ng, head of corporate affairs for Kraft Foods, the parent company of Cadbury, explained that the smell comes from roasting cocoa beans to open their shells, making them easier to grind into cocoa powder.
The NEA has kept track of the number of complaints about this smell, which peaked at 40 in 2003.
In 2004, the agency worked with Cadbury to install an odour control system.
'Our system eliminates over 90 per cent of the odour,' said Ms Ng.
ADM Cocoa also claims to have an odour abatement system, and that the NEA is 'satisfied that it is working properly', said ADM's spokesman Beth Chandler.
NEA said there will still be occasional complaints due to residual odours. So far, only three have been logged this year.
Still, student Keith Lian, 15, who lives in Boon Lay, had a whiff of the smell on Tuesday night.
'It smelled like someone ate chocolate, and then smoked a cigarette,' he said.
In other neighbourhoods, food factories bombard residents with a plethora of odours. Several of these factories are clustered in Bedok while others are located in the Pandan Loop area south of Clementi.
Mr Just Wang, 22, a Bedok resident, said a roasted 'otah' smell had been around for the past couple of years, referring to the spicy, barbecued fish snack. 'It isn't unpleasant,' he said.
A spokesman for the East Coast Town Council said no complaints have been filed so far this year.
But Pandan Loop residents have voiced their displeasure.
Ms Amy Chan, 50, who lives near the factories, spoke of vanilla, chocolate and sometimes pepper scents so strong, 'it makes me want to throw up'.
The NEA logged 57 complaints in 2007 in Pandan, and has asked three factories - two which produce food flavouring and one that waxes defeathered ducks - to install odour scrubbing equipment. Since then, complaints have dropped. Only six people have complained so far this year.
Choa Chu Kang residents do not have it any better: they have had to live with the smell of chicken dung coming from the poultry farms in Sungei Tengah.
Madam Sundari Rangasamy, 52, said that the smell of chicken waste is 'very strong', especially on windy days after the rain.
'I have avoided inviting guests to my home because of the smell,' she said.
Three of the four poultry farms moved out of the area in 2002. The final one, Seng Choon Farm, was relocated last month because it failed to take effective measures to eliminate the odour, according to an NEA spokesman.
NEA received 57 complaints last year regarding the unpleasant smell, down from 136 the year before. Mr Chris Koh, senior group director at property agency Dennis Wee Group, said that despite the smell there, property prices have not been affected.
'People buy based on location and amenities, and not on the occasional smell. Demand still outstrips supply,' he said.
But some property agents tell clients they are familiar with not to buy.
Ms Chen Shu Yun, 58, was discouraged from buying a home in Choa Chu Kang in 2006.
'My agent told me the chicken smell was really bad,' she said.
She purchased a five-room flat in Bukit Panjang instead.
* Cities can act more easily than nations
* Many big cities have more economic clout than nations
Alister Doyle Reuters AlertNet 4 Dec 10;
CANCUN, Mexico, Dec 3 (Reuters) - Cities should play a much bigger role in fighting global warming and can act more easily than governments struggling to agree on a U.N. climate accord, the World Bank said on Friday.
"The 10 biggest cities in the world emit more greenhouse gases than Japan," Andrew Steer, the World Bank's special envoy for climate change, told Reuters. He urged reforms including changes to carbon markets to help cities become greener.
A World Bank study said that urban areas, home to just over half the world's population and responsible for two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions, could help by shifting to greener transport, clean energy or better trash recycling.
"Cities are the most important cause of climate change and cities are the most important potential solution to climate change," Steer said. And they have huge economic power.
The report said that the world's 50 biggest cities had a combined gross domestic product behind only that of the United States, ahead of China. It listed Tokyo and New York as having bigger economies than Canada or Turkey.
"When you have 194 countries in the world it's not always easy to get consensus," he said of U.N. climate talks, which are seeking to agree a modest package of measures to slow global warming at Nov. 29 to Dec. 10 talks in Cancun.
More than 1,000 U.S. mayors, for instance, signed on in 2008 to targets to cut greenhouse gases in line with the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, an accord binding almost 40 nations to curb emissions until 2012 but never ratified by Washington.
SEA LEVELS
And many of the world's biggest cities, such as Tokyo, Shanghai, New York or Buenos Aires, are near coasts or rivers and so have compelling reasons to act to limit risks of floods or sea level rise.
He said the World Bank favored an overhaul of a U.N. market mechanism that encourages investments in individual projects in developing nations, such as solar panels in Morocco or hydropower in Honduras, to allow a broader, city-wide scale.
Such a reform of the U.N.'s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) would allow mayors to get money and allow them to invest in areas ranging from flood barriers to hydrogen-powered buses, rather than getting each individual project approved.
"Our view is that measurement challenges are not overwhelming for cities as a whole," he said. The CDM allows companies to invest in green projects in developing nations and claim credits back home for the averted emissions.
Steer also said that city-dwellers' views of where it was best to live were shifting -- in past decades, when industrial air pollution was high, areas downwind such as the east side of London were home to the poor.
In future, the poor would live in low-lying areas at risk of river floods or rising sea levels. (Editing by Eric Walsh)
Charles J. Hanley Associated Press Yahoo News 4 Dec 10;
CANCUN, Mexico – Like the warming atmosphere above, a once-taboo idea hangs over the slow, frustrating U.N. talks to curb climate change: the idea to tinker with the atmosphere or the planet itself, pollute the skies to ward off the sun, fill the oceans with gas-eating plankton, do whatever it takes.
As climate negotiators grew more discouraged in recent months, U.S. and British government bodies urged stepped-up studies of such "geoengineering." The U.N. climate science network decided to assess the options. And a range of new research moved ahead in America and elsewhere.
"The taboo is broken," Paul Crutzen, a Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric scientist, told The Associated Press.
Whatever the doubts, "we are amazingly farther up the road on geoengineering," Crutzen, who wrote a 2006 scientific article that sparked interest in geoengineering, said by telephone from Germany.
But environmentalists are asking: Who's in charge? Who gets to decide whether to take such drastic action, with possibly unforeseen consequences for people worldwide?
"This is really a risky, dangerous option," said environmentalist Silvia Ribeiro, here for the two-week negotiating session of parties to the 193-nation U.N. climate treaty.
Just a few years ago, geoengineering was regarded as a fringe idea, a science-fiction playground for imaginative scientists and engineers.
Schemes were floated for using aircraft, balloons or big guns to spread sulfate particles in the lower stratosphere to reflect sunlight, easing the warming scientists say is being caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted by industry, vehicles and agriculture.
Others suggested assembling gargantuan mirrors in orbit to fend off the solar radiation. Still others propose — and a German experiment tried — seeding the ocean with iron, a nutrient that would spur the spread of plankton, which absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Sky, sea and land — the ideas vary, from spraying ocean clouds with sea salt to make them brighter and more reflective; to planting vast arid lands with agave, the "tequila plant," which stores carbon for years and grows where climate-friendly forests can't; to developing the chemistry and machines to suck in CO2 from the air and store it.
Specialists regard the stratospheric sulfates proposal as among the most feasible. The U.S. government's National Center for Atmospheric Research has undertaken computer modeling to assess its effect, for one thing, on the protective ozone layer.
The Colorado center also is researching the brightening of maritime stratocumulus clouds with seawater droplets. The center's John Latham, a British physicist, has drawn up plans for a field trial, although he said they're not yet funded.
Funding may not be far off.
In September, the U.S. Government Accountability Office recommended in a 70-page report that the White House "establish a clear strategy for geoengineering research" within its science office.
A month later, a report from U.S. Rep. Bart Gordon, a Democrat from Georgia who chairs the House Science and Technology Committee, urged the government to consider climate-engineering research "as soon as possible in order to ensure scientific preparedness for future climate events."
The U.S. panel had collaborated in its study with a British House of Commons committee.
"We may need geoengineering as a `Plan B,'" the British report said, if nations fail to forge agreement on a binding treaty to rein in greenhouse gases.
Perhaps most significantly, the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, the global authority on climate science, agreed in October to take on geoengineering in its next assessment report. Its hundreds of scientists will begin with a session next spring.
"You have to understand its potential. We also have to understand the downside," IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri said in an interview with the AP. Of the proposed sulfate layer, he asked, "What might be some of the implications of making that change in the atmosphere?"
Skeptics point to implications: For one, blocking the sun could itself suddenly shift the climate, especially precipitation patterns. For another, it would do nothing to keep the atmospheric CO2 buildup from acidifying the oceans, a grave threat to marine life.
But the science and engineering may be the easier part, says Britain's national science academy.
"The greatest challenges," the Royal Society said in a 2009 report, "may be the social, ethical, legal and political issues associated with governance."
Activist Ribeiro's Canada-based ETC organization accuses Washington of taking a "coalition of the willing" approach to geoengineering, going ahead with its British ally and perhaps others, disregarding the rest of the world.
Ribeiro said the United Nations must be in control: "It can't be voluntary schemes outside the U.N. when you're talking about manipulating the climate."
Critics suggest the Americans, whose resistance to mandatory emissions reductions has long helped block a global climate deal, view "Plan B" as a "Plan A," to avoid having to rein in emissions.
The U.S. and British parliamentary reports seem to diverge on governance. The House of Commons committee concluded, "The U.N. is the route" to a regulatory framework. The U.S. report never mentions the U.N.
The ETC campaigners scored a coup in October at a biodiversity treaty conference in Japan, where the parties adopted a vague moratorium on geoengineering experiments that might endanger biodiversity. One problem: The U.S. is not a party to that treaty.
"Can anything be meaningful if the U.S. is not a party to it?" Scott Barrett asked rhetorically.
Barrett, an environmental policy expert at New York's Columbia University, helped organize a geoengineering conference last March in California. He said he wants to see emissions slashed, not climate manipulation. But he opposes research bans.
"What happens if we discover we're on the precipice of a runaway greenhouse effect, and the only thing we can do is geoengineering? Are people going to say you can't do it?" he asked.
He believes geoengineering controls should be negotiated under the U.N. climate treaty. Pachauri agrees.
"If they feel there are risks involved, then it's up to them to decide how best to monitor them," the IPCC chief said of the treaty parties.
An Intimate Millipede Moment
from Macro Photography in Singapore
Javan Myna confronts a monitor lizard
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Gobies of Singapore - a fabulous poster!
from wild shores of singapore
ButterflyCircle makes it to AsiaMag
from Butterflies of Singapore
The Star 4 Dec 10;
PORT KLANG: The Selangor Customs managed to foil attempts to smuggle sand worth RM144,000 into Singapore by intercepting two barges and a ship.
Both sand consignments were being transported by the same company.
The department scored its first success on Nov 30 and the second on Dec 2.
Selangor Customs director Datuk Roslan Yusof said the department’s marine unit had on Nov 30 intercepted a ship and a barge transporting sand along in the Sungai Langat waters near Jugra, Banting.
Roslan said the substance was declared as mortar mix, however, upon examination it was sand.
The state has banned the export of sand.
He said that mortar mix could be exported without restriction while silica required an approved permit beginning Nov 1.
Roslan said the sand seized that day was valued at RM72,000,
The ship’s captain and seven crew members were brought in for questioning and could be charged soon as the offence was not compoundable.
Subsequently, Roslan said on Dec 2 at a private jetty in Carey Island, Banting another barge was detained.
The barge was transporting sand but its manifest showed it was transporting mortar mix. It was valued at RM72,000.
Roslan said a man who had come to the department on Thursday claiming to be the owner of both sand shipments had been detained for further questioning.
More time needed for studies on impact of regional tremors
Christopher Tan Straits Times 4 Dec 10;
JUST how vulnerable buildings in Singapore will be to tremors from major earthquakes in the region is still being investigated.
Two studies commissioned two years ago, following the massive quakes that devastated nearby Sumatra in 2004, 2005 and 2007, have yet to be completed.
They were initially expected to be ready this year.
Among other things, the projects set out to determine whether Singapore's construction codes need to include provisions for tremors. This is a consideration that had never cropped up before because the island was long deemed quake-free.
One study is by the Building and Construction Authority (BCA), which commissioned Nanyang Technological University (NTU) to conduct an 'earthquake vulnerability' study.
The BCA told The Straits Times last month that the study will take 'at least another year' to complete.
The other study, also not completed, is by the Housing Board (HDB), which engaged the National University of Singapore (NUS) to develop 'cost-effective monitoring sensors' to be mounted on HDB blocks, said an HDB spokesman.
He said these sensors will enable the HDB to prioritise building inspections in the event of tremors, not to assess the vulnerability of buildings to tremors.
NUS researchers involved in the HDB study declined to talk about it, describing it as 'a very sensitive topic'.
One of them, Professor Koh Chan Ghee of NUS' Centre for Hazards Research, told The Straits Times two years ago that it is not uncommon for building codes to be revised, if necessary, given that a big earthquake is 'a low-probability but high-consequence event'.
Over at NTU, however, geologist Kerry Sieh, the director of the university's Earth Observatory of Singapore, predicts that a quake of 8.8 magnitude will hit north of Padang in Sumatra within the next few decades.
Such a quake, considered a 'great' quake, can affect buildings several hundred kilometres away. Singapore lies about 450km from the predicted zone.
Professor Sieh's colleague, Assistant Professor Kusnowidjaja Megawati, said a real worry for Singapore is for buildings which stand on marine clay and some reclaimed land. These soil types tend to amplify low-frequency vibrations from quakes hundreds of kilometres away.
These soft soils make up about a quarter of Singapore's land mass, mostly in the south-east, like in Kallang.
Prof Megawati explained that geologists use a measure called centimetre per second squared (cm/ss) to indicate the degree of 'shaking' felt on the ground.
Recent simulations have shown that an 8.8-magnitude quake in Sumatra will create 'ground acceleration' of plus-minus 10cm/ss in Bukit Timah - an area with underlying hard rock - and plus-minus 30 to 40cm/ss in Kallang, he said.
In the 8.4-magnitude Sumatran quake in 2007 - the most severe quake felt here in recent times - the ground acceleration was less than 1 cm/ss in Bukit Timah and 3cm/ss in Kallang, he noted.
Even at that level, buildings as far inland as Toa Payoh and Little India shook, so if Prof Megawati is right and 'the next big one' happens, the effects felt here could be 10 times that.
But the experts do not all agree on the extent of Singapore's risk exposure to quakes and how it should respond to them.
Professor Pan Tso-Chien, the dean of NTU's School of Engineering, for instance, believes Singapore should not rush to change its building codes to guard against earthquake damage.
He said: 'It's a major issue in addressing a code change. It's not only a question of science or technology any more, but economics and costs as well.'
Arguing against jumping into a code change, he said: 'Are our current codes enough protection? Will we be over-providing? Are you going to make it so safe that it's safer than crossing a street? You have other competing needs for your resources - like terrorism, road accidents and defence.'
Prof Pan, who is also director of the Institute of Catastrophe Risk Management, a research body co-funded by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, said the issue may well resolve itself over time, as buildings 'are always getting stronger because of better materials, better engineering, better accuracy in design'.
At best, he said, resources should go into strengthening buildings gradually over time, systemically, so 'there's no need to rush or worry'.
Asked about the 'next big one', Prof Pan said: 'Personally, I'm not in favour of earthquake predictions because it's very difficult - you have to involve not only a place, but also time. It's too much consequence for one to be correct or incorrect.'
He also pointed out that the majority of deaths from earthquakes have been in rural areas, not urban high-rise ones.
Meanwhile, the insurance industry has not decided to start charging for earthquake coverage, even after having mulled over it in the past few years.
General Insurance Association president Derek Teo said 'exposures are still within a tolerable range'.
He added: 'Nevertheless, tremors here will be monitored on frequency and severity before a rate charge is considered.'
Yahoo News 3 Dec 10;
HANOI, Vietnam – A local conservation group voiced opposition Friday to the planned sale of tiger paste by Vietnamese authorities, amid warnings by the international community that the animal's survival is in serious jeopardy.
Officials in Vietnam's northern Thanh Hoa province agreed last month to organize a public auction of 6 pounds (2.8 kilograms) of tiger paste seized from traffickers. An auction date has not been set.
Vietnam bans the hunting or trade of wild animals and their products, but the Ministry of Agriculture has issued a directive allowing its use in making medicines.
In Vietnam, tiger bones are used to make expensive traditional medicines purported to cure many illnesses. Two pounds (1 kilogram) of tiger paste could be sold for $10,000 on the black market.
Nguyen Thi Phuong Dung, deputy director of Hanoi-based Education for Nature Vietnam, said Thanh Hoa authorities had used a "loophole" in the law to allow the sale of the tiger paste.
"The auctions go against conservation efforts," she told The Associated Press in a phone interview, adding the move has "helped legitimize the trade of the animal."
"We had recommended that the paste be destroyed to send a clear message to the public that the authorities do not encourage the consumption of wild animals' products," she said.
Wildlife experts warned at a summit last month in St. Petersburg, Russia, that wild tigers could become extinct in 12 years if countries where they still roam fail to take quick action to protect their habitats and step up the fight against poaching.
The World Wildlife Fund and other experts say only about 3,200 tigers remain in the wild — a dramatic plunge from an estimated 100,000 a century ago.
The summit approved a wide-ranging program with the goal of doubling the world's tiger population in the wild by 2022. The program is backed by the governments of the 13 countries that still have tiger populations, including Vietnam.
Several people have been arrested in the last few months in the communist country for their involvement in the trade of wild tigers.
Gently does it: seahorses take a bath in their new home
Kelsey Munro Sydney Morning Herald 4 Dec 10;
HOW things have changed. Veteran scuba diver Dave Thomas remembers when Sydney Harbour was toxic from factory waste pumped into the Parramatta River.
These days, environmental attitudes have changed so much that he and his team were asked to move a delicate colony of seahorses out of harm's way while Woollahra Council rebuilt the century-old Watson's Bay baths this year.
The baths, which will reopen on Friday, have long provided a habitat for a small colony of White's seahorses.
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''Their natural home is seagrass, not swimming pool nets, but they prefer them because it gets them off the ground and away from predators,'' Mr Thomas said. ''And they can't chase things down, so they rely on food coming to them. They love hanging in the nets while things go past.''
Mr Thomas and divers from his volunteer group, Eco Divers, made about six dives to move the seahorses from the baths, working just ahead of the crews who were demolishing the old wharf.
''We hand-picked the seahorses off the nets or seaweed,'' Mr Thomas said. ''They hold on by their tail, so you have to hold their shoulders, you have to be very gentle. After a while they relax and you can move them.
''We carry a little mesh bag - the sort you put in a washing machine for your delicates, that's ideal - and then we just move them out of the area and put them on seagrasses on the same depth contour.''
The mayor of Woollahra, Isabelle Shapiro, said the council consulted with NSW Fisheries on how to minimise environmental disturbances during demolition and construction.
"Council was very careful in ensuring all consideration was taken to protect the marine life when designing the Watsons Bay baths renovations,'' she said.
The divers have previously moved a seahorse colony at Clifton Gardens and other vulnerable species in the harbour. The group is part of a project, with Sydney Aquarium, to release White's seahorses bred in captivity into the harbour to help boost their numbers.
The seahorses, endemic to Sydney and the NSW coast up to Port Stephens, typically grow to an uncurled length of about 20 centimetres and are a protected species.
Mr Thomas said their habitats had been greatly depleted through the loss of harbour seagrasses, but the 2006 ban on commercial trawling had improved matters.
With heavy construction finished, Mr Thomas said the seahorses were beginning to gravitate back to the new nets around the baths, which were designed with them in mind.
The council spent more than $2 million upgrading the baths, which were opened to the public in 1905.
The work includes a new 50-metre lap pool with two sunbathing pontoons, a water ramp for wheelchair users - which the council says is an Australian first - and new shark nets.
We must consider setting an explicit time frame for protecting forests and halting their rapid degradation
Jane Goodall guardian.co.uk 3 Dec 10;
The rate at which species are disappearing from Planet Earth is horrifying. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the rate is between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural rate of extinction. This is largely due to human activity. The United Nations declared 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity to raise awareness of the critical role that biological diversity plays in sustaining life.
At the same time, nations are grappling with thorny questions of how to slow climate change. The UN is currently convening its 16th climate change conference in Cancún, Mexico, where bold steps may be taken to protect forests as a means of lowering carbon emissions.
Ape conservation tackles both of these issues head on. Apes live primarily in the tropical forests of Africa and Asia. Destruction of these forests largely responsible for the fact that all species of great apes are endangered. Even the illegal commercial hunting of great apes and other animals for food – known as the bushmeat trade – would not be nearly as widespread if not for the logging and mining roads that are cut through forests, allowing access to previously remote habitat of gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans.
However, to protect the forest we must do more than curb habitat destruction, for not only do apes need forest habitat to survive, but they, in turn, play an important role in the survival of the forests. In fact, biodiversity – the whole complex mix of animal and plant species in a forest ecosystem – must be preserved if we are to ensure the health and long-term survival of the forest itself because the countless life forms found there are interdependent in ways we do not yet fully understand.
We do know that, when the balance is upset, things tend to go wrong. For example, there are fewer seedlings in forests where there has been a lot of hunting, especially where primate numbers have been greatly reduced. In Africa and southeast Asia, the great apes – along with many other mammals and birds – play a critical role in dispersing seeds. It is clear, then, that we must prevent or at least reduce threats such as the bushmeat trade and indeed the number of wild animals consumed per se.
But how do we do this in areas where so many people are living in poverty, turning to the bounty of the forests for their very survival?
I began my work in Africa 50 years ago, studying the chimpanzees of Gombe National Park in Tanzania. Back then chimpanzee habitat extended far beyond the boundaries of the park. But by the early 1990s the trees outside the park had almost entirely disappeared.
When I flew over the whole area in a small plane, it was obvious that there were more people living in the villages around the park than the land could support – the result not only of typical population growth but also an influx of refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi. These people, economically very poor, were struggling to survive and cutting down the last of their forests in desperate efforts to grow crops to feed their families or earn a livelihood through charcoal production. The land had been over-farmed, the soil was losing its fertility, and there was widespread soil erosion. Could we protect the chimpanzees if we helped the people?
And so 16 years ago, we – the Jane Goodall Institute – started TACARE, a community-based conservation programme. We have found that an integrated approach to poverty alleviation is what works. We introduced better ways to grow the food the local people wanted, micro-credit programmes especially for women, sustainable use of water, better health facilities, and environmental education programmes to provide information about the forest and its inhabitants.
It was difficult at first to gain the co-operation of the people, but over the years we succeeded by working with them and respecting their needs and priorities. Today these people have become better stewards of the land and, as part of the participatory village land-use planning process, set aside village forest reserves that will help restore not only their own environment, but also the habitat of the chimpanzees – the forest and woodlands.
At the climate change conference in Bali in December 2007, world attention was focused on a new idea: Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation or "Redd". Since then, "Redd+" has evolved to recognise the importance of poverty alleviation, sustainable forest management, especially by local communities, and the conservation of species, as well as forest protection for carbon sequestration.
We must now capitalise on the Redd+ efforts of the past year and take the call to end deforestation to the next level. We must make sure that Redd+ projects are located in biodiversity-rich areas where keystone species such as great apes are struggling to survive. We must consider setting an explicit time frame for protecting forests and halting their rapid degradation. We must protect the rights of forest-dependent communities who are most directly impacted by deforestation and who at the same time can play a pivotal role in their protection. We need national strategies to be developed that allow full and effective participation by all stakeholders, including local communities. And, while focusing on forests most at risk now, it is important to establish a separate mechanism for protecting forests that are not yet significantly threatened.
Finally, let us acknowledge that forests are important in their own right – for me the most magical places on Earth.
• Dr Jane Goodall, DBE is founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and a UN messenger of peace. She will be appearing at the Hope 4 Apes event on Monday 6 December
Kerry Sheridan Yahoo News 3 Dec 10;
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Crippled by drought, scorched by wildfires and dying from beetle infestations, forests in the American west are struggling and in some states they now exude more carbon than they absorb, experts say.
In an attempt to uncover what the future holds for these ancient pine forests, scientists are studying how trees recover and regrow, and what forest managers can do to help them respond to the modern stresses of climate change.
"These systems are changing, kind of underneath us. It is slower than the nightly news cycle, that is for sure, but it is changing. And so we have to keep changing our management approach," said David Cleaves, the top climate change adviser at the US Forest Service.
America's forests, the fourth largest in the world, have served as an important net carbon sink for much of the past century, absorbing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis than they exude through decomposition and timber harvesting.
The carbon sink amounts to 162 teragrams of carbon per year and offsets about 10 percent of total US fossil fuel emissions, according to the US Forest Service.
But US forestlands were a major source of carbon from about 1800 until 1930, when pioneers cleared vast areas of land for settlement and timber was widely used for fuel and mass construction projects.
Some of the most iconic forests in the Interior West region -- home to towering pines, the soaring snow-topped Rocky Mountains and vast national parklands like Yellowstone -- have been hit hard in recent years by unusually dry seasons, melting ice packs, and plagues of fires and insects.
Two of those states, Arizona and Idaho, have flipped to become carbon sources rather than sinks, according to data released in April by the Environmental Protection Agency, averaging annual changes over time.
Another study in 2007, published in the journal Forest Ecology and Management, suggested Colorado and Wyoming were showing similar signs.
"The intermountain west is clearly an area of the most concern because of fire, mountain pine beetle and drought," said Richard Birdsey who heads the Climate, Fire, and Carbon Cycle Sciences project at the Forest Service.
"They have been hit by three of the main factors all around the same time. So they are under a lot of stress," he said, adding that beetles have damaged ten of millions of acres and killed many trees.
"All those dead trees are still standing. They haven't released all of their carbon yet. They take two to three decades."
A 2009 study led by the US Geological Survey suggested that the death rate in Western forests has doubled, and that forests would become sparser in the future, and be able to store less carbon.
In some cases, forest managers can help a struggling forest by thinning trees, allowing more light and water for those that remain and eliminating some stresses that can help tree-killing beetles gain the upper hand.
In other cases, Mother Nature may know best how to resprout after a fire.
Researcher Erica Smithwick has been studying the resiliency of the lodgepole pines, the thin tall trees that are the most common in Yellowstone, and which reproduce via cones that only release seeds in conditions of extreme heat.
That innate ability to regrow under harsh conditions has helped some areas bounce back from the 1988 fires that scorched 793,000 acres at Yellowstone, or more than one third of the parkland. But other areas have recovered more slowly.
Historically, most area ecosystems have been able to recover their carbon in 75-100 years, she said. But if fires occur more frequently, that could shift the landscape.
"If we expect to see fire return intervals that are much shorter, then we need to think about how we want to manage for that and look ahead to what that means for the ecosystems of this landscape," she said.
According to Mike Ryan at the Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Research Station in Colorado, it is crucial to make sure new trees can grow.
"From a carbon standpoint the best thing that a manager can do is make sure you get regeneration," said Ryan.
The US Forest Service downplayed the sink-to-source trend, saying that areas can flip back and forth over short periods but the trend is unlikely to force American forests on the whole to be net oozers of carbon in the near future.
"Our history is relatively short compared to the history of the forest so it is hard to tell," said Ryan.
"If our future holds that we are going to have more disturbances, then our forests are going to hold less carbon."
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