news20090924gdn1

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Climate Glaciers]
Thinning glaciers driving polar ice loss, satellite survey finds
Satellite survey of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets reveals extensive network of rapidly thinning glaciers that is driving ice loss in the regions
Ian Sample, science correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 23 September 2009 18.05 BST Article history

A comprehensive satellite survey of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has revealed an extensive network of rapidly thinning glaciers that is driving ice loss in the regions.

The most profound loss of ice was seen along the continental coastlines, where glaciers speed up as they slip into the sea. In some regions, glaciers flowing into surrounding waters were thinning by nearly 10m a year.

Scientists used data from Nasa's ICESat (Ice, Cloud and and land Elevation Satellite) to piece together a picture of the changing fortunes of glaciers on the ice sheets. The satellite bounces laser light off the ground, allowing researchers to measure the terrain with extraordinary precision.

The survey, compiled from 50m satellite measurements taken between February 2003 and November 2007, shows glaciers thinning at all latitudes in Greenland and along key Antarctic coastlines. Thinning penetrated deep into the interior of the ice sheets and continues to spread as ice shelves melt into the sea.

"We were surprised to see such a strong pattern of thinning glaciers across such large areas of coastline. It's widespread and in some cases, thinning extends hundreds of kilometres inland," said Hamish Pritchard who led the study at the British Antarctic Survey.

In Greenland, glaciers in the south-east were found to be flowing at speeds of more than 100m per year, during which they thinned by 84cm. More slow-going glaciers lost around 12cm a year.

In a vast region of western Antarctica that drains into the Amundsen Sea, the Pine Island glacier and neighbouring Smith and Thwaites glaciers are thinning by 9m a year, the satellite measurements show. The study is published in the journal Nature.

Previous satellite surveys of polar regions have relied upon radar measurements that cannot map the Earth's surface with the same precision as the ICESat laser rangefinder. The satellite allows scientists to take 65m-wide snapshots of the ground, giving an unprecedented view of glaciers on the steep terrain where ice meets ocean.

This satellite survey helps scientists explore how different aspects of climate change are driving ice loss in polar regions. Higher air temperatures can increase surface melting, but warm ocean currents accelerate ice loss more when glaciers flow into the sea.

"The majority of the thinning we see is not due to increased melting from higher atmospheric temperatures, but because the glaciers are flowing faster thanks to their interaction with the oceans," said Prof David Vaughan, a co-author on the study.


[Environment > Geo-engineering]
China's largest cloud seeding assault aims to stop rain on the national parade
Cloud-seeding aircraft to intercept rainclouds that threaten to cast shadow over communist party's 60th celebrations in Beijing
Jonathan Watts, Asia environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 23 September 2009 17.41 BST Article history

China's air force is gearing up for its biggest ever assault on the clouds to ensure blue skies above Beijing for the 60th anniversary of communist party rule, local media reported today.

Eighteen cloud-seeding aircraft and 48 fog-dispersal vehicles are on stand-by to intercept rainclouds that threaten to cast a shadow over the festivities, which will include the biggest display of military power in at least 10 years.

The weather modification could exceed the huge cloudbusting operation for the opening ceremony of the Olympic games last year, when more than 1,100 rain-dispersal rockets were fired into the sky.

"It is the first time in Chinese history that artificial weather modification on such a large scale has been attempted," said Cui Lianqing, an air force meteorologist, speaking to the Global Times newspaper.

Meteorologists will coordinate the mission using satellite data. The Beijing Weather Modification Office will supplement the air force's campaign with rockets and planes that load the clouds with silver iodide or liquid nitrogen — dry ice — to induce precipitation above reservoirs and rivers.

China has the world's most extensive rain creation infrastructure, employing about 50,000 people nationwide. Their job is usually to alleviate droughts in the arid north of the country. For national day they would have to encourage rain to fall from clouds before they reached Beijing.

The National Day events mark the founding of the People's Republic of China on 1 October, 1949. The communist party wants to use the occasion to showcase its achievements since Mao Zedong took power.

The centre of the city will be closed off for a huge parade, musical performance and show of military power. Clear skies are needed for the

firework display and fly past by air force jets.

Smog is another concern. Although air pollution has eased since the Olympics, when more than 100 factories were relocated and restrictions were imposed on cars, the Beijing authorities are taking no chances.

Environment officials have said they will inspect construction sites, regulate coal-burning facilities and impose extra restrictions on vehicles with high levels of exhaust fumes.

Inner Mongolia, Henan, Hebei and other neighbouring regions that host large-scale industrial parks have agreed to cooperate in reducing emissions ahead of the anniversary.

Fearing a major pollution incident might dampen the festive mood, the Ministry of Environmental Protection has mounted a week-long inspection of areas where accidents often happen or where dangerous chemicals are produced. Water supplies are being checked more stringently than usual.

Some of the security measures have frustrated many Beijingers. During rehearsals in recent weeks, residents along the route of the parade were instructed not to go on to their balconies or take pictures of tanks and other vehicles.

The authorities have banned the sale of knives in supermarkets and declared a no-fly zone for kites and racing pigeons. Whether non-compliant birds will suffer the same fate as wandering clouds has not been revealed.

Ten years after taking power, Mao Zedong declared a war on nature, including a disastrous campaign to eradicate sparrows, and a commitment to induce rain. "Manmade rain is very important. I hope the meteorological experts do their utmost to make it work," he said.

Today, however, the military admits there is a limit to their ability to control nature. "There are still a lot of uncertainties with the

weather," Cui told the Global Times. Past records suggest there is a 30% chance of rain on October 1, it said.


[Environment > Birds]
Sea eagles hatched in Scotland reach 150-year peak, says RSPB
Thirty-six chicks hatched this year in programme aimed at reviving species that was hunted to extinction
Press Association
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 24 September 2009 11.43 BST Article history

The number of sea eagle chicks born in Scotland has reached its highest level in 150 years, the RSPB said today.

The charity said 36 chicks were successfully hatched in 2009 - eight more than last year.

And two new breeding pairs of the sea eagle — the largest bird of prey in the British Isles — were spotted during the charity's annual survey.

Sea eagles were hunted to extinction in the last century and have now been reintroduced to Scotland.

The last of the birds, nicknamed "flying barn doors" because of their eight-foot wingspan, were shot in 1918.

The Sea Eagles Project to reintroduce the birds to Scotland started in 1975 and involves RSPB Scotland, Scottish Natural Heritage and Forestry Commission Scotland. At least 200 birds and 46 breeding pairs are believed to be living in Scotland.

Last year 44 pairs of breeding birds produced 28 chicks - a record year for the species since the project began. In 2009, two new pairs were found on the Isle of Lewis and Lochaber. A further 20 young birds will be brought to Scotland every year for the next three years. Five of the eaglets will be monitored to help wildlife experts understand more about their habits and keep up with their progress.

Scottish Natural Heritage's Colin Galbraith, who chairs the Sea Eagle Project team, said the record number of the birds now living in Scotland is important progress. "This is the result of a huge effort by many people over the past 30 years," he said.

"It shows what can be done to reinstate a key part of our natural heritage. It remains important however for the population, especially the newly released birds in the east of the country, to be allowed to fully settle in and establish territories."

Professor Jeremy Wilson, head of research for RSPB Scotland, said the sea eagle is an "inspiring" species.

"We are now seeing a steady rise in the breeding population every year, and this will grow further as the juveniles from the east coast reintroduction programme reach sexual maturity in the next couple of years," he said.

"There are plenty of vacant territories available with natural wild prey species to support these birds. As they continue to spread around Scotland's coast, this exciting spectacle will be made accessible to people throughout the country."

news20090924gdn2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Electric, hybrid and low-emission cars]
Electric vans are a viable cleantech alternative
Now able to compete on range and price, electric vans are a cleantech alternative to diesel
Marc Zakian
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 23 September 2009 20.30 BST Article history
　
I am cruising the outskirts of London in a vehicle that could turn white van drivers green. Green with envy, as a tank of diesel costs £100 compared with our £5 fill-up; and environmentally green because the van I am steering is electric.

The curved-nosed box-van can carry up to two tonnes (think Transit, but longer and taller). It is made by Modec, a Midlands-based company set up in 2004 by the former chairman of Manganese Bronze – makers of the iconic London taxi. After a £30m development, the Modec was launched in 2007.

Driving the Modec is a contradictory experience. Perched in its cabin, you command the road, and yet the ride is extraordinarily quiet; with none of the shake and rattle or the whiff of diesel of a traditional van – only the squeaks from the chassis and the beehive hum of the electric motor let you know you are driving. With no noise pollution or tailpipe emissions, the electric van should be the bright green future for commercial transport. But if the Zev (Zero Emission Vehicle) is to replace Britain's 3m diesel vans it will have to satisfy two demands: the distance it can travel on one charge, and its price.

Electric courier

"Range is an issue for our customers," explains George Smith, brand manager for Harris Van Centre who, after years of selling conventional trucks and vans, is convinced electric is the future. "But not as big an issue as you might think. When we first spoke to UPS about using electric vans on their courier routes in London, they looked at their mileage and worked out that the average distance travelled in the capital was 14 miles per day." Most commercial electric vehicles can cover about 100 miles on one six-hour charge.

So for door-to-door urban deliveries an electric Zev is a workable cleantech alternative. Tesco approached Modec in an initiative to reduce the company's global footprint, adding 15 Modec Zevs to its fleet. The courier company TNT has gone further, spending £7m on 100 seven-tonne electric vans from Smiths, Britain's largest and oldest electric vehicle maker. And by sourcing 20% of its electricity from renewables, TNT answers the charge that electric vehicles simply shift pollution from the road to the power station.

But while large companies can afford to invest in electric transport, the up-front cost is challenging for smaller businesses. At around £40,000, a Transit-size electric van is twice the price of a similar size diesel. And you will need a three-phase charging point to plug them into.

It is once the Zevs are on the road that savings are made. "We spend £25 a week charging an electric van, compared with £200 on a diesel equivalent," says Nick Murray, TNT's communications manager. "After three years an electric van works out cheaper than diesel."

As well as costing less in fuel, electric vans don't need an MOT, are zero-rated for road tax and have no oil or filters to change. And with only four moving parts in the engine – compared with more than 1,000 on an internal combustion engine – electric vehicles are cheaper to maintain and suffer fewer breakdowns.

The strongest financial incentive, however, is an emissions-based congestion charge. "If the government really wants people to stop using polluting vans," says Roger Atkins, Modec's sales director, "they just need to look at how the London congestion charge is an impetus for change. The exemption for electric vehicles represents an annual £2,000 incentive for Zevs."

So for short-haul delivery the electric van offers a cleantech solution. But what about the UK's 500,000 lorries? Last year, heavy goods vehicles covered 18bn miles on British roads, with a loaded articulated lorry averaging 6 to 8 miles a gallon. The rising cost of fuel has seen truck drivers blocking the roads in protest and consumers paying more for transport costs.

Long-haul solution

Although electric HGVs are starting to make an appearance – last May the port in Los Angeles started using electric trucks to move sea containers – they are short-range vehicles. Electric vans recharge on the move, generating power when the vehicle brakes and returning that power to the battery. So the stop/start rhythms of a delivery van are well-suited to electric power. Long-distance trucks drive for hours without stopping, way beyond the current 100- to 150-mile battery range.

One potential solution is already incorporated into the Modec van. The battery is exchangeable. This future-proofs the vehicle, so that as technology improves, vehicles can be retrofitted with the latest batteries. Currently this swap takes about 15 minutes. But if the exchange were speeded up, it would pave the way for a relay of "battery stations" around the country, with electric vans or trucks swapping spent batteries for charged ones, giving them an infinite range. This potential is being exploited by Project Better Place, who with Renault and Nissan are planning an electric car battery station network which they plan to deploy by 2011.

But Dan Jenkins, from Smiths Electric Vehicles, believes the eventual solution will be improved battery technology. "Lithium ion battery technology is only at the beginning of its performance curve," he stresses. "In the next few years we will see the range being extended to 200 miles and beyond. And in the long term, batteries using ultra-capacitors should mean you can fast-charge in minutes."

In the meantime, for the newly greened white van driver the Zev is good news. Goodbye to the bone-battering rattle of the diesel engine, and hello to the gearless, silent, stress-free world of the electric van.


[Environment > Coal]
Scottish leader accused of failing to consult community over power station
Residents have asked judges to block a decision to give a coal power station protected status under planning regulations
Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 24 September 2009 11.05 BST Article history

Residents next to the site of a major new coal-fired power station have accused the devolved Scottish government in court of breaching its legal duties to consult local people about the proposal.

Alex Salmond supports plans by the Danish power company Dong to build a major coal-fired station in Ayrshire to replace Hunterston nuclear power plant, claiming it would eventually be fitted with "clean coal" carbon-capture technology that will limit its CO2 emissions.

But local residents have asked judges in Edinburgh to block a decision by the Scottish government to give the power station special protected status under planning regulations.

Environmentalists believe Salmond's ambitious climate change strategies, including a 42% emissions cut target for 2020, and his championing of renewable energy, is undermined by his support for coal. He has called for Longannet coal mine in Fife to reopen, and his government has relaxed planning laws on opencast mines.

It emerged last December that the 1.6GW power station, which could open in 2014, had been quietly added to the priority list in the national planning framework (NPF), eight months after the main public consultation on the framework had closed.

That status means a planning inquiry cannot challenge the power station's purpose or legitimacy, just its design, siting and any environmental mitigation. Similar measures have been introduced by the UK government in England and Wales.

The campaigners, supported by the pressure group Planning Democracy and the Environmental Law Centre Scotland, yesterday submitted a petition for judicial review to the civil Court of Session in Edinburgh, accusing ministers of breaking planning law and European environmental law by failing to properly consult them.

The decision to add Hunterston to the NPF list of 14 priority projects was publicised in an obscure official journal, the Edinburgh Gazette, with a six-week consultation period. The main consultation on the 52 projects considered for the framework in 2008 was widely publicised and lasted for three months, supported by workshops.

They claim that the government was legally required to use local newspapers in Ayrshire and ensure that residents were fully notified of the proposal. Maggie Kelly, from the residents campaign group Communities Opposed to New Coal at Hunterston (CONCH), said: "The proposed power station would have a devastating impact on our community, damaging our health, our livelihoods and destroying the local environment. Yet under the National Planning Framework, we have been denied the opportunity to object to this major development."

The Scottish government refused to discuss the judicial review, but said: "The public will be able to have their say on matters such as siting, design and the minimisation and mitigation of potential environmental effects as part of the development management process, including any public inquiry.

news20090924gdn3

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[News > World news G20]
Pittsburgh braced for G20 protests
Police seal off city centre to insulate global leaders from potential protests surrounding G20 heads of government summit
Andrew Clark in New York
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 23 September 2009 21.54 BST Article history

A carefully drilled security operation swung into action in Pittsburgh today as police sealed off the centre of the so-called steel city to insulate global leaders from potentially rowdy protests surrounding a contentious G20 heads of government summit.

Nearly 4,000 police and 2,000 national guard troops, plus 11 coastguard vessels, are on standby in Pittsburgh, where President Barack Obama will host talks on issues ranging from the environment to the global economic downturn and restrictions on bankers' pay. The city was chosen as a venue to showcase its recovery from disused smokestacks to hi-tech growth.

Welcome flags adorned the streets and a banner from one skyscraper read "jobs, good jobs, green jobs". Catholic and Anglican bishops have asked every church in the district to ring bells at midday tomorrow to mark prayers for the summit. At a 19th-century greenhouse in the city's botanical gardens, chefs began preparing for an eve-of-summit banquet showcasing local produce, organic foods and sustainable agriculture.

But many restaurants, schools and offices were shutting for the duration of the two-day summit. Scores of shops have boarded up their windows, wary of a constellation of protest groups. Even before the arrival of politicians, demonstrators pressing for healthcare reform, more funds for HIV/Aids treatment and opposing bank bailouts have marched on the G20 convention centre. A group called the G20 Resistance Project is calling for a "peoples' uprising", culminating in a mass march with the theme‚ "power from below, not impositions from above".

Officials say Pittsburgh is ready. Dan Onorato, chief executive of the local Allegheny County authority, said protestors "come with the turf" in hosting summits: "We view them as our guests and we welcome those who plan peaceful protests. But those who want to do damage to property will be dealt with."

Onorato said he hoped world leaders would leave with an impression of dynamism from a city known as the birthplace of the artist Andy Warhol and as the home of the food brand Heinz. "We want to show how we've remade ourselves and turned ourselves round from an old industrial town."

The bulk of the negotiations will take place on Friday , when 19 leaders of the world's biggest economic powers, including Britain, Australia, Japan and Russia, plus the president of the European Union, will gather at Pittsburgh's David L Lawrence convention centre. The US is calling for a rebalancing of the global economy, pressing rapidly growing economies such as India and China to increase public spending and curtail their vast budget surpluses.

President Obama will urge nations to resist the temptation to cut off economic stimulus packages prematurely. But he will come under pressure from Europe to impose caps on multi-million-pound Wall Street bonuses, blamed for encouraging reckless risk-taking and for contributing to the credit crunch.

To address climate change, the US wants countries to agree on a plan to phase out any remaining subsidies for power generated by fossil fuels, although developing nations such as China, Brazil and Russia are reluctant to agree to this. There will also be efforts to avert any repetition of the global financial meltdown through tighter financial regulation – an avenue which Germany's finance minister, Peer Steinbrueck, has accused Britain of avoiding: "There is clearly a lobby in London that wants to defend its competitive advantage tooth and nail."

Meanwhile, leaders' spouses including Michelle Obama and Sarah Brown will have a meal at Rosemont Farm, a working farm owned by the food heir Teresa Heinz. They will tour Pittsburgh's Andy the Warhol art museum and visit to a local music academy for performances by several stars including the cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

A city of 313,000 people, Pittsburgh is spending $18m (£11m) on public safety. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that 27 ramps and streets leading into the central area, known as the golden triangle, will be blocked off. The US National Lawyers' Guild is sending 200 observers to watch the authorities' handling of protests, but tensions have already flared, with one group, Seeds of Peace, filing a lawsuit against the police for harassment.Seeds of Peace has accused the authorities of "illegal searches, vehicle seizures, raids and detentions", and has complained that police have repeatedly forced a van cooking food for demonstrators to move. One member said officers had even accused them of failing to have adequate local animal permits for pet dogs.

Several city-centre restaurants awere offering special G20 menus and some local businesses have vowed to carry on with business as usual. Larry Lagattuta, owner of an Italian bakery, Enrico Biscotti, said he hoped that activists would sample a biscuit before demonstrating: "There's an old Buddhist expression,: 'I stand here with my hands open.' We're ready for anything that happens, we're ready to welcome the world."


[News > Technology > Energy]
Widgets for greener living
Google and Hewlett-Packard are providing widgets to help computer users monitor energy consumption
Kevin Anderson
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 23 September 2009 21.00 BST Article history

With a heightened awareness of the environment and an increased urgency to address climate change, people are looking to all areas of their lives to reduce their carbon footprint.

Computers and the internet have come under fire from green groups for their contributions to carbon emissions. Environmental groups have even criticised Google for the carbon cost of every internet search made via the search engine. But to put this in context, estimates from the London-based Climate Group found in its Smart 2020 report that computers account for about 2% of total global emissions. By 2020, with more people owning computers, mobile phones and other gadgets, that percentage will rise to about 6%, according to the same report.

The good news is that in the past decade, computers have not only become smaller, faster and cheaper, but also much more energy-efficient. The cost of electricity and the demand for longer battery life for laptops and portable devices have been driving companies to increase the energy efficiency of electronics.

You can do a lot these days to build not only a very fast but also very efficient computer. You can choose energy efficient chips, energy efficient hard drives and power supplies with the 80 Plus efficiency rating.

Google and Hewlett-Packard are now getting involved by providing widgets to help you monitor the energy consumption of your computer and change your habits to cut your computing carbon footprint. Google employees have created a software "gadget" that will enable and optimise your computer's energy management settings. (You'll need to have Google Desktop installed to use it.)

Hewlett-Packard has launched its Power to Change scheme with a downloadable Adobe Air widget that reminds you to turn off your computer if you aren't using it. The site says that more than 23,000 people have joined the campaign.

These may be small steps, but the energy monitors help you understand your contributions to cut your carbon footprint.

news20090924gdn4

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Electric, hybrid and low-emission cars]
Chinese electric car maker upbeat despite gloomy sales
Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 23 September 2009 08.49 BST Article history

It has drawn the attention of billionaire investor Warren Buffett and been named as a potential saviour of the world's car industry. But Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer BYD is facing a struggle to live up to expectations, after it emerged that the company has sold fewer than 100 of its landmark plug-in cars in the past nine months.

The news of the low sales figures deals a serious blow to the company, which launched the F3DM model to much fanfare last December. At the time it was heralded as the world's first mass-produced plug-in hybrid car, a saloon with a battery that can see it travel up to 80 miles before the petrol engine kicks in.

But despite positive press and public targets ranging between 3,000 and 4,000 cars for 2009, reports suggest that the company has shifted just a fraction of the £13,000 vehicles it had planned to sell.

In an interview with Reuters at the Frankfurt Motor Show, one senior executive said that the company remained optimistic.

"The Chinese government supports 10 cities to each have 1,000 electric vehicles for public transportation," said Henry Li, general manager of the company's exports. "With this we already have a quite high demand for electric vehicles... but there is a lot of competition, so it is hard to say how many we can actually get."

However, the news places even more pressure on BYD's forthcoming E6 model - still under development at the company's headquarters in Shenzen and due to go on sale later this year.

BYD - the name stands for Build Your Dreams - started out as a manufacturer of rechargeable batteries before moving into the electric car business in 2003. The prospects for growth in the electric vehicle market and support from the government has helped propel the company forward, including a significant investment of $230m from US billionaire Warren Buffet.

The company has been bullish about its plans, suggesting that China's need to ditch polluting petrol vehicles in favour of clean transport will help the market for electric vehicles grow rapidly.

Earlier this year executives said they planned to sell 700,000 cars in 2010 - almost all of them inside China - and have longer term projections that will see BYD eclipse the world's largest car manufacturer, Toyota, in just a few years. The company has plans to launch in the US by the end of next year, and in Europe by 2011.

Scott Laprise, an industry analyst with investment brokers CLSA, told the Associated Press that such high expectations were a part of BYD's strategy to woo customers.

"It's all about advertising and brand building," he said. "That's going to be massive publicity. Don't sell anyone cars. Just let the world know you are the world leaders and then see what happens."

news20090924nn1

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 23 September 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.945
News
Publisher retracts paper by Iran's science minister
Iranian scientists press for plagiarism inquiry.
By Declan Butler

Iranian researchers say they are dismayed and angered that a 2009 paper¹ coauthored by Kamran Daneshjou, Iran's science minister, appears to have plagiarized a 2002 paper² published by South Korean researchers. The similarities between the articles were revealed yesterday by Nature (see 'Paper co-authored by Iran's science minister duplicates earlier paper'). Iranian scientists say they intend to press for an examination of the allegations, and for the minister's resignation — should wrongdoing be established.

Anthony Doyle, publishing editor for the Springer journal Engineering with Computers, in which the paper was published, also told Nature that the journal will label it as "retracted" online, and include an erratum in the next issue drawing attention to the matter. "Springer takes plagiarism very seriously."

"This is a bitter blow to Iranian academic society, it's a scandal," says Ali Gorji, an Iranian neuroscientist based at the University of Münster in Germany, "I'd like to assure the international scientific community that Iranian scientists are honest and ethical, and that they are offended by this stupid act."

The affair has been widely picked up among Iranian researchers' email networks, blogs and some political news websites in Iran. Researchers inside Iran say that the minister has not yet publicly responded to the allegations, but that they expect him to. "There is a paradoxical situation between Iran's determination to boost science and technology, as stated by the Supreme Leader and the alleged non-ethical action by a science minister of the country," asserts one scientist in Iran, who wanted to remain anonymous.

Striking similarities

The 2009 paper by Daneshjou and Majid Shahravi, from the department of mechanical engineering at the Iran University of Science and Technology in Tehran, in many places duplicates verbatim the text of the 2002 paper published by South Korean scientists in Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics. A smaller number of sentences are identical to those in a paper given at a 2003 conference by other researchers.

"The introduction is copied practically word-for-word," comments Muhammad Sahimi, an Iranian materials scientist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, adding that so too are large parts of the methods, results and discussion section. "The English of the paper is not uniform," he notes, "Where they have copied from other papers, it reads smoothly. Where they have tried to add things themselves, it does not read as smoothly."

Similarly, almost all the figures, and their captions, are copied from the South Korean paper, although their order is sometimes different, he notes, adding that some are mirror images of those in the earlier paper.

Nature has since discovered that another 2009 article³ by the same authors, published in the Taiwan-based Journal of Mechanics, contains large chunks identical to a 2006 article published by a US scientist in Elsevier's International Journal of Impact Engineering4, as well as material from the paper by South Korean scientists.

Nature has made repeated efforts to contact Daneshjou and Shahravi for comment without success.

Controversial appointment

Many Iranian researchers have disputed Daneshjou's nomination as science minister. "The man's appointment was a political action by the government. He was not selected, nor is he supported, by Iranian scientists," says Gorji.

Daneshjou served as the head of the interior ministry's office that oversaw the conduct of the contested presidential elections last June, which returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power. He was also Tehran's governor general from 2005-2008, and is described by scientists as a hardliner with ties to the revolutionary guards — most Iranian scientists, inside and outside the country, support the reformist movement.

Many researchers fled Iran during the cultural revolution in the early 1980s. The regime closed universities for three years, and violently purged them of any Western or non-Islamic influences.

Some now worry that a new purge of the universities is on the way, following Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's denouncing in early September of the humanities and social sciences taught in universities as a corrupting influence causing students to doubt and question Islamic values, and called for a revision of what was taught. Such alleged influences have also been a recurring theme in the recent public confessions and show trials of protestors.

References
1. Daneshjou, K. & Shahravi, M. Eng. Comput. 25, 177- 667 (2008).
2. Lee, W. , Lee, H-J. & Shin, H. J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 35, 2676– 2686 (2002).
3. Daneshjou, K. & Shahravi, M. J. Mech. 25, 117– 128 (2009).
4. Segletes, S. Int. J. Impact Eng. 32, 1403- 1439 (2006).

news20090924nn2

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 23 September 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.944
News: Briefing
Climate summit fails to address key challenges
Lack of progress threatens global deal.
By Jeff Tollefson

Some had hoped for a breakthrough as global leaders convened for a global-warming summit at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Tuesday. Early indications suggest otherwise, but leaders of the major economies will get a second chance when the G20 meets in Pittsburgh on Thursday and Friday. Nature takes a closer look.

Expectations were high for both US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao. Did either rise to the occasion?

Everybody is looking for signs of progress from the two biggest emitters, who together account roughly 40% of emissions, but neither president offered the kind of commitments needed to re-energize the talks. Obama was in the unenviable position of needing to make bold promises before the US Congress has weighed in on the issue. Nonetheless, he declined to acknowledge, let alone address head on, the challenges he is facing on the domestic front.

For his part, Hu largely underscored existing policies, promising to expand forests, produce 15% of the country's power using renewable energy and decrease energy intensity per unit of gross domestic product by a "notable margin" between now and 2020. All of these would substantially reduce Chinese emissions compared with baseline forecasts, and China is beginning to win some praise for its energy policies. Nonetheless, cumulative emissions are expected to continue rising, and Hu made no reference to any specific emissions targets or a date by which the country might try to stabilize its emissions.

Was there any sign of a convergence between the two countries?

Both Hu and Obama offered generic language about the need for all nations to move together, but the basic stumbling blocks — who will move first, who will pay and what kind of commitments will be required — remained solidly in place.

Hu began his speech by underscoring the idea of "common but differentiated responsibilities", and then went on to demand that wealthy nations provide financial aid to support climate mitigation and sustainable development in the developing world. Obama said what so many industrialized leaders have been saying all along: developed nations must move first and provide financial support to those who need it, but developing countries will need to commit to some kind of verifiable action as well.

Both positions seem reasonable. What's the problem?

Although almost everybody agrees with these statements, these same phrases have been uttered countless times by officials all over the world. Finding a middle ground has proven elusive.

What kind of discussions are expected at the G20 summit this week?

Global warming made it on to the agenda, but discussions about global economic recovery are expected to dominate. Although leaders are planning discussions about a climate finance package that would help developing countries pay for adaptation and mitigation in the years to come, few think the heads of state are likely to produce any kind of conclusive statement.

What does all this mean for the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December?

Such things are hard to predict, but it has become increasingly clear that getting a groundbreaking deal on greenhouse-gas emissions to replace the Kyoto Protocol will be difficult.

Speaking in Washington recently, Michael Zammit Cutajar, Malta's climate change envoy and chairman of one of the core negotiating groups in the UN climate process, said that this kind of diplomacy is like the Big Bang in reverse — painfully slow for a long time, "with a big bang at the end".

Jennifer Morgan, director of the climate and energy programme at the World Resources Institute in Washington DC, has laid out four possible outcomes. The 'Breakthrough' outcome, in which countries come to the table with strong proposals and then build them into an even stronger agreement. The 'foundation' scenario, which relies on a solid framework that spells out basic commitments and things such as funding, monitoring and verification, leaving the details for later. The third, 'greenwash', involves nothing but bottom-up commitments that nations would have made anyway, which means there is no value added by the international framework. And the last is self-explanatory: 'collapse'.

Right now, Morgan says she thinks the negotiations are hovering between foundation and greenwash.

Meanwhile, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called for heads of the major industrialized nations to meet again after the G20 meeting but ahead of Copenhagen.

news20090924nn3

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 23 September 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.935
News
Indian ancestry revealed
The mixing of two distinct lineages led to most modern-day Indians.
By Elie Dolgin

The population of India was founded on two ancient groups that are as genetically distinct from each other as they are from other Asians, according to the largest DNA survey of Indian heritage to date. Nowadays, however, most Indians are a genetic hotchpotch of both ancestries, despite the populous nation's highly stratified social structure.

"All Indians are pretty similar," says Chris Tyler-Smith, a genome researcher at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute near Cambridge, UK, who was not involved in the study. "The population subdivision has not had a dominating effect."

India makes up around one-sixth of the world's population, yet the South Asian country has been sorely under-represented in genome-wide studies of human genetic variation. The International HapMap Project, for example, includes populations with African, East Asian and European ancestry — but no Indians. The closest the Human Genome Diversity Cell Line Panel of 51 global populations comes is Pakistan, India's western neighbour. The Indian Genome Variation database was launched in 2003 to fill the gap, but so far the project has studied only 420 DNA-letter differences, called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), in 75 genes¹.

Caste divisions

Now, a team led by David Reich of the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Lalji Singh of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, India, has probed more than 560,000 SNPs across the genomes of 132 Indian individuals from 25 diverse ethnic and tribal groups dotted all over India.

{“There are populations that have lived in the same town and same village for thousands of years without exchanging genes.”
David Reich
Broad Institute}

The researchers showed that most Indian populations are genetic admixtures of two ancient, genetically divergent groups, which each contributed around 40-60% of the DNA to most present-day populations. One ancestral lineage — which is genetically similar to Middle Eastern, Central Asian and European populations — was higher in upper-caste individuals and speakers of Indo-European languages such as Hindi, the researchers found. The other lineage was not close to any group outside the subcontinent, and was most common in people indigenous to the Andaman Islands, a remote archipelago in the Bay of Bengal.

The researchers also found that Indian populations were much more highly subdivided than European populations. But whereas European ancestry is mostly carved up by geography, Indian segregation was driven largely by caste. "There are populations that have lived in the same town and same village for thousands of years without exchanging genes," says Reich.

Number puzzle

Indian populations, although currently huge in number, were also founded by relatively small bands of individuals, the study suggests. Overall, the picture that emerges is of ancient genetic mixture, says Reich, followed by fragmentation into small, isolated ethnic groups, which were then kept distinct for thousands of years because of limited intermarriage — a practice also known as endogamy.

This genetic evidence refutes the claim that the Indian caste structure was a modern invention of British colonialism, the authors say. "This idea that caste is thousands of years old is a big deal," says Nicole Boivin, an archaeologist who studies South Asian prehistory at the University of Oxford, UK. "To say that endogamy goes back so far, and that genetics shows it, is going to be controversial to many anthropologists." Boivin fears that the study might be 'spun' by politicians seeking to maintain caste structures in India, and she calls on social scientists and geneticists to collaborate on such "highly politicized" issues.

Beyond the study's social repercussions, the low rates of genetic mingling "could have important implications for biomedical studies of Indian populations", notes Sarah Tishkoff, a human geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia who was not involved in the research. The partitioned population structure will need to be taken into account in any efforts to map disease genes, she says.

The small numbers of founders of each Indian group also have clinical consequences, says Reich. "There will be a lot of recessive diseases in India that will be different in each population and that can be searched for and mapped genetically," he says. "That will be important for health in India."

The evidence that most Indians are genetically alike, even though anthropological data show that Indian groups tend to marry within their own group, is "very puzzling", says Aravinda Chakravarti, a human molecular geneticist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, who wrote an accompanying News & Views article³. For example, Chakravarti notes that the study can't establish a rough date for when the ancient mixing between the two ancestral populations took place. "There are very curious features of the data that are hard to explain," he says, adding: "This is not the end of the story."

References
1. Indian Genome Variation Consortium J. Genet. 87, 3-20 (2008).
2. Reich, D. et al. Nature 461, 489-494 (2009).
3. Chakravarti, A. Nature 461, 487-488 (2009).

news20090924nn4

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 23 September 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.940
News
Protein burns its evolutionary bridges
Mutations can set genetic change on an irreversible path.
By Elie Dolgin

Time always marches forward — and so does evolution, according to a new study showing that protein changes that happened over the course of tens of millions of years can prevent molecular turnarounds and render evolution irreversible.

"This backwards pathway is not accessible to selection," says study author Joe Thornton, a molecular evolutionary biologist at the University of Oregon in Eugene. "It's very strongly supported evidence for the view that contingency plays a major role in evolution."

More than a century ago, the French–born Belgian palaeontologist Louis Dollo proposed that evolution cannot retrace its steps to restore a lost trait — an idea that has remained controversial. Dubbed Dollo's law, this proposition had a certain appeal to many evolutionary biologists. Whales and snakes never regained legs, for example; birds did not reacquire teeth. But more recently, studies have shown that silenced genes and dormant developmental programs can be reactivated, leading many researchers to believe that evolution can indeed double back on itself.

Evolution's arrow

Thornton and his colleagues decided to test Dollo's law at the molecular level. They focused on the glucocorticoid receptor (GR), a protein that binds the hormone cortisol to regulate the stress response and other functions in humans and other vertebrates. Thornton's team had previously showed that the first GR protein evolved more than 400 million years ago from an ancestral receptor that was activated by a trio of hormones: cortisol, aldosterone and deoxycorticosterone¹. Over the course of 40 million years, the ancestral protein acquired 37 amino-acid alterations, cortisol binding to produce the 'modern' GR protein².

{“The chances of reversibility ever happening are vanishingly small.”
Joe Thornton
University of Oregon}

The researchers reverse-engineered the protein to undo all seven mutations that affected cortisol binding, but the resulting receptor was non-functional and did not bind any hormone. To determine whether other mutations might be having an effect on receptor function, the team looked at the three-dimensional structure of the protein and pinpointed five additional mutations. These extra mutations did not affect the cortisol-binding specificity of the receptor but they did prevent it from doing its job properly. When the researchers reversed these mutations as well, the protein was transformed back into its ancestral functional state and could bind all three hormones.

Although it is technically possible for the molecular changes to backtrack, admits Thornton, such a shift couldn't be driven by natural selection. Undoing the five extra mutations in the absence of the other seven changes had negative or neutral consequences on protein function, and so would not be favoured by evolution, the researchers report in Nature³. "The chances of reversibility ever happening are vanishingly small," Thornton says. "It's virtually impossible."

Traces of time

The study reveals how interdependencies between amino acids can limit the scope of evolution, says Günter Wagner, an evolutionary developmental biologist at Yale University. "Because [the additional mutations] are only enabling but not themselves selective, they can mutate away, effectively burning the bridge you went over," he says.

Michael Rose, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Irvine, says that the experimental demonstration of irreversibility was "impressive" but not all that surprising. "That this phenomenon would apply on this timescale is what every evolutionary biologist would expect," he says. But in the short term, selection often goes back to its old ways. For example, earlier this year, Rose and his colleagues showed that fruit flies that had diverged over decades of selection in the lab returned to their ancestral state after just two years of reverse selection⁴. Thornton's study, by contrast, "is way, way macro in time frame," Rose says, adding, "It illustrates the importance of historicity in evolutionary biology."

But Fyodor Kondrashov, an evolutionary geneticist at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, Spain, disagrees. "There's absolutely nothing impossible about reversing everything that has happened," he says. Rather than focusing on the authors' "spin of reversibility", Kondrashov says, the paper highlights how the likelihood of particular evolutionary trajectories is contingent on a protein's genetics and structure. "We really need these kinds of examples", he adds.

References
1. Bridgham, J. T., Carroll, S. M. & Thornton, J. W. Science 312, 97-101 (2006).
2. Ortlund, E. A., Bridgham, J. T., Redinbo, M. R. & Thornton, J. W. Science 317, 1544-1548 (2007).
3. Bridgham, J. T., Ortlund, E. A. & Thornton, J. W. Nature 461, 515-519 (2009).
4. Teotónio, H., Chelo, I. M., Bradic, M., Rose, M. R. & Long, A. D. Nature Genetics 41, 251-257 (2009).

news20090924bcc

[One-Minute World News] from [BBC NEWS]

[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 12:56 GMT, Thursday, 24 September 2009 13:56 UK
Suu Kyi 'welcomes US engagement'
Detained Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi says she welcomes US plans to engage with the country's military rulers, her lawyers say.

But lawyer Nyan Win said that Ms Suu Kyi also wanted the US to engage with the political opposition.

It comes after the US said sanctions against Burma could be eased if the junta improved its human rights record.

Ms Suu Kyi is under house arrest and is currently preparing an appeal against an extension of her sentence.

"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said that direct engagement is good," said Nyan Win.

"She accepts it but she says that engagement must be with both sides," AFP news agency quoted him as saying.

Earlier, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said sanctions remained an important part of US policy but that "by themselves they have not produced the results that had been hoped for on behalf of the people of Burma".

She said the US would be looking to employ both sanctions and engagement to "help achieve democratic reform" in Burma.

Ms Suu Kyi was sentenced in August to a further 18 months' house arrest after a US intruder stayed at her home.

She has spent 14 of the past 20 years in detention and if her appeal fails, the extension will keep her out of multi-party elections scheduled to be held next year.


[Africa]
Page last updated at 13:34 GMT, Thursday, 24 September 2009 14:34 UK
US travel ban threat for Kenyans
Hundreds died in weeks of violence following the election in 2007
The US has threatened to impose travel bans on 15 senior Kenyan officials if they fail to support the country's "reform agenda".

Michael Ranneberger, the US ambassador in Nairobi, says letters have been sent to the officials urging them to back reforms and oppose the use of violence.

In recent months the US has criticised Kenya for failing to investigate deadly violence after the 2007 election.

Some 1,300 people died, but officials have resisted calls for a tribunal.
The letter sent to the officials stated that the US "would not do business as usual with those who do not support reform or who support violence".

In it, state department official Johnnie Carson urges Kenya to strengthen its institutions and eradicate corruption to avoid more violence after the next election in 2012.

Deadlines missed

Mr Ranneberger told reporters he would not be releasing the officials' names, but said they included ministers, MPs, permanent secretaries and other prominent officials.

He added that the US would "more closely scrutinise any proposals for Kenya in international financial institutions".

A power-sharing government was eventually set up after the 2007 election, but it has struggled to restore stability in the wake of the violence.

Rights groups blamed the police for many of the deaths in the riots, which raged for two months after the election.

International mediators have pressed the government to set up a tribunal to investigate the killings, but officials continue to miss every deadline they are set.

In recent weeks the US has also criticised President Mwai Kibaki's attempt to reappoint a much-criticised anti-corruption chief without parliament's approval.


[Americas]
Page last updated at 14:00 GMT, Thursday, 24 September 2009 15:00 UK
Obama pushes nuclear disarmament
The UN Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution calling for nuclear disarmament, in a session chaired by US President Barack Obama.

The resolution calls for further efforts to stop the spread of nuclear arms, to boost disarmament, and to lower the risk of "nuclear terrorism".

It was the first time US president had chaired a Security Council meeting.

The resolution comes amid growing concerns among world powers over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

It also comes a day after Mr Obama's debut UN speech, in which he warned of a nuclear arms race.

The resolution adopted on Thursday reaffirms the council's commitment "to seek a safer world for all and to create the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons", the Associated Press reported.

It does not specifically mention countries by name, such as North Korea and Iran, but reaffirms previous Security Council resolutions relating to their nuclear plans.

Iran's nuclear programme has been criticised by the US and five nations who are set to hold talks next week.

Iran says its nuclear ambitions are for peaceful energy purposes, but others fear it is developing weapons.

{ UN ON THURSDAY
Security Council:
> Nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament
General Debate:
> Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu
> Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama
> Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
> Iraqi President Jalal Talabani
>Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili}

Also on Thursday, a UN conference on a 1996 treaty banning nuclear bomb tests will begin with a speech by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Her appearance is the first US participation at the biannual conference since 1999 when the US Senate refused to ratify the treaty.

On Wednesday, the first day of the United Nations General Assembly, Iran's plans came under fire.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Iranian leaders were "making a tragic mistake" if they thought the international community would not respond.

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned Iran - and North Korea - that the world would be even tougher on proliferation.

In his speech on Wednesday, President Obama said: "For decades, we averted disaster, even under the shadow of a super-power stand-off. But today, the threat of proliferation is growing in scope and complexity.

"If we fail to act, we will invite nuclear arms races in every region, and the prospect of wars and acts of terror on a scale that we can hardly imagine."

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signalled that Moscow might be prepared to soften its opposition to sanctions against Iran over its nuclear plans.

But the Chinese foreign ministry has said that increasing pressure on Iran would not be effective.

In his speech, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke of countries which undermined the development of other nations under the pretext of preventing arms proliferation.

Mr Obama said he and Mr Medvedev shared the goal of allowing Iran to pursue peaceful nuclear energy, but not nuclear weapons.


[Middle East]
Page last updated at 12:12 GMT, Thursday, 24 September 2009 13:12 UK
'Al-Qaeda group' escape Iraq jail
Sixteen members of al-Qaeda in Iraq have escaped from a prison north of Baghdad, Iraqi security officials say.

Reports said five of the group, who were being held at a facility in Tikrit, had been sentenced to death for involvement in attacks.

A security official said that the men removed the windows from a bathroom, crawled through the opening and climbed a ladder over the prison walls.

One of the men has since been caught, but the rest remain at large.

Checkpoints have been set up around Tikrit, which is a predominantly Sunni town in Salah al-Din province about 80 miles (130km) from Baghdad.

Iraqi military spokesman Maj Gen Abdul-Karim Khalaf said extra surveillance had also been ordered at Iraq's borders and throughout the north-west of the country.

A senior provincial security official told AFP news agency that the escapees had probably received assistance from within the prison system.

"It is clear there was co-operation with specific groups that helped them escape. Probably one of the officials helped them," he said.

In a separate development, 24 people have been arrested in Morocco on suspicion of having links to a cell recruiting suicide bombers for Iraq, according to a state news agency.

It said the group, based in towns and cities across Morocco, was also suspected of recruiting men to fight in Somalia and Afghanistan.

news20090924reut1

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business
Hu's carbon commitment marks new era for China
Thu Sep 24, 2009 2:52am EDT
By Emma Graham-Harrison - Analysis

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese President Hu Jintao's pledge this week to cut "carbon intensity" marked Beijing's first acceptance that it must control emissions, a pivotal shift that could alter the dynamic of global climate change talks.

It seemed obscure and technical to many, with no hard number to anchor the target or boost pressure on other major emitters, and some critics claimed the new objective was little more than a dressed up extension of existing "energy intensity" goals.

But buried amid stodgy language and recycled commitments to cleaner energy was China's first recognition of a responsibility the rest of the world has long urged it to shoulder -- that of counting and curbing its emissions of greenhouse gases.

Previously, Beijing had always argued that although it would attempt to control greenhouse gas output, as a developing country China could not accept any specific targets because they might hinder the fight against poverty.

As China is now the world's top emitter, the shift should smooth talks on a new global framework to tackle climate change, due to be finalized at UN-led talks in Copenhagen in December.

Rich nation demands for major emerging economies to accept greater commitments have been one of the key stumbling blocks.

Hu's decision to unveil the new policy in a rare address to the United Nations was also a sign to the international community that climate change has become a priority for China's leaders.

"It was enormously important," said Deborah Seligsohn, China programme director at the World Resources Institute in Beijing.

"And the fact that, when Hu was addressing the United Nations, this was the subject he chose to speak on -- I think it is impossible to overstate the importance of that as well."

The lack of a firm target was in line with Chinese leaders' tradition of unveiling big-picture new initiatives and leaving officials to fill in the gaps, Seligsohn added.

The country's climate change chief has already promised that hard figures will soon follow. And the National Statistics Bureau is preparing carbon calculation methods, because it has been told controls will start from 2011, sources say.

MORE THAN ENERGY INTENSITY

The carbon commitment has been seen as a natural extension of an existing goal to reduce energy intensity 20 percent between 2006 and 2010, which did indirectly rein in emissions by promoting more efficient use of fossil fuels.

But that target was driven largely by energy security and air pollution worries and did not affect Beijing's stance that it had no duty to set firm controls on carbon dioxide output.

Energy intensity measures only the amount of fuel needed to generate each dollar of economic output, but does not differentiate between renewables and other types of power, or encourage controls on non-energy related emissions.

A factory seeking to meet a carbon intensity target could choose whether to boost efficiency or invest in renewables like wind or solar to provide its power.

Carbon targets could also provide an incentive for emissions cuts which make little sense in energy terms alone, such as an expensive system to capture and burn methane -- which has a much greater warming effect than carbon dioxide -- in a coal mine.

China may also have room to make its emissions targets even more ambitious than those for energy efficiency.

Every gram of fuel saved will mean a corresponding reduction in emissions, but there will be additional reductions from a planned roll-out of renewables, which should provide 15 percent of the country's energy in 2020.

According to figures published by the United States Department of Energy, China in 2006 emitted 2.85 tonnes of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels for every $1,000 of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

This was 15 percent lower than a decade earlier, suggesting China would need to set itself a relatively ambitious target for carbon intensity to get a large deviation from business as usual.

In comparison, the United States in 2006 emitted 0.52 tonnes of carbon dioxide for every $1,000 of GDP.

NOT ENOUGH FOR COPENHAGEN

Hu's promise disappointed those who took strong Chinese hints of a new policy to mean it would be something powerful enough to kickstart the global talks.

"I think it hurts momentum," said Nick Mabey, head of London-based think-tank E3G.

But the new target could pave the way for a deal between China and the United States, the world's number two emitter and one of the most outspoken critics of Beijing's emissions policy.

Former President George W. Bush set a U.S. carbon intensity goal after rejecting the Kyoto Protocol, so it is hard for Washington to dismiss Hu's plans out of hand.

It also appeals to those in the financial industry who hope to see China set up a carbon trading scheme, as it will boost Beijing's ability to measure output of greenhouse gases, which is key to any market in credits to emit.

And a carbon intensity target could dovetail with plans touted by some players in the European Union for "sectoral carbon crediting", to extend the carbon market after 2012.

Under this system, companies in sectors like steel and power that beat a certain emission or energy intensity benchmark would qualify for carbon offset credits which would be tradable in Europe's emissions trading scheme. (Editing by Nick Macfie)


[Green Business]
China, South Korea lead in green stimulus investment
Thu Sep 24, 2009 1:04am EDT
By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - South Korea and China lead the world's 20 largest economies in the percentage of economic stimulus money they invest in environmental projects, the U.N. Environment Program reported on Thursday.

Other members of the Group of 20 leading economic powers, including the United States, trail behind in percentage of green investment from stimulus money, the agency found.

Almost exactly a year after the global financial crisis began, the U.N. agency found that about 15 percent of the estimated $3.1 trillion in global stimulus funds are "green" in nature.

But only 3 percent of stimulus funds committed to environmental projects were actually disbursed by the middle of this year, and the total in committed funds is still below 1 percent of global gross domestic product, the amount economists recommend to reduce dependence on carbon and fuel the transition to a greener world economy, the agency said.

The level of funding for renewable energy is not enough to cut carbon emissions and limit average global warming to 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C), the increase above which some of the most severe effects of climate change are predicted.

The U.N. agency's executive director, Achim Steiner, called on the G20 leaders to have stimulus packages that double their green investments in sustainable energy to $500 billion a year to keep the global temperature rise below this threshold.

The report also noted that global stimulus commitments include some $250 billion in what the agency called "perverse subsidies" for fossil fuels and agriculture that can actually add to climate change are operating in the G20 economies.

Pavan Sukhdev, project leader of the U.N. agency's Green Economy Initiative and director of the current report, said this study does not address climate negotiations focused on crafting a follow-on agreement to the carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol at a December meeting in Copenhagen.

However, he said, the report does show that there is significant greening investment -- about $512 billion -- commitment already, pegged to some hope of a carbon market after this phase of the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

"So it would of course be a huge disappointment if Copenhagen did not make headway toward a new 2012 agreement, as that would reduce if not defeat business interest in 'greening' processes and energy use," Sukhdev said in answer to emailed questions about the report.

In order of the percentage of stimulus money committed to environmental projects, South Korea was first with 79 percent; China had 34 percent; Australia 21 percent; France 18 percent; United Kingdom 17 percent; Germany 13 percent; United States 12 percent; South Africa 11 percent; Mexico 10 percent; Canada 8 percent; Spain 6 percent; Japan 6 percent; Italy 1 percent.

(Editing by Eric Walsh)

news20090924reut2

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
New Zealand's new carbon laws set for safe passage
Thu Sep 24, 2009 2:12am EDT

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - New Zealand brought its revised scheme to cut carbon emissions before parliament on Thursday, confident of enacting it before about 190 nations meet in December to hammer out a new global climate pact.

In contrast to neighboring Australia, where legislation for a similar scheme is stuck in political deadlock, the New Zealand government has struck deals with minor parties to ensure its legislation makes a relatively safe passage through parliament.

New Zealand, like Australia, proposes to use a market-based scheme to put a price on carbon emissions and plans to phase it in from July next year. It revised the original legislation this month to cut costs for businesses and households.

New Zealand Climate Change Minister Nick Smith said in introducing the legislation that the revised scheme was workable and affordable, balancing environmental and economic needs.

"It takes a responsible approach to the climate change problem caused by greenhouse gas emissions while being realistic about how much a small country like New Zealand can contribute," Smith said in parliament.

The governing minority National Party has done a deal with the small United Future and Maori parties to have the legislation introduced and referred to a parliamentary committee for detailed study and public submissions, standard procedure for new bills.

The revised scheme will cover all sectors and all gases, but increases subsidies to industry and offers price caps on the cost of carbon.

Smith said he wanted the committee to report back on the legislation by mid-November to allow its passage into law before the Copenhagen climate change negotiations in December.

The Maori Party, which has a support agreement with National on confidence and financial matters, has reversed its previous policy favoring a carbon tax and agreed to support the bill. Its five seats and the single United Future vote, will provide National with the necessary majority in the 122 seat parliament.

Business groups have backed the proposed changes because the previous scheme, brought in by the then Labor-led government, was seen as too expensive and ambitious.

Environmental groups have criticized the revised scheme as being too lenient on carbon-emitting sectors.

The government has said its target to cut greenhouse gas emissions would be between 10 and 20 percent by 2020 on 1990 levels, depending on the outcome of the Copenhagen meeting.

(Reporting by Gyles Beckford; Editing by Mark Bendeich)


[Green Business]
Honda unveils battery-powered unicycle
Thu Sep 24, 2009 1:06am EDT

TOKYO (Reuters Life!) - Honda Motor Co has unveiled an electric battery-powered personal transporter, a unicycle shaped like the number eight that riders steer by leaning in the direction they want to travel.

The "U3-X," which Honda will show at the Tokyo Motor Show next month, is the latest to join a growing number of futuristic transportation devices, such as the much bigger Segway.

But while the Segway has been used outdoors and in big buildings, the 65 cm (2 ft 2 inch) tall Honda machine is small enough and light enough to use at home.

Honda's machine has a one-wheeled, "8"-shaped body on which the rider sits and changes direction by leaning forward, backward or sideways. It moves at a maximum speed of 6 kph (3.7 mph), about the pace of brisk walk.

The self-balancing U3-X, weighing in at less than 10 kg (22 lb), is powered by a lithium-ion battery and runs for an hour per charge.

Honda Chief Executive Takanobu Ito told reporters the machine could one day become the smallest means of transportation for human beings, though it is purely in the development stage and the automaker has no plans to start selling them now.

Ito said the U3-X's small size would make it an ideal indoor transport device.

"If my legs get a little weak, I would like to have this around in my house. It's easy to move around," said the 56-year-old CEO.

(Reporting by Taiga Uranaka; Editing by Chris Gallagher)


[Green Business]
New Zealand's new carbon laws set for safe passage
Thu Sep 24, 2009 2:12am EDT

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - New Zealand brought its revised scheme to cut carbon emissions before parliament on Thursday, confident of enacting it before about 190 nations meet in December to hammer out a new global climate pact.

In contrast to neighboring Australia, where legislation for a similar scheme is stuck in political deadlock, the New Zealand government has struck deals with minor parties to ensure its legislation makes a relatively safe passage through parliament.

New Zealand, like Australia, proposes to use a market-based scheme to put a price on carbon emissions and plans to phase it in from July next year. It revised the original legislation this month to cut costs for businesses and households.

New Zealand Climate Change Minister Nick Smith said in introducing the legislation that the revised scheme was workable and affordable, balancing environmental and economic needs.

"It takes a responsible approach to the climate change problem caused by greenhouse gas emissions while being realistic about how much a small country like New Zealand can contribute," Smith said in parliament.

The governing minority National Party has done a deal with the small United Future and Maori parties to have the legislation introduced and referred to a parliamentary committee for detailed study and public submissions, standard procedure for new bills.

The revised scheme will cover all sectors and all gases, but increases subsidies to industry and offers price caps on the cost of carbon.

Smith said he wanted the committee to report back on the legislation by mid-November to allow its passage into law before the Copenhagen climate change negotiations in December.

The Maori Party, which has a support agreement with National on confidence and financial matters, has reversed its previous policy favoring a carbon tax and agreed to support the bill. Its five seats and the single United Future vote, will provide National with the necessary majority in the 122 seat parliament.

Business groups have backed the proposed changes because the previous scheme, brought in by the then Labor-led government, was seen as too expensive and ambitious.

Environmental groups have criticized the revised scheme as being too lenient on carbon-emitting sectors.

The government has said its target to cut greenhouse gas emissions would be between 10 and 20 percent by 2020 on 1990 levels, depending on the outcome of the Copenhagen meeting.

(Reporting by Gyles Beckford; Editing by Mark Bendeich)

news20090924reut3

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green BUsiness]
FPL, Duke Energy to convert to electric vehicles
Thu Sep 24, 2009 9:20am EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two utilities, FPL Group Inc and Duke Energy Corp, said on Thursday they plan to convert all their company cars and trucks to plug-in hybrid or all-electric vehicles by 2020.

The joint commitment represents more than 10,000 vehicles and a $600 million investment for manufacturers to produce viable plug-in electric vehicles, the companies said in a statement at a Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York.

They said the conversion has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 125,000 metric tons over the next 10 years.

North Carolina-based Duke and FPL, which is headquartered in Florida, said their goal is for all new fleets to be plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) by 2020.

"The more organizations that join this initiative, the more we can develop a sustainable transportation future," said Lew Hay, FPL Group chairman and chief executive.

(Reporting by Steve James, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)


[Green Business]
Italy asks to renegotiate EU carbon quota: source
Thu Sep 24, 2009 10:05am EDT
By Pete Harrison and Julien Toyer

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has written to the European Commission asking to renegotiate the caps on his country's carbon dioxide emissions, an Italian government official said on Thursday.

Several European Union countries, including France, are also discussing the possibility of asking for more carbon emissions permits from a reserve fund of the ETS, an EU diplomat said.

The comments came one day after Poland and Estonia made headway in a court challenge to their own emissions caps.

"The cap assigned to Italy was excessively low and we have difficulty meeting it as our industry is already very efficient, especially our power generation system," the Italian official said.

The caps cover carbon emitted during the 2008-2012 phase of the Emissions Trading Scheme, the EU's main tool for ratcheting down industry's greenhouse gas emissions in the fight against climate change.

"The letter was meant to raise a problem that has also become evident in the European court ... decision on Poland and Estonia's caps," the Italian official added.

"We are making no proposal, just looking to discuss this problem with the Commission."

A shortage of carbon permits could cost Italy about 500 million euros ($736 million) in the short term, mounting to a total of 800 million by 2012, the official added.

Poland and Estonia's victory at the European Court of First Instance has unsettled markets for carbon emissions permits as it raises doubts over the authority of the EU's executive Commission to determine the quotas.

Some analysts have even raised the possibility the ETS will become bogged down in a string of appeals by member states unhappy with their quotas. But a European Commission spokeswoman played down the chances of negotiation.

"The ceilings have been established already, and normally are not renegotiable," she told a news briefing.

Elsewhere in Europe, discussions center on the "New Entrants Reserve" of the ETS, a reserve of carbon permits intended to be used for new businesses joining the scheme as economies expand.

"The question of the reserve for new entrants is being asked in several EU countries, among them France, but at this point there is no formal demand of reviewing the allocation plan," the EU diplomat said.

(Reporting by Pete Harrison and Julien Toyer, editing by Timothy Heritage)


[Green Business]
EU states mull seeking more carbon permits: diplomat
Thu Sep 24, 2009 9:27am EDT

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Several European Union countries, including France, are discussing the possibility of asking for more carbon emission permits from a reserve fund of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), an EU diplomat said.

The diplomat made the comments on Thursday, one day after Poland and Estonia made headway in a court challenge to their own emissions caps.

The discussions center on the "New Entrants Reserve" of the ETS, a reserve of carbon permits intended to be used for new businesses joining the scheme as economies expand.

"The question of the reserve for new entrants is being asked in several EU countries, among them France, but at this point there is no formal demand of reviewing the allocation plan," the diplomat said.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has written to the European Commission asking to renegotiate the caps on his country's carbon dioxide emissions, an Italian government official said on Thursday.

(Reporting by Pete Harrison, editing by Dale Hudson)


[Green Business]
Poland faces risk asking for more CO2 permits
Thu Sep 24, 2009 10:18am EDT
By Gabriela Baczynska

WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland is still considering whether to demand more emissions permits for its coal-reliant industry after a European Union court ruling, but officials said by doing so Warsaw could face a further cut in permits.

The Luxembourg tribunal upheld on Wednesday Poland's lawsuit against a decision by the 27-nation bloc executive, the European Commission, to give the EU's biggest ex-communist state 208.5 million tonnes per year in CO2 permits for 2008-2012.

Prices for the carbon permits traded under the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme dropped four percent after the announcement -- which also concerned Estonia -- as traders feared more permits could hit the market. Warsaw originally demanded 285 million tonnes annually.

Several other EU countries, including France and Italy, are now discussing the possibility of asking for more carbon emission permits from a reserve fund of the EU's trading scheme, an EU diplomat said on Thursday.

"There is only one thing we can now say for sure. It's certainly not true that we now have 76 million tonnes to offer around," Wojciech Jaworowski, head of Poland's national permits administrator (KASHUE) said on Thursday.

"We are analyzing all aspects of the case and reading the justification of this ruling carefully. It's too early to say if we will prepare a new national allocation plan (NAP). It'll be a whole new deal and new conditions," he added.

The European Commission said it may appeal the ruling and has two months to do so.

Warsaw had originally opposed Brussels plan saying too few emission permits would hurt its economy and contribute to growing energy prices in the country of 38 million.

But finally it backed the package and now sees a lower than expected shortfall in emission permits -- partly due to the economic crisis eating into energy demand -- at around 50 million tonnes for the five-year period.

"We should be happy about the ruling, but it does not mean we will get all we want. I would expect a compromise to be found ... If Poland got 240-250 million tonnes, it would be great," said Polish energy expert Krzysztof Zmijewski.

DOWNSIDE RISKS

A source close to the matter also told Reuters this increase would be acceptable for Warsaw, but noted that would involve issuing a whole new emissions proposal for 2008-2012.

"That may be risky. Given the crisis and some other factors, the Commission could argue we were more or less fine with the smaller allocation and it could therefore push for an even lower quota," the source said.

EU industrial emissions under the scheme fell by three percent in 2008 and are expected to fall more this year due to the economic downturn, leaving firms with a surplus in permits.

"We have to analyze all the aspects profoundly and identify all sides from which we could be hit," said the source.

Poland's environment ministry said more details would be available on Friday after lawyers present their analysis of the justification of the ruling to the government.

(Editing by Michael Szabo and James Jukwey)