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[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Climate change]

Democrats unveil ambitious draft climate change bill to the US Senate
Senators expected to launch bill that aims to cut emissions 20% by 2020 - stricter cuts than already passed by Congress
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 30 September 2009 10.59 BST Article history

Democratic leaders are expected to take on the monumental challenge of getting the Senate to act on global warming today by formally unveiling a draft climate change bill proposing a 20% cut in greenhouse gas emissions.

The draft bill, which is to be announced by Senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry at a press conference this morning, sets out a more ambitious target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions than the 17% cut from 2005 levels by 2020 passed by the House of Representatives in June.

The draft would push for a 20% reduction from 2005 levels by 2020 and an 83% reduction by 2050.

The targets appear chosen for their resonance with European and Asian leaders who have been looking to America to demonstrate commitment to action on global warming ahead of the meeting at Copenhagen in December cast by the United Nations as a last chance for getting the world to act on climate change before it is too late to avoid catastrophic warming.

But it is far from clear that the Senate will be able to pivot from its battles over healthcare to climate change and make significant progress before the Copenhagen meeting.

The 800-page draft bill, which is still being worked on, is almost certain to undergo significant changes in the coming weeks with Democrats struggling to build support even from within their own ranks.

"Complex processes are part and parcel of passing major legislation," Tony Kreindler of the Environmental Defence Fund said in an email to reporters on Tuesday. "The most important thing is that the draft be taken for what it is: a starting point that Senators can work with, tailor and pass."

Boxer and Kerry plan a high-profile launch, with fellow Senators, environmental activists, and executives of some of the household name firms that have been pushing for climate change legislation at the press conference.

Republicans, who are expected to largely oppose the bill, are planning their own counter-press conference. On Tuesday, Republican members of Boxer's environment and public works committee wrote a letter warning they would not be rushed into a vote on the bill.


Today's formal start of the legislative process on climate change in the Senate has assumed huge importance in the run-up to meetings in Copenhagen.

World leaders see movement on a US climate change bill as essential to getting an international deal. A series of delays on introducing the bill to the Senate — plus mixed signals from Barack Obama and other members of his administration on the need for urgent action — has deepened fears that the talks at Copenhagen could end in deadlock.

Those fears increased this month when the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, said the Senate was so taken up with healthcare that it might wait until 2010 before it even got to climate change.

President Obama in his meetings with G20 leaders in Pittsburgh last week downplayed the importance of sealing a comprehensive deal at the Copenhagen talks, and his energy secretary, Stephen Chu, has also warned against seeing the meeting as a "make or break" moment. Environmentalists have also accused Obama of missing an opportunity in his speech to the United Nations climate change summit last week to urge the Senate to pass legislation.

But the administration is coming under pressure from outside the US to make significant steps on emissions reductions. "If we don't come to an agreement in Copenhagen this year American business will suffer the most," said Connie Hedegaard, the Danish minister for climate and energy who as one of the hosts will be heavily involved in the negotiations.

The course of climate change legislation in the Senate is expected to be even more difficult than in the house, where 44 Democrats defied party leaders and the White House to vote against the bill. In August, 10 Democratic Senators demanded that any climate change bill would protect workers in oil and coal states.

Senate Democrats had been expected to further water down their bill to try to secure support from conservative Democrats in the rust belt and coal producing states, but drafts circulating on Capitol Hill this week defied some of those predictions.

Kieran Suckling, the director of the Centre for Biological Diversity, called the bill a "baby step forward".

Aside from the more robust cuts in emissions, the draft would restore the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate carbon from coal power plants, which had been eliminated under the house bill.

However, the draft includes other measures which could trouble environmentalists. It raises the possibility of trade sanctions against countries that do not cut their emissions. Negotiators have warned such a move could complicated efforts to reach a deal at Copenhagen, especailly with rapidly industrialising countries such as India and China.

The Senate draft also appears to give an opening to an expansion of nuclear power — a bow to Senate Republicans who have been clamouring for 100 more nuclear plants.

Such gestures are part of a strategy aimed at broadening support for the bill. For months Kerry has been inviting fellow Senators to Tuesday morning breakfast meetings with environmentalists and business leaders supporting climate change legislation.

Democratic leaders have also borrowed the strategy deployed by Henry Waxman and Ed Markey, the authors of the house bill, by refusing to specify their plans for the distribution of emission allowances — essentially licences to pollute that energy and manufacturing firms would be compelled to purchase under climate change bill. The omission is intended to avoid a confrontation over the distribution of valuable permits.

Environmental organisations and business leaders have also been pushing hard to cultivate support for a bill, releasing a battery of reports showing the economic and job benefits of the shift to a cleaner energy economy.

The University of California at Berkeley, said in a report published today that the American Clean Energy and Security Act passed in the house in June would create up to 1.9m jobs by 2020.


[Environment > Wildlife]
Number of Earth's species known to scientists rises to 1.9 million
The world's most comprehensive catalogue of plants and animals has been boosted by 114,000 new species in the past three years
Toni O'Loughlin in Sydney
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 29 September 2009 15.53 BST Article history

The number of species on the planet that have been documented by scientists has risen to 1.9 million, according to the world's most comprehensive catalogue of plants and animals.

The new figure has been boosted by 114,000 new species discovered since the catalogue was last compiled by Australian researchers three years ago – a 6.3% increase.

The was report hailed by the naturalist Sir David Attenborough as a "crucial reference point for all those who are acting to protect our planet for future generations". It estimates there are 11 million species living on the planet.

But many of them will disappear before they are even found, according to the researchers. Lists of threatened species "lag well behind discovery and … thus are likely to provide underestimates," the report says.

Australia, with one of the highest extinction rates in the world is the only nation to keep a comprehensive list of threatened species. Scientists compiled the Number of Living Species in the World report for the Australian government which says it is the only comprehensive catalogue of plants and animals in the world.

This is the second time that Australian scientists have scoured the globe for published information on identified species of which there are now 1.9 million, 6.3% more than when the report was first published in 2006.

However, the total number of species on the planet is estimated to be much higher. Scientists' calculations vary from 3 million to 100 million, but the report says the number is closer to 11 million.

"Unless we can be certain of exactly what organism we are considering, we cannot protect it. Listing species is the beginning of that essential process," Attenborough said in a statement accompanying the report.

Australia has identified 147,579 of its plants and animals but scientists estimate there are almost 500,000 more species yet to be found. In the three years since the last report, scientists have identified an additional 48 reptiles, eight frogs, eight mammals, 1,184 flowering plants and 904 spiders, mites and scorpions in Australia. As many as 93% of reptiles and 87% of mammal species on the island continent are found there and nowhere else.

But this crucial reservoir of biodiversity is under threat. Of the 388 mammal species found in Australia, 78 are listed as vulnerable, endangered or extinct in the wild while nearly 14% of amphibians, 5% of reptiles and 6% of birds are at risk of extinction.

"We need this essential information to do a better job of managing our biodiversity against the threats of invasive species, habitat loss and climate change," the federal environment minister, Peter Garrett, said.

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[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Food]
By 2050, 25m more children will go hungry as climate change leads to food crisis
> Report says food shortages will hit developing world
> Global warming set to bring back malnutrition
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
The Guardian, Wednesday 30 September 2009 Article history

Twenty-five million more children will go hungry by the middle of this century as climate change leads to food shortages and soaring prices for staples such as rice, wheat, maize and soya beans, a report says today.

If global warming goes unchecked, all regions of the world will be affected, but the most vulnerable – south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa – will be hit hardest by failing crop yields, according to the report, prepared by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) for the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.

The children of 2050 will have fewer calories to eat than those in 2000, the report says, and the effect would be to wipe out decades of progress in reducing child malnutrition.

The grim scenario is the first to gauge the effects of climate change on the world's food supply by combining climate and agricultural models.

Spikes in grain prices last year led to rioting and unrest across the developing world, from Haiti to Thailand. Leaders at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh last week committed $2bn (£1.25bn) to food security, and the United Nations is set to hold a summit on food security in November, its second since last year's riots.

But the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, is pressing the World Bank and other institutions to do more. He said the industrialised world needs to step up investment in seed research and to offer more affordable crop insurance to the small farmers in developing countries. Though prices have stabilised, the world's food system is still in crisis, he said at the weekend.

"Ever more people are denied food because prices are stubbornly high, because purchasing power has fallen due to the economic crisis, or because rains have failed and reserve stocks of grain have been eaten," he said.

Even without global warming, rising populations meant the world was headed for food shortages and food price rises.

"The food price crisis of last year really was a wake-up call to a lot of people that we are going to have 50% more people on the surface of the Earth by 2050," said Gerald Nelson, the lead author of the report. "Meeting those demands for food coming out of population growth is going to be a huge challenge – even without climate change."

After several years in which development aid has been diverted away from rural areas, the report called for $7bn a year for crop research, and investment in irrigation and rural infrastructure to help farmers adjust to a warming climate. "Continuing the business-as-usual approach will almost certainly guarantee disastrous consequences," said Nelson.

The G20 industrialised nations last week began discussing how to invest some $20bn pledged for food security earlier this year.

Some regions of the world outlined in the report are already showing signs of vulnerability because of changing rainfall patterns and drought linked to climate change. Oxfam yesterday launched a $152m appeal on behalf of 23 million people hit by a severe drought and spiralling food prices in Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and Uganda. The charity called it the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa for a decade, and said many people in the region were suffering from malnutrition.

But southern Asia, which made great advances in agricultural production during the 20th century, was also singled out in the IFPRI report for being particularly at risk of food shortages. Some countries, such as Canada and Russia, will experience longer growing seasons because of climate change, but other factors – such as poor soil – mean that will not necessarily be translated into higher food production.

The report was prepared for negotiators currently trying to reach a global deal to fight climate change at the latest round of UN talks in Bangkok. It used climate models prepared by the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia to arrive at estimates of how changes in growing seasons and rainfall patterns would affect farming in the developing world and elsewhere.

Without an ambitious injection of funds and new technology, wheat yields could fall by more than 30% in developing countries, setting off a catastrophic rise in prices. Wheat prices, with unmitigated climate change, could rise by 170%-194% by the middle of this century, the report said. Rice prices are projected to rise by 121% – and almost all of the increase will have to be passed on to the consumer, Nelson said.

The report did not take into account all the expected impacts of climate change – such as the loss of farmland due to rising sea levels, a rise in the number of insects and in plant disease, or changes in glacial melt. All these factors could increase the damage of climate change to agriculture.

Others who have examined the effects of climate change on agriculture have warned of the potential for conflict. In a new book, Plan B 4.0: Mobilising to Save Civilisation, published today, Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, warns that sharp declines in world harvests due to climate change could threaten the world order.

"I am convinced that food is indeed the weak link," he said.

Brown saw Asia as the epicentre of the crisis, with the latest science warning of a sea level rise of up to six feet by 2100. With even a 3ft rise, Bangladesh could lose half of its rice land to rising seas; Vietnam, the world's second largest producer of rice, could also see much of the Mekong Delta under water.

Wheat and rice production would also fall because of acute water shortages, caused by past over-pumping and the melting of the Himalayan glaciers, which currently store water that supplies the region's main rivers: the Indus, Ganges, and Yangtse.

Brown said: "The potential loss of these mountain glaciers in the Himalayas is the most massive projected threat to food security ever seen" .

Global shortfall

People in both the developing and developed worlds will have less to eat by 2050 if climate change is not seriously addressed, though the shortfall will be relatively slight in richer countries. Prices rises and shortages of food will drive down the average calories available:

> The calories available for each person in industrialised nations will fall from 3,450 in 2000 to about 3,200.

> In developing countries overall, the average will fall from 2,696 to 2,410 calories.

> In sub-Saharan Africa, people will on average have only 1,924 calories a day, compared with 2,316 in 2000.

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[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[News > World news > Samoa]
Samoa tsunami: 100 feared dead on Pacific islands
> Death toll expected to rise with whole villages flattened
> British child among victims on Samoa and American Samoa
Toni O'Loughlin in Sydney, Jo Adetunji and Adam Gabbatt
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 30 September 2009 08.14 BST Article history

Scores of people are feared dead and many more injured after a powerful earthquake triggered a tsunami that swept the Pacific islands.

Cars and people were swept out to sea by the fast-churning water as survivors on the worst-hit islands of Samoa and American Samoa fled to high ground, where they remained huddled for hours.

The floodwater engulfed cars and homes, flattened villages and washed ashore a large boat that came to rest on the edge of a highway.

The 8.3-magnitude quake struck about 125 miles from Samoa at 6.48pm BST, sending a large wave into Apia, the capital of Samoa, and a 1.5-metre wave into Pago Pago, the capital of American Samoa.

Separately, a second earthquake, of magnitude 7.6, triggered tsunami warnings in Indonesia this morning after it struck off the coast of Sumatra island, damaging buildings. It is not clear if there were any casualties. Indonesia is thousands of miles north-west of the Pacific islands but lies on the same volatile Indo-Australia tectonic plate.

More than 100 people are feared dead on the Pacific islands after villages were destroyed by the waves, with a two-year-old British child among those confirmed dead.

The Samoan police commissioner, Lilo Maiava, said police there had confirmed 63 deaths, but said that with officials still searching affected areas that number could rise soon.

Officials in American Samoa said at least 19 people were killed on the island. Unconfirmed reports said five people were dead in Tonga.

One agency reporter said there were "bodies everywhere" in the main hospital on the Samoan island of Upolu, including at least one child. She said three or four villages had been wiped out on a popular tourist coast near Lalomanu, on the south of the island.

Hampered by lack of power and communications, officials struggled to assess the casualties and damage. But the death toll seemed sure to rise.

The Samoan prime minister, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, looked shaken aboard a flight from Auckland, New Zealand, to the Samoan capital.

"So much has gone. So many people are gone," he told reporters. "I'm so shocked, so saddened by all the loss."

Malielegaoi said his own village of Lepa was destroyed.

"Thankfully, the alarm sounded on the radio and gave people time to climb to higher ground," he said. "But not everyone escaped."

In Washington, Barack Obama declared the situation a disaster, making federal funds available to victims in American Samoa – a US territory of about 65,000 people.

A US coastguard spokesman, Lieutenant John Titchen, said a C130 plane was being dispatched to deliver aid to American Samoa, assess damage and take the governor home.

In Samoa, the wave reportedly sent water and debris surging up to 100 metres inland, leaving terrified residents fleeing their homes for higher ground.

In Apia, on Samoa's second-largest island, witnesses said the ground shook for up to three minutes. Businesses and schools were forced to close and the city was left virtually deserted with thousands of people gathered on nearby hills, according to reports. Villagers reported cars and houses washed out on to reefs.

Graeme Ansell, a New Zealander who was at the beach village of Sau Sau Beach Fale on Samoa, said it was levelled by the wave. "It was very quick. The whole village has been wiped out," Ansell told a New Zealand radio station from a hill near Apia. "There's not a building standing. We've all clambered up hills, and one of our party has a broken leg. There will be people in a great lot of need round here."

American Samoa is home to a US national park that appears to be especially hard-hit. Holly Bundock, spokeswoman for the national park service's Pacific west region in Oakland, California, said the park superintendent and another member of staff had located only a fifth of the park's 13 to 15 employees and 30 to 50 volunteers.

The territory is believed to have been hit by four separate waves. In Leone, one of many villages flattened, hundreds of people fled their homes for higher ground.

Minutes later their homes were gone, crushed by the force of the wave.

"It's just devastating like the wrath of God," said Vincent Iuli, a villager. "I've never seen anything as powerful as this. I was just about to get into the car to go to work when the warning came on the radio."

Iuli raced to take his wife and children to higher ground but got split up in the confusion. The wave hit the village 15 minutes later.

Hundreds sought shelter in a church on higher ground. While the wave rushed past the building the water seeped in and reached the top of the pews where many were standing. Six people were killed and another three were missing. After two hours of frantic calls Iuli made contact with his wife.

"There's a lot of mud and there are dead fish lying everywhere for about a quarter of a mile inland."

Hundreds of people are crowding on the high ground behind the village where chiefs have set up a camp until emergency services reach them. "Each family has a chief and this is when they rise to the occasion," Iuli said.

Mike Reynolds, the superintendent of the national park of American Samoa, was quoted as saying four tsunami waves from 15ft to 20ft high roared ashore soon afterwards, reaching up to a mile inland.

In Tonga, New Zealand's acting prime minister, Bill English, said the situation could "look worse rather than better" over the next 12 hours.

"There are a considerable number of people who've been swept out to sea and are unaccounted for," English said.

"We don't have information about the full impact and we do have some real concern that over the next 12 hours the picture could look worse rather than better."

The Pacific tsunami warning centre said it had issued a general alert for the region, which includes the Cook Islands, New Zealand, and Hawaii, and was monitoring the situation.

Hawaii, which was initially put on tsunami alert, was later downgraded.

Japan's meteorological agency issued a tsunami warning along its eastern coast.

The US geological service said the earthquake struck about 20 miles below the ocean floor and was followed 20 minutes later by an aftershock of magnitude 5.6.

Brian Atwater, a tsunami expert for the service, said although the earthquake and tsunami were big, the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, which killed 150,000 people, was 10 times as strong.

Samoa and American Samoa have a combined population of about 250,000.

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[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Sea level]
Increase in sea levels due to global warming could lead to 'ghost states'
David Adam, environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 29 September 2009 22.23 BST Article history

Global warming could create "ghost states" with governments in exile ruling over scattered citizens and land that has been abandoned to rising seas, an expert said yesterday.

Francois Gemenne, of the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations in Paris, said the likely loss of small island states such as Tuvalu and the Maldives raised profound questions over nationality and territory.

"What would happen if a state was to physically disappear but people want to keep their nationalities? It could continue as a virtual state even though it is a rock under the ocean and its people no longer live on that piece of land."

Gemenne said there was more at stake than cultural and sentimental attachments to swamped countries. Tuvalu makes millions of pounds each year from the sale of its assigned internet suffix .tv to television companies. As a nation state, the Polynesian island also has a vote on the international stage through the UN.

"As independent nations they receive certain rights and privileges that they will not want to lose. Instead they could become like ghost states," he said. "This is a pressing issue for small island states, but in the case of physical disappearance there is a void in international law."

Experts say it is a matter of time before global warming drives up sea levels the one or two metres it would take to force permanent evacuation of islands such as Tuvalu, the highest point of which is four metres above water. Gemenne was speaking during a conference at Oxford University to discuss the implications of a catastrophic 4C rise in global temperature, which many scientists fear will occur. Presenting the results of the largest study of its kind into how climate change could drive migration, he said rich countries such as Britain had a responsibility to help people flee the worst impacts of rising temperatures.

"Industrialised countries have a duty to provide adaptation funding to make sure the costs of migration do not have to be met by the countries where the migration will happen," Gemmene said. Such migrants should not be considered "resourceless victims" and financial assistance needed to go beyond basic humanitarian aid and pay for infrastructure such as schools and hospitals. Up to a billion people could eventually be made to move because of climate change.

The study of 23 regions where environmental degradation has caused people to move had showed that fears of millions of people flooding across borders could be misplaced. Most movement was within countries, Gemenne said.

The poorest and most vulnerable people were often unable to migrate, the research showed. "The poorest people lack the social and economic capital to escape," said Gemmene. "This has very important policy implications. People will only move if policies are in place to allow them to do so."

In a 4C warmer world, migration must be considered as a pro-active adaptation strategy, he said, rather than a last ditch catastrophic consequence.

Simon Hales of the World Health Organisation told the conference that widespread population movement would also pose a significant risk to global health. Health protection in a 4C warmer world, he said, would require "substantial redistribution" of global resources such as food, water and energy.


[News > World news > Philippines]
Philippines struggles as flood deaths rise to 246
Associated Press in Manila
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 29 September 2009 19.53 BST Article history

Victims of floods in the Philippines trudged through ankle-deep sludge to crowded relief centres in search of scarce food and clean water today, as the government strained to distribute supplies, dig out the sprawling capital and prevent looting.

The toll from tropical storm Ketsana and the ensuing floods, the south-east Asian country's worst in four decades, climbed to 246 dead, with 38 still missing.

Ketsana, which hit the Philippines on Saturday, strengthened further and crashed into central Vietnam today.At least 23 people died – drowned, caught in mudslides or hit by falling trees, officials said. Some 170,000 people were evacuated from the path of the storm.

"The rivers are rising, and many homes are flooded, and several mountainous districts have been isolated by mudslides," said Nguyen Minh Tuan, a provincial disaster official in Vietnam.

More bad weather may be headed for the Philippines, forecasters said, prompting the government to consider evacuating some regions where people have only just started returning.

In Marikina, a district of Manila, police used forklifts to remove mud-caked cars stalled along the road. Elsewhere, people used shovels and brooms to clear mud from homes and businesses.

Victims clutching bags of belongings lined up for hours at relief centres for bottled water, boiled eggs and packets of instant noodles.

In the Bagong Silangan area of the capital, about 150 people sheltered on a covered basketball court that had been turned into an evacuation centre. Seventeen white wooden coffins, some of them child-sized, lined one part of the court. A woman wept quietly beside one coffin.

Sensitive to criticism that her administration was unprepared to respond to the disaster, the president, Gloria Macapagl Arroyo, launched a public relations offensive to show her administration was doing all it could – even while conceding the country needed international aid. She opened part of the presidential palace as a relief centre, and hundreds of people received food and made free phone calls to friends and relatives.

A presidential aide said up to 500 victims would be given blankets and other supplies and allowed to stay in the palace grounds, after they had undergone security checks. At another centre, Arroyo's chef cooked gourmet food for victims.

"We're responding to the extent we can to this once in a lifetime typhoon emergency," Arroyo said in a statement.

The homes of almost 2 million people were inundated, the government said. Nearly 380,000 have sought shelter in relief centres. The government has declared a state of calamity in Manila and 25 storm-hit provinces and estimated the damage at more than £60m.

Tropical storm Parma was about 800 miles south-east of the Philippines , bringing the threat of more heavy rain. "There is a sense of extreme urgency that we prepare," said the chairman of the national disaster co-ordinating council, Gilberto Teodoro.

Washington had pledged $100,000 for the relief efforts, and US navy personnel were helping with search and rescue, the Foreign Affairs Department said. China, Japan, Singapore and Australia have also pledged extra aid, and the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, sent a message that help would come from the world body, too.

Earlier, at a meeting of top officials to address the crisis, Arroyo said more police should be deployed to respond to reports of looting.

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[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Electric, hybrid and low-emission cars]
Brighton & Hove aims to become UK's most electric car-friendly city
Street chargers installed to motivate drivers to switch to electric
Adam Vaughan
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 29 September 2009 17.49 BST Article history

Not content with trying become self-sufficient in food, possibly electing the first Green party MP and weaning itself off oil as a Transition Town, Brighton & Hove is launching a bid to become one of the UK's most friendly cities for electric cars.

This week the city sees a major investment in electric car charging infrastructure, with the installation of four street-side charging stations and a further 16 completed by the end of 2010. The charging stations, which are vital to create a viable charging network for electric cars that mostly have a range of less than 100 miles, will reportedly be the first street-side points outside London.

The capital currently has more than 100 on-street charging stations, and in April mayor Boris Johnson said he wanted London to become the electric car capital of Europe with 25,000 stations and 100,000 electric vehicles. Other cities such as Bristol and Gateshead have existing public charging points but only in car parks.

Brighton-based charging company Elektromotive has already completed installation of the first four Brighton & Hove pilot sites. The first 10 stations will be paid for by £130,000 from clean transport initiative Civitas, which is part-funded by the EU.

Calvey Taylor-Haw, managing director of Elektromotive, said: "By encouraging drivers to switch to electric, Brighton will benefit hugely. There will be less air pollution and local residents will appreciate the quiet of electric vehicles. The installation of the bays will take place over a short period of time, providing electric vehicle users with rapid access to charging facilities."

The bays work with a standard mains plug and wireless key fobs that open the charging stations, which recharge cars within four to eight hours. Electric car owners will pay an annual fee to Brighton & Hove council for a registration scheme to access the network, pricing for which is unconfirmed but is expected to be in the region of £75-100 to join and £30-50 annually.

The scheme has come in for some criticism on The Argus local newspaper website, with users commenting on the fact that there are only three electric cars in the city. A fact confirmed by Taylor-Haw. Electric car owners, who already enjoy a 50% discount on parking permits for the city, will be able to use the bays from November when the council registration scheme opens.

Yesterday the secretary of state for energy and climate change, Ed Miliband, announced a £10m fund for local carbon-cutting initiatives such as charging stations, and earlier this summer the government said it would offer electric car buyers grants up to £5,000 to encourage take-up of the new technology.


[Environment > Climate change]
US firms quit Chamber of Commerce over climate change position
Nike and Johnson & Johnson among corporations criticising business organisation over chamber's resistance to 'cap-and-trade' legislation
Andrew Clark in New York
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 29 September 2009 18.09 BST Article history

The largest American business federation, the US Chamber of Commerce, has suffered a rash of high-profile walkouts as multinational companies become uncomfortable with the organisation's hard-line opposition to measures tackling climate change.

In a sign of mounting acceptance in the business community of a need for action on carbon emissions, big names including the sportswear manufacturer Nike and the household products empire Johnson & Johnson have attacked the chamber for its refusal to back "cap-and-trade" legislation supported by the Obama administration.

This week, the largest US nuclear power generator, Exelon, resigned from the chamber over its environmental policy, following two fellow utilities, Pacific Gas & Electric and PNM Resources.

In a speech to an environmental energy group in Chicago, Exelon's chief executive, John Rowe, told his audience that "the rat must smell the cheese" through incentives for green energy. He said he regretted that congressional Republicans and business organisations failed to "recognise the reality" that carbon controls were inevitable and that some were using greenhouse gas legislation as a "cudgel" against the president.

"Because of their stridency against carbon legislation, Exelon has decided not to renew its membership in the US chamber this year," said Rowe.

With three million members and roots stretching back a century, the chamber describes itself as the world's largest business organisation. It operates from premises directly opposite the White House in Washington. But discomfort about its policies came to a head last month when a senior chamber official proposed a "Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century" to evaluate global warming, comparing such a move to a famed 1925 courtroom confrontation in Tennessee in which a teacher was convicted for teaching evolution, rather than the Bible's version of creation.

"It would be evolution versus creationism," William Kovacs, the chamber's vice-president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs, told the Los Angeles Times. "It would be the science of climate change on trial."

The chamber has since clarified its position, saying it wants public hearings on the degree of public danger caused by greenhouse gases, rather than on climate science in general. And it says it would welcome legislation, providing it fulfils several conditions – including preserving US jobs and adopting an international, rather than merely US-wide, stance.

Many US companies fear that unless they support "cap-and-trade" proposals in Congress, they could face much more severe measures. The US environmental protection agency could invoke powers to regulate carbon as a harmful emission under an existing law, the clean air act.

Responding both to public opinion and to the long-term economic implications of inaction, more than 30 large US corporations have joined an alliance called the US Climate Action Partnership, which presses for swift legislation on emissions.

Critics feel that the US Chamber of Commerce is out of step with this trend. Earlier this year, Johnson & Johnson asked the chamber to stop making public pronouncements on climate change that failed to "reflect the full range of views" of members. Pacific Gas & Electric accused the body of "extreme rhetoric and obstructionist tactics". Nike, which faces shareholder pressure on the controversy, said it "fundamentally disagrees" with the chamber's position, describing climate change as an "urgent" issue: "It is not a time for debate but instead a time for action."

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[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 30 September 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.963
News
Climate change will hit developing world harvests hardest
Report quantifies link between global warming and food security.
By Natasha Gilbert

{{By 2050, yields of wheat could drop by a third or more in some areas.}
Punchstock}}

Developing countries could see large drops in crop yields by 2050 if climate change is left unchecked, according to a US report, potentially leaving as many as 25 million more children malnourished compared to a world without global warming.

The study by the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC is one of the most comprehensive to look at the links between climate change and food security. The results are being released today at the international climate-change meeting taking place in Bangkok, Thailand.

The report forecasts the effects on crop yields and agricultural supply and demand under the A2 scenario of the fourth report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — that is that by 2100 the temperature will rise between 2.0 °C and 5.4 °C and sea levels will ascend by between 26 cm and 59 cm compared to 1990 levels. It uses two climate models to forecast these effects: one developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, and one by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Clayton, Australia.

"This report brings together for first time a detailed modelling of crop growth under climate change with insights from the crop market," says Gerald Nelson, the study's lead author.

Asian impact

Some of the biggest effects could be felt on irrigated wheat and rice yields, the study finds. If left unchecked, climate change will reduce wheat yields from irrigated fields by 20-35% by 2050 compared with the potential yields for these crops under a no-climate-change scenario.

"The developing countries will probably be the hardest hit by climate change and will face bigger reductions in crop yields than industrialized countries," says Nelson.

The results show that southern Asia will be hit particularly hard by climate change, with some of the largest losses in crop production. In a worst-case scenario, the models show that farmers in this region could see a nearly 50% drop in wheat production by 2050 compared with potential production with no climate change.

Nelson says that the biological effects of climate change on crops will "work their way through the agricultural market", reducing production and increasing food prices. As a result, he says, consumption and calorie intake will fall, leading to more malnutrition. The report calls for additional investments of at least US$7 billion per year for research, to increase agricultural productivity, and help farmers adapt to climate change.

Extreme scenario

"This report links climate change to food security," Keith Goulding, says a soil scientist at Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire — Britain's largest agricultural research centre. "This is important as one of the problems we face is narrowly focused policies that address one issue without considering others."

Goulding supports the main conclusions of the report but notes that the IPCC climate scenario used in the study predicts "quite extreme conditions".

And some of the results, such as climate change effects on crop production by regions, and on world prices for livestock products and major grain, don't take into account gains in crop yields and production from a possible carbon fertilization effect — increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere may be beneficial to some crops, he says. "Taking carbon fertilization into account could give a more optimistic outcome," he says.

But Goulding adds that the models also do not include loss of land to bioenergy crops — and that could further increase the risk to food security.


[naturenews]
Published online 29 September 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.962
News
Chinese dam may be a methane menace
Wetlands around Three Gorges produce tonnes of the greenhouse gas.
By Jane Qiu

{{Marshes in the drawdown area of the Three Gorges Reservoir could be a significant source of methane.}
Wikimedia Commons}}

Marshland created when China's Three Gorges Reservoir is partially drained during the summer may be a significant source of the powerful greenhouse gas methane, researchers say.

The findings, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research¹, are among the latest to raise questions over the green credentials of hydropower.

Scientists have become increasingly concerned about the greenhouse gases released by submerged grass and trees when land is flooded to create dams. When such organic matter decays, it releases methane and carbon dioxide, which contribute to global warming. Methane is particularly troublesome as it has more than 20 times the warming impact of CO2.

Previous studies of methane emission have focused on dam components themselves, such as the power-generating turbines — where the gas fizzes out of solution as reservoir water is fed into them — and also on the reservoir surface, where methane is released either through slow diffusion or as bubbles. But many dams are partially drained at different times of year for maintenance purposes, such as silt removal, exposing 'drawdown' areas that have previously been underwater.

"Little attention has been paid to the drawdown regions, probably because they usually constitute a small part of the reservoir surface area," says Huai Chen, an ecologist at Chongqing University in China, who was first author of the study.

The Three Gorges Reservoir, however, has a large drawdown area of 350 square kilometres — or about one-third of the total flooded reservoir area when the dam is in full operation. That led Chen and his colleagues to suspect that methane emission from such areas might not be negligible.

Summer peak

In a pilot study, the researchers focused on an area of 37 square kilometres near the Pengxi River, a branch of the Yangtze River, that becomes marshland when the water level is lowered in the summer to clear silt. They covered a fixed area of the wetland with a plastic chamber to trap escaping gases, which they then tapped and analysed.

After taking measurements from four types of vegetation every ten days from July to September in 2008, the team found that different plants emitted varying amounts of methane at different times of the year. Plants that grow in deep water emit more methane than those that thrive in shallow water. High methane emitters also seemed to grow in soil with high levels of dissolved organic carbon, which can be used by microbes to produce methane.

The researchers report that methane emission peaks in early July, and is followed by low, steady emission before the winter flooding. The decline of methane release after the July leak may be due to low water levels during the summer, says Chen.

The researchers calculated that, on average, the newly created marshes along the Pengxi River emitted 6.7 milligrams of methane per square metre per hour — higher than the rate of methane emission from the surface of reservoirs in the tropics, such as the Petit Saut reservoir in French Guiana or the Balbina and Samuel reservoirs in Brazil.

The amount of methane emitted from the surface of the Three Gorges Reservoir has not been accurately measured, says Chen. But assuming that it is similar to that emitted by tropical reservoirs, the additional methane emitted by the marshes created by summer drainage — which account for 100 km2 and 10% of the total reservoir area — could be as much as a fifth of that emitted from the reservoir surface. Chen says that the findings might help to reduce methane emission from the reservoir by, for example, removing vegetation from marshy areas at low-water levels.

Mapping methane

"This is an important study because it is the first careful look at greenhouse-gas emission from a major Chinese dam," says David Victor, an energy-policy expert at Stanford University in California. He cautions, however, against extrapolating the findings to other reservoirs because dam construction and operation vary enormously, and calls for similar studies on reservoirs in other regions.

"The research is a welcome addition to the current efforts in estimating methane emission by reservoirs around the world," says Philip Fearnside, a conservation biologist at the National Institute for Research in the Amazon in Manaus, Brazil. The levels of methane released by flooded, decaying organic matter may fall over time, but plants growing in marshes created by periodic draining could be a long-term source of methane emission, he adds.

Chen and his colleagues are in the process of documenting methane emission from additional marshes at low-water levels as well as from the surface of the Three Gorges Reservoir. They are taking monthly measurements every 200 kilometres along the length of the reservoir, and expect to get an estimate of total emissions by the end of next year.

The team, however, will not be able to study methane release from the dam's turbines because that area is not accessible to researchers. That could be a serious drawback to the study, Fearnside warns. He believes that the turbines may be the main culprit of methane emission from the dam.

References
1. Chen, H. et al. J. Geophys. Res. 114, D18301, doi:10.1029/2009JD012410 (2009). | Article

news20090930nn2

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 29 September 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.959
News
Climate sizzle could come soon
UK researchers predict 4 °C rise within decades.
By Anna Barnett

{{If global temperatures rise by 4 °C many countries could see rainfall drop by a fifth.}
Jodie Coston / Getty}}

The planet could warm by 4 °C as early as 2060 if greenhouse-gas emissions are not curbed quickly and dramatically, according to a UK government-backed study.

The research, commissioned by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change in London from the Met Office Hadley Centre in Exeter, looks in detail at the future high-emissions scenario that was considered the worst case in the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Much analysis and policy debate has focused on avoiding global warming of more than 2 °C above pre-industrial temperatures — widely considered to be the threshold for dangerous climate change. But emissions have continued to rise rapidly and the latest findings on the carbon cycle have strengthened the view that in future, less of our CO2 emissions will be absorbed by natural sinks. So a much greater temperature rise is increasingly plausible, says Richard Betts, who presented the study at the conference 4 Degrees and Beyond in Oxford, UK, on 28 September.

"Now we know that emissions are at the upper end of what the IPCC projected a decade ago, it justifies taking the higher-emissions scenario more seriously," says Betts. Moreover, he says, evidence is accumulating that warming will weaken natural carbon sinks that so far have been taking up 50% of the greenhouse gases produced from the burning of fossil fuels, speeding up warming even further.

Extreme scenario?

Betts's group applied a complex climate model to the IPCC's highest-emissions scenario that incorporated the effects of weakening sinks. Depending on how much the sinks weaken — a key source of uncertainty — they found that temperatures of 4 °C higher than pre-industrial levels would probably be reached in the 2070s, and perhaps by 2060.

In climate simulations where average global temperature rises 4 °C or more, oceans warm less than that average and land areas more — by 7 °C in many areas, Betts reports. Temperatures could shoot up by up to 10 °C in western and southern Africa and by that much or more in the Arctic, and decreases in rainfall of 20% or more would be widespread in parts of Africa, Australia, the Mediterranean and Central America.

"It's an extreme scenario, but one that is plausible," says Betts. "When millions of people's lives are at stake, it's worthwhile thinking about extreme, plausible scenarios."

To avoid a rise of 4 °C, emissions must peak and then steeply decline within the next 30 years, says Betts. To stay under 2 °C, that needs to happen in a decade. But even if ambitious action is agreed at this year's United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen, he says, it will take years to implement. This puts policy-makers between a rock and a hard place, says Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Norwich, UK. "Mitigating for 2 °C is much more challenging than was previously thought, but adapting to 4 °C is also extremely challenging," Anderson says. "There is no easy way out."


[naturenews]
Published online 29 September 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/461578b
News
Experts draw up ocean-drilling wish list
Researchers seek deeper understanding of crust formation.
By Quirin Schiermeier

BREMEN

{{The United States' research vessel the JOIDES Resolution is equipped to drill down 2 kilometres into the seabed.}
J. Beck/IODP}}

Earth scientists have laid the groundwork for the future of ocean drilling. More than 500 scientists — almost twice as many as organizers had initially expected — gathered last week in Bremen, Germany, to discuss priorities and research goals for the second phase of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), which is expected to begin in late 2013.

Since ocean drilling began in the 1960s, sediment and rock cores retrieved from the seabed have provided information about everything from plate tectonics to Earth's climate history. Much more remains to be discovered, scientists said at the meeting.

"We're not done," says Alan Mix, a marine geologist at Oregon State University in Corvallis. "Actually, we ain't seen nothing yet."

Researchers have generated a detailed wish list for new ocean-drilling projects, which will be boiled down into a science plan for the 2013–23 period by a group yet to be appointed. The finalized science plan will then be forwarded to funding agencies in Japan, Europe and North America, which currently support the IODP to the tune of around US$200 million per year.

Mix says that targets might include the role of greenhouse gases in transitions between cold and warm climates, and the magnitude, speed and locations of resulting sea-level changes. A more ambitious project would be to relaunch the effort to drill through Earth's crust and into its mantle. A 1960s attempt to drill through the sea floor into this boundary, known as the Mohorovičić discontinuity, or 'Moho', failed.

The Japanese IODP vessel, the Chikyu, is already outfitted with technology to drill down some 7,000 metres into the crust, and there are plans to refit the vessel over the next three years with drilling and core-recovery technology to allow it to drill even deeper.

"Japan will lead the Moho project," says Asahiko Taira, the Yokohama-based executive director of the Japan Agency for Marine–Earth Science and Technology, which oversees Japan's ocean-drilling operations. "It's a classic geological quest, and definitely one of our prime targets."

"The journey down is equally important to the things we may find at the bottom," adds Benoît Ildefonse, a geologist at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) based in Montpellier, France. "Recovering rocks from near Moho will, for the first time, allow us to test our ideas and models about how the crust forms."

The deepest sea-floor holes drilled so far include a 2,111-metre-deep hole drilled during the 1970s and 1980s off Nicaragua, and a 1,500-metre-deep hole drilled in 2005 in the Cocos plate in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The latter, performed by the US vessel JOIDES Resolution, was the first continuous retrieval of core from Earth's upper crust. Following a $130-million refurbishment, the 30-year-old ship is now capable of drilling 2,000 metres into the sea floor in waters as deep as 7,000 metres.

IODP leaders say they are increasingly aware of the need to explain the societal relevance of their work. "We need to explain very well why what we are doing matters," says Catherine Mével, director of the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling, which coordinates the activities of 16 European IODP members and Canada. "We haven't always been able to make this clear enough in the past."

Meanwhile, China — an associate IODP member alongside South Korea, Taiwan, India, Australia and New Zealand — has announced plans to build a deep-sea drilling vessel of its own.

"The small Chinese deep-sea research community is rapidly growing in numbers, and our formerly reluctant government is increasingly convinced about the significance of ocean drilling," says Wang Pinxian, a marine geologist at Tongji University in Shanghai and vice-chair of the Chinese IODP science committee.

As an associate member with limited ship time and managerial rights, China pays the reduced IODP membership of US$1 million. The Chinese government and the Chinese Academy of Sciences are currently discussing whether China should apply for full membership beyond 2013, for which it would need to pay around $6 million per year, says Wang.

IODP rules and overall programme architecture are unlikely to undergo any substantial changes after 2013, says Rodey Batiza, section head of marine geosciences at the US National Science Foundation in Arlington, Virgina. New members will be welcome to join, but membership will not be linked to specific national drilling preferences, he says.

"We'd like to seamlessly continue drilling after 2013 with a programme designed to deliver the best science at the lowest cost," he says. "We do already have some very exciting questions that we can ask, and perhaps answer, in the next ten years."

news20090930nn3

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 29 September 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/461581a
News
Instant climate model gears up
Simulation tool gives rapid feedback on implications of policy changes.
By Jeff Tollefson

A climate simulator that started life in a doctoral dissertation is being adopted by negotiators to assess their national greenhouse-gas commitments ahead of December's climate summit in Copenhagen.

Dubbed C-ROADS — for Climate Rapid Overview and Decision-support Simulator — the tool translates complex climate modelling into readily digestible predictions. Using data on greenhouse-gas emissions input by country or region over a given period, the simulator projects temperatures, sea level and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to 2100.

The tool hit the headlines last week when Robert Corell, chairman of the Washington-based Climate Action Initiative, made a dire assessment: even with all the international pledges to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, including a yet-to-be-enacted commitment by the United States, by the end of this century global average temperature will still outpace the 2 °C increase targeted by the G8 countries and others. "We're headed to a 4-degree world," Corell told reporters at a press conference in Washington DC. "We don't want to go there."

C-ROADS has its origins in 1997 doctoral work by Thomas Fiddaman, now a modeller with Ventana Systems in Harvard, Massachusetts. The current version represents a collaboration between Ventana, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge and the Sustainability Institute in Hartland, Vermont.

The tool made its debut in the policy world last year during a global-warming war game in Washington DC, and has since been picked up by climate negotiators in the United States and Europe. Earlier this month, modellers on the C-ROADS team travelled to Beijing to train Chinese negotiators on the software.

The goal is to distribute C-ROADS to all parties so that everybody is working off of the same baseline in evaluating proposals, says Andrew Jones, who heads up the initiative at the Sustainability Institute. "We want to get a lot of the bickering over the different numbers out of the way," he says.

The team has calibrated C-ROADS against global climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Unlike those, it can be run on a laptop and produces instant results. Users can adjust dates and emissions from all of the major emitters and groups of developing countries, providing immediate feedback on the likely effects of any given policy commitments.

An independent team led by climatologist Robert Watson of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, reviewed the model and recommended in March that the United Nations consider adopting it as a formal tool to support the climate negotiations. That hasn't happened yet, but modellers with the C-ROADS team are attending UN climate meetings to help negotiators assess policy proposals.

C-ROADS tracks historical data well and generally performs in line with average IPCC modelling results, says John Sterman, an MIT management professor who works on the project.

Sterman says a key problem with global-warming policy is the time lag between today's emissions and the problems they cause, which can be decades down the road. The model attempts to get around that by allowing policy-makers — and the public, through a simplified version on the Climate Interactive website — to see the likely consequences of their decisions immediately. "It's not that the other models are flawed," Sterman says. "They are opaque to the policy-makers."

Jones says that the model produces warming of 4.5 °C by 2100 for business as usual and 3.8 °C based on the targets announced in March. Taking into account all the latest pledges by countries, including a commitment from Russia this summer, the model's current reading is 3.5 °C.

"The doom and gloom story is getting 90% of the attention," he says, "but now we're at 3.5 °C. The global climate deal is getting better over time."

Still, global leaders made little headway on climate last week, at both a UN summit in New York and a meeting of the G20 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Leaders of the G20 did, however, agree to phase out fossil-fuel subsidies while providing "targeted support for the poorest".

news20090930bbc1

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

[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 05:05 GMT, Wednesday, 30 September 2009 06:05 UK
Deadly tsunami in Pacific islands
A tsunami triggered by a strong quake in the South Pacific has killed at least 65 people in Samoa and more than 20 in American Samoa, say reports.

The Samoan authorities say at least another 145 people have been injured and whole villages destroyed.

American Samoa's delegate to the US Congress said thousands of people had been left homeless in the territory.

An 8.3-magnitude quake struck at 1748 GMT, generating 15ft (4.5m) waves in some areas of the islands.

The Samoa islands comprise two separate entities - the nation of Samoa and American Samoa, a US territory - with a total population of about 250,000 people.

A tsunami warning was initially issued for the wider region but cancelled a few hours later.

The general manager of Samoa's National Health Service told the BBC that 65 people had died and 145 people were injured.

President Barack Obama has declared a major disaster in American Samoa, enabling federal funding to made available to help victims.

Floating cars

"Some of the areas there are only a few feet above sea level, so you can imagine the devastation," said Eni Faleomavaega, who represents American Samoa in the US.

"It caused severe damage to property, there are cars floating everywhere."

Mr Faleomavaega told the BBC the waves had "literally wiped out all the low-lying areas in the Samoan islands," causing 11 deaths and injuring "several hundred".

He said the tsunami had hit within minutes of the quake, leaving people with no time to escape.

"There would have been no warning system capable of giving adequate warning to the people," he said.

Dr Lemalu Fiu, at a hospital in the Samoan capital, Apia, said the number of casualties was expected to rise as people arrived from coastal areas.

Talutala Mauala, Secretary General of the Red Cross in Samoa, said she was travelling to the country's south coast, where many injuries were reported.

"We won't know the full extent of the damage until we get there and see for ourselves," she said.

Ms Mauala said it could take many months for people to rebuild their homes.

An Associated Press reporter said he had seen "bodies everywhere" in the main hospital in Lalomanu, on Samoa's main island of Upolu, including at least one child.

Several foreign tourists are thought to be among the dead.

Beaches gone

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre (PTWC) said the quake struck at a depth of 33km (20 miles) some 190km (120 miles) from Apia. Waves of 5.1ft (1.57m) hit Apia and Pago Pago in American Samoa.

{{The water was swirling like a spa pool outwards [towards] the rim of the lagoon and in a few seconds the water sunk}
Ula Osasa-Mano
Eyewitness}}

Radio New Zealand quoted Samoan residents as saying that villages were inundated and homes and cars swept away.

Graeme Ansell, a New Zealander near Apia, told the radio station the beach village of Sau Sau Beach Fale had been "wiped out".

"There's not a building standing. We've all clambered up hills, and one of our party has a broken leg. There will be people in a great lot of need around here," he said.

Samoalive News said local radio stations had been receiving reports of high sea swells hitting coastal areas on the eastern and southern side of Upolu island.

"School has been called off for the day with tsunami warnings calling for people to head to higher grounds," the website said.

Witnesses have reported scenes of destruction.

"It's horrible... The village is gone and my once beautiful beach front villa has now been submerged in water," Josh Nayangu told the BBC after fleeing the area on a small fishing boat with his wife and son.
Ula Osasa-Mano, who was visiting family on the island, told the BBC the water along the Apia seawall was turbulent.

"The water was kind of swirling like a spa pool outwards [towards] the rim of the lagoon and in a few seconds the water sunk," Ula Osasa-Mano said.

The PTWC - a branch of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - issued a general alert for the South Pacific region, but it was cancelled by 2200 GMT.


[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 04:10 GMT, Wednesday, 30 September 2009 05:10 UK
Typhoon Ketsana blasts Cambodia
The powerful typhoon that has hit the Philippines and Vietnam with deadly force is now battering Cambodia.

At least nine people have died in Kampong Thom province in central Cambodia.

When Typhoon Ketsana hit Vietnam, more than 30 people were killed and almost 200,000 people fled their homes; severe flooding remains in central provinces.

In the Philippines, where the typhoon hit over the weekend, at least 246 people are known to have died.

Relief officials in the Philippines, struggling to feed and shelter hundreds of thousands of displaced people, admit they have been overwhelmed by the disaster.

They warn that new storms are heading towards the country.

Cambodia caught

In Vietnam, Ketsana hit with torrential rains and winds of more than 150km/h before it headed inland towards northern Cambodia and southern Laos.

Typhoons usually weaken on reaching land, but Ketsana is still dangerous, officials said.

"At least nine people were crushed last night when their house fell down," said Chea Cheat, chief of the Red Cross office in Kampong Thom province, about 130 km (80 miles) north of the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh.

He added that at least 78 houses in his province were destroyed and that heavy rain and rising floods were continuing.

International organisations and government officials in Cambodia said they were distributing tents and food to affected people while assessing damage across at least five of the country's provinces.

Vietnam floods

The BBC's Guy De Launey in Phnom Penh said that Ketsana had been devastating when it headed toward the city of Danang, on central Vietnam's coast.

The airport and schools were closed. Railways and roads linking north and south Vietnam were cut off. Danang airport has since reopened.

The biggest floods in decades now threaten Vietnam's central provinces, correspondents said, with thousands of homes inundated with water.

Vietnamese state media reported that at least 33 people had died from floods and landslides in seven coastal and central highland provinces, and river waters in Quang Nam provinces could reach a level last seen in 1964.

Around 170,000 people were evacuated before the typhoon made landfall.

Vietnam's Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai said late on Tuesday that he hoped power supplies would be restored quickly, particularly to Quang Ngai province where Vietnam's first oil refinery, Dung Quat, was due to reopen after an outage shut the plant's test runs last month.

Overwhelmed

In the Philippines, the government said it now believed 246 people had died after the storm struck on Saturday, a figure that is expected to rise as mud is cleared from the worst affected areas.

Almost two million people were affected by the flooding in Manila, the worst to hit the city in 40 years. At one point, 80% of the city was submerged.

Ketsana, with winds of up to 100km/h (60mph), hit the Philippines early on Saturday, crossing the main northern Luzon island before heading out toward the South China Sea. Officials say more than 40cm (16in) of rain fell on Manila within 12 hours, exceeding the average for the whole month of September.

Meanwhile forecasters said a new storm forming in the Pacific Ocean was likely to enter Philippine waters on Thursday and make landfall later on the northern island of Luzon.

news20090930cnn1

[Top stories] from [CNN.com]

[Asia]
Quake, tsunami near American Samoa kills at least 22
Story Highlights
> NEW: White House declares major disaster; orders federal aid
> U.S. sending plane with aid, officials to help American Samoa
> Magnitude-8.0 quake strikes near Samoan Islands early Tuesday
> Quake struck at depth of 7.4 miles, triggered three 5-foot tsunamis
September 30, 2009

(CNN) -- A magnitude 8.0 earthquake struck the Pacific near American Samoa, triggering towering tsunami waves that gushed over the island and leaving at least 22 people dead.

American Samoa Gov. Togiola Tulafono, speaking from Hawaii, said Tuesday's quake ranked "right up there with some of the worst" disasters on the island. He said about 50 people had been treated for injuries so far but he expected that number to rise.

The quake hit the small cluster of South Pacific islands early Tuesday morning. By evening, Laumoli, standing outside the LBJ Tropical Medican Center morgue in the capital of Pago Pago, confirmed 22 deaths.

"I thought it was the end of the world," said Dr. Salamo Laumoli, director of health services. "I have never felt an earthquake like that before."

Laumoli feared more fatalities would turn up as rescue workers were still trying to access parts of the island severed by damaged infrastructure.

Laumoli said people in outlying villages on one end of the main island have been cut off because the main bridge was washed away.

"Two or three villages have been badly damaged," he told CNN International.

Tulafono cited extensive damage to roads, buildings and homes, and said he had spoken to the military about mobilizing reserve forces for assistance.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach, Hawaii, canceled tsunami watches and warnings for American Samoa about four hours after the earthquake hit. However, a tsunami advisory is still in effect for for the coastal areas of California and Oregon.

The Japan Meteorological Agency also activated a tsunami advisory along its eastern coast. The precautionary alert means that the height of a possible tsunami wave would be less than a foot and a half.

President Barack Obama "declared a major disaster exists in the Territory of American Samoa" late Tuesday and ordered federal aid to supplement local efforts. The declaration makes federal funding available to affected individuals.

The tsunami waves hit right in the middle of the Pago Pago harbor, the capital, said Cinta Brown, an American Samoa homeland security official working at the island's emergency operations center. The water devastated the village of Leone.

"The wave came onshore and washed out people's homes," Brown said.

The same happened on the hard-hit east and west sides of American Samoa, she said.

The quake generated three separate tsunami waves, the largest measuring 5.1 feet from sea level height, said Vindell Hsu, a geophysicist with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. Preliminary data had originally reported a larger tsunami.

Officials in the U.S. territory issued a clear call and were focusing on assessing the damage, Brown said.

Reports of damage were still emerging, but a bulletin from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the waves "may have been destructive along coasts near the earthquake epicenter and could also be a threat to more distant coasts. Authorities should take appropriate action in response to this possibility."

Tulafono, the governor, was on his way back home Tuesday night on one of two U.S. Coast Guard C-130 transport planes flying to American Samoa with aid.

The Coast Guard also will transport more than 20 officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to American Samoa, said John Hamill, external affairs officer for FEMA in Oakland, California.

The FEMA team will include a variety of debris experts, housing experts, members of the Corps of Engineers, and other disaster relief specialists, Hamill said.

Tulafono told reporters Tuesday that it was hard being away from home when disaster came calling. It was a time, he said, for families to be together.

Those who experienced the massive quake described it as a terrifying event.

Brown was standing in a parking lot when her sports utility vehicle began rocking left and right.

"You could hear the rattling of the metal" of a large chain link fence around the lot, Brown said.

"It shakes you because you know something else is coming," she said.

news20090930reut1

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[News > U.S.]
Samoa tsunami toll may exceed 100, hundreds injured
Wed Sep 30, 2009 2:12am EDT
By Michael Perry

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A series of tsunamis smashed into the Pacific island nations of American and Western Samoa, killing possibly more than 100 people, destroying villages and injuring hundreds, officials said on Wednesday.

President Barack Obama declared a major disaster in American Samoa, a U.S. territory, and ordered federal aid to help recovery efforts, with a U.S. C-130 military transport aircraft due to leave Honolulu for the tiny South Pacific islands.

At least 24 people were killed and 50 injured, Governor Togiola Tulafono said from Hawaii, with the southern portion of the main Tutuila island "devastated."

Television images showed flattened shorelines and homes torn apart by the waves, with large fishing boats hurled ashore.

New Zealand said there were serious concerns about the neighboring island nation of Tonga after a 4-meter (13-foot) wave hit its northern coast. Tongan officials said they feared as many as 10 people had been killed.

A Pacific-wide tsunami warning was issued after an 8.0 magnitude undersea quake off American Samoa, with reports of a small tsunami reaching New Zealand and rising sea levels in several South Pacific island nations.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center canceled its Pacific-wide warning, but Japan's Meteorological Agency issued a local tsunami warning for its east coast, warning of a possible small tsunami.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center later issued an advisory that small tsunami waves had reached Hawaii, warning the waves could be dangerous to swimmers and boats.

An Indian Ocean tsunami on December 26, 2004, which killed about 230,000 people across 11 countries, is the worst on record.

BODIES BURIED IN SAND

Shortly after local radio tsunami warnings were issued in American and Western Samoa, waves started crashing into the capital of American Samoa, Pago Pago, and villages and resorts on the southern coasts, witnesses said.

"It's believed as of now, there could be a number close to 100 deaths," said Ausegalia Mulipola, assistant chief executive of Western Samoa's disaster management office.

"They are still continuing the searches for any missing bodies in the area," Mulipola told Reuters, adding the southern side of the country's main island Upolu was the worst hit.

At least 47 people had been killed, officials later told Reuters, with the number of injured still unknown as emergency teams scoured remote coastal villages.

"Some areas have been flattened and the tsunami brought a lot of sand onshore, so there have been reports the sand has covered some of the bodies," Mulipola said. "So we need specialized machines to search for bodies that are buried under the sand."

A unnamed Samoan living in Australia told ABC local news that nine family members had been killed in the village of Lalomanu.

"We have confirmation that nine members of our family have perished, four of them children and many more missing. The tourists haven't been accounted for either," the writer said.

The owner of the Samoan resort Sea Breeze on the southside of Upolu said people were almost washed away when the waves destroyed their resort.

"The second wave hit and came up through the floor, pushed out the back door and threw us outside," Wendy Booth told Fairfax Radio Network in Australia.

U.N. emergency reports said destructive waves struck southern Upolu, with at least 17 killed, while the northern island, Savaii, could have also been hit.

Emergency shelters were required and Red Cross teams had mobilized more than 100 emergency workers who were collecting coconuts to help meet early food and water needs, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

(Additional reporting by Adrian Bathgate and Mantik Kusjanto in Wellington, Rob Taylor and James Grubel in Canberra, Stacey Joyce in Washington, Bud Seba in Houston, Jim Christie in San Francisco, Peter Henderson in Los Angeles)

(Editing by Nick Macfie)


[Green Business]
Climate control debate heats up in Senate
Wed Sep 30, 2009 1:07am EDT
By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's drive to tackle global warming gets a boost on Wednesday, when Democrats in the Senate are expected to unveil a bill aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions over the next four decades.

The Senate Democrats' draft legislation, which was circulating on Capitol Hill, embraces major elements of a controversial bill that passed the House of Representatives in June.

Both bills would establish a "cap and trade" system for replacing dirty, polluting fossil fuels with cleaner solar, wind and other alternative energies to power factories and oil refineries and to produce electricity.

Under cap and trade, carbon dioxide emissions would drop and companies would be allowed to sell to each other the pollution permits that would control those emissions.

Unless the draft bill is changed last-minute, Senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry have written a measure that aims to reduce smokestack emissions of carbon dioxide by 20 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050 from 2005 levels.

The short-term goal is slightly more ambitious than the House's 17 percent target.

Either way, the U.S. Congress has been criticized by many countries for advancing legislation that they say would inadequately address the global warming problem, especially with a December deadline looming for an international deal on next steps.

Senate Republicans quickly denounced the Democrats' 800-page bill.

When asked by Reuters if he could support the Democrats' bill Senator John McCain said: "Of course not. Never, never, never."

McCain complained that the Democratic bill merely paid lip-service to the nuclear power industry. Republicans want to encourage the building of new nuclear generating facilities with additional government aid in the climate bill. They argue it is a necessary tool in expanding "clean energy."

Republicans' harsh words could preview a divisive fight over environmental legislation, similar to the bitter struggle now being waged over healthcare reform. Their opposition underscored the uncertainty over the bill's fate this year.

In coming weeks, Boxer's Environment and Public Works Committee will have to plug in key details still unresolved in their draft bill.

Those include identifying which industry sectors are to get a fixed number of free government permits to emit declining amounts of carbon dioxide in coming years, which was the subject of intense lobbying during the House debate of its bill.

If the Senate cannot manage to pass a climate bill this year, Democrats would likely take up the debate again in 2010.

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Google working on "smart" plug-in hybrid charging
Wed Sep 30, 2009 12:30am EDT
By Poornima Gupta

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc is in the early stages of looking at ways to write software that would fully integrate plug-in hybrid vehicles to the power grid, minimize strain on the grid and help utilities manage vehicle charging load.

"We are doing some preliminary work," said Dan Reicher, Google's director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives. "We have begun some work on smart charging of electric vehicles and how you would integrate large number of electric vehicles into the grid successfully."

"We have done a little bit of work on the software side looking at how you would write a computer code to manage this sort of charging infrastructure," he said in an interview on the sidelines of an industry conference.

Google, known for its Internet search engine, in 2007 announced a program to test Toyota Prius and Ford Escape gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles that were converted to rechargeable plug-in hybrids that run mostly on electricity.

One of the experimental technologies that was being tested by the Web search giant allowed parked plug-ins to transfer stored energy back to the electric grid, opening a potential back-up source of power for the system in peak hours.

Google has pushed ahead in addressing climate change issues as a philanthropic effort through its Google.org arm.

Reicher said Google has been testing its fleet of plug-in hybrids "pretty intensely" for the last couple of years.

"One of the great things about plug-ins is this great opportunity for the first time to finally have a storage technology," he said

Reicher said the company is trying to figure out how to manage the impact of having millions of future electric vehicle owners plugging in their vehicles at the same time.

"We got to be careful how we manage these things," he said. "On a hot day in July when 5 million Californians come home, you don't want them all plugging in at the same moment."

Reicher laid out a scenario where power utilities, during a time of high demand, could turn on or off the charging of electric vehicles. The owner of these vehicles, who have agreed to such an arrangement, would get a credit from the utility in turn.

"The grid operators may well be indifferent to either putting 500 megawatts of new generation on or taking 500 megawatts off," he said. "The beauty of plug-in vehicles is that with the right software behind them, you could manage their charging."

Apart from plug-in hybrids, Google also is working on other green technologies such as developing its own new mirror technology that could reduce the cost of building solar thermal plants by a quarter or more, and looking at gas turbines that would run on solar power rather than natural gas.

The often-quirky company also said in late 2007 that it would invest in companies and do research of its own to produce affordable renewable energy -- at a price less than burning coal -- within a few years, casting the move as a philanthropic effort to address climate change.

(Reporting by Poornima Gupta; editing by Carol Bishopric)


[Green Business]
Mercedes' green claim rejected by advert watchdog
Wed Sep 30, 2009 12:57am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Mercedes-Benz adverts for its new E class saloon series which said "CO2 emissions for the range are down to 139g/km" were banned on Wednesday after the advertising watchdog ruled the ads were misleading.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) noted only two out of the 24 possible permutations in the Mercedes range had a 139g/km figure, the exact CO2 emissions figure per vehicle being dependent on a number of possible variations.

Those variations included the choice between petrol and diesel, manual and automatic gearbox, and were also affected by various alloy wheel size.

"We considered that the headline claim would give the impression to readers that a significant proportion of the range had achieved the lowest emissions figure, or a figure that was relatively low for the class, when that was not the case," the ASA said in its ruling.

The watchdog said the advert must not appear again in its current form.

(Reporting by Matthew Jones)


[Green Business]
Environmentalists fear EU softening eco-labeling for tires
Wed Sep 30, 2009 9:09am EDT

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union negotiators are on the brink of agreeing new rules to inform consumers about the eco-performance, noise and wet grip of tires, diplomats said, but critics charge the draft has been softened and lacks teeth.

Earlier versions of the proposal would have required stickers on each tire sold, like those that have boosted European sales of energy-efficient fridges and washing machines.

The current deal between the European Parliament, the executive European Commission and EU member states offers tire makers a softer alternative -- that the label be "shown to the end user in the immediate proximity of the tire," critics said on Wednesday.

Such alternatives have in the past led to retailers displaying mandatory information posters in obscure areas such as the toilets, they said.

"It's not too late to put this back on track and help consumers choose the most efficient tires which save on fuel bills and emissions," said Jos Dings of environment group T&E.

"A voluntary scheme won't work and is a huge waste of legislators' time," he added.

Tire maker Michelin said it would prefer labels to be mandatory on the tires.

"We will show the labels on the tires ourselves, even if it is not compulsory," said Michelin spokesman Fabrice Lenica.

Under the proposed rules, tires' energy efficiency and wet grip would be rated on a scale of A-G.

Critics say manufacturers of cheap tires have had too much influence on the political process.

"It is essential that the label is displayed on the tire itself," said Stephen Russell, secretary general of consumer group ANEC.

The rules are part of an EU push to reduce its reliance on costly and unreliable oil imports, and to curb energy consumption to one fifth below 1990 levels by 2020.

(Reporting by Pete Harrison, editing by Anthony Barker)

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[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
South Korea's polluters invest in green for profit
Wed Sep 30, 2009 5:08am EDT
By Cho Mee-young

SEOUL (Reuters) - Heavy polluters in South Korea, one of the world's fastest growing carbon emitters, are attracting strong investor interest as they pump billions dollars into green projects,
cashing in on state incentives and the global push for renewable energy.

Companies such as LG Chem and Samsung SDI, which have already established a strong presence in rechargeable batteries, are being joined by the likes of SK Energy, Hyundai Heavy Industries and the Samsung Group on projects from batteries to solar and wind.

Shares in companies involved in the environmental push have risen sharply, but analysts believe more gains are likely as Seoul looks to leverage off the country's existing high-tech infrastructure and become a global green industry leader.

LG Chem shares have more than tripled so far this year, propelled by news it would supply batteries to General Motors' Volt plug-in vehicle. Samsung SDI shares also have tripled, boosted by an electric car battery supply deal with BMW.

Korea's No.1 refiner SK Energy, which saw its shares spike by as much as a third this month on the news of testing hybrid car batteries for mass production, is also close to supply batteries to an European automaker, a company source said.

"The fact LG Chem and Samsung SDI were picked up by global top-tier automakers GM and BMW tells that their technologies were proved, and they have grown big enough to compete with Japanese rivals," said Eung-ju Yi, analyst at Daewoo Securities.

GROWTH MARKET, VALUATIONS REASONABLE

LG Chem trades at 11 times its estimated earnings and Samsung SDI at 28 times, still well below rivals including Japan's GS Yuasa and Chinese electric car and battery maker BYD, according to Thomson Reuters data.

With the global electric-car battery market projected to hit $27 billion in 2015 from almost nothing now, growth prospects look strong.

"Given (its) technological leadership, we anticipate LG Chem signing additional contracts with a well-known global automaker in the near future," said Morgan Stanley in a recent research.

As many firms venture into green business globally, acquiring competitive technology and patent is critical, analysts said.

Conscious of this, Korea is providing financial enticements such as tax breaks to encourage its technology powerhouses such as Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics to support its push for global green leadership.

"We think the most realistic and effective way of realizing green growth is through IT. IT is a major axis of green growth," said Sang-hyup Kim, secretary at the presidential office.

Four-fifths of Korea's economic stimulus spending has been earmarked for environmental projects, the highest proportion in the world's top 20 economies, according to the U.N.

Having seen emissions double in 15 years to 2005, Korea will set a 2020 emissions target by the end of 2009.

To help its economy recover from the financial crisis, reduce its reliance on imported energy and to cut carbon emissions, South Korea has vowed to spend $85 billion, or 2 percent of GDP, on eco-projects over five years.

That will be followed by billions dollars of investment plans by major firms, including the world's top memory chip maker Samsung Electronics.

GROUP TIES

Large Korean companies typically have numerous associate firms which can be relied on as customers for products and components.

"Korea has solid IT companies in front, and there has been a strong demand for self-supply of components. Such needs met the country's drive in green technologies," said Sean SY Hwang, head of Korea research at Mirae Asset Securities.

LG Chem, for example, has captive markets for its batteries and LCD glasses through LG Electronics and the world's No.2 LCD panel maker LG Display. That is helping LG Chem as its main petrochemical business gets more volatile and challenging.

Samsung Group plans to join solar cell business via Samsung Electronics and wind power business via the world's No.3 shipbuilder, Samsung Heavy Industries.

SK Energy is also leveraging off SK Telecom, the country's No.1 mobile operator, in developing smart grid technology that will allow two-way communication between utilities, customers and eventually household appliances.

Korean refiners and heavy industry makers also joined the global rush in spending to tap renewable energy markets that are expected to be worth more than $134 billion a year over the next 12 years.

The world's top shipbuilder Hyundai Heavy is spending up to 300 billion won in the solar cell sector in 2008-2009.

"It is possible for heavy industry makers to catch up in a short period with global wind power players, should the world's top shipbuilders aggressively enter the market," said Yi at Daewoo Securities.

($1=1186.8 Won) (Additional report by Rhee So-eui; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

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[World]
PAGO PAGO, American Samoa, Sept. 30, 2009
Tsunamis Kill Scores on Samoan Islands
Samoa, American Samoa Devastated after Huge Quake Spawns Towering Waves; At Least 84 Reportedly Killed

(CBS/AP) A powerful Pacific Ocean earthquake spawned towering tsunami waves that swept ashore on Samoa and American Samoa, flooding and flattening villages, killing at least 84 people and leaving dozens missing.

Cars and people were swept out to sea by the fast-churning water as survivors fled to higher ground, where they remained huddled hours after the quake struck early Tuesday. Signs of devastation were everywhere, with a giant boat washed ashore lying on the edge of a highway and floodwaters swallowing up cars and homes.

The quake, with a magnitude between 8.0 and 8.3, struck around dawn 120 miles from American Samoa, a U.S. territory that is home to 65,000 people.

Four tsunami waves 15 to 20 feet high roared ashore soon afterward, reaching up to a mile inland, Mike Reynolds, superintendent of the National Park of American Samoa, was quoted as saying by a parks service spokeswoman.

Hampered by power and communications outages, officials hours later struggled to determine damage and casualties. At least 84 people were killed — 65 on Samoa and 19 on American Samoa — but officials acknowledged the death toll seemed sure to rise.

Radio host John Rayner was down the coast from the hard-hit village of Pago Pago on American Samoa. "It was just absolutely frantic. People were saying, go high or go pray somewhere," he told CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker. "Get away from the ocean as quickly as you can."

Speaking to the British Broadcasting Corporation early Wednesday morning, Dr. Stanley Dean, head of the Samoan Health Service, said the death toll on Samoa had reached 65 and that at least 145 more people were injured.

"I don't think anybody is going to be spared in this disaster," said acting American Samoa Gov. Faoa A. Sunia.

Sunia declared a state of emergency in American Samoa, describing "immense and widespread damage to individual, public and commercial buildings in coastal areas" along with death and injury.

In Washington, President Obama promised federal aid for victims and recovery efforts in American Samoa, declaring it a major disaster.

Federal assistance can include grants for temporary housing and home repairs, low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses, and other programs to help individuals and business owners recover from the effects of the disaster.

U.S. Coast Guard spokesman Lt. John Titchen said a C-130 was being dispatched Wednesday to deliver aid to American Somoa, assess damage and take the governor back home.

One of the runways at Pago Pago International Airport was being cleared of debris for emergency use, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said in Los Angeles.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it was deploying teams to American Samoa to provide support and assess damage.

Gov. Togiola Tulafono, who was in Honolulu for a conference, told reporters that more victims could be found when rescuers reach areas that are inaccessible by roads. Tulafono said a member of his extended family was among the dead.

New Zealand's acting Prime Minister Bill English said any death tolls for the Samoas were only "guesses" so far, and that there were unconfirmed reports of five additional people dead in the island nation of Tonga, west of the Samoas.

"There are a considerable number of people who've been swept out to sea and are unaccounted for," English said. "We don't have information about the full impact and we do have some real concern that over the next 12 hours the picture could look worse rather than better."

He said a New Zealand P3 Orion maritime surveillance plane would reach the region later Wednesday to search for survivors.

Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said an Australian woman has been confirmed killed in Samoa, three other Australians have been hospitalized and six other Australians remain unaccounted for after the tsunami.

In Samoa, at least three villages were flattened.

American Samoa is home to a U.S. national park that appeared to be especially hard-hit.

Reynolds, the park superintendent, said he had been able to locate only 20 percent of the park's 40 to 50 employees and volunteers.

He spoke to park service officials from Pago Pago Harbor and reported that the visitor center and offices were destroyed, according to Holly Bundock, spokeswoman for the National Park Service's Pacific West Region in Oakland, Calif.

Residents in both Samoa and American Samoa reported being shaken awake by the quake, which lasted two to three minutes and was centered about 20 miles below the ocean floor. It was followed by at least three large aftershocks of at least 5.6 magnitude.

Dr. Dean, of the Samoan Health Service, told the BBC that the quake struck just as Samoans were getting ready for school and work. He said many of the islands' popular tourist beaches and resorts had been devastated.

New Zealander Graeme Ansell said the village of Sau Sau Beach Fale was leveled.

"It was very quick. The whole village has been wiped out," Ansell told New Zealand's National Radio from a hill near Samoa's capital, Apia. "There's not a building standing. We've all clambered up hills, and one of our party has a broken leg. There will be people in a great lot of need 'round here."

The Samoan capital was virtually deserted with schools and businesses closed.

Local media said they had reports of landslides in the Solosolo region of the main Samoan island of Upolu and damage to plantations in the countryside outside Apia.

Rescue workers found a scene of destruction and debris with cars overturned or stuck in mud, and rockslides hit some roads. Several students were seen ransacking a convenience store.

Eni Faleomavaega, who represents American Samoa as a non-voting delegate in the U.S. House, said he had talked to people by telephone who said that Pago Pago — just a few feet above sea level — was flattened. Several hundred people's homes were destroyed, but getting more concrete information has been difficult, he said.

The dominant industry in American Samoa — tuna canneries — was also affected. Chicken of the Sea's tuna packing plant in American Samoa was forced to close although the facility wasn't damaged, the San Diego-based company said.

The effects of the tsunami could be felt thousands of miles away, with federal officials saying strong currents and dangerous waves were forecast from California to Washington state. No major flooding was expected, however.

Japan's Meteorological Agency also issued a tsunami warning all along that country's eastern coast.

While the earthquake and tsunami were big, they were not on the same scale of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, said Brian Atwater of the U.S. Geological Survey in Seattle. That tsunami killed more than 230,000 in a dozen countries across Asia.

The 2004 quake was at least 10 times stronger than the measurements being reported for Tuesday's quake, Atwater said.

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[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Copenhagen climate change conference 2009]
Copenhagen negotiating text: 200 pages to save the world?
Draft agreement being discussed ahead of December's crucial Copenhagen summit is long, confusing and contradictory
Interactive: Beginner's guide to the negotiating text
Help us interpret the document
David Adam, environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday 28 September 2009 16.37 BST Article history

It is a blueprint to save the world. And yet it is long, confusing and contradictory. Negotiators have released a draft version of a new global agreement on climate change, which is widely billed as the last chance to save the planet from the ravages of global warming.

Running to some 200 pages, the draft agreement is being discussed for the first time this week as officials from 190 countries gather in Bangkok for the latest round of UN talks. There is only one short meeting after this before they meet in Copenhagen aiming to hammer out a final version.

The draft text consolidates and reorders hundreds of changes demanded by countries to the previous version, which saw it balloon to an unmanageable 300 pages. It has no official status yet, and must be formally approved before negotiators can start to whittle it down. Here, we present key, edited sections from the text and attempt to decipher what the words mean.

The text includes sections on the traditional sticking points that have delayed progress on climate change for a decade or longer.

• How much are rich countries willing to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, and by when?

• Will large developing nations such as China make an effort to put at least a dent in their soaring levels of pollution?

• How much money must flow from the developed world to developing countries to grease the wheels and secure their approval? How much to compensate for the impact of past emissions, and how much to help prevent future emissions?

According to the UN rules, for a new treaty to be agreed, every country must sign up – a challenging requirement. The new treaty is designed to follow the Kyoto protocol, the world's existing treaty to regulate greenhouse gases, the first phase of which expires in 2012. Because the US did not ratify Kyoto, the climate talks have been forced on to awkward parallel tracks, with one set of negotiations, from which the US is excluded, debating how the treaty could be extended past 2012. This new text comes from the second track, which lays out a plan to include all countries in long-term co-operative action.

Behind the scenes, pessimism about the Copenhagen talks is rising. Despite references in the text to a global goal and collective emission cuts of 25-40% by 2020 for rich countries, many observers believe there is little chance such an approach will succeed.

Stuart Eizenstat, who negotiated Kyoto for the US, said: "Copenhagen is more likely to be a way station to a final agreement, where each country posts the best that it can do... The key thing is let's not go into Copenhagen with all the same kind of guns blazing like we did in Kyoto."

A top European official told the Guardian: "We've moved on from the idea that we can negotiate on targets. That's naive and just not the way the deal will be done. The best we can get is that countries will put in what they want to commit to."

Once all the carbon offsets – buying pollution credits instead of cutting emissions – and "fudges" are taken into account, the outcome is likely to be that emissions in 2020 from rich countries will be broadly similar to those in 1990, he said. "That's really scary stuff."


[Business > Airline industry]
British Airways launches luxury service to New York
Twice daily flights on Airbus A318s has come under fire from environmental groups Plane Stupid and Greenpeace
David Teather
guardian.co.uk, Monday 28 September 2009 19.10 BST Article history

British Airways was accused of hypocrisy as the airline prepared to launch a luxury all-business service between London and New York, with just 32 seats on an aircraft normally fitted for 100 people, days after chief executive Willie Walsh pledged a drastic cut in emissions.

Environmental group Plane Stupid will stage a protest at London City Airport tomorrow to coincide with the maiden flight at 12.50pm, with Walsh on board.

The twice daily service on customised Airbus A318s features flat beds and latest technology allowing passengers to send emails and text and use the internet while on board. Return fares will start at £1,901 but go up to £5,000 for more flexible tickets. The airport in London's Docklands, close to the financial districts in Canary Wharf and the City, means the service is likely to appeal to bankers.

Flights leaving from London though will be forced to make a brief refuelling stop at Shannon airport in the west of Ireland because City airport's runway is too short to handle an A318 aircraft with a full fuel load. BA is arranging for passengers to use the Shannon stop to clear US customs and immigration

Greenpeace aviation campaigner, Vicky Wyatt, said the service was "another example of BA saying one thing, and doing another. Only last week, Willie Walsh announced that the industry is committed to playing its part in the fight against climate change. But it is blindingly obvious that the aviation industry doesn't intend to cut emissions at all. Rather airlines, like BA, want to pay other countries and sectors to make those cuts so that the industry can carry on with business as usual."

Friends of the Earth campaigner Richard Dyer said the spacious layout of the aircraft meant that each passenger is responsible for around three times the emissions from regular flights.

"Aviation causes harmful emissions that contribute to climate change – we should be curbing the growth in flying, not laying on new flights," he said.

Walsh appeared before the United Nations forum on climate change in New York last week, to unveil an agreement between airlines, airports and aircraft companies to cut emissions to 50% below 2005 levels by 2050. The plan was viewed as a bid to seize the initiative on the issue, to ensure that the industry would not be ambushed with more punishing strictures at the global warming summit in Copenhagen in December. Aviation accounts for 1.6% of global greenhouse gas emissions currently, but that figure is set to grow significantly if left unchecked.

A BA spokesman said the airline remained committed to reducing its emissions. He said the A318 was the smallest commercial aircraft on the route and produced only 25% of the carbon of a typical Boeing 747.

"Of the hundreds of commercial aircraft crossing the Atlantic every day between the UK and US, these two purpose built new A318s will produce the least amount of carbon dioxide. Even with this extra service we have reduced our flying schedule between the UK and New York by almost 20% over the past two years."

The timing of the all-business class launch, with the economy still stuck in the doldrums, has also raised eyebrows. Silverjet, Maxjet and Eos, three short-lived airlines which competed in the business-only market, all collapsed last year, the last survivor, Silverjet, going under in June.

But Douglas McNeill, an aviation analyst at Blue Oar Securities, said BA had a reasonable chance of success. "In some ways the timing does look odd, I would be curious to know when they gave this the greenlight," he said. "That said, there is grounds for quite a lot of optimism. The pioneers such as Silverjet showed there is a market. They did many things right and offered high quality services but they were ultimately overwhelmed by the oil price.

"In March 2008, Silverjet and Eos carried 10,000 passengers a month, BA will have capacity for 3,000 a month, so there is reason to believe there will be more than enough demand for BA to fill the requisite number of seats," McNeill added. "The premium market has shrunk about 20% since then, but even then there should be plenty of demand. The pioneer airlines blazed the trail but it may be that those that come later and are better capitalised that make it work."

BA also has the advantage of City airport – Silverjet flew from Luton and Eos and Maxjet from Stansted. But BA is charging a premium. Silverjet charged about £999 return, Maxjet started at £840 and Eos at £1,765.

BA will be under pressure to show investors that the premium airline can be a success. The carrier lost £148m in the three months to the end of June, amid warnings of a prolonged downturn. The airline said it intended to ground 22 planes, 9% of its fleet, over the winter.

The figures showed that yields – the revenue per passenger – had fallen by nearly 10%, owing to the downward pressure on prices and the number of passengers trading down from premium seats, BA's main source of profits,