news20091224jt

[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[NATIONAL NEWS]
Thursday, Dec. 24, 2009
Ichihashi confesses to Hawker's slaying
Suspect admits choking Briton but 'didn't intend' for her to die
Compiled from Kyodo, Staff report

CHIBA — Tatsuya Ichihashi has admitted choking Briton Lindsay Ann Hawker to death in 2007, one of his lawyers said Wednesday.

"She shouted, so I choked her by putting my arm around her neck from behind. I didn't intend to kill her," the lawyer quoted Ichihashi as saying.

Prosecutors filed rape and murder charges against Ichihashi, 30, the same day, in addition to the earlier charge of abandoning Hawker's corpse.

He faces a lay judge trial.

Ichihashi, who had remained silent about the case since his arrest last month, has begun to speak to investigators about the death of Hawker, 22, admitting the teacher from the now-defunct Nova language school chain died in his apartment in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, investigative sources said.

Soon after he was served an arrest warrant earlier this month for murder and rape, Ichihashi admitted he was with the victim in his flat on March 25 and 26, 2007, claiming they talked and watched a speech by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the Internet, said the lawyer, who was not identified, quoting the accused as later explaining how he choked Hawker and said: "She was alive until dawn on the 26th. I had no intention of killing her and also tried artificial resuscitation."

Although Ichihashi has not directly voiced an apology to the slain English-language teacher's family, the lawyer said he has shown feelings of remorse and appears to have felt, while a fugitive, the weight of his actions.

Ichihashi was captured Nov. 10 in Osaka waiting to board an Okinawa-bound ferry, after 32 months on the run. He was initially arrested for abandoning Hawker's body.

On Dec. 2, he was indicted on that charge and was served with another arrest warrant on murder and rape. Police sent him to prosecutors Dec. 4.

Ichihashi fled officers who went to his apartment to question him about Hawker's disappearance. They subsequently found her naked body in a sand-filled bathtub on his balcony. While on the run, he had his face altered by plastic surgery.

Earlier reports, including those in tabloids, said Ichihashi was "treated like a VIP" immediately after his arrest — being served everything from sushi to fancy "bento" boxed meals — as investigators at Gyotoku Police Station in Chiba Prefecture tried to get him to eat in the hope he would spill his guts.

The Chiba police had no choice but to keep him in good health and get him to talk because they had already been a subject of ridicule for letting him flee barefoot after almost nabbing him at his apartment, a police source was quoted as telling a weekly magazine.

But Ichihashi adamantly refused for days to eat, to say nothing of opening up about Hawker's slaying. He's now in Chiba Prison, eating three square meals a day.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Thursday, Dec. 24, 2009
Role in '43 sinking 'unclear'
Japan awaits results of Aussie probe into Allied hospital ship's loss

SYDNEY (Kyodo) Japan believes the responsibility for torpedoing an Australian hospital ship during World War II is still unclear, The Australian newspaper reported Wednesday.

The Japanese Embassy in Canberra told the newspaper it is awaiting the outcome of an Australian investigation into the incident before accepting responsibility.

"The circumstances were not clear, given that it occurred during the Second World War," the embassy said in a statement. "We will see how the ongoing investigation by Australia unfolds."

The development comes just days after the AHS Centaur was discovered more than 2,000 meters below the surface off southeast Queensland.

According to Australian military history, the wartime hospital ship was traveling from Sydney when it was torpedoed by a Japanese I-177 submarine in the early hours of May 14, 1943.

Of the 332 medical staff and seamen onboard, only 64 survived.

The embassy also said Japan had earlier conducted an inquiry into the incident but would not elaborate on the findings.

Japan has long been criticized for specifically targeting a hospital ship in direct contravention of the Hague Convention on merchant vessels during war.

In the past there was speculation that the Japanese submarine sank the Centaur because it believed it was carrying military supplies to Australian troops in Papua New Guinea.

However, David Mearns, who led the search project to uncover the hospital ship, believes the claim is untrue.

"There has been absolutely no shred of any proof that munitions other than the guns that the ambulance drivers were entitled to carry were on board," The Australian quoted Mearns as saying.

The embassy emphasized that during World War II the two countries were adversaries, adding that relations now are on a strong footing.

"Japan, reflecting on the past, has since made the greatest efforts for world peace and prosperity as a responsible member of the international community and has also developed a close relationship with Australia," the embassy said.

Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it had accepted Japan's apologies for its wartime behavior and said the country is now a very different one that "contributes greatly to regional prosperity and security."

"The Japanese government has, on a regular basis, expressed its remorse for Japan's wartime actions — this includes current Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who has done so since his election earlier this year," a spokesman told The Australian.

However, one of the survivors, Martin Pash, 87, told the Courier-Mail newspaper that he would like Japan to acknowledge that the Centaur should never have been torpedoed.

"It would be the decent thing to do," Pash said.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Thursday, Dec. 24, 2009
ISS arrivals add Christmas touch

MOSCOW (Kyodo) Soichi Noguchi and two other astronauts arrived Wednesday at the International Space Station to begin their five-month stay, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency officials said.

The three, who took off from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan aboard a Russian Soyuz space capsule Monday, entered orbit before successfully docking with the station at 7:48 a.m. Wednesday, Japan time, the officials said.

Noguchi, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov and U.S. astronaut Timothy Creamer went aboard the ISS two hours later wearing Santa Claus hats and were met by two astronauts already on board, American Jeff Williams and Russian Maxim Suraev.

The five then held a video conference. Noguchi spoke with agency officials, and exchanged Christmas greetings with his wife and three daughters.

During his stay at the station scheduled to run until May, Noguchi, 44, will be involved in scientific studies making use of the space environment and will install the robotic arms on Japan's Kibo laboratory module.

He is expected to break the Japanese endurance record for a stay in orbit of 137 days, set by Koichi Wakata, 46, earlier this year.

news20091224gdn1

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Climate change]
Plants and animals race for survival as climate change creeps across the globe
Lowland tropics, mangroves and deserts at greater risk than mountainous areas as global warming spreads, study finds
David Adam
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 23 December 2009 18.20 GMT Article history

Global warming creeps across the world at a speed of a quarter of a mile each year, according to a new study that highlights the problems that rising temperatures pose to plants and animals. Species that can tolerate only a narrow range of temperatures will need to move as quickly if they are to survive. Wildlife in lowland tropics, mangroves and desert areas are at greater risk than species in mountainous areas, the study suggests.

"These are the conditions that will set the stage, whether species move or cope in place," said Chris Field, director of the department of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution in the US, who worked on the project. "Expressed as velocities, climate change projections connect directly to survival prospects for plants and animals."

The study, by scientists at the Carnegie Institution, Stanford University, the California Academy of Sciences, and the University of California, Berkeley, combined information on current and projected future climate to calculate a "temperature velocity" for different parts of the world.

They found that mountainous areas will have the lowest velocity of temperature change, meaning that animals will not need to move very far to stay in the temperature range of their natural habitat. However, much larger geographic displacements are required in flatter areas such as flooded grasslands, mangroves and deserts, in order for animals to keep pace with their climate zone. The researchers also found that most currently protected areas are not big enough to accommodate the displacements required.

Healy Hamilton, director of the centre for applied biodiversity informatics at the California Academy of Sciences, said: "One of the most powerful aspects of this data is that it allows us to evaluate how our current protected area network will perform as we attempt to conserve biodiversity in the face of global climate change."

He added: "When we look at residence times for protected areas, which we define as the amount of time it will take current climate conditions to move across and out of a given protected area, only 8% of our current protected areas have residence times of more than 100 years. If we want to improve these numbers, we need to both reduce our carbon emissions and work quickly towards expanding and connecting our global network of protected areas."

The study found that global warming would have the lowest velocities in tropical and subtropical coniferous forests, where it would move at about 80 metres a year, and montane grasslands and shrublands - a biome with grass and shrubs at high elevations - with a projected velocity of about 110 metres each year.

Global warming is expected to sweep more quickly across flatter areas, such as mangrove swamps and flooded grasslands and savannas, where it could have velocities above 1km a year. Across the world, the average velocity is 420 metres each year. The results are published in the journal Nature.

Wildlife in areas with low projected climate change velocities are not necessarily better protected, the scientists point out. Habitats such as broadleaf forests are often small and fragmented, which makes it harder for species to move.

The study examines the movement of climate zones, not species, the scientists stress, which means it is difficult to predict what the impacts may be on individual trees, insects and animals. Some are more tolerant to changing temperature than others, and the movement of species can be difficult to track. While trees are estimated to have spread northwards through a warming Europe after the end of the last ice age at a speed of about 1km per year, this could be down to dormant seeds reseeding the landscape, which would not be possible if species are forced to shift to new territories.

The scientists say that global warming will cause temperatures to change so rapidly that almost a third of the globe could see climate velocities higher than even the most optimistic estimates of plant migration speeds.

Some plants and animals may have to be physically moved by humans to help them cope, the scientists say, while protected areas must also be enlarged and joined together.


[Environment > Birds]
Rare bird species seeing a revival, says RSPB
Bittern, avocet and osprey numbers increased over past decade
David Adam
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 23 December 2009 16.27 GMT Article history

Britain's birds have seen a dramatic reversal of fortune over the past decade, according to a review.

Almost 60% of Britain's rarest birds, including once near-extinct species such as the bittern, avocet and osprey, have seen their numbers increase, said the RSPB.

Mark Avery, the RSPB conservation director, said: "There are birds which started the noughties right on the brink, like the bittern, and a lot of people have put a lot of effort in to save them with some amazing results."

But rare birds that breed in Britain have fared better than their more common cousins, with many species, including starlings, nightingales and cuckoos, in decline.

news20091224gdn2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Blooding]
Cockermouth rebuilds after the floods: 'Back, but better than before'
Cumbrian town devastated by surging river Derwent sees chance to regenerate Georgian heart
Martin Wainwright
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 23 December 2009 16.18 GMT Article history

Echoing to builders' drills and lined with skips of stinking flood debris, the devastated town of Cockermouth is planning a wholesale restoration of its exceptional Georgian heart.

Taking their cue from hundreds of optimistic children's paintings and messages of support, pasted up beside the Christmas lights and decorations, people have started talking not simply about patch-and-mending, but reinventing their picturesque town centre.

A month into recovery, talk in Main Street and Market Place is of recreating the "Manchester effect" which revolutionised the city after the 1996 IRA bomb. "That was a disaster which triggered an extraordinary regeneration," says Darren Ward, an architect and head of Cockermouth and District Civic Trust. "Here's our disaster, and in the same way, it's a golden opportunity - not just to repair the town, but to transform it into something much better."

An exhibition pointing the way opened yesterdayat Christ Church, which is doubling as Cockermouth's temporary library – just as a pub has made room for a flooded-out hairdresser and ladies' underwear is being sold from an accountancy. Organised by the trust and Allerdale council, it highlights specially-designed shopfronts commissioned for an initial 10 businesses.

In place of run-of-the-mill 1950s fascias and years of haphazard additions, the designs reflect Cockermouth's surviving Georgian buildings, and draw on archive pictures of others which have been poorly modernised. Corporate fascias such as Boots, the first store to reopen on Main Street, are also on the hit list.

"We can't go back to Georgian times but we can match their quality of design," says Ward. "Some shops have been allowed to degrade over the years. Others had renovation which was frankly no good."

The council has set aside £50,000 for work on the 10 pioneers, with more to come as an estimated £100m of insurance money gets Main Street and Market Place back on their feet.

"We want to see the centre up and running in six months' time," says Rebecca Wilson, planning officer for Allerdale. "But not just by putting things back as they were. This is our chance to design something much better: a new, improved Cockermouth – back, but better than before."

The plan has the support of most independent traders, who are running temporary outlets in places such as Mitchell's auction rooms. Eighty per cent suffered damage and Christmas trade is forlorn, with some startling exceptions.

"We've sold many more than we expected of these," says Catherine Hetherington of the New Bookshop, holding up Margaret Atwood's latest novel Year of the Flood. Wet Weather Walks and a rushed-out picture book on the floods are also big sellers. In the next, cramped unit, Jonty and Fiona Chippendale's temporary toyshop is doing a nice line in model kits of the Titanic and wooden Noah's arks.

With other traders, both shops give every buyer a sticker saying "Bought in Cockermouth", which is turning - beyond the town and Cumbria - into one of this year's must-have Christmas gifts. Fetching out another reel from under his till, Jonty says: "No doubt we'll be seeing them on eBay soon."

The Chippendales' Main Street store is signed up to the "new, improved Cockermouth" plan, thanks to six feet of filthy water which left the inside like a bombsite. As a drill rips out the floor to get at a sewage-contaminated void below, Jonty says: "Everything we put back in has got to conform to new building standards, so we're going to end up with a much better shop. Cosier and warmer too - all the concrete has to have a thermal lining."

The National Trust, busy with repairs to Wordsworth's birthplace, which backs on to the river he called "a boyhood playmate", is also supporting the plan.

Businesses and the council are seeking funding wherever they can. The flood appeal has topped £1m, a tenth of it given by Cockermouth's biggest employer James Walker, whose 350 staff are back at work after valve-making equipment was rescued from the flood. Jennings Brewery, currently making its beers in Wolverhampton, is giving 10p for every pint.

Other businesses have signed up to a potential legal claim for compensation over water releases from Lake District reservoirs, which may have coincided with the flood's exceptional surge. "We had flood warnings and got a lot of our stock on to shelves a metre higher," says Chippendale. "But it was wasted effort because the water reached six feet."

Arts groups are pitching in too, with Keswick's Theatre by the Lake giving £3,000 from its apt Christmas show, Grimm Tales, and community mass sings of a recovery song, What Can Be Done?, accompanied in Main Street by Cockermouth Mechanics Band. Pressure is also mounting on the government to speed up temporary road bridges for Cockermouth and Workington, which have both been cut in half by the collapse or closure of five crossings of the river Derwent.

"It's absolutely essential; it's a struggle to get anywhere round here," says Catherine Hetherington, whose staff are familiar with the mantra: "If this was down south, we'd have had a bridge a fortnight ago." With a temporary train station built at Workington in a weekend, a £5m temporary supermarket (and 24 jobs) in a week by Tesco, and a footbridge in 10 days by the army, the universal Christmas question is: why is a road crossing taking so long?

Living out of a shopping bag
"Everyone's been wonderful," said Robert Casson, "but I can't say other than that Christmas has been cancelled for us." Checking through warm clothes at the emergency distribution centre – still busy after four weeks helping evacuees – he and his wife Elizabeth face a long road back.

"I've not been paid since the flood," said Robert, who usually commutes weekly to an opencast mining job in Scotland. He was there when Elizabeth rang him from home at lunchtime as the river rose, saying she thought the water might seep in.

"I got back at 5pm and had to wade through the front door, up to my waist," he said. Elizabeth could not remember what she was doing until he reminded her gently: "Love, you were sitting on the stairs crying, and that was no surprise."

A mountain rescue team got them out in a dinghy, family members took them in and have been kindness itself, but the daily routine is wearing. Elizabeth, opening her shopping bag to show a bulging file, said: "That's our life. Everything we've got's in there – bank stuff, insurance and all the rest. We take it with us wherever we go." Living out of a file will be relieved on Christmas Day, when the couple get together with grandchildren, but normal life is the best part of a year away. "Cleaning, sanitising, drying, rebuilding – it looks like late autumn before we're home," said Elizabeth. "Then we'll have the biggest street party ever."

news20091224gdn3

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Copenhagen Climate change conference 2009]
Pressure on poor at Copenhagen led to failure, not diplomatic wrangling
The summit was a culmination of attempts by rich countries to steamroller the G77 into accepting a deal not in their interests
Bernarditas de Castro Muller
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 23 December 2009 14.41 GMT Article history

The failure of negotiators to agree a significant deal in Copenhagen was not due to two weeks of frenetic diplomatic wrangling, it was the culmination of years of attempted bullying and bribery by rich nations, in order to steamroller the developed world into accepting a deal that was not in their interests.

The EU for example made sustained attempts to influence and pressure developing nations – something that only served to increase their cohesion. They bribed where they could, promising the same recycled financing and maybe more to come if countries bent to their demands. And they bullied when they could not bribe.

The UK financed workshops in selected vulnerable countries and deployed climate envoys. One of its envoys told intransigent negotiators that the UK would mobilise a group of vulnerable countries to pressure the major developing countries – such as China, Brazil and India – into committing to emissions reductions, contrary to their obligations under the climate treaty.

Meanwhile, everybody waited to see which way the US would go. The whole process went into slow motion until the new US administration took over early in 2009. The US did begin to engage, but only to make more noise in the negotiations, dampening hopes for a US emissions reduction target. It promised recycled financing, most of it to be spent domestically, and above all warned that everything depended on US congressional approval. This ensured nothing would happen until mid- to late-2010.

What occurred in Copenhagen was the culmination of the frustrations many developing countries have about the total lack of transparency and inclusiveness in the process. Rumours of a "Danish text" – the now infamous document prepared by rich countries outside the negotiating process and leaked to the Guardian in the first week of the conference – were circulating weeks before Copenhagen. When confronted with these rumours, the Danish presidency firmly denied the text's existence.

At the beginning of the second week, new procedures were introduced that delayed negotiations for at least two days. The G77 group of developing nations was blamed for these delays, while developed countries stalled in the closed negotiating rooms.

But to the press outside, rich countries continued to push the message that "the G77 is blocking negotiations".

The G77 negotiators continued to engage in negotiations, hoping for these to be part of the final agreed outcome. We waited in vain. What took place behind closed doors was backroom wheeling and dealing. I took part as part of the Sudanese team in the first meeting, where the big G77 countries were trying to revise the text. Small gains were made, but largely the revisions suggested were ignored. Sudan dropped out of the final backroom negotiations when it became clear that little more could be accomplished for small developing countries.


The final plenary, which all members from all parties must attend, broke out in confusion when the Danish prime minister and conference chairman, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, marched in after making the delegations wait for nearly five hours without any explanation. He took the microphone to announce that a deal (the Copenhagen accord) was done, and secretariat personnel frantically distributed the text. Countries had just an hour to read the text and come up with their positions.

Rasmussen then closed the session without following normal procedures of soliciting views of parties and proceeded to march out again, leaving pandemonium on the floor. The only way to be allowed to speak in the subsequent debate was to ask for points of order, which were not heeded until delegates began banging name-plates on the table. During the interventions, the chairman looked on, glaring at the proceedings, turning now and then to consult the secretariat. No courtesy nor proper attention were accorded to the speakers. The claim that only three or four countries spoke against the accord is false.

The intervention of Ed Miliband, the UK's climate change minister, focused on the paragraphs concerning financing, saying they would not be put into operation unless countries signed up to the accord. The US made a similar point. Tuvalu, in speaking against the accord, likened the financing offered to the "30 pieces of silver" Judas Iscariot received to betray Jesus. It is sad to say but pledges of financing have a way of evaporating over time, and financing done through existing institutions are unpredictable, difficult to access, conditional and selective.

The parties decided to continue with the negotiations, while taking note of the accord which, on many of its provisions, undermines the developing countries' positions in these negotiations.

Copenhagen represented a complete breakdown of trust among the parties. To build it up again, under the shadow of a the Copenhagen accord, is immensely challenging. The holidays might provide time for reflection, and the firm resolve of the New Year should be to do something, finally, please, to address climate change and its adverse effects.

Bernarditas de Castro Muller is the former lead coordinator and negotiator for the G77 and China in Copenhagen

news20091224nn1

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 23 December 2009 | Nature 462, 968-969 (2009) | doi:10.1038/462968a
News
Tsunami watch
Five years after the Indian Ocean disaster, the technology is in place, but local preparedness is less advanced.
Quirin Schiermeier & Alexandra Witze

{Early warnings saved lives in a 2009 tsunami in Samoa.}

On the morning of 29 September, Mase Akapo knew exactly what to do. At 6:48 a.m., on the island of Tutuila in American Samoa, he had felt the ground shake harder than he ever had before. Ten minutes later Akapo, a meteorologist, was in his office, issuing an alert for the tsunami he knew was probably on its way.

Tsunami warnings are a way of life for coastal communities, but five years ago they took on a new layer of meaning. On 26 December 2004, a magnitude-9.0 quake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra generated a series of tsunamis that drowned some 230,000 people around the Indian Ocean. Most of them had no idea it was coming.

Memory of the disaster remains relatively fresh in many coastal communities, even in the South Pacific, where American Samoa and other nations have used it to brush up on their preparedness plans. "What we learned from that tsunami really helped us," says Akapo, whose 2009 warnings helped entire villages to reach safety before a massive wave struck Tutuila.

Experts say that much work remains, however. In all the world's major oceans — although not the Mediterranean Sea, where some still see a risk — sophisticated tsunami-sensing instruments are now on alert, from the extensive Pacific network first set up in 1965 to the brand-new system deployed across the Indian Ocean in the wake of the 2004 disaster (see graphic). Such systems rely on a network of seismic stations to detect the earthquake, and deep-ocean and coastal gauges to detect resulting changes in sea level. But the best instrumentation in the world cannot guarantee that crucial communication takes place where it is needed: at the waterfront, before the wave strikes, and in terms that local communities can understand and heed.

"In the Indian Ocean region there is a tremendous amount of work yet to be done," says Costas Synolakis, director of the University of Southern California's Tsunami Research Center in Los Angeles. "It is urgent work, because when it comes to tsunamis, bad information kills."

Before 2004, most people associated tsunamis with the Pacific Ocean, where the waves have repeatedly struck Japan and Hawaii. Few worried about such hazards in the Indian Ocean. Only 4% of all known tsunamis in the twentieth century occurred there — and none had struck in living memory in countries such as Thailand, India and Sri Lanka. Palaeorecords of ancient tsunamis suggest that the 2004 event was the biggest in that region in more than 600 years^1,2.

At the time, the Indian Ocean had no tsunami warning system. By 2005, the Japan Meteorological Agency in Tokyo and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, had started issuing warnings as well as they could for the Indian Ocean with the instruments they had set up for the Pacific. And by the end of March 2010, the new Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System will be fully operational. It includes 120 seismic stations, more than 60 coastal tide-gauge stations, 24 early-detection buoys and 20 deep-ocean 'tsunameters'.

The effort, which cost more than US$100 million, is being paid for by various countries, with Germany, Indonesia and India assuming the largest shares. The 28 countries that are connected to the system are each responsible for collecting and feeding in their data to regional tsunami watch centres in Australia, India and Indonesia. If the data suggest a real threat, the centres will immediately send an alert back to national tsunami focal points, which in turn disseminate warnings to local communities and emergency services.

"People in the region are safer than they were in 2004," says Keith Alverson, project-office director with the Global Ocean Observing System of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris. "The challenge is to tailor technology to local cultures and make the system sustainable in the long term," he says.

Hidden dangers

A tsunami that struck Java on 17 July 2006, killing more than 600 people, highlighted the limits of any warning system, no matter how technologically advanced. The tsunami arrived about 30 minutes after the earthquake, and survivors have reported that no warnings were issued. Lifeguards also failed to recognize the initial recession of water that typically precedes a tsunami, because it was masked by large, wind-driven waves breaking on the shore³.

{“When it comes to tsunamis, bad information kills.”}

The earthquake itself might have raised the alarm. "For people living close to a fault line, the only effective tsunami warning, alas, is the quake itself," says Harald Spahn, a geologist with the German Technical Cooperation who helps authorities in Sumatra, Java and Bali to improve tsunami warning capacities at the local level. But before the Java tsunami little or no ground-shaking was felt, which is typical for the 'slow' earthquakes that are common in the region.

Community-based public education and evacuation drills are essential to save lives in any tsunami, even if evacuation begins just minutes before the wave arrives. Regular drills are now conducted in some Javanese communities, but not all Indonesian coastlines are sufficiently prepared, says Spahn.

There have been some success stories in improving the communication of warnings down the critical 'last mile', he adds. For example, loudspeakers on mosques that normally call people for prayer are also an efficient way of broadcasting a tsunami warning, and have been used for this purpose in Sumatra and Java.

Similar public-education efforts paid off in saving lives in Samoa and American Samoa three months ago, says Bruce Jaffe, a coastal-hazards researcher at the US Geological Survey in Santa Cruz, California. "Many people knew what to do," he says; they hurried on foot to higher ground.

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, he says, provided "the wake-up call" to reinvigorate overall preparedness efforts for coastal communities around the world. But as more years pass since nearly a quarter of a million million people died, Jaffe worries that people's awareness will start to drop off again. "We can't let that happen," he says. "We've got to, if anything, step up the efforts."

Quirin Schiermeier, with additional reporting by Alexandra Witze

References
1. Jankaew, K. et al. Nature 455, 1228-1231 (2008).
2. Monecke, K. et al. Nature 455, 1232-1234 (2008).
3. Fritz, H. M. et al. Geophys. Res. Lett. 34, L12602 (2007).

news20091224nn2

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 23 December 2009 | Nature |
News
Microbial encyclopaedia guided by evolution
Sequencing project reveals microbial cache of protein families.
Brendan Borrell

Sequencing neglected microbes could accelerate the discovery of new protein families and biological traits, a study published today suggests.

Genome sequencers have tended to gravitate towards microbes with special traits, such as deadly pathogens or deep-sea extremophiles, but as a result sequencing efforts have been piecemeal and have left blank large portions of the microbial tree of life. In this week's issue of Nature, Jonathan Eisen at the University of California, Davis, and his co-authors analyse the complete sequences of 56 bacterial and archaeal species¹ that were selected to help fill those gaps.

{{Sequencing shows that the bacterium Haliangium ochraceum appears to have stolen a textbook gene from eukaryotes.}
M. Rohde/Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, Braunschweig}

The approach nets an average of 1,000 protein families for each genome sequenced, and so far the researchers have identified 1,768 protein families that seem to be new to science. Discovering novel enzymes that can be used in industrial processes such as bioremediation or biofuel production is one of the main practical goals of microbial genomics.

Donald Bryant, a microbial physiologist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park who was not involved in the research, says that this evolutionarily guided strategy "has the potential to direct people toward new discoveries".

Sequencing history

The study represents the first publication of the Genomic Encyclopedia of Bacteria and Archaea, launched in 2007 by the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) in Walnut Creek, California, where Eisen holds an adjunct appointment. The project developed after he completed eight microbial genome sequences and realized — with some disappointment — that the deepest branches of the microbial tree of life were still murky. JGI director Eddy Rubin suggested starting up a large-scale sequencing project to rectify the situation, but only if Eisen and his collaborators could demonstrate the practical benefits of this basic research.

Now Eisen believes he has made his case. The team examined a microbial family tree that had been assembled on the basis of the gene encoding the RNA that forms the small subunit of the bacterial ribosome, and chose 200 lineages whose members had never been sequenced. Collaborators at the German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures in Braunschweig then grew enough of the microbes to begin the sequencing; the team prioritized work on ones that would be easiest to obtain sufficient quantities of DNA. Compared with a random selection of microbes, Eisen says, evolutionarily guided sequencing can net more proteins and improve the reconstruction of the tree of life.

One species, called Haliangium ochraceum, which lives in coastal saltwater environments, has a gene similar to those that make actin proteins in eukaryotes — organisms whose cells contain complex membrane-bound structures, such as fungi, plants and animals. This is the first time that a version of this 'textbook' eukaryotic gene has been discovered in bacteria. Eisen suspects that the bacterium stole the gene from a eukaryote, and may use it to disrupt the growth of eukaryotic prey or competitors such as fungi. "This is just an emblematic reason to do unbiased sampling," Eisen says. "Nobody would have sequenced the genome of this organism other than for phylogenetic reasons."

He believes that sequencing just 1,520 microbial strains selected to fill in the microbial tree of life could encompass half of the diversity of the bacteria and archaea that can be cultured in a laboratory. Ultimately, Eisen hopes that this study will convince funding agencies to support the sequencing of not only those organisms, but thousands more that have never been cultured.

But not everyone is enamored of the strategy. "We all agree that many more microbial genomes are needed, but it does not really matter in what order these will be sequenced," says Stephan Schuster of Pennsylvania State University. For Schuster, the most important thing is that genomes are finished and annotated rather than being reported as "laundry lists of novel features".

References
1. Wu, D. et al. Nature 462, 1056-1060 (2009).


[naturenews]
Published online 23 December 2009 | Nature |
News
Fish tanks 'threaten Sunshine State sea creatures'
Florida invertebrate fishery could be heading for collapse, scientists warn.
Daniel Cressey

{{The blue-legged hermit crab is one of the species that might be under threat.}
RevolverOcelot/Wikipedia}

A growing trend towards fancier fish tanks threatens the future of Florida's invertebrate fishery, researchers warned this week.

While some question the scientists' bleak conclusion, data on crabs, anemones, starfish, snails and the like collected off the coasts of the Sunshine State, show a huge increase in catches for aquaria since 1994.

"The invertebrate ornamental fishery in the State of Florida, with increasing catches over a more diverse array of species, is poised for collapse," warns a paper in PLoS ONE¹.

The problem, says lead author of the paper Andrew Rhyne, is a trend away from simple fish-only display tanks towards having entire coral ecosystems in your living room. To create these miniature reefs, invertebrates are harvested from the wild, either to adorn a tank or to provide a useful role, such as keeping algae under control.

Florida hosts the world's third largest ornamental fishery, behind only Indonesia and the Philippines. Rhyne, a marine biologist at the New England Aquarium in Boston, Massachusetts, and Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island, and his colleagues looked at how fishing in the state has changed. For this, they used the Florida Marine Life Fishery (FMLF) database, which records details of fisheries products caught in the state.

{{“We're not saying the system is totally destroyed or that this is a terrible fishery that shouldn't be occurring. We're saying there should be a different management system.”}
Andrew Rhyne
New England Aquarium}

They found that, each year between 1994 and 2007, the number of invertebrates taken from Florida waters increased by 13.3%, or half a million individual animals. Nine million individuals were collected in 2007, with the most popular including the blue-legged hermit crab (Clibanarius tricolor), the five-holed keyhole sand dollar (Mellita tenuis) and the star snail (Lithopoma americanum).

Worryingly, there has also been a shift towards collecting grazing species. These are prized by aquarium keepers as they keep algae under control. But they perform a similar function in the wild, and their removal may hasten what some researchers have dubbed the "slippery slope to slime", in which coral is killed off by algae.

The FMLF fishery, Rhyne et al write, "appears to be crawling to collapse".

"We're not saying the system is totally destroyed or that this is a terrible fishery that shouldn't be occurring," Rhyne told Nature. "We're saying there should be a different management system."

Downturn hopes
The difficulty, says Rhyne, is that there are no real baseline data for many of these species. Simply put, no one knows what a sustainable level of take for many of these animals might be.

With the aquarium industry quick to respond to new trends, Rhyne worries that some animals might become imperilled under the current management system if demand suddenly increases.

At present, most of the invertebrates in question are caught under 'multi-species' licences that allow collectors to take any species except some corals and endangered animals.

In their paper, the researchers suggest that a predicted — although probably temporary — decline in demand for relatively exotic aquarium species owing to the current economic downturn presents a real opportunity to change the management of these animals. Rhyne suggests individually managing the most popular species or reducing the number of licences granted.

The researchers also note that there is legislation under discussion in the US that could ban trade in non-native wildlife. If laws are enacted banning the import of species from outside the US this could "dramatically increase" the pressure on Florida.

Sherry Larkin, a researcher in marine resource management at the University of Florida, says there is a lot of good work in the paper, including information about types of species gathered and exploration of the potential implications of a trade ban.

"I'm less thrilled about the general categorization of the worldwide problem and how the Florida data supports statements that the fishery is headed for collapse," says Larkin. "The regulations for the Florida commercial industry are extensive but the article gives the impression that the effort by the current restricted fishermen is a run-away train that will be solely responsible for a collapse."

Lee Schlesinger, a spokesman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in Tallahassee, denied that there was a problem with the management of Florida's marine resources.

"Our fisheries are well managed and have been for years. The resources are considered to be fairly healthy and abundant," he says. "Five hundred-plus species are collected for the aquarium trade. It is a highly regulated fishery here in Florida."

References
1. Rhyne, A. et al. PLoS ONE 4, e8413 (2009).

news20091224nn3

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 23 December 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.1160
News
Fossil evidence of early reptiles' last meal
Insect remains found in the mouths of early vertebrate fossils.
Janelle Weaver

{{The jaws of two fossils may be harbouring evidence that early reptiles fed on insects.}
Biology Letters}

In the caves of a hilly Oklahoma ghost town, researchers have found what may be the first evidence of preserved insect remains in the mouths of fossilized vertebrates. The find is compelling evidence that early reptiles, the equivalent of modern-day lizards, fed on insects.

Sean Modesto, a biologist at Cape Breton University in Nova Scotia, Canada, and his colleagues found pieces of arthropod skeleton on the teeth inside two 280-million-year-old skulls of a species of reptile they have yet to fully describe. They report the discovery in the journal Biology Letters¹.

One skull contained a cuticle with five segments that seemed to be part of an antenna, and the other had a long cuticle fragment that was narrow at one end and broader at the tip. This could have been part of a rear appendage.

"It is extremely uncommon to find the remains of organisms in the mouths of fossilized predators," says Matthew Vickaryous, who studies the anatomy of fossil vertebrates at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. "To the best of my knowledge, this is a one of a kind find."

Lucky find

Modesto and his collaborators made this discovery entirely by chance. "You don't expect to see the last meal lodged in the teeth of fossils," Modesto says. "The modern equivalent is finding a popcorn kernel shell in the tooth of an ancient Mayan."

The two skulls come from an enigmatic group called parareptiles, which first appeared nearly 300 million years ago and for the most part became extinct by the end of the Permian period, with just a few species lingering into the age of dinosaurs.

{{What seem to be remains of an antenna and a rear appendage of insects have been found on the fossils' teeth.}
Biology Letters}

"To have pieces of both vertebrate and invertebrate preserved at the same time is very unusual," Vickaryous says. Vertebrate palaeontologists may overlook small pieces of invertebrate remains when excavating spectacular vertebrate fossils. Beyond the initial detection, preserving the remains requires careful recovery and preparation, he adds.

In younger specimens, researchers have found mollusc shell fragments in the gut of a fossil sea turtle², preserved fish remains in a bird's stomach³, lizard and mammal skeletons in fossil dinosaur stomachs⁴ and dinosaur remains in a fossil mammal's stomach⁵. In fossil reptiles from the Permian, scientists have found plant material in the gut⁶ and reptile bones in the mouth7.

But little other evidence is available for the dietary habits of the vertebrates that lived during the Permian, says Conrad Labandeira, palaeoecologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. "This paper may be more important in the long run than the original description of the fossil bones."

Insectivorous evidence

Roy Beckemeyer, palaeoentomologist at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum in Lawrence, has studied Permian insect fossils in Oklahoma. He evaluated photographs of the finds and verified that the fragments were from an arthropod. "We know of roughly 200 species of insects in this area during that time," Beckemeyer says. "There's a very good chance that these reptiles were insectivorous."

Scientists had long suspected that early reptiles were insectivorous because of the shape of their teeth, which are sharp and curve inward, making them ideal for piercing insect skeletons and holding struggling prey in place. But that evidence is indirect because it relies on comparisons between extinct and living animals.

"It's pretty much smoking-gun type of evidence when you actually have the organism in the part of the anatomy responsible for feeding," Labandeira says. "It's very compelling evidence that closes the case."

References
1. Modesto, S. P. , Scott, D. M. & Reisz, R. R. Biol. Lett. 5, 838-840 (2009).
2. Kear, B. P. Biol. Lett. 2, 113-115 (2006).
3. Mayr, G. J. Ornithol. 145, 281-286 (2004).
4. Currie, P. J. & Chen, P.-J. Can. J. Earth Sci. 38, 1705-1727 (2001).
5. Hu, Y. , Meng, J. , Wang, Y. & Li, C. Nature 433, 149-152 (2005).
6. Karlsruhe, W. M. & Sues, H.-D. Paläontol. Zeitschr. 67, 169-176 (1993).
7. Eaton, T. H. Jr American Museum Novitates No. 2169 (1964).


[naturenews]
Published online 23 December 2009 | Nature 462, 962-963 (2009) | doi:10.1038/462962a
News
News 2009
The year in which …
Lizzie Buchen

H1N1 swept the planet

The first influenza pandemic in 40 years propelled the globe onto a roller coaster of panic and complacency. In March, a new H1N1 virus — a mongrel containing genes from swine, bird and human flu viruses — emerged in North America and spread rapidly, sparking fears of a severe pandemic. The new virus was particularly dangerous for younger adults and those with underlying diseases, but most patients had mild symptoms. The low severity cut the world some slack, as a vaccine took months to produce and some manufacturers fell behind schedule; the United States, Australia and Europe didn't start vaccination programmes until October, and poorer nations months after that, if at all. As of mid-December the flu was continuing to intensify across central and eastern Europe and parts of Asia, but its second wave had peaked in North America and parts of Europe. More than 10,580 people have died.

The LHC broke a world record

The high-energy physics crown has passed from the United States to Europe. On 30 November the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland, became the highest-energy accelerator in the world, breaking the record long held by the Tevatron at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois. Europe's proton-pummelling behemoth had spent most of the year in recovery after an electrical failure during its first run in September 2008 caused massive damage. By December 2009, head-on collisions at the LHC had reached 2.36 teraelectronvolts; physicists plan to begin science at this energy level in 2010, with the hope of finding evidence of the long-sought Higgs boson and dark matter.

Climate e-mails were hacked

In what climate-change sceptics are calling the scandal of the decade — and many climate scientists are calling a meaningless nuisance — more than 1,000 e-mails between top researchers were hacked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, UK, just weeks before the Copenhagen climate summit began. Some of the e-mails revealed frustration with data and a cavalier attitude towards sceptics, but they did not discredit the solid body of evidence showing that the world is getting warmer, probably at the hands of humans. The e-mails did, however, embolden sceptics, who interpreted them as evidence of a global conspiracy. CRU director Phil Jones, who composed most of the more controversial e-mails, has stepped aside while an independent panel investigates.

The Moon was found to be damp

A decades-long debate has been resolved: water ice can accumulate in frigid craters on the Moon. On 9 October the rocket booster of NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) slammed into a lunar crater that receives no sunlight, kicking up a plume of dust that was disappointing to spectators but exciting for scientists. Just before LCROSS crashed, its instruments detected water in the dust, suggesting that vapour had frozen into the crater floor. Other spectra hinted at other molecules, such as carbon dioxide, mercury and methane. Researchers hope to explore the ice for clues about the Solar System's history.

Obama boosted US science

"We will restore science to its rightful place," said US President Barack Obama in his inaugural address in January. On 9 March, Obama signed a memo supporting scientific integrity in federal decision-making and an executive order lifting the prior administration's limits on human embryonic stem-cell research. The latter move greatly expanded the number of cell lines eligible for federal funding for research, and by mid-December, 40 such lines had been approved. Obama has also appointed top scientists to key positions, including physicist Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy (see page 978), physicist and climate expert John Holdren as science adviser and marine ecologist Jane Lubchenco as administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

CONTINUED ON newsbbc4

news20091224nn4

[naturenews] from [nature.com]


[naturenews]
Published online 23 December 2009 | Nature 462, 962-963 (2009) | doi:10.1038/462962a
News
News 2009
The year in which …
Lizzie Buchen

CONTINUED FROM newsbbc3

Science weathered the recession

The global economic downturn forced tough choices on research funding. Crashing endowments struck top institutions such as Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which halted construction on a new science complex, and California's formidable budget deficit drove its state university system to force faculty members to take unpaid leave. But some governments, seeing research as a driver of the economy, made significant efforts to bolster basic science. The US Congress awarded $21 billion in stimulus funding to research. German chancellor Angela Merkel signed off on €18 billion (US$26 billion) over the next decade to universities and research organizations. French president Nicolas Sarkozy promised to spend €19 billion on research and higher education. And Japan allocated 1.6 trillion ($18 billion) for low-carbon technologies. But rich countries looked out for their own: much of African science is hurting after foreign investment and donor funding were slashed.

Japanese science got budget whiplash

Japan's first new government in five decades jolted scientists to attention. In November, a cabinet-level working group chaired by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama recommended slashing funding for many prominent science projects, including the SPring-8 synchrotron in Harima, the country's deep-sea-drilling programme and a supercomputer at RIKEN, which would become the world's fastest. Leading Japanese researchers and Nobel laureates rallied the scientific community and appealed to Hatoyama, and in December the country's highest science-policy-making body proposed continued support for the projects. Final budget decisions will be announced by the end of the year.

Climate negotiations faltered

The warmest decade on record concluded with the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen, where international climate negotiators failed to craft a treaty to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol (see page 966). Deep fissures remained between developing nations, which will probably be affected most by global warming, and developed nations, which have historically emitted the lion's share of greenhouse gases. However, both sides offered some concessions. Rich nations pledged to speed up the delivery of clean-energy technology to the developing world, and developing nations such as Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and South Africa promised major emissions cuts.

Plagiarism scandal hit Iranian ministers

A series of Nature investigations uncovered plagiarism in papers co-authored by high-level officials in Iran. Science minister Kamran Daneshjou, who oversaw the disputed June presidential election, and transport minister Hamid Behbahani, among others, were co-authors on multiple plagiarized papers, most of which have now been retracted by the journals involved.

US human spaceflight was in limbo

NASA may have to lower its ambitions. A commission headed by former aerospace executive Norman Augustine concluded that the US human-space-flight programme has nowhere near sufficient resources to meet the goals laid out by former US President George W. Bush, including returning to the Moon by 2020 using the next-generation Ares rocket (pictured). Under the agency's current budget, the panel said, astronauts won't even make it beyond low Earth orbit. The report suggested tabling the Moon mission, increasing the role of the private sector and extending the life of the International Space Station, which NASA had planned to abandon in 2015. President Barack Obama met with NASA administrator Charles Bolden on 16 December to discuss the agency's goals, and is expected to announce a decision soon.

They said it …

"It's sort of sad isn't it that you criticize government policy and you get sacked?"

Psychopharmacologist David Nutt after being dismissed from the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. He had advised that alcohol is more harmful than both ecstasy and cannabis.

Source: Nature News

"I think the population is losing half of the human brain power by not encouraging women to go into the sciences."

Chemistry Nobel prizewinner Ada Yonath, in what turned out to be a record year for women winning the prize: five took the award.

Source: AFP

"I have two passions. Space exploration and hip hop."

Buzz Aldrin, who made the hip hop video Rocket Experience in the year of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo Moon landings.

Source: http://buzzaldrin.com

"In England there has been almost a fashion recently for suing scientists for libel."

Journalist Simon Singh, who was sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association, has become the focus of a campaign to keep UK libel law from stifling scientific debate.

Source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation

"A high level of serious hysteria."

Physicist Gordon Kane describes a workshop on a mysterious dark-matter signal (see page 967). The signal was "inconclusive, sadly".

Source: New York Times

"The bird escaped unharmed but lost its bread."

CERN statement after the Large Hadron Collider had an electrical short circuit when a bird dropped a bit of baguette.

Source: CERN

"I don't want to use a word like 'breakthrough', but I don't think there's any doubt that this is a very important result."

Director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci on a clinical trial that combined two failed HIV vaccine candidates to produce a moderate result.

Source: New York Times

"I'd like to go back to studying cancer epidemiology and aetiology. They're my thing."

Health researcher and former prostitute Brooke Magnanti discusses her future after 'outing' herself as author of the famous sex blog Belle de Jour.

Source: Times Online

"We didn't pay 37 million zlotys ($11 million) for the largest elephant house in Europe to have a gay elephant live there."

Michal Grzes, a councillor in Poznań, Poland, protests that 'Ninio the gay elephant' will not help the zoo's breeding programme.

Source: Reuters

"Darwin was wrong."

This cover line in New Scientist magazine, in an issue marking the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, caused much ire.

"I'm not going to answer that question. I am a Christian, and I don't think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate."

Gary Goodyear, Canada's minister of state for science and technology, declining to answer the question 'do you believe in evolution?'. His rationale triggered much criticism.

Source: Globe and Mail

news20091224reut1

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
ANCHORAGE, Alaska
Wed Dec 23, 2009 7:58am EST
BP discovers leak at Alaska oil pipe, no output hit
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - BP has discovered a leak in an oil pipeline from one well at the giant Prudhoe Bay field, the third pipeline leak reported by the oil major over the past month on Alaska's North Slope.

BP said there was no "appreciable" impact to production from the event, which spilled a mixture of oil, produced water and natural gas at Prudhoe Bay, the largest U.S. oil field.

"This was, by every indication, an extremely short-term event. The line broke, the safety valve immediately shut the well off, it was over," said BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc spokesman Steve Rinehart.

The amount of liquid spilled was unknown, state and BP officials said, adding it came from a 6-inch-diameter pipeline that carries product from a single well. The leak was discovered on Monday during a routine check, state environmental officials said.

Rinehart said the spilled material appeared to have been limited to the area right by the well, landing on top of snow on the gravel pad.

Weld Royal, spokeswoman for the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, said the spill appeared to have "definitively affected" about 12,000 square feet of gravel pad, along with another 5,000 square feet that had patches of spilled material. Officials were hoping Tuesday to delineate possible impacts to snow-covered tundra, Royal said.

Three weeks ago, a ruptured 18-inch-diameter line at the Lisburne field released about 46,000 gallons of liquids, a mixture of oil and produced water, according to state officials. That rupture, discovered on November 29, is believed to have been caused by pressure that built up when contents of the line froze into long ice plugs. That event remains under investigation, officials said.

BP is preparing to fix the broken pipeline, a plan that would require state approval, Royal said. "BP has given DEC a conceptual plan for replacing the affected part of the pipeline. DEC is reviewing that conceptual plan," Royal said.

Another spill, discovered December 2, was from a pipeline inside a manifold building at a different Prudhoe Bay drill site. That spill released an estimated 7,170 gallons of produced water, according to state environmental officials.

BP is on probation following an Alaska pipeline spill in 2006, the largest ever recorded on the North Slope. That spill poured 212,252 gallons of crude oil onto the tundra. The company pleaded guilty to a single criminal violation of the Clean Water Act and paid $20 million in fines and restitution. It was also ordered to improve its pipeline maintenance.

Various agencies are investigating the circumstances of the Lisburne pipeline rupture to see whether there were any violations of BP's probationary terms, said Mary Frances Barnes, BP's federal probation officer.

A result of that probe will probably not be reached quickly because so many agencies are participating, Barnes said Monday. "The more people you have involved, the longer it's going to take," she said.

BP is also the target of pending civil lawsuits filed by both the state and federal governments over the 2006 spill and a second spill that year that resulted in a partial shutdown of the Prudhoe Bay field.

The federal lawsuit seeks millions of dollars in fines for various environmental violations. The state lawsuit seeks hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation for what the state claims was royalty and tax revenue lost during Prudhoe's partial shutdown in 2006.

At the site of the Lisburne spill, which sent oil and produced water spraying over an area of about 8,400 square feet, cleanup is nearly completed, state and BP officials said.

Oil-covered snow has been hauled away and is being melted, with contents separated, according to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. Workers using jackhammers and hand tools have removed contaminated snow and ice in spots inaccessible to machines, Rinehart said.

"What can be done now is almost completely done," he said.

Crews will be at the site in the spring to check on potential damage to tundra and, if necessary, options for rehabilitation, according to the Department of Environmental Conservation.

(Editing by Christian Wiessner)


[Green Business]
Wed Dec 23, 2009 8:57am EST
FACTBOX: Shale gas stirs energy hopes, environment concerns
(Reuters) - The boom in shale natural gas drilling has raised hopes the United States will be able to rely on the cleaner-burning fuel to meet future energy needs, but concerns about its impact on water quality could slow the industry's ability to tap this bountiful resource.

New York City urged a ban on natural gas drilling in its watersheds on Wednesday.

Some shale gas facts:

* Shale gas is natural gas -- largely methane -- produced and stored in shale formations a mile or more underground in many of the lower 48 U.S. states.

* Together with other "unconventional" natural gas sources (tight sands and coalbed methane), shale gas accounts for 60 percent of technically recoverable U.S. onshore reserves, according to the Department of Energy. At least half of new reserves growth is expected to come from shale gas by 2011. In all, shale reserves are estimated to contain enough gas to meet total U.S. demand for 26 years.

* Estimates of total U.S. natural gas reserves have been rising in recent years. The Energy Information Administration calculated proven reserves at 244 trillion cubic feet, or about 11 years' supply, up from the agency's 2006 estimate of 211 trillion cubic feet.

* A separate estimate from the Potential Gas Committee, an industry group, in June 2009 concluded that the U.S. has 1,836 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable natural gas reserves, the highest in the 44-year history of the organization. That represents about 80 years' supply at the current national consumption rate of 23 trillion cubic feet a year. The higher forecast largely reflects a reassessment of shale plays in the Appalachians, the Gulf Coast and elsewhere.

* One trillion cubic feet of gas is enough to heat 15 million homes for a year or to fuel 12 million natural gas-powered vehicles for a year, according to DOE figures.

* The abundance of shale and other forms of natural gas may allow the U.S. to reduce its dependence on overseas energy sources while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Natural gas produces about half of the carbon dioxide emitted by coal, and about a third less than oil, and so is seen as a "bridge" fuel between petroleum and renewable fuels such as wind and solar. Natural gas also emits lower levels of other pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide.

* A recent boom in shale gas development in states including Texas, Wyoming and Pennsylvania has been driven by advances in hydraulic fracturing in which a mixture of water, sand and chemicals are forced underground at pressures sufficiently high to open gas-bearing fissures in the shale, releasing the fuel which then flows to the surface.

* Exploitation of shale "plays" has also been aided by horizontal drilling, enabling much wider coverage of shale formations than with traditional vertical drilling, and with less surface disturbance.

* The biggest U.S. shale play is the Marcellus Shale which underlies most of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, along with parts of Ohio and New York state. The Marcellus could contain as much as 489 trillion cubic feet of gas, according to Terry Engelder, a Penn State University geoscientist. Its value is enhanced by the high quality of its gas and the fact that it is close to the major northeast market. More than 800 Marcellus wells have been drilled in Pennsylvania since 2005, most of them in the last year as energy companies accelerate development of the field, state regulators say.

(Reporting by Jon Hurdle; Editing by Daniel Trotta)

news20091224reut2

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
WASHINGTON
Wed Dec 23, 2009 7:52am EST
U.S. cracks down on lung-harming ship emissions
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. environmental regulators on Tuesday finalized engine and fuel standards for U.S. flagged ships to cut emissions that cause lung diseases and save more than $100 billion in health costs.

By 2030 the strategy should cut annual emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOX) from large oil tankers, cargo ships and cruise vessels by about 1.2 million tons and particulate matter emissions, or soot, by about 143,000 tons, the Environmental Protection Agency said.

When fully implemented, the effort will reduce NOX emissions from ships by 80 percent, and particulate emissions by 85 percent, compared to current emissions.

The EPA estimates that in 2030, the standards will prevent between 12,000 and 31,000 premature deaths and 1.4 million work days lost.

Annual health benefits in 2030 should be worth between $110 billion and $270 billion, compared to compliance costs of only about $3.1 billion, the EPA said.

"Stronger standards will help make large ships cleaner and more efficient, and protect millions of Americans from harmful diesel emissions," EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in a release.

An environmentalist agreed. "Frankly, it is hard to find a better deal in the public health world," Rich Kassel, the director of clean fuels and vehicles at the Natural Resources Defense Council said in a blog on Tuesday.

The EPA is also working with international organizations to control emissions from non-U.S. flagged ships.

The International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency, is set to vote in March next year on the adoption of the joint U.S.-Canada buffer zone, which would result in stringent standards for large foreign-flagged and domestic ships operating within the designated area.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by David Gregorio)


[Green Business]
PHILADELPHIA
Wed Dec 23, 2009 8:57am EST
Q+A: Environmental fears over U.S. shale gas drilling
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - The boom in shale natural gas drilling has raised hopes the United States will be able to rely on the cleaner-burning fuel to meet future energy needs. But concerns about its impact on water quality could slow the industry's ability to tap this bountiful resource.

New York City urged a ban on natural gas drilling in its watersheds on Wednesday.

Some questions and answers:

WHY ARE ENVIRONMENTALISTS CONCERNED ABOUT SHALE GAS DRILLING?

Critics of the U.S. boom in shale gas drilling say the practice contaminates the aquifers where many rural residents get their domestic water supplies; pollutes the air around gas rigs and compressor stations, and scars the landscape with drilling pads and new roads.

The natural gas industry says the drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," is entirely safe, citing research that has yet to prove any link between fracking and water contamination that could cause illness.

WHAT'S THE PROBLEM WITH WATER SUPPLIES?

Fracking chemicals are escaping into groundwater, critics say, and in several states there have been reports of fouled water and increased illness since drilling began. In addition, naturally occurring toxic substances such as arsenic are released from underground by fracturing and have been found at elevated levels near some drilling operations.

There are more than 200 "introduced" chemicals used in fracturing but details of how they are used are not published by energy companies. They are not required to disclose it because of an exemption to a federal clean water law granted to the oil and gas industry in 2005. That exemption has made it hard for critics to prove their case.

Drilling chemicals may cause many illnesses including cancer, fertility problems and neurological disorders, critics say.

HAS ANYONE ACTUALLY FOUND TOXIC CHEMICALS IN WATER WELLS NEAR GAS DRILLING?

Yes. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found 14 "contaminants of concern" in 11 private wells in the central Wyoming farming community of Pavillion, an area with about 250 gas wells. The August report did not identify the source of the contamination but is conducting more tests and is expected to reach a conclusion by spring 2010. In Pennsylvania, at least two privately conducted water tests near gas drilling have also found chemical contamination. One set of tests is being used in a lawsuit by a landowner against the gas company.

HOW DOES THE INDUSTRY RESPOND TO THESE CLAIMS?

Companies argue that the fracturing chemicals are heavily diluted, and are injected through layers of steel and concrete into the shale a mile or more underground and thousands of feet below aquifers, so they cannot mingle with drinking water. Industry officials say there has never been a documented case of water contamination from gas drilling. Some fracturing chemicals are also used in household products, which may explain their presence in water tests, energy companies say.

WHAT'S THE EXPERIENCE OF PEOPLE WHO LIVE NEAR GAS DRILLING?

Residents complain of water that is discolored, foul-smelling, bad-tasting, and in some cases even black. Some say drinking it causes sickness and bathing in it causes skin rashes. In a few cases, water has become flammable because methane has "migrated" from the drilling operations to water wells, a fact that has been confirmed by regulators in Pennsylvania. Many low-income people who live near gas rigs drink bottled water, and some have their water supplied by the gas company.

IS THERE A PROBLEM WITH WASTE WATER?

Yes. Around a third of the millions of gallons of water used in fracturing comes back to the surface where it is either reused or trucked to treatment plants. In Pennsylvania, where the industry is rushing to exploit the massive Marcellus Shale formation, critics say there isn't enough capacity to remove toxic chemicals from waste water. As a result, some waste gets pumped into rivers and creeks with little or no treatment, critics say. Some residents have accused tank trucks of dumping waste water on rural roads.

(Reporting by Jon Hurdle; Editing by Daniel Trotta)


[Green Business]
LONDON
Wed Dec 23, 2009 9:00am EST
Voluntary CO2 offset market ends year on down note
LONDON (Reuters) - Demand for voluntary carbon offsets declined in December, traditionally one of the market's busiest months, as a slow year meant retailers did not face the usual scramble to square their books, market players said.

"There has been a lack of last-minute December activity. Offset retailers usually buy any missing volumes from customer orders in the year but that was largely absent," Grattan MacGiffin, head of voluntary carbon markets at brokers MF Global in London, said on Wednesday.

"The general decline in volumes effectively gave retailers more time to get their books settled."

The unregulated voluntary market operates outside mandatory emissions cut schemes such as the United Nations' Clean Development Mechanism or the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme.

Despite a pickup from September to November, demand for offset credits called verified emissions reductions (VERs) generally stalled this year as companies cut expenditure to reduce their carbon footprint because of the global economic slump.

VER prices were largely stable this month, except for industrial credits which were slashed to around $1.50 from $3 in an attempt to attract more buyers.

"Overall the voluntary market has bucked previous years' trends of sustained growth. Estimates are that 40 to 50 percent of volume was traded in 2009 versus 2008, as corporate social responsibility buying has been constricted," MacGiffin added.

On Tuesday, the Brazilian Securities, Commodities and Futures Exchange canceled its voluntary credit auction due to lack of participants.

OPTIMISM FOR 2010

Demand should pick up again in 2010, when the United States Senate may pass climate legislation enabling a federal emissions trading scheme. Market players hope the scheme will include some voluntary offset credits.

"The paradox of a failed Copenhagen deal makes the realization of a U.S. cap-and-trade scheme more achievable as it will not be in the shadow of strong international targets, meaning some of the Republican senators might go along with a weakish, unilateral market," MacGiffin said.

This week, Nedbank and Wildlife Works Incorporated signed a multi-million pound deal to launch the first African carbon credit scheme. Over 2.5 million tonnes of credits will be generated by a Kenyan avoided deforestation scheme. The project is seeking registration from the Voluntary Carbon Standard registry, the companies said.

Earlier this month, UK-based financial information provider Markit and clean energy project developer C-Questor launched a new carbon standard for low-carbon energy projects.

The Carbco Platinum Carbon Standard will give extra certification and validation to clean energy projects in the voluntary and regulated U.N.-backed carbon markets.

(Reporting by Nina Chestney; Editing by Anthony Barker)

news20091224reut3

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
SEOUL
Wed Dec 23, 2009 9:58am EST
South Korea's STX Group in $428 mln Europe wind power deal
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean shipping-to-energy business group STX said on Wednesday it had agreed to develop a 300 million euro ($427.6 million) wind power project in eastern Europe.

STX said in a statement that it had signed a deal with a Polish consortium to develop the 220-megawatt project, under which an STX unit will provide wind power generators to different eastern European countries between 2010 and 2013.

($1=.7016 Euro)

(Reporting by Rhee So-eui; Editing by Jonathan Hopfner)


[Green Business]
SOFIA
Wed Dec 23, 2009 3:21pm EST
Bulgaria sends revised 2008-12 CO2 plan to Brussels
SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria's new government approved on Wednesday a long-delayed revision of its 2008-12 national plan that allocates carbon permits to industries to meet European Union requirements and sent to Brussels for approval.

Bulgaria, the only EU member state without an approved plan, hopes to get Brussels' nod in two months and distribute 42.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) permits a year to 132 installations, Environment Minister Nona Karadzhova said.

The new center-right government of the GERB party, which won July elections on promises to tackle rampant corruption and crime, has said it has tackled all shortcomings of the plan, which the European Commission has rejected two times.

"The plan has been revised in close co-operation with the European Commission so that we can be sure there will be no problems with its approval," Karadzhova told reporters.

Industry groups and carbon traders have criticized the previous Socialist-led government for lack of transparency, favoring certain companies over others and failing to respond to remarks by the EU's executive.

The Commission has rejected the plan two times, saying Sofia should exclude new industrial installations that were yet to become operational. It also demanded transparency in the way the quotas were allocated, saying some were treated preferentially.

The plan will allow Bulgarian industrial producers to join the EU's carbon trading scheme, the 27-nation bloc's main strategy to fight climate change.

It sets an overall cap on permits to emit the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) to energy-intensive industry, but allows companies to trade these permits among themselves.

Cash-stripped Bulgaria, hard hit by recession, is also seeking to sell its quota of Kyoto Protocol emission rights and is in negotiations with Japan and Spain, Karadzhova said.

Under Kyoto, signatory countries that are comfortably below their greenhouse gas emissions targets can sell excess emissions rights to other nations struggling to meet their own targets.

Bulgaria has about 200-250 million tonnes of such rights. Karadzhova has said Bulgaria may get about 1-2 billion levs ($731.5 million-$1.46 billion) in revenues from such deals.


[Green Business]
LONDON
Wed Dec 23, 2009 12:14pm EST
UK gas falls on warmer forecasts, power down
LONDON (Reuters) - Prompt British gas prices dropped due to forecasts for warmer weather next week, while power slipped because industrial demand was expected to fall due to the Christmas holidays.

Gas for Thursday was 32.50 pence per therm ($5.184 per mmbtu) at 1704 GMT, down 1.65 pence compared with day-ahead contracts late on Tuesday.

"There's a warming trend into Christmas, but we're not too sure after that," a trader said.

"It's basically a weather play at the moment, as people are seeing it coming in warmer into the Christmas break," another gas trader said.

Temperatures across northwest Europe, including Britain, were forecast to be three degrees Celsius above to seven degrees below norms in the next six to ten days, compared with being constantly between zero to minus six degrees below norms for the next five days.

Northeast Europe was also forecast to be milder over the next few days, decreasing gas demand for heating.

National Grid forecast Britain's gas demand for Thursday to be 379 million cubic meters a day (mcm), from around 425 mcm seen earlier in the week.

The system was a little short but traders remained confident that supply could comfortably meet demand. Flows were strong, with Dutch gas via the BBL pipeline at 34 mcm and Belgium gas via the Interconnector adding 21 mcm.

Norwegian gas via Langeled was 54 mcm, which suggested there was capacity to ramp up output if needed, while Rough storage was still adding 41 mcm and Milford Haven liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals were pumping 43 mcm into the grid.

But January was 32.60 pence, gaining 0.45 pence, and there could be some upside as cold weather was still prevalent in Europe and demand could pick up to refill gas storage.

"If we get into the start of January and it's cold, and it's certainly cold in Europe now, we could potentially see another spike," a trader said.

"Especially with the fact that we've withdrawn a lot of storage over the past week means they'll have to inject it back into the medium range."

Three LNG tankers were scheduled to arrive in Britain before the end of 2009, and three tankers were expected at Belgium's Zeebrugge in the beginning of the new year.

In power, prices eased on lower industrial demand as factories begin winding down for the Christmas holiday.

Baseload power for Thursday was 34.45 pounds per megawatt hour, compared with 36 pounds for day-ahead contracts on Tuesday.

"We're losing demand as we're getting closer to Christmas. Gas has something to do with it too," one power trader said.

Trade was thin on Wednesday, as traders began locking in positions.

January was quoted at 35.85 pounds versus 35.90 pounds on Tuesday, while February was 36 pounds.

(Reporting by Kwok W. Wan, editing by Anthony Barker and Sue Thomas)


[Green Business]
Koustav Samanta
BANGALORE
Wed Dec 23, 2009 2:01pm EST
ADA-ES shares rise after JV wins carbon supply deals
BANGALORE (Reuters) - Shares of ADA-ES Inc rose as much as 35 percent, touching a new 52-week high, after its joint-venture company ADA Carbon Solutions LLC said it signed two contracts with coal-fired power companies to provide activated carbon to control mercury emissions.

ADA-ES develops and implements environmental technology and provides specialty chemicals that enable coal-fueled power plants to enhance existing air pollution control equipment.

Under the contracts signed, ADA Carbon Solutions, which is a joint venture between ADA-ES and Energy Capital Partners, would supply about 25 million to 30 million pounds of activated carbon to the power plant customers.

On Monday, Clean Coal Solutions LLC, a joint venture between ADA-ES and NexGen Refined Coal LLC, had installed and commenced operations of two CyClean facilities that produce refined coal, thus meeting the year-end placed-in-service requirement for certain tax credits.

"I see the company moving along, working in three business lines -- activated carbon, clean coal solutions and carbon dioxide control, and having success with all three of these," Lazard Capital Markets analyst Graham Mattison told Reuters.

Mattison, who has a "buy" rating on the stock, said the company could benefit materially from its ongoing work on carbon capture technology for coal-fired power plants and from its refined coal joint venture.

"We see ADA-ES as one of the companies best positioned to benefit from the expected new rules for ACI (activated carbon injection) systems and the sale of activated carbon," Mattison said in a note to clients.

The analyst also raised his price target on the shares to $7 from $6, primarily based on valuation.

Shares of the company were up 26.2 percent, or $1.44, at $6.94 Tuesday afternoon on Nasdaq. They touched a high of $7.45 earlier in the day.

(Reporting by Koustav Samanta in Bangalore; Editing by Maju Samuel)

news20091224reut4

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Martin Roberts
MADRID
Wed Dec 23, 2009 11:27am EST
Spain mulls extending nuclear plant working lives
MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's Cabinet studied a bill on Wednesday that would allow nuclear power stations to keep running after the 2020s when their 40-year working lives are mostly due to expire.

An Industry Ministry statement said it had drawn up the bill tabled at a weekly cabinet meeting to establish a "transparent, stable and predetermined" legal framework for nuclear plant operating permits.

The bill proposes an "extraordinary procedure" to allow nuclear plants to run for more than 40 years unless the CSN nuclear watchdog should rule they are unsafe.

Earlier this year, the government agreed to allow the aging Garona plant to run until 2013, by which time it will have been working for 42 years.

Prior to the decision, the CSN nuclear watchdog queried the legality of renewing the nuclear plant's operating permit for the four years to 2013 rather than a standard 10 years.

The government also had the option of closing the plant forthwith, but decided to keep it open in order not to add to Spain's long and growing dole queues.

Apart from Garona, Spain's other seven nuclear plants -- which provide about 20 percent of the country's electricity -- will not turn 40 until between 2021 and 2028.

NO NEW PLANTS

Although the Socialist government had recently suggested it would extend the plants' working lives, it has also repeatedly said it will not support building new ones.

Neither major party proposed building new nuclear plants in elections last year, however the opposition Popular Party says it will keep Garona working past 2013 if it is returned to power.

Greenpeace spokesman Carlos Bravo said the bill ran contrary to another recent bill which proposes underpinning long-term economic growth with booming renewable energy sources.

"The Ministry bill contradicts the provisions of the Sustainable Economy Bill. This makes no sense, it is incoherent," he said.

Spain has become the world's third-largest producer of wind power and the second-biggest of solar in a bid to cut its heavy dependence on imported fuels and greenhouse gas emissions.

The bill also proposed a long-delayed call for bids from local authorities to house a centralized site for storing nuclear waste for up to 60 years.

The country's nuclear power stations no longer have room to store much more than the 6,700 tonnes of spent fuel rods they have accumulated.

The government has estimated the ATC -- as the project is known in Spanish -- will cost 540 million euros ($773 million) and cover 20 hectares.

The United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, last year recommended Spain step up efforts to find a dedicated site for storing high-level nuclear waste.

(Editing by Keiron Henderson)


[Green Business]
Edith Honan
NEW YORK
Wed Dec 23, 2009 3:45pm EST
NYC urges ban on shale gas drilling in watershed
NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City urged the state to ban natural gas drilling in its watershed on Wednesday, becoming the most powerful opponent to date of a process that critics say is poisoning drinking water.

Shale gas trapped deep underground is considered one of the most promising sources of U.S. energy, but environmentalists and small-town neighbors of drilling operations -- and now the biggest city in the United States -- are seeking to limit its exploitation.

The drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," involves blasting through rock with a mixture of water, sand and a proprietary list of chemicals used to split the shale formation and free trapped gas.

Steven Lawitts, the city's top environmental official, called fracking techniques "unacceptable threats to the unfiltered fresh water supply of nine million New Yorkers," putting the city at odds with the gas industry, which considers shale drilling completely safe.

"Based on all the facts, the risks are too great and drilling simply cannot be permitted in the watershed," said Marc LaVorgna, a spokesman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The 2,000-square-mile (5,200-square-km) watershed is tiny compared to the largest known U.S. shale formation, which extends below the surface in much of Pennsylvania and parts of New York, Ohio and West Virginia.

The opposition from New York City adds heft to the ranks of fracking critics and could embolden state and local authorities elsewhere, though many are strapped for cash and badly need the revenue that comes with drilling.

Geologists say the Marcellus Shale formation could satisfy U.S. natural gas demand for a decade or more, providing a relatively clean form of fossil fuel and helping promote U.S. energy independence.

New York state Governor David Paterson, who will play a major role in deciding the future of drilling next year as he slashes state services to close a $3.2 billion budget deficit, said he was still listening to "all points of view."

"We've actually extended the public comment period because of the grave concern that so many who we trust, like the mayor, are raising in this issue," Paterson told reporters.

'FRACK ACT'

Major natural gas producers and oilfield service companies like Schlumberger Ltd and Halliburton Co have a stake in shale gas production, and Exxon Mobil cited the potential for unconventional gas production in its $30 billion bid to take over XTO Energy this month.

The deal includes a clause that would allow Exxon Mobil to back out if the U.S. Congress bans or severely regulates the process used to extract gas from shale rock.

Some companies like Chesapeake Energy Corp had announced they would not seek to drill in the New York watershed, which lies about 90 miles north of the city.

Terry Engelder, a Penn State University professor of geosciences, said New York City's demand may improve prospects for passage of the "Frack Act," federal legislation that would require gas companies to disclose the chemicals they use.

"It shines a brighter light on the Frack Act because New York is a significant enough fraction of the U.S. population that care will be taken," he said.

Ray Deacon, an analyst with energy-focused Pritchard Capital, acknowledged the reluctance of companies to provide details on the fracking fluid because "it's kind of the secret sauce that makes the rock break apart."

Shale drilling companies say the industry maintains strict safeguards to prevent any danger to water supplies. But neighbors of drilling in several states report fouled water and increased illness since drilling began.

Earlier this year, New York state proposed new rules that would allow drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale formation. New York City is asking the state to exclude the watershed from the areas that can be drilled.


[Green Business]
Alister Bull and Tabassum Zakaria
WASHINGTON
Wed Dec 23, 2009 7:59pm EST
Obama says disappointment at Copenhagen justified
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that disappointment over the outcome of the Copenhagen climate change summit was justified, hardening a widespread verdict that the conference had been a failure.

"I think that people are justified in being disappointed about the outcome in Copenhagen," he said in an interview with PBS Newshour.

"What I said was essentially that rather than see a complete collapse in Copenhagen, in which nothing at all got done and would have been a huge backward step, at least we kind of held ground and there wasn't too much backsliding from where we were."

Sweden has labeled the accord Obama helped broker a disaster for the environment, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the summit was "at best flawed and at worst chaotic," and climate change advocates have been even more scathing in their criticism.

The talks secured bare-minimum agreements that fell well short of original goals to reduce carbon emissions and stem global warming, after lengthy negotiations failed to paper over differences between rich nations and developing economies. Some singled out China for special blame.

British Environment Minister Ed Miliband wrote in the Guardian newspaper on Monday China had "hijacked" efforts to agree to significant reductions in global emissions. Beijing denied the claim and said London was scheming to divide developing countries on the climate change issue.

Obama did not point any fingers, but did say the Chinese delegation was "skipping negotiations" before his personal intervention.

"At a point where there was about to be complete breakdown, and the prime minister of India was heading to the airport and the Chinese representatives were essentially skipping negotiations, and everybody's screaming, what did happen was, cooler heads prevailed," Obama said.

Obama forged an accord with China, India, Brazil and South Africa in the conference's final hours after personally securing a bilateral meeting with the four nations' leaders.

"We were able to at least agree on non-legally binding targets for all countries -- not just the United States, not just Europe, but also for China and India, which, projecting forward, are going to be the world's largest emitters," he said.

(Editing by Sandra Maler and Todd Eastham)

news20091224reut5

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Michael Szabo
LONDON
Wed Dec 23, 2009 5:02pm EST
Copenhagen blame game not helpful says UN climate chief
LONDON (Reuters) - Countries should stop blaming each other for the weak outcome of the Copenhagen climate talks and sit down together to move the process forward, the U.N.'s top climate change official said on Wednesday.

It is still possible to reach a legally binding global treaty, and bickering among countries like China and Britain is unproductive, Yvo de Boer, the head of the UN's climate change secretariat, told Reuters.

Britain accused a handful of states including China on Monday of hijacking efforts to agree deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. China replied that the allegations were an attempt to sow discord among emerging countries.

"These countries have to sit down together next year, so blaming each other for what happened will not help," de Boer said.

The Copenhagen summit ended with a non-binding accord between the U.S., China and other emerging powers that sets a target of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degrees Celsius and offers funding to help poor nations adapt to climate change, but the details are scant.

"It can be an important guiding light or foundation for moving the process forward, and criticizing it or blaming each other for how it came about is not helpful," de Boer said.

A legally binding treaty is still possible and next year should be used to decide its content, which in turn should determine its legal nature.

"It's the classical 'form follows function'," he added.

Some 28 nations signed the final Copenhagen Accord, but de Boer expects more to step forward and officially support it.

"A letter will be going out from the Danish government to all countries informing them of the accord, telling them they have the opportunity to subscribe to it and reminding them of the agreed deadlines."

The accord sets a January 31, 2010 deadline for rich nations to submit economy-wide emissions targets for 2020 and for developing countries to present mitigation actions.

De Boer said subscribing to the accord does not oblige countries to make pledges nor are there penalties for late submissions. "Commitments are always warmly received," he said.

UN climate talks will resume in Bonn, Germany in May 2010.

LACK OF UNDERSTANDING

Responding to claims that a few countries had "hijacked" negotiations in Copenhagen, de Boer said it was a lack of understanding rather than pure objection that prevented delegates from agreeing a robust climate pact.

"For developing countries it wasn't clear what a legally binding treaty would mean for them, how it would impact their ability to grow their economies or eradicate poverty," he said.

"To commit to a legally binding treaty when you don't know what it means for your country is quite a leap of faith."

De Boer said the countries that denounced the U.S. and China-led plan, including Sudan, Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia, felt they had not been included in the decision-making process and that they did not have enough time to evaluate the offer.

"(The accord) enjoyed very broad support but it didn't enjoy consensus," he said.

De Boer identified four steps which would advance the negotiating process to ensure a comprehensive deal is agreed at next year's UN talks in Mexico:

"Taking good stock of Copenhagen, seeing if the accord receives broad support, discussing if a more intensified meeting schedule is needed ... and getting ready for the meetings in May in a solid way."

(Reporting by Michael Szabo; editing by Tim Pearce)


[Green Business]
Bappa Majumdar
NEW DELHI
Wed Dec 23, 2009 3:22pm EST
India, China stronger from climate meet: Pachauri
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The grouping of China, India, Brazil and South Africa has emerged as a significant force in Copenhagen and they could lead the way in future negotiations, the head of the U.N. climate panel said on Wednesday.

A climate change meeting ended last week in Copenhagen with a non-legally binding political agreement at the last moment between the United States and the big developing countries -- China, India, Brazil and South Africa that forms the BASIC group.

The next climate change meet is in Mexico next year, where countries hope to reach a legally binding agreement.

"What has happened politically which is very significant is the emergence of this grouping of Brazil, South Africa, India and China," Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in New Delhi.

"Undoubtedly whatever agreement comes into existence by the time Mexico completes its conference of the parties, will necessarily have to deal with the power of this group (BASIC)."

In November, the BASIC countries forged a united front in Beijing to put pressure on developed countries in Copenhagen.

India said the BASIC countries were successful in thwarting global pressure to agree to a legally-binding emissions cut.

The meeting in Copenhagen failed to yield the outlines of a broader and tougher legally binding climate agreement to expand or replace the Kyoto Protocol, whose first phase ends in 2012.

Pachauri said the Kyoto Protocol was "sacrosanct" and provisions of the 1997 protocol should be safeguarded as the world gradually moved toward a legally binding agreement.

"Otherwise I am afraid the agreement will not be acceptable for a large number of countries," Pachauri said.

India as an important member of the BASIC group has a big role to play in safeguarding the interest of smaller island nations like Bangladesh and in Africa in future negotiations, he said.

"Indian authorities must ... not allow their words or actions to be interpreted as being only in India's national interest," Pachauri said, a day after New Delhi said it had safeguarded the nation's interest by not signing a legally binding emission cut.

India, which says it is willing to rein in its "carbon intensity" -- the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted per unit of economic output -- by between 20 and 25 percent by 2020, from 2005 levels must be serious about climate change, Pachauri said.

"If we don't bring about a shift to a more sustainable pattern of energy consumption and supply, India will face a major crisis."

(Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Sugita Katyal)


[Green Business]
Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES
Wed Dec 23, 2009 8:14pm EST
Ecosystems strain to keep pace with climate
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Earth's various ecosystems, with all their plants and animals, will need to shift about a quarter-mile per year on average to keep pace with global climate change, scientists said in a study released on Wednesday.

How well particular species can survive rising worldwide temperatures attributed to excess levels of heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases emitted by human activity hinges on those species' ability to migrate or adapt in place.

The farther individual species -- from shrubs and trees to insects, birds and mammals -- need to move to stay within their preferred climate, the greater their chance of extinction.

The study suggests that scientists and governments should update habitat conservation strategies that have long emphasized drawing boundaries around environmentally sensitive areas and restricting development within those borders.

A more "dynamic" focus should be placed on establishing wildlife corridors and pathways linking fragmented habitats, said research co-author Healy Hamilton of the California Academy of Sciences.

"Things are on the move, faster than we anticipated," she told Reuters. "This rate of projected climate change is just about the same as a slow-motion meteorite in terms of the speed at which it's asking a species to respond."

The new research suggests that denizens of mountainous habitats will experience the slowest rates of climate change because they can track relatively large swings in temperature by moving just a short distance up or down slope.

Thus, mountainous landscapes "may effectively shelter many species into the next century," the scientists wrote in the study, which is to be published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

This is especially crucial for plant species, which due to their being rooted in the ground cannot migrate at nearly the pace of animals in response to habitat changes.

Climate change will be felt most swiftly by inhabitants of largely flat landscapes, such as mangroves and prairie grasslands, where the rate of warming may more than double the quarter mile per year average calculated for ecosystems generally, the study found.

Nearly a third of the habitats studied in the report face climate change rates higher than even the most optimistic plant migration estimates.

Lowland deserts are likewise subject to a higher velocity of climate change, although the trend toward protecting large swaths of desert may ease the problem there.

By contrast, much of the world's forest habitats and grasslands already have been severely fragmented by development, making mitigation of climate change in those landscapes harder and leaving their species more vulnerable.

The velocities charted in the report were based on the "intermediate" level of projected greenhouse gas emissions assumed over the next century by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change.

(Editing by Mary Milliken and Bill Trott)