news20091217gdn1

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Copenhagen Climate change conference 2009]
Copenhagen: World leaders 'face public fury' if agreement proves impossible
Miliband warns heads not to stall on technicalities as some progress is made between the biggest polluters US and China
Suzanne Goldenberg, Jonathan Watts and John Vidal in Copenhagen
The Guardian, Thursday 17 December 2009 Article history

World leaders arriving at the Copenhagen climate change summit today and tomorrow face public "fury" if they fail to inject crucial new momentum into the talks, according to climate secretary Ed Miliband.

Talks resumed late last night following many hours of delay as negotiators wrangled over the form a treaty to fight global warming should take. "People will find it extraordinary that this conference is being stalled on points of order," said Miliband. "People will be rightly furious if agreement is not possible."

The row centres on the draft treaty texts the Danish presidency of the summit must produce for leaders to finalise and whether they end the existing Kyoto protocol, signed in 1997. Rich nations want a new treaty to reflect a much-changed world economic order, while poorer nations insist the legal demands Kyoto makes on industrialised polluters must be preserved.

Yesterday began badly, with Connie Hedegaard, Danish environment minister and chair of the summit, resigning to allow her prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen to take over. She called the move "appropriate" with so many heads of state and government attending, though it had not been signalled in advance. Some delegates speculated it was to smooth the way for the introduction of a draft treaty by the Danish presidency that would sideline Kyoto.

But if, as Miliband believes, it will be possible to reassure developing countries over Kyoto, there were some positive steps to build on in other areas.

The most significant of these was progress between the US and China, the world's biggest polluters and whose actions will determine the fate of summit.

US senator John Kerry gave a packed conference hall a "100%" guarantee to get climate change laws passed through Congress if the countries at the summit managed an overall deal.

"With a successful deal, next year, the US Congress – house and Senate – will pass legislation," Kerry said to applause. "I will tell you right now, 100%, we are going to pass major climate and energy legislation that is going to have an impact on emissions."

A critical part of the Copenhagen deal the US wants is "transparency" from China on the curbs on carbon emissions Beijing has promised – an inspection regime. "To pass a bill, we must be able to assure a senator from Ohio that steelworkers in his state won't lose their jobs to India and China because those countries are not participating in a way that is measurable, reportable and verifiable," said Kerry, who heads the Senate foreign relations committee and is guiding climate laws through the Senate.

After talks with Kerry, the chief Chinese negotiator, Su Wei, held out an olive branch. He said China would be more open and improve the quality of information about its measures to improve energy efficiency and curb emissions.

"I believe through these measures, we can see that China will only do better in terms of effectiveness, openness and transparency in implementing the goals we set," Su said.

While stopping short of American demands for independent verification, Su said more data would be made available through existing mechanisms. He was confident this would be enough to end one of the disputes. "I don't see any further necessity to worry about this," he said. It is uncertain if other countries will be willing to accept China's offer, but Su's comments show China's efforts to help the Obama administration pass a climate bill through the senate.

Such a bill is crucial if the US is to join a global treaty, while a global treaty would be crippled by the absence of the US. The uncertainty about whether America is prepared to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, and by how much, has dogged the negotiations. It has allowed developing countries, such as China and India, to stall on committing to action and has bred resentment from African and poor countries that will suffer the most from climate change.

India's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, was unimpressed by Kerry's rhetoric. He said India was already prepared to introduce some of the reporting mechanisms America was demanding. A strong offer on climate change finance would help ease the resentment of developing countries, he added.

"If the US comes up with a generous financial offer, the chemistry of Copenhagen would entirely change," Ramesh told the Guardian. "But they can't do it on Friday morning when Obama gets here. They must change the atmosphere now."

Tackling deforestation, which contributes up to 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions, took a step forward, with the UK, along with Japan, Norway, America, France and Australia, agreeing that by 2010 a total of $3.5bn would be spent on saving trees. The money comes from the so-called "fast start" fund worth $30bn to poorer countries over three years.

On the vexed issue of longer term finance, the Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi presented an offer to reduce developing country demands by 75% to $100bn a year from 2020, in return for guarantees of how the money would be distributed. But his offer was derided as a sellout by some nations.


[News > UK news]
Workington to get two-lane road bridge by springCrossing at flood-hit Cumbrian town will end misery of 14-mile detour for commuters
Martin Wainwright
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 17 December 2009 11.07 GMT Article history

More than a month of misery for commuters in flood-stricken Cumbria is to end in the new year with the building of a temporary road link between the two halves of Workington.

Two-hour round-trips at rush hour between the north and south of the port, which were severed when three bridges across the river Derwent collapsed or were closed, should be no more than a memory by the spring.

Contractors were today given a deadline of 4 January by Cumbria county council to tender for the two-lane crossing, which will be capable of supporting lorries up to 44 tonnes. Last month's unprecedented floods, which claimed the life of PC Bill Barker when Northside bridge collapsed as he directed traffic, have seriously affected links with major local employers, including the nuclear complex at Sellafield.

Council engineers have surveyed a suitable site for the temporary bridge, and tender details will be published before the weekend. Jim Buchanan, Labour leader of Cumbria county council, said that the timescale envisaged was "almost unheard of in a civil engineering project of this size".

The crossing will be built between the Northside bridge and the listed stone Calva bridge, built in the 18th century, which was wrenched by the flood more than a foot off its foundations, and now lies at an angle. An Army team installed a temporary footbridge two hundred yards upstream from Calva two weeks ago, completing the work in 10 days.

Contractors will be required to work around the clock, seven days a week, on the bridge, which will restore the main north-south link on the Cumbrian coast. Business in central Workington, on the south bank of the Derwent, has been severely affected by the traffic chaos, which has also hit traders in Cockermouth, seven miles away, where flooding damage was even more severe.

Buchanan said: "We're fully aware of the impact that the disruption is having on local people and businesses in west Cumbria and every second counts to get this job done as soon as possible. In the meantime we'll continue to work with the government and underline how important it is that additional public transport continues until a bridge is in place."

Extra buses have been provided for the 14-mile diversion, a journey that took seconds when the Northside and Calva bridges were open. Special train services are also running on the rail bridge over the Derwent which survived the floods, calling at a temporary North Workington station, which was built earlier this month in a weekend.

The temporary road bridge will be paid for by the government as part of its emergency package for Cumbria. Sadiq Khan, the junior transport minister, said: "We pledged after the floods to give the council the funds it needed to build temporary bridges and to help the area recover in the longer term. We have already funded the temporary footbridge and additional train services.

"The new road bridge will make such a difference to the people of Workington and Cumbria more widely, and we are delighted to help the council ensure that contractors deliver the bridge quickly and effectively."

Rob Johnston, chief executive of Cumbria chamber of commerce, said: "This is one of the biggest threats to west Cumbria's economy we have faced. The longer it goes on the more businesses we are at serious risk of losing. It's very positive news that this temporary bridge will take HGVs as this is a key requirement for businesses. And we welcome the fact that it will be two-lane, which will have a huge impact on the traffic that can be carried."

Tim Heslop, leader of Allerdale borough council, said: "This is a great early Christmas present for the people of Allerdale. Workington residents and business owners can now look forward to the new year with renewed hope."

news20091217gdn2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Copenhagen Climate change conference 2009]
Copenhagen conference on the brink of collapse as world leaders arrive at talks
Officials from the three main blocs say they have given up on reaching an agreement
Suzanne Goldenberg, John Vidal and Jonathan Watts in Copenhagen
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 17 December 2009 09.56 GMT Article histor
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Talks to save the planet from catastrophic climate change were on the brink of collapse this morning as officials from the three main blocs – rich countries, major developing economies, and small island states – said they had given up on getting a substantive deal.

Even as 115 world leaders began arriving to put their personal imprint on a deal, the summit hosts were admitting they had failed to broker an agreement.

The chaotic end game to the negotiations could mean that world leaders only have time to hastily paper over a face-saving agreement.

In a story headlined Denmark gives up, the influential Berlingske newspaper quoted a senior source in the host delegation, saying the failure was a monumental disappointment to the Danes.

"During the whole process, the problem is that this is a huge puzzle where all the pieces had to fall in place at the same time. But to do that, the countries had to make a serious effort and they have been unwilling to do so," the source was quoted as saying.

However, Denmark could try to revive the process by formally introducing a version of a negotiating draft from last week and imposing it on the summit. However, the draft – the Danish text leaked to the Guardian last week – has infuriated developing countries, and its re-entry could trigger chaos.

Other countries were also working to resuscitate the talks. A UK official said: "We are not giving up. The irony is that on substance we have had considerable movement in the last few days. For the talks to be in this state simply over matters of procedure rather than substance is immensely disappointing."

The sense of collapse was compounded further still when China – the world's biggest emitter and an essential component to any deal – said it saw no possibility of achieving a detailed accord to tackle global warming.

An official from another country told Reuters the Chinese had instead suggested issuing "a short political declaration of some sort", but it was not clear what that declaration would say.

China was still committed to the negotiations, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters in Beijing today. Jiang said: "China hopes the Copenhagen meeting is successful, and has always taken a constructive attitude."

In the final nail in Copenhagen's coffin, the Maldives president, Mohamed Nasheed, whose island country could be almost entirely swallowed up by rising seas, said he was staring at failure.

"We will not have a draft. There is no draft. We are facing a situation where it is possible that nothing comes out of COP15 unless the heads of state decide to come up with it themselves," Nasheed told an NGO meeting last night. "I am very nervous and very disappointed. During the course of the last two years, negotiators were supposed to have come up with a document for us to see and consider tomorrow, but they have failed."

Dino Patti Djalal, an Indonesian presidential spokesman said: "Obviously we are considered at the prospect of negotiations are having some kind of a deadlock. We are thinking it's going to need the leaders pushing very hard until the last minute." He said uncertainty about emissions cuts from the major developed countries plus America's insistence on a monitoring regime for emissions cuts by rapidly emerging economies had led to the impasse.

The Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh said, "We have lost a day and a half. I don't want to point fingers. We must get talks back on a sold substantive track by the time the world leaders meet tomorrow...I am hopeful that negotiations can resume."

The sense of despair from the Danes comes after nine days of working negotiations which has seen increasing acrimony and distrust between rich countries and poor countries, and industrialised countries and the rapidly emerging economies.

African countries and small island states which are on the frontline of climate change accused Denmark of trying to railroad them into a deal without getting strong enough commitments to act on climate change from the developed world. "The Europeans have broken the African solidarity," said a negotiator from Mauritania. "If these talks produce a good deal for Africa that would be a big surprise for me. There is enormous pressure on the heads of state of Africa. They are very weak – especially in financial terms. Any African country that depends on French or British aid will not be able to raise its voice to object."


[Environment > Copenhagen Climate change conference 2009]
Chances of a meaningful Copenhagen deal fading, negotiators say
Mood at Copenhagen talks darkens with news that China is setting its sights on a purely political – not legal – climate agreement
Allegra Stratton in Copenhagen and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 17 December 2009 10.34 GMT Article history

The chances of a meaningful deal emerging from the Copenhagen climate negotiations receded overnight as reports emerged that the Chinese were now setting their sights on a purely political agreement rather than a detailed text.

British officials acknowledged the mood continued to darken with one saying "the process is not in great shape" and expectations of a draft text being produced this morning failed to materialise, something Danish sources blamed on the Chinese position.

Gordon Brown also appeared to downgrade even his aspirations for a follow-up conference, which many had been focusing on for months as it became apparent as early as October that Copenhagen was only going to produce a political document rather than legal document.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, also struck a downbeat note in a speech she made to parliament before travelling to Copenhagen. According to Reuters, she said that news of the negotiations had not been good and she warned a failure to reach an agreement would be damaging. "The news that we've been receiving is not good," she said. "I must say very honestly, that the United States offer to cut [CO2 emissions] by 4% compared to 1990 levels is not ambitious."

In his speech at Copenhagen, Brown said nations should attempt to drive through legislation in six months to one year, a slight delay on his previous ambition of six months. He urged countries to: "Commit to turn this agreement into a legally binding instrument within six months to a year as we build on the Kyoto protocol."

Aides said Brown's three-minute speech to the conference floor was going to be important in focusing minds with a section calling on countries such as the US to move to "the highest possible level of ambition for 2020" and also assuring developing countries that long funds provided by developed countries to smooth transition to a low carbon future would not necessarily come from existing aid budgets, as is the case in the short term. In his speech, he said: "We must commit to additionality in our support so that we do not force a choice between meeting the needs of the planet and meeting the millennium development goals."

With its mention of "additionality", the speech appears to be the first declaration of more public funds being directed towards climate change, but an aide was unable to answer how Brown would financially meet the pledge while government is cutting spending to reduce the budget deficit.

His speech also contained words of assurance for the Chinese delegation concerned that any promise they make to curb carbon emissions will require intrusive monitoring by other countries around the world. He called for "transparency in accounting for both developed and developing countries, including international discussion and without diminishing national sovereignty".

Brown said that the international negotiations should achieve:

> A long-term goal of a global temperature increase by 2050 of "no more than 2C".

> All developed countries moving to their "highest possible level of [emission cut] ambition for 2020".

> Developing countries committing to "nationally appropriate mitigation actions at their highest level of ambition" achieving a significant reduction from "business as usual".

> Developed countries committing to immediate finance for developing countries starting from Jan 2010, rising to $10bn (£6.2bn) annually by 2010.

> Long-term finance by 2020 the goal of $100bn a year "to come from private and public sources".

> Committing additional funds after 2012 to ensure funds to developing countries do not simply come from redirected aid budgets.

> Transparency between countries "without diminishing national sovereignty".

> A commitment to turn this agreement into a legally binding instrument within six months to a year, as "we build on the Kyoto protocol".

news20091217gdn3

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Copenhagen Climate change conference 2009]
US bids to break Copenhagen deadlock with support for $100bn climate fund
Hillary Clinton pledges US support for a $100bn fund to help poor countries adapt to climate change providing their leaders sign up to a deal
Suzanne Goldenberg in Copenhagen
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 17 December 2009 12.08 GMT Article history

The US moved to assert its leadership and save the UN climate talks in Copenhagen from collapse today, saying it was ready to support a $100bn (£62bn) fund to shield poor countries from the ravages of climate change.

But speaking at the conference, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, warned developing countries that the finances would only flow if their leaders signed up to a strong global warming deal at the summit.

"The US is prepared to work with other countries to jointly mobilise $100bn a year by 2020," Clinton told a press conference on a day that began with reports that the summit's Danish hosts had given up hope of reaching a deal.

However, she warned: "In the absence of an operational agreement that meets the requirement that I outlined there will not be the final commitment that I outlined - at least from the United States."

The $100bn figure was formally put on the table at the conference last night by the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi, who is head of the African group of nations. It is much lower than many developing nations say is necessary to help them adapt to climate change and develop green technologies.

Zenawi acknowledged that his proposal would disappoint some in Africa. But he said: "My proposal dramatically scales back our expectation of the level of funding in return for more reliable funding and a seat at the table in the management of such fund."

Standing with reporters when the news broke, the UK prime minister's official spokesman was surprised by the timing of Clinton's announcement, despite the fact that one of Gordon Brown's chief negotiators, Jon Cunliffe, had been on the phone with his American counterpart overnight.

"Obama said he wanted to be as helpful as he could but was concerned about public opinion at home," said one official. Another added: "This is a very serious move by the Americans. We were waiting for it".

Clinton also made it clear that America would not budge on its demand for greater accountability from rapidly emerging economies like China and Brazil that they are living up to whatever pledges they make to cut emissions.

Without such transparency, she said, there would be no deal. And without a deal, there would be no money for African and low-lying countries that have the most to lose from rising sea-levels brought by climate change.

Even as 115 world leaders began arriving to put their personal imprint on a deal, the summit hosts were admitting they had failed to broker an agreement. Informal talks on finance and the overall format of the deal were continuing yesterday, but the spokesman for the bloc of African countries warned about the perils of pushing poor countries to a cosmetic deal at any cost.

"Any bad solution for the developing countries is worse than no deal at all in particular for Africa and for the developing countries," said the spokesman for the African nations. "Those who are forcing the process who are trying to jeopardise what we are doing I am not sure humanity will forgive them at least for the next 50 years."

The chaotic end game to the negotiations could mean that world leaders only have time to hastily paper over a face-saving agreement.

In a story headlined Denmark gives up, the influential Berlingske newspaper quoted a senior source in the host delegation, saying the failure was a monumental disappointment to the Danes.

"During the whole process, the problem is that this is a huge puzzle where all the pieces had to fall in place at the same time. But to do that, the countries had to make a serious effort and they have been unwilling to do so," the source was quoted as saying.

However, Denmark could try to revive the process by formally introducing a version of a negotiating draft from last week and imposing it on the summit. However, the draft – the Danish text leaked to the Guardian last week – has infuriated developing countries, and its re-entry could trigger chaos.

• Additional reporting by Allegra Stratton


[Environment > Copenhagen Climate change conference 2009]
Copenhagen has changed the face of global politics
Whatever the outcome of the climate talks, we know that power is no longer only in the hands of the rich and the few
Simon Hughes
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 17 December 2009 12.30 GMT Article history

It was a long journey from London to the UN climate talks in Copenhagen by train – though improved by the enthusiasm of others like young climate champions from Wales making the same journey. Leaving in the early afternoon on Saturday, I eventually arrived at about noon on Sunday.

Copenhagen was a strange mixture of a city hosting an ever-growing environmental army, but less general noise and excitement among the shoppers and casual passers-by. The historic city and the very unhistoric Bella centre looked unlikely venues for the future of the world to be decided.

Many people were using Sunday to go to the Bright Green expo in the forum centre nearer to the middle of town. I made targeted visits to stalls I wanted to learn from or talk to – including the Norwegians about hydroelectricity and grids and the Canadians about tar sands.

Then came a series of bilateral meetings in pleasant cafes and hotel bars all facilitated by my friendly Danish hosts, proud that it is our Liberal Democrat sister party Venstre, leading government in Denmark, and their party leader hosting the conference. (As things turned out before the week was over, not just hosting but chairing.) Then I met people from the Climate Parliament – including my friend and MEP Graham Watson.

There were also discussions about the harsh politics this week and how to deliver any necessary further deal. Denmark's time in the chair runs for 12 months until next December, but I sense they are really worried if similar global responsibility falls on them for the rest of the coming year. If further summits are required to complete the work and deliver a legal and binding agreement, then Denmark will need to summon up all its political strength to shoulder a second phase of responsibility.

Everybody I spoke to was clear that if no solid agreement is reached then the conference needs to meet again urgently. If not, the sense or urgency could recede, and important distractions like the mid-term elections in America could make bold moves more difficult.

Having seen the demonstrations in Copenhagen and heard of more since my return, I don't know whether a deal will be done. But I am clear about three things. First, the climate crisis has mobilised people in every country to come together in a way unparalleled in history. Secondly, the forum of the United Nations makes sure that the little people (the small island countries for example) cannot be ignored and are just as important in making or breaking a deal as the big ones. Finally, I saw that there is a new generation of green commitment, knowledge and activism, determined to practise sustainability. This generation will not just talk of deadlines and far-off target dates, but understands that now is almost already too late.

Every couchette was taken on the night train from Copenhagen on the way back – almost all of them by engaged global citizens, empowered by being together in a common cause. Whatever the deal this week, the politics of the world has been changing fast and power is no longer in the hands of the rich and the few. Those who have had their exploitative way for too long must realise now that exploiting our planet will not be possible in the same way again.

> Simon Hughes MP is the Liberal Democrats' energy and climate change spokesman

news20091217nn1

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 16 December 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.1146
News
Sea level rise may exceed worst expectations
Seas were nearly 10 metres higher than now in previous interglacial period.
Richard A. Lovett

With climate talks stalling in Copenhagen, a study suggests that one problem, sea level rise, may be even more urgent than previously thought.

Robert Kopp, a palaeoclimatologist at Princeton University in New Jersey, and his colleagues examined sea level rise during the most recent previous interglacial stage, about 125,000 years ago. It was a time when the climate was similar to that predicted for our future, with average polar temperatures about 3-5°C warmer than now.

Other studies have looked at this era, but most focused on sea level changes in only a few locales and local changes may not fully reflect global changes. Sea level can rise, for example, if the land is subsiding. It can also be affected by changes in the mass distribution of Earth. For example, says Kopp, ice-age glaciers have enough gravity to pull water slightly polewards. When the glaciers melt, water moves back towards the Equator. To adjust for such effects, Kopp's team compiled sea-level data from over 30 sites across the globe.

"We could go to a lot of different places and look at coral reefs or intertidal sediments or beaches that are now stranded above sea level, and build a reasonably large database of sea-level indicators," says Kopp.

The team reports1 in Nature today that the sea probably rose about 6.6–9.4 metres above present-day levels during the previous period between ice ages. When it was at roughly its present level, the average rate of rise was probably 56–92 centimetres a century. "[That is] faster than the current rate of sea level rise by a factor of about two or three," Kopp says, warning that if the poles warm as expected, a similar accelleration in sea-level rise might occur in future.

Climate meltdown

The study is "very sophisticated", says Peter Clark, a geologist at Oregon State University in Corvallis. "A lot more of the existing ice sheets at the time must have melted than was thought to be the case," he says, such as parts of Greenland and Antarctica.

The implications are disconcerting, says Clark. If the world warms up to levels comparable to those 125,000 years ago, "we can expect a large fraction of the Greenland ice sheet and some part of the Antarctic ice sheet, mostly likely West Antarctica, to melt. That's clearly in sight with where we're heading."

Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson agrees. "Earth's polar ice sheets may be more vulnerable to climate change than commonly believed," he says.

Furthermore, even if global warming causes seas to start rising toward the levels seen 125,000 years ago, there is no reason to presume that it will proceed at the relatively sedate rate of 6-9 millimeters a year seen by Kopp's study. In part, that's because his study didn't have the resolution to spot changes on a year-by-year basis, so there's nothing to say that the rise during the last interglacial didn't occur in shorter, faster spurts, undetectable in Kopp's data.

Near future warming will also be driven by potentially faster-moving processes than those of the last interglacial. "The driver of [climate change during the last interglacial period] was slow changes in Earth's orbit, happening over thousands of years," says Stefan Rahmstorf, an ocean scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. "We're now set to cause several degrees of global warming within just a century. I would expect this to drive a much faster sea level rise."

Some scientists think that we may already be committed to a future with higher seas than had been expected. "There could be a global warming tipping point beyond which many metres of sea level rise is inevitable unless global greenhouse-gas emissions are cut dramatically, and soon," warns Overpeck.

"I have spent a lot of time talking with national security decision-makers in this country and abroad about the security implications of climate change," says Marc Levy, deputy director of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University's Earth Institute in New York. "I've consistently witnessed an inability on their part to take sea-level risks seriously. This study helps frame the risks in ways that decision-makers can better understand."

References
1. Kopp, R. E., Simons, F. J., Mitrovica, J. X., Maloof, A. C. & Oppenheimer, M. Nature 462, 863-867 (2009). | Article


[naturenews]
Published online 16 December 2009 | Nature 462, 836 (2009) | doi:10.1038/462836a
News
Modellers claim wars are predictable
Insurgent attacks follow a universal pattern of timing and casualties.
Natasha Gilbert

Seemingly random attacks and a shadowy, mysterious enemy are the hallmarks of insurgent wars, such as those being fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many social scientists, as well as the military, hold that, like conventional civil wars, these conflicts can't be understood without considering local factors such as geography and politics. But a mathematical model published today in Nature (see Nature 462, 911–914; 2009) suggests that insurgencies have a common underlying pattern that may allow the timing of attacks and the number of casualties to be predicted.

{{Could a model help to predict the number of casualties in conflicts such as that in Afghanistan?}
REUTERS}

"We found that the way in which humans do insurgent wars — that is, the number of casualties and the timing of events — is universal," says team leader Neil Johnson, a physicist at the University of Miami in Florida. "This changes the way we think insurgency works."

Johnson and his colleagues argue that the pattern arises because insurgent wars lack a coherent command network and operate more as a "soup of groups", in which cells form and disband when they sense danger, then reform in different sizes and composition. The timing of attacks, the authors say, is driven by competition between insurgent groups for media attention.

Johnson, who has presented preliminary versions of the work to the US military, says that the findings allow a glimpse into the heart of insurgency behaviour. "We can get a sense of what is going on and what might happen if we intervened in certain ways," he says. He is now working to predict how the insurgency in Afghanistan might respond to the influx of foreign troops recently announced by US President Barack Obama.

Power law

The researchers collected data on the timing of attacks and number of casualties from more than 54,000 events across nine insurgent wars, including those fought in Iraq between 2003 and 2008 and in Sierra Leone between 1994 and 2003. By plotting the distribution of the frequency and size of events, the team found that insurgent wars follow an approximate power law, in which the frequency of attacks decreases with increasing attack size to the power of 2.5. That means that for any insurgent war, an attack with 10 casualties is 316 times more likely to occur than one with 100 casualties (316 is 10 to the power of 2.5).

"This is surprising because these wars are all fought in different terrains and under different circumstances," says Johnson. "It shows that there is something going on in the way these wars are fought that is common to all."

To explain what was driving this common pattern, the researchers created a mathematical model that assumes that insurgent groups form and fragment when they sense danger, and strike in well-timed bursts to maximize their media exposure. The model gave results that resembled the power-law distribution of actual attacks.

"They show a nice agreement between the data and their model, which is an important first step," says Aaron Clauset, who researches the mathematics of conflict at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. But he and others question the model's assumptions, such as the number of insurgents in the conflict remaining roughly fixed over time. Clauset says that this idea does not match with other findings.

The model also assumes that insurgent groups can freely break up then re-form. But Roy Lindelauf, who models terrorist networks at the Netherlands Defence Academy in Breda, notes that some insurgents in Iraq are battling each other as well as the coalition forces, and would therefore not merge into a single group.

Lars-Erik Cederman, a researcher in international conflict at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, adds that the model "has the potential to improve knowledge about warfare". But, he says, the authors "go too far in claiming they have found a universal underlying pattern" because their work includes only nine wars. Cederman, part of a group that regards insurgency as similar to general warfare, also says that although terrorist attacks can be driven by competition for media attention, it remains far from clear whether insurgencies have the same motive.

"In human social systems, it is usually difficult to nail down what mechanism is behind an observed behavioural pattern," Clauset says. "There are almost always several equally plausible explanations that need to be considered."

Johnson agrees that there could be other explanations for the pattern his group has found. But he says, "We have looked for many years for a model, and this is the only one we have found that explains the data."

news20091217nn2

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 16 December 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.1143
Corrected online: 17 December 2009
News
Cancer genomes reveal risks of sun and smoke
Sequencing of skin and lung cancers show that many mutations could be prevented.
Brendan Borrell

Sun and smoke leave their fingerprints on cancer genomes.MOREDUN ANIMAL HEALTH LTD / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARYResearchers have completed the genetic sequences of two types of cancer — skin cancer and small-cell lung cancer — revealing that the genomes bear the hallmarks of their respective carcinogens: sun and smoke. Worldwide, the two diseases kill a total of nearly 250,000 people each year, despite the fact that they are largely preventable.

Tumours develop when a normal cell's DNA is damaged, allowing that cell to proliferate unchecked. By sequencing and cataloguing all the mutations in a single tumour type from multiple individuals, scientists aim to identify the genes that are most susceptible to damage, to understand the processes underlying DNA repair, and to develop drugs that counteract certain types of damage.

Scientists from the Cancer Genome Project at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, near Cambridge, UK, and their collaborators at partner institutions describe the genetic sequences of cell lines derived from patients with small-cell lung cancer1 or malignant melanoma². The studies are published online today in Nature.

{{“Every pack of cigarettes is like a game of Russian roulette.”}
Peter Campbell
Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton}

These papers mark the completion of the fourth and fifth cancer-cell genomes to be sequenced, and come just one year after a team from Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis published the first cancer genome, from a patient with leukaemia³. The breast-cancer genome was published by a Canadian-led consortium in October this year⁴, and dozens more sequences are expected to come out of The Cancer Genome Atlas Program of the US National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland — a project that is slated to receive US$275 million over the next two years from the National Institutes of Health.

"We are in the middle of an explosive development in cancer-genome sequencing," says Matthew Meyerson, a cancer-genomics expert at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, who was not involved in the research. "Whole-genome sequencing is the wave of the future for both cancer-gene discovery and, eventually, for cancer diagnosis."

Fifteen cigarettes, another mutation

Peter Campbell, a haemotologist and cancer-genomics expert at the Sanger Institute who worked on the latest studies, says that the number of genetic mutations they identified — 33,345 for melanoma and 22,910 for lung cancer — was remarkable. The mutations were not distributed evenly throughout the genome — many were present outside of gene-coding regions, suggesting that cells had repaired damaged DNA in those key regions.

Campbell says that the findings help to answer lingering questions about whether carcinogens cause most mutations directly, or if cancer itself contributes to the mutations by disrupting the function of DNA-repair mechanisms. The team found that most mutations were single-base DNA substitutions that could be traced to the carcinogenic effects of chemicals in tobacco smoke (in the case of the small-cell lung cancer genome) or ultraviolet light (in the melanoma genome), supporting the idea that these two cancers are largely preventable. The team estimates that every 15 cigarettes smoked results in a DNA mutation. "Every pack of cigarettes is like a game of Russian roulette," Campbell says. "Most of those mutations will land where nothing happens in the genome and won't do major damage, but every once in a while they'll hit a cancer gene."

The lung-cancer study also identified one recurrent mutation — a duplication of the chromatin-remodelling gene CHD7, which regulates the activity of other genes. The team had already identified the existence of this mutation in 2008, but the current study1 confirms its presence in three independent cell lines. Such recurrent mutations could point to key cancer genes that may be useful drug targets.

Some scientists, however, are more circumspect about the benefits of cancer-genome sequencing. Steve Elledge, an expert in DNA damage and cancer genetics at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, was impressed with the new analysis but says that the potential impact on cancer diagnosis and treatment will not be fully felt until scientists have hundreds of sequences at hand — a costly prospect. "It's still very expensive, and I think all these efforts should be coupled with an equal amount of effort on studying gene function," he says.

Corrected:This article previously stated that each cigarette smoked could result in an estimated 15 DNA mutations. In fact, the typical smoker would acquire one mutation for every 15 cigarettes smoked.

References
1. Pleasance, E. D. et al. Nature advance online publication doi:10.1038/nature08629 (2009).
2. Pleasance, E. D. et al. Nature advance online publication doi:10.1038/nature08658 (2009).
3. Ley, T. J. et al. Nature 456, 66-72 (2008). | Article | ChemPort |
4. Shah, S. P. et al. Nature 461, 809-813 (2009). | Article | ChemPort |