MP calls for surcharge on all single-use bags, except those used for fresh produce

LOUISA TANG Today Online 2 Oct 18;

SINGAPORE — Consumers should pay for single-use carrier bags made of all materials — not only plastic — but bags used to carry fresh produce should be exempted from any charge, Mr Louis Ng said on Monday (Oct 1).

In this way, consumers will still have some free bags for binning their trash, but fewer plastic bags will be consumed overall.

Mr Ng, who is Member of Parliament for Nee Soon Group Representation Constituency (GRC), cautioned that the issue of plastic waste has “reached a turning point”.

“If we don’t do anything about it, there will be more plastics than fish in the ocean by 2050,” he said in an adjournment motion in Parliament.

The Government will continue to monitor developments on this front, replied Dr Amy Khor, Senior Minister of State for the Environment and Water Resources.

In March, the authorities said that it would not impose a charge on plastic bags, adding that substituting them with other types of disposable bags, such as paper ones, may not be better for the environment in Singapore’s case.

Paper and biodegradable bags may require as much resources to produce and have a similar environmental impact, as waste here is incinerated before going to the landfill and not left to decay, Dr Khor said at the time.

The British government estimated that a cotton tote bag must be used 173 times before its greenhouse gas emission impact improves beyond the plastic bags we use to line our bins, Dr Khor said on Monday.

The issue of charging consumers for plastic bags has been the subject of animated debate for years in Singapore.

On Mr Ng’s proposed approach — which is what Hong Kong has done — Dr Khor said it complicates the system and makes enforcement more difficult. Some reports have stated that non-compliance by retailers in Hong Kong is about one-third to half, she said.

Mr Ng noted that there are critics of what Hong Kong is doing. “But at least Hong Kong is trying, and I’d rather be optimistic and say, not bad, 50 per cent of retailers are compliant, good start,” he said.

Charging for carrier bags has been effective in cutting usage, he said. Lifestyle brand Miniso reported a drop of 75 per cent in customers’ plastic-bag usage after its stores began charging 10 cents for every such bag last year.

“This throwaway culture is so deeply ingrained… Even when I take my own reusable bag to the supermarket, the cashier sometimes puts my groceries first into a plastic bag, and then into my reusable bag,” Mr Ng said.

‘PLASTIC WRAPPED IN MORE PLASTIC’

In his speech, Mr Ng also urged the public sector to take the lead in reducing plastic waste. At this year’s National Day Parade (NDP), the fun pack contained “many plastic items individually wrapped in more plastic”, and each person received a plastic bag for waste items.

“If NDP 2019 were to use only reusable items with minimal packaging, it would send a strong signal that our nation is committed to building a sustainable world,” he said.

Dr Khor said public agencies have a best-practice guide on organising environment-friendly events. Her ministry does not serve bottled water at its meetings, for example.

However, major events such as the NDP may not be able to “do away entirely” with items such as bottled water because of the large number of people present.

In order to tackle packaging waste on a larger scale, Dr Khor announced that businesses will have to report the type and amount of packaging they put on the market and their plans for reduction by 2020, a year earlier than previously said.

The Government is also studying whether it is feasible to impose collection targets on businesses that use or produce packaging, through the Extended Producer Responsibility approach for packaging waste. A third of domestic waste comes from packaging.

More details on the initiatives will be released in the inaugural Zero Waste Masterplan, to be launched next year.

Plastic waste and marine plastics are a growing problem worldwide, killing a million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals each year. A recent study found 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic weighing 80,000 tonnes now floating in the ocean between California and Hawaii.

Mr Ng added that Singapore is tackling symptoms of the problem, but Dr Khor disagreed and said the Government’s measures deal with the root cause of marine pollution.

She said: “Marine pollution is caused by improper disposal of plastic waste, and not the use of plastics per se."

The Government will continue addressing the issue of marine plastics pollution through “stringent anti-littering measures, educating the public against littering and excessive consumption of plastics, and introducing regulatory measures to minimise plastic and packaging waste upstream”.

“We will not hesitate to legislate where necessary. But we will do so by taking a pragmatic and considered approach that suits our local context,” Dr Khor said.

Charging for carrier bags one way to rid Singapore of 'throwaway culture': Louis Ng
Matthew Mohan Channel NewsAsia 1 Oct 18;

SINGAPORE: Member of Parliament Louis Ng has proposed that charging for single-use carrier bags - regardless of the material they are made of - be enforced and that the public sector reviews its waste generation practices, as he called on Singapore to take the lead in reducing plastic waste.

Raising an adjournment motion in Parliament on Monday (Oct 1), Mr Ng described the plastic waste problem as an "urgent public safety issue" that must be addressed.

"Plastic can no longer be seen as just an environmental problem," he said. "It is a danger to the health of our ecosystems and to our own health."

Citing 2016 statistics, Mr Ng pointed out that Singapore discarded 27 billion plastic bags, an average of 13 bags per person per day.

"This throwaway culture is so deeply ingrained," he said. "Even when I bring my own reusable bag to the supermarket, the cashier sometimes puts my groceries first into a plastic bag, and then into my reusable bag. We really need to start thinking about our plastic bag use."

Emphasising the need for a "plastic-lite" Singapore, Mr Ng said that enforcing a carrier bag charge policy would be one way to drastically reduce the demand for plastic.

Citing the example of IKEA Singapore which applied a 10 cent bag charge in 2007 and stopped offering disposable bags six years later, Mr Ng said that a levied fee can be a step towards eliminating the use of all disposable plastic items.

But some exemptions can be made, he said.

"Using reusable bags to carry fresh produce, raw meat or seafood may be unhygienic, so plastic bags should be given out for such items," Mr Ng proposed.

"In this way, people can still obtain some bags to bin their trash, maintaining the cleanliness and safety of our rubbish chutes and waste disposal system."

Calling for a stronger emphasis on reduction rather than recycling, Mr Ng urged the Government to "walk the talk and lead by example" by encouraging ministries and agencies to eliminate single-use plastics from their catering and events.

Using reusable items with only minimal packaging for next year's National Day Parade (NDP), for instance, is one way this can be done, suggested Mr Ng.

"This year’s NDP fun pack contained many plastic items individually wrapped in plastic, and even an NDP 2018 plastic bag for each person to bag their waste," he said.

"If NDP 2019 were to use only reusable items with minimal packaging, it would send a strong signal that our nation is committed to building a sustainable world for all Singaporeans."

ONE OF MINISTRY'S KEY PRIORITIES

In her response to Mr Ng's speech, Senior Minister of State for Environment and Water Resources Amy Khor said that managing plastics and packaging waste is one of the "key priorities" for her ministry.

"My ministry believes the long-term approach is to engage Singaporeans on the importance of sustainability," said Dr Khor.

"Hence, our aim is to build a national consciousness to care for the environment so that Singaporeans and businesses will take action, even beyond what the regulations require.

"This process may take longer. But this is the right way; the positive effects will go beyond plastic bags, beyond packaging, beyond waste management to areas including climate action."

Dr Khor pointed out even as her ministry seeks to reduce plastic usage, it recognises that plastics have their uses.

"Substituting them with other materials may not be more environmentally friendly as some may perceive," she said. "Hence, our approach is to reduce excessive consumption of all types of packaging, including plastics used by businesses and individuals."

Agreeing that the public sector should set the standard, Dr Khor added that her ministry has published a guide to aid agencies in organising environmentally-friendly events.

"I am happy to share that my ministry is definitely taking the lead. We do not serve bottled water for meetings. Our staff bring their own plates and cutlery for events to avoid the use of disposables," she said.

"We are encouraging other public sector agencies to do the same for their meetings and events such as the National Day Parade and community activities to minimise the use of plastics."

In response to Mr Ng's suggestion on the carrier bag charge, she said the ministry will continue to monitor developments.

Source: CNA/mt(ra)


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Sunk costs: Airports taking action against rising seas, storms as climate changes

Jamie Freed Reuters 1 Oct 18;

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Global airport operators, faced with rising sea levels and more powerful storms as the climate changes, are starting to invest in measures including higher runways, seawalls and better drainage systems to future-proof immovable assets.

In early September, a seawall at Japan’s Kansai International Airport built on a reclaimed island near Osaka, was breached during Typhoon Jebi.

The runway was flooded and it took 17 days to fully restore airport operations, at a high cost to the region’s economy as well as the dozens of airlines that canceled flights.

Major airports in Hong Kong, mainland China and North Carolina were also closed due to tropical storms last month.

Such incidents highlight the disaster risks to investors and insurers exposed to a sector with an estimated $262 billion of projects under construction globally, according to Fitch Solutions.

“There is a kind of one-way direction with regards to the frequency and severity of climate change-related events,” said Fitch Solutions Head of Infrastructure Richard Marshall. “If people aren’t taking that seriously, that is a risk.”

Fifteen of the 50 most heavily trafficked airports globally are at an elevation of less than 30 feet above sea level, making them particularly vulnerable to a changing climate, including rising sea levels and associated higher storm surges.

“You see it at individual airports that are already seeing sea rise and are already dealing with water on their runway,” Airports Council International (ACI) Director General Angela Gittens said, citing examples in island nations including Vanuatu and the Maldives.

“But even in some of these mature economies they are having more storms, they are having to do more pumping. My old airport in Miami is in that scenario.”

A draft copy of an ACI policy paper reviewed by Reuters and due to be released this week warns of the rising risks to facilities from climate change. It encourages member airports to conduct risk assessments, develop mitigation measures and take it into account in future master plans.

The paper cites examples of forward-thinking airports that have taken climate change into account in planning, such as the $12 billion Istanbul Grand Airport on the Black Sea, set to become one of the world’s largest airports when it opens next month.

INVESTOR INTEREST

Debt investors in particular have high exposure to airports, most of which are owned by governments or pension funds. Ratings agency Moody’s alone has $174 billion of airport bonds under coverage.

Earl Heffintrayer, the lead analyst covering U.S. airports at Moody’s, said the risk of climate change became apparent to investors after Superstorm Sandy closed major New York airports for days in 2012.

Sandy led to the cancellation of nearly 17,000 flights, costing airlines $500 million in revenues and disrupting operations around the world, according to a 2017 presentation by Eurocontrol on climate change risk.

Investors are increasingly asking about mitigation plans at low-lying airports like San Francisco and Boston as they look to invest in bonds with terms of up to 30 years, Heffintrayer said.

San Francisco International Airport, built on reclaimed land that is slowly sinking, has completed a feasibility study on a $383 million project to make the airport more resilient to sea level rises on its 8 miles (12.9 km) of bay front shoreline by 2025.

“We are seeing a lot more thought going into protection against flood damage, catastrophe, making sure that the storm drains around the airport are fit for purpose,” said Gary Moran, head of Asia aviation at insurance broker Aon. “There definitely is a lot more thought going into potential further worsening in weather conditions further down the line.”

TAKING ACTION

Singapore’s Changi Airport [CHAP.UL], which has analyzed scenarios out to 2100, has resurfaced its runways to provide for better drainage and is building a new terminal at a higher 18 feet (5.5 meters) above sea level to protect against rising seas.

Moran said such steps were prudent and would provide comfort to insurers.

“If you were to look at Singapore, if something was to happen at Changi in terms of weather-related risk, Singapore would have a problem,” he said. “There isn’t really too much of an alternative.”

Singapore expects sea levels to rise by 2.5 feet (0.76 meter) by 2100. Changi Airport declined to comment on the cost of the extra protection.

ACI, Fitch, Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s were unable to provide Reuters with an estimate of the global cost of climate change protection at airports. The protective action is often folded into larger refurbishment and expansion projects, ratings agency analysts said.

In Australia, Brisbane Airport [BAIRP.UL] and located on reclaimed land on the coast at just 13 feet (4 meters) above sea level, is constructing a new runway 3.3 feet (1 meter) higher than it otherwise would have done, with a higher seawall and better drainage systems as sea levels rise.

Paul Coughlan, the director of Brisbane Airport’s new runway project, said the incremental cost of such moves was relatively low - for example the seawall cost around A$5 million ($3.6 million) more than without taking into account sea level rises - but the potential benefits were big.

“At the end of the day, whether you are a believer in climate change or a disbeliever, doing a design that accounts for elevated sea levels, more intense rainfall, flooding considerations, that is just prudent,” Coughlan said.

“If you build it into your design philosophy from day one, you don’t pay that much of a premium and you have bought a lot of safeguards.”

Reporting by Jamie Freed. Editing by Lincoln Feast

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Indonesia tsunami: Palu hit by 'worst case scenario'

Anna Jones BBC News 2 Oct 18;

Indonesia experiences earthquakes every day, but the scale of the quake and tsunami which hit Palu on Friday took local people and scientists by surprise.

More than 800 people have died, but the final figure could be in the thousands, say officials.

As scientists explained to the BBC, a combination of geography, timing and inadequate warnings meant that what happened in Palu was a worst case scenario.

A perilous location

Earthquakes are caused by the Earth's tectonic plates sliding against or under each other. This is happening constantly, but sometimes the movement is big enough and close enough to populated areas to have devastating consequences.

Small tremors had been happening throughout Friday in Palu, but in the early evening the Palu-Koru fault suddenly slipped, a short distance off shore and only 10km (6 miles) below the surface, generating a 7.5 magnitude quake.

Hamza Latief, from the Bandung Institute of Technology, has been studying the fault line since 1995 and says the impact of the quake was magnified by the thick layers of sediment on which the city sits.

Whereas rock just shakes in a quake, sediment moves around a lot more, essentially behaving like liquid. Few poorly built properties can withstand such movement.

"Any place where people have put buildings on fill - where they've dug dirt and moved it to another place - is not going to be as solid as bedrock," says Jess Phoenix, a US-based geologist who has studied Indonesia.

When it comes to quakes, she says, "those are the areas to worry about".

An unexpected wave

"You don't normally pay much attention to the Palu-Koru fault line, as far as tsunamis are concerned," says Prof Philip Liu Li-Fan at the National University of Singapore.

That's because the two plates are moving horizontally, not with the vertical thrust usually required to set off dangerous waves.

"We have been trying to figure out what was really going on," says Prof Liu.

It could be that the quake kicked off a landslide underwater, which in turn disturbed the water, he says, or there could be inaccuracies in describing the fault, but "we don't really know yet".

But once the wave started moving, Palu - at the end of a narrow 10km-long bay, was a sitting duck.

Tsunamis are no danger when out at sea. But when the waves come closer to land, their base drags on the seabed causing them to rise up.

Jess Phoenix said the geography and timing meant it was "basically a worst case scenario".

"When water comes into a horseshoe-shaped area like that, instead of the wave increasing just because the ocean is getting shallow, you also have the bowl effect, where the waves are going to reflect off the shoreline around it."

Mr Latief says the area has been hit by tsunamis before. Historical records show that in 1927, one wave was 3-4m at the mouth of the bay but had risen to 8m by the time it reached the town.

An ineffective warning system?

After the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami killed a quarter of a million people, huge amounts of money were spent on an early warning system.

A complex system of sensors were installed across the region. These are meant to help scientists quickly assess whether a quake is likely to trigger a tsunami, and alert the public to move to higher ground.

The head of Indonesia's disaster mitigation agency has said that a key part of the country's warning system - a series of buoys connected to seafloor sensors designed to detect tsunamis - had not been working since 2012. He blamed a lack of funding.

Prof Liu says the system is "sort of working and sort of not working", and that Indonesia's focus has largely been its southern regions, which were so badly hit in 2004.

A tsunami warning was issued after the quake, but, says Jess Phoenix, "it'll be interesting to see what comes out about whether the warning was implemented correctly, whether people heard it".

It's not unusual for people to be killed by a tsunami because they stayed to look at the spectacle of the sea suddenly drawing back as the wave builds up. Since 2004, a huge amount of effort has gone into educating people to run inland if the water retreats.

One man told the BBC's Rebecca Henschke he saw the sea disappear and sent his family running to higher ground while he grabbed a nearby child and clung to a tree.

But despite the warning, it appears there were still lots of people on or near the beach in Palu, many of them setting up for a festival.

"People in that region are really familiar with what tsunami can do. I'm hopeful that if there were casualties on the beach they were trying to leave," said Ms Phoenix.

"But a 10ft wave is really substantial. To get everyone evacuated in a very short amount of time you have to have very clear egress routes marked.

"From my experience working in Indonesia, I didn't see super clearly marked egress routes. I'm not sure about that particular town, but it is really hard to get a large amount of people out of an area quickly."

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What does 1.5C mean in a warming world?

Matt McGrath BBC 2 Oct 18;

Over the past three years, climate scientists have shifted the definition of what they believe is the "safe" limit of climate change.

For decades, researchers argued the global temperature rise must be kept below 2C by the end of this century to avoid the worst impacts.

But scientists now argue that keeping below 1.5C is a far safer limit for the world.

Everyone agrees that remaining below that target will not be easy.

This week in South Korea, researchers will report on the feasibility and costs of achieving this lower limit.

The scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are gathering in the city of Incheon to hammer out a plan in co-operation with government delegates, on the actions that would need to be taken to meet this new goal.

So why has the goal changed?

In a word - politics.

The idea of two degrees as the safe threshold for warming evolved over a number of years from the first recorded mention by economist William Nordhaus in 1975.

By the mid 1990s, European ministers were signing up to the two-degree limit, and by 2010 it was official UN policy. Governments agreed in Cancun to "hold the increase in global average temperatures below two degrees".

However, small island states and low-lying countries were very unhappy with this perspective, because they believed it meant their territories would be inundated with sea water as higher temperatures caused more ice to melt and the seas to expand.

They commissioned research which showed that preventing temperatures from rising beyond 1.5C would give them a fighting chance.

At the ill-fated Copenhagen climate summit in 2009, the climate-vulnerable nations pushed for the lower figure, but their efforts were lost in the blame-game that followed the collapse of the conference.

But the idea didn't go away completely - and by the time of the Paris negotiations in 2015, it emerged centre-stage as French diplomats sought to build a broad coalition of rich and poor nations who would support a deal.

It worked.

What difference does half a degree actually make?

More than you might think!

Leaked drafts of the IPCC Summary for Policymakers that will be published after a week of haggling with government delegates in South Korea point to some major differences in terms of the impacts on the world of 1.5 and 2C. We've summarised the main ones here:

"Two degrees is no longer the two degrees we thought it was," said Kaisa Kosonen from Greenpeace who is monitoring the progress of the IPCC 1.5C report.

"It's increasingly becoming meaningless as a climate goal, when you look at the risks that would come with it and what we are already witnessing with one degree - why would you have a goal that doesn't protect anything that we care about?"

How hard will it be to keep below the limit?
Very - the world has already warmed by around one degree and according to leaked drafts of the 1.5 report, we will sail past that limit by around 2040.

The new IPCC report won't tell governments what to do but will instead set out a range of approaches that will likely involve heavy cuts in carbon emissions, a rapid transition to renewable energy and lifestyle and dietary changes as well.

What happens if we go beyond 1.5?

The IPCC have spent a lot of time considering that question and have devised a cunning plan!

In their draft reports they talk about "overshoot", meaning that in many scenarios they expect temperatures to go beyond 1.5 but they believe they can be clawed back below the limit by using a range of technologies that will remove carbon dioxide from the air - these range from planting trees to more complex, untested machines.

Some experts, though, believe that there are considerable risks to this approach.

"A species that goes extinct at two degrees will still be extinct if you come back down to 1.5C," said Dr Steven Cornelius from WWF, a former UK government IPCC negotiator.

"Some things may come back but some things are irreversible, in terms of taking a risk you'd want to try and keep below 1.5, and clearly that means faster, deeper earlier emissions cuts, and it probably means carbon dioxide removal. But these technologies - some of them we know what to do, but some are early days and need to be assessed."

Are there any hopeful signs?

Surprisingly, yes!

While the task of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5C this century is massive, there are some indicators on the horizon that show that some governments are recognising the seriousness of the issue and are taking steps to deal with it.

Just a few days ago, the UK government committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050 when it joined 18 other nations in the Carbon Neutrality Coalition.

Some environmentalists believe that the pathway to keeping temperatures down to 1.5 can be done without resorting to mechanical devices or planting billions of trees.

"If we have very rapid emissions reductions and couple that with massive scaling up of restoration of land and changes in our food system to reduce meat consumption, we can get to 1.5C in a way that creates lots of wellbeing for people," said Hannah Mowat from Fern.

"It creates better air and reduces levels of obesity. It's a world we want to say yes to, rather than a further industrialisation of our landscapes."

UN report spotlights government inaction on climate
Marlowe HOOD AFP Yahoo News 1 Oct 18;

Diplomats gathering in South Korea Monday will find themselves in the awkward position of vetting and validating a major UN scientific report that underscores the failure of their governments to take stronger action on climate.

The UN special report on global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels began as a request from the 195 nations that inked the Paris Agreement in 2015.

That landmark pact called for capping the rise in global temperature to "well-below" 2C, and invited countries to submit voluntary national plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

To the surprise of many -- especially scientists, who had based nearly a decade of research on the assumption that 2C was the politically acceptable guardrail for a climate-safe world -- the treaty also called for a good-faith effort to cap warming at the lower threshold.

At the same time, countries asked the UN's climate science authority, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to detail what a 1.5C world would look like, and how hard it might be to prevent a further rise in temperature.

Three years and many drafts later, the answer has come in the form of a 400-page report -- grounded in an assessment of 6,000 peer-reviewed studies -- that delivers a stark, double-barrelled message: 1.5C is enough to unleash climate mayhem, and the pathways to avoiding an even hotter world require a swift and complete transformation not just of the global economy, but of society too.

With only one degree Celsius of warming so far, the world has seen a climate-enhanced crescendo of deadly heatwaves, wild fires and floods, along with superstorms swollen by rising seas.

- Line-by-line vetting -

"I don't know how you can possibly read this and find it anything other than wildly alarming," said Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Washington-based research and advocacy group, referring to the draft Summary for Policy Makers.

Government representatives -- often the same ones in the trenches at UN climate negotiations -- will spend the entire week going through the 22-page executive summary, line-by-line.

With scientists at their elbow, they will check it against the underlying report and, if the past is any guide, attempt to blunt conclusions deemed inconvenient by their governments.

"Some countries, such as Saudi Arabia, have threatened to be obstructionist," said one of the report's authors.

China is said to have reservations on the chapters outlining policy options, concerned that some of the measures outlined may be too ambitious.

But the joker in the pack is the United States, several delates and observers noted.

"This is the first report coming up for approval since the Trump administration took office," said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University, and an IPCC author on a another report-in-progress.

"That's a real wild card."

- US a 'wild card' -

There are few clues as to what the United States might say or do in Incheon, which has left a lot of people nervous.

"The US could, as they have in the past, support the science," said one contributing author.

"Or they could become obstructionist -- maybe Fox News will decide to shine a spotlight on the meeting."

A State Department spokesperson confirmed to AFP that veteran climate diplomat Trigg Talley will head the US delegation, a development one veteran IPCC author described as "reassuring."

"Never in the history of the IPCC has there been a report that is so politically charged," said Henri Waisman, a senior researcher at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations, and one of the report's 86 authors.

Governments looking for a straightforward answer to the question of whether the 1.5C target can be reached are likely to be disappointed, he added.

"The report isn't going to simply say 'yes' or 'no'," he told AFP.

"Our goal was to put as much information as possible into the hands of policy makers so they can step up to their responsibilities."

Many scientists say the goal is feasible on paper, but would require political will and economic transformations that are not on the near-term horizon.

"In my view, 1.5C stabilisation is extremely difficult if not impossible at this point, while 2C stabilisation is an uphill challenge but doable," Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, told AFP.


Climate changing faster than feared, but why are we surprised?
Marlowe HOOD AFP Yahoo News 5 Oct 18;

Incheon (South Korea) (AFP) - Nearly every day, peer-reviewed studies on global warming warn that deadly impacts will come sooner and hit harder than once thought.

Virtually none, however, suggest that previous predictions of future heatwaves, droughts, storms, floods or rising seas were overblown.

And so, as the world's nations huddle in South Korea to validate the first major UN assessment of climate science in five years, one might ask: have we underestimated the threat of global warming?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on capping the rise in Earth's surface temperature at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels has not been finalised, with delegates predicting the five-day meet -- due to end Friday -- will go deep into overtime.

But a new draft of the 28-page summary for policymakers, obtained by AFP, makes it alarmingly clear that the two-degree ceiling long seen as the guardrail for a climate-safe world is no longer viable.

With only one degree Celsius of warming so far, the planet is reeling from a crescendo of lethal and costly extreme weather events made worse by climate change.

"Things that scientists have been saying would happen further in the future are happening now," Jennifer Morgan, Executive Director of Greenpeace International, told AFP.

"We thought we had more time, but we don't."

The landmark 2015 Paris Agreement enjoins its nearly 200 signatories to hold warming to "well below" 2C -- and 1.5 degrees if possible, an aspirational goal that gave rise to the IPCC report.

- 'Short-termism' -

Many scientists point out that warnings of a climate-addled future date back decades.

The 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, for example, foresaw the possibility of "global and catastrophic effects" from a 2C jump in temperatures caused by carbon dioxide emissions.

"Many scientists have long known that human-induced climate change could have dire consequences," said Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a professor of climatology at Universite Catholique de Louvain, and a former IPCC vice-chair.

"Those who have underestimated the severity of climate change are mostly policymakers."

Van Ypersele chalked up political inaction to "short-termism" -- election cycles trumping long-term issues -- and deliberate campaigns led by the fossil fuel industry to sow doubt about the validity of climate science.

But Wolfgang Cramer, research director at the Mediterranean Institute for Biodiversity and Ecology and a lead author of the IPCC report, disagreed.

"Scientists should be a bit more self-critical," he told AFP in Incheon. "Over the last 15-20 years, we have focused mostly on the impacts of a 2.5C, 3C and even 4C world."

"So when leaders asked, 'if we shoot for 1.5C, what will it take?', we could only answer: 'We don't really know'."

- Models inadequate -

Indeed, the vast majority of 200-odd climate models used to generate IPCC projections in its last major report, published in 2013, presumed a 2C benchmark. Only a handful even considered a 1.5C world.

And for good reason: Though loosely tethered to science, the 2C target emerged mostly from the political turmoil of the 2009 Copenhagen summit, and set the research agenda for nearly a decade.

Those earlier models were inadequate, said Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University.

"Overly conservative, they failed to capture the full impacts of a warming planet on extreme weather events such as those that broke out across North America, Europe and Asia this summer," he told AFP.

The models also underestimated Arctic sea ice loss, along with the pace at which the ice sheets atop Greenland and West Antarctica -- with enough frozen water to add 13 meters to sea levels -- are disintegrating.

These "feedback effects", both a cause and an effect of global warming, are especially difficult for models to capture, Mann noted.

Finally, science is inherently conservative, doubly so when it comes to the IPCC, whose credibility -- constantly under fire -- depends on never exaggerating the threat.

"There is a cultural tradition in science, especially climate science, to not want to be alarmist," said Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a Washington-based research and advocacy group.

The 2013 IPCC report, for example, chose to not include in its sea-level projection the contribution of melting ice sheets, which have since emerged as the main driver.

"It was erring on the side of least drama," Frumhoff told AFP.

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Best of our wild blogs: 1 Oct 18

7-13 Oct: Celebrate Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve's 25th Anniversary
Celebrating Singapore Shores!

Unveiling Pulau Tekukor
Offshore Singapore

marsh sandpipers & a curlew sandpiper @ SBWR-30Sep2018
sgbeachbum

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Electricity tariffs to go up by 2.1 per cent in last quarter of 2018

ASYRAF KAMIL Today Online 29 Sep 18;

SINGAPORE — Electricity tariffs are set to rise for the fourth consecutive quarter this year, with the average household living in a four-room Housing and Development Board (HDB) flat expected to pay about S$1.76 more for electricity from October to December.

In a press release on Saturday (Sept 29), utility provider SP Group said that electricity tariffs for the next three months will go up by an average of 2.1 per cent on the back of “higher cost of natural gas for electricity generation”.

For the period from Oct 1 to Dec 31, SP Group will be charging 0.48 cents more per kilowatt hour (kWh), bringing up the tariffs to 24.13 cents per kWh.

On average, households in one-room HDB flats will likely pay 0.64 cents more a month, while those in a terrace house could pay S$4.25 more. Their average monthly bills in the next quarter are estimated be about S$32 and S$214 respectively.

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SP Group said that it reviews the electricity tariffs quarterly based on guidelines set by the Energy Market Authority (EMA), the electricity industry regulator.

Earlier this month, the EMA announced that consumers will be able to choose their electricity supplier starting from Nov 1, when the open electricity market is expanded to cater to them zone by zone around the island.

By May 2019, when the full roll-out is completed, 1.4 million households and small businesses will have the option of buying electricity from 12 different retailers.

Instead of being restricted to buying electricity from SP Group at a regulated tariff as they do now, consumers may choose a price plan that meets their needs from the authorised dealers within the open market. SP Group will continue to operate the national power grid and deliver electricity islandwide.

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Indonesia tsunami death toll nears 400, expected to rise

NINIEK KARMINI, Associated Press Yahoo News 30 Sep 18;

PALU, Indonesia (AP) — Residents too afraid to sleep indoors camped out in the darkness Saturday while victims recounted harrowing stories of being separated from their loved ones a day after a powerful earthquake triggered a tsunami that unleashed waves as high as 6 meters (20 feet), killing hundreds on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.

The official death toll stood at 384, with all the fatalities coming in the hard-hit city of Palu, but it was expected to rise once rescuers reached surrounding coastal areas, said disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho. He said others were unaccounted for, without giving an estimate. The nearby cities of Donggala and Mamuju were also ravaged, but little information was available due to damaged roads and disrupted telecommunications.

Nugroho said "tens to hundreds" of people were taking part in a beach festival in Palu when the tsunami struck at dusk on Friday. Their fate was unknown.

Hundreds of people were injured and hospitals, damaged by the magnitude 7.5 quake, were overwhelmed.

Some of the injured, including Dwi Haris, who suffered a broken back and shoulder, rested outside Palu's Army Hospital, where patients were being treated outdoors due to continuing strong aftershocks. Tears filled his eyes as he recounted feeling the violent earthquake shake the fifth-floor hotel room he shared with his wife and daughter.

"There was no time to save ourselves. I was squeezed into the ruins of the wall, I think," said Haris, adding that the family was in town for a wedding. "I heard my wife cry for help, but then silence. I don't know what happened to her and my child. I hope they are safe."

It's the latest natural disaster to hit Indonesia, which is frequently struck by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis because of its location on the "Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin. In December 2004, a massive magnitude 9.1 earthquake off Sumatra island in western Indonesia triggered a tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries. Last month, a powerful quake on the island of Lombok killed 505 people.

Palu, which has more than 380,000 people, was strewn with debris from the earthquake and tsunami. A mosque heavily damaged by the quake was half submerged and a shopping mall was reduced to a crumpled hulk. A large bridge with yellow arches had collapsed. Bodies lay partially covered by tarpaulins and a man carried a dead child through the wreckage.

The city is built around a narrow bay that apparently magnified the force of the tsunami waters as they raced into the tight inlet.

Indonesian TV showed dramatic smartphone video of a powerful wave hitting Palu, with people screaming and running in fear. The water smashed into buildings and the mosque.

Nina, a 23-year-old woman who goes by one name, was working at a laundry service shop not far from the beach when the quake hit. She said the quake destroyed her workplace, but she managed to escape and quickly went home to get her mother and younger brother.

"We tried to find shelter, but then I heard people shouting, 'Water! Water!'" she recalled, crying. "The three of us ran, but got separated. Now I don't know where my mother and brother are. I don't know how to get information. I don't know what to do."

The earthquake left mangled buildings with collapsed awnings and rebar sticking out of concrete like antennae. Roads were buckled and cracked. The tsunami created even more destruction. It was reported as being 3 meters (10 feet) high in some areas and double that height elsewhere.

"We got a report over the phone saying that there was a guy who climbed a tree up to 6 meters high," said Nugroho, the disaster agency spokesman.

Communications with the area were difficult because power and telecommunications were cut, hampering search and rescue efforts. Most people slept outdoors, fearing strong aftershocks.

"We hope there will be international satellites crossing over Indonesia that can capture images and provide them to us so we can use the images to prepare humanitarian aid," Nugroho said.

Indonesia is a vast archipelago of more than 17,000 islands that's home to 260 million people. Roads and infrastructure are poor in many areas, making access difficult in the best of conditions.

The disaster agency has said that essential aircraft can land at Palu's airport, though AirNav, which oversees aircraft navigation, said the runway was cracked and the control tower damaged.

AirNav said one of its air traffic controllers, aged 21, died in the quake after staying in the tower to ensure a flight he'd just cleared for departure got airborne safely. It did.

More than half of the 560 inmates in a Palu prison fled after its walls collapsed during the quake, said its warden, Adhi Yan Ricoh.

"It was very hard for the security guards to stop the inmates from running away as they were so panicked and had to save themselves too," he told state news agency Antara.

Ricoh said there was no immediate plan to search for the inmates because the prison staff and police were consumed with the search and rescue effort.

"Don't even think to find the inmates. We don't even have time yet to report this incident to our superiors," he said.

Indonesian President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo said Friday night that he instructed the security minister to coordinate the government's response to the disaster.

Jokowi also told reporters in his hometown of Solo that he called on the country's military chief to help with search and rescue efforts.

United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric said U.N. officials were in contact with Indonesian authorities and "stand ready to provide support as required."

Sulawesi has a history of religious tensions between Muslims and Christians, with violent riots erupting in the town of Poso, not far from Palu, two decades ago. Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country.

Associated Press writers Margie Mason and Stephen Wright contributed to this report from Jakarta, Indonesia.

Warning system might have saved lives in Indonesian tsunami
Stephen Wright, Associated Press Yahoo News 1 Oct 18;

MAKASSAR, Indonesia (AP) -- An early warning system that might have prevented some deaths in the tsunami that hit an Indonesian island on Friday has been stalled in the testing phase for years.

The high-tech system of seafloor sensors, data-laden sound waves and fiber-optic cable was meant to replace a system set up after an earthquake and tsunami killed nearly 250,000 people in the region in 2004. But inter-agency wrangling and delays in getting just 1 billion rupiah ($69,000) to complete the project mean the system hasn't moved beyond a prototype developed with $3 million from the U.S. National Science Foundation.

It is too late for central Sulawesi, where walls of water up to 6 meters (20 feet) high and a magnitude 7.5 earthquake killed at least 832 people in the cities of Palu and Donggala, tragically highlighting the weaknesses of the existing warning system and low public awareness about how to respond to warnings.

"To me this is a tragedy for science, even more so a tragedy for the Indonesian people as the residents of Sulawesi are discovering right now," said Louise Comfort, a University of Pittsburgh expert in disaster management who has led the U.S. side of the project, which also involves engineers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and Indonesian scientists and disaster experts.

"It's a heartbreak to watch when there is a well-designed sensor network that could provide critical information," she said.

After a 2004 tsunami killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries, more than half of them in the Indonesian province of Aceh, a concerted international effort was launched to improve tsunami warning capabilities, particularly in the Indian Ocean and for Indonesia, one of world's most earthquake and tsunami-prone countries.

Part of that drive, using funding from Germany and elsewhere, included deploying a network of 22 buoys connected to seafloor sensors to transmit advance warnings.

A sizeable earthquake off Sumatra island in 2016 that caused panic in the coastal city of Padang revealed that none of the buoys costing hundreds of thousands of dollars each were working. They'd been disabled by vandalism or theft or just stopped working due to a lack of funds for maintenance.

The backbone of Indonesia's tsunami warning system today is a network of 134 tidal gauge stations augmented by land-based seismographs, sirens in about 55 locations and a system to disseminate warnings by text message.

When the 7.5 quake hit just after 6 p.m. Friday, the meteorology and geophysics agency issued a tsunami alert, warning of potential for waves of 0.5 to 3 meters (2 to 10 feet). It ended the warning at 6:36 p.m. That drew harsh online criticism, but the agency's head said the warning was lifted after the tsunami hit. It's unclear exactly what time tsunami waves rushed into the narrow bay that Palu is built around.

"The tide gauges are operating, but they are limited in providing any advance warning. None of the 22 buoys are functioning," Comfort said. "In the Sulawesi incident, BMKG (the meteorology and geophysics agency) canceled the tsunami warning too soon, because it did not have data from Palu. This is the data the tsunami detection system could provide."

Adam Switzer, a tsunami expert at the Earth Observatory of Singapore, said it's a "little unfair" to say the agency got it wrong.

"What it shows is that the tsunami models we have now are too simplistic," he said. "They don't take into account multiple events, multiple quakes within a short period of time. They don't take into account submarine landslides."

Whatever system is in use, he said, the priority after an earthquake in a coastal area should be to get to higher ground and stay there for a couple of hours.

Power outages after the earthquake struck meant that sirens meant to warn residents to evacuate did not work, said Harkunti P. Rahayu, an expert at the Institute of Technology in Bandung.

"Most people were shocked by the earthquake and did not pay any thought that a tsunami will come," she said.

Experts say the prototype system deployed offshore from Padang — a city extremely vulnerable to tsunamis because it faces a major undersea fault overdue for a massive quake — can provide authoritative information about a tsunami threat within 1 to 3 minutes. That compares with 5 to 45 minutes from the now defunct buoys and the limited information provided by tidal gauges.

The system's undersea seismometers and pressure sensors send data-laden sound waves to warm surface waters. From there they refract back into the depths, traveling 20 to 30 kilometers (12 to 20 miles) to the next node in the network and so on.

The Padang network's final undersea point needs just a few more kilometers of fiber optic cable to connect it to a station on an offshore island where the cascades of data would be transmitted by satellite to the geophysics agency, which issues tsunami warnings, and to disaster officials.

The Associated Press first reported on the system in January 2017, when the project was awaiting Indonesian funding to lay the cables. Since then, agencies involved have suffered budget cuts and the project bounced back and forth between them.

A December 2017 quake off the coast of Java close to Jakarta reignited interest and the geophysics agency made getting funding a priority. In July, the Ministry of Finance in July approved funding to purchase and lay the cable.

But at an inter-agency meeting in September, the three major agencies involved failed to agree on their responsibilities and the project was "simply put on hold," Comfort said.

Indonesian officials who've been supportive of the new early warning system did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Since the 2004 tsunami, the mantra among disaster officials in Indonesia has been that the earthquake is the tsunami warning and signal for immediate evacuation. Not everyone is convinced a tsunami detection system is essential.

"What Indonesian colleagues have commented upon is that people were confused about what to do with the alert information," said Gavin Sullivan, a Coventry University psychologist who works with the Indonesian Resilience Initiative on a disaster preparation project for the Indonesian city of Bandung.

The fact that people were still milling around Palu's shoreline when waves were visibly approaching shows the lessons of earlier disasters haven't been absorbed.

"This points to the failing to do appropriate training and to develop trust so that people know exactly what to do when an alert is issued," he said. "In our project in Bandung, we're finding a similar unwillingness to prepare for something that seems unlikely."

___

Associated Press writer Margie Mason in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.


'Heard nothing from Donggala': The Indonesian town of 300,000 close to quake epicentre
Channel NewsAsia 30 Sep 18;

JAKARTA: As tragic details emerge from the quake-tsunami hit city of Palu on Sulawesi island in Indonesia, information from another hard-hit area remained elusive.

The town of Donggala, north of Palu, with a population of 300,000 was the epicentre of the shallow 7.5 magnitude tremor that shook the region.

With the death toll of more than 400 so far from Palu alone and reports only slowly filtering in from Donggal, authorities are bracing for worse to come.

"Worryingly, the National Disaster Management Agency has said they've received no information from the district of Donggala, which is closer to the epicentre of the earthquake," said Helen Szoke of Oxfam.

"We have heard nothing from Donggala and this is extremely worrying. There are more than 300,000 people living there," the Red Cross said in a statement.

Map showing location of the city of Palu and the region of Donggala in Sulawesi island.

"This is already a tragedy, but it could get much worse."

The fishing town of Donggala has been extensively damaged, with houses swept into the sea and bodies trapped in debris, according to a Metro TV reporter on the scene.

Indonesia's vice president Jusuf Kalla said the toll could rise to thousands as President Joko Widodo said he will be visiting the affected areas including Palu and Donggala.

The Head of the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), Willem Rampangilei, told reporters in Sulawesi late on Saturday rescuers were struggling in their hunt for more victims as the death toll in Palu had reached 420.

"We are having difficulty deploying heavy equipment to find victims under the rubble of buildings because many of the roads leading to Palu city are damaged," he was quoted by the Kompas newspaper as saying.

About 10,000 displaced people were scattered at 50 different places in Palu, he said.

Source: CNA/Agencies/mn


Fatalities in Indonesia could reach thousands, officials say
Aftershocks rattle island of Sulawesi as vice-president warns nation to expect significant rise in death toll
Hannah Ellis-Petersen The Guardian 30 Sep 18;

The confirmed death toll from the earthquake and tsunami that struck the Indonesian island of Sulawesi has risen to 832, and the vice-president, Jusuf Kalla, has warned it could reach into the thousands.

More than 150 aftershocks followed the 7.5-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit Sulawesi on Friday, causing thousands of homes, hotels, shopping malls and several mosques to collapse.

Of the fatalities, 821 were in the city of Palu, with 11 casualties so far recorded in Donggala, the worst-hit area, which is home to 300,000 people. Hundreds of bodies have been found on beaches and authorities fear many may have been washed out to sea.

Speaking at a press conference, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the spokesman for the BNBP disaster agency, said the area affected was much bigger than originally thought.

“The deaths are believed to be still increasing since many bodies were still under the wreckage while many have not able to be reached,” said Sutopo, emphasising that access to Donggala, as well as the towns of Sigi and Boutong, was very limited so the final death toll was impossible to predict.

The city of Palu has been completely devastated by the earthquake and tsunami waves, which reached as high as six metres in some areas. In the city, partially covered bodies lay near the shore and survivors sifted through a tangled mess of corrugated steel roofing, timber, rubble and flotsam. One man was seen carrying the muddy corpse of a small child.

“Many corpses are scattered on the beach and floating on the surface of the sea,” one local resident, Nining, told local media. The identified bodies are being buried in mass graves, Sutopo said.

Sutopo confirmed there was no electricity in Palu and Donggala, while drinking water and fuel were running out. There was limited access to heavy equipment needed to help rescue efforts, so the search for people trapped in the rubble was mostly being carried out by hand.

Rescue efforts are continuing for dozens of people still trapped in the collapsed ruins of the eight-storey Roa Roa hotel in Palu, with voices heard screaming from the wreckage.

A 25-year-old woman was found alive during the evening in the ruins of the Roa-Roa Hotel, according to the National Search and Rescue Agency, which released photos of the her lying on a stretcher covered in a blanket.

There were concerns about the whereabouts of hundreds of people preparing for a beach festival that had been due to start on Friday, a spokesman for the BNBP said.

At least 540 people had been badly injured, the agency said, as hospitals struggled to cope with the influx of casualties, setting up open-air clinics to treat the injured.

Dwi Haris, who suffered a broken back and shoulder, rested outside Palu’s army hospital, where patients were being treated outdoors due to the continuing strong aftershocks. Tears filled his eyes as he recounted feeling the violent earthquake shake the fifth-floor hotel room he shared with his wife and daughter.

“There was no time to save ourselves. I was squeezed into the ruins of the wall, I think,” said Haris, adding that his family was in town for a wedding. “I heard my wife cry for help, but then silence. I don’t know what happened to her and my child. I hope they are safe.”

The Indonesian president, Joko Widodo, who visited the region on Sunday, said earlier the military was being called to the region to help search-and-rescue teams.

One of the first casualties of the earthquake, 21-year-old Anthonius Gunawan Agung, is being hailed a hero after he stayed in the air traffic control tower as the earthquake hit, to make sure that a flight to Bali could take off safely. Agung then jumped from the control tower as it was collapsing, but did not survive the fall.

Many residents slept in makeshift shelters, terrified that the powerful aftershocks could topple their damaged homes.

Some voiced criticism of the agency that lifted the tsunami warning. The agency said it followed standard operating procedure and made the call to “end” the warning based on data available from the closest tidal sensor, about 125 miles (200km) from Palu.

“We have no observation data at Palu. So we had to use the data we had and make a call based on that,” said Rahmat Triyono, the head of the earthquakes and tsunami centre at BMKG. He said the closest tide gauge, which measures changes in the sea level, only recorded an “insignificant” 6cm wave and did not account for the giant waves near Palu.

The tsunami was triggered by a strong quake that brought down buildings and sent locals fleeing for higher ground as a churning wall of water crashed into Palu. “We all panicked and ran out of the house” when the quake hit, said Anser Bachmid, a 39-year-old Palu resident. “People here need aid – food, drink, clean water.”

Dramatic video footage captured from the top floor of a parking ramp in Palu, nearly 50 miles (80km) from the quake’s epicentre, showed waves bring down several buildings and inundate a large mosque.

“This was a terrifying double disaster,” said Jan Gelfand, a Jakarta-based official at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. “We have heard nothing from Donggala and this is extremely worrying. There are more than 300,000 people living there. This is already a tragedy, but it could get much worse.”

Friday’s tremor was also felt in the far south of the island in its largest city Makassar and on neighbouring Kalimantan, Indonesia’s portion of Borneo island.

The initial quake struck as evening prayers were about to begin in the world’s biggest Muslim-majority country on the holiest day of the week, when mosques are especially busy.

Indonesia is one of the most disaster-prone nations on earth. It lies on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide and many of the world’s volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur.

Earlier this year, a series of powerful quakes hit Lombok, killing more than 550 people on the holiday island and neighbouring Sumbawa.

Indonesia has been hit by a string of other deadly quakes including a devastating 9.1-magnitude tremor that struck off the coast of Sumatra in December 2004.

That Boxing Day quake triggered a tsunami that killed 220,000 throughout the region, including 168,000 in Indonesia.


Sulawesi quake: Death toll crosses 1,200 as rescuers race to reach victims
Francis Chan Straits Times 30 Sep 18;

Rescuers are racing against time to reach victims of last Friday’s earthquake still trapped under rubble two days after the disaster. Meanwhile, the death toll continues to rise as more bodies are found.

President Joko Widodo on Sunday (Sept 30) sought to reassure the victims in Central Sulawesi that no effort will be spared to help them get back on the road to recovery. “I hope people will be patient. We are working on this together,” he added.

His comments, made during his visit to parts of the provincial capital Palu, devastated by a 7.4-magnitude quake and a 3m-high tsunami it triggered, come as the death toll rose to more than 1,200 on Sunday.

The number is set to go up further as rescuers finally reach Donggala, which was cut off from them until Sunday because roads leading to the regency were damaged and communications were down.

Donggala, normally a 30-minute drive from Palu, is nearer the epicentre of the quake and the authorities are fearing the worst.

According to national disaster management agency BNPB, some 16,700 people have been displaced by the quakes, but about 2.4 million in Donggala and Palu will need humanitarian aid.

“Fuel, drinking water, medical personnel, tents, electricity, food and other essentials are urgently needed,” BNPB spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said at a press conference in Jakarta Sunday.

Emergency teams could not get to Palu earlier because parts of its airport runway and air traffic control tower were damaged by tremors. But the local air navigation authorities Sunday cleared Mutiara SIS Al-Jufrie airport for more aircraft, including commercial flights, to land and take off.

The evacuation of quake victims, including a 53-year-old Singaporean who was in Palu for a paragliding competition, has also started with the additional flights.

Mr Ng Kok Choong, who was among more than 60 foreigners evacuated by Indonesian military (TNI) transport, arrived home in Singapore Sunday afternoon.

Rescuers are trying to reach those trapped under collapsed buildings.

But they are taking a more cautious approach when digging for survivors among the debris, as aftershocks were causing building structures to be unstable. Dr Sutopo said more than 200 aftershocks have been recorded since Friday.

Officers from national search and rescue agency Basarnas were seen chipping carefully through rubble at what remains of the Roa Roa Hotel in downtown Palu, while another team at the nearby Tatura Mall were trying to establish a safe access point into the building.

Basarnas official Agus Haryono told reporters at the site that rescuers had detected mobile-phone signals inside the mall and were trying to find a way to get in.

Before he arrived in Palu on Sunday, President Joko mobilised the TNI and police to support rescue and relief operations. His administration has also set aside 560 billion rupiah (S$51.4 million) for relief efforts.

This latest crisis comes after earthquakes hit Lombok, a resort island in West Nusa Tenggara province, located south of Sulawesi, recently.

Relief efforts are still ongoing in Lombok, where nearly half a million people were left homeless following the series of deadly earthquakes in July and August.

Meanwhile, two Singapore Civil Defence Force officers are in Indonesia as part of a team from the Asean Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance.

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Vietnam seizes nearly a ton of pangolin scales, ivory

AFP Yahoo News 30 Sep 18;

Hanoi (AFP) - Vietnam has seized around a ton of pangolin scales and ivory hidden inside dozens of boxes on a flight from Nigeria, state media reported, a haul highlighting the illegal wildlife trade routes connecting Africa and Southeast Asia.

Both the ivory and pangolin trade have been banned in Vietnam. But weak law enforcement in the communist state has allowed a black market to flourish and feed into a global multibillion dollar industry in animal parts and exotic pets.

Southeast Asian countries have become a busy thoroughfare for tusks trafficked from Africa and destined for other parts of Asia, mainly China. Pangolins are treasured in Vietnam and the region for their meat and alleged medicinal properties of their scales.

Authorities at Hanoi's airport found 805 kilograms of pangolin scales as well as 193 kilograms of ivory and ivory-derived products in two dozen boxes on Friday, said a report in the official newspaper of the customs department.

The goods were sent from two companies based in Nigeria, according to the labelling. They had arrived on a September 21 flight but were never picked up.

"The (intended) recipients of the cargo package have refused to receive the goods," the article said.

Photos showed a pile of the pangolin scales on the floor as inspectors went through the boxes, which were initially covered in an extra layer of wrapping and taped shut.

The tiny and shy pangolin, which resembles a scaly anteater, is the world's most heavily trafficked mammal and despite bans the trade remains rampant.

Vietnam outlawed the ivory trade in 1992 but illegal trade still persists and shops sell ivory pre-dating the ban for decorative and medicinal purposes.

The haul is the latest to make headlines in Vietnam, where seizures are infrequent but usually large.

Last year police found 2.7 tonnes of tusks inside cartons on the back of a truck in the central province of Thanh Hoa.

In October 2016 customs officials in Vietnam discovered about 3.5 tonnes of elephant tusks at Cat Lai port in Ho Chi Minh City.

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IPCC: Climate scientists consider 'life changing' report

Matt McGrath BBC 1 Oct 18;

It will likely be the most critical and controversial report on climate change in recent years.

Leading scientists are meeting in South Korea this week to see if global temperatures can be kept from rising by more than 1.5C this century.

The world has already passed one degree of warming as carbon emissions have ballooned since the 1850s.

Many low-lying countries say they may disappear under the sea if the 1.5C limit is breached.

After a week of deliberations in the city of Incheon, the researchers' new report will likely say that keeping below this limit will require urgent and dramatic action from governments and individuals alike.

One scientist told BBC News that our lives would never be the same if the world changed course to stay under 1.5C.

The new study is being produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body set up to provide a clear scientific view for governments on the causes, impacts and solutions to rising temperatures.

When the Paris climate agreement was signed in December 2015, there was delight and surprise among many delegates that countries had agreed that the long-term goal of the pact should be to keep global temperatures "well below two degrees C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees C".

To examine the challenges and impacts of keeping temperatures below the 1.5C limit, the UN asked the IPCC to produce a special report, which the scientific body has delivered in record time.

This week in Incheon, the scientists and government delegates will go through the final, short, 15-page Summary for Policymakers, the key distillation of the underlying scientific reports.

This will be done word by word, to ensure everyone - scientists and governments alike - are in agreement on the text.

Why is this report important?
The report will be the guiding light for governments as they decide how to develop their economies in the face of rising temperatures over the coming decades.

"The decisions we make now about whether we let 1.5 or 2 degrees or more happen will change the world enormously," Dr Heleen de Coninck, one of the co-ordinating lead authors of the report, told BBC News.

"But our lives, when keeping it below 1.5C with projected population rise and economic growth, will also look differently."

"Lives of people will never be the same again either way, but we can influence which future we end up with."

Right now, the world has passed one degree of warming above the global temperatures that pertained around 1850, before widespread industrialisation.

Leaked drafts of the new report suggest that global warming is on track to break the 1.5C mark by around 2040.

This is potentially very bad news for low-lying island states and some of the least developed countries in the world who fear that 1.5C will cause sea-level to rise and threaten their survival.

How does the IPCC work?
Slowly and quite carefully.

The IPCC has been in existence for 30 years and produces detailed assessments of the state of the climate every six or seven years.

This special report has been almost three years in the making.

The authors are all scientists who have been nominated by governments and international institutions.

In this case, there are 86 lead authors from 39 countries, of which 39% are female.

These researchers, who are unpaid, have reviewed the available scientific literature on the feasibility, impacts and costs of staying under 1.5C.

They have then put together draft versions of their report, after having reviewed some 6,000 references all told.

These draft reports were sent out to other experts and governments for review. In total, this report has had over 40,000 review comments.

Because so many people are involved, and all these review comments have been taken on board, the IPCC has a reputation for being rather conservative, producing reports that have a very broad consensus.

Those involved say the wide range of literature and the large number of authors involved is a key strength of the body.

"We don't base our reports on a single article that has an extreme conclusion, that contrasts with the available literature," said Dr Carolina Vera, a member of the IPCC bureau.

"The collective view of the available literature is the most robust contribution that we can provide to the governments."

So why is this report controversial?
If you add up all the promises to cut carbon made by countries that have signed the Paris climate agreement, it would see the world warm by more than 3C by the end of this century.

For some scientists, there is not enough time left to take the actions that would keep the world within the desired limit.

"If you really look seriously at the feasibility, it looks like it will be very hard to reach the 1.5C," said Prof Arthur Petersen, from University College London and a former IPCC member.

"I am relatively sceptical that we can meet 1.5C, even with an overshoot. Scientists can dream up that is feasible, but it's a pipedream."

As well as the science, there is also the politics.

For some countries, especially those who are major exporters of fossil fuels, limiting carbon emissions more rapidly than at present is a challenge.

"The overall big question in this report is how we can still get to that 1.5C goal? What does it take?", said Kaisa Kosonen from Greenpeace.

"There are those for whom 1.5C is a matter of life or death and they want the message to be clear. Others might want to suggest that there is not scientific certainty and the messages, for example on rapid fossil-fuel phase-out, should not be so straightforward."

What will the report likely recommend?
The challenge of keeping temperatures below 1.5 is considerable. But, if it is accepted by the governments, the report will likely say that it can be done, if the world is willing to take some very tough steps.

These are likely to involve an intensification of cuts to CO2 emissions, a rapid move to renewable energy and quite possibly, the deployment of technologies to suck greenhouse gases from the air.

This last option is seen as highly controversial.

The report will also likely state that lifestyle and dietary choices can make a significant difference - but there are no simple or cheap solutions.

"There is no easy answer; it is a much more complicated answer," said Prof Jim Skea, who co-chairs one of the IPCC working groups.

"It has physical elements, it has social elements, it has political elements. The report, as it is scoped, allows us to go into these issues, but a crisp answer I don't think is what we were asked for by governments."

Who is actually in charge - the scientists or the governments?
There has been quite a bit of speculation that the scientists are being forced to soften the contents of the report, or "pull their punches", on some of the major conclusions.

What's happened is that there have been notable changes between different draft versions of the short Summary for Policymakers, which will be released officially on Monday 8 October.

This has led some critics to conclude that important aspects are being downplayed to suit the interests of countries with major fossil fuel industries, such as the United States, Saudi Arabia and Australia.

But members of the IPCC say that they will not allow their conclusions to be watered down during the next few days when the Summary is gone through, line by line.

"What is really important for the work of the IPCC is the respect for the integrity and scientific rigour of the authors - that is at the heart of the work of the author teams," said Valérie Masson-Delmotte, a co-chair of the body.

"If one can imagine the governments holding the hands of the scientists, this means you don't know how science works!"

Will sparks fly at this meeting?
Quite likely, yes!

IPCC sessions are closed from the public, to allow governments and scientists to speak freely. Governments often seek to make changes to the text - the scientists are there to ensure that if changes are made, they are consistent with the research.

"I've never been to an approval session that didn't go well after hours; it's kind of IPCC working practice now," said Prof Skea.

"Absolutely it will be a robust session and we are well geared up for it."

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Orca 'apocalypse': half of killer whales doomed to die from pollution

Banned PCB chemicals are still severely harming the animals – but Arctic could be a refuge
Damian Carrington The Guardian 27 Sep 18;

Although the poisonous chemicals, PCBs, have been banned for decades, they are still leaking into the seas. They become concentrated up the food chain; as a result, killer whales, the top predators, are the most contaminated animals on the planet. Worse, their fat-rich milk passes on very high doses to their newborn calves.

PCB concentrations found in killer whales can be 100 times safe levels and severely damage reproductive organs, cause cancer and damage the immune system. The new research analysed the prospects for killer whale populations over the next century and found those offshore from industrialised nations could vanish as soon as 30-50 years.

Among those most at risk are the UK’s last pod, where a recent death revealed one of the highest PCB levels ever recorded. Others off Gibraltar, Japan and Brazil and in the north-east Pacific are also in great danger. Killer whales are one of the most widespread mammals on earth but have already been lost in the North Sea, around Spain and many other places.

“It is like a killer whale apocalypse,” said Paul Jepson at the Zoological Society of London, part of the international research team behind the new study. “Even in a pristine condition they are very slow to reproduce.” Healthy killer whales take 20 years to reach peak sexual maturity and 18 months to gestate a calf.

PCBs were used around the world since the 1930s in electrical components, plastics and paints but their toxicity has been known for 50 years. They were banned by nations in the 1970s and 1980s but 80% of the 1m tonnes produced have yet to be destroyed and are still leaking into the seas from landfills and other sources.

The international Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants came into force in 2004 to tackle the issue, but Jepson said the clean-up is way behind schedule. “I think the Stockholm Convention is failing,” he said. “The only area where I am optimistic is the US. They alone produced 50% of all PCBs, but they have been getting PCB levels down consistently for decades. All we have done in Europe is ban them and then hope they go away.”

The researchers said PCBs are just one pollutant found in killer whales, with “a long list of additional known and as yet unmeasured contaminants present”. Further problems for killer whales include the loss of key prey species such as tuna and sharks to overfishing and also growing underwater noise pollution.

The new research, published in the journal Science, examined PCB contamination in 351 killer whales, the largest analysis yet. The scientists then took existing data on how PCBs affect calf survival and immune systems in whales and used this to model how populations will fare in the future. “Populations of Japan, Brazil, Northeast Pacific, Strait of Gibraltar, and the United Kingdom are all tending toward complete collapse,” they concluded.

Lucy Babey, deputy director at conservation group Orca, said: “Our abysmal failures to control chemical pollution ending up in our oceans has caused a killer whale catastrophe on an epic scale. It is essential that requirements to dispose safely of PCBs under the Stockholm Convention are made legally binding at the next meeting in May 2019 to help stop this scandal.” Scientists have previously found “extraordinary” levels of toxic pollution even in the 10km-deep Mariana trench in the Pacific Ocean.

“This new study is a global red alert on the state of our oceans,” said Jennifer Lonsdale, chair of the Wildlife and Countryside Link’s whales group. “If the UK government wants its [proposed] Environment Act to be world-leading, it must set ambitious targets on PCB disposal and protect against further chemical pollution of our waters.”

The research shows that killer whale populations in the high north, off Norway, Iceland, Canada and the Faroes, are far less contaminated due to their distance from major PCB sources. ”The only thing that gives me hope about killer whales in the longer term is, yes, we are going to lose populations all over the industrialised areas, but there are populations that are doing reasonably well in the Arctic,” said Jepson.

If a global clean-up, which would take decades, can be achieved, these populations could eventually repopulate empty regions, he said, noting that killer whales are very intelligent, have strong family bonds and hunt in packs. “It is an incredibly adaptive species – they have been able to [live] from the Arctic to the Antarctic and everywhere in between.”

He praised the billion-dollar “superfund” clean-ups in the US, such as in the Hudson River and Puget Sound, where the polluter has paid most of the costs: “The US is going way beyond the Stockholm Convention because they know how toxic PCBs are.”

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Best of our wild blogs: 30 Oct 18

14 Oct (Sun) - Free guided walk at Chek Jawa Boardwalk
Adventures with the Naked Hermit Crabs

Proning - Getting Down on It!
Butterflies of Singapore

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Outdoor educator, nature enthusiasts reach happy compromise over Rifle Range Nature Park

LOW YOUJIN Today Online 29 Sep 18

SINGAPORE – Conservationists who were alarmed by the potential impact of an outdoor education programme on Rifle Range Nature Park have reached a happy compromise with its founder Darren Quek.

In the wake of TODAY's report on Mr Quek's alternative programme, Forest School Singapore, nature enthusiasts had raised concerns over the impact that humans could have by going off-trail and entering an ecologically sensitive stream in the area.

While they welcomed Mr Quek's efforts to connect children with nature, they wondered if the positive online response to his programme would lead more parents to sign their children up, and were worried that he might be loving nature to death.

Wildlife consultant Subaraj Rajathurai said he was disturbed by Forest School Singapore's videos of children running through the streams in nature reserves and parks.

"Basically, that is not allowed as the streams are delicate ecosystems in their own right, with native wildlife that would be very badly disturbed by such activities," said Mr Subaraj.

Mr Louis Ng, founder of the Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (ACRES), said he supports Mr Quek's intentions.

"There are important lessons (children) can and need to learn in the forest and through free play," said Mr Ng, who is also a Member of Parliament.

But "it is a question of sustainability, especially if more and more people start to follow and also wander off the trails and ultimately destroy the ecosystem which we are teaching the children to protect," he said.

REACHING OUT

The National Parks Board's (NParks) group conservation director Adrian Loo got in touch with Mr Quek and met him recently with nature enthusiast and biology teacher Tan Beng Chiak.

Ms Tan, who is a member of the Nature Society (Singapore) and board member of the Jane Goodall Institute (Singapore), said she knew conservationists were "quite upset" with Mr Quek's activities within Rifle Range Nature Park as it is a pristine area.

She did not disagree with Mr Quek's teaching philosophy and went along to meet Mr Quek as she wanted to share her perspective as an educator.

"All we need is to communicate with each other and come to a better solution than to clamp them down and shut them off," said Ms Tan.

Dr Loo said the meeting was to share about conservation matters and to better understand the school's objectives so that NParks could support it.

He has offered to guide Mr Quek on walks through the various reserves and parks on the island to share more about Singapore's ecology and biodiversity.

Mr Quek, on his part, is heartened by discussions so far.

He acknowledged the ecological sensitivity of Rifle Range Nature Park and has agreed to adjust his programme accordingly. The former preschool teacher wants to have more conversations with the nature community and is excited to learn from the experts.

Both sides are open to collaboration, although no concrete plans have been laid out yet.

Dr Loo said an option is "co-creating programmes with the school that will connect children to nature in ways that are both experiential and sensitive to the environment".

Forest School Singapore's participants could serve as eyes and ears on the ground for NParks, said Mr Quek.

With Rifle Range Nature Park slated to close from October until 2020 for enhancement works, Mr Quek is scouting around for other green areas in Singapore that are not ecologically sensitive to conduct his programme.

This is something that NParks can help with, said Dr Loo.

"We welcome other educators who are interested in organising nature-based activities in our green spaces to get in touch with us, to discuss how to carry out the programmes in a sensitive manner," he said.

KEEPING IT NATURAL

Taking TODAY on a guided walk through Rifle Range Nature Park last week, Dr Loo said the upcoming enhancement works will benefit the ecosystem and not turn it into a manicured space, as Mr Quek had feared.

Natural features such as dead logs by the side of walking trails will become a home for insects, which in turn serve as food for the critically endangered Sunda Pangolin.

Invasive plant species such as the Zanzibar Yam will be removed. The tuber with heart-shaped leaves was originally brought over by the British from Africa who thought it might be a good food source.

Left unmanaged, this climber will grow rapidly and even "smother trees", said Dr Loo.

"If we don't eradicate it, the native plants will not be able to come in and take root."

More native species of plants will be introduced. For example, the fishtail palm's fruit will attract animals such as the Common Palm Civet, which in turn helps to disperse seeds through its scat.

Creatures that can be found in the stream include the Common Walking Catfish and a native Lowland Freshwater Crab, as well as the Malayan Forest Betta (a fish) and Sunda Swamp Eel.

"Several species of dragonflies and their larvae could take six months to a year to mature into adults," said Dr Loo.

While a lone person wading through the stream will not make a difference, a big group could cause fine silt to get stirred up and clog the gills of aquatic life and "even prevent fish from finding their prey".

Going off-trail could damage seedlings and plants such as the bintagor gasing – an evergreen plant with medicinal properties – which may not be able to recover, said Dr Loo.

Spreading awareness of nature is the point of his efforts, said Dr Loo. "We want to impart this. That's why we are in conservation. With more knowledge, you can become more aware of your surroundings and be better stewards to your environment."

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