news20091112gdn

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Carbon capture and strage (CCS)]
Beneath the waves: the future of carbon capture and storage
The need to capture and store carbon pumped out by power stations has prompted deep-sea research by US scientists
David Adam
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 11 November 2009 20.05 GMT Article history

If you could capture the carbon that thousands of power stations would otherwise pump into the atmosphere, where would you put it?

According to the International Energy Agency, the world needs to fit 3,400 coal-fired power stations with technology to capture carbon dioxide by 2050.

So-called carbon capture and storage (CCS) is often labelled as expensive and unproven, though most of the problems are with the capture part of the process. Energy-hungry scrubbers are needed to soak the greenhouse gas from the exhaust gases, which drain the clean coal's power output and reduce its efficiency.

When it comes to storing the billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide that would be captured, the answer for Britain seems obvious – we can put it under the North Sea, in our emptying natural gas fields. But where do nations without access to such convenient geology turn? One option is to pipe waste gas directly into the sea. In very deep water, scientists think carbon dioxide would form a dense slush that would stay on the seabed for hundreds of years. Wally Broecker, a climate expert at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at New York's Columbia University, says 480bn tonnes of carbon dioxide could be safely dumped in the deep Pacific in this way: the amount created by about 16 years of the world's current fossil fuel use.

Scientists in the US have tested this concept, and the impact it could have on deep-sea life. Experts at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute released small amounts of liquid carbon dioxide into a series of plastic cylinders on the seabed, some 3,000m down in waters off California. A few weeks later, samples of marine life were taken from inside the experiments, the surrounding sea bed and from some 100m away.

The scientists were interested in the reaction of three types of tiny sea creatures called foraminifera – single-celled organisms that make up a large part of life at the bottom of the deepest oceans and are a critical link in marine food webs.

The study found the survival of the tiny creatures depended on whether they formed shells, called tests. Those that did not make shells, or used particles they scavenged from the surrounding seabed, were not affected. Less fortunate were the foraminifera that build calcium carbonate shells: they were wiped out where they came into direct contact with the carbon dioxide. Writing in the journal Global Change Biology, the scientists say these calcareous foraminifera will face "considerable challenges" in areas where CO2 is dumped.

[News > World news > Colombia]
BP faces damages claim over pipeline through Colombian farmland
> Group says project harmed crops, livestock and fish
> Original assessment allegedly warned of risks
Diane Taylor
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 11 November 2009 23.57 GMT Article history

Ninety-five Colombian farmers are suing the oil company BP in the high court in London for allegedly causing serious damage to their land, crops and animals.

In the first case of its kind, the farmers are claiming that BP Exploration Company (Colombia) Ltd, which joined forces with Colombia's national oil company and four foreign multinational corporations in a consortium to construct the 450-mile (720km) Ocensa pipeline, caused landslides and damage to soil and groundwater, causing crops to fail, livestock to perish, contaminating water supplies and making fish ponds unsustainable.

The farmers are claiming damages against BP for breach of contract and negligence. If the court accepts the evidence of environmental damage caused by the project it could open the way for similar claims by other communities in developing countries who say they have been adversely affected by oil pipelines.

In 1988 and 1992 BP discovered two oilfields in Colombia and in 1995 it began construction of a pipeline to transport crude oil to an exportation terminal 515 miles away. The pipeline crossed 192 villages and most of the land was owned by small-scale peasant farmers. It has a capacity to transport 620,000 barrels of crude oil a day.

According to the claim lodged by the farmers' lawyers, an environmental impact assessment conducted by BP prior to construction of the pipeline acknowledged significant and widespread risks of damage to the land, but the farmers, most of them illiterate, were not informed of these risks. BP promised compensation to the farmers for damage that might occur but said there would be no long-term environmental damage.

"BP, part of one of the largest oil companies in the world with world-class expertise, should have known the possible effects," the lawyers state.

Pedro Florez, one of the farmers suing BP, said: "Now that my land has been destroyed I realise that the money I was paid for the pipeline to be built across my farm was a mere pittance and that BP took advantage of my inability to read and write and my lack of understanding of technical language. I can no longer keep the same number of animals or crops, or fish in the local lake, because of the poor quality of the water. It is now very hard to survive on the income that the farm produces."

The farmers claim that during construction of the pipeline natural vegetation that protected the soil from sun, wind and rain was removed and replaced with vegetation that did not protect the soil. They say there has been significant soil erosion and that sediment flowing towards lower ground has altered the land and aquatic ecosystem, silting up water sources including reservoirs. Because the land was not stabilised after construction of the pipeline it is susceptible to landslides.

"The region has been profoundly and adversely affected causing many farms to close or drastically reduce production and causing some farmers to leave the land," the court documents state.

The farmers say BP has failed to compensate them for all of the damage caused to their farms, including the long-term damage, failed to ensure an adequate water supply for farming and domestic use and failed to provide equitable compensation for the damage caused. The company is negligent and in breach of a duty of care to the farmers, they conclude.

A group of Colombian farmers previously reached an out-of-court settlement with BP for alleged environmental damage caused by the pipeline. BP did not admit liability in this settlement and avoided a costly and potentially embarrassing court case in London. Now the company has decided to change tack and fight the farmers' claims in court. It declined to comment on the reasons for this.

BP denies that it acted negligently and that the construction of the pipeline has caused long-term damage to the farmers' property. It argues that the main cause of soil erosion and sedimentation is the removal of forests by farmers for cattle grazing. The farmers' solicitors have lodged further papers in court disputing BP's defence. No date has yet been set for the court hearing.

The area where the pipeline was laid – from the Cusiana-Cupiagua oilfields, in the region of Casanare, to the port of Covenas – has been plagued by paramilitary activity. Farmers say they have experienced harassment and intimidation meted out by Colombian paramilitaries employed by the government to guard the pipeline.

Colombian lawyers who tried to help the farmers claimed they faced intimidation by local paramilitary groups. Marta Hinestroza, one of the farmers' lawyers, fled Colombia for Britain when she discovered that her name was on a paramilitary hit list. In November 2002 the UK government granted her asylum on the basis of the risks she faced because of her work in the area.

Paul Dowling, of Leigh Day & Co, a solicitor for the farmers, said: "The construction of this pipeline has destroyed the livelihoods of many poor families living in an often violent area of Colombia. Unfortunately BP has forced them into a position where they have had to issue legal proceedings in a distant country to seek fair compensation for the hardship they have suffered. They intend to fight for as long as it takes to ensure that justice is done."

A BP spokesman said that as the legal action was ongoing, the company would not comment on the case beyond the defence lodged in the high court.

news20091112nn

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 11 November 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.1078
News
Lithium loss may be the planet-hunter's gain
Depletion of the element in stars might be linked to the existence of extrasolar planets.
Geoff Brumfiel

{{Stars orbited by planets may burn up more of the lithium in their atmospheres than stars that are planet-free.}
ESO/L. Calcada}

The amount of lithium on the surface of a Sun-like star could be a telltale sign that it is orbited by extrasolar planets — a finding that could speed astronomers' attempts to detect them.

Astronomer Garik Israelian of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands in Tenerife, Spain, and his colleagues, found evidence for the link by comparing planet-hosting and planet-free stars. "It's a very clear signal," says Israelian.

Lithium cannot easily survive the scorching conditions on a hot star's surface without burning up, but it can exist in a star's outer atmosphere. Models show that in many stars, the atmosphere is insulated from the surface, allowing lithium to persist there. "For a Sun-like star, the models predict a very high amount of lithium in the atmosphere," Israelian says.

However, that is not what astronomers observe: the Sun has 140 times less lithium than it is predicted to have had when it formed, far less than astronomers expect to see. And now it would seem that the Sun isn't alone in having this characteristic.

Israelian's team analysed data from surveys of 30 Sun-like stars that had detectable orbiting planets, known as extrasolar planets, and found that the vast majority — 26 stars in total — had unusually low levels of lithium in their atmospheres. If a star's low lithium levels are strongly correlated with the presence of extrasolar planets, it could provide an important new way to search for planets in other solar systems. The team's results are published in Nature¹.

A question of age

Others, however, question whether the connection between lithium levels and extrasolar planets is real. The star's age might also be responsible for the low lithium readings, says Jorge Melendez, an astronomer at the University of Porto, Portugal.

{{“We believe what they are seeing is just an age effect.”}
Jorge Melendez
University of Porto}

Stars grow hotter with time and burn more lithium as they age, so it would be unsurprising if the older stars in the sample had less lithium. Young stars are turbulent, and that would make it harder to see their planets, he adds. Thus the apparent link between the presence of planets and low lithium might be due to a systematic bias. Melendez wants Israelian and his team to provide more robust evidence for the age of the stars in their sample.

"We believe what they are seeing is just an age effect," he says.

Israelian counters that the group has already taken the stars' age into account: all the stars in their sample are more than a billion years old, and many without planets have relatively high levels of lithium in their atmospheres. The observation that so many systems with planets have low levels of lithium is unlikely to be due to chance, he believes. "It cannot be a simple coincidence," he says.

In a spin

As for why lithium is depleted in these stars, Israelian and his team propose that extrasolar planets are to blame. The group theorizes that orbiting planets sap stars of their angular momentum, causing them to spin more slowly. That, in turn, causes their atmospheres to mix more readily, allowing lithium to be sucked down to the star's hot surface where it burns and is destroyed.

Intriguingly, out of 103 planet-free stars the team examined, roughly half also had low levels of lithium. That could mean that these stars have extrasolar planets that have not yet been detected.

References
1. Israelian, G. et al. Nature 462, 189-191 (2009). | Article


[naturenews]
Published online 11 November 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.1079
News
Evolution of a single gene linked to language
Mutations in the FOXP2 gene could help explain why humans can speak but chimps can't.
Kerri Smith

{{Changes to the sequence of one gene may help to explain why humans talk but chimps don't.}
mlorenzphotography/ Getty}

Two tiny changes in the sequence of one gene could have helped install the mechanisms of speech and language in humans.

In 2001, a gene called FOXP2 was found to underlie a rare inherited speech and language disorder¹. It encodes a transcription factor called FOXP2, a protein 'dimmer-switch' that binds to DNA and helps to determine to what extent other genes are expressed as proteins.

Experiments have now revealed that the human version of FOXP2, which has two different amino acids compared with the version carried by chimps, has differing effects on genes in the brains of the two species. These differences could affect how the brain develops, and so explain why only humans are capable of language.

To find out whether these changes in FOXP2 had a biological function, a team led by Daniel Geschwind of the University of California, Los Angeles, inserted the two versions into human brain cells and looked at expression of the genes that the protein regulates. They found that the human version increased the expression of 61 genes and decreased the expression of 51 genes compared with the chimp version of the protein. To double-check that the same was happening in real brains, they looked at the expression of these genes in human and chimp brain tissue and found similar expression levels as in the cells. Their study is published in Nature².

Master switch?

Many of the genes looked at by the team are known to have roles in brain development and function, firming up the central place of FOXP2 in the brain's language and speech networks. They also affect soft-tissue formation and development, linking FOXP2 to the physical side of speech and articulation.

"I'm not a person who necessarily believes that one gene is going to tell us everything, but this was really quite remarkable and does place FOXP2 in a relatively central position," says Geschwind.

The study also lends weight to the idea that language didn't evolve from scratch. It "depended on the retuning of genetic pathways present in non-verbal ancestors, rather than the appearance of completely novel mechanisms", says Simon Fisher of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics in Oxford, UK, and part of the team that discovered the gene and first linked it to language.

Whether FOXP2 is the main driver of the evolution of language in humans, or just a cog in the wheel, remains unclear, says Fisher. "It is worth remembering that a large number of genetic differences distinguish the brains of these two species, not just the substitutions in FOXP2," he adds.

Differences in the cells or even in the animals used for the analysis could also skew the picture. "The results could depend on particular cell-line samples or particular humans or chimps," says Wolfgang Enard, who studies the evolutionary history of FOXP2 at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

Geschwind and his team now plan to dig deeper into the genes that FOXP2 regulates and find out whether these too are different in humans from in chimps. "It's plausible that since language is so important, that not only FOXP2 but many of its targets might be under selection," he says.

The team would like to know where these genes are expressed in the brain, and what kind of brain cells they are most active in. Their results could even throw up new candidates for genetic screening programmes aimed at identifying language impairments, Geshwind says.

References
Lai, C. S., Fisher, S. E., Hurst, J. A., Vargha-Khadem, F. & Monaco, A. P. Nature 413, 519-523 (2001). | Article | PubMed | ISI | ChemPort |
Konopka, G. et al. Nature 462, 213-217 (2009). | Article

news20091112reut1

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Storm could follow calm in EU carbon market
Wed Nov 11, 2009 7:32am EST
By Nina Chestney - Analysis

LONDON (Reuters) - The European carbon market is bracing itself for a storm as another wave of selling by industrial companies is anticipated at the end of December or early January.

"Concerns over industrial surplus are so huge that all financial institutions are nervous," an emissions trader said.

The outcome of U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen this December will have little effect on prices for permits under the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) as world leaders are not expected to agree to a new global climate pact.

Once a famously volatile commodity, carbon has barely moved in the past six months, trading between 12 euros ($17.98) and 15.50 euros ($23.22) a tonne since June.

Since 2005, the EU ETS has imposed a cap on carbon emissions from factories and power plants in the 27-nation bloc using a fixed quota of emissions permits, called EU Allowances (EUAs).

EUA prices should not move significantly out of a 12 to 15 euro range this year, analysts said. They were trading around 13.60 euros a tonne on the European Climate Exchange on Wednesday.

"There is no fundamental reason for prices to change before Copenhagen," said Emmanuel Fages, carbon and coal analyst at Societe Generale/orbeo.

"Heading toward the end of the year, people have more or less squared their permit needs and what will happen in Copenhagen has already been written," he said.

The $126 billion global carbon market is touted to grow to $2 trillion by 2020 if nations agree to a new climate pact curbing greenhouse gas emissions and the United States introduces its own federal emissions trading scheme.

Hopes for a treaty in December faded last week when delegates at U.N. climate talks in Barcelona said a deal may need an extra year or more, beyond the original December deadline.

"Expectations are low for Copenhagen. Unless there is a very big failure it will not have a negative impact on prices," said Deutsche Bank analyst Mark C. Lewis.

SELL-OFF

Industrial companies, such as steel and cement firms, were widely expected to dispose of the rest of their surplus permits for 2009 from October. The sell-off has not yet materialized but it could happen by 2010, analysts said.

Industrial firms sold EUAs in February to raise cash after the economic downturn reduced their output. This caused prices to drop as low as 8.05 euros. They still have a lot left to sell.

"This year will be the biggest surplus year due to the massive contraction in demand for steel and cement," Lewis said.

European installations have an average 0.4 billion spare EUAs in 2009, according to a Reuters poll..

Industrials could start a second wave of selling at the end of December or January when they have clear figures on their emissions output for 2009 and know exactly how many EUAs they have to dispose of.

"Middle to smaller-sized industrials want to know their exact end-of-year position before they sell. They are not interested in hedging like utilities," Lewis added.

Other compliance players in the market, power companies, could help hold prices up. They have been hedging power sales for 2013 and banking unused EUAs to the third phase of the EU ETS (2013-2020), when they will start paying for EUAs currently received for free.

Some companies are slowly starting to recover from the economic slowdown, reducing the need they had nine months ago to monetize EUAs.

If industrial output gets a boost in the fourth quarter, some firms may actually choose to hang onto any spare EUAs they have for use next year.

(Editing by William Hardy)


[Green Business]
Japan's greenhouse emissions fall, recession bites
Wed Nov 11, 2009 11:43am EST
By Risa Maeda

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's greenhouse gas emissions tumbled 6.2 percent last year in a new sign on Wednesday that recession is doing the job of cutting emissions while the world struggles toward a U.N. pact to combat climate change.

In Singapore, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged countries in Asia and the Pacific region to embrace green growth but predicted a new accord to slow global warming may not be easy at talks in Copenhagen from December 7-18.

Japan's greenhouse gas emissions fell to 1.286 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in the year to March 2009 from a revised 1.371 billion tonnes in 2007/2008, a record high.

The latest figure is closer to the Japanese government's promise under the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol to limit emissions to 1.19 billion tonnes a year until 2012. Japan is the fifth biggest emitter after China, the United States, Russia and India.

"The figure suggests we're currently at levels sufficiently (low) enough to achieve the target," said Yasuo Takahashi, head of the environment ministry's climate change policy division.

"But we're not saying that we no longer need to carry out the emission-cut plans," he said of measures meant to curb rising temperatures and more droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, floods and rising seas.

The International Energy Agency has projected that the economic downturn may cut global emissions by up to 3 percent this year. Last month, the U.S. government projected a 6 percent fall in U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide in 2009.

Many experts say the declines may be only a brief respite from a rising global trend and that pressing economic problems may distract from Copenhagen. U.S. unemployment rose to 10.2 percent in October, the highest since 1983.

Clinton, addressing ministers from the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Singapore which includes China and the United States, urged green investments to help create jobs.

CLEAN GROWTH

"We must cooperate to turn the threat of climate change into an opportunity for clean-energy growth," she said, urging plans that would lead to an "explosion of new investment and generate millions of new jobs."

And she called for continued resolve on Copenhagen. "We also need to remind ourselves that a final deal will not necessarily come quickly or easily," she said.

Disputes about distributing curbs on emissions among rich and poor nations, and on how to raise billions of dollars to fund the fight against global warming, have been roadblocks toward Copenhagen.

And many nations view President Barack Obama as central to unlocking a deal -- the United States is the only developed nation outside Kyoto, but the U.S. Senate is unlikely to agree legislation this year to cap emissions.

On Tuesday, U.S. Senator John Kerry said he would try to outline a compromise climate bill "that will hopefully put us in a position to go to Copenhagen with a framework or outline of where the Senate will be heading in legislation."

Lack of a firm U.S. target for cutting emissions could mean other nations sit on the fence in Copenhagen, arguing they cannot be expected to act without certainty that Washington will too.

In Berlin, German Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen said in a speech to parliament that there was no point looking beyond Copenhagen. The United Nations says it will take more time in 2010 to nail down a legally binding text.

"There is no alternative to success at the climate summit in Copenhagen. There is no second option, no plan B," he said.

"Success is clear CO2 reduction targets that flow from the recognition that global warming must be limited to a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius," he said.

(With reporting by David Fogarty in Singapore and Noah Barkin in Berlin, writing by Alister Doyle, editing by Mark Trevelyan)

news20091112reut2

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Oil companies racing back to Gulf following Ida
Wed Nov 11, 2009 3:27pm EST

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Oil companies were quickly restoring Gulf of Mexico production shut by Tropical Storm Ida, the U.S. Minerals Management Service said on Wednesday.

Shut oil production fell on Wednesday to 401,120 barrels, or 30.86 percent of the 1.3 million barrels that come out of the Gulf daily, the MMS said. Producers have restarted 12.23 percent of oil output since Tuesday.

All but 7.6 percent of the 7.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas taken daily from the Gulf was back on-line Wednesday, the MMS said. A total of 532 million cubic feet per day remained shut. On Tuesday, 27.96 percent was offline.

Companies had begun shutting production on Sunday ahead of Ida, which was then a hurricane, and the first storm in this year to threaten production platforms and drilling rigs in the Gulf, home to 25 percent of U.S. domestically produced oil and 15 percent of natural gas.

Ida weakened and made landfall on Tuesday but workers flying back to offshore platforms were having to contend with rough seas, that at the storm's height, disrupted shipping across the northern Gulf of Mexico.

"Seas are down from what they were at the storm's passage," said Jim Shugart, executive vice president at ERA Helicopters. "But they're still pretty rough out there because winds were high. Today's better. We should be through by end of the day."

The giant Independence Hub, which can process 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas daily had resumed partial production by Wednesday morning, said owner Enterprise Products Partners.

The giant Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP), which can offload 1 million barrels per in foreign crude, said it was ready to receive the giant crude carriers, but rough seas made it impossible for the ships to dock.

Crude oil prices added more than a dollar earlier in the week because of storm disruptions from Ida, but were soaring on Wednesday due to sliding dollar and China's demand for oil.

The Gulf's largest producers BP, Exxon, Shell and Chevron have said they saw little damage to offshore platforms during initial inspections on Tuesday.

Exxon said on Tuesday its Mobile Bay operations sustained minimal impact from the storm.

(Writing by Erwin Seba; Reporting by Joshua Schneyer, Edward McAllister, Eileen Moustakis, Scott Disavino in New York; Janet McGurty in Toronto; Bruce Nichols, Kristen Hays and Erwin Seba in Houston; Editing by Marguerita Choy)


[Green Business]
Obama, Japan PM to agree on green technology: report
Wed Nov 11, 2009 7:20pm EST

TOKYO (Reuters) - The United States and Japan will agree this week to cooperate in developing environmental and energy technologies, including capturing and storing emissions, a Japanese newspaper reported on Thursday.

As no major breakthrough is expected on a feud over a U.S. military base at a meeting between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama on Friday, environment and energy cooperation will likely take the center stage at Friday's summit in Tokyo, the Nikkei business daily added.

The two leaders are expected to agree on technical cooperation in five areas -- smart power grids, carbon capture and sequestration, nuclear power, joint efforts between their national research labs, as well as renewable energy and energy conservation, the paper said.

On carbon capture and storage, they are expected to agree to work together on the development of a liquid solution for absorbing carbon dioxide (CO2), as well as on environmental assessments of CO2 storage sites, it added.

Obama and Hatoyama are likely to agree that the two nations should cooperate in developing construction technology for making nuclear plants more earthquake resistant.

In addition, they are expected to agree to help other nations introduce nuclear power for civilian uses, the newspaper said.

(Reporting by Yoko Nishikawa; Editing by Sugita Katyal)


[Green Business]
China should reduce carbon intensity: report
Wed Nov 11, 2009 9:22pm EST

BEIJING (Reuters) - China should cut its carbon intensity every year by 4 or 5 percent if it wants to achieve a goal of low-carbon development by 2050, state media on Thursday cited a thinktank report as saying.

In September, Chinese President Hu Jintao promised to put a "notable" brake on the country's rapidly rising carbon emissions, but dashed hopes he would unveil a hard target to kickstart stalled climate talks.

Hu, the leader of the world's biggest emitter, told a U.N. summit China would pledge to cut "carbon intensity," or the amount of carbon dioxide produced for each dollar of economic output, over the decade to 2020.

The official China Daily said the China Council of International Cooperation on Environment and Development would submit a report to the central government on cutting carbon intensity.

"If China is to meet the target of year-on-year emissions cuts of between 4 and 5 percent, it will need to reduce energy intensity by between 75 and 85 percent by 2050," the newspaper wrote, paraphrasing the report.

"In addition, the proportion of manufacturing industry within the national economic structure would need to be cut from the current 50 percent to around 30 percent by the middle of the century," it added.

"By 2030, more than half of new energy demand should be met by low-carbon energy and by 2050, all new energy should be clean energy," the newspaper said. "In addition, carbon capture and storage technology should be promoted by 2030."

The China Daily said the report was the first time a high-level think-tank had made concrete proposals to cut emissions since Hu's September address.

The think tank said China should reform its environmental tax system.

"It says the time is ripe for the country to begin to collect taxes from companies that emit pollutions and carbon dioxide because of the burning of fossil fuels."

The report comes ahead of a major U.N. climate gathering in Denmark in December.

The United Nations wants the December 7-18 Copenhagen meeting to yield a broader, and tougher, legally binding agreement by all nations to fight climate change but negotiations have largely stalled, dimming hopes of success.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Jerry Norton)


[Green Business]
Japan to reassure U.S. on alliance at summit
Thu Nov 12, 2009 6:39am EST
By Chisa Fujioka

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan will reassure the United States that their alliance is in good shape, Tokyo said on Thursday, as a feud over a Marine base strains relations ahead of a visit by President Barack Obama.

Japan's new government has pledged to steer a diplomatic course more independent of its key ally, raising worries about the alliance which is central to security arrangements in a region home to a rising China and an unpredictable North Korea.

But Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said he wanted to allay such concerns in talks on Friday with Obama, who will make his first visit to Japan as president.

"There are many people (in the United States) who have been supportive of our new government, while there are those who have been worried about the change," Hatoyama told reporters.

"One big purpose of the Japan-U.S. summit is to tell those who are concerned that there is nothing to be worried about, that things are all right."

Obama and Hatoyama are expected to turn down the heat in a dispute over the U.S. Marines Futenma air base on Japan's southern island of Okinawa, a key part of a realignment of the 47,000 U.S. troops in Japan.

U.S. officials have made crystal clear they want Tokyo to implement a 2006 deal under which Futenma, now located in a crowded part of Okinawa, would be closed and replaced with a facility in a remoter part of the island.

But Hatoyama said before the August election that swept his Democratic Party to power that the base should be moved off the island, reluctant host to more than half the U.S. forces in Japan.

No breakthroughs are expected on the issue during Obama's visit, although Hatoyama said on Thursday he would tell the U.S. leader that he wants to resolve the issue soon.

The two sides will instead likely stress the positive as they look for ways to adjust the decades-old alliance to changes in the region.

"I will obviously be discussing bilateral issues with President Obama, but I also want to spend time talking about more global issues," Hatoyama said.

The mass circulation Yomiuri newspaper said the two leaders would issue a statement pledging to cooperate to promote nuclear disarmament, as well as calling on North Korea to rejoin stalled multilateral talks on its nuclear arms program and urging Iran to allay suspicions about its atomic energy program.

As the leader of the only country to suffer atomic bombings, Hatoyama has backed Obama's calls for a world free of nuclear arms -- although presently Japan relies on the U.S. "nuclear umbrella" for deterrence.

The leaders will also agree to cooperate in developing environmental and energy technologies, including capturing and storing emissions, the Nikkei business daily reported.

About 50 protesters gathered near the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo on Thursday, calling for U.S. military bases to be moved out of Japan and for the United States to end the war in Afghanistan.

(Additional reporting by Yoko Nishikawa, Linda Sieg, Yoko Kubota; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

news20091112reut3

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Australia reaches out to India with climate aid
Thu Nov 12, 2009 7:39am EST
By Bappa Majumdar

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Australia said it will invest $50 million to develop green technologies in India, in a sign Canberra was trying to bridge differences with New Delhi over climate change negotiations.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made the announcement during a visit that was also aimed at soothing bilateral relations strained after several Indian students were assaulted in Australia, sparking an outrage in India.

"Our challenge is to work together and shape a common future for us all, requiring real action on part of all countries."

India has slammed the so-called "Australian Proposal" on climate change that seeks to remove the distinction between rich and poorer nations, calling on both sides to cut emissions.

Developing countries led by India and China say negotiations should be based on a previously agreed U.N. framework that requires rich nations to take deep emission cuts while putting no such restrictions on poorer countries, Indian officials say.

India is also unhappy Australia refuses to supply uranium to nations that have not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, undermining an India-U.S. civilian nuclear deal which allowed uranium to be supplied to India for the first time in decades.

"What Australia is trying to do is reduce disputes and build on whatever opportunities that exist. Issues like climate change, attacks on Indians and the nuclear deal are a few," said Naresh Chandra, former ambassador to the United States.

Representatives from about 190 countries will meet in Copenhagen next month to discuss a new climate change pact.

"The Australian proposal is already facing opposition from China, G-77 and other developing countries. India is saying no to the proposal and Australia would definitely want India to dilute its stand," said K. Srinivas, a Greenpeace climate change expert.

The Australia prime minister made the investment announcement in Delhi after a meeting with Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

(Editing by Alistair Scrutton)