news20100131lat

[Today's Newspaper] from [Los Angeles Times]

[Environment]
By Andrew Malcolm and Johanna Neuman
January 31, 2010
TOP OF THE TICKET

Sen. Blanche Lincoln: Endangered in the political kingdom
A conservation group is now going after the Arkansas Democrat.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln is one of the most endangered Democrats on the political landscape this year.

The two-term Arkansas moderate is getting only 38% or 39% against any of her little-known Republican opponents, according to a recent Rasmussen poll. Politico is putting her "at the top of the list of vulnerable Democrats."

And providing President Obama with his 60th vote for healthcare reform in the Senate hasn't helped in a state where public opinion is running strongly against it.

To stretch a metaphor, she's more endangered than that infamous snail darter that delayed Tennessee's Tellico Dam.

Now, the League of Conservation Voters is going after Lincoln for her opposition to a climate-change bill. Putting her on its “Dirty Dozen” list of prime targets, the league -- which spent $1.5 million battling opponents in the last election cycle -- is pledging to put up megabucks to defeat her.

"Most regrettable is the fact that Sen. Lincoln is walking away from her previous support for climate legislation -- and given the scope, urgency and magnitude of this issue, she has more than earned a spot on LCV's Dirty Dozen," said Gene Karpinski, the group's president.

Asked whether the organization wasn't in danger of hurting Obama's agenda by robbing the Senate of another Democratic vote, Karpinski told The Ticket that the league is not a "Democratic organization, we are a nonpartisan issues-based organization, and our issue is the environment."

He added:

"The fact of the matter is that we support the president's agenda that he reiterated in the State of the Union -- passing bipartisan comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation -- and unfortunately Sen. Lincoln does not."

Gibbs in Fox News territory

Remember that White House war on Fox News?

Well, forget it.

Looks like reaching Fox News' winning audiences -- fully a third of whom are . . . shhhh, Democrats who denounce Fox News at work and parties and then go home to secretly watch the channel -- ended up making more sense to White House strategists than trying to freeze out that alleged arm of the Republican Party.

As The Ticket previously reported, on Jan. 19 during the Massachusetts Senate race coverage, Fox News drew in 6.8 million viewers, about four times the audience sleeping over at CNN.

And now the liberal Air America radio network has silenced itself due to a lack of listeners, creating a lack of advertisers, creating a dearth of dough.

So President Obama's chief spokesman, Robert Gibbs, went on "Fox News Sunday" last week all by himself. To face the dark empire's death star Chris "No, Luke, I Am Your Father" Wallace.

Of course, Gibbs didn't make any grand pronouncements. The press secretary's job is to dodge while appearing to elaborate.

But the Obama crowd was on defense all week and had to get some of its folks out to play down the predictable OMG D.C. chatter about the upset election win by Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts. Nothing special going on there -- same anger as before, move along.

Now, why would a president, who just a few years ago was a nobody state senator in Illinois before getting elected to the U.S. Senate, be worried about a nobody state senator in Massachusetts getting elected to the U.S. Senate just a few years before the 2012 presidential election? Gee, beats us.

Anyway, Gibbs told Wallace several things, not necessarily in this order.

So what about the election of a Republican senator for the first time since 1972 in Massachusetts?

Gibbs: "There's no doubt there's anger and frustration in this country -- we saw it manifest itself in Massachusetts. . . . What people want in this country is they want us to focus on getting this economy moving again. They want us to work together."

So what about the president's sinking poll numbers and Democratic defeats in Virginia and the former party strongholds of Massachusetts and New Jersey? Will that change White House strategy on healthcare, etc.?

Gibbs: "Well, right now, we're working with leaders on Capitol Hill to try to figure out the best path forward. We don't know what that is quite yet."

So with things going so swimmingly well politically for Obama in recent months, how should we read the president bringing 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe back into his political operation?

Gibbs: "He will help supplement an already good political staff led by Patrick Gaspard in the White House in helping us watch the 2010 elections, the gubernatorial, the Senate and the House elections, that will obviously be important to the direction of the country."

andrew.malcolm@latimes.com

Neuman writes for The Times.

Top of the Ticket, The Times' blog on national politics ( www.latimes.com/ticket "> www.latimes.com/ticket ), is a blend of commentary, analysis and news. These are excerpts from the last week.


[Environment]
By Curtis Morgan
January 31, 2010
Winter chill takes toll on Florida Keys coral
Scientists begin early assessments of the damage on marine life, but initial reports are bleak.

Reporting from Miami - January's bitter cold may have wiped out many of the shallow-water corals in the Florida Keys.

Scientists have only begun assessments, but initial reports are bleak. The damage could extend from Key Largo through the Dry Tortugas islands west of Key West, a vast expanse that covers some of the prettiest and healthiest reefs in North America.

Given the depth and duration of the frigid weather, Meaghan Johnson, marine science coordinator for the Nature Conservancy, expected to see losses. But she was stunned by the devastation when she joined a dive team surveying reefs in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The divers were looking for "bleaching," a telltale indicator of temperature stress in corals.

Star and brain corals, large species that can take hundreds of years to grow, were as white and lifeless as bones, frozen to death, she said. Dead sea turtles, eels and parrotfish also littered the bottom.

"Corals didn't even have a chance to bleach. They just went straight to dead," Johnson said. "It's really ecosystem-wide mortality."

The record chill that gripped South Florida for two weeks took a heavy toll on wildlife -- particularly marine life.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reported that a record number of endangered manatees had succumbed to the cold this year -- 77, according to a preliminary review. The previous record, 56, was set last year.

The warm Gulf Stream is believed to have protected deeper areas, but shallower reefs took a serious, perhaps unprecedented, hit, said Billy Causey of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Coral-bleaching has struck the Keys in the past, most recently twice in the 1990s, preceding a die-off that claimed 30% of the reef tract. But those events, along with others that have hit reefs around the world, have usually been triggered by water hotter than corals typically tolerate.

Healthy corals depend on a symbiotic relationship between polyps, the living tissues that slowly build the hard outer skeletons that give species distinctive shapes, and algae called zooxanthellae that give corals their vibrant colors. But when ocean temperatures are too hot or cold for too long, corals shed that algae, turning dull or a bleached bone-white.

The effect usually doesn't kill coral immediately but can weaken it, slowing growth and leaving reefs more vulnerable to diseases, pollution and damage from boaters and divers.

Cold-water bleaching last occurred in 1977, when it snowed in Miami, killing hundreds of acres of staghorn and elkhorn corals across the Keys. Neither species has recovered, and in 2006, both became the first corals to be listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.

This year's big chill, Causey said, shapes up worse.

"They were exposed to temperatures much colder, that went on longer, than what they were exposed to three decades ago," he said.

Typical winter lows in-shore hover in the mid- to high 60s in the Keys. During this cold spell, a Key Largo reef monitor recorded 52.

Morgan writes for the Miami Herald.

news20100131gdn

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Renewable energy]
Green energy firms fear new feed-in tariffs will be too low
Campaigners fear government's cashback offer for microgeneration will not be enough to stimulate renewables industry
Ashley Seager
The Observer, Sunday 31 January 2010 Article history

The government will tomorrow publish the long-awaited levels of remuneration it will offer for renewable energy generated by households and communities and fed back into the national grid.

It hopes the new tariff will boost the growth of "micro-generation" by small-scale wind turbines, solar panels or hydro power. But there are fears in the renewable energy industry that the Department of Energy and Climate Change will make little or no upward adjustment to the tariff levels for clean electricity it proposed last year.

The DECC has been heavily lobbied by the big energy firms, and tomorrow's announcement has been delayed several times. The Clean Energy Cashback, or feed-in tariff, will reward households, businesses or communities by paying above-market rates for the electricity they produce and feed into the grid.

When the tariffs were unveiled last year, they were criticised for offering rates of return too low to encourage people to install micro-generation plants. Germany introduced feed-in tariffs a decade ago offering double-digit rates of return and sparked a green revolution.

But Alan Simpson, special adviser to energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband, fears the battle to get higher tariffs has been lost and believes the DECC will stick to its aim of getting just 2% of the UK's electricity from smaller scale renewables by 2020. He says three times that would be easily achievable at an additional cost per household energy bill of £1.20 a year.

"Germany needed starting rates that gave a 10% return on investment to kickstart their leap to the top of the renewables league. Britain needs to do the same," he wrote in a letter to Gordon Brown last week. "At the moment, we don't have a renewables industry. We have survivors; firms that exist despite government policy rather than because of it.

"A coalition of groups – from farmers to the fuel-poor, environmental NGOs to eco-builders, ethical bankers to engineers and installers – has been lobbying DECC officials for all they are worth. But little seems to be working."

Andrew Melchior, head of the EIC Partnership, which is setting up the Horizon energy co-operative in Manchester, said his business was only viable because of an EU grant. The feed-in tariff would not be enough, he warned.

"The Germans created an efficient industry that is able to provide solar installations at competitive prices. The UK does not have this industry, more a collection of enthusiasts experimenting with new technologies or proponents well versed in the pragmatics and dark arts of exploiting pots of grant funding.

"We must provide a decent incentive so that the public begin to accept the concept of economically viable solar energy in the UK."


[Environment > climate change scepticism]
Ed Miliband declares war on climate change sceptics
Climate secretary Ed Miliband warns against listening to 'siren voices', in an interview with the Observer
Juliette Jowit, environment editor
The Observer, Sunday 31 January 2010 Article history


The climate secretary, Ed Miliband, last night warned of the danger of a public backlash against the science of global warming in the face of continuing claims that experts have manipulated data.

In an exclusive interview with the Observer, Miliband spoke out for the first time about last month's revelations that climate scientists had withheld and covered up information and the apology made by the influential UN climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which admitted it had exaggerated claims about the melting of Himalayan glaciers.

The perceived failure of global talks on combating climate change in Copenhagen last month has also been blamed for undermining public support. But in the government's first high-level recognition of the growing pressure on public opinion, Miliband declared a "battle" against the "siren voices" who denied global warming was real or caused by humans, or that there was a need to cut carbon emissions to tackle it.

"It's right that there's rigour applied to all the reports about climate change, but I think it would be wrong that when a mistake is made it's somehow used to undermine the overwhelming picture that's there," he said.

"We know there's a physical effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leading to higher temperatures, that's a question of physics; we know CO2 concentrations are at their highest for 6,000 years; we know there are observed increases in temperatures; and we know there are observed effects that point to the existence of human-made climate change. That's what the vast majority of scientists tell us."

Mistakes and attempts to hide contradictory data had to be seen in the light of the thousands of pages of evidence in the IPCC's four-volume report in 2007, said Miliband. The most recent accusation about the panel's work is that its chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, may have known before the Copenhagen summit that its assessment report had seriously exaggerated the rate of melting of the Himalayan glaciers.

However, Miliband was adamant that the IPCC was on the right track. "It's worth saying that no doubt when the next report comes out it will suggest there have been areas where things have been happening more dramatically than the 2007 report implied," he said.

The danger of climate scepticism was that it would undermine public support for unpopular decisions needed to curb carbon emissions, including the likelihood of higher energy bills for households, and issues such as the visual impact of wind turbines, said Miliband, who is also energy secretary.

If the UK did not invest in renewable, clean energy, it would lose jobs and investment to other countries, have less energy security because of the dependence on oil and gas imports and contribute to damaging temperature rises for future generations. "There are a whole variety of people who are sceptical, but who they are is less important than what they are saying, and what they are saying is profoundly dangerous," he said. "Every­thing we know about life is that we should obey the precautionary principle; to take what the sceptics say seriously would be a profound risk."

The Copenhagen conference in December ended with no formal agreement to make deep cuts in global emissions, or even set a timetable, but Miliband warned activists against "despair".

The UN conference was a "disappointment", he said, but there were important achievements, including the agreement by countries responsible for 80% of emissions to set domestic carbon targets by today. "There's a message for people who take these things seriously: don't mourn, organise," said Miliband, who has previously called for a Make Poverty History-style mass public campaign to pressure politicians into cutting emissions.

Lord Smith, the Environment Agency chairman, said: "The [Himalayan] glaciers may not melt by 2035, but they are melting and there's a serious problem that's going to affect substantial parts of Asia over the course of the next 100 or more years."

news20100131reut

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
BERLIN
Sat Jan 30, 2010 9:32am EST
Merkel says Germany committed to nuclear fusion

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany is committed to research into nuclear fusion as a clean and abundant source of alternative energy but international cooperation is vital, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday

"Nuclear fusion could provide endless energy without producing radioactive waste," said Merkel in a podcast.

"It is worth investing in such a technology of the future, but no one country can do this alone, you need international scientific cooperation."

In 2006, more than 30 countries signed a deal to build the world's most advanced nuclear fusion reactor, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).

The objective of ITER is to demonstrate the feasibility of producing electricity from a fusion reaction, which involves fusing atomic nuclei at extremely high temperatures inside a giant electromagnetic ring.

Critics argue however it could be at least 50 years before a commercially viable reactor is built, if one is built at all.

Merkel said her government was increasing funds available for research this year and was committed to developing renewable energy sources. (Reporting by Sarah Marsh)


[Green Business]
WASHINGTON
Sat Jan 30, 2010 8:03pm EST
IMF working on plans for "green fund"

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund is working on proposals for a multibillion dollar "green fund" to help countries tap funds to deal with the effects of climate change, the head of the institution said on Saturday.

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that developing countries would need financial help to tackle climate change while rich nations have taken on higher debt in reaction to the global financial crisis.

Global talks on a new climate change pact have mostly looked to industrial powers to help finance efforts by developing countries to deal with climate change.

In remarks in Davos that were published on the IMF website, Strauss-Kahn said the world needed to "think outside the box and come up with innovative ways to provide the money."

He said the IMF would begin discussions with central banks and finance ministers on whether such a fund was possible.

Strauss-Kahn said resources for the fund, "which could climb to $100 billion a year," could be raised through an allocation to IMF member countries of IMF special drawing rights, or SDRs.

SDRs are international reserve assets and the fund's unit of account. They are disbursed in proportion to each member's IMF quota, or subscription, and can be exchanged for hard currency such as U.S. dollars, yen, euros or pounds.

Last year IMF member countries agreed to issue $250 billion worth of SDRs to boost global liquidity at a time countries' foreign exchange reserves were being depleted by the financial crisis,

(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Editing by Xavier Briand)


[Green Business]
Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO
Sun Jan 31, 2010 7:41am EST
Copenhagen climate deal gets low-key endorsement

OSLO (Reuters) - Nations accounting for most of the world's greenhouse gas emissions have restated their promises to fight climate change, meeting a Sunday deadline in a low-key endorsement of December's "Copenhagen Accord."

Experts say their promised curbs on greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 are too small so far to meet the accord's key goal of limiting global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times.

The U.N. Climate Change Secretariat plans to publish a list of submissions on Monday. That may put pressure on all capitals to keep their promises.

Countries accounting for at least two-thirds of emissions -- led by China, the United States and the European Union -- have all written in. Smaller emitters, from the Philippines to Mali, have also sent promises or asked to be associated with the deal.

The Secretariat says the January 31 deadline is flexible.

"Most of the industrialized countries' (promises) are in the 'inadequate' category," said Niklas Hoehne, director of energy and climate policy at climate consultancy Ecofys, which assesses how far national commitments will help limit climate change.

"The U.S. is not enough, the European Union is not enough. For the major developed countries it's still far behind what is expected, except for Japan and Norway," he said.

Some developing nations, such as Brazil or Mexico, were making relatively greater efforts, he said.

FLOODS, DROUGHTS AND WILDFIRES

The accord's goal of limiting warming to below 2 C -- meant to help limit floods, droughts, wildfires and rising seas -- is twinned with promises of $28 billion in aid for developing nations from 2010-12, rising to $100 billion a year from 2020.

Ecofys reckons that the promised curbs will set the world toward a 3.5 degrees Celsius rise in temperatures, not 2.

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP said that on current projections the world would exceed an estimated "carbon emissions budget" for the first half of this century by 2034, 16 years ahead of schedule.

The European Union plans to cut emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and 30 percent if others make deep cuts. The United States plans a cut of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, or 4 percent below 1990 levels.

"Carbon prices look set to remain relatively low until economic growth picks up or until a more ambitious target is adopted," Richard Gledhill, a climate expert at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said of the EU goal.

"This will continue to delay major capital investment in low carbon technology," he said in a statement.

The Copenhagen Accord, reached after a summit on December 18 in Denmark, was not adopted as a U.N. plan for shifting from fossil fuels after opposition by a handful of developing nations such as Venezuela and Sudan.

One possible complication is that some countries, including China and India, have written to the United Nations giving 2020 targets but without explicitly backing the Copenhagen Accord. The U.N. has asked all to take sides by January 31.

An Indian document sent to the U.N. Secretariat does not mention the accord, for instance, but says it is giving details of plans to 2020 "in view of the current debate under way in the international climate negotiations."

(Editing by Andrew Roche)


[Green Business]
NEW DELHI
Sun Jan 31, 2010 4:16am EST
India reiterates carbon goals for climate accord

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India has reiterated a goal of slowing the rise of its carbon emissions by 2020 as part of pledges due by Sunday under a "Copenhagen Accord" to fight climate change, an official statement said.

Many other nations have also reiterated existing goals for slowing global warming before a Sunday deadline for making commitments under the "Copenhagen Accord," which sets an overriding goal of limiting a rise in world temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F).

The statement said India will "endeavor" to reduce its carbon emission intensity by 20 to 25 percent by 2020 in comparison to the 2005 level.

Carbon emissions intensity refers to the amount of carbon dioxide emitted for each unit of gross domestic product.

The statement said India's actions will be legally non-binding and its carbon intensity cut target will not include emission from the agriculture sector.

Last week, China reiterated a voluntary domestic target to lower its carbon emissions intensity by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 from 2005 level while also stepping up the use of renewable energy and planting more trees.

The non-binding accord was described by many as a failure because it fell far short of the Copenhagen conference's original goal of a more ambitious commitment to prevent more heat waves, droughts and crop failures.

So the more top emitters such as China and India there are committing numbers to the accord, the better its chances of survival.

China, India, South Africa and Brazil met in the Indian capital on January 24 and expressed support for the "Copenhagen Accord," while urging donors to keep promises of aid.

(Reporting by Krittivas Mukherjee; Editing by David Fox)

news20100130nn

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 29 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/463600a
News
Mars rover Spirit (2003–10)
NASA commits robot explorer to her final resting place.
Katharine Sanderson

Spirit was born in 2003 to mission manager Mark Adler and Steven Squyres, a planetary scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. She was delivered at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and it was there that she spent her formative months being schooled in rovering. Later, she moved to a finishing school at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Her graduation was epic: a 490-million-kilometre flight to Mars, where she and her twin Opportunity would pursue their destinies as roving geologists.

Her adult life began in January 2004, with an airbag-cushioned landing in the Gusev crater in January 2004 on the opposite side of the planet from her twin. The aim: to find evidence of water, and of environments that might once have been conducive to life.

With three spectrometers, an abrasion tool and panoramic and close-up cameras on board, the young rover quickly gained confidence. Her geological mettle was proved when just 32 days into her Martian voyage she picked out a rock, named Adirondack, swept it clean and drilled into it, confirming that it was the volcanic rock basalt.

Before long, she got her driving licence. She began controlling her own movements using her hazard-avoidance camera, rather than only following instructions from her large team of Earth-based mentors.

She went on to use her wire brush to uncover different-coloured layers in a rock in the Gusev crater that suggested multiple exposures to water — leading one Earthly scientist to declare the find a "miracle".

By the time the initial mission of 90 sols (Martian days) was complete, Spirit had driven 600 metres, but that was only the beginning. Well beyond her appointed days, she continued to gather valuable scientific information about Mars, sometimes with unexpected help, often against all odds. Dust was a constant nuisance, covering her life-giving solar panels. But in 2005, a dust devil happened to sweep the panels clean, giving her an energy boost.

In March 2006, Spirit's right front wheel stopped working. But she struggled on over soft ground towards McCool Hill, in the Columbia Hills region, dragging the broken wheel — and had another lucky stroke. The broken wheel churned up the soft soil, exposing dirt that Spirit analysed to show was unexpectedly rich in silicates, which need water to form.

Each winter, Spirit had to bed down on a north-facing slope to make the most of the low winter sun to charge her solar panels. A favourite spot was Home Plate, a sunny plateau that provided her with not only a winter home, but also a place to explore. While wintering here in 2006, Spirit discovered a pair of iron-rich meteorites using her thermal-emission spectrometer. That same winter, in October, Spirit reached a milestone 1,000 sols on Mars and survived a technical hitch that support teams on Earth worried might be a Martian version of the millennium bug.

News reports back on Earth suggested that the rover's days were numbered, yet she constantly confounded any prophets of doom. But in late January 2009, Spirit's lucidity deteriorated. She had trouble moving around, couldn't identify the position of the Sun correctly, and her family on Earth had trouble understanding her. Cosmic rays were blamed.

In April 2009, the ailing rover chose to reboot her computer twice. Worried controllers on Earth encouraged Spirit to press on, but more trouble lay ahead.

In a location called Troy, Spirit unwittingly crunched through the surface of a sandpit, and became entrapped. In November 2009 engineers on Earth, who had been testing a replica rover in a sand pit, tried to help her get out of her sticky situation — but to no avail. Even though the rover, by now suffering another broken wheel, did manage to climb up a few centimetres, Spirit finally gave up trying on 26 January 2010.

Her odometer read 7,730 metres. She will continue to radio back observations — of the atmosphere, of the planet's rotation — from her stationary position for as long as possible.

Spirit leaves behind her sister Opportunity — who is still active and is on her way to peer into a crater called Concepcion — and an extended family at NASA.


[naturenews]
Published online 29 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.44
News
Ten billion dollars pledged for 'decade of vaccines'
Gates Foundation cash could save nearly nine million children.
Heidi Ledford

{{The Gates Foundation hopes to boost vaccine development and distribution.}
Bananastock}

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today promised to put $10 billion towards a 10-year effort to boost vaccination against infectious disease in developing countries. It is the foundation's largest commitment yet to the discovery, development and distribution of vaccines.

The announcement, made at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, comes as the GAVI alliance — another vaccine initiative supported in part by the Gates Foundation — celebrates its ten-year anniversary. GAVI has been credited with distributing vaccines to 257 million children and preventing 5 million deaths. The alliance has also been instrumental in bringing the world vaccination rate against hepatitis B up from about 15% in 1999 to nearly 70%, says Adel Mahmoud, a global health researcher at Princeton University in New Jersey. "This is very serious stuff," says Mahmoud. "GAVI's success with hepatitis B was tremendous."

According to a model developed at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, the new $10 billion commitment could save up to 7.6 million children by targeting viruses that cause diarrhoea and pneumonia. If the RTS,S vaccine against malaria, currently in clinical trials (see 'Malaria vaccine enters phase III clinical trials'), is introduced by 2014, 1.1 million other children could be saved.

The Gates Foundation has already dedicated $4.5 billion to vaccines but says that much more would be needed to immunize 90% of the world's children. "Part of this is a call to action," says Joe Cerrell, director of the foundation's Europe office in London. "We are trying to make sure that governments and others are doing all that they can to support more immunization coverage."

Improving vaccination against rotavirus — the leading cause of severe diarrhoea in infants and children — is one area that could benefit, notes Mahmoud. The rotavirus vaccine was shown to reduce disease by over 60% when introduced in South Africa and Malawi¹. But the vaccines, first licensed in 2006, are still relatively new. "The general feeling is: who is going to champion their introduction in the developing world?" says Mahmoud. "To this date there is no clear-cut plan. So if the Gates Foundation comes up with something very robust in this area, it will really make a difference."

References
1. Madhi, S. A. et al. N. Engl. J. Med. 362, 289– 298 (2010).

news20100130gdn1

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Climate change]
US pledges to cut federal government emissions by 28% by 2020
Barack Obama will also propose a tripling of government funding for new nuclear reactors to more than $54bn
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 January 2010 17.57 GMT Article history

Barack Obama used his presidential authority to help advance his climate change agenda today, announcing that the US federal government and agencies would cut their giant carbon footprints by 28% by 2020.

The announcement was held up by administration officials as evidence of Obama's commitment to his climate and energy agenda, which has run into opposition in Congress and from coal, oil and manufacturing groups.

The White House said the targets – which are set against 2008 emissions levels – would reduce America's greenhouse gas emissions by 80m metric tons by 2020, and save the government between $8bn (£5bn) and $11bn in energy costs.

Obama will also propose a tripling of government loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors to more than $54bn, an administration official said, a move sure to win over some Republican lawmakers who want more nuclear power to be part of climate change legislation.

The loan guarantees, which follow Obama's pledge in his State of the Union address to work to expand nuclear power production, will be announced as part of his budget proposal on Monday, the official said.

The federal goverment is the largest single user of fuel and electricity in the country and is responsible for emissions to match. Including the department of defence, it owns nearly 500,000 buildings, more than 600,000 vehicles, and it purchases $500bn in goods and services every year.

"As the largest energy consumer in the US, we have a responsibility to American citizens to reduce our energy use and become more efficient," said President Obama. "Our goal is to lower costs, reduce pollution, and shift Federal energy expenses away from oil and towards local, clean energy."

The White House ordered federal government departments last October to begin measuring their use of electricity and fuel, and make energy savings.

Nancy Sutley, the chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the effort was an important show of leadership. "It shows the commitment of federal government to lead by example and to take on its responsibility to reduce pollution and help stimulate clean energy economy," she said.

The cuts will come from across 35 government agencies and departments. The Treasury department pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 33%. The department of Defence – which operates 300,000 of those government buildings – pledged to cut its emissions by 34%. However, that effort excludes combat operations, and would cover just 40% of DoD greenhouse gas emissions.

Sutley said government departments across the country were already taking action, installing solar panels and wind turbines. The National Renewable Energy Labs in Denver was aiming to reduce energy use of its data centre by 65%.

Today's announcement covers only direct emissions from electricity in government office buildings and military installations, and petrol for government cars. Departments are to report back in 2010 about other potential areas of energy savings, including workers' commutes. The order also does not cover government contractors, officials said.

The initiative comes at a time when the Obama administration is determined to demonstrate its commitment to action on climate change. Obama in his State of the Union address pledged to work to help build Republican support for climate change proposals now under discussion in the Senate. But most observers think getting a climate bill through Congress in 2010 still remains a long shot.


[Environment > Climate change]
Cost of UK flood protection doubles to £1bn a year
Latest data from the Environment Agency shows that more than half a million UK homes are at 'significant' risk of flooding
Alok Jha, green technology correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 January 2010 17.30 GMT Article history

More than half a million homes are at "significant" risk of flooding and the cost of protecting them will double to £1bn a year by 2035, according to the latest data from the Environment Agency (EA).

The rising costs will be incurred from the impacts of climate change that will take effect in the coming decades, meaning the risks to homes and communities will increase unless defences are improved.

The costs of dealing with floods can run into the billions - the devastating floods of summer 2007 cost a total of £3.2bn according to the EA, including more than £2bn in costs to homeowners and businesses as well as 400,000 of lost school days. The EA estimates that 5 million people live and work in the 2.4m properties in England that are at some risk of flooding and, at present, around £570m is spent every year building and maintaining the defences required for them. Half a million of those properties are in highest risk band, which means they are at risk of flooding due to extreme weather expected once every 75 years.

Climate scientists predict that, by the 2080s, sea levels could be around 70cm higher around the southern parts of the UK, making serious storm surges and floods more frequent. Using predictions from the UK Climate Impacts Programme, the EA estimates that keeping all 2.4m at-risk homes at the existing level of flood risk for the next 25 years will cost £1bn per year by 2035. "Assuming that no new properties are adding to that risk, then that investment is to maintain the existing infrastructure and to invest to make sure it isn't worsened, taking into account the uncertainties of climate change," said Robert Runcie, the EA's director of flood and coastal risk management.

"What we know from the science of climate change is that weather patterns are going to become more extreme. The risk is going to get greater and we need to up our game in response to that," said Chris Smith, the EA chairman, in an evidence session to the House of Commons environmental audit committee (EAC) last week.

"The case for flood defence is very strong. The cost benefit of any flood defence work that we do, the benefit is at least five times the cost. The average cost to a home of being flooded is £20,000 to £30,000. The average cost to a home of being burgled is about £1000. So the damage that flooding does in terms of its impact on people's livelihoods is huge."

But getting this money out of government has proved difficult. "The Treasury have crawled all over our figures and have agreed that our working is absolutely in order and have agreed with the conclusions that we have reached," said Smith. "What they have not done, of course, is commit the actual figures and that is unlikely to happen this side of an election or, I suspect, the other."

An Treasury spokeswoman said:"The government will make decisions about the allocation of expenditure, including the allocation for flood risk management, at the next spending review." She pointed out that spending on on flood and coastal erosion risk management had increased in recent years, from £394m in 2002-03 to £564m in 2005-06.

Not spending the money could have even bigger consequences. The EA estimates that the annual cost of damage to residential and commercial property from flooding in England could rise from £2.5bn to £4bn by 2035 without the extra cash for flood defences. Investing the money would save England some £180bn over the next 100 years.

"Even at a time of unprecedented financial pressure, this is something that has to be given a priority," said EAC chair and Conservative MP Tim Yeo. "We could be more creative about getting private sector investment in as well. Where you've got new developments taking place, it's quite legitimate in my view for the planning authority to say, look, although what we're going to ask for [in flood defences] is not directly related to the houses or supermarket you're putting up there, it is of concern to this community and we do need to accelerate investment in flood-prevention measures so we want to supplement what the taxpayer is being asked for with developer contributions."

Runcie said that flood management in future would depend on careful planning and preventing the construction of new buildings on flood plains. "One of the things that's made a huge difference on that is a change to the planning laws where, only last year, we became a formal consultee. In the last 12 months, of the thousands of applications for major developments that have been proposed, only 4% went against our recommendations."

news20100130gdn2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Travel > Andalucia]
Andalucía, Spain's virgin territory
If you want to dip into the 'real' Spain, head to the olive groves of Andalucía's hidden Sierras Subbéticas
Isabel Choat
The Guardian, Saturday 30 January 2010 Article history

Custodio pulled out a roll of white paper cloth, cut it to fit the table and plonked four tumblers, a pile of cutlery and bread and olives on top. "The food's coming," he told us, before disappearing back into the kitchen. Seconds later, his wife Dolores arrived bearing platters of salad and local cheese. Next up a chicken broth – the sort of warming soup you crave when poorly – followed by a pork feast: chorizo, morcilla (Spanish black pudding) and chuletas (pork chops) with a side order of fried potatoes. We'd told Tim, the owner of our guesthouse, that we wanted to eat somewhere authentic. And we got it at Dolores' Place.

The husband and wife team run a pig farm in the tiny Andalucian village of Fuente Alhama, rearing and butchering the animals themselves. Everything on our plate was made by them. Their "restaurant" – a few tables in their front room, the "menu" whatever Dolores rustles up that day – generates extra cash, mostly from local labourers grateful for a home-cooked meal at lunchtime, and the occasional tourist blown-in.

As we tackled the sausage mountain, Custodio entertained us with tales of his bullfighting days – his moment of triumph, taking part in a fight in Madrid. He insisted on fetching the original poster to prove it. It looked suspiciously new for a 30-year-old advert, but it seemed rude to question his story.

Custodio held court while Dolores sat by the open fire preparing a giant bowl of olives for marinading. Far more than pork products, this inland enclave of Andalucía, the Sierras Subbéticas, is known for its olive oil. Within the local denominación de origen of Priego de Córdoba there are 30,000 hectares of olive groves, 7,000 farms, nine mills, 14 commercial plants and four co-operatives, producing some of the finest olive oil, not just in Spain, but in the world. Never heard of it? That's because Priego de Córdoba has the product, but not necessarily the marketing nous needed to promote it.

It's a situation that British hotelier, Tim Murray-Walker, hopes will change over time; he sees potential in the area, not just for its oil, but for its undiscovered mountain trails, ideal for hiking and biking, its pretty whitewashed villages. So much so that, with his wife Claire, he has spent four years renovating a remote, 150-year-old cortijo, which has just opened as Casa Olea. Now a pristine, eco-friendly guesthouse with solar panels and a biomass boiler that runs on waste olive pellets, it has six simple white rooms with splashes of colour provided by Guatemalan ponchos and other treasures collected on their travels.

Equidistant between Granada and Córdoba, it stands in splendid isolation, surrounded by olive groves in every direction. I stayed there in December when the nighttime temperature can fall below zero, but days are often T-shirt warm, the sky brilliant blue – the perfect conditions for walking.

Tim and Claire have mapped out several routes in the surrounding hills. This area was the frontier of Al-Andalus, which explains the medieval watchtowers dotted about the countryside – they once served as Moorish lookout posts. We followed one of Tim's walks, passing locals harvesting olives, and up to one of the towers. From there, regimented groves fanned out as far as the eye could see, with no interruption bar the occasional crumbling tower or Roman ruin.

Now, the Subbética is at the frontier of a different kind: tourism. The Costa de la Luz, Almeria, the Alpujarras, Granada . . . all have been infiltrated by holidaymakers and expats to varying degrees. But the Subbética remains an almost lost world of authentic Spain. If you want beaches and bars, forget it. If you want to immerse yourself in a Spain that has barely changed in centuries, Casa Olea is the perfect base.

When we weren't walking, we took day trips to the pretty town of Priego de Córdoba, with its tree-filled square and cobbled walkway snaking round the town, providing more views of . . . you've guessed it, olive groves. We stopped for lunch at La Fuente in the deserted village of Zagrilla which, like every restaurant in the area, sold the local green nectar. We picked up two bottles of extra virgin for €6 each. On our last day we visited Córdoba itself – in summer it's an oven thronging with tourists, in December we had its iconic sight, the magnificent Mezquita, almost to ourselves. Started in the 7th century and once Islam's grandest mosque, the staggering interior is a forest (23,000sq metres to be precise) of columns, its soaring red and white striped arches enough to make you dizzy.

But the most jaw-dropping thing about it is the audacious baroque cathedral bang in the middle of the mosque. Dripping in gold, this is religious one-upmanship on the grandest scale. It should never have been built – even Fernando III, who authorised its conversion from mosque to cathedral in the 13th century, said, on seeing it: "You have built what you and others might have built anywhere, but you have destroyed something that was unique to the world." Its intrusive presence is disturbing, but it's also part of what makes the Mezquita the most extraordinary building I've ever visited.

Back at Casa Olea, our evenings were quiet and cosy: healthy suppers cooked by Claire, hot chocolate by the open fire. In summer, I imagine Casa Olea feels very different with the doors thrown open to those views and wine served on the terrace. One evening we had a tasting, trying every type of oil from the finest to the undrinkable dregs made from the damaged olives. We bought another bottle of extra virgin.

The only downside of the trip was becoming an olive oil snob. Now, if people come round and ask why we have so many bottles, I sound like an M&S ad: "It's not just any old oil, this is Priego de Córdoba's finest. . ."
> B&B at Casa Olea from €79 (+34 696 748 209). Ryanair flies to Granada from Stansted and Liverpool. A week's car hire with Europcar (0871 384 1089) picking up from Granada airport costs from £145.

news20100130reut1

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Vithoon Amorn
BANGKOK
Fri Jan 29, 2010 6:33am EST
GM to spend $455 million on Thai expansion

BANGKOK (Reuters) - General Motors Corp announced plans on Friday to spend 15 billion baht ($455 million) in Thailand over the next two years, reviving plans for a new diesel-engine plant and retooling existing production lines.

The expansion at its existing plant in Thailand's Rayong Province, a region dubbed "the Detroit of Asia" for its large concentration of global carmakers, will be financed by 13.5 billion baht local syndicated loan, GM executives said.

The rest will be provided through injection of equity by the Detroit automaker to its wholly owned Thai unit,

Bangkok Bank, Siam Commercial Bank and Tisco Bank signed contracts pledging to provide GM (Thailand) Ltd the credit line.

GM executives said the company would spend $150 million building a diesel-engine plant with a 106,000-unit annual capacity and another $330 million retooling the plant's machinery.

"After the retooling process needed for our next generation pick-up trucks and special utility vehicles, our annual capacity would be around 120,000 units," Steve Carlisle, GM chief executive for South East Asia, said.

GM had shelved the diesel engine project in late 2008 after the global financial crisis forced its Detroit head office to seek a U.S. government bailout.

With the downturn of the auto industry in 2008 and 2009, GM's Thai car and truck output plunged to around 40,000 units in 2009 from 104,000 a year earlier.

Industry data showed GM sold 15,111 vehicles in Thailand in 2009, down from 22,204 in 2008. GM executives said on Friday they expected the recovering auto sector would help raise its output to about 60,000 units this year, of which about 60-70 percent are to be exported.

Tim Lee, Shanghai-based president of GM operations outside the United States and the European Union, told Reuters his firm and its Chinese joint venture partners expected to sell over two million vehicles in China this year, up from 1.83 million in 2009.

"China's recent decision to curb bank loans has not yet affected our business and we are prepared to participate in the industry's further growth in this big market," Lee said.

China is the world biggest auto market with total vehicle sales of 13.6 million units in 2009.

(Editing by Jason Szep)


[Green Business]
Laura Isensee
LOS ANGELES
Fri Jan 29, 2010 12:10pm EST
OriginOil CEO expects revenue in 2011

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - U.S. algae biofuel start-up OriginOil expects to start generating revenue in 2011 as the renewable energy firm starts to lease devices to extract oil from algae for fuel and other products, its chief executive said on Thursday.

Chief Executive Riggs Eckelberry said the company may see some revenue from services this year but said the firm is not rushing to produce revenue and has not disclosed when it expects to turn a profit.

"There's a rush to getting it right," Eckelberry said, referring to finding an affordable way to convert algae to fuel on a commercial scale.

OriginOil, which trades on the over-the-counter bulletin board, is among a slew of algae-to-energy companies working to replace traditional fossil fuel with fuel made from lowly pond scum.

The emerging sector has drawn attention from oil giants Exxon Mobil Corp, Chevron Corp and BP Plc as well as the U.S. military and investors.

Yet the fledgling industry faces a series of hurdles to compete with traditional fossil fuels -- from finding the best strain of pond scum to developing efficient ways to harvest oil.

At OriginOil's warehouse in Los Angeles where 1,200 gallons of algae brew in vats, Eckelberry said the technology issues are largely resolved. What's needed, he said, is for different players to combine their methods so that the industry can take off.

"It's not going to be one company," Eckelberry said. "The Internet showed us that at the end of the day, it's this cacophony of all these technologies."

The executive sees OriginOil's place in the industry as an Intel -- selling or licensing its black boxes that emit electromagnetic pulses, zapping algae so that the oil, water and biomass separate and making the harvest faster and more energy-efficient.

The company has developed other components, such as bioreactors, to optimize the entire process of producing algae-based biofuel. Eckelberry said the components are designed to work with different types of algae.

"We want to be the Switzerland of strains," he added.

Shares of OriginOil ended trade on Thursday at 28 cents each, against a 12-month high of 48 cents and a low of 22 cents.

(Editing by Eileen O'Grady, Gary Hill)


[Green Business]
Jeffrey Jones
CALGARY, Alberta
Fri Jan 29, 2010 3:24pm EST
Noise edict could kill Mackenzie pipeline: Imperial

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - A panel's recommendation to enforce strict noise limits at a bird sanctuary has the potential to shut down development of the C$16.2 billion ($15.1 billion) Mackenzie pipeline in Canada's Arctic, the project's backers said.

The contention is among several by Imperial Oil Ltd and its Mackenzie partners in written responses to proposals made by the Joint Review Panel, which assessed the massive project's environmental and socioeconomic impacts in a report issued at the end of last year.

Canada's National Energy Board will use the report, and responses to it, in deciding whether to approve the Mackenzie project, which has been plagued with delays and rising costs. It has planned final arguments for April.

The JRP said the proponents should be required to design any facilities within the Kendall Island Bird Sanctuary, located on the northern end of the Mackenzie Delta in the Northwest Territories, to keep noise levels below 50 decibels at 300 meters (984 feet) from the fence line.

Imperial said such a measure has so far proved impossible, and is not needed to protect birds in the sanctuary from adverse effects. Enforcing it could prevent development of two of the natural gas fields that will feed to pipeline.

"To make this a condition for any approvals for facilities in the Kendall Island Bird Sanctuary would have the potential effect of preventing development of the Taglu and Niglintgak anchor fields, and therefore, the entire Mackenzie gas project," Imperial said.

In two letters of response, the company urged regulators to reject several of the JRP's recommendations.

The panel gave its support to the line, which would run 1,220 km (760 miles) through the territory, saying it would bring benefits to Canada's North if 176 recommendations are followed.

They include a diverse range of measures covering such things as analysis of the impact of climate change on facilities buried in permafrost, monitoring grizzly bear dens and assessing if alcohol and drug abuse programs in the sparsely populated region are adequate.

Fewer than half are aimed at the pipeline's backers. The rest target the federal and territorial governments as well as other regulators.

"Our responses were directed at measures that we believed would have the net effect of increasing regulatory complexity or might affect regulatory timing, etcetera," Imperial spokesman Pius Rolheiser said.

"Then we had a number of comments on specific recommendations pertaining to specific aspects of the project, including the one dealing with noise levels in the Kendall Island Bird Sanctuary."

The Joint Review Panel urged the NEB to refrain from granting approvals for future applications for projects or activities until some actions are completed. This should be rejected, Imperial said, arguing that such applications should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

Another recommendation, that proponents complete certain tasks prior to any construction, would be unwieldy because work takes place at different locations over four years.

"It is not practical to expect that all plans, manuals and specifications for all construction activities at all locations will be made available before the first right-of-way or site preparation activity begins," the company wrote.

Imperial said many JRP recommendations are "far-reaching and apply to activities that are not associated with the Mackenzie Gas Project."

It did not address them directly, but said the governments should avoid adopting any that have the potential to discourage development in Canada's North.

Imperial's partners in the project are Royal Dutch Shell Plc, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil Corp and Aboriginal Pipeline Group.

($1=$1.07 Canadian)

(Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson; editing by Rob Wilson)

news20100130reut2

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Svetlana Kovalyova
MILAN
Fri Jan 29, 2010 2:20pm EST
Italy solar industry wants improved incentive plan

MILAN (Reuters) - Italian government should improve its new incentive plan for booming solar sector including tariff cuts and cap on subsidized capacity to ensure investment flow and steady industry growth, an sector body head said on Friday.

The government, which works on a new incentive plan as the current one is due to expire this year, has said it would cut incentives to ease the budget burden. It is expected to present the new scheme in mid-February.

Cuts in a key feed-in tariff proposed by the government for 2011 and the following 2 years are sharper than the industry has counted on and a cap on new capacity to be covered by incentives is too tight, Assosolare Chairman Gianni Chianetta said.

One of the main sticking points is an up to 18 percent cut in the feed-in tariff for large-scale photovoltaic installations -- which turn sunlight into power -- in 2011 included in the latest draft of a government decree circulating in the industry.

Assosolare, which represents about 70 companies active in the photovoltaic sector in Italy with a total turnover of about 1.6 billion euros in 2008, and other renewable energy bodies would accept a 14 percent cut but not more, Chianetta said.

"We agree that there should be a reduction (in incentives) but ... 14 percent is a maximum cut which can be accepted," he told Reuters in a telephone interview.

A 6 percent average annual cut seen by the government from 2012 in an expected three-year plan is also sharper than a 4 percent cut proposed by the industry and would bring returns on investment bellow a 10 percent floor, Chianetta said.

"Returns on investment should not be lower than 10 percent. Otherwise it would be more interesting to make an investment in real estate," he said.

Returns on investment come at about 8-12 percent in Italy with greater yields seen in the sun-lit southern regions, according to several industry sources.

Investors, from families to sports car maker Ferrari and banks, have piled into Italian photovoltaic (PV) sector since 2007 when the current incentives, seen among the most generous in Europe, were launched.

The scheme expires when the total PV capacity covered by incentives reaches 1,200 megawatts.

The government plans to put a 3,000 MW cap on the new subsidized capacity in 2011-2013 is too stringent for the rapidly growing industry which counted on a 4,000 MW limit, Chianetta said.

Italy's total installed PV capacity is expected to exceed 900 MW in 2009 and hit the 1,200 MW cap in July, according to the state energy management body GSE.

Chianetta said the government would improve the incentive package in the final talk with the industry representatives expected in the next few days.


[Green Business]
DAVOS, Switzerland
Sat Jan 30, 2010 6:57am EST
Novozymes to launch ethanol product in Q1: CEO

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Danish biotech company Novozymes would launch in the first quarter this year a new enzyme to produce transport fuel from agricultural waste, its chief executive Steen Riisgaard told Reuters on Saturday.

That was the company's firmest guidance yet on the timing of the release of the new product, called Cellic, said Riisgaard.

Novozymes has a 47 percent market share in the global enzyme industry, for use for example in the food and washing products industry, as well as bio-ethanol.

U.S. ethanol producer POET has trialed the Novozymes enzyme on a limited basis for a couple of months, but following the launch it would be available generally on a commercial basis.

"It's going to be ready in commercial quantities. You have to be able to do it at a big scale. We are building a facility at a new factory in Nebraska just for this purpose," Riisgaard said.

He said the company could show that its new product would be competitive with corn-based ethanol and gasoline.

"We can demonstrate ... a total cost including the capital cost for building a factory will be in the order of 225 cents (per gallon). In the U.S. there is a subsidy of 101 cents which makes it certainly competitive with corn-based, where the subsidy is only 46 cents.

"It's going to be a good business ... if they (ethanol producers) can rely on the continuation of the subsidy," he said.

He expected a widespread commercialization of cellulosic ethanol production by 2013, "in the best case."

Riisgaard was positive about demand from China, where he said senior executives at oil company Sinopec had told him they would be credited for increasing efficiency and using low-carbon fuels.

The purpose of alternative transport fuels is to cut dependence on imported oil and cut carbon emissions compared with burning fossil fuels.

Ethanol derived from corn has faced criticism for increasing pressure on agricultural land, stoking food prices, leading to a hunt for potent enzymes which can break down tough fibers in wood chips or agricultural waste - called cellulosic ethanol.

Novozymes made sales of about 1.2 billion euros ($1.69 billion) last year, and was retaining its long-term target to grow 10 percent per year, said Riisgaard. It expected 2 to 6 percent growth this year, in local currencies, following 2 percent growth in 2009.

"Listening to many of the economists here I think we have reasons to be cautious," he said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

(Reporting by Gerard Wynn, Editing by Hans Peters)


[Green Business]
Gerard Wynn
DAVOS, Switzerland
Fri Jan 29, 2010 2:16pm EST
World may not do climate deal this year

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Global climate talks may have to continue into 2011 after failing last month to agree on a Kyoto successor, the U.N.'s climate chief and Denmark's new climate minister told Reuters on Friday.

The world failed to commit in Copenhagen last month to succeed or extend the existing Kyoto Protocol from 2013. The U.N.'s top climate official, Yvo de Boer, could not guarantee a deal in Mexico, the next scheduled ministerial meeting.

A lack of trust and the economic crisis complicated prospects for a deal in Mexico in December, added President Felipe Calderon, the prospective host of those talks.

"Whether we can achieve that in Mexico or need a bit more time remains to be seen and will become clearer in the course of the year," de Boer said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, where executives said they would invest in low-carbon technologies regardless of a global climate deal.

"It's very difficult to pin down. One of the lessons from Copenhagen was don't rush it, take the time you need to get full engagement of all countries and make sure people are confident about what is being agreed."

India's top climate envoy Shyam Saran said on Thursday that that the world would "probably not" agree an ambitious deal this year unless the global economy improved.

Deadlock last month centered on how far big emerging economies should follow the industrialized world and enforce binding actions to fight climate change.

Denmark holds the presidency of the U.N. process until the Cancun meeting. Its new climate minister, Lykke Friis, agreed it was too soon to be sure of success in Mexico.

"The ultimate goal is to reach a legally binding deal but it's too early to say if it will be done in Mexico. No-one has the complete game plan to get to Cancun, that's what we're trying to find out now."

Denmark still did not know how much each industrialized country would contribute of about $30 billion to help developing nations fight climate change from 2010-2012, as agreed in the final "Copenhagen Accord," she added.

Mexico would do their best, said Calderon.

"My perception is that the lack of consensus is related to the economic problems in each nation, because there are economic costs associated with the task to tackle climate change.

"We want in Cancun a robust, comprehensive and substantial agreement," by all 193 signatories of the U.N.'s climate convention, he said.

"We need to try to learn from our mistakes ... we need to return trust and confidence between the parties."

The U.N.'s de Boer said countries must arrange additional meetings this year, in addition to the two already timetabled in Bonn in June, and then in Mexico if they wanted agreement.

De Boer said he was "very happy" to receive confirmation yesterday from the United States that it had beaten a January 31 deadline to submit formally its planned carbon cuts, to be written into the non-binding Copenhagen Accord.

For a factbox of all pledges submitted so far to the United Nations, double-click here -- [ID:nLDE60S0UY]

(Reporting by Gerard Wynn, Editing by Mike Peacock)

news20100130reut3

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
SANAA
Sat Jan 30, 2010 6:06am EST
Al Qaeda man captured wearing bomb belt in Yemen

SANAA (Reuters) - Yemeni forces on Saturday captured an al Qaeda militant wearing an explosive belt who was planning a suicide attack on "economic facilities," a government official said.

The man was detained while driving a motorbike in the Khals area in the Hadramaut region, the Ministry of Interior official said in a statement sent to Reuters. He was named as Saleh Abdul-Habib Saleh Shawash.

"The primary interrogation of this terrorist (revealed) he was planning a suicide attack against economic facilities in Hadramaut ... the interrogation is ongoing to reveal more information about this and to see who else might be involved in the plan," the source said.

Yemen has gained a reputation as a haven and a training and recruiting center for al Qaeda militants since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

Authorities stepped up operations against the group after its Yemeni wing said it was behind an attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner on December 25.

Yemen is also fighting a war with Shi'ite rebels in northern regions bordering Saudi Arabia and facing simmering separatist sentiment in the south.

The Shi'ite rebels, known as Houthis, made a truce offer last week and said they had withdrawn from all Saudi territory.

Yemen said on Saturday that the Houthis' claim to have left Saudi territory was "a new attempt to evade, lie and deceive."

The rebels said on Friday that Saudi air and artillery attacks had continued despite the truce offer.

(Reporting by Mohamed Sudam; editing by Andrew Roche)


[Green Business]
Dominic Evans and Lisa Jucca
DAVOS
Sat Jan 30, 2010 6:23am EST
Bankers, regulators hold constructive talks

DAVOS (Reuters) - Bankers and policymakers held constructive talks on Saturday about how to reform the financial system and prevent future crises, drawing a line under weeks of recrimination and political uproar over reining in bank excesses.

The closed-door informal meeting, held on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, reached no firm conclusions or specific proposals but marked an incremental step forward, participants said.

Duncan Niederauer, chief executive of the New York Stock Exchange, said there had been "positive discussions and practical suggestions."

Britain urged leading U.S. and European banks, policymakers and regulators to move quickly on areas of accord. British finance minister Alistair Darling told Reuters there was agreement on the need to increase capital and so-called living wills, which would allow a quick wind-down of a failed bank.

"What has changed is there is an acceptance on the part of banks that they need to make changes and they need to make changes quickly," Darling said in an interview.

"They have moved from a position of almost resenting public interference to one accepting the need to put their house in order."

Bankers attending the meeting said there was no agreement on a global bank levy to pay for bailouts, contrary to a weekend press report.

That was only "one of a number of ideas," Darling said.

One top banker who took part in the discussions also confirmed talks had broached the creation of a global "resolution fund" to enable the system to absorb the shock of a bank failure, but said this was an existing proposal and was not the focus of Saturday's discussions.

"The purpose was not to reach a specific agreement, it was to discuss a range of issues," the head of Britain's Financial Services Authority, Adair Turner, said after the talks.

Brian Moynihan, Chief Executive of Bank of America, described the talks as "robust" as he emerged from a room in which journalists could glimpse white boards covered in writing headlined "Capital Requirements," "International Regulatory Cooperation" and "Risk Assessment."

Saturday's talks follow behind-the-scenes discussions between leading European and U.S. banks at Davos, at which they failed to reach agreement on how to fight back against a global push for tougher financial regulation.

(Additional reporting by Clara Ferreira-Marques and Martin Howell, editing by Stella Dawson)


[Green Business]
Sat Jan 30, 2010 6:28am EST

DAVOS-Novozymes to launch ethanol product in Q1-CEO

* Enzyme to produce transport fuel from agricultural waste

* Says enzyme makes cellulosic ethanol competitive with corn

* Commerical ethanol roll-out not expected before 2013

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Danish biotech company Novozymes would launch in the first quarter this year a new enzyme to produce transport fuel from agricultural waste, its chief executive Steen Riisgaard told Reuters on Saturday.

That was the company's firmest guidance yet on the timing of the release of the new product, called Cellic, said Riisgaard.

Novozymes has a 47 percent market share in the global enzyme industry, for use for example in the food and washing products industry, as well as bio-ethanol.

U.S. ethanol producer POET has trialled the Novozymes enzyme on a limited basis for a couple of months, but following the launch it would be available generally on a commercial basis.

"It's going to be ready in commercial quantities. You have to be able to do it at a big scale. We are building a facility at a new factory in Nebraska just for this purpose," Riisgaard said.

He said the company could show that its new product would be competitive with corn-based ethanol and gasoline.

"We can demonstrate ... a total cost including the capital cost for building a factory will be in the order of 225 cents (per gallon). In the U.S. there is a subsidy of 101 cents which makes it certainly competitive with corn-based, where the subsidy is only 46 cents.

"It's going to be a good business ... if they (ethanol producers) can rely on the continuation of the subsidy," he said.

He expected a widespread commercialisation of cellulosic ethanol production by 2013, "in the best case".

Riisgaard was positive about demand from China, where he said senior executives at oil company Sinopec had told him they would be credited for increasing efficiency and using low-carbon fuels.

The purpose of alternative transport fuels is to cut dependence on imported oil and cut carbon emissions compared with burning fossil fuels.

Ethanol derived from corn has faced criticism for increasing pressure on agricultural land, stoking food prices, leading to a hunt for potent enzymes which can break down tough fibres in wood chips or agricultural waste - called cellulosic ethanol.

Novozymes made sales of about 1.2 billion euros ($1.69 billion) last year, and was retaining its long-term target to grow 10 percent per year, said Riisgaard. It expected 2 to 6 percent growth this year, in local currencies, following 2 percent growth in 2009.

"Listening to many of the economists here I think we have reasons to be cautious," he said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

(Reporting by Gerard Wynn, Editing by Hans Peters)

news20100129gdn1

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Climate change]
Obama sees the positives as US gives formal notice on greenhouse gases
State department climate change envoy Todd Stern writes to UN to formally promise to reduce emissions by 17% by 2020
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 January 2010 02.51 GMT Article history

America embraced the accord reached at the Copenhagen climate summit yesterday by formally giving notice to the United Nations that it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The announcement was the second piece of encouraging news from the US in 24 hourson the prospect of reaching a global deal on climate change.

In his state of the union address on Wednesday, Barack Obama promised to keep pushing on his energy and climate change agenda. The intervention could boost the slim prospects of getting Congress to act on climate change - which is widely seen as a precondition for a global deal.

In his letter to the UN, the state department climate change envoy, Todd Stern, said that America could cut carbon emissions by 17% from 2005 levels by 2020.

However, he said, the commitment was contingent on Congress passing climate change legislation.

The letter reaffirms the promise Obama made to the summit last month to cutUS emissions and work for a global climate deal. It says the 2020 commitment was a first step towards cutting America's global warming pollution by 42% in 2030, and by more than 80% by the middle of the century.

"The US submission reflects President Obama's continued commitment to meeting the climate change and clean energy challenge through robust domestic and international action that will strengthen our economy, enhance our national security and protect our environment," Stern wrote.

He said America was acting on the assumption that other countries which signed the accord would take similar action.

"The United States is committed to working with our partners around the world to make the accord operational and to continue the effort to build a strong, effective, science-based, global regime to combat the profound threat of climate change," Stern wrote.

Under the slight, 12-paragraph, accord reached at Copenhagen, industrialised countries and the rapidly emerging economies like India and China were expected to offer formal notification of their plans to act on emissions by January 31.

However, the UN has since indicated that deadline is somewhat elastic, and there are fears that the momentum in the run-up to Copenhagen has fizzled away.

Obama offered some sense of movement in his speech, refusing to back down on climate agenda despite running into opposition from Republicans, as well as Democrats from oil and coal states, and the industrial heartland.

He told Congress he would carry on. "I know there have been questions about whether we can afford such changes in a tough economy, and I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change," he said. "But even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future. "

Obama's new vision for an energy and climate bill, spelled out on Wednesday, do not necessarily align with those of environmental groups or the liberal wing of his own Democratic party. He called for opening up new areas for offshore drilling and building more nuclear power plants.

But his willingness to recommit his administration to the energy agenda could boost the slim prospects of getting a climate change bill out of the Senate this year.

Democrat John Kerry and Republican Lindsey Graham have been lobbying hard among Republicans and conservative Democrats - as well as business leaders - to try and craft a compromise bill.

Obama, in his support for nuclear power and offshore drilling, hit on some of the components Kerry and Graham have been discussing. But several Senators told reporters they still thought it unlikely the Senate would take up energy and climate before the end of 2010.


[Environment > Hacked climate science emails]
University in hacked climate change emails row broke FOI rules
> Too late to take action, says deputy commissioner
> University of East Anglia 'will act as appropriate'
James Randerson
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 27 January 2010 22.26 GMT Article history

The University of East Anglia flouted Freedom of Information regulations in its handling of requests for data from climate sceptics, according to the government body that administers the act.

In a statement, the deputy information commissioner Graham Smith said emails between scientists at the university's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) that were hacked and placed on the internet in November revealed that FOI requests were "not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation".

Some of the hacked emails reveal scientists encouraging their colleagues to delete emails, apparently to prevent them from being revealed to people making FOI requests. Such a breach of the act could carry an unlimited fine, but Smith said no action could be taken against the university because the specific request they had looked at happened in May 2008, well outside the six-month limit for such prosecutions under the act.

The hacked emails have created an international argument that has fuelled climate scepticism and led to questions about the operation of the UN's climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The circumstances surrounding the hacking and the actions of the scientists are the subject of an independent inquiry commissioned by the university and headed by Sir Muir Russell, formerly a civil servant and principal and vice chancellor of Glasgow University.

The pronouncement by the Information Commissioner's Office is likely to carry significant weight with the inquiry. The illegal hack is separately also being investigated by Norfolk police.

"I think that is an extremely serious charge," said Phil Willis, the Liberal Democrat MP who chairs the parliamentary science and technology select committee, which is conducting its own inquiry. He said that Smith's statement would be investigated by both the select committee and Russell's inquiry. "I don't think you can have the inquiry unless you have all the issues relating to it out in the open."

Willis said it would be wrong if there could be no legal sanction had the FOI act been breached. "Given the seriousness of this issue, the fact that it has caused global consternation, and has given ammunition to the climate sceptics – to have such a serious breach and for there to be no recourse in law requires urgent attention by the government."

He urged the university to be open with the data that was being requested. "If there has been a breach in this situation then the most honourable thing for the university to do would be to honour the request in its totality with all speed," said Willis.

Smith's statement refers to an FOI request from a retired engineer and climate sceptic in Northampton called David Holland. The CRU had been bombarded with similar requests for data, and the hacked emails between scientists suggest they were extremely frustrated with having to deal with them.

In response to the request, Dr Caspar Ammann, a scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, wrote back to three scientists, including the CRU's director, Dr Phil Jones: "Oh MAN! Will this crap ever end??"

In his statement, Smith said that Holland's request was not dealt with correctly by the university. "The emails which are now public reveal that Mr Holland's requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation. Section 77 of the Freedom of Information Act makes it an offence for public authorities to act so as to prevent intentionally the disclosure of requested information."

But he added that it was now too late to take action because the legislation requires that sanctions are imposed within six months of the offence. "The ICO is gathering evidence from this and other time-barred cases to support the case for a change in the law. It is important to note that the ICO enforces the law as it stands – we do not make it."

He said he would be advising UEA on its legal obligations. "We will also be studying the investigation reports [by Sir Muir Russell and Norfolk police], and we will then consider what regulatory action, if any, should then be taken under the Data Protection Act."

Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham research institute on climate Change and the environment at the London School of Economics, said: "I think that anybody reading the emails that have been posted online will have concluded that some of those showed an intention to avoid complying with the FOI. I always thought that those emails were the most damning.

"I think this is quite damaging. It remains to be seen why these requests were not handled properly. I think regardless of any action by the information commissioner, the university should clearly take appropriate action in response to this."

A spokesperson for the University of East Anglia said that it was not aware of Smith's statement. "The way Freedom of Information requests have been handled is one of the main areas being explored by Sir Muir Russell's independent review. We have already made clear that the findings of the review will be made public and that we will act as appropriate on its recommendations," she said.

news20100129gdn2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Business > Davos]
Davos: Funding switch threatens aid to developing world, campaigner warns
Larry Elliott in Davos
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 January 2010 15.58 GMT Article history

Rich countries are raiding their aid budgets to bankroll a new global fund to help poor countries adapt to climate change, one of the world's leading development campaign groups warned today.

Jamie Drummond, executive director of the One group co-founded by the rock stars Bono and Bob Geldof, said the west was being "dishonest" about the $30bn (£18bn) of fast-track finance proposed in Copenhagen last month to persuade developing countries to agree a deal on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Drummond said the proposal to spend $10bn a year over the next three years involved no additional money, but was instead being diverted from existing budgets.

The impact, he said, would be to divert funds from health and education spending in Africa to infrastructure projects in Asia and Latin America.

"Development promises are under threat. There is double counting going on. The $30bn is not new money and nor is the $100bn promised for 2020 to help poor countries cope with climate change."

Speaking in Davos, Drummond said One was lobbying world leaders to "come clean" about what they were doing. Similar concerns were expressed earlier this week by Bill Gates, who has used part of his personal fortune to fund health programmes in Africa.

Drummond admitted that it was hard for rich countries to stump up more money during a tough recession, but said the solution was to explore innovative ways of raising finance – including a transaction tax, a levy on aviation travel and selling part of the International Monetary Fund's gold reserve.

Poor countries, he added, would not be prepared to sign up to a climate change deal unless there was additional money for adaptation and mitigation.

Many countries, including Britain, have pledged to raise aid budgets to 0.7% of GDP, but Drummond said that "we may need to look at new goals and proposals like Sir Nicholas Stern's proposal for 1%, incorporating both development and climate finance".


[Money > Energy bills]
Boiler scrappage scheme hit by delays
Enthusiastic response has seen call centre staff battling with a backlog, and applicants waiting to receive their vouchers
Lisa Bachelor
guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 January 2010 10.35 GMT Article history

Thousands of householders who have applied for the government's boiler scrappage scheme are facing long delays for the vouchers needed to give their installers the go ahead.

The scheme, which was launched about three weeks ago, is designed to cut carbon emissions and help people save money on energy bills by offering householders a £400 voucher to replace their old G-rated boiler with an A-rated one.

It has received such an enthusiastic response from consumers that the Energy Saving Trust, the organisation that administers the scheme, has admitted it is battling to clear a huge backlog of applications.

By the beginning of this week it had received 160,000 calls, and around 36,000 people had applied for one of the 125,000 available vouchers.

It has now doubled the number of staff in its call centre to cope with the demand.

"People applying now should expect to receive their vouchers within 10 days," a spokesman said. "People who called earlier have not been forgotten about. The call centres are working their way through logged calls in chronological order."

Fraser Winterbottom, chief operating officer at the Energy Savings Trust, this week told Radio 4's You and Yours programme that the system had been changed so that applicants would now automatically be sent an email telling them the trust would contact them.

He said the organisation was "three or four days behind" on applications, but that this would soon revert to a "normal period".

Applicants play waiting game
Ruth Thompson from Teddington, who contacted guardian.co.uk/money, is one of those still waiting for a response from the Energy Saving Trust.

"I spent three days trying to get through to them only to be greeted with a recorded message," she said. "I finally succeeded a week later and was told I would be contacted 'in 10 days'. That was more than 10 days ago and I am still waiting."

Thompson, who is over 60, said many of her friends found themselves in the same position, and people posting on the MoneySavingExpert website appear to be suffering similar delays.

A comment from shirlgirl2004 said: "I read that the voucher would take 10 days to arrive and then I had an email [from the Energy Saving Trust] that told me 10 working days – but the truth is 10 working days has been and gone and I'm still waiting."

Another poster known as "aah" claimed he had been told he would have his voucher in 20 working days. "They have not got a clue," he wrote. "I guess in two months time I will still be using the old boiler."

Thompson, meanwhile, also contacted Warm Front, a government scheme that operates a separate £300 boiler rebate scheme for those aged over 60. She did not qualify because her boiler was still working. A spokesman said the scheme currently has a six-month waiting list, and that it has seen an increase in calls since the boiler scrappage scheme was announced.

Thompson said: "It is very confusing that you have these different schemes running side by side and none of them seem to be operating properly.

"The general public has got very good intentions, but the companies are not prepared at the other end."

British Gas, which is offering money off boilers on top of the government rebate, said that in the first three weeks of the year it had four times the number of customers asking for a quote than the same period last year, and six times the number received in the three weeks before the scheme launched.

Householders who have successfully received their voucher, however, could be set for further delays as the Energy Savings Trust will need to deal with them again further into the process. Those accepted for the scheme only get their money back by returning the voucher with an attached invoice to the Energy Saving Trust once the work has been done. Payment is then meant to be be issued within 25 working days of receipt.

Not everyone has welcomed the idea of a scrappage scheme. Plumber to the stars, Charlie Mullins, told Guardian Money last week that the scheme could prove to be "financial madness" as it could involve ripping out an inefficient but functioning boiler.


[Environment >Heathrow third runway]
Greenpeace plans to build fortress on Heathrow runway site
Environmental group says the plan will create a legal headache for any government pushing ahead with airport's expansion
Matthew Taylor
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 January 2010 19.07 GMT Article history

Environmental activists have invited some of the UK's leading architects to design an "impenetrable fortress" to be built on land earmarked for the third runway at Heathrow.

Greenpeace plans to build the winning design at the centre of the site where airport operator BAA hopes to construct a £7bn runway and a sixth terminal.

The charity bought the parcel of land last year and then distributed ownership to more than 60,000 supporters around the world.

Organisers say the small individual plots will create a legal headache for any government trying to push ahead with the expansion plans.

news20100129gdn3

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Climate change]
Water vapour caused one-third of global warming in 1990s, study reveals
Experts say their research does not undermine the scientific consensus on man-made climate change, but call for 'closer examination' of the way computer models consider water vapour
David Adam, environment correspondent
The Guardian, Friday 29 January 2010 Article history

Scientists have underestimated the role that water vapour plays in determining global temperature changes, according to a new study that could fuel further attacks on the science of climate change.

The research, led by one of the world's top climate scientists, suggests that almost one-third of the global warming recorded during the 1990s was due to an increase in water vapour in the high atmosphere, not human emissions of greenhouse gases. A subsequent decline in water vapour after 2000 could explain a recent slowdown in global temperature rise, the scientists add.

The experts say their research does not undermine the scientific consensus that emissions of greenhouse gases from human activity drive global warming, but they call for "closer examination" of the way climate computer models consider water vapour.

The new research comes at a difficult time for climate scientists, who have been forced to defend their predictions in the face of an embarrassing mistake in the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which included false claims that Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035. There has also been heavy criticism over the way climate scientists at the University of East Anglia apparently tried to prevent the release of data requested under Freedom of Information laws.

The new research, led by Susan Solomon, at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who co-chaired the 2007 IPCC report on the science of global warming, is published today in the journal Science, one of the most respected in the world.

Solomon said the new finding does not challenge the conclusion that human activity drives climate change. "Not to my mind it doesn't," she said. "It shows that we shouldn't over-interpret the results from a few years one way or another."

She would not comment on the mistake in the IPCC report - which was published in a separate section on likely impacts - or on calls for Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, to step down.

"What I will say, is that this [new study] shows there are climate scientists round the world who are trying very hard to understand and to explain to people openly and honestly what has happened over the last decade."

The new study analysed water vapour in the stratosphere, about 10 miles up, where it acts as a potent greenhouse gas and traps heat at the Earth's surface.

Satellite measurements were used to show that water vapour levels in the stratosphere have dropped about 10% since 2000. When the scientists fed this change into a climate model, they found it could have reduced, by about 25% over the last decade, the amount of warming expected to be caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

They conclude: "The decline in stratospheric water vapour after 2000 should be expected to have significantly contributed to the flattening of the global warming trend in the last decade."

Solomon said: "We call this the 10, 10, 10 problem. A 10% drop in water vapour, 10 miles up has had an effect on global warming over the last 10 years." Until now, scientists have struggled to explain the temperature slowdown in the years since 2000, a problem climate sceptics have exploited.

The scientists also looked at the earlier period, from 1980 to 2000, though cautioned this was based on observations of the atmosphere made by a single weather balloon. They found likely increases in water vapour in the stratosphere, enough to enhance the rate of global warming by about 30% above what would have been expected.

"These findings show that stratospheric water vapour represents an important driver of decadal global surface climate change," the scientists say. They say it should lead to a "closer examination of the representation of stratospheric water vapour changes in climate models".

Solomon said it was not clear why the water vapour levels had swung up and down, but suggested it could be down to changes in sea surface temperature, which drives convection currents and can move air around in the high atmosphere.

She said it was not clear if the water vapour decrease after 2000 reflects a natural shift, or if it was a consequence of a warming world. If the latter is true, then more warming could see greater decreases in water vapour, acting as a negative feedback to apply the brakes on future temperature rise.


[naturenews]
Published online 29 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.44
News
Ten billion dollars pledged for 'decade of vaccines'
Gates Foundation cash could save nearly nine million children.
Heidi Ledford

{{The Gates Foundation hopes to boost vaccine development and distribution.}
Bananastock}

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today promised to put $10 billion towards a 10-year effort to boost vaccination against infectious disease in developing countries. It is the foundation's largest commitment yet to the discovery, development and distribution of vaccines.

The announcement, made at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, comes as the GAVI alliance — another vaccine initiative supported in part by the Gates Foundation — celebrates its ten-year anniversary. GAVI has been credited with distributing vaccines to 257 million children and preventing 5 million deaths. The alliance has also been instrumental in bringing the world vaccination rate against hepatitis B up from about 15% in 1999 to nearly 70%, says Adel Mahmoud, a global health researcher at Princeton University in New Jersey. "This is very serious stuff," says Mahmoud. "GAVI's success with hepatitis B was tremendous."

According to a model developed at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, the new $10 billion commitment could save up to 7.6 million children by targeting viruses that cause diarrhoea and pneumonia. If the RTS,S vaccine against malaria, currently in clinical trials (see 'Malaria vaccine enters phase III clinical trials'), is introduced by 2014, 1.1 million other children could be saved.

The Gates Foundation has already dedicated $4.5 billion to vaccines but says that much more would be needed to immunize 90% of the world's children. "Part of this is a call to action," says Joe Cerrell, director of the foundation's Europe office in London. "We are trying to make sure that governments and others are doing all that they can to support more immunization coverage."

Improving vaccination against rotavirus — the leading cause of severe diarrhoea in infants and children — is one area that could benefit, notes Mahmoud. The rotavirus vaccine was shown to reduce disease by over 60% when introduced in South Africa and Malawiue¹. But the vaccines, first licensed in 2006, are still relatively new. "The general feeling is: who is going to champion their introduction in the developing world?" says Mahmoud. "To this date there is no clear-cut plan. So if the Gates Foundation comes up with something very robust in this area, it will really make a difference."

References
1. Madhi, S. A. et al. N. Engl. J. Med. 362, 289– 298 (2010).

news20100129gdn4

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Guardian Environment Network]
Copenhagen: what next?
It's coming up to six weeks since the end of the Copenhagen negotiations on climate change. Now that the dust has settled, there's time to stand back and take a more considered look. Here Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and Stefan Rahmstorf, professor of physics of the oceans at Potsdam University, Germany give their views on the outcome of the COP15 talks and the way forward
Liz Kalaugher of Environmentalresearchweb, part of the Guardian Environment Network
guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 January 2010 12.55 GMT Article history

At a press conference last week, de Boer said that the outcome in Copenhagen made "the task to hand more urgent…the window of opportunity we have to come to grips with this issue is closing faster than it was before". But he claimed that the talks did raise climate-change issues to the highest level of government, helped to define temperature limits and financial contributions, and set 2015 as a date for reviewing whether global action needs to be more urgent.

The Copenhagen Accord, meanwhile, an agreement negotiated by China, South Africa, India, Brazil and the US, and noted by the other nations at the conference, "reflects a political consensus on the long-term global response" that is needed to climate change, according to de Boer. "We are now in a cooling off period," he added. "This gives useful time for countries to resume discussions with each other."

Climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf thinks that the outcome of COP15 is depressing, but also tried to highlight some more upbeat aspects. "On the positive side: most of the actors in Copenhagen by far were quite willing to commit to a substantial effort to halt global warming – including many who were not willing to do this earlier, for example the US or Australia," he told environmentalresearchweb. "And some important developing countries have made very constructive pledges as well. We were closer than ever to major progress in fighting global warming."

Rahmstorf reckons that an agreement was not reached because "the consensus-based UN process with 192 countries is very cumbersome, and it was exceptionally badly managed at this conference", because China did not play a very constructive role and because the US was not able to offer enough. "The IPCC deemed 25–40% emissions reductions below 1990 values necessary by 2020 by developed nations to limit warming to 2 °C, and what the US offered amounted to only 4%," he explained. "This is largely a result of the lost years under previous administrations, during which the US emissions increased steeply – unlike those in Europe."

During his briefing, de Boer said that he never ceases to be amazed by the vision that some people have of the UN. "To me it is a collection of countries that have created a body to facilitate negotiation among each other," he added. "If those governments were to go and negotiate in a different setting with a different secretariat I don't know if that would fundamentally change their behaviour."

Keeping on the UN track

Both de Boer and Rahmstorf would like to see the UN process continue. "Everybody I have spoken to so far doesn't want the Accord to be a third track," said de Boer.

Rahmstorf agrees. "I hope that the multilateral UN track to a global climate agreement will not die, however cumbersome it is, because the alternatives are even worse," he said, "for example, the G20 with only the biggest emitters on the table deciding alone on climate policy, without those affected, like the small island nations, having a proper voice". In the meantime, Rahmstorf says that "while we wait for our world leaders to get their act together, there is nothing to stop us as world citizens to do all we can to reduce emissions bottom-up".

The next UNFCCC negotiating session is due to take place in late May in Bonn, with the next COP meeting set for Mexico in late November. According to de Boer, many countries feel that there is a need for an intensified negotiating schedule this year – he plans to convene the COP bureau to determine whether it's possible to slot in another set of negotiations before May.

The countries that negotiated the Copenhagen Accord – China, South Africa, India, Brazil and the US – account for around 80% of carbon emissions. "It's true to say there was not final agreement on the Accord, but an overwhelming majority supported it," said de Boer. "It was not formally adopted by COP – only noted – and we should be careful not to make it more than it is."

But de Boer believes the Accord is a political tool that has broad support at a high level and that can be usefully employed in negotiations. He says the Accord is clear on a long-term goal, on how it can be measured, on financial support and on a number of new institutions that need to be established. "It can be used by us to help speed up the negotiations," he said.

Countries have until 31 January to let the UN know if they wish to be associated with the Accord in the official report of the COP15 negotiations. Industrialized countries have the option of including details of the targets they intend to commit to, while developing nations can indicate the action that they plan to take. The deadline is for administrative reasons only; the list of countries associated with the Accord will be updated on the UNFCCC secretariat website as later details come in. "It's a soft deadline, there's nothing deadly about it," said de Boer.

The climate for science

But what does this mean for the day-to-day lives of researchers? Rahmstorf believes the outcome in Copenhagen has no direct or immediate effects on climate science. "The morale of many is shaken, though," he added. "We've got an important job: since the Copenhagen Accord calls for limiting global warming to a maximum of 2 °C, possibly even 1.5 °C (this option is left open at the end of the Accord), one of the major tasks of science will be to narrow down the range of future emissions that is compatible with these policy goals."

Rahmstorf reckons that climate scientists have communicated their work quite well, particularly through the IPCC. While 2010 is the UN year of biodiversity, the biodiversity community has "not yet managed to get as much high-level attention to the biodiversity crisis; it is only now calling to set up something like the IPCC for biodiversity". On the other hand, "climate science could still do a lot better if more climate scientists get involved, take an interest in public understanding of science and educate themselves more about how to effectively work with the media". Rahmstorf reckons that "too many scientists are still stuck in the ivory tower and – for example – shrug off and ignore wrong media reports about climate science, rather than recognizing that public perception matters and that they should not leave the public debate to people with a political agenda".

The last word goes to de Boer: while the Copenhagen negotiations "didn't produce the final cake", they did leave countries "with all the key ingredients to bake a new one". Although the proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating.

news20100129nn1

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 28 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.38
News
Cascadia quake zone gets wired up
Seismometer array will monitor natural hazards.
Rex Dalton

One of the most under-appreciated earthquake hazard zones in the United States is getting extra attention.

{{Project scientists test a shield to protect the seismometers from ocean-bottom trawlers.}
Andrew Barclay}

Just off the Pacific Northwest coast, the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate dives beneath North America, shuddering and occasionally releasing the accumulated stress as a major earthquake. A magnitude-9 quake struck here in 1700, triggering a tsunami that hit Japan, and the chances of another quake of that size are 1 in 500 each year. Yet the Cascadia zone remains relatively sparsely studied.

Now geophysicists have taken advantage of grant money gleaned from last year's US economic stimulus bill to rig up the waters off the Cascadia coast with an unprecedented assembly of ocean-bottom seismometers. The US$10-million project is on a fast track to be fully set up by early next year. But the fact that the United States is only now putting such research resources into a long-known trouble zone shows how far even developed nations lag behind on earthquake studies.

"People haven't appreciated the level of hazard there for both an earthquake and a tsunami," says project member John Orcutt, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. "This study will over the long term provide a fundamental understanding of the Earth's structure and the hazard."

Cascadia already has a number of seismometers and other equipment on land to measure earthquake risk, including the Plate Boundary Observatory of geodetic equipment that stretches from California to Alaska. But the ocean-bottom component has been lacking; only with that, geophysicists say, can sea-floor movements along the edge of the Juan de Fuca plate be monitored effectively.

"This will be the most comprehensive study of a subduction zone conducted anywhere to date," says Richard Carlson, project manager for the Cascadia initiative at the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Virginia.

Peering deep

The initiative will beef up the land-based instruments already in place by adding seismometers and having geodetic data feed back in real time instead of after a delay. More significantly, it will also deploy 60 ocean-bottom seismometers off the coasts of Oregon and Washington, at depths of between about 300 metres and 1 kilometre.

The stations are being built by three venerable oceanographic institutions: the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and Scripps. Each of the new ocean-bottom stations costs about $70,000 and includes a seismometer, pressure gauge, data recorder and special clock to match data to shore-based equipment.

Some project scientists are questioning whether the correct type of seismometer is being purchased. Because the economic stimulus money had to be spent within a certain period of time, the decision on which seismometer to use had to be made within about three months last summer. Orcutt, for one, says that he would have preferred a '240' seismometer with a higher bandwidth than the '120' instruments the National Science Foundation has bought from Nanometrics Inc. in Kanata, Ontario. The '240' seismometers can capture more data and would be more useful for future deployments, Orcutt says.

Carlson, for his part, says that the agency is comfortable with the type of seismometer it has chosen.

Meanwhile, project leaders are starting work on how to deploy the complex package of delicate instruments. The equipment must be tough enough to withstand being dropped off the side of a ship, then exposed to sea-floor conditions for at least a year, and retrieved by popping a remote-control release and floating to the surface.

Sometimes deployments go flawlessly, as when researchers dropped and recovered nearly 70 devices off British Columbia last summer. But equipment can go awry. For instance, three stations malfunctioned after a deployment off Newport, Oregon, several years ago. The problem, which involved the cable connection, wasn't discovered until after they had been in the water for a year. In other cases, the glass balls that buoy the instrument package to the surface have imploded, destroying the stations.

For the Cascadia deployment, project leaders are also building protective cages to shield the instrument from heavy currents and from being snagged by fishing trawlers.

But researchers can't always predict what challenges await them in the field. Anne Tréhu, a geophysicist at Oregon State University in Corvallis who led the earlier deployment, says that the team hadn't expected to receive several local visitors on the sea floor.

"We found octopus were a problem, too," she says. They nestled against the instruments, messing up the measurements of current flows.


[naturenews]
Published online 29 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.44
News
Ten billion dollars pledged for 'decade of vaccines'
Gates Foundation cash could save nearly nine million children.
Heidi Ledford

{{The Gates Foundation hopes to boost vaccine development and distribution.}
Bananastock}

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today promised to put $10 billion towards a 10-year effort to boost vaccination against infectious disease in developing countries. It is the foundation's largest commitment yet to the discovery, development and distribution of vaccines.

The announcement, made at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, comes as the GAVI alliance — another vaccine initiative supported in part by the Gates Foundation — celebrates its ten-year anniversary. GAVI has been credited with distributing vaccines to 257 million children and preventing 5 million deaths. The alliance has also been instrumental in bringing the world vaccination rate against hepatitis B up from about 15% in 1999 to nearly 70%, says Adel Mahmoud, a global health researcher at Princeton University in New Jersey. "This is very serious stuff," says Mahmoud. "GAVI's success with hepatitis B was tremendous."

According to a model developed at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, the new $10 billion commitment could save up to 7.6 million children by targeting viruses that cause diarrhoea and pneumonia. If the RTS,S vaccine against malaria, currently in clinical trials (see 'Malaria vaccine enters phase III clinical trials'), is introduced by 2014, 1.1 million other children could be saved.

The Gates Foundation has already dedicated $4.5 billion to vaccines but says that much more would be needed to immunize 90% of the world's children. "Part of this is a call to action," says Joe Cerrell, director of the foundation's Europe office in London. "We are trying to make sure that governments and others are doing all that they can to support more immunization coverage."

Improving vaccination against rotavirus — the leading cause of severe diarrhoea in infants and children — is one area that could benefit, notes Mahmoud. The rotavirus vaccine was shown to reduce disease by over 60% when introduced in South Africa and Malawiue¹. But the vaccines, first licensed in 2006, are still relatively new. "The general feeling is: who is going to champion their introduction in the developing world?" says Mahmoud. "To this date there is no clear-cut plan. So if the Gates Foundation comes up with something very robust in this area, it will really make a difference."

References
1. Madhi, S. A. et al. N. Engl. J. Med. 362, 289– 298 (2010).

news20100129nn2

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 28 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.42
News
Water vapour could be behind warming slowdown
Mysterious changes in the stratosphere may have offset greenhouse effect.
Jeff Tollefson

A loss of water vapour from the Earth's stratosphere may have been behind the last decade being cooler than expected.NASAA puzzling drop in the amount of water vapour high in the Earth's atmosphere is now on the list of possible culprits causing average global temperatures to flatten out over the past decade, despite ever-increasing greenhouse-gas emissions.

Although the decade spanning 2000 to 2009 ranks as the warmest on record, average temperatures largely levelled off following two decades of rapid increases. Researchers have previously eyed everything from the Sun and oceans to random variability in order to explain the pause, which sceptics have claimed shows that climate models are unreliable.

Now a team led by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado, report that a mysterious 10% drop in water vapour in the stratosphere — the atmospheric layer that sits 10–50 kilometres above Earth's surface — since 2000 could have offset the expected warming due to greenhouse gases by roughly 25%. Just as intriguingly, their model suggests that an increase in stratospheric water vapour might have boosted earlier warming by about 30% in the 1980s and 1990s. The team's work is published online by Science today¹.

The effect on temperature is dominated by water vapour in the lower part of the stratosphere, which absorbs and radiates heat in much the same way as water molecules and other greenhouse gases do in the lower atmosphere. The drop in water vapour doesn't explain the entire decrease in the rate of warming, but it could contribute to it, says Susan Solomon, first author of the study and a NOAA scientist who co-chaired the physical-science working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as part of its 2007 assessment.

"What we are trying to do here is explain not the overall multi-decadal trend, but the zigs and zags in that trend," Solomon says. "I think it's too early to know how they all play out."

In 1999, researchers at the University of Reading, UK, reported similar numbers to Solomon and her colleagues, suggesting that the increase in stratospheric water vapour could have boosted warming by 40% compared with carbon dioxide alone². Subsequent research challenged the magnitude of that effect as well as the data itself, but Solomon says that the current study "is basically pulling us back to the seminal work those guys did".

One of the Reading researchers, Keith Shine, says that Solomon's paper does a good job of documenting the effect for the current decade, based on more reliable satellite measurements. Unfortunately, he says, earlier data from a single series of balloon measurements conducted above Boulder remain a bit shaky. "We know the water vapour has definitely dropped post-2000, but we can't be certain about what happened before that," Shine says.

Into thin air

It remains unclear what is driving the changes in stratospheric water vapour. Average temperatures at the coldest point in the stratosphere — about 16 kilometres above the tropics — have fallen by about 1 °C in the past decade, says Bill Randel, who heads the atmospheric chemistry division at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. Colder temperatures freeze out water vapour that might otherwise have entered the stratosphere. But, Randel says, "We don't really understand why that 1-degree temperature change occurred."

Other researchers see different factors at play in the recent temperature trends. A study published last year³ hones in on the solar cycle and the El Niño Southern Oscillation, an upwelling of warm surface waters in the tropical Pacific. Both have been in their negative phases for most of the decade so temperatures may rise as they move into their positive phases.

"I think it's exciting that this [transition] is happening, because we are going to learn a lot," says Judith Lean, a solar physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC, who co-authored last year's study³ with David Rind, a climate modeller at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

With solar activity ramping up and an El Niño underway, Lean and Rind suggest that temperatures could rise over the coming years, followed by a slight plateau coinciding with the next solar minimum. Their paper³, based on a statistical analysis of past temperature trends, predicts rising temperatures until 2030, including scenarios for any unpredictable occurrences of El Niño and volcanic eruptions. A 2008 paper in Nature⁴ that investigated ocean currents and sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic came to the opposite conclusion, suggesting a pause in warming over the coming decade.

Jeff Knight, a climate modeller at the Met Office Hadley Centre in Exeter, UK, last year led an analysis of temperature trends from the year 2000 and found that current global climate models are able to reproduce such short-term events without a hitch. He says that the models produced an extended period of relatively flat temperatures in one out of every eight decades — although none of them produced a flat trend beyond 15 years.

"Too much focus on decadal trends is not healthy," he says, suggesting that the climate models can simulate these events and do not necessarily need to be able to simulate any particular decade.

References
1. Solomon, S. et al. Science advance online publication doi: 10.1126/science.1182488 (2010).
2. Forster, P. M. de F. & Shine, K. P. Geophys. Res. Lett. 26, 3309-3312 (1999). | Article | OpenURL
3. Lean, J. L. & Rind, D. H. Geophys. Res. Lett. 36, L15708 doi:10.1029/2009GL038932 (2009). | Article | OpenURL
4. Keenlyside, N. S., Latif, M., Jungclaus, J., Kornblueh, L. & Roeckner, E. Nature 453, 84-88 (2008). | Article | OpenURL | | ChemPort |