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[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Hacked climate science emails]
Climate emails inquiry: Energy consultant linked to physics body's submission

Evidence from Institute of Physics drawn from energy industry consultant who argues global warming is a religion
David Adam, environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 4 March 2010 21.00 GMT Article history

Evidence from a respected scientific body to a parliamentary inquiry examining the behaviour of climate-change scientists, was drawn from an energy industry consultant who argues that global warming is a religion, the Guardian can reveal.

The submission, from the Institute of Physics (IOP), suggested that scientists at the University of East Anglia had cherry-picked data to support conclusions and that key reconstructions of past temperature could not be relied upon.

The evidence was given to the select committee on science and technology, which is investigating emails from climate experts at the University of East Anglia that were released online last year.

The committee interviewed witnesses on Monday, including Phil Jones, the scientist from the university's climatic research unit (CRU), who is at the heart of the controversy.

The Guardian has established that the institute prepared its evidence, which was highly critical of the CRU scientists, after inviting views from Peter Gill, an IOP official who is head of a company in Surrey called Crestport Services.

According to Gill, Crestport offers "consultancy and management support services … particularly within the energy and energy intensive industries worldwide", and says that it has worked with "oil and gas production companies including Shell, British Gas, and Petroleum Development Oman".

In an article in the newsletter of the IOP south central branch in April 2008, which attempted to downplay the role carbon dioxide plays in global warming, Gill wrote: "If you don't 'believe' in anthropogenic climate change, you risk at best ridicule, but more likely vitriolic comments or even character assassination. Unfortunately, for many people the subject has become a religion, so facts and analysis have become largely irrelevant."

In November Gill commented, on the Times Higher Education website: "Poor old CRU have been seriously hacked. The emails and other files are all over the internet and include how to hide atmospheric cooling."

The institute submission accused the East Anglia university scientists of "apparent suppression, in graphics widely used by the IPCC, of proxy results for recent decades that do not agree with contemporary instrumental temperature measurements". This appears to refer to an email sent by Jones in which he said he had used a "trick" to "hide the decline" in a temperature series derived from tree-ring data, but which refers to a widely known feature of that data.

The IOP evidence concluded that the emails had "worrying implications for the integrity of scientific research in this field". That was used by climate sceptics to bolster claims that the email affair, dubbed "climategate", showed the scientists did not behave properly and that the problem of global warming was exaggerated.

The IOP has already been forced to issue a clarification that the evidence does not undermine the scientific basis for climate change. But many experts think this does not go far enough.

In an open letter to the institute, Andy Russell, an IOP member who works on climate at the University of Manchester, says: "If the IOP continues to stand by this statement then I will have no other option but to reconsider my membership." He says the allegation of data suppression is "incorrect and irresponsible".

The institute says its evidence was based on suggestions from the energy subcommittee of its science board. It would not reveal who sat on this sub-commitee, but confirmed that Gill was a member.

A spokeswoman for the institute said Gill was not the main source of information nor did the evidence primarily reflect his views; other members of the sub-commitee were also critical of CRU. However the IOP would not reveal names because they would get "dragged into a very public and highly politicised debate".

Gill told the Guardian he helped prepare the submission but many of his suggestions were not in the final document.

The IOP added that the submission was approved by three members of its science board, but would not reveal their names. The Guardian contacted several members of the board, including its chairman, Denis Weaire, a physicist at Trinity College Dublin. All said that they had little direct role in the submission.

The institute supplied a statement from an anonymous member of its science board, which said: "The institute should feel relaxed about the process by which it generated what is, anyway, a statement of the obvious." It added: "The points [the submission] makes are ones which we continue to support, that science should be practised openly and in an unbiased way. However much we sympathise with the way in which CRU researchers have been confronted with hostile requests for information, we believe the case for openness remains just as strong."

Evan Harris, a member of the science and technology select committee, said: "Members of the Institute of Physics … may be concerned that the IOP is not as transparent as those it wishes to criticise."


[Environment > Waste]
Microchips in our bins herald pay as you throw tax, say Tories

Number of households whose rubbish is chipped has jumped by two-thirds to 2.6m, according to report
Matthew Taylor
The Guardian, Friday 5 March 2010 Article history

The number of households that have microchips in their bins has jumped to 2.6m in the past 12 months, according to a new report.

The study shows that 68 councils across the UK now put the new technology in their bins – a two-thirds increase in the past year.

Councils say the microchips identify which houses the bins belong to and deny accusations that they allow local authorities to analyse the amount of rubbish being thrown away. But opposition politicians claim the microchips can be used to weigh waste and fear the rise in the use of the technology will lead to "pay as you throw" schemes.

Caroline Spelman, shadow communities secretary, said: "Labour ministers are secretly planning to roll out bin taxes across the country after the election if Gordon Brown can cling to power.

"The government has already forced through bin tax laws and has been funding the bin technology to collect the taxes."

Alex Deane, director of Big Brother Watch, which published the report based on information released under the freedom of information act, criticised the "surreptitious" installation of chips which he said had cost more than £1m in the past year.

"Councils are waiting until the public aren't watching to begin surveillance on our waste habits, intruding into people's private lives and introducing punitive taxes on what we throw away. The British public doesn't want this technology, these fines or this intrusion. If local authorities have no intention to monitor our waste then they should end the surreptitious installation of these bin microchips."

But a spokesman for the Local Government Association dismissed the claims of the group, which was set up by the founders of the TaxPayers' Alliance.

"Microchips simply identify the house to which a bin belongs. They do not mean councils can analyse what people are throwing away or issue fines. Putting microchips in people's bins can allow councils to provide people with a better service that costs less... Through its Big Brother Watch campaign, the TaxPayers' Alliance claims to be fighting intrusions on people's privacy and liberties. If this was really the case it would be focusing on more important things than the state of the nation's rubbish bins."

A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs said there were no government plans to introduce microchips in bins.

"Any use of microchips is a local authority decision – some councils use them to monitor levels of waste across their area.

"The microchips do not monitor what goes into the bin and this is not about spying on people or fining them."

He said the microchips would help councils work with households to reduce the amount of waste being sent to landfill. "It is important that councils work with communities to reduce waste, reuse it where possible and recycle more."

news20100305gdn2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Business > Energy industry]
Green energy industry asks for £500m cash injection to meet targets

RenewableUK wants money for research and development
Terry Macalister
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 4 March 2010 20.11 GMT Article history

The renewable power industry has warned that it needs £500m from the government over the next two years if it is to help ministers meet energy and climate change targets. More than half of the cash is for offshore wind power generation, while another part is required if wind and tidal power is to move from experimental to commercial application, the industry said in a budget submission out tomorrow .

The call for a large injection of public cash was made by RenewableUK, the lobby group previously known as the British Wind Energy Association, in a presentation to the energy minister, David Kidney.

Maria McCafferty, chief executive of RenewableUK, accepted it was a "huge amount of money" at a time when public finances were severely dented. But she said it would pay dividends for years to come, adding: "The returns are very, very significant and, frankly, I don't think there is a better option at the moment."

The call for new money comes at a time of rising disquiet in some quarters at the cost of the "green" revolution, with even some environmentalists questioning the cost of the planned new feed-in tariff which is meant to encourage homeowners to put small-scale wind turbines and solar panels on their roofs. RenewableUK pointed to the example of Denmark as a country that had reaped the benefits of giving strong support to a new industry, in particular onshore wind. Ministers had injected £1.3bn into a sector that is now producing revenues of £2.3bn annually.

McCafferty said venture capitalists were "beating on the door" to invest in the clean technology sectors. The industry needs government subsidies until it was able to stand on its own feet, she argued.

Even in the tidal arena, which is a long way behind wind in commercial terms, there are encouraging signs of interest with big names such as Siemens of Germany and Vattenfall of Sweden buying up equity stakes in wave power businesses.

The budget submission called for up to £300m to be invested in offshore wind facilities, technologies and "intellectual infrastructure". Wind operators want to see a capital grant programme to support testing and the establishment of a "green bank" to channel new funding into the wider renewables sector.

RenewableUK is also calling for £30m for research to resolve conflicts with the aviation sector, which is said to be holding up wind power projects. A further £15m is required to aid the Ministry of Defence with radar problems caused by similar developments. The remaining £150m would go to tidal and wave schemes.

The budget submission was not just about money. It also raised a considerable number of concerns including "punishingly high" network charges for remote generators and the way the Offshore Transmission Owner (OFTO) arrangements would work. "The currently envisaged application of this [OFTO] system will result in a gap in orders to the industry ... the hiatus will also mean that the UK is behind the curve necessary to meet 2020 targets," RenewableUK said.

Kidney, who was attending a RenewableUK tidal and wave conference, did not comment on the budget requests from industry but said that the government remained fully committed to its low-carbon industrial strategy.

This article was amended on 5 March 2010. In the original a sentence referred to "wind and tidal power". This has been corrected.


[News > World news > Venezuela]
Drought extinguishes Venezuela's lightning phenomenon

Lake Maracaibo left in darkness as drought caused by El Niño disrupts weather patterns that cause constant lightning storms
Rory Carroll in Caracas
guardian.co.uk, Friday 5 March 2010 12.22 GMT Article history

Darkness rarely lasted long in the skies over Lake Maracaibo. An hour after dusk the show would begin: a lightning bolt, then another, and another, until the whole horizon flashed white.

Electrical storms, product of a unique meteorological phenomenon, have lit up nights in this corner of Venezuela for thousands of years. Francis Drake abandoned a sneak attack on the city of Maracaibo in 1595 when lightning betrayed his ships to the Spanish garrison.

But now the lightning has vanished. A phenomenon that once unleashed up to 20,000 bolts a night stopped in late January. Not a single bolt has been seen since.

"This is unprecedented. In recorded history we have not had such a long stretch without lightning," said Erik Quiroga, an environmentalist and leading authority on the Relampago de Catatumbo, or Catatumbo Lightning.

The spectacle, one of the longest single displays of continuous lightning in the world, lasts up to nine hours a night. On average it is visible over 160 nights a year and from 400km away. Lightning bolts discharged from cloud to cloud strike 16 to 40 times a minute. They can reach an intensity of 400,000 amps but are so high thunder is inaudible. There are similar phenomena in Colombia, Indonesia and Uganda but they do not last the whole night.

Fishermen in the village of Congo Mirador, a collection of wooden huts on stilts at the phenomenon's epicentre, are puzzled and anxious by its absence. "It has always been with us," said Edin Hernandez, 62. "It guides us at night, like a lighthouse. We miss it."

The celestial spectacular appears to be a casualty of the El Niño weather phenomenon, which has disrupted global weather patterns and caused a severe drought in Venezuela. Rain has all but disappeared, drying up rivers and disrupting the conditions that produce the lightning, whose causes remain unclear. One theory links it to decomposing organic materials which release methane. Another links it to Andean winds blowing across marshes, generating low pressure and building up an electrical charge in the atmosphere.

The last time the phenomenon vanished was in 1906 after a catastrophic 8.8-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Ecuador and Colombia unleashed a tsunami. The lightning returned three weeks later.

Now it is five weeks and there is still no sign of the nocturnal flashes.

"I look for it every night but there is nothing," said Francisca Hernandez, 28, a schoolteacher in Congo Mirador who monitors Lake Maracaibo's sky for researchers based in Caracas.

Some scientists believe the electrical storms help replenish the ozone layer. Others doubt that, saying the ozone they produce reaches only the tropospheric atmosphere.

The drought has also extinguished many man-made lights across Venezuela as the country relies largely on hydropower. Last month, the president, Hugo Chávez, declared an electricity emergency and said severe rationing, which has blacked out towns and cities, could last months. One state electricity company told workers to pray for rain.

Losing the lightning is a symbolic blow. In addition to warding off Drake's naval assault – an event celebrated in Lope de Vega's 1598 epic poem – it is credited with helping independence fighters defeat a Spanish fleet in 1823. The state of Zulia, which encompasses Lake Maracaibo, has a lightning bolt across its centre and refers to the phenomenon in its anthem.

Quiroga worries that when rains return the lightning may not recover its former glory. It was dwindling in frequency and force even before the drought, probably because deforestation and agriculture had clogged the Catatumbo river and several lagoons with silt.

"This is a unique gift and we are at risk of losing it," said Quiroga, who has led scientific teams to its epicentre. He has lobbied Venezuelan authorities to protect the area and the United Nations to recognise it as a world heritage site. A Unesco spokeswoman said there were no plans to do so because electrical storms did not have a "site".

news20100305gdn3

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Climate change]
Met Office analysis reveals 'clear fingerprints' of man-made climate change

Climate scientists say the 100 studies of sea ice, rainfall and temperature should help the public to make up their own minds on global warming
Alok Jha
The Guardian, Friday 5 March 2010 Article history

It is an "increasingly remote possibility" that human activity is not the main cause of climate change, according to a major Met Office review of more than 100 scientific studies that track the observed changes in the Earth's climate system.

The research will strengthen the case for human-induced climate change against sceptics who argue that the observed changes in the Earth's climate can largely be explained by natural variability.

Climate scientists and the UN's climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have come under intense pressure in recent months after the IPCC was forced to admit it had made two errors in its fourth assessment report published in 2007. Emails hacked from climate scientists at the University of East Anglia in November have also sparked a series of inquiries into allegations of a lack of transparency by researchers and manipulation of the peer review process.

Asked whether his study was specifically scheduled as a fightback, Peter Stott, who led the review, said that the paper was originally drafted a year ago. But he added: "I hope people will look at that evidence and make up their minds informed by the scientific evidence."

Scientists matched computer models of different possible causes of climate change - both human and natural - to measured changes in factors such as air and sea temperature, Arctic sea ice cover and global rainfall patterns. This technique, called "optimal detection", showed clear fingerprints of human-induced global warming, according to Stott. "This wealth of evidence shows that there is an increasingly remote possibility that climate change is being dominated by natural factors rather than human factors." The paper reviewed numerous studies that were published since the last IPCC report.

Optimal detection considers to what extent an observation can be explained by natural variability, such as changing output from the sun, volcanic eruptions or El Niño, and how much can be explained by the well-established increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

According to Nasa, the last decade was the warmest on record and 2009 the second warmest year. Temperatures have risen by 0.2C per decade, over the past 30 years and average global temperatures have increased by 0.8C since 1880.

The evidence that the climate system is changing goes beyond measured air temperatures, with much of the newest evidence coming from the oceans. "Over 80% of the heat that's trapped in the climate system as a result of the greenhouse gases is exported into the ocean and we can see that happening," said Stott. "Another feature is that salinity is changing - as the atmosphere is warming up, there is more evaporation from the surface of the ocean [so making it more salty], which is most noticeable in the sub-tropical Atlantic."

This also links into changes in the global water cycle and rainfall patterns. As the atmosphere warms, it has been getting more humid, exactly as climate modellers had predicted. "This clear fingerprint has been seen in two independent datasets. One developed in the Met Office Hadley Centre, corroborated with data from satellites."

Arctic sea ice is also retreating - the summer minimum of sea ice is declining at a rate of 600,000 km² per decade, an area approximately the size of Madagascar. Again, decreasing sea ice is predicted by climate models.

Rainfall is also on the rise in the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere and large swaths of the southern hemisphere, while in the tropics and sub-tropics, there are decreases. "The already-wet regions are getting wetter and the dry regions are getting drier," said Stott. "We now have studies that can identify this fingerprint in the observational data."

The review, published in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, found that the natural causes of climate variation, including changing energy output from the sun and volcanic eruptions, could not explain the observed changes by themselves. "There hasn't been an increase in solar output for the last 50 years and solar output would not have caused cooling of the higher atmosphere and the warming of the lower atmosphere that we have seen," said Stott.

If the observed climate change was entirely due to solar activity, the Earth's atmosphere would have warmed more evenly - both the troposphere and stratosphere would have been affected. Warming due to the Sun would also have meant temperatures should have increases more quickly early than late in the 20th century, which is the reverse of what was actually measured.

The review is published as scientists also report a rise in methane emissions from a section of the Arctic Ocean sea floor. That study, published today in the journal Science, shows that the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic shelf, once considered an safe store of methane, is leaking large amounts of the gas into the atmosphere. Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming as this is a greenhouse gase around 30 times more potent than CO2.

"The amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world's oceans. Sub-sea permafrost is losing its ability to be an impermeable cap," said Natalia Shakhova, a researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks's International Arctic Research Centre. "The release to the atmosphere of only one percent of the methane assumed to be stored in shallow hydrate deposits might alter the current atmospheric burden of methane up to three to four times. The climatic consequences of this are hard to predict."


[Environment > Climate change]
How public trust in climate scientists can be restored

The Met Office's review of latest climate research will strengthen the case for human-induced climate change
Chris Huntingford
The Guardian, Friday 5 March 2010 Article history

We know from many long-term records of environmental change (for instance, analysis of bubbles of air trapped in ice cores) that planet Earth is a truly remarkable "living" entity. The climate has had both warm and cold periods in the past. But what is different about the present is the speed at which the planet is warming.

Our computer simulations can only recreate this rapid warming when the addition of large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from human sources is included. If this warming continues, we may reach a situation where very unwelcome changes occur to our weather patterns, which for developing nations could cause major difficulties with food and water security.

So what are the potential flaws in this line of argument? First we have to completely trust the temperature measurement records, such as those developed by colleagues at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit. Although their temperature numbers are very similar to those produced by other American groups, the revisiting of their analysis is in many ways to be welcomed. I cannot imagine what my colleagues at CRU are going through at the moment, but although we cannot pre-empt any form of inquiry, most climate researchers believe that their analysis will have been shown to be accurate.

Second there is the question of whether major policy decisions should really be made on the basis of simulations of the climate system, as performed on a few specialised computers dotted around the world? There are compelling reasons to trust these computer models, but at the same time, more direct evidence underpinning the claim that climate is changing is needed. That is why the work by Peter Stott and colleagues is important. It looks beyond temperature to other artefacts of a changing environment. Direct measurements show decreasing amounts of Arctic sea ice, changes in rainfall patterns and associated levels of moisture in the atmosphere, rapid variations in ocean levels of saltiness. All of these things can be attributed to impacts of global warming. They are all additional strands of evidence that climate change remains a concern.

The recent furore surrounding the science of climate change is difficult for those working on the subject, yet most of us do think that ultimately something good will come from this. There certainly has to be more openness about the underpinning research. To preserve public confidence, we must "buy out" the copyright from research journals of key papers so that these can be freely available to all for inspection. Datasets must also become more available for general scrutiny. Effort should also be made to avoid statements on climate change that could, inadvertently, be perceived as scare-mongering. Researchers need to calmly present their findings on climate change as an issue, among many others facing the world, on which well-considered collective thought and economic or technical action is likely to be needed.

I sincerely hope we can win back the trust of the public. If we do so, then hopefully society will keep emissions on a pathway that ensures a safe climate for future generations while avoiding any damage to the global economy.

> Dr Chris Huntingford is a climate change researcher working at Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.

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[Environment] from [scientificamerican.com]

[Evolution]
March 4, 2010
By Katherine Harmon
A Theory Set in Stone: An Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs, After All

A single asteroid impact near the Yucatan remains the best explanation for the massive Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, scientists conclude in a new, deep review

Although any T. Rex–enthralled kid will tell you that a gigantic asteroid wiped the dinosaurs off the planet, scientists have always regarded this impact theory as a hypothesis subject to revision based on further evidence gathered from around the globe. Other possible causes, such as volcanism and smaller, multiple asteroid strikes, never actually went away, and over the years researchers raised important points that did not fully jibe with a history-changing celestial impact near the Yucatan peninsula one awful day some 65.5 million years ago.

A group of 41 researchers have pored over the evidence and decided that—in accordance with the original postulate put forth 30 years ago by a team led by father and son researchers Luis and Walter Alvarez—it was, indeed, a massive asteroid that slammed into Earth, creating Chicxulub Crater on Mexico's Gulf Coast, that killed off many of the species on the planet, including the non-avian dinosaurs.

The review, published online March 4 in Science, evaluated the whole picture, according to Kirk Johnson of the Research and Collections Division at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and co-author of the paper. And that meant assessing the other theories that have been put forth about what spelled death for the dinosaurs.

Fiery failures
The researchers dismiss the theory that the volcanism that produced the great Deccan Trap formation in western India at the end of the Cretaceous period might have produced enough sulfur and carbon dioxide to initiate a massive shift in climate. They note that pinpointing the times when the heavy volcanism occurred is sketchy, and it likely kicked off some 400,000 years before the extinction event. In fact, as Johnson noted in a March 3 conference call with reporters, the emissions from these volcanoes likely warmed the planet slightly, actually making life easier for many animals and encouraging diversification and dispersion over wider geographical areas.

Some scientists have pointed to multiple layers of impact residue as evidence that there was more than one asteroid involved in generating the extinction. This theory did not seem to measure up, either. Johnson says they see "no evidence for multiple impacts," and sites that had turned up these various layers were so close to Chicxulub itself that the chaotic event likely churned the layers into different locations in the sediment.

An assertion that the impact occurred hundreds of thousands of years before the extinctions also failed to hold water with the researchers. Evidence of Cretaceous period shells on top of the impact crater are likely not a sign that the animals persisted after the impact, but rather that they got "washed into the hole," Johnson noted.

Global ground zero
The researchers assessed reports from some 350 sites all over the globe that had evidence of the impact—whether it was a dusting of iridium (an element much more common in extraterrestrial objects) or bits of shocked quartz—and could be traced back to the Chicxulub location. In some areas near the crater, the layer was 80 meters thick, pointing to one single devastating day for life on the planet.

"That's the single best explanation for the extinction of so many groups," says Neil Landman, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and was not involved in the review, about the single impact theory.

"We've examined sites around the world," he notes of his study of ammonoids, which are shelled cephalopods that went extinct after the Cretaceous. And from the work he and his colleagues have done, he says, the evidence for the Chicxulub asteroid impact is the most consistent. "I'm very comfortable with this explanation."

A massive blow
Based on the size of material from rocky shrapnel and the crater diameter, researchers have estimated the dino-demolishing object to be some 10 kilometers across. And when it struck—at about 20 kilometers per second—it created an instant crater about 100 kilometers wide and 25 to 30 kilometers deep "almost piercing the crust of the Earth," Johnson noted. The final crater that formed after the initial impact was about 180 kilometers across and two kilometers deep, which is still close to the depth of the Grand Canyon, Johnson pointed out.

The impact spewed rock so high, some of it likely was shot into orbit, whereas other pieces entered the upper atmosphere, reheating as they fell back to the ground. The jolt would have spurred massive earthquakes—some surpassing magnitude 11—tsunamis and landslides. While examining ammonoid fossils in southeastern Missouri, Landman says, he found a shallow water site that was "just immediately covered over by a jumble of stuff," he says. "I think what we're seeing is a tsunami," which might have reached as far from the Yucatan impact site as southern Illinois.

Perhaps most devastating, however, the crash would have caused acid rain and darkness, as particulate matter blocked sunlight, prohibiting photosynthesis in both land and water ecosystems, effectively shutting down large swaths of the food chain. Directly after the extinction event, ferns (which reproduce from spores) proliferated and species that depended on detritus seemed to survive.

From Landman's study of ammonoids, he points out that even for groups that eventually went extinct after the collision (producing the so-called K–T boundary in the fossil record), the asteroid's impact did not mean sudden eradication. "There seems to be some suggestion of some survival for awhile after the event," he says. Fossils found above the iridium layer show that ammonoids might have survived "for tens to possibly hundreds of years afterward" perhaps because "things in the marine realm were a little more insulated," he explains.

Although these estimates might seem rough for such a dramatic event, revealing details on the resolution of years and months "was unimaginable" in decades past, he says. "It's one of the best studied intervals of the geologic record," he notes. And all of this attention has led to increasing nuance in the timeline.

"This is not geologic time—this is instant time," Johnson said, acknowledging that it is a very tricky task to pin down a single event from 65.5 million years ago. But, judging from the chemical, geochemical and geochronological evidence, he said, "The Chicxulub Crater really is the culprit."

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[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 5 March 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.105
News
Galileo backed Copernicus despite data

Stars viewed through early telescopes suggested that Earth stood still.
By Katharine Sanderson

{Did Galileo Galilei go with his gut rather than his data?}
Justus Sustermans (1636)}

Galileo Galilei was right: Earth moves around the Sun, just as Nicolaus Copernicus said it did in 1543. But had Galileo followed the results of his observations to their logical conclusion, he should have backed another system — the Tychonic view that Earth didn't move, and that everything else circled around it and the Sun, as developed by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe in the sixteenth century.

This is the conclusion that Christopher Graney, a physicist at Jefferson Community and Technical College in Louisville, Kentucky, came to after reading manuscripts from another astronomer who was active in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, at the same time as Galileo.

Graney suggested in 2008 that Galileo's observations of stars were actually diffraction patterns called Airy disks — patterns of concentric circles that arise when light from a point source, such as a star, passes through a hole. Diffraction hadn't been discovered in Galileo's time, so he was unaware of the phenomenon and believed what his eyes, or his telescope, were telling him and used the observations to estimate the size and distance of stars. As a result, he got the distances of the stars too short by a factor of thousands (see 'Galileo duped by diffraction').

After Graney realized that Airy disks had tricked Galileo, he decided to search for contemporaries of Galileo who might have seen similar things with their instruments. "There had to be someone who had a good telescope other than Galileo," says Graney.

{In the Copernican model, the stars appear as pinpricks to observers on Earth.}
Stefano Bianchetti/CORBIS}

That someone was German astronomer Simon Marius, most famous for naming the moons of Jupiter (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto) and claiming to have detected them just days before Galileo.

Like Galileo, Marius mistook Airy disks as representing the stars themselves, says Graney in a paper soon to be published in the journal Physics in Perspective¹.

Whereas Galileo stuck to his Copernican system view, Marius's analysis of starry data led him to very different conclusions, says Graney, who made the finding after reading a German translation of Marius's book Mundus Iovialis (The Jovian World), published in 1614.

Close call

According to Graney, Marius concluded that his observations showed that the stars were too close to Earth to satisfy the Copernican world view — which says that the stars lie at a huge distance from Earth, and so would appear as starry pinpricks to any observer. The Copernican view was shared by others: stars would be seen as points if the telescope's lens was darkened by smoke, wrote Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens in his book Systema saturnium, published in 1659, 17 years after Galileo's death.

Instead, Marius said that the observation of the stars as disks confirmed the Tychonic system, which put Earth, unmoving, at the centre of the system with the Moon and Sun orbiting it. The planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn all then orbit the Sun and the stars lie just beyond these planets in a fixed sphere.

"Marius's reasoning was more rigorous than Galileo's," says Graney. "In fact, Galileo's own data would lead to the same conclusion, had he followed it rigorously." So why did Galileo stick to his Copernican views?

{Simon Marius realized that his observations were consistent with the Tychonic system.}

"Galileo was strongly committed to Copernicanism. That he chose not to include arguments against it is not very surprising, although according to modern scientific standards he probably should have done so," says Rienk Vermij, a historian of science from the University of Oklahoma in Norman. Vermij adds that the different world views were hotly debated for many years, and that this argument about the size and distribution of the stars was only one among many. "It is not evident that this argument should be decisive, any more than other arguments," says Vermij.

Graney can't say why Galileo stuck to what turned out to be the right view, in spite of the observations. "Galileo was a very smart guy. I wonder if he didn't have more of this worked out in his head that he never got around to putting down on paper," he says.

But in a world in which, according to Vermij, the Tychonic system was regarded as a serious rival of the Copernican system, Marius's conclusions seem reasonable. "You have to hand it to Simon Marius for looking at the data and pursuing it through to its logical conclusion," says Graney.

References
1. Graney, C. Phys. Perspect. (in the press).


[naturenews]
Published online 4 March 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.107
News
Woody shrubs don't slurp up water

Clearing encroaching plants from savannah might make drought worse.
By Erik Vance

Trees and shrubs may help to keep water flowing in arid areas.Charles TaylorMost Texans know that ranchers don't like shrubs. That's because of an assumption that when woody plants move into an area, they greedily horde water and drain nearby rivers. That assumption is the driving force behind efforts from Texas to South Africa to clear shrubs from drought-prone land.

However, there is one problem — according to a study by researchers at Texas A&M University in College Station, that assumption may not be true. Hydrologist Bradford Wilcox and his colleague Yun Huang examined water levels going back to 1925 for four of Texas's biggest rivers near the parched Edwards Plateau in the west of the state. What they found shocked them.

"Rivers on the Edwards Plateau not only are not disappearing, but they are increasing in flow," says Wilcox, who is first author on the study, to be published in Geophysical Research Letters¹. "By a lot. I mean, it's doubled. That's really big."

The landscapes that Wilcox is describing are karst savannahs that are fed by groundwater and the occasional rain storm. A century ago, the Edwards Plateau was heavily populated by massive herds of cows, goats and sheep. However, as Texas developed, the number of herds diminished and left wastelands of eroded soil and rock. These 'degraded' landscapes slowly recovered and, eventually, aggressive woody shrubs such as juniper and mesquite blanketed what had once been prairie. Such plants today are demonized as greedy water drinkers, and ranchers are asking for government help in removing them. Yet, when Wilcox examined water records, he found an increase in water flows that he attributes to increased land cover by woody plants. Rain patterns in the area haven't changed drastically and there has been little urbanization.

"I can't really think of any other plausible explanation," Wilcox says. "The obvious no-brainer is that it has had this massive change in land cover. There's more vegetation, there's more cover, there's more protection. And so it allows more water to enter into the soil."

Wilcox is careful not to expand his results beyond the study region of west Texas. The area's karst formations — sedimentary rock often associated with layered cliffs and huge cave networks — are notoriously permeable and may not behave like other soils. Still, such formations are common and are found worldwide. Furthermore, many countries have taken measures to save water by eliminating woody plants from drought-affected areas regardless of the type of soil found there. These results might cause land managers to look for other solutions to mitigate drought.

Robert Jackson, an ecologist who studies water cycles at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, says that it is not yet time to let woody plants off the hook. "I'm not saying he's wrong," says Jackson. "I'm saying I would have liked more evidence to convince me that the mechanism he's attributing this to is the mechanism that's operating."

Indeed, Wilcox says that he would like to fill in some of the plant picture on a broader scale. He is hoping that upcoming efforts to clear brush will include money to monitor and evaluate whether the brush actually increases stream flow.

References
1. Wilcox, B. P. & Huang, Y. Geophys. Res. Lett. doi:10.1029/2009GL041929 (2010)

news20100305nn2

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 4 March 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.108
News
Heavy antimatter created in gold collisions

Most massive antimatter nucleus yet identified in particle experiments.
By Geoff Brumfiel

{Millions of collisions produce just a few antihydrogen nuclei.}
Brookhaven National Laboratory}

Physicists have rooted through a morass of collisions to find the heaviest antimatter nucleus yet inside one of their particle accelerators.

Collisions between gold nuclei at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) on Long Island, New York, have yielded heavy isotopes of antihydrogen that include a subatomic particle known as an antistrange quark, which is heavier than less unusual up or down quarks. The extra mass of the exotic antiquark is enough to make this antihydrogen isotope heavier than the previous record-holder, antihelium. Further studies of the new antinuclei may provide information about the cores of neutron stars, or even insight into the earliest days of the Universe. The work appears online today in the journal Science¹.

Few pieces of science fact come as close to science fiction as antimatter. Antimatter particles carry the same mass as normal matter, but the opposite charge. When matter and antimatter collide, they annihilate in a flash of energy.

Paul Dirac first theorized antimatter's existence in 1928, and since then researchers have studied antimatter particles created by nuclear decays and high-energy collisions of normal matter. Today, positrons — antielectrons — are even used in some kinds of medical imaging.

But antiatoms made up of antiprotons and antineutrons are still a rarity. Because we live in a world dominated by regular matter, antiprotons and antineutrons typically annihilate before they can form into antinuclei. To date, only a handful of groups have successfully coaxed antiparticles into atomic configurations.

Antimatter recipe

To make the antiatoms requires two conditions, says Declan Keane, a physicist at Kent State University in Ohio and a member of the STAR Collaboration, which discovered the new nuclei. First, you need enormously high energies to generate the antimatter. Second, you need enough of the stuff around that it has a chance to meet other antimatter particles and form atoms before it annihilates.

RHIC is perfect for this kind of work, Keane says. The collider smashes gold nuclei together at 200 gigaelectronvolts, an energy that approaches the earliest moments following the Big Bang. When they hit, nuclei quickly dissolve into a soup of quarks and antiquarks, the fundamental particles that make up protons and neutrons.

To form the new antihydrogen isotope, first an antistrange quark binds with an antiup and antidown quark to make an antilambda — an antineutron-like particle. The antilambda, which is fractionally heavier than a neutron, must then combine with a conventional antineutron and an antiproton. The chances of this happening are very slim: out of 100 million collisions, RHIC generated just 70 of the new antihydrogen isotopes.

The little bang

The data "literally looked like haystacks", Keane says. To find the new antihydrogen, Jinhui Chen of the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, and Zhangbu Xu of Brookhaven National Laboratory, where RHIC is housed, developed sophisticated software that could pick out the new antinucleons.

Each one tipped the scales at just over 5.3x10-27 kilograms (2.991 gigaelectronvolts/c2) — a vanishingly small amount, but with antihelium weighing in at 4.8x10-27 kg (2.72 GeV/c^2), still heavy enough to make this antihydrogen isotope the heaviest antinucleus discovered up to this point. The isotope didn't stick around for long however — the half life of the antinuclei was just a few hundred trillionths of a second.

"The production of these 'strange' anti-nuclei is not really a surprise," says Jürgen Schukraft, a physicist on the ALICE heavy-ion experiment at CERN, Europe's particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. Nevertheless, he says, they will be interesting to study. Neutron stars, the remnants of once-massive stars, are thought to contain large numbers of strange quarks, and antinuclei containing strange quarks could play a part in their evolution. Moreover, studying the properties of antinuclei such as these might help physicists to better understand why the Universe is full of matter rather than antimatter.

The Big Bang may have given us plenty of regular matter to work with, Schukraft says, but "the little bang at RHIC has now delivered some of their most exotic antimatter partners for scientific investigation".

References
1. The STAR Collaboration Science advance online publication doi:10.1126/science.1183980 (2010).

news20100305bbc1

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

[Science & Environment]
Page last updated at 23:49 GMT, Thursday, 4 March 2010
By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News, The Woodlands, Texas
Dinosaur extinction link to crater confirmed

{The dinosaurs were one of many groups to go extinct}

An international panel of experts has strongly endorsed evidence that a space impact was behind the mass extinction event that killed off the dinosaurs.

They reached the consensus after conducting the most wide-ranging analysis yet of the evidence.

Writing in Science journal, they rule out alternative theories such as large-scale volcanism.

The analysis has been discussed at the 41st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in the US.

A panel of 41 international experts reviewed 20 years' worth of research to determine the cause of the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) mass extinction, around 65 million years ago.

The extinction wiped out more than half of all species on the planet, including the dinosaurs, bird-like pterosaurs and large marine reptiles, clearing the way for mammals to become the dominant species on Earth.

Their review of the evidence shows that the extinction was caused by a massive asteroid or comet smashing into Earth at Chicxulub on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

When the 10km-15km space rock struck the Yucatan, the explosive energy released was equivalent to 100 trillion tonnes of TNT - over a billion times more explosive than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The huge crater that remains from the event is some 180km in diameter and surrounded by a circular fault about 240km in diameter.

"You can actually trace debris right up to the rim of the crater from across the world," Co-author Dr David Kring, from the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, told BBC News.

"You can start in Europe, cross the Atlantic and it just thickens as you approach the Chicxulub impact crater."

In the new study, scientists examined the work of palaeontologists, geochemists, climate modellers, geophysicists and sedimentologists who have been gathering evidence about the K-T extinction.

They conclude that the Chicxulub space impact is the only plausible explanation for the devastation evident in geological records.

The initial impact would have triggered large-scale fires, huge earthquakes, and continental landslides which generated tsunamis.

Dr Gareth Collins, one of the review's co-authors from Imperial College London, said the asteroid hit Earth "20 times faster than a speeding bullet".

He added: "The explosion of hot rock and gas would have looked like a huge ball of fire on the horizon, grilling any living creature in the immediate vicinity that couldn't find shelter."

Dr Joanna Morgan, another co-author from Imperial, commented: "The final nail in the coffin for the dinosaurs happened when blasted material was ejected at high velocity into the atmosphere. This shrouded the planet in darkness and caused a global winter, killing off many species that couldn't adapt to this hellish environment."

{The ejected debris (white) can be seen in rocks from 65 million years ago}

The review confirms that a unique layer of debris ejected from a crater is compositionally linked to the Mexican crater and is also coincident with rocks associated at the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary.

The team also says that an abundance of shocked quartz in rock layers across the world at the K-T boundary lends further weight to conclusions that a massive meteorite impact happened at the time of the mass extinction. This form of the mineral occurs when rocks have been hit very quickly by a massive force. It is only found at nuclear explosion sites and at asteroid impact sites.

"Combining all available data from different science disciplines led us to conclude that a large asteroid impact 65 million years ago in modern day Mexico was the major cause of the mass extinctions," said author Dr Peter Schulte, assistant professor at the University of Erlangen in Germany.

David Kring explained: "I have been invited to give colloquia at a number of universities across North America and I had always been surprised by the number of people who didn't think the connection was as firm as it was.

"I think it was very important for this distinguished panel of experts from around the world who have seen the evidence from their own geographic quarter to debate the issue and come to a final resolution. I think it is that international consensus that is so important in this case."

{Today, the crater is buried under Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, but weaknesses in the overlying rock have produce a ring of slumping that is visible from space}

Scientists have previously argued about whether the extinction was caused by a space impact or by volcanic activity in the Deccan Traps in India, where there were a series of super-volcanic eruptions that lasted approximately 1.5 million years.

These eruptions spewed more than 1,000,000 cu km of basaltic lava across the Deccan Traps - enough to fill the Black Sea twice. These were thought to have caused a cooling of the atmosphere and acid rain on a global scale.

Despite evidence for relatively active volcanism in the Deccan Traps at the time, marine and land ecosystems showed only minor changes within the 500,000 years before the time of the K-T mass extinction.

Furthermore, computer models and observational data suggest the release of gases such as sulphur into the atmosphere after each volcanic eruption in the Deccan Traps would have had a short-lived effect on the planet.

The panel also discounted previous studies that suggested the Chicxulub impact occurred 300,000 years prior to the mass extinction event.

Scientists estimate that this type of impact occurs on average about once every 100 million years; about five have occurred during the evolution of complex life on Earth.

The importance of Chicxulub was cemented by the announcement in 1991 of the discovery of "shocked quartz" - one of the tell-tale signs of an impact - in a 1.6km-deep drill hole from the crater.

David Kring, Alan Hildebrand and William Boynton presented their results at that year's LPSC, then held at Nasa's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Dr Kring explained that he was "elated" with the consensus about the link between Chicxulub and the K-T mass extinction.


[Science & Environment]
Page last updated at 11:04 GMT, Friday, 5 March 2010
Met Office seasonal forecasts to be scrapped

{The Met Office says its short-term forecasts are "extremely accurate"}

The Met Office is to stop publishing seasonal forecasts, after it came in for criticism for failing to predict extreme weather.

It was berated for not foreseeing that the UK would suffer this cold winter or the last three wet summers in its seasonal forecasts.

The forecasts, four times a year, will be replaced by monthly predictions.

The Met Office said it decided to change its forecasting approach after carrying out customer research.

Explaining its decision, the Met Office released a statement which said: "By their nature, forecasts become less accurate the further out we look.
Tricky forecasts

"Although we can identify general patterns of weather, the science does not exist to allow an exact forecast beyond five days, or to absolutely promise a certain type of weather.

"As a result, 'seasonal forecasts' cannot be as precise as our short-term forecasts."

It said the UK is one of the hardest places to provide forecasts for due to its "size and location", making it "very hard to forecast much beyond a week".

However, it said its short-term forecasts are "extremely accurate".

The Met Office, based at Exeter in Devon, added that it would work towards developing the science of long range forecasting.

news20100305bbc2

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

[Science & Environment]
Page last updated at 03:19 GMT, Friday, 5 March 2010
By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News
Climate change human link evidence 'stronger'

{Icebergs off Greenland: The review looked at changes in Arctic sea ice}

A review from the UK Met Office says it is becoming clearer that human activities are causing climate change.

It says the evidence is stronger now than when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change carried out its last assessment in 2007.

The analysis, published in the Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change Journal, has assessed 110 research papers on the subject.

It says the Earth is changing rapidly, probably because of greenhouse gases.

In 2007 the IPCC's report concluded that there was "unequivocal" evidence that the Earth was warming and it was likely that it was due to burning of fossil fuels.

Since then the evidence that human activities are responsible for a rise in temperatures has increased, according to this new assessment by Dr Peter Stott and colleagues at the UK Met Office.

The Met Office study comes at a time when some have questioned the entire basis of climate science following recent controversies over the handling of research findings by the IPCC and the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

Dr Stott denies that the study has been published as part of a fight back by the climate research community.

"We started writing this paper a year ago. I think it's important to communicate to people what the science is showing and that's why I'm talking about this paper."

'Consistent picture'

The study, which looks at research published since the IPCC's report, has found that changes in Arctic sea ice, atmospheric moisture, saltiness of parts of the Atlantic Ocean and temperature changes in the Antarctic are consistent with human influence on our climate.

"What this study shows is that the evidence has strengthened for human influence on climate and we know that because we've looked at evidence across the climate system and what this shows very clearly is a consistent picture of a warming world," said Dr Stott.

The study brings together other research from a range of disciplines.

{{It's important to communicate to people what the science is showing}
Dr Peter Stott}

"We hadn't [until now] looked in detail at how the climate system was changing," says Dr Stott.

"[Our paper looks at] not just the temperatures but also the reducing Arctic sea ice and it includes changing rainfall patterns and it includes the fact that the atmosphere is getting more humid.

"And all these different aspects of the climate system are adding up to a picture of the effects of a human influence on our climate."

The Met Office study said that it was harder to find a firm link between climate change and individual extreme weather conditions - even though models predicted that extreme events were more likely.

According to the report: "Extremes pose a particular challenge, since rare events are by definition, poorly sampled in the historical record and many challenges remain for robustly attributing regional changes in extreme events such as droughts, floods and hurricanes."


[Science & Environment]
Page last updated at 12:51 GMT, Thursday, 4 March 2010
By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News
Promise made on UK physics woes

{Diamond is one of the most expensive physics facilities ever built in the UK}

The UK government is promising to put in place measures to protect the future funding of physics and astronomy.

The body responsible for overseeing the disciplines has had to withdraw from some projects and cut research grants because of pressures on its budget.

One key problem is the low value of the pound, which has made UK involvement in international science very expensive.

Ministers say they will continue to provide compensation payments while implementing a longer-term solution.

The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) is one of a number of research councils charged with routing public funds into British scientific activity.

The STFC looks after UK interests in major astronomy and physics experiments, such as the Large Hadron Collider at Cern in Switzerland, and the Very Large Telescope in Chile.

{{It is critical that whoever forms the next government prioritizes investment in science}
Nick Dusic, Case}

It also leads British participation in space science at the European Space Agency (Esa).

More than half of the council's budget is tied up in the "subscriptions" it pays to participate in these science "clubs"; and it also has a large fixed-cost element at home from managing big physics centres such as the Diamond X-ray light source in Oxfordshire.

Factors such as a weakening in sterling have conspired with the organisation's particular structural arrangements to put a squeeze on on those areas of its activities that are more flexible - the actual science and scientists it funds in the big facilities and clubs.

In December, the STFC executive announced that the UK would be withdrawing from major projects, such as the operation of the Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn, and from the Gemini eight-metre telescopes (in Hawaii and Chile) the UK helped to build.

It also indicated there would have to be a cut-back in grants. Currently, it is envisaged there will be a 13% reduction next year in the money available to support PhD students in physics, space and astronomy.

Treasury discussions

The government announced on Thursday that it was putting in place new arrangements for the STFC "designed to ensure that it can plan with greater predictability and provide its community with more stability".

These plans include what it describes as "better management of pressures arising from international subscriptions, and longer-term planning and budgeting for large domestic facilities".

{The UK pays a subscription to take part in the LHC venture}

This includes getting the other research councils - like the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Medical Research Council - to agree to better organise their use and funding of facilities operated by STFC.

Science minister Lord Drayson said: "There is no doubt STFC faced a difficult situation. A lot of work has gone in to finding ways of preventing such pressures rearing their heads again in future.

"The better management of international subscriptions through measures to manage exchange rates, and longer-term planning and budgeting for large domestic facilities will allow STFC's grant-giving functions to be managed with a higher degree of predictability."

None of the planned efficiencies announced in December will be affected by the new arrangements. The managed withdrawal from ventures - such as the Alice Collaboration, which seeks to exploit data acquired by the LHC; and nuclear physics projects such as Agata and Panda - will proceed as outlined.

Discussions are currently under way between the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Treasury to find a sustainable strategy to protect UK science from currency fluctuations in the years ahead.

The STFC should shortly be relieved of a major part of this problem anyway when the new UK executive space agency is formally established. This agency will take over the funding and policy for space science previously dealt with by STFC.

'Staunch the flow of blood'

The immediate reaction from the physics and astronomy community to the announcement appeared positive but with reservation.

Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, president of the Institute of Physics, and Professor Andrew Fabian, president of the Royal Astronomical Society, issued a joint statement.

They said: "We have been particularly concerned about the way in which unforeseeable rises in international subscriptions due to the falling value of the pound have put extreme pressure on the funding available from STFC both for research grants and the running of UK-based facilities. Today's announcement demonstrates that the problem has now been recognised and we look forward to seeing how it will be addressed."

{Space activity in the UK will soon be coordinated by an executive agency}

But they added: "Looking at the science base as a whole, we remain concerned about the overall impact on science funding as the pressure on the public purse becomes increasingly acute. We urge that the government continues to recognise the value of investment in the science base and funds accordingly."

Peter Coles, professor of astrophysics at Cardiff University, wrote on his blog: "The Drayson review may have staunched the flow of blood, but the patient will remain dangerously ill unless additional measures are taken."

And Dr Dave Clements, an astronomer from Imperial College, wrote on Twitter: "Our competitors are still boosting science funding at a time when the UK is cutting it - no fix for that here."

Nick Dusic, from the Campaign for Science and Engineering (Case), told BBC News: "Today's announcement shows that the government has identified potential solutions to the STFC's structural problems, which should give a glimmer of hope to those that depend on STFC for funding or look to its research for inspiration.

"However, we will not know the full implications of the proposals until the outcome of the next spending review. It is critical that whoever forms the next government prioritises investment in science."

news20100305reut1

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
RIO DE JANEIRO
Wed Mar 3, 2010 11:10am EST
Brazil's Petrobras wants ethanol firm stake: report

(Reuters) - Brazilian state run oil company Petrobras is seeking a stake of up to 40 percent in ethanol maker ETH Bioenergia to slow the growing influence of foreigners in the country's ethanol sector, local newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo reported on Wednesday.

Petrobras declined comment on the newspaper report.

Foreign investors have taken a growing interest in Brazil's ethanol sector with Shell committing last month to investing in a $21 billion joint venture with Brazil's Cosan amid a wave of consolidation of Brazilian sugar ethanol firms.

Folha said that transaction left the government uneasy about the advance of foreign firms in what is a very Brazilian industry, expanding since the mid 1970s when ethanol-powered cars began to be marketed there with the government's backing.

Petrobras told Folha it was not negotiating any kind of partnership with ETH Bioenergia.

Based on the current value of the company, controlled by Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht, a 40 percent slice of ETH Bioenergia would cost around 2.8 billion reais ($1.57 billion), Folha estimated.

In February, ETH took over debt-laden rival Brenco, creating one of the world's largest producers of cane-derived biofuel. ETH Bioenergia should have annual production capacity of 3 billion liters of ethanol by 2012, the companies said.

Folha said Petrobras also planned to acquire three cane mills for about 450 million reais which it would join to ETH Bionenergia's operations. Petrobras does not produce ethanol at present but trades in it to supply its huge nationwide network of filling stations branded "BR".

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has sought to boost state involvement in the economy in sectors from fertilizers to telecommunications and has been clamoring for raw material producers to process their products before export to create jobs and add value.

(Reporting by Camila Moreira; Writing by Brian Ellsworth and Peter Murphy; editing by Jim Marshall)


[Green Business]
LONDON
Wed Mar 3, 2010 11:13am EST
Factbox: Details of EU Commission's CO2 permit auction plan

(Reuters) - The European Commission is considering auctioning carbon permits from 2011 onwards on up to two platforms and might cancel auctions if prices fall too low, two leaked documents seen by Reuters on Wednesday showed. Officials within the EU's executive are deciding how to arrange auctions for carbon permits, called EU Allowances (EUAs), ahead of the third phase of its emissions trading scheme, which will run from 2013-2020.

Below are the main details from the EU Commission's EUA auctioning plan, as proposed in the draft documents: * TWO PLATFORMS: One "provisional" platform for future and forward EUA sales in 2011 and 2012. It would need to be operational soon to meet hedging needs of utilities that forward sell power.

The other is a "definitive" platform which will be a regulated market or a multilateral trading facility and will sell EUAs with 2-day or 5-day settlement. The definitive platform will be appointed for an initial 5-year term.

Industry has said it supports a central platform.

Companies to provide both provisional and definitive clearing and settlement systems will also be appointed.

Other schemes like a coordinated collaboration between platforms in several member states were ruled out by the Commission on grounds of lower efficiency.

* WEEKLY: Auctions to take place at least weekly, with the auctioning calendar published a year ahead.

* CONFIDENTIAL: Auctioning to be uniform, single round, sealed bid.

* PRICE FLOOR?: No active price management, but "in the case the auction clearing prices is abnormally low, the auction shall be canceled forthwith and the auctioned volume shall be distributed evenly over the next four scheduled auctions."

The EU Commission will determine what amounts to an abnormally low price using a confidential methodology that it said can be modified.

* PRICE: Incoming bids are ordered according to price and the final clearing price is established at the level where the auctioned volumes are exhausted.

* Canceled: If the bidding volume is below the auctioned volume, the clearing price is too low or cannot be established, the auction can be canceled.

* BIDDING: Authorized bidders must be either participants in the EU's emissions trading scheme or be regulated financial institutions. "Allowing access of financial operators does not imply an invitation to excessive speculative behavior," one draft said. Other firms can participate, and bid on behalf of clients, at the discretion of individual member states.

Bidding windows of at least two hours in length will open on the day of the auction.

Bids will be made in minimum lots of 500 tonnes and the maximum bid size could be set at 25 percent of the EUAs offered in an individual auction or 25 percent of the total number auctioned in a calendar year.

Bidders will have to pay for their bids upfront.

* MONITOR: All auctions will be supervised by an appointed monitor that will ensure they are protected against market manipulation, money laundering, terrorist-financing or fraud.

* REVENUES: Member states will sell their EUAs to the auctioneer, who will in turn auction them to participants.

(Compiled by Michael Szabo; Editing by Anthony Barker)


[Green Business]
Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON
Wed Mar 3, 2010 4:42pm EST
Lieberman on climate bill prospects

(Reuters) - Senate Republicans could withhold support of key legislation such as a climate-change bill if Democrats ram a healthcare reform bill through the Senate using fast-track procedures, Senator Joseph Lieberman said on Wednesday.

"What worries me," Lieberman said, "is Republican colleagues I've talked to, some of them usually trying to work with Democrats on individual pieces of legislation, have said to me if healthcare reform is forced through by reconciliation, nothing bipartisan is going to happen this year."

Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, is working with Democratic Senator John Kerry and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham to forge a compromise, bipartisan climate-change bill forcing U.S. reductions in greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.

While such legislation is one of President Barack Obama's highest priorities, healthcare reform is his top priority.

To win quick passage of expanded healthcare, Obama and fellow Democrats in Congress are planning to use a special procedure, known as "reconciliation," to overcome a solid wall of Republican opposition in the Senate.

Referring to that tactic, Lieberman fretted it could poison the atmosphere for a climate bill he hopes will pass this year, despite heavy odds against it with members of both parties concerned about such a sweeping bill in an election year.

"We have a lot of important things we should do besides healthcare reform this year, including energy-independence climate-change legislation," he added. "There are Republicans working on this who want to support this."

Lieberman also told Reuters during a brief interview:

-- "I'm interested in cap and dividend but I don't like it better yet" than cap and trade.

Cap and trade, the centerpiece of a climate bill passed by the House of Representatives last year, would place continually-declining limits on smokestack emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. It also would establish a huge financial market for trading carbon pollution permits that companies would have to obtain.

Under cap and dividend, similarly strict limits could be placed on carbon pollution. But instead of focusing on smokestack emissions, it would aim the cap on upstream operations, such as on coal and oil companies and importers. The "dividend" would be in the form of monthly checks to consumers to help ease the cost of higher energy prices and without the complicated trading scheme of cap and trade.

-- "I'm thinking about" a plan to initially place carbon limits only on the electricity-generating utility sector, which accounts for about 40 percent of U.S. carbon emissions. He would not specify which mechanism could be picked to achieve the limits.

-- "Clearly under consideration" is a proposal to put off any carbon-emission requirements on manufacturers, giving time for alternative energy sources, such as wind and solar power, to develop at a cheaper cost.

-- Would a tax on the transportation sector spell doom for a climate bill? "I don't know. I think people are open to considering. People have talked about it. We're talking to our colleagues about it. It depends how the tax is applied and what happens to the money," he said.

-- "I probably was a little optimistic there" with a forecast on Tuesday that a detailed outline of a compromise bill could be set forth within days. Key decisions still must be made, he said.

(Editing by Philip Barbara)

news20100305reut2

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Chang-Ran Kim and Christiaan Hetzner
GENEVA
Thu Mar 4, 2010 7:15am EST
Little room for hybrids, EVs in Europe for a decade

(Reuters) - Hybrid and electric cars are the stars of motor shows, but the expensive technologies could take a decade to really hit European roads as automakers improve petrol and diesel cars to meet short-term emissions targets.

The planned launch of the first zero-emission electric cars from Nissan Motor Co, Daimler AG and Mitsubishi Motors Corp this year, as well as debut of hybrid cars from a growing number of European brands has renewed the buzz around electric powertrains as promising solutions to reducing emissions in carbon dioxide-conscious Europe.

But most automakers gathered at the Geneva auto show this week said the most practical road to meeting Europe's 130g/km CO2 emissions target by 2015 was to improve conventional gasoline engines, downsize their cars, or offer more diesel engines, which are 20 to 30 percent more fuel-efficient than their petrol cousins.

"I think the opportunity for hybrids in Europe is quite small," said Hyundai Motor Europe Vice President Allan Rushforth.

While Hyundai Motor has hybrid and pure-electric cars in the production pipeline elsewhere, Rushforth said the introduction of clean diesel engines and improved gasoline cars alone would help South Korea's top automaker reduce its CO2 emissions in Europe to 115g/km by 2015, from 142g/km last year.

Generous subsidies have helped hybrids gain traction in Japan and the United States, but European consumers have favored diesel cars for better mileage and lower CO2 emissions.

With sales volumes so small, at less than 1 percent of the overall European market last year, having hybrid models in its line-up has done little for Japan's Honda Motor Co -- one of the few mass producers of gasoline-electric cars in the world. Its average emissions were above 140g/km last year.

"Hybrids don't have the same recognition in Europe as they do in the United States or Japan," Honda Motor Europe CEO Shigeru Takagi told Reuters at the auto show.

Takagi added that while Honda hoped the launch of the new sporty CR-Z showcased in Geneva and Jazz subcompact hybrids would help boost sales, Honda would also have to boost mileage on the Accord and other volume sellers to bring its emissions down.

Honda would eventually also need a small diesel engine to meet targets beyond 2015, he said.

"I think the Europeans were in no hurry to launch hybrids because they are not necessarily that much better in terms of fuel efficiency than diesel," said Michael Tyndall, auto specialist at Nomura International.

"The cost benefit trade-off doesn't really work for European consumers because a diesel car will be cheaper to buy and the comparative fuel saving is not enough to justify that extra cost," he added.

Hybrid leader Toyota Motor, meanwhile, slashed its emissions to 130.1g/km last year, only trailing Italian small-car maker Fiat, but that was thanks to the penetration of its Yaris subcompact, according to research firm JATO Dynamics.

Toyota sold just 44,000 units of the Prius hybrid in Europe last year, compared with about 210,000 for the Yaris.

Even the Renault-Nissan alliance, which has been the most aggressive in pursuing a zero-emission strategy, said EVs would only go so far to meet European targets.

"We're projecting a 10 percent share of the global market for EVs by 2020, and that's said to be a very optimistic target," the partners' zero-emissions project leader, Hideaki Watanabe, told Reuters.

"Even at that level, we'd have to work on the remaining 90 percent, which is based on internal combustion engines."

Japan's Mazda Motor Corp is taking just such a strategy, making improvements to its internal combustion engines to raise fuel economy by 30 percent until 2015, and adding hybrid and other electric options beyond that.

HYBRIDS FOR 2020?

Still, automakers say a further reduction in CO2 targets to 95g/km by 2020 would require hybrid technology or zero-emission electric or hydrogen fuel-cell cars, which is why automakers such as BMW and Volkswagen have plans to bring gasoline-electric cars to showrooms, albeit just in the high-end segments for now.

"(This) can only be achieved with a mixture of vehicles," said BMW CEO Norbert Reithofer.

"You will need electric cars, very good diesels, and hybrids," he said, adding BMW will expand its new 5-series generation to include a full hybrid.

Opel's R&D chief Rita Forst clarified Chief Executive Nick Reilly's recent break with his predecessor's aversion to offering hybrids in addition to the vaunted Opel Ampera electric car that will likely hit showrooms late next year.

She said the German carmaker was in fact planning to add a start-stop system for the Corsa soon as a "micro hybrid" and did not exclude the possibility that a "mild hybrid" with brake energy recuperation might also be offered in low volumes.

France's top automaker, PSA Peugeot Citroen, also expects electric powertrains to play a bigger role in a decade.

"If you look at the market in 2020 compared to what it is today... our assumptions are that if you add up the electric vehicle and the hybrid it will add up to potentially 15 percent of the market," PSA CEO Philippe Varin said.

(Additional reporting by Helen Massy-Beresford; Editing by Hans Peters)


[Green Business]
Thu Mar 4, 2010 1:02pm EST
Factbox: Swift US EPA climate regulation faces hurdles

(Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency faces big hurdles in implementing regulations to curb greenhouse gas emissions from sources such as coal-fired power plants.

The Obama administration is pushing the EPA to regulate emissions under the Clean Air Act partly to force companies and lawmakers to support a climate bill stalled in the Senate that would reduce gases blamed for global warming.

Here is background on what EPA is considering and challenges it faces:

BACKGROUND

Late last year, the EPA declared that greenhouse gases endanger human health after the Supreme Court ruled that the agency had the power to regulate the gases under the Clean Air Act, legislation last amended in 1990.

The EPA, along with the Department of Transportation, plans late this month to boost fuel economy standards on cars and light duty trucks, which would cut emissions. The EPA benchmark would be raised to 35.5 miles per gallon (15.1 km per liter).

That would open the door for more controversial regulations on stationary sources of emissions such as power plants and cement, glass and steel makers. Under the rules, those sources would have to get permits showing they are using the best available technology to cut emissions.

EPA administrator Lisa Jackson has indicated the agency is willing to soften rules on smaller businesses and that no company would be regulated before 2011.

CONGRESS

Senator John Rockefeller, a Democrat from coal-rich West Virginia, introduced legislation on Thursday seeking to delay rules controlling carbon dioxide pollution from sources such as coal-fired power plants for two years.

The bill would not delay EPA from moving forward on carbon regulations from vehicles.

In addition, Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from oil-rich Alaska, introduced legislation that would permanently delay EPA from regulating the gases. The bill has little chance of being enacted as President Barack Obama would have to sign it into law and Congress would likely not have the votes to override that.

STATES

California, a long-time leader in taking action on environmental issues, wants the EPA to delay the rules. California's Energy Commission says imposing the rules could hurt its plans to transform its energy system to run more on renewable energy such as solar power.

States in the U.S. Northeast support eventual EPA regulation if a climate bill fails. However, they too have called for delays, saying that requiring factories to have permits would overwhelm state air offices.

COMPANIES AND INDUSTRY GROUPS

Many industry groups have filed petitions in court questioning whether EPA has conducted independent research on the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions. Petitions can linger in the courts for years, according to clean air lawyers. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce filed a petition challenging the EPA's decision to regulate the gases.

GREEN GROUPS

The EPA also faces potential lawsuits from moderate and more liberal environmental groups. Some groups want EPA to implement cap-and-trade market system on greenhouse gases under the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, the same measure that limits pollutants such as particulates. That would limit the amount of carbon dioxide and other gases allowed in the air. Other green groups say that would subject EPA to a rash of lawsuits.

(Compiled by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

news20100305reut3

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Steven Jewkes and Jonathan Gleave
MADRID/MILAN
Thu Mar 4, 2010 10:32am EST
Enel prepares to merge Spanish renewable assets

(Reuters) - Italy's Enel SpA looks set to merge most of its Spanish renewable energy assets into its Green Power unit in a move to beef up the division ahead of a stake sale scheduled for this year.

Its 92 percent-owned Spanish unit Endesa SA said on Thursday it was talking to Enel about the benefits of merging its renewables assets with those held separately by the Italian utility, but no decision had yet been taken.

"The idea is to set up a joint venture that is majority owned by Enel and into which Endesa would place its renewable assets in Spain, while Enel would place its Eufer assets," a source close to the operation said.

"EGP would eventually take ownership of the Enel share in the joint venture, which could be around 60 percent," the source added.

Enel's renewable energy assets in Spain are split between 2.7 gigawatts of generation capacity held through Endesa and a 50 percent stake in its 1.2 gigawatt Eufer joint venture with Gas Natural, according to Endesa and Eufer websites.

Gas Natural is studying a proposal by Enel, Europe's most indebted utility, to break up Eufer and divide up its assets, sources close to the operation told Reuters.

Gas Natural and Enel declined comment.

Enel's plans to save on operating costs by grouping together its Spanish renewables assets and merging most of them into Enel Green Power (EGP) makes sense ahead of the unit's expected partial listing this year, analysts said.

"There are obvious synergies and it's hard to see why they haven't done it before if they want to sell the stake in EGP," UniCredit analyst Javier Suarez said, adding he has an EGP enterprise value of around 10 billion euros.

It had originally targeted the unit for sale by end-2009 but the group's CFO Luigi Ferraris told Reuters in December: "We believe a June-September deadline is achievable and we've given ourselves a bit more time so we can present a complete equity story for EGP."

Enel is banking on a minority stake sale in EGP to reduce its debt pile, which at the end of 2009 was around 51 billion euros ($69.8 billion).

At 1148 GMT, Enel shares were down 0.6 percent, broadly in line with falls in the European utilities sector.

(Editing by David Holmes)

($1=.7310 Euro)


[Green Business]
Michael Szabo
LONDON
Thu Mar 4, 2010 1:02pm EST
Kyoto carbon offset (CER) issuances picking up

(Reuters) - The UN shaved its forecast for 2012 Kyoto Protocol carbon offsets this week, despite a rise in the number issued by its climate change secretariat last month.

The UN issued 13.3 million offsets in February, the most seen since last November, but cut the number it expects to hand out before the current Kyoto treaty expires in 2012 to 1.035 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.

Under Kyoto, efforts to cut greenhouse gases can be outsourced to emerging countries through investment in clean energy projects that have been registered under the UN's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) scheme. Investors receive offsets in return, called Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs), which can be used toward emissions reduction goals or sold for profit.

The first two months of 2010 yielded 21.9 million CERs, and with another 3.5 million issued by the UN so far this week, Q1-2010 could be on track to see over 33 million CERs, according to Reuters calculations.

This compares to 31.8 million issued in Q1-2009.

Regardless, the UN forecast a lower CER supply by 2012.

"Due to the medium issuance in February our projection for the amount of CERs projected to be available by the end of 2012 decreased from 1,051 million CERs to 1,035 million CERs," said the UNEP Risoe Center.

That number could drop even further if long bureaucratic delays return to the CDM or if the scheme's executive panel announces more CDM auditor suspensions. Several emissions auditors were suspended last year after the CDM's executive board spotted "non-conformities" in their practices.

Analysts said the repercussions from this, most likely a dent in issuance rates, have yet to be fully felt by the market.

These supply issues have caused the futures curve to become backwardated with spot CERs trading some 25 cents above Dec-10 futures and around 40 cents over the Dec-11's.

Spot CER prices were down over 2 percent to 12.14 euros on Thursday afternoon as lower energy prices weighed.

Average wholesale, or primary market prices for issued CERs was around 9 euros as of last Friday, according to IDEAcarbon, implying a profit margin of over 3 euros when compared to secondary spot market rates.

The CDM's executive is consulting stakeholders on proposals to streamline the registration and issuance processes, and will review all comments at its next meeting from March 22-26.

INDUSTRIAL GAS

The share of industrial gas CERs, those generated by CDM projects that capture potent greenhouse gases like hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and nitrous oxide (N2O), fell for a third straight month in February as more renewable energy and energy efficiency projects received CERs, UN data showed.

Industrial gas CERs now make up 75.1 percent of all issued CERs, down from 76.6 percent in November.

Although there are now 81 registered HFC or N2O projects, three quarters of all industrial gas CERs come from 10 large projects in China, India, South Korea and Brazil.

New industrial gas projects, once called "low-hanging fruit" because they were easy to implement and provided the greatest return on investment, are all but scarce now with only a handful currently awaiting validation.

(Editing by James Jukwey)


[Green Business]
CALGARY, Alberta
Fri Mar 5, 2010 8:25am EST
Canada regulator OKs TransCanada shale gas plan

(Reuters) - Regulators on Thursday conditionally approved TransCanada Corp's plan for a C$200 million ($194 million) pipeline, the first federally regulated shale gas transport system in Western Canada.

The 77 km (48 mile) Groundbirch pipeline would carry gas to TransCanada's Alberta pipeline network from northeastern British Columbia's Montney formation.

Canada's National Energy Board said its approval carried 30 conditions, comprising such things as environmental protection and aboriginal consultation measures.

The region of British Columbia has become known as one of the continent's top sources of natural gas trapped in shale rock formations. The industry has improved drilling and recovery technology to the point where trillions of cubic feet of supply have become accessible.

($1=$1.03 Canadian) (Reporting by Jeffrey Jones; Editing by Frank McGurty)


[Green Business]
BRUSSELS
Fri Mar 5, 2010 5:16am EST
EU tempers hopes of binding climate deal this year

(Reuters) - The European Union executive is tempering its hopes of securing a legally binding climate deal in talks this year culminating in Cancun, Mexico, focusing instead on a 2011 summit in South Africa, a source said.

"The realistic approach is to aim for deliverables in the Bonn and Cancun meetings this year, and then to aim for a legally binding agreement in South Africa," the European Commission source said on condition of anonymity.

"But we should not give up hope of it being done earlier," the source added.

(Reporting by Pete Harrison, editing by Dale Hudson)


[Green Business]
PARIS
Fri Mar 5, 2010 7:16am EST
France blasts GM crop approvals by EU agency

(Reuters) - Europe's food safety agency has used partial evidence to approve genetically modified crops, including a GM potato developed by BASF, and should overhaul its methods, a French environment minister said.

France has previously invoked environmental risks to suspend cultivation of Monsanto's MON 810 maize, which was the only GM crop approved for growing in the European Union prior to this week's approval of BASF's Amflora potato.

Chantal Jouanno, a junior minister in the French government, said the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA), whose opinions are used by the EU's executive, had ignored the environmental effects of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

"We do not recognize their expertise because we consider that their opinions are incomplete," she told French daily Le Parisien in an interview published on Friday.

"They are only interested in the sanitary consequences of GMOs, without taking into account their long-term environmental impact," she said, citing potential contamination of soil and adverse effects on other species.

France has asked a national biotechnology committee, the HCB, to give its opinion on the Amflora potato, after already consulting the body last year on MON 810 maize after taking issue with a favorable opinion from EFSA on renewing the European license for growing the crop.

To resolve longstanding divisions between member countries over GM crop approvals, the European Commission also said this week it may propose letting each country decide whether to authorize the cultivation of GM crops on its soil.

France's farm minister told Reuters last month he was opposed to any national decision-making on GM crops, calling for harmonized EU rules.

(Reporting by Gus Trompiz; editing by James Jukwey)

news20100305reut4

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Chang-Ran Kim and Christiaan Hetzner
GENEVA
Fri Mar 5, 2010 5:31am EST
Little room for hybrids, EVs in Europe for a decade

Hybrid and electric cars are the stars of motor shows, but the expensive technologies could take a decade to really hit European roads as automakers improve petrol and diesel cars to meet short-term emissions targets.

The planned launch of the first zero-emission electric cars from Nissan Motor Co, Daimler AG and Mitsubishi Motors Corp this year, as well as debut of hybrid cars from a growing number of European brands has renewed the buzz around electric powertrains as promising solutions to reducing emissions in carbon dioxide-conscious Europe.

But most automakers gathered at the Geneva auto show this week said the most practical road to meeting Europe's 130g/km CO2 emissions target by 2015 was to improve conventional gasoline engines, downsize their cars, or offer more diesel engines, which are 20 to 30 percent more fuel-efficient than their petrol cousins.

"I think the opportunity for hybrids in Europe is quite small," said Hyundai Motor Europe Vice President Allan Rushforth.

While Hyundai Motor has hybrid and pure-electric cars in the production pipeline elsewhere, Rushforth said the introduction of clean diesel engines and improved gasoline cars alone would help South Korea's top automaker reduce its CO2 emissions in Europe to 115g/km by 2015, from 142g/km last year.

Generous subsidies have helped hybrids gain traction in Japan and the United States, but European consumers have favored diesel cars for better mileage and lower CO2 emissions.

With sales volumes so small, at less than 1 percent of the overall European market last year, having hybrid models in its line-up has done little for Japan's Honda Motor Co -- one of the few mass producers of gasoline-electric cars in the world. Its average emissions were above 140g/km last year.

"Hybrids don't have the same recognition in Europe as they do in the United States or Japan," Honda Motor Europe CEO Shigeru Takagi told Reuters at the auto show.

Takagi added that while Honda hoped the launch of the new sporty CR-Z showcased in Geneva and Jazz subcompact hybrids would help boost sales, Honda would also have to boost mileage on the Accord and other volume sellers to bring its emissions down.

Honda would eventually also need a small diesel engine to meet targets beyond 2015, he said.

"I think the Europeans were in no hurry to launch hybrids because they are not necessarily that much better in terms of fuel efficiency than diesel," said Michael Tyndall, auto specialist at Nomura International.

"The cost benefit trade-off doesn't really work for European consumers because a diesel car will be cheaper to buy and the comparative fuel saving is not enough to justify that extra cost," he added.

Hybrid leader Toyota Motor, meanwhile, slashed its emissions to 130.1g/km last year, only trailing Italian small-car maker Fiat, but that was thanks to the penetration of its Yaris subcompact, according to research firm JATO Dynamics.

Toyota sold just 44,000 units of the Prius hybrid in Europe last year, compared with about 210,000 for the Yaris.

Even the Renault-Nissan alliance, which has been the most aggressive in pursuing a zero-emission strategy, said EVs would only go so far to meet European targets.

"We're projecting a 10 percent share of the global market for EVs by 2020, and that's said to be a very optimistic target," the partners' zero-emissions project leader, Hideaki Watanabe, told Reuters.

"Even at that level, we'd have to work on the remaining 90 percent, which is based on internal combustion engines."

Japan's Mazda Motor Corp is taking just such a strategy, making improvements to its internal combustion engines to raise fuel economy by 30 percent until 2015, and adding hybrid and other electric options beyond that.

HYBRIDS FOR 2020?

Still, automakers say a further reduction in CO2 targets to 95g/km by 2020 would require hybrid technology or zero-emission electric or hydrogen fuel-cell cars, which is why automakers such as BMW and Volkswagen have plans to bring gasoline-electric cars to showrooms, albeit just in the high-end segments for now.

"(This) can only be achieved with a mixture of vehicles," said BMW CEO Norbert Reithofer.

"You will need electric cars, very good diesels, and hybrids," he said, adding BMW will expand its new 5-series generation to include a full hybrid.

Opel's R&D chief Rita Forst clarified Chief Executive Nick Reilly's recent break with his predecessor's aversion to offering hybrids in addition to the vaunted Opel Ampera electric car that will likely hit showrooms late next year.

She said the German carmaker was in fact planning to add a start-stop system for the Corsa soon as a "micro hybrid" and did not exclude the possibility that a "mild hybrid" with brake energy recuperation might also be offered in low volumes.

France's top automaker, PSA Peugeot Citroen, also expects electric powertrains to play a bigger role in a decade.

"If you look at the market in 2020 compared to what it is today... our assumptions are that if you add up the electric vehicle and the hybrid it will add up to potentially 15 percent of the market," PSA CEO Philippe Varin said.

(Additional reporting by Helen Massy-Beresford; Editing by Hans Peters)


[Green Business]
Sui-Lee Wee and Leonora Walet
HONG KONG
Thu Mar 4, 2010 10:01pm EST
IBM banks on China for growth in energy div

(Reuters) - IBM sees strong market potential for "smart grids" power distribution systems in China as the country seeks ways to use energy more efficiently.

Technology giants including Google Inc, Cisco and Microsoft are investing heavily in smart grids, intelligent power-distribution systems designed to be more responsive and interactive than today's traditional power grids.

In terms of countries, China, the world's biggest greenhouse-gas emitter, is investing the most. Beijing plans to invest $7.3 billion in smart grid projects in 2010, more than the United States, according to Zpryme, a market research firm in Austin, Texas.

China is far behind the United States and Japan in terms of its smart grid development.

"China is pursuing smart grids as aggressively or more aggressively than any other country in the world right now," Brad Gammons, vice-president of IBM's Global Energy & Utilities Industry, told Reuters in an embargoed interview last week.

"They're very focused and have a very strong commitment to move in that direction," he said.

IBM -- which counts State Grid Corp. of China, the nation's leading power grid operator, as one of its customers -- unveiled its Energy & Utilities Solutions Lab in Beijing this week.

Smart grids include computerized monitoring of the electricity flowing though a power grid and allow utilities to manage electricity usage automatically.

IBM's products span the range of smart grid systems, including the automation of power stations and electricity distribution networks with the use of digital sensors and communication networks.

CHINA GROWTH

China's smart grid could take five to 10 years to fully develop, said Wendy Wang, an analyst with Yuanta Securities, adding the nation is still trailing the United States and Japan.

"China offers huge growth opportunities for investors in smart grids given increased spending in the sector," she said.

"Investors will benefit from the transformation of the country's grid infrastructure and we will see opportunities from the building of the ultra high-voltage grid down to the development of meters and software."

IBM expects the China revenues of its energy and utilities division to grow by $400 million from now until 2014 as Beijing banks on "smart grids" to make the country more energy-efficient, Gammons said.

While the company gave no detailed breakdown, a report from Macquarie Equities Research puts IBM's China revenue at $2.6 billion in 2008. IBM saw total revenue of $95.76 billion for all of 2009.

"We're looking at $400 million in incremental revenue over our base revenue in China over the next four years," he said. "We're making investments in China based on the grid opportunities we see."

IBM is eyeing partnerships with local companies as it seeks to expand its business in China, Gammons added.

(Editing by Don Durfee and Valerie Lee)

news20100305reut5

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON
Thu Mar 4, 2010 3:50pm EST
Sen. Rockefeller seeks EPA carbon rule delay

(Reuters) - A fight over U.S. President Barack Obama's climate change initiatives intensified on Thursday when an influential Democratic senator sought a two-year pause on regulations to reduce carbon dioxide pollution from coal-fired power plants and other smokestacks.

Legislation calling for the delay was introduced by Senator John Rockefeller of West Virginia, where the coal industry anchors his small state's economy, much like several others.

In offering the bill, Rockefeller said it would "safeguard jobs, the coal industry and the entire economy as we move toward clean-coal technology." It also would give Congress "the time it needs" to write climate control legislation, he said.

The Obama administration has long maintained that the Environmental Protection Agency would move independently to reduce greenhouse gases blamed for global warming if Congress failed to produce its own climate legislation.

But the five-term senator has said Congress shouldn't move too fast on the legislative front, noting that more time was needed to develop "clean coal" technologies which would attempt to capture and bury carbon from burning coal.

As chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, Rockefeller is positioned to have an impact on negotiations for a climate bill, which has been stalled in the Senate since last year and faces an uphill fight in this election year.

Rockefeller's proposal would not stop EPA's imminent moves to reduce carbon pollution from vehicles, however.

EPA spokeswoman Adora Andy said the agency was still reviewing the senator's bill. But she added that unlike a Republican bill to stop EPA carbon rules, Rockefeller's "does not attempt to overturn or deny the scientific fact that unchecked greenhouse gas pollution threatens the well-being of the American people" or threaten EPA car-emissions rules.

Rockefeller's bill, if passed by Congress, would impose a two-year time-out on EPA regulations on stationary sources of pollution from the date of enactment, so at least through March, 2012.

TWO CAN TURN INTO FOUR

But some environmentalists saw longer delays.

Joe Mendelson, director of global warming policy at the National Wildlife Federation, said the legislation would stop EPA from doing any more preparatory work on regulating smokestack carbon emissions.

"It'd be two years plus another 18 months to two years" lost in laying the groundwork, Mendelson said. "We don't have four years to wait."

It was not clear how quickly Rockefeller's bill would move in the Senate. Even before he introduced his bill, there was significant sentiment in the Senate for challenging EPA's authority on climate change initiatives.

Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, from the oil-producing state of Alaska, along with at least 35 other senators, has legislation to permanently ban the EPA from regulating carbon. She has voiced conditional support for some sort of broad energy and environmental legislation.

"I'm hopeful that this bill will draw additional support and advance quickly," Murkowski said in a statement on Rockefeller's bill. If not, she said her bill "is guaranteed consideration in the Senate."

Rockefeller said coal-producing state members in the House of Representatives would introduce the two-year delay in that chamber.

Democratic leaders in Congress and the Obama administration have been pushing for legislation this year to cut greenhouse gas emissions by about 17 percent by 2020, from 2005 levels.

But with no guarantees a bill will be enacted, the EPA began moving on carbon emission controls early into Obama's presidency and after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it had the authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon, which the agency says presents a danger to human health.

Obama, most members of Congress and many business and environmental groups agree a legislative remedy would bring a better result.

While the House narrowly passed a carbon-capping bill last year, senators from midwestern and southern states heavily reliant on fossil fuels such as coal and oil have not been able to strike a deal with northeastern and western lawmakers who could see their wind, solar and other alternative power industries blossom.

With the Obama administration fighting falling poll numbers, a recent Reuters poll found key senators doubted a climate bill could pass in this election year.

(Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner and Jeff Mason, editing by Vicki Allen)


[Green Business]
Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent
WASHINGTON
Thu Mar 4, 2010 1:10pm EST
Labor, environment groups push "green" broadband

(Reuters) - Labor and environmental groups joined with the U.S. government on Thursday to promote high speed Internet access and related technologies to create green jobs and help lift the United States out of recession.

"In the same way that building the interstate freeway system brought the United States out of the post-World War Two recession ... a clean energy economy is exactly what we need in recession-bound America to put people back to work," said David Foster, executive director of Blue Green Alliance, an organization of unions and environmental groups.

Policies to support broadband technologies providing high-speed Internet access can reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions that spur climate change, according to a report released by the Blue Green Alliance, the Progressive States Network, the Sierra Club and the Communications Workers of America.

The report, released on Capitol Hill, maintains that changing the way people and businesses use technology can cut carbon dioxide emissions by 13 percent to 22 percent by 2020, with a potential gross energy and fuel savings of $140 billion to $240 billion.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission also is promoting broadband as an environmental and economic tool.

"INNOVATION AND INVESTMENT"

"To unleash innovation and investment in smart homes and buildings, consumers need access to and control of their digital energy information," said Nick Sinai, energy and environment director at the FCC. "Broadband allows consumers to track and manage their energy consumption, from their home or on their smartphones."

The FCC is set to release a National Broadband Plan on March 16 to free up airwaves for mobile broadband, seek to increase universal access and adoption of broadband, and create a nationwide public safety network.

The plan will not call for spending beyond the existing programs, a commission official said on Wednesday, which likely will please lawmakers.

One key to energy savings and cuts in climate-warming carbon emissions is in a so-called smart grid to put in digital controls and high-voltage transmissions lines to carry power more cheaply from renewable energy source sites where it is generated to where it is used, the report said.

Development of renewable energy sources like solar and wind power is also expected to generate jobs that cannot be moved to other countries, the report said.

The report said the U.S. government's appropriation of $4.5 billion for smart grid technology in the economic recovery plan is a "small but positive step" but said bigger investments will be needed to modernize the current energy grid.

Broadband technologies can cut travel and fuel costs, cutting greenhouse pollution from air and ground transportation, but to get the most benefit out of this technology, the United States will need to deploy broadband on a large scale, the report said.

Some 3 million to 6 million U.S. households have no access to a broadband provider, and about one-third of U.S. households that have access do not subscribe to broadband.

(Editing by Vicki Allen)

news20100305reut6

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Vera Eckert - Analysis
FRANKFURT
Fri Mar 5, 2010 8:49am EST
German nuclear talks messy, operators may still gain

(Reuters) - Germany's nuclear power industry is no closer to knowing how long its plants may operate than five months ago when Chancellor Angela Merkel's new government assumed power and promised to extend their lives.

Rifts inside her center-right cabinet over the merit of rivaling renewables energies and a local election potentially threatening her party's leadership of a key state have delayed steps to free the 17 reactors from closure in the coming decade.

But analysts say having expected and priced in closures for as long as the 10-year old exit deal, the industry must keep its nerve and focus on the benefits from any leeway given.

"Operators will be fairly pragmatic about the affair, realizing that the lack of progress on politicians' part makes the case for generous life extensions that much stronger for them," said Lawrence Pooole of IHS Global Insight.

"Under such a scenario, operators could however find themselves paying a heftier share of revenue to the government for the additional generation these facilities will provide," he said, adding there could also be tough maintenance conditions.

Even if operators must upgrade plants and share additional profits, they may still stand to earn billions of euros a year if largely written off plants produce longer than envisioned in the exit deal that wants plants to stop after an average 32 years of age.

That is why anti-nuclear groups such as "Ausgestrahlt," which means "enough radiation," vow to stage powerful protests.

"Our aim is not just to block life extensions," said its spokesman Jochen Stay, meaning demands for a total stop in 2021.

TREADING CAREFULLY

Having lived with public protests over safety and unresolved waste issues since its inception in the 1970s, the industry knows it should not bully the government as it could backfire.

"We would find that inappropriate," said RWE CEO Juergen Grossmann at a news briefing last week.

The big four nuclear operators RWE, E.ON, EnBW and Vattenfall Europe have been docile so far and instead displayed a lot of creativity behind the scenes.

EnBW directly tackled the scheduled phase-out of its Neckarwestheim 1 plant this year by announcing it will cut the block's load by two thirds to avoid closure.

RWE, whose Biblis A reactor is also due to shut this year if it does not receive an injection of fresh production quotas, could be rescued under various scenarios.

A court must decide whether it may borrow quotas from RWE's younger Lingen plant to tide it over, but there is no date.

Alternatively, E.ON may lend RWE and EnBW quotas from its Stade plant, closed in 2002, in a move which would be legitimate and easy to implement but observers say would not come cheaply.

Vattenfall Europe's two northern German nuclear plants escape immediate closure threats due to embarrassing and costly shutdowns after safety glitches.

Politicians are poles apart on how many years to add to the plants' lives beyond 32 years. Between 8 and 20 years are suggested. Plants in other countries can run up to 60 years.

Industry executives at a conference this week said they were braced for tough and costly conditions to be tied to a deal but to remain profitable would argue the likely impact on prices.

They would study hard whether it was worth spending large sums on necessary plant upgrades and share profits to support renewables, as they were free to invest in those by other means.

But there was a new drive to unblock a decade-old debate about a final waste repository and to try and tackle the PR war, said Ralf Gueldner, deputy chairman of E.ON's Kernkraft unit.

"We can get somewhere with the help of multiplicators," he said. "The industry has become more transparent."

An overall national energy plan, in which a nuclear deal will be embedded, is due to be signed in October but an earlier interim report will become available in mid-May.

(Reporting by Vera Eckert)


[Green Business]
SANTA BARBARA, California
Fri Mar 5, 2010 8:08am EST
China winning green race, venture capitalist says

(Reuters) - China is leapfrogging ahead in the development of green technology, and the United States is "barely in the race," a prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist said on Thursday.

"China's growth in renewables is astounding," said John Doerr, partner at Kleiner Perkins, one of the most prolific and successful venture capital firms in the United States. "The results of their policies are really staggering."

Kleiner Perkins, which typically invests in early-stage start-up companies, is best known for its investment in Netscape, Amazon, Google and Genentech.

"My conclusion is China is winning," Doerr said. "My conclusion is that we are barely in the race today."

As an example, Doerr said, China grew its market share in the solar industry to nearly 50 percent in the fourth quarter of last year from just 2 percent three years earlier.

The United States, on the other hand, went from 43 percent to 16 percent in the same period.

China has also pushed ahead fast in developing wind power. It overtook the United States in new installations and in manufacturing of wind turbines last year, nearly doubling its wind generation capacity from 12,100 megawatts in 2008 to 25,100 megawatts at the end of 2009.

China still lags behind the United States in total wind generation, but experts say it may grab the No. 1 spot this year.

The Chinese government has aggressively encouraged green projects and new technologies through funding and regulation, while the U.S. industry, struggling from a lack of financing because of the credit crisis, is hoping for more action from Washington on federal renewable-energy policies.

(Reporting by Poornima Gupta; Editing by Gary Hill)


[Green Business]
Charlie Dunmore
BRUSSELS
Fri Mar 5, 2010 7:26am EST
EU drafts warn of biofuels' link to hunger

(Reuters) - The European Union's promotion of plant-based biofuels will raise EU farm incomes and agricultural commodity prices, but could create food shortages for the world's poorest consumers, draft EU reports show.

The EU has a legal target to get a tenth of its road transport fuels from renewable sources such as biofuels by 2020. For EU farmers hit by falling incomes, Europe's 5 billion euros-per-year ($6.84 billion) biofuels market is coveted as a source of new revenues.

Impact studies drafted for EU policymakers -- included in 116 documents released to Reuters under freedom of information laws -- predict that current biofuel policies will boost EU farm incomes by 3.5 percent in 2020.

But the studies also reveal concerns about the unintended impact of Europe's thirst for biofuels.

"A new and strongly growing non-food demand for agricultural output will undoubtedly boost farm prices and hence farmers' incomes," one report says.

"However, the desired effect may come at a potentially high cost: a human cost paid by the world's poorest consumers who may face higher food prices or food shortages."

High food prices in 2008 led to food riots in some developing countries and were partly blamed on biofuels such as ethanol consuming part of the U.S. corn crop.

"The simulated effects of EU biofuels policies imply a considerable shock to agricultural commodity markets," the report reads.

MORE WORK NEEDED

Internal communications in the European Commission describe the modeling exercises as "scientifically acknowledged and robust." But more work needs to be done before drawing firm policy conclusions, a spokeswoman for the EU executive told Reuters.

EU demand for cereals such as wheat -- used to make ethanol -- will rise by about 7 percent in the next decade as a direct result of its biofuel policies, raising cereal prices by 10 percent, one modeling study shows.

World prices for sugar and maize (corn), also used to make ethanol, are predicted to rise 20 percent due to EU demand for biofuels. Sugar imports will rise sharply as a result, despite EU sugar beet production increasing by 10 percent, another model predicts.

The greatest impact of EU demand for biofuels will be on the price of vegetable oils, used to make biodiesel. The EU will account for nearly half the world's biodiesel consumption in 2020, the studies say, leading to a 30-35 percent rise in vegetable oil prices.

EU vegetable oil imports could more than double to 20 million tonnes in 2020, the studies show, with much of the increased demand being met by increased palm oil production in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Environmentalists warn that to meet the added demand for biofuels, farmers around the world will expand into new areas, sometimes by clearing tropical rainforests and draining peatlands.

(Additional reporting by Pete Harrison; Editing by Keiron Henderson)

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[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Poornima Gupta
SANTA BARBARA, California
Fri Mar 5, 2010 8:52am EST
CEOs seek firm signal on climate change policy

(Reuters) - Global leaders in the energy business say they want some certainty in U.S. climate policy to encourage development of new technologies and other investment, but they do not expect federal legislation to pass this year.

The chief executives of some of the biggest companies in the power, raw materials and oil businesses also said they broadly support a carbon cap-and-trade program.

Cap-and-trade was the centerpiece of a climate bill passed by the House of Representatives last year, but senators are not expected to back such a plan, which would limit greenhouse gas emissions and let companies trade permits to emit carbon.

"We are a very keen proponent of market-based energy legislation," Royal Dutch Shell Plc Chief Executive Peter Voser said at a Wall Street Journal conference in Santa Barbara, California.

He said the industry needs "certainty on the carbon price, certainty on legislation."

"I am still very hopeful we'll get something passed," Voser said. "I am skeptical (about) this year."

The head of the largest U.S. producer of power from burning coal, American Electric Power Co Inc, also said a climate bill was unlikely this year.

But AEP CEO Michael Morris told the conference that a climate policy was needed to support investment in technologies that can reduce the environmental impact of burning coal, such as carbon capture and storage.

"We need this done, America needs to lead the world," Morris said.

A climate bill that would help reduce U.S. emissions, the highest in the developed world, has stalled in the Senate due to opposition from lawmakers representing coal and oil states. Since Democrats lost their Senate supermajority after an election in Massachusetts, its prospects have worsened.

Tom Albanese, chief executive of mining conglomerate Rio Tinto, said his company typically does long-term planning for the mines, as much as 30 years ahead.

"For us to have some assurance that the market's going to be there, we need to begin to create some carbon pricing signals sooner rather than later," he said.

Such pricing would allow companies to redirect spending and provide less investment uncertainty, he added.

"Overall, on balance, I would say cap-and-trade would be our preferred view," Albanese said.

Lewis Hay, chief executive of power utility FPL Group Inc, said U.S. utilities need to know what climate-change legislation would look like before they can invest more in developing nuclear and renewable power sources.

A lack of U.S. policy and the uncertainty surrounding it "puts a lot of investment dollars on the sidelines," Hay said, adding that the economics surrounding it need to be clear.

"Are we going to have a price on carbon, and if so, what's it going to be?," he wondered.

Another system now being debated is a cap-and-dividend, under which similarly strict limits would be placed on carbon emissions, but instead of focusing on smokestacks, it would aim the cap at upstream operations, such as coal and oil companies and importers.

The "dividend" would be in the form of monthly checks to consumers to help ease the cost of higher energy prices and without the complicated trading of cap-and-trade.

In the absence of a climate bill, President Barack Obama has pushed the Environmental Protection Agency to begin regulating gases blamed for warming the planet.

Many companies oppose EPA regulation of greenhouse gases, and some hope to block it.

U.S. coal producer Peabody Energy Corp, which is suing the EPA, said incentives were needed to accelerate technology, not "draconian" regulations.

"We believe in a technology pull and not a command-and-control regulatory push in order to make changes to the energy infrastructure," CEO Gregory Boyce said.

(Reporting by Poornima Gupta; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)


[Green Business]
Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO
Thu Mar 4, 2010 2:26pm EST
Methane bubbles in Arctic seas stir warming fears

(Reuters) - Large amounts of a powerful greenhouse gas are bubbling up from a long-frozen seabed north of Siberia, raising fears of far bigger leaks that could stoke global warming, scientists said.

It was unclear, however, if the Arctic emissions of methane gas were new or had been going on unnoticed for centuries -- since before the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century led to wide use of fossil fuels that are blamed for climate change.

The study said about 8 million tonnes of methane a year, equivalent to the annual total previously estimated from all of the world's oceans, were seeping from vast stores long trapped under permafrost below the seabed north of Russia.

"Subsea permafrost is losing its ability to be an impermeable cap," Natalia Shakhova, a scientist at the University of Fairbanks, Alaska, said in a statement. She co-led the study published in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

The experts measured levels of methane, a gas that can be released by rotting vegetation, in water and air at 5,000 sites on the East Siberian Arctic Shelf from 2003-08. In some places, methane was bubbling up from the seabed.

Previously, the sea floor had been considered an impermeable barrier sealing methane, Shakhova said. Current methane concentrations in the Arctic are the highest in 400,000 years.

GLOBAL WARMING

"No one can answer this question," she said of whether the venting was caused by global warming or by natural factors. But a projected rise in temperatures could quicken the thaw.

"It's good that these emissions are documented. But you cannot say they're increasing," Martin Heimann, an expert at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Germany who wrote a separate article on methane in Science, told Reuters.

"These leaks could have been occurring all the time" since the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago, he said. He wrote that the release of 8 million tonnes of methane a year was "negligible" compared to global emissions of about 440 million tonnes.

Shakhova's study said there was an "urgent need" to monitor the region for possible future changes since permafrost traps vast amounts of methane, the second most common greenhouse gas from human activities after carbon dioxide.

Monitoring could resolve if the venting was "a steadily ongoing phenomenon or signals the start of a more massive release period," according to the scientists, based at U.S., Russian and Swedish research institutions.

The release of just a "small fraction of the methane held in (the) East Siberian Arctic Shelf sediments could trigger abrupt climate warming," they wrote.

The shelf has sometimes been above sea level during the earth's history. When submerged, temperatures rise by 12-17 degrees Celsius (22-31 F) since water is warmer than air. Over thousands of years, that may thaw submerged permafrost.

About 60 percent of methane now comes from human activities such as landfills, cattle rearing or rice paddies. Natural sources such as wetlands make up the rest, along with poorly understood sources such as the oceans, wildfires or termites.

Most studies about methane focus on permafrost on land. But the shelf below the Laptev, East Siberian and Russian part of the Chuckchi sea is three times the size of Siberia's wetlands.

(Editing by Janet Lawrence)

(For Reuters latest environment blogs, click on: blogs.reuters.com/environment/)