The Great Beyond

An endangered fish is actually two even more endangered fish, according to new research.

Although it is already listed as ‘critically endangered’ the poor old European common skate may be in an even worse state than we thought. A new paper published in Aquatic Conservation says what we thought was the skate Dipturus batis is actually two different animals.

“Morphology, genetics, and life history reveal that two distinct species have been erroneously confused since the 1920s under the single scientific name D. batis,” write Samuel Iglésias, of the French National Museum of Natural History, and colleagues.

Iglésias says the ‘common skate’ species should be split into the blue skate (provisionally D. cf. flossada) and the flapper skate (D. cf. intermedia). This is not just of academic importance.

“Revisions of incorrect synonymizations - called species resurrections - are common works for systematists, but in the present case the resurrection of D. cf. intermedia is of great conservation significance,” the authors note.

The problem is that the not-quite-so-bad state of blue skate populations has been masking the really, really bad state of the flapper. And the old ‘common skate’ is already noted as the first fish brought to the brink of extinction by commercial fishing and this confusion of blue and flapper has hamstrung those trying to conserve the species – both of which deserve independent ‘critically endangered status’ says the paper.

“The risk of extinction of these depleted species is higher than previously assessed and appears unavoidable without immediate and incisive conservation action,” Iglésias concludes.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 19, 2009
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The world’s carbon dioxide ‘sinks’ are not able to keep up with the amount of the greenhouse gas being produced, according to a paper published in Nature Geoscience.

Reviewing the recent literature Corinne Le Quéré, of the University of East Anglia, and colleagues report that between 1959 and 2008 43% of each year’s carbon dioxide emissions have remained in the atmosphere with the rest being absorbed by land and ocean sinks. However in the last 50 years they suggest that the fraction remaining in the atmosphere has increased from about 40% to 45%.

They also found that a 29% rise in carbon emissions between 2000 and 2008 can be attributed to a large extent to burning coal and the growth of the so-called ‘emerging economies’.

“The Earth’s carbon sinks are complex and there are some gaps in our understanding, particularly in our ability to link human-induced CO2 emissions to atmospheric CO2 concentrations on a year-to-year basis,” says Le Quéré (press release). “But, if we can reduce the uncertainty about the carbon sinks, our data could be used to verify the effectiveness of climate mitigations policies.”

Uncertainties in this area are huge. Another recent paper in Geophysical Research Letters suggested there has been no decline in the fraction absorbed by sinks.

The author of that paper, Wolfgang Knorr of the University of Bristol, says, “We are just at the very edge of being able to detect a trend in the airborne fraction. Our apparently conflicting results demonstrate what doing real science is like and just how difficult it is to accurately quantify such data.” (Press release.)

One thing the authors can apparently agree on: if global warming is going to be stopped emissions are going to have to be reduced drastically.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 18, 2009
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In 1835, Darwin and his shipmates collected specimens of the Floreana mockingbird in the Galapagos Islands. Now those same specimens may help conservationists re-establish the species to the island that gives them their name.

Although they died out on the isle of Floreana some 50 years after the famous naturalist’s visit, two populations of Mimus trifasciatus still exist on nearby rocks.

In the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters, Paquita Hoeck and colleagues report that genetic analysis shows that one of these populations is highly inbred but comparison with the specimens collected by Darwin reveals that both have unique alleles found in the original Floreana population. For this reason birds from both populations should be used in the forthcoming attempt to reintroduce the animals to the main island, they say.

“Though Darwin knew nothing of DNA, the specimens he and [Beagle captain Robert] FitzRoy collected have, after 170 years of safe-keeping in collections, yielded genetic clues to suggest a path for conservation of this critically endangered and historically important species,” says paper author Karen James, a researcher at the Natural History Museum where the specimens are kept (press release).

Two others authors on the paper may be familiar to Nature News readers: Peter and Rosemary Grant.

See also: Nature's Darwin 200 special.

Image: Natural History Museum

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 18, 2009
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Over 60 of the world’s leading agricultural scientists have issued a statement warning that December’s negotiations on climate change in Copenhagen must not ignore agriculture and the need for crop adaptation to ensure the world’s future food supplies.

The statement says, “The negative impact of climate change on agriculture, and thus on the production of food, could well place at risk all other efforts to mitigate and adapt to new climate conditions.”

The scientists say that farmers will encounter problems they have never before encountered, including higher than average temperatures, and shorter growing seasons. There is no single characteristic that will ensure crops will retain, or increase their productivity in new climates. Efforts to adapt will be required crop by crop. But crop diversity, which holds the key to future adaptation, is being lost.

“We urge countries at the Copenhagen conference to give due attention to crop diversity conservation and use as an essential element of the commitments they will make for climate change adaptation,” the statement says.

Continue reading "Climate change agreement must not ignore agriculture " »

Posted by Natasha Gilbert on November 18, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Policy, Road to Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In December this year, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will descend on Copenhagen to wrangle over the details of a new global climate deal — a potential successor to the Kyoto Protocol. See Nature’s Road to Copenhagen special for more coverage.

Confusing reports abound today about Obama’s stance on the upcoming Copenhagen climate talks.

Wall Street Journal says that Copenhagen is going to be a flop, which follows reports that Obama said at a meeting in Singapore over the weekend that a legally binding deal at Copenhagen was unlikely.

Since then Obama has met with the Chinese president Hu Jintao, and again climate was high on the mind of the world’s reporters. The AP’s shorter-than-short story, and Reuters both report what has now spread far and wide: Obama and Hu have agreed to take “significant” action to mitigate carbon emissions.

The reports do seem contradictory, but it probably depends on your views on Copenhagen in the first place. For someone who will only be happy with a legally binding agreement out of Copenhagen, the news seems bleak. But for others the fact that China and the US have come to some sort of agreement could signal a pang of optimism.

CNN for one is filled with that optimism, running their story that says “China and the United States, the largest producers of greenhouse gases, will team up to fight climate change and create clean energy, their leaders said Tuesday.” And the Deutsche Welle says that Obama and Hu want to “reinvigorate” climate talks.

Look elsewhere and the focus on the lack of a binding agreement at Copenhagen won’t go away: FT, WSJ blog.

It seems too important an issue to leave hanging, but it looks like we’re just going to have to wait and see.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on November 17, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Road to Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A UN summit on food security opens today in Rome, Italy, where world leaders are gathering to discuss how to feed the world’s billion hungry people.

Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary general, called for nations to agree a single global vision to address the problem, which he said must recognise the links between food and climate security.

"There can be no food security without climate security," he said.

“By 2050 our planet may be the home of 9.1 billion people... by 2050 we know we will need to grow 70 percent more food, yet weather is becoming more extreme and more unpredictable," he added.

Anti-poverty campaigners lamented the absence of leaders from the world’s riches countries at the summit.

“Sixty leaders are coming from around the world to this important UN summit, but where are the leaders from all the G8 countries?" asked ActionAid. "This doesn’t signal they are serious about finding global solutions to hunger," said Francisco Sarmento, ActionAid’s food rights coordinator.

At a pre-summit meeting yesterday, scientists from a leading Brazilian university agreed to work with the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation to help build agricultural development programmes in Latin American and African countries. Under a Memorandum of Understanding, Brazil’s Universidade Federal de Viçosa (UFV), which specialises in food and agricultural studies and research, will also open its doors to students from developing countries.

Posted by Natasha Gilbert on November 16, 2009
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Posted for Quirin Schiermeier

Rising temperatures cause melting and retreat of large ice sheets, sea ice, and mountain glaciers – that’s pretty much common knowledge by now, as are implications on sea level, ecosystems, water supply and natural hazard risk. But a couple of news stories this week may cause confusion.

That the Greenland ice sheet is losing ice, and that mass loss has further accelerated in recent years, comes as no particular surprise. Using ground observations and satellite gravity measurements, a team led by Michiel van den Broeke from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, estimates that some 1,500 gigatonnes – roughly 1,500 cubic kilometers – have been lost from 2000-2008, equivalent to about 0.46 millimeters of global sea level rise.

Melting rates have accelerated since 2006, with mass loss reaching 273 gigatons of mass per year, equivalent to 0.75 millimeters of sea level rise. Without the moderating effects of increased snowfall, post 1996 mass losses would have been 100% higher, the team writes in a paper in this week’s issue of Science [subscription].

But the cryosphere – those parts of the globe that are permanently or seasonally covered by ice – does have surprises in store. Or so it seems.

Continue reading "Greenland ice and Himalayan glaciers: What’s going on?" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 13, 2009
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The American Physical Society (APS) has overwhelmingly rejected a petition by a group of physicists asking the organization to reverse its position on climate change.

The petition was signed by 160 physicists including Nobel laureate Ivar Giaever. If you don't feel like reading the thing, it essentially says that there has been a lot of natural variation in climate change over the past centuries, and that natural variation can explain the recent rise in global temperatures. The statement also points out what it calls the "beneficial effects of increased levels of carbon dioxide for both plants and animals."

The group has been bullish on the hopes of changing the APS's minds. They even wrote us a letter in July, noting that they had prompted an APS review of its climate change position. "We hope it will lead to meaningful change," they said in the letter.

But no such luck. The society review, lead by nuclear physicist Daniel Kleppner from MIT, recommended that no changes be made, and on 10 November, the council accepted their recommendation.

As interesting as the petition is, there's an equally fascinating analysis of the signers that's doing the rounds. John Mashey, a computer scientist and APS member, has done a thorough analysis of who was involved. It's not the easiest to read, but it starts getting interesting around section 4 or 5. Mashey breaks down the signers by age, political contributions and geographic area. He also does some network analysis to show who was involved with the petition at different stages.

He finds that the signers tend to be predominately older and big contributors to the Republican and Libertarian parties. More interestingly the supporters seem to be centered around the Northeast, particularly Princeton University's department. Again, not surprising considering that one of the main organizersis Will Happer, a well-respected Princeton physicist and long-time climate change sceptic who, in 1993, was pushed out of his position at the Department of Energy after rowing with then vice president Al Gore over the significance of the ozone hole (see our rival for a little background).

The petition wasn't a total flop, the APS says its Panel on Public Affairs should "examine the statement for possible improvements in clarity and tone." Happer called the decision a "big victory" for the petitioners.

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on November 12, 2009
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The brown pelican has been officially declared recovered by the US government, and the species will no longer be listed under the Endangered Species Act.

Pelecanus occidentalis was devastated by DDT use in the 1940s and 50s. Yesterday though the US Fish and Wildlife Service removed the animal’s endangered status, announcing there are now over 650,000 brown pelicans in the US, the Caribbean and Latin America.

“At a time when so many species of wildlife are threatened, we once in a while have an opportunity to celebrate an amazing success story,” says Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar (press release). “Today is such a day. The brown pelican is back!”

The FWS notes that pelicans have survived not only DDT – as famously described by Rachel Carson in Silent Spring – but also a 19th century craze for using their feathers in women’s hats and slaughter by fishermen who accused them of taking their fish.

The Service also reminds us of Dixon Lanier Merritt’s poem:

A wonderful bird is the pelican,
His bill will hold more than his belly can,
He can take in his beak
Enough food for a week,
But I’m damned if I see how the hell he can.

Image: FWS

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 12, 2009
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Over at the New York Times is an interesting story about solar panels and the European Parliament. I kid you not.

The story tells us about some proposals, proposed by the Swedish EU presidency government in the summer, that would see solar panel manufacturers subject to European hazardous waste legislation, that previously they were exempt from.

The problem is cadmium, a toxic metal that is used to make some photovoltaic cells.

The NYT story also mentions a mysterious European Parliament committee that is “expected in coming days to propose a way of keeping pressure on solar companies to come up with alternatives to cadmium telluride.”

This is interesting news indeed, and Greentech Media has picked up on it, although details are still sparse about the committee and its proposals. But the message seems to be that First Solar, seen as a success in the solar arena, will be in serious trouble if cadmium is banned in Europe.

I remember a while ago talking to quantum dot manufacturers Nanoco, spun out of Manchester University, who are trying to turn away from cadmium – but there the question is one of knowing the markets: in Japan, where quantum dots are likely to be used for TV screens and other display applications, cadmium is a big no-no. Mining in Japan led to long term cadmium release into water causing itai-itai disease, symptoms of which include brittle bones.

So, while a cadmium ban may be bad for solar panel makers in Europe, this might signal a need for electronics manufacturers world wide to try and turn away from making products that contain these toxic elements in the first place.

Image: Getty

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on November 11, 2009
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The fossils of whales and plesiosaurs may contain evidence allowing modern scientists to understand the evolution of one of the strangest creatures in the sea.

Osedax worms live by burrowing into the bones of mammals that sink down to the bottom of the sea. Once ensconced on a nice decomposing whale or seal the worms mature into sexual females and acquire a harem of microscope males that live in the gelatinous tubes that surround them.

In a new paper in BMC Biology Robert Vrijenhoek, of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in the United States, and his colleagues say there are at least 17 different species of Osedax, not just the five previously described.

While the team's genetic and morphological analysis has teased out more about the evolutionary relationships between these worms, a big question remains: when did Osedax appear on the global bone-devouring scene?

One possibility is that they split from their worm ancestors about 45 million years ago when ancient whales appeared. Another theory posits they appeared at least 20 million years before the appearance of large marine mammals.

Osedax are soft bodied, so they do not generally leave decent fossils. However if they were around back in the day they may well have bored distinctive holes into the bones of ancient creatures in much the same way as modern Osedax put holes in modern carcasses.

“Consequently, we have distributed whalebones containing Osedax to several paleontologists who are also examining the taphonomy of fossilized bones from plesiosaurs and cetaceans,” write Vrijenhoek and co. “It is to be hoped that these efforts will help us to narrow the age of this remarkable genus of bone-eating worms.”

Vrijenhoek tells Nature that one palaeontologist is already CT scanning some cow bones with Osedax holes in the hope of developing tools to detect traces in fossil whalebones. Other researchers – including those working on Cretaceous plesiosaurs – are also being enlisted in the great historical worm hunt.

Image: Greg Rouse

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 11, 2009
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Following up on some initial results released last month, the International Energy Agency released 700 pages of statistical goodness on global energy markets and greenhouse gas emissions on Tuesday.

Perhaps the most significant numbers in the World Energy Outlook, at least in terms of the current policy and the international climate negotiations, pertain to China. Indeed, the IEA suggests that if China actually follows through on all of the goals and targets it has announced (for renewables, nuclear power, energy efficiency and the like), it alone could account for 25 percent of the reductions that the world needs to make by 2020 in order to remain on track for limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. Put another way, China would be doing more to address global than either the United States or Europe.

These are remarkable statistics, and they should get some attention when climate negotiators meet in Copenhagen next month. China represents the fastest growing source of emissions, and everybody wants to see them put some kind of numbers on the table, along with existing commitments. Those who look at the issue tend to come up with big numbers (see here and here). That said, the IEA's analysis would be the most significant to date, and will likely serve as a baseline for assessments of what China is doing from here on out. Who knows, perhaps China will be inspired to come up with its own numbers.

Continue reading "IEA: something for everybody in the 2009 outlook" »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on November 10, 2009
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Conservationists are again pushing for Australia’s iconic koalas to be listed as endangered by the country’s government, as new and controversial estimates of their numbers prompt renewed fears over the cuddly critters’ future.

Concerned that the government will not list the koala, the Australian Koala Foundation has launched a media blitz, warming of a drastic decline in the animal’s numbers.

“There could be as few as 43,000 and no more than 80,000 koalas left on the mainland of Australia. We know this because we have the science, and the koala habitat is just not there,” says the foundation CEO, Deborah Tabart (press release pdf). “Previous estimates were around 100,000, but the data is now more accurate.”

Tabart says her researchers have been measuring the loveable things at 1,800 field sites in Australia to come up with their numbers.

The Threatened Species Scientific Committee meets today to begin deliberations on whether or not Phascolarctos cinereus is officially endangered, a process which continues into next year. Bob Beeton, committee chairman, told the Sydney Morning Herald, “the onus is on the science” but not everyone agrees on the numbers.

David Phalen, director of the Wildlife Health and Conservation Centre at Sydney University, told the paper, “We do know that koalas are threatened by habitat loss in Queensland and northern NSW but numbers elsewhere are increasing or stable. There’s a real degree of uncertainty around the numbers.”

Internationally there are also some differing opinions over the koala. While populations on the mainland may be in decline, elsewhere the animals seem to be doing fine.

The United States has classified koalas as ‘threatened’ under its endangered species act but the international ‘Red List’ classifies it as ‘least concern’, noting:

Listed as Least Concern in view of its wide distribution, presumed large population, and because it is unlikely to be declining at nearly the rate required to qualify for listing in a threatened category.

Image: Quartl via Wikipedia under creative commons

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 10, 2009
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Update:

In December this year, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will descend on Copenhagen to wrangle over the details of a new global climate deal — a potential successor to the Kyoto Protocol. See Nature’s Road to Copenhagen special for more coverage.

International delegates to the Montreal Protocol wrapped up their meeting in Port Ghalib, Egypt, over the weekend without taking formal action to curb hydrofluorocarbons, modern refrigerants that are also poised to become a major contributor to global warming.

Some 41 countries joined in a declaration in support of regulating HFCs as greenhouse gases under the Montreal Protocol (not under the Kyoto Protocol, as indicated in an initial post; that is of course where they currently reside). This according to the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development and the Environmental Investigation Agency. This is in addition to support in North America and Europe as well as Micronesia and Mauritius, which have led the proposal.

Ozone-friendly HFCs represent the culmination of the Montreal Protocol's original mission; regulating them as greenhouse gases would require an amendment expanding the protocol's regulatory umbrella. In Egypt, Montreal delegates called on a technical committee to analyze alternatives to the chemicals in advance of a potential decision next year. For background, see our previous coverage here and here.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on November 09, 2009
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Japanese electronics giant Panasonic is about to get even bigger, by offering to buy the majority of another Japanese electronics company, Sanyo for $4.5 billion. So what? I hear you cry.

This take over will mean that Panasonic is more than plasma-screen TVs, the company will have swiftly catapulted itself into the greentech big leagues. According to Greentech Media the deal, if it is successful (and according to the Guardian it will be) then Panasonic’s green tech portfolio becomes much more impressive.

The company will now have Sanyo’s solar panel capability and both companies’ combined lithium-ion battery arsenal will make the joint venture responsible for 30% of that market, says the Wall Street Journal. And we all know how hot lithium ion batteries are right now. The two companies, also according to that WSJ blog, will together account for most of the current battery market for hybrid cars, including the Toyota Prius and the Tesla cars.

To check out the rest of Panasonic’s green portfolio I recommend a closer look at that Greentech Media piece. It outlines the green credentials of Panasonic’s light bulbs, efficient TVs and even recycling schemes.

Image: Getty

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on November 06, 2009
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The US Congress is finally taking on the controversial idea of geoengineering — large-scale, deliberate manipulation of the climate system to counteract climate change.

The concept has slowly been creeping into public awareness, including a casual — and much overblown — mention by Obama's science advisor John Holdren in his first interview with the Associated Press.

Yesterday the House committee on science and technology heard testimony from five scientists, including big-name geoengineering proponents people who have called for government support of geoengineering research, including Lee Lane, codirector of the American Enterprise Institute's geoengineering project, Ken Caldeira of Stanford University and John Shepherd of the University of Southampton. Shepherd recently chaired a Royal Society working group, which also included Caldeira and which released a report on geoengineering in September.

In his opening statement, committee chair Bart Gordon emphasized that there are many uncertainties about geoengineering, including the potential for catastrophic side-effects. But, he said, “the climate is changing”, so “we should accept the possibility that certain climate engineering proposals may merit consideration”.

Gordon announced that this hearing would be the first of three or four hearings to explore geoengineering over the next eight months, and that the committee planned to work with the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee. The chairman of the Commons committee will testify before the House committee this spring, Gordon said.

Continue reading "Geoengineering in the House" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on November 06, 2009
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Nature reporter Jeff Tollefson is at the United Nations climate summit from 2-6 November 2009 in Barcelona, Spain. It is the last negotiating period before the seminal climate summit in Copenhagen in December. You can read his full reports over at our In the Field blog.

Big heads of state

I arrived at the conference this morning only to encounter global leaders with unusually large heads pulling funny money out of one box labelled "aid" and putting it into another labelled "climate change." It was a short stunt by Oxfam - and just one of many put on by various activist groups each day - intended to raise awareness of the danger that rich countries will simply reduce development aid as they increase funding for adaptation and mitigation. Developing countries have made this a central part of their platform going into Copenhagen - any climate financing must be in addition to existing development aid. ...more...

Safeguarding primary forests under REDD

And now back to the case of the missing 10-word phrase, which says that any payments for reduced deforestation should include "safeguards against the conversion of natural forests to forest plantations." Just for amusement, here's the gist in UN climate speak: It was in "Non-paper No. 11" but was left out of "Non-paper No.18" when negotiators gathered for a final session before departing Bangkok last month. ...more...

Nature Geo stirs things up with deforestation analysis

This afternoon has been all about deforestation. Environmentalists are busy tracking the debate about an 10-word phrase - mysteriously deleted at the last talks in Bangkok - that is designed to prevent natural forests from being converted into plantations. But I'll deal with that issue in my next post and move on to a Nature Geoscience commentary that has caused quite a buzz here in Barcelona by downgrading the relative contribution of carbon emissions from deforestation. ...more...

Afternoon updates from the Africans, EU

Following up on yesterday's agreement, the leader of the African Group said during an afternoon press conference he is "guardedly optimistic" about the talks going forward. But Sudan's Lumumba Di-Aping refused to give any ground on developing countries' demands that rich countries curb emissions by 40 percent by 2020. ...more...

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 05, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Road to Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The US House of Representatives yesterday passed legislation condemning the destruction of Madagascar’s forests.

Resolution 839 was passed by 409 votes to five. The resolution calls for Madagascar to restore a constitutional government after the political strife earlier this year; to cease illegal extraction of wood, mining and smuggling of wild animals; and for importing countries to intensify inspection and monitoring to identify illegally sourced wood from the country.

“The House is sending a firm signal that the devastating and illegal destruction of Madagascar’s natural resources will not be tolerated,” says Democrat Earl Blumenauer who introduced the legislation.

“Illegal logging not only does irreparable harm to the environment, but it destroys livelihoods. While Madagascar’s de facto government continues to use its endangered resources to boost its regime, Congress today joined the administration in calling for an immediate end to these practices.”

Earlier this year Nature’s Anjali Nayar visited a pioneering project in Madagascar that is attempting to protect one of the country's few remaining forests.

Félix Ratelolahy, an ecologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, explained how subsistence farmers have slashed and burned away the margins of the forest to grow rice while gangs have pillaged rosewood, ebony and quartz.

“It looks as though bombs have fallen on the place,” he said.

For more, you can watch a Nature Video piece on her trip and read her feature, How to save a forest.

Image: Anjali Nayar

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 05, 2009
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A man who claims he was sacked because of his views on climate change has been told he can take his former employers to an industrial tribunal.

A judge ruled that Tim Nicholson could pursue his claim against Granger under the Employment Equality (Religion and Belief) Regulations 2003, which apply to “any religion, religious belief, or philosophical belief” (BBC).

Nicholson, formerly head of sustainability, was made redundant by Granger in 2008.

The company had challenged a March ruling allowing a claim under the 2003 regulations, on the basis that views on climate change were not religious or philosophical. John Bowers, representing Grainger, has claimed that climate change opinions should not be protected because it is “a scientific view rather than a philosophical one” and “philosophy deals with matters that are not capable of scientific proof” (Daily Telegraph). Granger also says letting Nicholson go was a normal redundancy.

However, a judge has ruled the claim can go ahead.

Continue reading "Global warming views ‘are philosophical belief’ for UK law" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 04, 2009
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In December this year, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will descend on Copenhagen to wrangle over the details of a new global climate deal — a potential successor to the Kyoto Protocol. See Nature’s Road to Copenhagen special for more coverage.

“Icebergs are melting in the Arctic. In Africa, people become refugees because their environment has been destroyed. We need an agreement on one objective: Global warming must not exceed 2 degrees Celsius.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel urges Congress to act on climate change during a visit to Washington (CNN).

“All of us agreed that it is imperative for us to redouble our efforts in the weeks between now and the Copenhagen meeting to assure that we create a framework for progress in dealing with potential ecological disaster.”
US President Barack Obama comments after meeting Merkel (AFP).

“None whatsoever.”
James Inhofe, Republican Senator and global warming skeptic, comments on what impact Merkel’s speech might have on the US debate (AFP).

“With the strong leadership of the United States we can indeed make an agreement.”
Jose Manuel Barroso, European Commission President, says a meeting with US President Barack Obama has filled him with confidence (BBC).

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 04, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Quotes of the day, Road to Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Nature reporter Jeff Tollefson is at the climate negotiations in Barcelona. This is his first blog post from the pre-Copenhagen meeting, cross posted from In the Field.

I arrived at the United Nations climate conference today - late, on the second day, after a red-eye flight over the Atlantic and an all-too-brief nap at the hotel – and encountered drama much sooner than expected. I registered, oriented myself at the conference centre, gathered the requisite daily briefing documents and then found a bathroom to deploy a newly purchased toothbrush.

It was there, after bumping into a colleague, that I learned the African Group had announced at the opening session on Monday that it would boycott the Kyoto Protocol talks until developed countries get serious about their climate commitments.

Continue reading "Barcelona climate: A rough start, tinged with hope" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 04, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Policy, Road to Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Another year, another dire assessment of the world’s endangered species.

This year’s update of the the IUCN’s ‘Red List’ of threatened species says 17,291 species out of the 47,677 assessed are officially threatened. That’s about 36%.

Admittedly, that’s a slight improvement on last year, when only 38% of species assessed were classified as threatened. However that’s because 16,928 species out of 44,828 were threatened, so there are actually an extra 363 species in trouble*.

“The scientific evidence of a serious extinction crisis is mounting,” says Jane Smart, director of IUCN’s Biodiversity Conservation Group (press release).

New entries in this year’s list include the Panay Monitor Lizard (Varanus mabitang) which comes in as ‘endangered’ and the Eastern Voalavo (Voalavo antsahabensis), also in the endangered category.

And spare a thought for the Kihansi Spray Toad (Nectophrynoides asperginis) now ‘Extinct in the Wild’.

The full, depressing statistics:

Global figures for 2009 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species:
Total species assessed = 47,677
Total Extinct or Extinct in the Wild = 875 (2%) [Extinct = 809; Extinct in the Wild = 66].
Total threatened = 17,291 (36%) [Critically Endangered = 3,325; Endangered = 4,891; Vulnerable = 9,075].
Total Near Threatened = 3,650 (8%).
Total Lower Risk/conservation dependent = 281 (<1%) [this is an old category that is gradually being phased out of the Red List]
Total Data Deficient = 6,557 (14%)
Total Least Concern = 19,023 (40%)
Global figures for 2008 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species:
Total assessed = 44,838
Total Extinct or Extinct in the Wild = 869 (2%) [Extinct = 804 ; Extinct in the Wild = 65]
Total threatened = 16,928 (38%) [Critically Endangered = 3,246; Endangered = 4,770; Vulnerable = 8,912]
Total Near Threatened = 3,513 (8%)
Total Lower Risk/conservation dependent = 283 (<1%) [this is an old category that is gradually being phased out of the Red List]
Total Data Deficient = 5,570 (12%)
Total Least Concern = 17,675 (39%)

*And if you want to play the percentages, in 2000 69% of assessed species were endangered (11,406 out of 16,507).

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 03, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Climate negotiators are in Barcelona, Spain, this week for the last bout of negotiating prior to the two-week Copenhagen meeting. In December this year, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will descend on Copenhagen to wrangle over the details of a new global climate deal — a potential successor to the Kyoto Protocol. See Nature’s Road to Copenhagen special for more coverage.

“The clock has almost ticked down to zero and, as always, time will fly. These last five days are critical on the road to success to Copenhagen. They need to be used wisely.”
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, tells the meeting to make progress (AFP).

“A good deal for the climate is still possible. All that is missing is political will, not least from the US, which under President Obama has fallen far behind the rest of the world, and is threatening to undermine a planet-saving agreement in Copenhagen.”
Damon Moglen, of Greenpeace US, comments after his organisation stormed the town’s Sagrada Familia to unveil banners (AFP).

“I feel it [is] very hard to imagine how the US president can receive the Nobel peace prize on December 10 in Oslo only a few hundred kilometres [from Copenhagen] if he has sent an American delegation to Copenhagen with no offer.”
Connie Hedegaard, Denmark’s environment minister, takes aim at America (Guardian).

“Climate change is a ticking time bomb. Global leaders need to act now to stop the needless deaths of millions of children.”
David Mepham, Save the Children’s policy director, says climate change could kill 250,000 children in 2010 and over 400,000 by 2030 (Daily Telegraph).

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 02, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Quotes of the day, Road to Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted for Rex Dalton

A US project to more precisely chart geological time scales is releasing a new initiative to educate students on deep time in order to challenge religious groups who argue life was divinely made about 10,000 years ago.

Earthtime’s program – downloadable at earth-time.org and available in DVD and CD format – explains the ages back billions of years. It includes teaching methods in math and physics to explain how researchers date sediments through atomic decay.

Sam Bowring, a geochronologist from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston and an Earthtime leader, described the educational drive last week to the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America.

“I will never forget Kirk Johnson of the Denver Museum of Science and Technology leaning into the camera, saying: ‘Go home and tell your parents the world is 4.567 billion years old’,” says Bowring.

In Denver, Colorado, and Boston, Massachusetts, Earthtime scientists have provided educational material to a total of hundreds of students and teachers. Denver scientists also conduct dialogues with students over district video networks.

In a planned next grant from the US National Science Foundation that previously has funded Earthtime with $1 million, scientists hope to expand the educational outreach.

One major Earthtime science project is to precisely date the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary about 65 million years ago, when most life forms were wiped out by a worldwide catastrophic event. Bowring, Johnson and other researchers are using sediments of the K-T boundary debris outside Denver for the more exact date.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 29, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Policy | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

The El Niño triggers declines in primates in the New World, suggesting an increase in these events caused by global warming could be devastating.

Ruscena Wideerholf and Eric Post, of Penn State University, looked at how El Niño influences the populations of muriqui (Brachyteles hypoxanthus), woolly monkey (Lagothrix lagotricha), Geoffroy’s spider monkey (Ateles geoffroyi), and red howlers (Alouatta seniculus). In Biology Letters, they report that all four experienced either intimidate or one year lagged negative impacts on their populations.

“Our results indicate that global climate change and increased El Niño events could pose a serious threat to ateline primates” they write. “Given that the status of many primate species is already precarious, in the face of continued global change, further studies to quantity the effects of climate and environmental variability on primate species are needed.”

The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a change in sea surface temperatures in the Pacific.

“El Niño events are expected to increase in frequency with global warming,” says Post (press release). “This study suggests that the consequences of such intensification of ENSO could be devastating for several species of New World monkeys.”

Image: critically endangered northern muriqui / Carla B. Possamai / K.B. Strier

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 28, 2009
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Months after the House of Representatives passed its historic global warming legislation, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is finally poised to begin moving its own bill. But first, three days of non-stop testimony from dozens of experts representing the Obama administration, academics, environmental groups and business representatives.

Today was reserved for Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat who partnered up with California Democrat and committee chairwoman Barbara Boxer, to write the bill, as well as a suite of administration officials led by Energy Secretary Steven Chu and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

Despite a steady stream of testimony underscoring the many benefits that could flow from 900-plus page bill, the debate seems to be stuck on basic questions about whether protecting the climate by deploying clean energy will bankrupt the nation. As the New York Times points out, even Democrats who come from energy producing states have reservations.

Chu tried to address the question by pointing out that China "has already made its choice" and is now spending $9 billion per month on clean energy. He went on to talk about how the United States has lost its lead in clean energy manufacturing and must now make up for lost time if it wants to remain competitive.

"When the starting gun sounded on the clean energy race, the United States stumbled," he said in his written testimony, available here. "But I remain confident that we can make up the ground."

Continue reading "US Senate begins climate proceedings " »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on October 27, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Energy, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted for Quirin Schiermeier

Russia has postponed for another year plans to drill into sub-glacial Lake Vostok in Antarctica. Entry into the uniquely pristine lake 3,750 metres below the Antarctic ice sheet is now planned for the 2010-2011 drilling season, Valery Lukin, director of the Russian Antarctic Expedition, told Nature in an email.

During the 2008-2009 drilling season the Russian crew made an unsuccessful attempt to recover from the borehole bottom at 3,367 metres a drill that had been damaged during an accident in October 2007 (see: Russia delays Lake Vostok drill, 16 July 2008).

“All attempts to extract the drill have failed,” says Lukin. “On 20 January 2009 our drillers have made a decision to change the direction of drilling beginning from a depth of 3,590 metres.”

Seasonal operations at Russia’s Vostok station in East Antarctica will resume in late November, and continue until around early February when temperatures usually drop below levels at which aircraft can safely operate. The Russian drillers hope to reach a depth of around 3,680 metres by the end of the season.

Image: Lake Vostok / NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Canadian Space Agency/RADARSAT International Inc.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 27, 2009
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Lord Stern, who authored the UK report “The Economics of Climate Change” in 2006 and has long been a climate change stalwart in that country, is upset about the coverage his latest remarks have received.

The Times is running a story under the headline “Climate chief Lord Stern: give up meat to save the planet” . Stern was interviewed by the Times and said some things about meat that those pesky reporters decided was the best quote going, and slapped on their front page. “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases,” he says. In future people will treat eating meat differently, more like smoking or drinking, the article continues. And of course, the point has been picked up in the Brit press (Evening Standard, Spectator, Telegraph).

Farmers are cross. Jonathan Scurlock, stepped up from the National Farmers Union. “Farmers in this country are interested in evidence-based policymaking. We don’t have a methane-free cow or pig available to us,” he says in the same piece.

It seems that Stern was trying to make the point that there is poor understanding of the real consequences of not changing behaviour to try and mitigate climate change. And he might have a point. Stern this morning issued a press release saying that his remarks about meat were given “undue prominence”.

“The debate about climate change should not be dumbed down to a single slogan, such as ‘give up meat to save the planet’. Climate change has broad and profound implications for us and we need a sensible public discussion about the choices and decisions we face,” the statement continues. Stern has arranged a symposium in parliament this afternoon for MPs and members of the House of Lords to “discuss these issues and to encourage them to engage the public about them.”

It does seem, from reading the rest of the interview with Stern later in the paper, that he said a whole lot more than a few comments about meat. Such as calling for president Obama to attend the Copenhagen climate summit in December. But perhaps Stern was naive to think that any threat to the British Sunday roast would be allowed to pass without a furore.

Image: Getty

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on October 27, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Australia’s government has been told to invest more in research on the impact climate change will have on its coastlines.

The House of Representatives committee on climate change warned that “the time to act is now” in its new report on climate and coasts. As well as more research, there is a need for more clarity on legal and insurance issues for those living on the coast and better emergency management arrangements, it says.

“This is an issue of national significance. Some 80% of the Australian population live in the coastal zone, and the concentration of Australia’s population and infrastructure along the coast makes us particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts, including sea level rise,” says Jennie George, the committee chairwoman (press release).

The committee wants more investment in research on sea level rise, ice sheet dynamics, ocean acidification, erosion and wave climate, and the impact climate change will have on diseases.

Below the fold: media coverage.

Continue reading "Australia frets over coastal impact of climate change" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 27, 2009
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A paper published in Nature Geoscience this week is causing consternation for other geologists.

The news, already reported on earlier this year when presented at a conference, comes from Graham Hill, at GNS Science in Wellington, New Zealand, and his colleagues.

Hill is claiming that underneath Mount St Helens Mount Adams, and possibly Mount Rainier in the Cascades – a mountain range in Washington State in the US – lurks a giant magma chamber. The initial news story in New Scientist, based on the AGU meeting in June this year, suggested that this meant a supervolcano was waiting to erupt in this region.

Hill’s work, now published, is based on measurements of electrical conductivity in the rocks under the northern Cascades. This, according to Hill confirmed a widespread layer of high conductivity material under the range. The reason they infer a large molten magma chamber is because molten rock has different conductivity than solid rock. This large magma chamber could link Mt St Helens, Mt Adams and Mt Rainier, leading to the supervolcano links.

Cue ruffled feathers: the volcano blog Eruptions wasn’t pleased, nor was the Oregonian. And now the aforementioned paper based on this presentation has been published, they’re at it again.

What was the cause of their displeasure? The author of Eruptions disputes that the magma chambers under this mountain range could all be linked, and he says that the magma down there is not molten, or at least not much of it is. Judging by the comments thread at that blog, others are similarly sceptical.

In the Miami Herald Seth Moran, a volcano seismologist with the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Washington is quoted as saying. "Other geophysical studies don't support this theory."

“Moran said the most telling evidence that the theory was wrong was the lack of any surface evidence, such as geothermal vents or hot springs, among the mountains that would indicate the presence of a super-heated underground magma pool,” the piece reads.

Ah, but the Miami Herald piece also asserts that Hill is making no claims about a supervolcano at all. And taking a look at the press release that accompanied the paper, no such bold claims are actually made. It reads: “If confirmed by additional methods, this could be one of most widespread magma-bearing areas of continental crust discovered thus far.”

Over at the Seattle Times, another geologist, George Bergantz from the University of Washington, says that this study is the best yet, and calls the study “provocative” but nevertheless something that warrants further work.

Who is right? I don't know. But I will definitley be keeping an eye out for responses to the paper.

The paper’s conclusions state that their work “raises the possibility that the entire SWCC [Southern Washington Cascades Conductor, a conductive zone known in this region] marks a single laterally extensive zone of partial melt in the mid-crust.” And ends by saying that more work is needed to prove the point. Well, at least on that point I’m sure everyone will agree.

Image: Mount St Helens, by Steve Schilling, USGS

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on October 26, 2009
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Two papers in Science yesterday have poured cold water on the promise of second generation biofuels.

Biofuels derived from the cellulosic, woody parts of plants are not having their greenhouse gas emissions properly accounted for, says Jerry Melillo from the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole. Melillo’s study suggests that changes in the way land is used, as a consequence of growing crops for biofuels, is not taken into account, and if it were then those biofuels would be shown to actually cause more greenhouse gases to be released than fossil fuels. Nitrous oxide emissions from increased use of fertilisers are a big part of the problem.

"The problem is, we have a finite amount of land where new crops could be grown. Melillo and colleagues now report that if biofuel crops replace food crops on current farmlands, then the clearing of forested land for additional food crops will release more carbon from the soil there than in the areas where the biofuel crops themselves are being grown," says the press release.

In a related policy forum article, Timothy Searchinger from Princeton University and a bunch of colleagues point out flaws in the ways that carbon emissions are counted for cap-and-trade schemes in both Europe and the US.

They say that the assertion that fuels made from biomass can be counted as carbon neutral is wrong. “Harvesting existing forests for electricity adds net carbon to the air,” the report says. “If bioenergy crops displace forest or grassland, the carbon released from soild and vegetation, plus lost future sequestration, generates carbon debt, which counts against the carbon the crops absorb.”

"In the near-term I think, irrespective of how you go about the cellulosic biofuels program, you're going to have greenhouse gas emissions exacerbating the climate change problem," Melillo is reported as saying in Reuters.

Energy efficiency news says the report is damning for biofuels.

More bad news comes from a UNEP report, highlighted by the New York Times. The report calls for greater debate about biofuels before ploughing headlong into a completely biofuel-powered society, although it focuses mainly on first generation fuels, unlike the Science papers.

Image: Chris Neill, MBL

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on October 23, 2009
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Over 200,000 square miles (520,000 sq km) of Alaskan territory could be designated ‘critical habitat’ for polar bears, under new proposals from the US Fish and Wildlife Service. This is the largest area ever proposed for such a designation by the FWS

If the land is designated as critical habitat any “destruction or adverse modification” of it will be prohibited under the Endangered Species Act. This would apply to oil and gas exploration activities which are currently underway in the area says the FWS.

“This Administration is fully committed to the protection and recovery of the polar bear,” says Tom Strickland, Interior Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks (press release pdf). “Proposing critical habitat for this iconic species is one step in the right direction to help this species stave off extinction, recognizing that the greatest threat to the polar bear is the melting of Arctic sea ice caused by climate change.”

The proposed area covers land where bears construct dens and sea ice where bears feed. It is the latest move in ongoing wrangling over protection for the animals, which was a major issue for environmentalists under the Bush administration (see Interior revokes Bush rule on endangered species and Obama backs Bush on polar bear).

The proposal was welcomed by the Center for Biological Diversity, but Brendan Cummings, the CBD’s senior attorney, accused the Interior Department of being “schizophrenic” as earlier this week its Minerals Management Service approved plans for oil exploration in the Beaufort Sea.

Image top: FWS

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 23, 2009
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Nature reporter Anjali Nayar hiked for 21 days in Northern Bhutan to find out how this tiny Himalayan nation is dealing with rapidly melting glaciers. Read Anjali's full report: When the ice melts.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 22, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Road to Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sometimes I think I’m going to get bored of environmental photography competitions. There are, after all, only so many shots of a penguin looking cute or a deer framed against the sky it is possible to take.

Then someone takes a photograph like this. A photograph that makes you say “that can’t be real”.

However José Luis Rodríguez swears this shot isn’t faked and that he took this picture of an Iberian wolf in Spain. You have to feel sorry for the other entrants in this year’s Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition; one imagines that the judges saw Rodríguez's shot and that was it, no one else had a chance. (And that’s not a misspelling, the competition sponsor is called Veolia Environnement.)

That’s not to say the other entries aren’t great. The two shown below are Fergus Gill’s Clash of the Yellowhammers and Thomas Haney’s ‘The lone fir’.

There are even some nice photos of a deer framed against the sky and a cute penguin. But seriously, can this photo of the wolf be real? Really?

See all the images in the online gallery.

The Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition is owned by the Natural History Museum and BBC Wildlife Magazine. All images are credit of the photographer and Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2009.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 22, 2009
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The world’s largest orb weaver spider has been discovered, lurking malevolently in the jungles of Africa.

Matjaž Kuntner and Jonathan Coddington, of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and the Smithsonian Institution respectively, describe the giant beastie in PLOS One and name it Nephila komaci. The bodies of females average 3.8 cm while the legs are 10 cm long each. Webs from the spider are likely to be over a metre across, capable of trapping bats, birds and even small humans (maybe).

“The genus Nephila already contained the largest orbweaving spiders, but N. komaci now becomes the largest Nephila species known,” they write.

The animal is named after Kuntner's late friend Andrej Komac.

A specimen of this huge spider was first collected in 1978 from Sodwana Bay in South Africa but two subsequent expeditions to find more were unsuccessful, leading scientists to conclude that either the animal was a hybrid or it had become extinct. Then a second animal, originally hailing from Madagascar, was discovered in a museum in 2003. A search of museums again turned up nothing, adding weight to the extinction theory.

Then something wonderful happened (unless you’re an arachnophobe, in which case something terrible happened): in the authors’ words “two additional females and a male were recently collected in Tembe Elephant Park by South African colleagues, and it is now clear that N. komaci is a valid, new extant Nephila species”.

However Kunter and Coddington appear to have made one shocking error. They don’t have any photos of the animal…

Image: this is acutally Nephila inaurata, not Nephila komaci / M. Kuntner

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 21, 2009
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NASA’s Operation Ice Bridge got underway in the Southern Hemisphere on Friday last week, with a DC-8 plane flying the first of a series of missions to measure Antarctic ice.

Although ice can and is measured from satellites there will be a gap in NASA’s measurements after ICESat-I comes to the end of its life this year and before the start of ICESat-II in 2014. To plug this gap the space agency is stepping up with a six-year programme of ice-measuring plane flights.

“The DC-8 flew two parallel tracks along the coast, one just offshore over the floating ice shelf, and one just inland. By measuring on either side of the “grounding line” between the floating ice and the ice on land, scientists can determine the rate at which this near-shore part of the ice shelf is melting,” says NASA.

The plane is too large for Antarctic runways so it launched from Chile at 9:11 local time and flew south to the Getz Ice Shelf.

Although Friday’s flight is being reported as the start of Operation Ice Bridge, the very first OIB flights were actually made in April in the Northern Hemisphere.

Image top: OIB logo.
Image lower: view from the plane.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 19, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Neat technologies | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The UK must grow GM crops to avoid food shortages in the future, a report from the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of sciences, is expected to say (Telegraph).

The study was commission in July 2008 in response to a prediction from the United Nations that world food production would need to double by 2050 to sustain a global population expected to reach nine billion.

Previous plans to grow GM crops commercially in the UK were withdrawn at the beginning of the decade after protests from green groups and consumers’ rejection of the technology.

The Telegraph says that the report, which is due to be published this week, examines several options to increase crops yields in the UK and around the world, including growing GM crops.

A source told the Sunday Telegraph, “The report will say the right GM crops should be used in the future to alleviate food shortages. This study is going to move the debate forward. The government will have to take notice of this.”

But opponents of GM crops told the Telegraph, “There is no scientific evidence that GM produces huge yields.”

Posted by Natasha Gilbert on October 19, 2009
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Earth, environment & ecology, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In December this year, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will descend on Copenhagen to wrangle over the details of a new global climate deal — a potential successor to the Kyoto Protocol. See Nature’s Road to Copenhagen special for more coverage.

“We must frankly face the plain fact that our negotiators are not getting to agreement quickly enough. So I believe that leaders must engage directly to break the impasse. … We cannot compromise with the catastrophe of unchecked climate change; so we must compromise with one another.”
UK prime minister Gordon Brown tries to chivvy along world leaders in the run up to Copenhagen (Daily Telegraph).

“Canada will undertake efforts to meet our global responsibilities in a way that balances environmental protection and economic prosperity for Canadians, and is comparable to the level of effort of other industrialized countries.”
Sujata Raisinghani, spokeswoman for Environment Minister Jim Prentice, says Canada hopes to set itself up as an environmental leader at the Copenhagen talks (AFP).

“We should come out of Copenhagen with a deal that will ensure that everyone will survive.”
Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed comments on the negotiations after emerging from the world’s first underwater cabinet meeting, held on the seafloor to highlight the threat of sea level rise (AFP).

“I am 99.9% sure there will be no harmful creatures. I’m sure there won't be any sharks. The nastiest thing would be a moray eel, but we have checked the reef.”
Nasheed again, with some more immediate concerns before his cabinet meeting (BBC).

“Strong progress has been made in the past few weeks, with Japan, for example, announcing that it will cut its emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by 25% by 2020 relative to levels in 1990. But there are still major obstacles and some doubt whether a strong global deal can be hammered out in time for the United Nations’s conference on climate change in Copenhagen, now just seven weeks away.”
Nicholas Stern, author of the Stern Review, writes in the Observer.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 19, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Quotes of the day, Road to Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

China’s Premier Wen Jiabao today issued an apology. For making a basic error in his geology.

When visiting a classroom earlier this month Wen referred to the three types of rock as “sedimentary, magmatic and volcanic”. This is a schoolboy error, as he has now acknowledged in a letter to state news agency Xinhua, which reported his original comments.

“The three main types of rocks should be sedimentary rocks, magmatic rocks (also called igneous rocks) and metamorphic rocks. Please correct my mistake and send my apology to all readers,” he wrote.

The Danwei website notes:

Needless to say, the apology burnishes the established reputation of Wen as a humble, down-to-earth, grandfatherly leader, even if, as a graduate of the Beijing Institute of Geology, he really ought to have known such basic information.

Another reason, perhaps a more important one, is that for the Communist Party, which has been touting "scientific" as its top claim to power (as in "the scientific concept of development" associated with president Hu Jintao), scientific rigor is definitely a quality it would like to be associated with.

The Times says Wen’s “unprecedented” apology has “caused a sensation”.

Xinhua quotes Wang Wei, of the National School of Administration, who says, “Everybody makes mistakes. My respect for our premier is stronger after this.” The news service also notes that “Wen has gained a reputation as a man of the people over the years.”

Headline watch
With apology, China's Premier wins praise as rock of responsibility – Xinhua
Premier's candor on rock error rocks China – China Daily

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 16, 2009
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China’s got ample space underground to store the carbon dioxide it pumps into the sky, according to a recently publicised study by Chinese and US researchers (Dahowski et al, Energy Procedia 1, 2009; doi:10.1016/j.egypro.2009.02.058). It has 2,300 Gt/CO2 of theoretical capacity spread generally across the country, and not too far from the powerplants that are large point sources of the greenhouse gas – meaning that transport and storage costs can be kept down to less than $10 per ton of CO¬2, the study finds.

Lump this in with other capacity estimates, such as the US Department of Energy’s Carbon Sequestration Atlas, and it’s clear that the world is generally not short of space, and could likely store hundreds of years of carbon dioxide output.

The IEA has more capacity estimates in its CCS roadmap [pdf], released on Tuesday to coincide with political support for carbon capture and storage (see Nature’s news story, ‘Urgency’ needed on carbon capture).

But (there’s always a but).

Continue reading "Carbon storage: searching for space" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on October 15, 2009
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Posted for Rex Dalton

A new front in the environmental battle over bluefin tuna was opened yesterday to try to protect the dwindling populations facing commercial wipe out in the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea.

On the last day possible before a conference next year, Monaco nominated Atlantic bluefin tuna to be added to the list of species that can’t be traded internationally under CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and Wild Fauna and Flora. This sets the stage for a high-stakes battle in March, when the next Conference of the Parties to the convention will meet to consider nominations.

Environmental groups criticized the Obama Administration for failing to formally endorse Monaco’s nomination. In response US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrator Jane Lubchenco issued a statement saying the administration “strongly supports” Monaco’s nomination but wants an 11th hour-attempt to work within another international conservation framework to reduce fishing quotas and improve regulation.

Continue reading "Monaco continues push for bluefin fishing ban" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 15, 2009
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The US Geological Survey today warned that introduced species of gigantic snake “constitute an exceptional threat to the integrity of native ecosystems”.

A new report from the USGS also warns that the largest examples of these animals are “probably capable of killing an adult human”. Luckily, “most seem disinclined to do so”.

More likely the snakes will end up – as we have already seen – in face offs with native wildlife. “Large alligators and panthers would be capable of eating the occasional giant constrictor, but large constrictors will likely eat alligators and panthers,” warns the report.

The report says the “overall organism risk potential” – the sum of the likelihood a snake population could be established and the consequences if it did – is high for the Indian or Burmese Python, Northern African Python, Southern African Python, Boa Constrictor, and the Yellow Anaconda.

The risk potential was deemed medium for the Reticulated Python, Green Anaconda, DeSchauensee’s Anaconda, and Beni Anaconda. At the moment only three species are known to be reproducing in the US: the Burmese Python, the Northern African Python, and the Boa Constrictor.

Don’t think that these snakes are nasty though, the authors of the report (Robert Reed and Gordon Rodda) are at pains to point out this is not the case. They write:

We can testify to these snakes’ attraction personally, as we both have kept pet giant constrictors. We can attest to these snakes’ beauty, companionability, and educational value. The love of nature is often originally fostered in one’s own arms, where close contact with living things engenders a connection not otherwise possible. And size does impress.

Image: Skip Snow of the National Park Service measures a Burmese python captured in the Everglades / photo by Lori Oberhofer, NPS.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 14, 2009
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“Fire up the B-movietron!” exlaims University of Portsmouth paleontologist Mark Whitton, musing on the discovery of fossils of a weird flying reptile (which he’s also pictured in action, below). The fossils were found in northeastern China, and have been christened Darwinopterus, in honour of the great man’s multiple anniversaries this year.

Why so weird? Well, as Junchang Lu and colleagues report in Proceedings of the Royal Society B (doi: 10.1098/rspb.2009.1603) the crow-sized fossil is a kind of pterosaur (or pterodactyl), one of the flying reptiles that cruised around the sky 220-65 million years ago. It’s a transitional fossil, but transitional in a strangely disjointed way: its head and neck look like they belong to advanced, short-tailed pterosaurs, and the rest of the skeleton is similar to more primitive forms.

“It’s as if someone said, ‘Let’s nail these two together and make a sort of chimera, that’ll really confuse everybody,’” says Dave Unwin of the University of Leicester in England [Science News].

Unwin adds (press release): “The head and neck evolved first, followed later by the body, tail, wings and legs. It seems that natural selection was acting on and changing entire modules and not, as would normally be expected, just on single features such as the shape of the snout, or the form of a tooth. This supports the controversial idea of a relatively rapid "modular" form of evolution.”

Darren Naish fills in all the gory details at Tetrapod Zoology.

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on October 14, 2009
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Apparently black bears, soccer moms and Chief Justice John Roberts have something in common: a preference for minivans.

As with most pudgy animals, black bears are committed to energy efficiency, eating only the fattiest portions of their prey (the skins, eggs and brains) and even selecting the plumpest ants. A new analysis published in the Journal of Mammalogy reveals that this dedication even translates to their anthroprogenic food sources.

A group from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Service took a close look at the bear-jack records at Yosemite National Park. They found that between 2004 and 2005, bears chose to break into minivans 29% of the time, even though the only made up 7% of the cars. And while 28% of the cars in the parking lot were sedans, bears were only tempted by them 14% of the time.

Every year between 2001 and 2007, minivas were either the most or second most popular cars, according to the black bears.

Continue reading "Choosy Bears Choose Minivans" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on October 14, 2009
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US billionaire George Soros, founder of the hedge fund Soros Fund Management, has announced plans to invest $1 billion in clean-energy technologies to help stave off global warming.

Speaking at a climate conference in Copenhagen on 12 October, Soros also said he plans to establish - with $100 million of his own money - a new environmental policy group called Climate Policy Initiative.

“I want to apply rather stringent criteria to the investments,” Soros told Bloomberg in an email. “They should be profitable but should also actually make a contribution to solving the problem.”

Soros – estimated to be worth $11 million billion by Forbes – said to reporters in Copenhagen that he lacked scientific expertise, but “the one thing I have is the ability to put money to work” (Guardian).

The Climate Policy Initiative will be headed up by Stanford University Law School professor Thomas Heller, says Bloomberg.

In December this year, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will descend on Copenhagen to wrangle over the details of a new global climate deal — a potential successor to the Kyoto Protocol. See Nature’s Road to Copenhagen special for more coverage.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 13, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Energy, Road to Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Given that they occupy a position on the scientific credibility spectrum that could charitably be characterised as ‘fringe’, it is no surprise that those who deny climate change have to take their victories where they find them.

Hence the glee following the BBC’s recent story ‘What happened to global warming?’

The BBC quotes Piers Corbyn from weather forecasting company Weatheraction and Don Easterbrook of Western Washington University. Both cast doubt on the widely held consensus view that human activity is driving changes in climate.

Corbyn and Easterbrook are both global warming deniers / sceptics and both have been publicising their doubts for some time (see the references on their Wikipedia entries for more). Without commenting on the merits of their arguments, it is clear that it is slightly disingenuous to use the views of these two men to claim as the BBC does that “It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up.”

Nevertheless, the anti-global warming movement is celebrating. Leading the charge is the Daily Telegraph which has a news story and an opinion piece from Damian Thompson which says:

I think the BBC wanted to slip this one out quietly, but a Matt Drudge link put paid to that. The climate change correspondent of BBC News has admitted that global warming stopped in 1998 – and he reports that leading scientists believe that the earth’s cooling-off may last for decades.

Many in the blog-world have followed up with similar items.

To summarise then: two scientists who have previously said they didn’t believe in global warming still don’t believe in global warming.

The main scientific point of the BBC article – that “for the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures” – is discussed in detail on this blog post at Real Climate.

If you don’t wish to follow the link here are a couple of extracts:

Even under conditions of anthropogenic global warming (which would contribute a temperature rise of about 0.2 ºC over this period) a flat period or even cooling trend over such a short time span is nothing special and has happened repeatedly before (see 1987-1996).
…
It is highly questionable whether this “pause” is even real.

UPDATE - See also, 'Nature' attacks the BBC for its U-turn over climate change, Daily Telegraph, 12 October.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 12, 2009
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The UK government has decided to convince us all that climate change is real. To this end it is spending £6 million on a prime time advertising campaign featuring a father reading a bedtime story about the evil carbon dioxide monster created by grown ups which is making rabbits cry.

In perhaps the worst advert for stopping climate change I’ve ever seen, the cringe worthy short has the father telling his child how scientists found that global warming “was being caused by too much CO2, and it was the children of the land who’d have to live with the horrible consequences” (transcript).

When the child asks plaintively “is there a happy ending?” a disembodied voice proclaims, “It’s up to us how the story ends.”

Well in that case I want Al Gore to ride in on an IPCC dragon and slay the carbon monster with his sword of Inconvenient Truth.

The UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change says a recent poll found less than 20% of citizens think climate change will impact their children. “The survey results show that people don’t realise that climate change is already under way and could have very severe consequences for their children's lives,” says climate change minister Joan Ruddock (Reuters).

It’s a worthy cause, but an awful advert.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 09, 2009
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The US Chamber of Commerce has hit back at Apple, after the computer company joined the list of members who have left the group over its views on climate change.

In a letter to Apple, the chamber’s president Thomas Donohue writes:

It is unfortunate that your company didn’t take the time to understand the Chamber’s position on climate and forfeited the opportunity to advance a 21st century approach to climate change.
…
While we do support legislation to address climate change, we oppose legislation such as the Waxman-Markey bill that numerous studies show will cause Americans to lose their jobs and shift greenhouse gas emissions overseas, negating potential climate benefits.
(Full letter on Under the Influence blog.)

Earlier this week Apple said it was leaving the chamber, with VP Catherine Novelli saying, “Apple supports regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and it is frustrating to find the Chamber at odds with us in this effort.” (Various sources, eg ARS Technica.)

Earlier this month the not-insignificant energy companies Exelon, the Public Service Company and Pacific Gas and Electric also left the chamber over climate change differences. In August the chamber called for a public trial of climate change.

Image: Thomas Donohue. Photo by Ian Wagreich / © U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 08, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Energy, Road to Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The European Commission has proposed investing an additional €50 billion into a new research and development programme for low-carbon energy over the next decade, ramping up annual investments from the current €3 billion to €8 billion annually.

The proposal lays out funding goals in six sectors - wind, solar, nuclear, bio-energy, electricity grids and carbon capture and storage, while creating a new "Smart Cities Initiative" focusing on urban energy efficiency. Solar came out on top with €16 billion, followed by CCS at €13 billion. For a quick summary of investments, check Reuters.

The plan sounds good but is missing one thing: Money. The commission readily acknowledges that it can't foot the entire bill itself, meaning "public and private sectors at national and EU level" will need to step up to make it a reality. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal reports EU Commissioner Janez Potocnik saying that most of the money will need to come from the private sector.

Response to the plan has generally been positive, despite some questions about priorities. The European Wind Energy Association wonders why CCS and nuclear received more money than wind, which is ready to go. Along similar lines, the European Photovoltaic Industry Association suggests the commission would be wise to put more resources into clean energy deployment.

Policymakers, researchers and business representatives will discuss the proposal later this month at the European Energy Technology Summit in Stockholm.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on October 07, 2009
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Mere hours after a Nobel Prize was awarded for an invention that allowed the modern digital camera to come into being, a tiny example of this technology has flown into the news on the back of an albatross.

Writing in Plos One, Akinori Takahashi, of Japan’s National Institute of Polar Research, and colleagues report the first recordings of the birds using killer whales as unwitting food providers.

Using data from cameras and depth gages mounted on the backs of black-browed albatrosses (Thalassarche melanophrys) the researchers report that the birds appear to follow Orcinus orca and probably scavenge from the scraps they leave behind

“A close association with foraging killer whales would help albatrosses to find food more efficiently in the apparently ‘featureless’ sea, especially in a year when the availability of aggregative prey species, such as Antarctic krill in South Georgia, is low,” they write.

Richard Phillips, of the British Antarctic Survey, suggests that the whales may also be driving prey to the surface where they are easier for the birds to catch. Phillips was not involved in the research but another BAS researcher was (press release).

You may not think the photo to the right is that impressive, but keep in mind it was recorded in the open ocean on a device the size of a lipstick.

Image: BAS

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 07, 2009
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Last night Cambridge’s clown school gave the world’s best and brightest the awards they deserved. Harvard University hosted its 19th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, where its Annals of Improbable Research recognized the usual combination of mad scientists and asinine leaders.

Pulling in the biology prize was a Japanese team that discovered pandas are more than just cuddly tax dollar vacuums — their poop packs a potent punch. The group isolated bacteria in panda feces that can reduce kitchen waste by more than 90 percent in mass. Good news, given that pandas produce about 40 pounds of poop a day — and as one might expect, it doesn’t stink.

The Ig Nobel prizes also continued their fascination with skivvies. Back in 2001 the biology prize went to the inventor of panties that filter out flatulence with a replaceable charcoal filter, and this year the public health prize went to the inventors of a bra that can be “quickly converted into a pair of gas masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander” — in this case that needy bystander was Wolfgang Ketterle, 2001 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Continue reading "Panda poop, panties and more at the Ig Nobels" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on October 02, 2009
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Chemistry, Earth, environment & ecology, Financial Crisis, Health and medicine, Physics & Mathematics | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday’s earthquakes in the Pacific and Indian Ocean have caused death and destruction in Samoa and Indonesia. In Samoa, a tsunami triggered by a magnitude 8.3 quake off Tonga killed at least 114 people and left thousands homeless. The death toll of the magnitude 7.6 earthquake which hit just a few hours later off the western coast of the Indonesian province of Sumatra may exceed 4,000, local authorities fear. Nature asks whether the double disaster was coincidence.

Is there a link between the Tonga and Sumatra quakes?

Although both quakes occurred on the boundaries of the Australian Plate, there is no known causal link between the two events. Normal physical interaction between earthquake zones doesn’t apply at that range. The ruptures also had quite different seismic characteristics, which is why the Tonga quake generated a tsunami but the Sumatra quake luckily didn’t.

However, a paper in Nature today suggests that seismic waves from earthquakes might indeed have an effect on distant fault lines, increasing the risk of earthquakes far away. Whether this long distance-effect was involved in yesterday’s events is not known.

Continue reading "Briefing: Earthquakes in Sumatra and Samoa" »

Posted by Ananyo Bhattacharya on October 01, 2009
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An earthquake in Indonesia has killed at least 75 people and trapped several thousand under collapsed buildings.

The United States Geological Survey recorded a 7.6 magnitude quake at 10:16 UTC, followed by a 5.5 magnitude quake at 10:38 UTC.

The epicentre of the first was 45 km west-northwest of Padang in Indonesia while the second was 40 km northwest of Padang says the USGS.

“This is a high-scale disaster, more powerful than the earthquake in Yogyakarta in 2006 when more than 3,000 people died,” says the country’s health minister Siti Fadilah Supari (MetroTV via AP).

A number of news sources say 75 people have died and more deaths are expected to be reported as thousands are missing in collapsed buildings.

A tsunami warning for the earthquake has been cancelled.

Image: USGS shake map, key below.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on September 30, 2009
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First, the good news: A new report cataloguing all the known plants and animals boosts the number of species known to science to 1.9 million — a rise of 114,000 compared to a study published three years ago.

Now, the bad news: A new report cataloguing all the known plants and animals found that almost 10% of all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish are at risk of extinction.

The publication, Numbers of Living Species in Australia and the World released by the Australian Biological Resources Study, was part of a major project to document the entire planet's biodiversity.

Continue reading "Mo' species mo' problems" »

Posted by Elie Dolgin on September 30, 2009
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Posted for Quirin Schiermeier and David Cyranoski

A massive earthquake triggered a tsunami that has devastated Samoa and American Samoa killing dozens and perhaps hundreds.

The earthquake, which the Japanese Meteorological Agency measured as a magnitude 8.3, struck at 6:48 local time at a reported depth of 32 kilometres and a distance of 190 kilometres from the Samoan islands. But most of the damage came with the tsunami waves, measuring up to 6 metres in American Samoa, that hit shore shortly afterwards.

Residents in Samoa complained of having little or no warning, some saying they only had 3 minutes. Tide gage records indicate the waves arrived in Pago Pago 8 minutes after the initial warning was issued and in Apia 28 minutes after the warning was issued.

“Clearly, there was very little time for evacuations,” says Costas Synolakis, a tsunami specialist at the University of South California in Los Angeles.

“What is abundantly clear once again is how important public education is for communities at risk, that strong ground shaking IS the warning to evacuate to high ground. The shaking lasted for at least 3 minutes.

“Our mantra is to evacuate if on the coast and if feeling an earthquake that lasts more than 30 seconds, only it is very, very hard to convince local officials to implement public education campaigns, particularly if there hasn’t been a strong event in living memory. With self-evacuation without waiting for warnings, many lives would had been spared.”

Continue reading "Hundreds feared dead after Pacific tsunami" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on September 30, 2009
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In December this year, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will descend on Copenhagen to wrangle over the details of a new global climate deal — a potential successor to the Kyoto Protocol. See Nature’s Road to Copenhagen special for more coverage.

The head of the UN’s climate change body has attempted to light a fire under international negotiators ahead of the Copenhagen summit.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, told those at a meeting in Bangkok, Thailand they would have to speed up the current “painfully slow” negotiations.

“Time is not just pressing. It has almost run out,” he said (Reuters, AP).

The meeting is one of a number scheduled to attempt to thrash out a new international deal to replay the Kyoto treaty, in advance of Copenhagen. Tove Ryding of Greenpeace has a solution to slow progress, as told to Reuters: “What we need to see is late nights and fights. We need to see them sit there, that’s what these people do for a living, they need to smell like sweat and coffee. If they don’t do that, they’re not actually at work.”

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said world leaders had made progress on climate change at a recent meeting in New York. “All leaders said they wanted a deal and are prepared to work for it. This gives the negotiations vital political impetus,” he said (press release).

Posted by Daniel Cressey on September 29, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Road to Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A massive earthquake that killed tens of thousands in the Chinese province of Sichuan last year was a “once in 4,000 years” event, according to a paper published in Nature Geoscience.

The Wenchuan quake in May 2008 “took the local population as well as scientists by surprise”, write Zheng-Kang Shen, of the State Key Laboratory of Earthquake Dynamics, and colleagues. “Although the Longmen Shan fault zone—which includes the fault segments along which this earthquake nucleated—was well known, geologic and geodetic data indicate relatively low deformation rates.”

However, by analysing GPS and radar data the researchers found that three different rock structures between different segments of the fault all failed one after another. “These connecting structures may represent barriers that rarely fail, and would fail only when high stress has accumulated after multiple rounds of smaller events broke the adjoining individual segments,” they write.

These three barrier regions corresponded to the areas of maximum damage at the towns of Yingxiu, Beichuan and Nanba. Such failures should only occur every 4,000 years, the team estimates.

“You really have to accumulate enough elastic energy to have them rupture through – but once rupture starts, it would rupture a series of barriers to get a cascade style,” lead author Shen told AP.

For more on the Sichuan quake, see Nature’s May 2009 news feature: The sleeping dragon.

Image: Alex Witze

Posted by Daniel Cressey on September 28, 2009
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A newly launched series of Google Earth tours will map out the projected impacts of climate change worldwide and look at mitigation and adaptation options. Here's a brief intro, narrated in the light Tennessee drawl of Al Gore:

The full length intro is here, with more tours to come. Google is also inviting netizens to talk back about climate change on a new YouTube channel.

While you're playing with climate science layers on Google Earth, you may want to check out our interactive map of polar ice coring sites where researchers have extracted hundreds of millennia of climatic history.

By Anna Barnett, cross posted from Nature's Climate Feedback blog.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on September 25, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Road to Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

A European court injected a fair bit of doubt and confusion into carbon markets Wednesday, ruling that the European Commission exceeded its authority when it imposed tighter caps for greenhouse gas emissions in Poland and Estonia (Reuters, The Times)

At first glance, the ruling could be interpreted to curtail the commission's authority to impose a European cap, which would threaten the integrity of the entire multi-national system and fuel existing tensions among countries. But analysts say the ruling is actually limited to the second commitment period, which runs from 2008 to 2012. The commission's authority moving forward does not appear to be in any danger, which means the impacts, whatever they turn out to be, will likely be temporary.

Milo Sjardin, an expert on carbon markets for the consultancy New Energy Finance in New York, said he isn't expecting any major changes in the overall European cap, in part because the recession has already significantly reduced pressure on European industries. NEF's latest estimates indicate that covered emissions (which include power and major industrial sources) are likely to drop by a whopping 10 percent in 2009 alone.

The result is a 50 percent reduction in the cost of curbing emissions by 20 percent by 2020. In fact, NEF now says it will be cheaper to curb emissions by 30 percent (an EU pledge that is contingent on action by the rest of the world) than original forecast for the 20 percent target, Sjardin says.

For his part, EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas made it clear that the commission isn't about to back down (AFP).

Regardless, the price of carbon allowances in Europe dropped on the news as traders weighed the possibility of the commission losing its battle and granting additional allowances, not only to Poland and Estonia but six other countries that have appealed their caps. That would make compliance easier and thus decrease the likelihood that companies would need to buy additional allowances to cover their emissions.

If all eight countries were to return to their originally proposed CAP, NEF says allowances would increase by 15 percent. And because companies can carry their allowances forward into the third trading period, which runs from 2013 to 2020, such a scenario could theoretically depress prices for years to come. That would be good news for traditional industries, although it might make clean energy technologies less competitive.

"But we regard that as a very unlikely scenario," Sjardin says. "There’s likely to be a compromise somewhere down the road."

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on September 24, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Energy, Policy, Road to Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The edges of ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic are thinning faster than we’d thought, thanks to a surprisingly extensive network of fast-flowing and accelerating glaciers, new satellite measurements show (Nature, doi:10.1038/nature08471).

"We were surprised to see such a strong pattern of thinning glaciers across such large areas of coastline – it's widespread and in some cases thinning extends hundreds of kilometres inland. We think that warm ocean currents reaching the coast and melting the glacier front is the most likely cause of faster glacier flow. This kind of ice loss is so poorly understood that it remains the most unpredictable part of future sea level rise," said Hamish Pritchard, of the British Antarctic Survey [press release].

"This report provides a much more ominous picture than we have had, and a depressing prospect of the potential for sea level rise," Inez Fung, an atmospheric scientist at UC Berkeley, told the San Francisco Chronicle. "It's very much a cause for worry."

Pritchard and other researchers analysed some 50 million laser readings from Nasa’s ICESat (Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite) between 2003 and 2007. 81 of 111 Greenland glaciers surveyed are thinning at an accelerating, self-feeding pace, AP highlights. While in parts of Antarctica, ice sheets have been losing 30 feet a year in thickness since 2003 (though there’s plenty of ice to get through – some of these areas are a mile thick). “To some extent, it’s a runaway effect. The question is, how far will it run?” Pritchard tells them.

That’s what everyone wants to know, and the scientists were careful to point out that it was “too early to determine whether the thinning was a sign that sea level rise would accelerate” (Reuters).

Image credit: British Antarctic Survey

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on September 24, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

European spacecraft Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (Goce) begins its finely tuned gravitational measurements this week.

The BBC explains that the mission will track ocean movement and should improve on existing measurements of the Earth's surface and its gravitational field--known as the geoid. Low solar activity and a calm upper atmosphere this week mean that the ion-powered spacecraft can fly just about 254.75 kilometres above the surface, plus or minus 50 metres, even lower than the 268 kilometres mission planners hoped for. The lower it flies, the more sensitive its measurements, which can detect changes in gravity as small as one 10-trillionth of gravity at the surface.

For Nature's previous coverage, see Gravity mission to launch (Nature News, 11 March 2009) and on GOCE is Go! (The Great Beyond, 17 March 2009) from the time of Goce's launch from Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia. In case the science proves overwhelming, the European Space Agency has provided a helpful visual demonstration that Goce, (spacecraft, right) will map the gravity (represented here by apples, center) of the Earth (bottom).

Continue reading "Goce tunes in to geoid" »

Posted by Lucas Laursen on September 23, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The US Environmental Protection Agency announced an emissions reporting rule today which will require producers of more than 25,000 metric tonnes of greenhouse gases a year to submit an annual report to the EPA. While the EPA already tracks big emitters this lowers the threshold and should account for about 85% of US greenhouse gas emissions, writes Mother Jones.

Other emissions-related fights are also burbling this week...

Continue reading "To report, or not to report: EPA emissions reporting up in the air" »

Posted by Lucas Laursen on September 23, 2009
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Sydney has been hit by a dust storm the likes of which it has not seen in decades. Thunderstorms from the Indian and
Southern Oceans have gathered dust and debris from southern and eastern Australia at up to 100 kilometres per hour on their way to Sydney, according to Reuters. Other impressive dust storms date to a 1983 El Niño year, when droughts made topsoil vulnerable.

Many, many videos on The Guardian's website.

Photo: Andy Tyler via Flickr

Posted by Lucas Laursen on September 23, 2009
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This giant squid, found by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service scientists during a sperm whale diet study on 30 July, measured 5.9 metres and weighed in at 46.7 kg according to a Reuters report.

See the full post for another photo...

Continue reading "One that didn't get away: giant squid found in Gulf of Mexico" »

Posted by Lucas Laursen on September 22, 2009
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

All eyes are now on tomorrow's UN Summit on Climate Change in New York and the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh later this week, although it's not yet clear whether either of these meetings is going to produce any meaningful breakthroughs.

Indeed, if last week's US-sponsored Major Economies Forum is any indication, the outlook isn't particularly good. The meeting ended as quietly as it began, leaving the United States' top climate envoy, Todd Stern, with little to say except that there was a "narrowing of differences" among the globe's top 17 greenhouse gas emitters. Combine that with increasing skepticism that the US Senate is going to be able to squeeze a climate bill out before the UN global warming talks in Copenhagen in December, and things begin to look positively gloomy.

Nonetheless, there are signs of movement at the highest levels, which is what people at the lower levels have been saying was needed for some time. Chinese President Hu Jintao will discuss his country's climate policies during a much-anticipated address on Tuesday. US President Barack Obama plans to do the same, although it's not clear how far he will be able to go given that his hands are tied by Congress.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced that he would be willing to personally attend the talks in Copenhagen if it comes down to that, and The Associated Press has reported that Obama might attend as well. This would certainly qualify as an important gesture of goodwill if the US delegation is unable to sign on to any significant commitments due to slow-moving domestic politics.

And just for kicks, Conservation International reports that out that Guyana President Bharrat Jagdeo and Harrison Ford (who does not lead a country but has appeared in some cool films) will attend an "extraordinary origami event" in New York, calling for the inclusion of tropical forest conservation an eventual climate change pact. Pictures aren't yet available, but keep an eye out for "life-size origami trees and wildlife."

Continue reading "Mixed signals as 'Climate Week' kicks off" »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on September 21, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Energy, Policy, Road to Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force released an interim report on Thursday, calling for a comprehensive national approach to managing oceans, what goes into them and pretty much anything that they contain or affect.

It is both an honorable goal and an enormous challenge. Achieving it would mean seamless management of everything from freshwater resources, stormwater runoff and coastal ecosystems to fisheries, aquaculture, commercial shipping, offshore energy, military activities and global warming (not to mention coordination with state and local governments).

Perhaps the biggest initiative would be the creation of a National Ocean Council to coordinate federal policy, although it's not entirely clear what kind of authority that council might have. Administration officials largely offered up broad statements without going into details about how the new policy, once finalized, might actually impact these activities.

"For the first time, we as a nation say loudly and clearly that healthy oceans matter," said Jane Lubchenco, Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "Today as never before, we better comprehend the connections between healthy oceans and people."

Appointed by President Barack Obama in June, the task force includes representatives from the full suite of federal agencies and departments. Its interium report will be available for public comment for 30 days, and a final report will be issued in December.

Just as a reminder, this is actually the second major ocean policy review in as many administrations, although the last one was not limited to federal agencies. As directed by Congress, President George W. Bush appointed 16 people to the US Commission on Ocean Policy, which finalized its report and closed up shop in 2004.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on September 17, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Oil trading company Trafigura announced a potential settlement of a legal case brought by 31,000 residents of Ivory Coast, who alleged the firm caused environmental and health damage by paying a contractors to dispose of oil byproducts in Abidjan. In a compensation claim led by UK lawyer Martyn Day of Leigh Day & Company, residents said the sludge caused diarrhea, nosebleeds, stomach pain, vomiting, and headaches. Trafigura sued the BBC for libel after a programme on the compensation claims in May, writing in a statement that "Trafigura has always denied that the slops caused the deaths and serious health consequences presented by the BBC."

Continue reading "Why clean up when you can cover up?" »

Posted by Lucas Laursen on September 17, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"The peculiar demands of our granting system have favoured an upper class of skilled scientists who know how to raise money for a big group. They have mastered a glass bead game that rewards not only quality and honesty, but also salesmanship and networking."
Cambridge researcher Peter A. Lawrence, in PLoS Biology, on the costs of funding science in fits and starting grants.

"The higher incidence is mainly because diagnostic techniques and monitoring capability have improved, as well as more and more women are delaying having children."
Anonymous Beijing health officer, quoted in Beijing Daily story on the doubling birth defect rates in the last decade in China.

"The government must find these other two ships."
Silvestro Greco, the head of Calabria's environment agency on the next step in an Italian investigation that revealed a sunken ship containing toxic waste, buried at sea by the Mafia (Al Jazeera).

Posted by Lucas Laursen on September 16, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Quotes of the day | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Norman Borlaug, the U.S. agricultural scientist who won the 1970 Nobel peace prize for his role in tackling world hunger has died on Saturday at the age of 95. (Texas A&M University, Reuters, Washington Post, Guardian)

Borlaug developed high-yielding, disease-resistant wheat kick-starting the “green revolution” in the 1960’s that dramatically increased food production in the developing world.

Borlaug served as a distinguished professor of international agriculture at Texas A&M University, in College Station, Texas.

Continue reading "Nobel-winning agricultural scientist dies" »

Posted by Natasha Gilbert on September 14, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The United States' climate envoy, Todd Stern, appeared on Capitol Hill Thursday to deliver what has become a depressingly familiar update. Yes, the chasm between the developed and developing worlds remains wide and deep; yes, talks are progressing with key players like China and India; yes, all sides are taking the issue seriously; no, there are no details to report; but yes, yes, of course, there is hope.

For more detail, check Bloomberg and Reuters, but suffice it to say that reporters in the room were generally left scratching their heads as to why Stern had been called to testify in the first place. And perhaps lawmakers felt the same way: Only seven members of the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming showed up; three stuck it out for the duration.

Indeed, there's no particular reason why anyone would expect Stern to have any major progress to report at this point. The most likely venues for breaking news come later this month, when the United Nations holds its Summit on Climate Change in New York and the G20 convenes on Pittsburgh. Moreover, Congress has just returned to town after a lengthy August recess, and pretty much everybody, including President Barack Obama, is talking about health care, not climate.

Continue reading "Stern talks; Congress flounders; EPA gears up?" »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on September 10, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Energy, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The European Commission is expected to publish a proposal today that would offer €15 billion a year in aid to developing nations so that they can combat climate change. The Financial Times has a nice piece outlining the promise and problems with the plan. The good news is that it may help to bridge the gap between developed and developing nations at the upcoming Copenhagen talks in December. The bad news is that the proposal's is based on an estimated need of just €100 billion between now and 2020, a third of China's estimated cost for controlling just its own emissions over that same period. The plan would also allow the EU to repurpose development money for climate, something aid groups aren't too happy about.

Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom (which is part of Europe as far as everyone but the UK is concerned) a series of reports is calling for more action on climate change. The first, by the government's independent advisory Committee on Climate Change calls for caps on global air travel to cut aviation-related emissions. A second report by the Institute for Public Policy Research looks at a scheme known as personal carbon trading that would allocate a carbon cap to individual citizens. The conclusion is that personal carbon trading is "politically risky", but may be necessary if other policies fail.

All these proposals come at a time of great uncertainty for the future of a global climate agreement. At a press luncheon yesterday, David Milliband, the UK's Foreign Secretary, warned that there was about a 50/50 chance that the Copenhagen talks would reach any sort of reasonable conclusion. You can see more of his fairly dire predictions by watching the video at right (courtesy of ITV).

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on September 09, 2009
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The British Science Festival is on this week at the University of Surrey. The festival provides an opportunity for British researchers to show their stuff. And it gives the media something to write about. Here's what's grabbed headlines today:

1. Conservationists are reintroducing short-haired bumble bees (Bombus subterraneus) to the British countryside. The bees were once commonplace in some parts of the UK, but none have been spotted since 1988. Now researchers are going to bring the bees back from New Zealand, where they were introduced in the 1800s to pollinate clover. Plenty of coverage to read here.

2. Chimpanzee babies are less whiny than human ones, according to a study out of the University of Portsmouth. Baby chimps apparently only cry when they have something to complain about, and they stop crying when their problem is dealt with. Actually it's more about a new way of understanding chimp facial expressions. But you can read the feed here.

3. Finally, there was plenty of coverage of a new, green Formula 3 car being developed at the University of Warwick. The car uses recycled carbon fiber and a steering wheel made of carrot bits. A lot of outlets picked up on the fact that the car ran on old wine and chocolate (aka biodiesel). You can read all about it from this Wawrick press release (from May).

Credit: D. Goulson/Bee Conservation Trust

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on September 08, 2009
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The UK news sites are reporting that a French truck (lorry) driver may have been the first human casualty of Ulva lactuca, otherwise known as sea lettuce.

Let me explain. For years lactuca has been growing along the coastline of Brittany in France. Researchers suspect that nitrogen-rich runoff from farms and untreated sewage are fueling the explosive growth. The seaweed washes ashore, where it decays and releases hydrogen sulfide, the gas that makes rotten eggs stink.

Normally the mess is smelly. This year, however, it's turned deadly. A study of one beach by France's National Institute for Environmental Technology and Hazards (Ineris) revealed hydrogen sulfide concentrations of up to 1,000 parts per million—enough to kill in minutes.

The concentrations were strong enough to kill a horse and incapacitate its rider. Now it's emerged that hydrogen sulfide may have also killed the 48-year-old truck trucker. The driver had been carrying truckloads of the seaweed off the beach in July, when he fell unconscious and swerved into a wall. Initially medical examiners ruled that a heart attack was the likely cause of death, but now the local prosecutor wants a more thorough investigation.

The driver's family has so far refused to allow an autopsy.

Credit: K. Peters/Wikipedia

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on September 08, 2009
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A giant rat of a species previously unknown-to-science has been captured on an extinct volcano in Papua New Guinea.

Found by a tracker from a local tribe, the Bosavi Wooly Rat is 82 cm from the tip of its nose to the end of its tail and it weighs in at a 1.5 kilos. And of course it has a lot of fur, hence ‘wooly’ (pictured right).

“I had a cat and it was about the same size of this rat,” says wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan (press release). “This rat was incredibly tame. It just sat next to me nibbling on a piece of leaf.”

The question I really want answered is who would win in a face-off between the new giant rat and the recently discovered rat eating plant.

Buchanan was part of a BBC team filming on Mount Bosavi for TV programme ‘Lost Land of the Volcano’. The team have found around 40 possible new species in addition to the rat, including a subspecies of the strange marsupial cuscuses.

Continue reading "Giant rat found in extinct volcano" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on September 07, 2009
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The Mote Marine Laboratory has lost its robotic submarine, Waldo. The sub was on a routine patrol in the Gulf of Mexico for "red tide," a periodic algal bloom that can devastate local fish populations. For five days it scanned the seas, reporting back every two hours to the scientists running the lab.

Then, without warning, the sub vanished. Researchers aren't quite sure what happened: Waldo may have sprung a leak, or been picked up by an unsuspecting boater. Regardless, Mote would like it back, says Gary Kirkpatrick, a scientist at the lab. "We're hoping that if anyone has seen Waldo, they will call and let us know so we can pick it up," Kirkpatrick said in a press statement.

The laboratory is offering a US$500 no-questions-asked reward for anyone with information leading to the capture of the missing sub. Given the fact the subs cost over $100,000 each, you'd think Mote could pony up a little more cash.

Predictably, the press are having a field day with "Where's Waldo?" references. But the Florida Sun Sentinel blog wins hands down for corny headlines with:

Missing: Where in the world is a yellow submarine named Waldo?

Not only do they hit Waldo, but they manage to work in a Beatles reference and a completely gratuitous nod to Carmen Sandiego ! This one's for you guys:

credit: NOAA

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on September 07, 2009
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African leaders are threatening to boycott the global warming summit in Copenhagen this December if negotiations come up short. Of course it's not yet clear whether they have the collective will to do so, at least as a unified block, but the message came through in no uncertain terms.

Speaking at a meeting of the Africa Partnership Forum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi declared that African leaders are prepared to "walk out of any negotiations that threaten to be another rape of our continent.”

Though least responsible and most at risk due, Meles said, Africans have largely been locked out of the already small transfer of wealth created to help poor nations cope and develop along a cleaner path. "But we have no intention to a free ride," he added, suggesting that Africa is prepared to protect and expand forests and remains a "green field" for clean energy investments.

African has been trying to formulate a unified position since making a decision to negotiate as a block earlier this year. Environment ministers were able to collectively call on industrialized nations to reduce emissions by a whopping 25-40 percent by 2020 earlier this summer, but many details were left unresolved. This week's meeting represented the latest attempt to consolidate positions.

Press reports indicate that they made some progress, although verifying details proved difficult. More than one story (see here and here) suggested that Africans planned to call on developing nations to provide some $200 billion, presumably annually, to developing countries by 2020, although it was not clear what that money would cover.

Lim Li Lin, who works on developing country issues for the Third World Network, says Africa has always more or less negotiated as a group. The question moving forward, she says, is whether leaders will be able to settle on a concrete position and then stick to it in the negotiations. "What is clear is that all this has not impacted the negotiations yet," she says.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on September 04, 2009
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Greenhouse gas emissions have helped reverse the Arctic's 2,000-year (at least) cooling streak, suggests a new report in Science.

The authors reconstructed the past two millennia of Arctic temperatures based on records from lake sediments, ice cores and tree rings, and found that the Arctic had been cooling throughout the data set — until this century, when the trend halted and reversed. Four of the five warmest decades in the past 2,000 years between 1950 and 2000, with the most recent decade the hottest of them all. The Arctic had been cooling due to a wobble in its orbit, causing less summer sunshine to hit its surface.

According to first author Darrell Kaufman, "the 20th century stands out in strong contrast to the cooling that should have continued. The last half-century was the warmest of the 2,000-year temperature record, and the last 10 years have been especially dramatic." (BBC)

The authors' model shows that the Arctic temperatures should have kept cooling for another 4,000 years before the trend reversed — had greenhouse gas emissions in the latter half of the 20th century not overwhelmed the natural cycle (MongaBay).

Current Arctic temperatures are about 1.4 degrees Celsius higher than they would have been had the 2,000-year cooling trend continued, leading to the suggestion that "this era really is the Anthropocene — a geological period of our own making, either by accident or design" (NY Times Dot Earth blog). The blog also quotes climate scientist Thomas Crowley, who notes that this "strengthens the argument that humans are now capable of preventing the onset of a future ice age". That quote prompted an update on the blog, where the author noted the concern that these implications "might be abused by folks fighting restrictions on greenhouse gases".

Other coverage:
Arctic reverses trend, is warmest in two millennia - AP
Warmest Arctic temperatures for 2,000 years, says new study - CNN
Abrupt reversal detected in Arctic cooling trend - SF Chronicle
Arctic Warming Overtakes 2,000 Years of Natural Cooling - NCAR press release

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on September 04, 2009
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Turkey has indicated it may be willing to allow Iraq and Syria to have more water from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, after both nations complained they were not being given their fair share.

“We have only received eight billion cubic meters of water from the Euphrates between August 2008 and August 2009. That means a decrease of 30 percent,” Latif Rashid, Iraq’s water minister said earlier this week (AFP).

“The situation in Iraq has never been as dire as it has been in the past two years. Iraq needs more water from both Syria and Turkey.”

Before a meeting on Thursday Turkey said it could not increase the rivers’ flow. But on Thursday environment minister Veysel Eroglu said attempts would be made to release more water.

“There is a serious water crisis in Iraq, we are taking this into account,” he said (AP). “But our own capabilities are limited.”

More
Turkey, Syria, Iraq discuss water resource of Euphrates, Tigris rivers - Xinhua
Turkey, Iraq and Syria in water crisis summit - CNN

Posted by Daniel Cressey on September 04, 2009
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In December this year, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will descend on Copenhagen to wrangle over the details of a new global climate deal — a potential successor to the Kyoto Protocol. See Nature’s Road to Copenhagen special for more coverage.

Japan’s new ruling party has warned that its election pledges on climate change are contingent on other countries’ moves.

Before the recent election in Japan, the Democratic Party of Japan was calling for a cut in greenhouse-gas emissions to more than 25% below 1990 levels by 2020 (see: Japan election sparks science pledges).

Now Katsuya Okada, the party’s secretary-general, has told Reuters, “This is not something Japan will do on its own. The premise is an agreement that includes other countries such as China and India.”

Okada dodged the question of whether the DJP would change its target if an international agreement couldn’t be reached. “We are trying to reach an agreement so we are not discussing what to do in the absence of an agreement,” he said.

Japan’s largest business group, Keidanren, has already come out against the 25% target (Yomiuri Shimbun, via Reuters).

Okada’s caveat of the party’s target may also deflate some of the hopes about the DJP’s climate stance, which was noticeably tougher than their rival Liberal Democratic Party.

Earlier this week – after the election but before the Reuters interview – Andreas Carlgren, Sweden’s environment minister said of the target, “That could create momentum in the climate-change negotiations. That is very close to the European ambitions.” (Bloomberg.)

Posted by Daniel Cressey on September 04, 2009
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BP announced on Wednesday it had struck a ‘giant’ oil-field nearly 11 kilometres under the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, a region of increasing importance in the oil world. The find underlines the impressive – or, as you could see it, desperate – depths to which oil producers are now drilling to find black gold.

Continue reading "How deep is your well?" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on September 03, 2009
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Climate activists in the UK had a day of protests at their week-long Camp for Climate Action, but didn’t meet with the aggressive police tactics seen at last year’s event and at the G20 meeting in May.

On Tuesday, activists stripped off to protest inside the front window of Edelman (a PR company whose clients include energy firm E.ON, which is planning a new coal-fired power station in the country). Others superglued themselves together on the trading floor of the Royal Bank of Scotland, in objection to its investment in fossil fuel projects. Groups also marched towards the head offices of BP and Shell, against the mining of tar sands in Canada – led by indigenous Canadian activists chanting: “When I say ‘BP’, you say ‘criminal’” (BBC).

The government was a target too: on Wednesday, fifteen be-goggled and arm-banded activists sat in kayaks at the headquarters of the UK’s department for energy and climate change, highlighting rising sea levels, they said, and protesting against carbon trading and carbon capture and storage technology (The Guardian).

Media reports characterize the camp in Blackheath, London – where a thousand or so have gathered for the week – as good-natured, chilled-out and, with environmental workshops, quite educational. With the watching police in equally relaxed mode (there has been only one arrest), media attention is turning to the next promised direct action: the 'great climate swoop', an attempt to shut down the UK’s second-largest coal-fired power station, Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire, on 17th and 18th October.

Image: The Blackheath camp/SallyB2, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on September 02, 2009
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Yesterday the Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific body, delivered its official view on geoengineering. Scientists analyzed a dozen different approaches and weighed their pros and cons. Then, being scientists, they plotted their results in a bizarre phase space that nobody could understand. Many a reporter, myself included, were scratching our heads when co-author Ken Caldeira popped this little gem up onto the screen:

(Note: error bars are purely symbolic. Huh?)

Now I want to be fair, the Royal Society report is actually very well written and it contains a lot of good information about the geoengineering proposals out there. But it's a nuanced take on a complex issue. So it's not surprising that you saw a range of headlines. The most inaccurate enthusiastic one by far, came from those lovely folks at the Register:

Boffins: Give up on CO₂ cuts, only geoengineering can work

The Financial Times landed on the other end of the spectrum:

Hopes dashed for geo-engineering solutions

And in between came everybody else:

Study says 'geoengineering' to flight climate likely, but risky (USA Today)

Royal Society warns climate engineering 'could cause disaster' (the Times)

World must plan for climate emergency-report (Reuters)

Investment in geo-engineering needed immediately, says Royal Society (the Guardian)

These headlines make the report look like a Kurosawa film, but most of the actual stories are pretty accurate in my opinion. The bottom line is that the Royal Society felt that the only sure way to save the planet is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But in the event of a global climate emergency, we should at least know the consequences of geoengineering.

You can read our coverage here.

Update: I've included the updated diagram off the Royal Society website.

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on September 02, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Neat technologies, Policy | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has staked out a larger government claim on newly discovered offshore oil reserves, promising to funnel proceeds into poverty reduction, education, science and technology.

Located off Brazil's southeast coast near Rio de Janeiro, the deep-water fields (the blue area in the Petrobras map) represent some of the biggest discoveries in the world in recent decades. The "pre-salts" are technically challenging, trapped below a thick layer of salt several thousand metres below the sea, but they could thrust Brazil into the major leagues of oil production - albeit at a time when the world is desperately seeking cleaner alternatives.

The plan has been on ice for more than a year (Nature), due in part to the global economic crisis. In making the announcement on Monday, Lula proclaimed an "independence day" of sorts. It stops well short of the kind of nationalization that has been seen in places like Venezuela and Bolivia, but many see it as a step in that direction.

Continue reading "Lula reasserts Brazilian control over new oilfield " »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on September 01, 2009
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The Wildlife Conservation Society has released this camera trap photograph of an endangered snow leopard, photographed in the Sast Valley in Afghanistan.

“WCS researchers are conducting ongoing wildlife surveys in this remote area with the goal of establishing a protected area,” says the group. “They found this endangered cat … willing to strike a pose or two.”

Snow leopards (Panthera uncia) are classified as endangered on the IUCN’s Red List.

The conflict in Afghanistan has opened up a new market for products from the animals, says the IUCN, which are also threatened by habitat degradation, shortages of prey animals and killing by farmers worried about their impact on livestock.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 28, 2009
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Geo-engineering has been all the rage recently, and yesterday the UK-based Institution of Mechanical Engineers weighed in with their recommendations for how best to engineer the environment.

The report was a mix of the very specific and very vague. On the specific side, the panel recommended three technologies, which they believed represent the cheapest, quickest form of geo-engineering:

*Reflective roofs on buildings in order to cool urban areas (although the panel noted that this, technically doesn't count as geoengineering, since it doesn't actually involve changing the climate).

*Putting algae tanks on the side of buildings. The idea is that this algae would soak up carbon and could then be charred and sequestered.

*Finally came the suggestion that grabbed most of the headlines—fake trees. The trees are basically just carbon dioxide filters that are thousands of times more efficient than the real thing. 100,000 such trees would be able to remove all carbon from transport related CO2 emissions in the UK.

But the engineers were much more vague about how much such proposals might cost, or what their overall influence on carbon dioxide levels could be. This report is more a "case study of what needs to be done," it says. Follow-up work could be done with £10-20 million from a UK contribution to an international research programme. The report comes just days ahead of a second, more comprehensive study by the Royal Society.

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on August 27, 2009
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A newly released satellite image from NASA shows that nearly nothing remains of one part of the once proud Aral Sea.

Irrigation projects started by the Soviet Union in the 1960s led to the sea shrinking hugely, eventually splitting into northern and southern halves. The latter later split again into an eastern and a western body of water.

Now this 16 August shot from the NASA’s Terra satellite shows that “virtually nothing” is left of the southern sea’s eastern lobe.

“Although the Northern Aral Sea still appears healthy, the Southern Aral Sea consists of two isolated water bodies: an irregular oval shape directly southwest of the Northern Aral Sea, and the long, thin remainder of the Southern Aral Sea’s far western lobe,” says NASA. “Although the faintest glimmers of blue-green appear in the eastern lobe, earth tones predominate, surrounded by a ghostly film of pale beige.”

NASA’s Earth Observatory also has a rather sad video of the shrinking of the Aral sea.

Image: Jesse Allen / NASA

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 27, 2009
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Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the policy-neutral Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has never been shy of speaking his mind on climate policy.

“I feel I have responsibility far beyond being a spokesman for the IPCC. If I feel there are certain actions that can help us meet this challenge, I feel I should articulate them,” he told Nature two years ago (Nature, 450, 1150-1155; 2007; subscription required).

He’s just articulated them again, calling for atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to be kept below 350 parts per million. (Current levels are around 387 ppm, and in its 2007 report, the IPCC took 450 ppm as a key target):

"As chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, I cannot take a position because we do not make recommendations. But as a human being I am fully supportive of that goal. What is happening, and what is likely to happen, convinces me that the world must be really ambitious and very determined at moving toward a 350 target." (AFP)

The statement was music to the ears of environmental writer Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, whose url explains its mission. In a Guardian blog, he called it "amazing news".

Nature features editor Rich Monastersky wrote in an April 2009 article (Nature 458, 1091-1094; 2009, subscription required): "The difference between 350 and 450 is not just one of degree. It's one of direction. A CO₂ concentration of 450 p.p.m. awaits the world at some point in the future that might conceivably, though with difficulty, be averted. But 350 p.p.m. can be seen only in the rear-view mirror."

Here’s McKibben making his point again on the Colbert Report a fortnight ago:

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on August 26, 2009
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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents 3 million large and small businesses, wants to put the science of climate change on trial, reports the Los Angeles Times.

The chamber is pushing for the Environmental Protection Agency to hold a public hearing -- with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge to rule on whether humans are causing global warming, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Continue reading "Industry wants to try climate change " »

Posted by Natasha Gilbert on August 25, 2009
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In December this year, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will descend on Copenhagen to wrangle over the details of a new global climate deal — a potential successor to the Kyoto Protocol. See Nature’s Road to Copenhagen special for more coverage.

“One single country will not solve its environmental problems on its own, it will need partners and that's why it's very important that there's that unified common position. The development of Africa should not go alongside the same mistakes that the developed world already made - to have these high emissions that are now affecting the whole world.”
Alice Kaudia, Kenya’s environment secretary, explains why ten African countries are meeting in Ethiopia to reach a common position before the Copenhagen meeting (BBC).

“We need to get an agreement that sets the world on a new path of sustainable consumption without getting obsessed with precise percentages.”
Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair says that the important thing is to reach a “realistic and practical” deal (Daily Telegraph).

“Being highly responsible for the survival and long-term development of mankind.”
Xie Zhenhua, China’s vice minister in charge of the National Development and Reform Commission, sets out his country’s negotiating attitude (Xinhua).

“China in the meantime firmly opposes any form of trade protectionism disguised as tackling climate change.”
Xie Zhenhua again.

“Rich nations cannot continue as before, emerging industrial countries must leave the old industrial-based path to prosperity, and the rest of the world may not even embark upon it. Yet the negotiations on emissions limits with each of the 192 signatory countries in the run-up to the UN climate change summit in Copenhagen in December 2009 have so far given no indication of so radical a change.”
Claus Leggewie, director of the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities in Essen, doesn’t think much of progress to date along the road (Guardian).

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 24, 2009
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Gigantic jets flow upwards from clouds towards the outer reaches of the atmosphere, rather than down to the ground. They have been captured on film only five times since 2001, says the US National Science Foundation.

Now Steven Cummer, of Duke University in North Carolina, and his colleagues have managed to work out just how much charge these jets transfer from storms to the ionosphere.

“Our measurements show that gigantic jets are capable of transferring a substantial electrical charge to the lower ionosphere,” he says (NSF press release).

“They are essentially upward lightning from thunderclouds that deliver charge just like conventional cloud-to-ground lightning. What struck us was the size of this event.”

In their paper in Nature Geoscience the team reports that the jet carries a current of 730 A and is around 75 km long. The researchers also show that gigantic jets do make contact with the upper atmosphere.

“What we were able to conclusively show is that these are not just sparks that come out of the thunderstorm and travel upward and tickle the upper atmosphere,” says Cummer (BBC). “They actually deliver to the upper atmosphere as much electric charge as the very strong lightning strokes to ground.”

Images: Steven Cummer

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 24, 2009
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Woah! Worms at the bottom of the sea are carrying bombs. Glowing bombs.

Seven new species of deep sea worm have been discovered by Karen Osborn of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California and her colleagues. All strong swimmers, five of these critters have attached to their bodies little balloon structures.

As soon as the worms start to get hassled by predators these balloons are released. Bombs away! And as the bombs are dropped they start to glow.

This has to be the coolest discovery of a new species for a long time. I almost don’t care what’s in the bombs and why, or how they evolved them, they’re so weird.

However, that is not the scientific way as well we all know. Osborn says that the bombs glow for around a minute after release and act to distract predators. The bombs are kind of modified gills, and once released the chemicals held in there come together and react, creating the glow.

The worms have been named Swima bombiviridis and have picked up quite some attention. And quite right too.

(New York Times, National Geographic, MSNBC, AP).

Oh, and if worms with bombs sounds familiar to you, you’re right.

More pictures below the fold for your viewing pleasure...

Continue reading "Worms wiggling with weapons way down beneath the waves" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on August 21, 2009
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Marina Silva has quit Brazil’s ruling party in what is being widely seen as the start of her bid for the country’s presidency in 2010 under a Green Party banner.

Silva previously resigned as environment minister in 2008, saying that “growing resistance ... in important sectors of the government and society” made it impossible for her to protect the Amazon (see: Concern after Brazil loses environment minister - May 15, 2008)

“I am now in talks with the Green Party in this period of transition,” says Silva. Jose Maria Cardoso da Silva, of Conservation International, told Reuters that this would lead to “a real debate about sustainable development”.

On the on the Brazil Political Comment blog, John Fitzpatrick notes:

The fact that Silva, a former environment minister, has no chance of winning is less important than the effect of her announcement This has stirred life into what looked like a two-horse race between President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva´s candidate, Dilma Rousseff, and the likely PSDB candidate, Jose Serra, the governor of São Paulo. It also increases the chances of other candidates, like Ciro Gomes of the PSB, standing and means there is now a greater chance of the election going into a second round.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 20, 2009
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Posted for Mico Tatalovic

Every single fish sampled from 291 streams across the United States between 1998-2005 was contaminated with mercury, according to the US Geological Survey.

A quarter of the sampled fish contained levels of mercury higher than those deemed safe for human consumption and more than two thirds contained levels exceeding the Environmental Protection Agency’s level of concern for the protection of fish-eating mammals, says a new report from the USGS.

“This study shows just how widespread mercury pollution has become in our air, watersheds, and many of our fish in freshwater streams,” says Ken Salazar, Secretary of the US Department of the Interior (press release).

Most of the mercury that reaches waterways in the US comes from emissions by coal- power plants. Once in the atmosphere the metal gets precipitated down, and then converted to the more toxic form, methyl mercury, This is easily taken up by fish and other aquatic organisms.

Continue reading "America’s quicksilver fish" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 20, 2009
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Global ocean surface temperatures last month were the warmest since records began in 1880, according to data released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last Friday. July's update hasn't received much coverage (perhaps because an identical temperature high was seen in June), but the New York Times noted the trend.

In both June and July ocean surface temperatures were measured at 16.99°C, 0.59°C above the 20th century average. The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for July 2009 was the fifth warmest on record, said officials at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina.

Not all regions felt the heat. Across the eastern US, central Canada and southern South America, conditions were 2-4°C cooler than average, while parts of Asia also dipped below par. (See map).

If El Niño conditions continue to mature, as now projected, global temperatures are likely to exceed previous record highs, NOAA added.

Image: NCDC/NOAA/NESDIS

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on August 19, 2009
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The Financial Times is reporting with excitement that senior Chinese climate change officials have set a date for emissions cuts: 2050.

Let's hope that's not what was meant in statements by Su Wei, director general of the National Development and Reform Commission's climate change division, because experts are hoping for much sooner cuts than that.

FT quotes Su as saying: "China's emissions will not continue to rise beyond 2050."

Judging from a report released this week, 2050 China Energy and CO2 Emissions Report, Su's comments are a throw-away. The report, co-authored by China's top climate think tanks, the Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission and the State Council's Development Research Centre, gives 3 scenarios for emissions. Even in the "business as usual" scenario, in which economic gain continues to dominate, China's carbon emissions peak in 2040.(Reuters)

So China's emission will likely fall before 2050. The question is when.

In international climate change debates, China continues to balk at suggestions that it put a time table on its emissions peak date and play hardball with the rich western countries. (Business Green)

But the Energy Research Institute report indicates that a more amenable position is emerging. They highlight an "enhanced low carbon" scenario" which shows emissions leveling off after 2020 and dropping after 2030. By 2050, they hit 1.4 billion tonnes of carbon - China's 2005 emission levels. This would be "difficult but doable," according to Jiang Kejun of the Environment Research Institute.

The report notes impact scenarios and discusses what emissions control measures would be needed to hit the enhanced low carbon targets. These targets still wouldn't be enough for China to hit the "2 degrees by 2050" goal that experts have advanced as a tolerable level of warming - that might require China to peak in 2015 or 2020. But it proves that, however much it refuses to acknowledge emissions targets at international meetings, at home, China is thinking hard about these matters.

In December this year, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will descend on Copenhagen to wrangle over the details of a new global climate deal — a potential successor to the Kyoto Protocol. See Nature’s Road to Copenhagen special for more coverage.

Published on behalf of David Cyranoski

Posted by Mark Peplow on August 18, 2009
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Another standoff between climate scientists and those who are trying to use freedom of information laws to access their data has emerged.

Last week Nature reported on attempts by Steve McIntyre, editor of the Climate Audit blog, to obtain monthly global surface temperature data from Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK. In the course of a month, Jones and his unit have received 58 freedom of information requests from Climate Audit.

Now Douglas Keenan has written about his attempts to obtain tree-ring data from Queen’s University Belfast, on the Watts Up With That blog.

“Some people have asked why QUB does not want to release the data. In fact, most tree-ring laboratories do not make their data available: it is not just QUB and Gothenburg that have been reluctant,” writes Keenan. “… [E]ven if the research and the researcher’s salary are fully paid for by the public—as is the case at QUB—the researcher still regards the data as his or her personal property.”

On his website, Keenan writes “I used to do mathematical research and financial trading on Wall Street and in the City of London; I now study independently.” Keenan has previously been praised on the Climate Audit blog for his work, including his criticism of research published in Nature.

In a statement to Nature, Queen’s said, “The University’s decisions on this matter have been upheld by the Information Commissioner’s Office. Freedom of Information requests for raw data from University researchers are dealt with on their merits in accordance with the provisions of the FoI Act.”

Image: photo by lawmurray via Flickr under creative commons

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 17, 2009
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The UK’s Natural History Museum has been targeted by thieves after an unusual prize: tropical bird skins.

It is not clear exactly when or how the bird remains were removed. Some reports say a branch of the museum in Tring was burglarised in June but the removal of nearly 300 skins was apparently not noticed for over a month. There are also suggestions the birds could have been stolen in batches by someone with legitimate reasons to access the collection.

“The birds that were stolen formed part of the nation’s natural history collection, painstakingly assembled over the last 350 years,” says Richard Lane, Director of Science at the Museum (press release). “It is very distressing that we should have been deliberately targeted in this manner.”

Those responsible for the crime are unlikely to have been motivated by the skins’ potential use in biodiversity, evolution or anatomy research. Speculation as to their purpose involves breaking up the specimens for use in jewellery, clothing or fly-fishing lures.

Let us hope the miscreants behind this outrage are swiftly caught and spend some time doing bird.

Anyone offered some dodgy bird skins should call Detective Inspector Fraser Wylie on 0845 33 00 222, citing crime reference number D3/09/450.

Image: Natural History Museum

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 14, 2009
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A study in this week’s Natureshows that mountain height is limited by climate, rather than just by plate tectonics and the strength of the underlying crust. The study shows that when mountains reach heights where it is cold enough for the snow to form permanently, further growth is capped by the moving glaciers.

"Glaciers are very effective at destroying mountains," said David Engholm, a researcher at Aarhus University in Denmark and lead author of the study. (AFP)

Researchers used radar images of Earth’s surface at different latitudes and found that mountains generally do not rise more than 1,500 metres above the snowline. "So once plate tectonics pushes the surface of the Earth above the snowline altitude, a glacier starts to accumulate, and then basically you reach sort of a steady state where the mountains really do not get any higher," Egholm told LiveScience.

The idea that moving ice can shaves off layers from a mountain is not new – but this study claims to be the first to demonstrate this is in a single model containing data from all the world's major mountain ranges. The model shows that “differences in the height of mountain ranges mainly reflect variations in local climate rather than tectonic forces” say the researchers.

This also explains why mountain ranges tend to be higher in the low latitudes closer to the equator, than they are closer to the poles. At lower latitudes, warmer climate means that the snow line is higher, allowing the mountains to grow taller before they start getting eroded. "So we've basically explained why there is a link between the presence of glaciers, climate, and the height of mountains," says Egholm.

High-latitude mountains also tend to have flatter tops than the low altitude ones. “What you see there is that glaciers have basically completely removed the part of the mountains that were above the snowline," Egholm explains.

Posted for Mico Tatalovic

Image: David Lundbek Egholm

Posted by Mark Peplow on August 13, 2009
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As widely expected, Australia's carbon emissions trading scheme was defeated in the Senate (the parliament's upper house) on Thursday.

Though Rudd has diluted the bill significantly from its initial introduction in March - the scheme will now be phased in from July 2011 (rather than 2010) and will not have a ‘cap’ on total emissions introduced until July 2012 - it has been subject to fierce criticism from opposition mindful of its effect on the cost of coal and other energy-intensive exports.

“The government should now put this damaging bill in the deep freeze and wait until after we see the outcome of the Copenhagen conference and the US Senate debate on emissions trading before resurrecting its discredited legislation," said Nick Minchin, leader of the Senate's Liberal party which has the largest voting bloc in the chamber (FT).

In the end, the legislation went down 42 votes to 30. So Rudd needs to find a swing of seven votes to get the legislation passed. And his team have gone straight back on the offensive.

"This bill may be going down today, but this is not the end. We will bring this bill back before the end of the year because if we don't, this nation goes to Copenhagen with no means to deliver our targets," climate change minister Penny Wong told the senate (The Telegraph).

Continue reading "Australia carbon trading blocked: what next?" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on August 13, 2009
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A deep sea photography machine built by undergraduates for £1,800 is the star of today’s image, the winner of Cambridge University’s Department of Engineering photo competition.

Shown here is ‘Project Pebble’ undergoing tests in a swimming pool. The idea was to use relatively cheap off the shelf parts to build a vessel capable of carrying a camera and some bait to the bottom of the sea and find some deep sea beasties.

Sadly, things did not end well for the intrepid craft when it was put into the sea in May.

“Unfortunately, Pebble was accidentally picked up by a passing fishing vessel during deployment, and could not be recovered,” says the project team. The search for Pebble was formally abandoned in June.

Pebble may live on though. Future undergraduates at Cambridge will try to improve the design and bring the cost down to under £1,000.

See all entries in the photo competition here.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 13, 2009
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The Australian government has announced AUS$19 million (£9.5 million) in funding for a mass cull of the country’s wild camels, most likely done by chasing and shooting the beasts from helicopters. The announcement has caused a stir, with people objecting to the waste of leaving shot camels to rot in the outback and others calling it inhumane (The Guardian).

Camels were introduced to Australia in the 19th century to help transport heavy goods to the remote interior of the country, but since being released into the wild they have since become a major pest (New Zealand Herald).

“The scientific evidence suggests they'll eat anything up to 80 per cent of the plants available," Murray McGregor, research general manager of Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre, which is involved in planning the cull, told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Jan Ferguson, managing director of the Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre, says there are more than a million camels in desert regions. "Australia has long accepted that we've got a problem with rabbits,” she says, “because they are in everybody's country. Camels tend to be isolated in the bush, so they're not so visible." The population is doubling in size every nine years.

But camel exporter Paddy McHugh might have a point when he says, "What happens in 15 years when the numbers come back again? Do we waste another AUS$20 million?" He suggests catching and exporting the animals for entertainment and food. Animal Liberation New South Wales animal welfare group instead proposed providing the camels with birth control

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd also got it in the neck from Erin Burnett, a newsreader on CNBC. She said during a broadcast: "There is a serial killer in Australia and we are going to put a picture up so we can see who it is.” A photo of Rudd appeared on the screen. "That would be the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd," Burnett told viewers. "Okay, well do you know what he is doing? He has launched air strikes - air strikes - against camels in the outback." Burnett later called her announcement a “deadpan joke”.

Posted for Mico Tatalovic

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Posted by Mark Peplow on August 12, 2009
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Disease-carrying mosquitoes from tourist planes landing to the Galapagos could be a threat to the biodiversity on these islands. Arnaud Battaile from Leeds University and his colleagues report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B that the southern house mosquito, Culex quinquefasciatus is being constantly introduced to the island via tourist planes. Scientists had previously thought that this mosquito was introduced to the islands only once, in the 1980s (see press release).

The southern house mosquito has a dark history of infecting pristine island environments, carrying various diseases such as avian malaria, avian pox and West Nile fever. When it was introduced to Hawaii in the late 19th century, it is thought to have caused extinction of many endemic bird species..

The unique fauna of the Galapagos islands played an important role in Charles Darwin’s Beagle journey. Because of its isolated position 600 miles away from the mainland it has escaped many of the diseases present in South America and as a result Galapagos animals are susceptible because they have built up no resistance through exposure, Simon Goodman, a co-author of the paper told the Daily Telegraph. "You only need a single infectious mosquito to initiate a disease cycle," Goodman says.

The team found about one mosquito in every 10 planes arriving at the Galapagos between October 2006 and September 2007. The mosquitoes that arrived on planes can survive and breed on islands, and can also island-hop by hitching a ride on boats. Although none of the mosquitoes captured on the planes in this study carried dangerous viruses, it is possible that they could bring viruses such as the West Nile Virus from the mainland that could spread across the archipelago’s 200 or so islands by these hitchhikers. “West Nile virus also affects reptiles and mammals, and so could impact other iconic Galapagos species such as marine iguanas and sea lions," Goodman told New Scientist.

Posted on behalf of Mico Tatalovic

Posted by Mark Peplow on August 12, 2009
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Last week's major fire on the Canary Island of La Palma, off the west coast of Africa, left the local telescopes unscathed.

This image was taken by the Terra satellite on 2 August and shows the smoke plume drifting off the island's southeastern coast. The Associated Press reported that it had burned some 3,000 hectares and destroyed 50 homes. Roughly 4,000 people were evacuated.

The Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, which hosts a number of world-class telescopes, is in the north-central portion of the island. Javier Mendez, a spokesman for the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, says that observing time was not affected. Last month the Grand Canary Telescope, the world's largest single optical telescope, was inaugurated at the observatory to much fanfare (Nature).

Fires are a hazard of life at many observatories; in 2003, for instance, most of Mt. Stromlo Observatory in Australia was wiped out by flames.

Image: NASA Earth Observatory

Posted by Alex Witze on August 11, 2009
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Natural phenomena have been wreaking havoc in East Asia. This morning a magnitude 6.5 earthquake ripped from the subducting Philippine plate at a depth of 23 kilometers in the middle of the Suruga bay off the east coast of Japan (BBC). Besides the immediate damage - at least 100 people were injured - there were two main concerns.

The first was that it would impact the nearby Hamaoka nuclear facility. But this worry was put to rest by reports that an early warning system had automatically stopped operations. So far no damage and no leakage of any radioactive material have been reported, a sharp contrast to the fear and frenzy resulting from an earthquake near a nuclear facility on the opposite coast two years ago.

The second fear was that this quake would trigger the magnitude 8 Tokai earthquake that scientists say will occur with a roughly 80% probability within the next 30 years. A committee of the Japan Meteorological Administration met today and judged from the pattern of crustal deformation that it would not initiate the Tokai earthquake.

The quake set off the earthquake warning system in the greater Tokyo area, and also set my phone squawking its earthquake alert at least 5 seconds before the trembling started (causing me much confusion, because I didn’t know my phone had that function and I usually only hear the calming instrumental version of Captain and Tennille’s Do that to me one more time, which for some reason is the outdated factory preset for incoming calls on my otherwise ultramodern Sony Ericsson W64S)

There was another magnitude 6.9 earthquake on Sunday night, also off the Pacific coast of Japan. But at a depth of 340 kilometers, it caused widespread shaking but little damage.

Japan was also hit on Sunday by a typhoon, Etau, that killed at least 14 and left 17 missing in landslides, mostly in western Hyogo province. Typhoon Morakot has been even deadlier, causing landslides and flooding that claimed at least 50 lives in the Phillipines and Taiwan, where it buried an entire village leaving hundreds still missing before moving on to mainland China (Bloomberg).

Posted on behalf of David Cyranoski

Posted by Mark Peplow on August 11, 2009
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Climate change may need a military response from America, according to a story from the New York times which is getting a lot of pick up in the world media.

While most policy discussions around climate change focus on energy wonks, the Times says that military analysts are increasingly of the view that “climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions”. Food and water shortages or huge floods could push vulnerable regions over the edge into crises that could “demand an American humanitarian relief or military response”, it says.

The Times piece quotes from a recent report prepared by retired Marine general Anthony Zinni for private research company CAN. Zinni says:

We will pay for this [climate change] one way or another. We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we’ll have to take an economic hit of some kind. Or we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives. There will be a human toll. There is no way out of this that does not have real costs attached to it. That has to hit home.

Although the Times says the Pentagon is “for the first time” looking seriously at national security and climate change, the idea that global warming could heat up things other than temperatures has been around for a while. Back in July 2008, for example, Nature reporter Jeff Tollefson attended one of the first war games on the subject of global warming. You can read his blog posts from the games in our archive.

Image: frigate USS Doyle in the Pacific Ocean earlier this year / US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Patrick Grieco

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 10, 2009
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The US Geological Survey released an updated report yesterday on three glaciers which it’s tracked since 1957. Unsurprisingly, it was bad news all round.

Gulkana and Wolverine, in Alaska, and South Cascade, in Washington, are ‘benchmark’ glaciers – the poster boys representing the trends of many other US glaciers. The South Cascade Glacier has lost nearly half of its volume and a quarter of its mass since 1958. The two others in the study, the Wolverine and Gulkana glaciers in Alaska, have both lost nearly 15% of their mass. (LA Times).

"All three of them have a different climate from the other two, yet all three are showing a similar pattern of behaviour, and that behaviour is mass loss," said Shad O'Neel, a USGS glaciologist in Anchorage (Reuters).

What ‘s more, the rate at which they’re losing mass and volume thanks to melting ice has only increased over the last 15 years. In the 1970s and before, the maritime glaciers gained or lost net mass in synchrony with the oscillations of Pacific ocean surface temperatures and pressures. Now, it’s a straight dwindling for all three.

“There is no doubt that most mountain glaciers are shrinking worldwide in response to a warming climate,” added USGS scientist Edward Josberger, in a statement put out by the Department of the Interior.

Image: Retreat of South Cascade Glacier, Washington/USGS

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on August 07, 2009
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Denial, mistrust and uncertainty are among the key psychological reasons that the American public is still resistant to serious action on climate change, according to psychologists.

A task force set up by an American Psychyological Association has been looking at the ‘psychological barriers’ to action on climate change and has presented its findings at the APA’s annual meeting in Toronto.

“What is unique about current global climate change is the role of human behaviour,” says task force head Janet Swim, Pennsylvania State University (press release, report pdf). “We must look at the reasons people are not acting in order to understand how to get people to act.”

Continue reading "Shrinks analyse climate change" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 07, 2009
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This week South Korea sketched out several options for reducing greenhouse gases in the coming decade, inching closer to a national commitment before the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen this December.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, only industrialized "Annex I" nations were required to take on specific emissions targets.
Seoul has already announced massive investments in clean energy technologies, earning a place among a core group of developing nations that are taking significant action to curb the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. If it moves forward, South Korea would join the ranks of Mexico, South Africa and Brazil in volunteering quantifiable pledges as world leaders negotiate a follow-on treaty.

Government officials say they are considering three emissions trajectories for 2020, all using a 2005 baseline: an 8 percent increase, a return to the 2005 level or a 4 percent decrease; that compares to a projected 30 percent increase under a "business-as-usual" scenario. The 2005 baseline is revealing because South Korea's emissions have increased by 95 percent since 1990, the baseline used in the Kyoto Protocol, according to the World Resources Institute in Washington.

Compared to a 1990 baseline, the proposals seem decidedly less ambitious, and the government has not spelled out exactly how it plans to meet such a commitment. Nonetheless, says Remi Moncel, an energy and climate expert at the institute, "it’s a good sign of leadership from a developing country."

Continue reading "South Korea unveils climate proposals" »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on August 05, 2009
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Posted for Mico Tatalovic

They went to war over Himalayan territory in 1962, but India and China are now set to work together to save the mountain range’s glaciers, which are crucial to both countries’ water supplies.

“We are talking to the Chinese about monitoring the Himalayan glaciers,” Jairam Ramesh, Indian environment minister has told the Financial Times. But he also warned that India would not allow Chinese scientists “to climb all over India’s glaciers”. Instead Ramesh wants a collaborative research programme.

As they are of strategic military importance, countries have been secretive about information regarding their parts of Himalayas. Pakistan considers all aerial photos from the area to be state secrets and India is wary of sharing any oceanographic and land-survey data with Pakistan.

Such policies have made the state of Himalayan glaciers “a blind spot, a big scientific question mark”, geographer Mats Eriksson, programme manager for water and hazard management at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development based in Kathmandu, told Nature back in 2008.

Eriksson helped organize a three-day international workshop in 2008 bringing together Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan in a collaborative effort to map glacial retreat in the area.

Now the FT reports that Ramesh is visiting China this month to strike a deal with Beijing ahead of the Copenhagen talks on climate change in December. However the paper also reports that India is skeptical about scientific claims that climate change is melting the region’s glaciers.

Image: "Glacier trails in the Ladokh and Zaskar Ranges (32.0N, 77.5E) of the Great Himalayan Mountain Range on the border of India and China" / NASA

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 03, 2009
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Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin appears to have developed a taste for marine science. In the last week he has assisted a whale research project and taken a spin around the bottom of the world’s deepest lake, according to state news source RIA Novosti.

On Friday he paid a visit on scientists researching whale behaviour and migration and affixed a satellite transmitter to a “white whale named Dasha”, likely a Beluga. Putin apparently expressed concern that Dasha might eat him.

“She won’t eat us but could splash us with cold water,” he was told. “Probably if she gets angry,” said Putin, before adding after attaching the transmitter, “Don’t be angry anymore.”

On Saturday Putin spent four hours in a Mir submarine diving in Lake Baikal. Speaking to journalists from under the lake’s surface he expressed surprise at the water’s lack of clarity (story, picture here).

“The water, of course, is clean from an ecological point of view but in fact it’s a plankton soup, or so I called it,” he said (AFP).

Asked if he would now be going into space Putin echoed the feelings of many marine scientists in saying, “There’s enough work on Earth.” (Guardian.)

Image: Lake Baikal / NASA

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 03, 2009
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Proposals for compensating developing countries for curbing deforestation via the international carbon market risk neglecting biodiversity hotspots, two leading scientific organizations jointly declared today.

The Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) and the Society for Tropical Ecology (GTÖ), which met this week in Marburg, Germany, issued “The Marburg Declaration”, highlighting “the urgent need to maximize biodiversity conservation in forest carbon-trading”.

Deforestation gives a serious one-two punch to the climate: not only does it negate the carbon dioxide trees take in from the atmosphere, but it also releases stored carbon when trees are burned or chopped down and left to rot.

In recent years, the idea of rewarding nations for reducing deforestation by letting them “sell” the carbon value of their living forests on the international carbon market has been gaining momentum. Not only does it mitigate climate change by preventing land use changes, but it also has the potential to conserve the forests' diverse plants and critters and to direct money to the poorer regions in the tropics.

Continue reading "A fly in the forest-saving ointment" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on July 30, 2009
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A new species of song bird has been found in Asia, and from the pictures of it it’s quite clear why it’s been shy for so long – it’s not a very pretty polly.

The bird is bald, and sports what the National Geographic calls a wispy Mohawk. Its name? The bare-faced bulbul. The baldy is the first new bulbul to be found in Asia in 100 years.

The bird lives in Laos, and was reported by scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and University of Melbourne.

“It’s always exciting to discover a new species, but this one is especially unique because it is the only bald songbird in Asia,” said Colin Poole, director of Asia programs for the Wildlife Conservation Society (press release).

The bird lives in a particularly remote and rugged part of Laos, in limestone karst, which could explain why its unique looks and song have gone unnoticed until now.

Msnbc news has tried to describe the call of the bird: “Like an opera singer milking a final aria, the bird produces at least one song that rises distinctly and ends "abruptly in a higher, separate note." Yet another call was translated to human-speak as "ch-ch chi chi-chi-chi-chi," with the individual notes again rising in pitch.” So now you know what to listen out for.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on July 30, 2009
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Posted for Mico Tatalovic

Australia’s government is being taken to task over its environmental record as a new paper reveals the extinction risk facing the south pacific region.

In the lead-up to the Pacific Island Forum in Cairns, Australia, next week a recently published review of more than 24,000 conservation papers regarding the region warns that “Oceania will require the implementation of effective policies for conservation if the region’s poor record on extinctions is not to continue.”

"Earth is experiencing its sixth great extinction event and the new report reveals that this threat is advancing on six major fronts," says the paper’s lead author, ecologist Richard Kingsford of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia (press release).

The paper, published in Conservation Biology, focuses on habitat loss and species extinctions in Australia, New Zealand, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. It notes that the region contains six of the world’s 39 hotspots of diversity but that these six could become much colder as mass extinction of species is taking place at all of them.

Continue reading "Oceania and the ‘worst extinction record on earth’" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 29, 2009
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How do orangutans swing through the trees? Carefully.

That awful joke takes us smoothly into the first of two studies today on the science of swinging.

First up: in a paper published in PNAS three researchers describe their work on how Sumatran orangutans move on spindly branches that appear incapable of holding their hefty weight. It seems that the animals carefully avoid setting up resonance effects of the kind that causes bridges to wobble when people march in step across them.

“We found that certain locomotor behaviours clearly are associated with the most compliant supports; these behaviours appear to lack regular limb sequences, which serves to avoid the risk of resonance in branch sway caused by high-frequency, patterned gait,” write the authors.

“Balance and increased stability are achieved through long contact times between multiple limbs and supports and a combination of pronograde (horizontal) and orthograde (vertical) body postures, used both above branches and in suspension underneath them.”

While the fact that orangs move through trees by gripping multiple branches and not using regular movements may seem obvious, the animals do differ from other primates, which often suspend themselves below branches rather than carefully balancing their way through, say the authors. Smaller animals also have to worry less about those resonance effects.

Continue reading "Man vs Orang in swinging science" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 29, 2009
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A multi-million refurb on the site at the epicentre of the UK’s 2007 foot-and-mouth disease outbreak has done a Lazurus and come back to life.

Earlier this year plans to do up the Institute for Animal Health at Pirbright to the tune of £120 million appeared to have been scuppered when the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs backed off (see: Britain hits a hurdle in replacing key animal-pathogen facility).

But yesterday the Government announced it would be funding a £100 million overhaul, with investment from a different sector, the newly formed Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. The money will allow the institute to implement the recommendations of reviews produced in the wake of the foot-and-mouth outbreak, including new labs (press release).

“What I hope is that it will give confidence to all our stakeholders that here at Pirbright we have the world’s leading experts. That it will be state-of-the-art and it will be as safe as it can possibly be,” says institute director, Martin Shirley (BBC).

The funding, says Shirley, is also a recognition of the “increasing threats” posed by animal diseases such as … err … foot and mouth.

Previous Pirbright
Britain hits a hurdle in replacing key animal-pathogen facility – Nature News, 10 February 2009
Setback for key UK animal lab – Nature News, 5 December 2008
British government tightens up lab biosecurity – The Great Beyond, 10 October 2008
Anybody know a good plumber? – The Great Beyond, 07 September 2007

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 28, 2009
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Earth, environment & ecology, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

An experiment with GM crops has been “secretly restarted” in the UK a year after protestors destroyed it.

GM trials in the country have proven hugely controversial, with many plants being destroyed by environmentalists. Last year potatoes at a trial in Yorkshire run by Leeds University were destroyed and it is these that have apparently been replanted.

Researchers aim to establish if the GM potatoes are effective at resisting nematodes, says the Yorkshire Post. The Daily Telegraph claims the trial has been “secretly” restarted as the research started up without informing the public.

Michael Jack, chairman of the UK Parliament’s Environment and Rural Affairs Select Committee select committee, defended the trial. He told the Western Morning News, “We agree that there are risks and uncertainties involved in GM technology, but this seems like an argument for further research, rather than an argument for dismissing GM technology out of hand. We believe that the potential of GM technology in the context of sustainable food production should be explored further.”

However a spokeswoman for the Friends of the Earth group accused the UK’s Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs of “trying to slip it [the Leeds trial] under the radar”.

In Europe, a GM trial has recently started in Belgium, the first GM field trial since 2002 according to European Biotechnology News.

Image: a non-GM potato, yesterday / Punchstock

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 27, 2009
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The UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon has given China a kick-up-the-bum on climate change by urging them to set a leading example to developing nations by promoting green living and environmentally-friendly economic growth.

Ban was launching a project to promote energy-saving lighting (Press release). "China has long been the world's fastest-growing major economy," Ban said. "It is also a leading emitter of greenhouse gases, and it is one of the countries most vulnerable to the impact of climate change."

"Without China there can be no success this year on a new global climate framework deal," said Ban, (AFP).

Meanwhile Nobel-prize winning chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri has “slammed” the US for its plans to introduce carbon tariffs (Wall Street Journal). These tariffs will be charged to countries importing to the US, when those countries don’t take their own steps to cut their emissions. “Please don’t use this weapon. I’m afraid that those that have been pushing these provisions probably don’t realize that all of this can cause a major negative reaction,” Pachauri said.

Pachauri has also been defending India’s use of coal (The Hindu).

Image: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on July 24, 2009
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Now observations of the largest member of the toucan family reveal it may in fact be a form of radiator, allowing the animals to shed excess heat given birds cannot sweat.

Glenn Tattersall, of Brock University in Ontario, Canada, and his colleagues Denis Andrade and Augusto Abe watched toco toucans (Ramphastos toco) in infrared while they flapped about. They also manipulated the temperatures that these comedy-big-nosed-birds experienced.

In Science this week they report that adult tocos were able to use their bills to compensate for their lack of sweating ability. They were able to adjust heat loss from their bills to account for between 5 and 100% of total body heat loss.

“Our results indicate that the toucan's bill is, relative to its size, one of the largest thermal windows in the animal kingdom, rivalling elephants’ ears in its ability to radiate body heat,” the researchers write.

Continue reading "Toucans’ massive heating bill" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 24, 2009
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Lonesome George, the famous and last-surviving giant Geochelone abigdoni tortoise from the island of Pinta in the Galapagos, has achieved that fame in part for his coy attitude to the ladies. Having failed to produce any offspring despite being wooed by many female tortoises, the worst was feared for George’s species.

But now, news arrives from the Galapagos that one of the two female tortoises sharing George’s compound at the Charles Darwin Research Station on the central island of Santa Cruz, has laid five eggs. And the world’s media is rejoicing (BBC, msnbc, AP, Reuters).

We won’t know for a while, though, whether the eggs will bring us little bundles of tortoisey joy. November is the guess for when they might hatch. We had this same excitement last year when eggs were found, thought to have been fertilized by George, but they were duds (see here and here). Still, George has waited around 100 years so far, I’m sure the last 5 months of waiting won’t add to his burden too much.

Well done George!

Image: From Flickr by putneymark under Creative Commons

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on July 23, 2009
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Last week’s 7.8 magnitude earthquake near New Zealand moved the country some 30 cm towards Australia, it was reported today

“The country is deforming all the time because of being on the plate boundary, but this has done it in a few seconds, rather than waiting hundreds of years,” says Ken Gledhill of government-owned research organisation GNS Science (The Press). “Basically, it’s taken us closer to Australia.”

However, while the southwest side of the country’s South Island moved 30 cm closer to Australia, its east coast moved just 1 cm in the same direction.

“New Zealand just got a little bit bigger is another way to think about it,” Ken Gledhill of government-owned research organisation GNS Science told AFP.

Will this herald increasing affection between the Kiwis and the Aussies? “The transtasman bond has become a wee bit tighter,” thinks Newstalk ZB. However, despite the hopes of some, cheaper air fares between the two countries are unlikely to be forthcoming.

The quake caused only minor damage, but it did allow a Russian tsunami modeller to do some impressive real time forecasting (see Nature’s news story on this from last week).

Image: New Zealand / Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 23, 2009
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Europe’s biggest single emitter of carbon dioxide is set to get even bigger next year, likely cementing its place in the ‘dirty 30’ polluters list.

According to the Guardian, Poland’s Elektrownia Belchatow coal power station will grow by 20% between 2008 and 2010.

Figures released earlier this year by the European Commission put Belchatow at the top of the list of carbon emissions from a single source, putting out the equivalent of 30.9 million tons of carbon dioxide a year in 2008. Those preliminary figures have now been confirmed. Reuters has a table of the data on the top 30 emitters, showing German facilities once again dominate the so-called ‘Dirty Thirty’, a term coined by the WWF.

Earlier this year Krzysztof Domagala, the Belchatow plant’s chief executive officer, told Bloomberg, “We will need to buy permits for 10 million tons of carbon dioxide within the next five years.”

One small ray of light: the European Commission has a carbon capture and storage project at Belchatow on its list of projects eligible for energy investments.

Image: by placidcasual/Ian under creative commons via Flickr.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 23, 2009
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If you’ve ever wondered whether the gaps between valley ridges were eerily even in their spacing, you’d have been right. Geologists have struggled to explain the phenomenon, or produce a predictive model to say how far apart those ridges will be over time.

Armed with some spectacular images like this one, (more below the fold) Taylor Perron at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, US, has worked out what makes those ridges space themselves out so evenly. (press release). His research is published in Nature. It’s a combination of soil creep – which is the really slow downhill movement of soil that happens as gravity pulls soil and rocks into a more comfortable position – and the channels that streams cut into the sides of the valleys. These two processes do opposite things, the first smooths things out and the second chops them up.

The timescales that these processes work on are the key to the formula. When these two competing processes happen on the same timescale, there is a characteristic length scale for the valley ridge spacing.

Continue reading "Working out the lie of the land" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on July 23, 2009
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More research to prove that global warming is shrinking tasty animals has appeared this week.

First up: extra on the Soay Sheep in Scotland. Earlier this month a paper in Science suggested that these animals were shrinking in size due, at least in part, to climate change (see: Scotland’s shrinking sheep shocker - July 03, 2009).

Now a new paper in Biology Letters comments on the fact that the larger sheep also tend to have darker coats than the smaller sheep. There is, say Shane Maloney, of the University of Western Australia, and colleagues, apparently a genetic link between coat colour and body size.

This may be another reason for the decline of the larger, black sheep: “While in the past a dark coat has offset the metabolic costs of thermoregulation by absorbing solar radiation, the selective advantage of a dark coat may be waning as the climate warms in the North Atlantic,” the researchers write.

Continue reading "Global warming is shrinking your dinner" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 22, 2009
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Rajendra Pachauri turned up the heat on global policymakers in a series of interviews following last week's meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Venice.

Speaking to reporters in New York on Monday, the IPCC chairman credited global leaders with endorsing a goal of holding global warming to 2 degrees Celsius but said countries must now follow up with real action. "The reality is that we have very little time," Pachauri said. Despite an alarmingly wide gap between developed and developing nations, Pachauri said he remains "cautiously optimistic" that a climate deal will be reached in Copenhagen this December.

Following the IPCC's fourth assessment in 2007, some experts suggested that the panel should switch gears and begin performing more rapid assessments, but in the end the panel decided to stay the course. Pachauri said the IPCC will begin rolling out its next major assessment as scheduled in 2013.

Reuters summarized some of the major issues that the panel will be digging into. At the top are sea level change, one of the more contentious issues in the fourth assessment, and the role clouds, which are the source of the largest uncertainties in current climate models.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on July 20, 2009
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NASA has released its report of what cause the US$273 million Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) to end up at the bottom of the ocean.

The report essentially confirms what was known shortly after the launch: OCO failed to reach orbit because the protective fairing that surrounded the satellite didn't separate from the rest of the Taurus XL rocket. With the fairing in place, the upper stage of the rocket was simply too heavy to reach orbit, and it instead ended up crashing into the icy waters surrounding Antarctica.

The exact cause behind the fairing failure will probably never be known, but the aptly named "mishap investigation board" has narrowed it down to one of four causes:

*First, is the possible failure of an explosive joint used to literally blow the fairing off the rocket.

*Second, a failure in the electrical subsystem controlling that joint.

*The third possibility would be a failure of the hydraulics that provide pressure to thrusters used to separate the fairing.

*Last but not least, the board postulates that a stray cord snagged in a joint or side rail might have been to blame.

The closing of the mishap investigation will be little comfort to OCO scientists, who are still waiting to see whether NASA will build them a replacement. But the successful conclusion is good news for Glory, an aerosol-observing satellite that is set to launch in January on the same Taurus XL model of rocket.

Image: NASA

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on July 17, 2009
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Thirty-four Nobel Laureates have penned a letter urging President Barack Obama to push for a $150 billion clean energy fund in the climate legislation currently moving through Congress. Not that Obama needs any prodding - this message was clearly targeted at Congress.

The president kicked things off earlier this spring by assumed the existence of roughly $600 billion in cap-and-trade revenues in his first 10-year budget. Some $150 billion of that money was dedicated to a Clean Energy Technology Fund, but the Senate eventually stripped all of this out of its budget bill, illustrating precisely why advocates are pushing for a dedicated and untouchable stream of revenue in the climate legislation itself.

Those efforts fell apart when House Democrats began striking deals to secure votes, eventually paving the way for passage on June 26. The last Congressional Budget Office analysis forecasts that the bill would effectively raise $873 billion over 10 years, but most of that sum would be doled out to various causes in an effort hold consumer and business costs down.

Burt Richter, the Nobel-prize winning physicist and former director of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, offered up a few numbers in a conference call with journalists: Energy makes up about 10 percent of the nation's gross national product, or about $1.5 trillion per year; $15 billion would represent just 1 percent of the nation's energy expenditures. Small potatoes in the grand scheme, but Richter says it would get the nation started on the kind of energy innovation that will be needed to meet the climate challenge - and stay ahead in an increasingly competitive world.

"The United States is getting to the point where it doesn’t make anything that anybody wants to buy," he said, pointing to nuclear and wind power as two energy technologies that the United States pioneered and then shipped overseas. "We would be well advised to invest at an appropriate scale ... if we want to preserve our position of technological leadership."

Continue reading "Nobelists call for energy R&D in climate bill" »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on July 16, 2009
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Officials have admitted that a tiger reserve in India no longer has any tigers.

Panna National Park, in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, had 24 tigers three years ago, but now officially joins the Sariska reserve in Rajasthan on zero. Panna's tiger demise is particularly embarrassing because "warning bells were sounded regularly for the last eight years," according to a report prepared by the central forest ministry (BBC).

Big cats are reportedly also in decline in the smaller Sanjay National Park, also in Madhya Pradesh, where tigers have not been seen for a year.

A century ago, 40,000 tigers roamed India. Now there are only 1,400 left (according to a February 2008 government census). Most observers blame this loss on rampant poaching - despite the attempts of the conservation programme, Project Tiger, which controls the country's tiger reserves. A 2006 Nature news feature, "The tiger's retreat" (subscription required) has more on the reasons behind India's rapidly dwindling tiger population.

Seemingly downplaying the poaching angle, a wildlife intelligence report submitted to Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has played up the influence of "excessive use of tranquilisers" and subsequent radio-collaring used to track tigers in the park. (Zeenews.com, Daily News Analysis).

Image: Panthera tigris tigris, Bengal Tiger/Wikimedia commons

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on July 16, 2009
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Twelve companies, including Siemens, Munich Re and Deutsche Bank, yesterday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Munich to develop business plans and financing concepts for building networked solar thermal plants in North Africa and the Middle East.

The companies agree to establish by the end of October a company, called Desertec Industrial Initiative (DII), of which they will all become shareholders. DII will then analyse the technical, economic, political, social and ecological framework of generating solar (and wind) power in the Saharan desert, and piping electricity to consumers in Europe. By 2050, the companies involved hope to produce sufficient power in the region to meet 15% of Europe’s electricity demand as well as a substantial portion of the power needs of the Maghreb region.

"We are pursuing a visionary plan,” Munich Re board member Torsten Jeworrek said in a statement. “If it is successful, we will make a major contribution to combating climate change. The ecological and economic potential is huge."

The DII consortium includes the Swiss ABB, the world’s largest builder of electricity grids. Besides legal and political issues, the transmission of power from the Sahara across the Mediterranean Sea to European population centres is considered a main hurdle to the project.

The Desertec project, a brainchild of the so-named foundation and the Club of Rome, made news last month when plans had leaked that German companies intended to invest up to €400 billion in a 100 gigawatt solar utility in Northern Africa.

Signatories of yesterday’s MoU did not confirm these figures.

Finance experts are not convinced that the project will attract sufficient private and public investment. “So far, this is nothing more than political lobbying in my view,” Reuters quotes an equity analyst as saying.

Posted by Quirin Schiermeier

Image: Torsten Jeworrek (Munich Re Group)

Posted by Quirin Schiermeier on July 14, 2009
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The Obama administration this week unveiled a programme to funnel billions of dollars directly into renewable energy projects, thus helping alleviate the capital crunch that has arisen as a result of the financial crisis.

The programme, announced jointly by the US Energy and Treasury departments, basically monetizes existing tax credits that subsidize development of wind, solar and other renewable resources. The way these deals worked in the past is that banks would finance individual projects and then take advantage of the tax credits themselves. But because these credits reduce taxes that would normally be paid on profits, they are completely useless if banks aren't making any money, as is currently the case.

Nature covered this problem back in October, when the impacts of the financial meltdown on Wall Street were just beginning to emerge, and again in January. The renewable energy industry seized on the issue and pushed to make the tax credits available as cash when Congress was working on a stimulus bill; their efforts paid off, and this week's announcement kicks off the new programme.

The Energy Department hopes to begin accepting applications on Aug. 1; checks would be cut within 60 days of submission. Agency officials estimate demand at roughly $3 billion (enough to get $10 to $14 billion in projects off the ground) but said there is no ceiling on the subsidy. "The real question is just how many projects come in," says Matt Rogers, who is working on the stimulus program at the Energy Department. "Three billion is the initial estimate, but we would be quite excited to see a number larger than that."

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on July 10, 2009
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With the international climate community focused on Italy, a key US senator casually announced plans to delay the first round of votes on a climate bill until September. The news from Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, came just two days after her committee kicked off the legislative process.

To what extent this counts as a setback remains unclear. For her part, Boxer downplayed the announcement by saying the committee would get its work done quickly after the August recess, leaving plenty of time to push the bill through the Senate during the fall session. In doing so, she issued her first warning to colleagues who might think they have better things to do in December: "We'll be in until Christmas, so I'm not worried about it."

There are two easy explanations for the delay. The first is that energy is competing for attention with another big-ticket issue: health care reform. The second is that Democrats are worried about cobbling together votes. Undoubtedly both are true to some extent, but it might also be that her staff needs time to organize hearings and write legislation, likely modelled after that passed by the House on June 26. After all, Boxer shouldn't have a problem getting a bill out of her committee, which consists of 12 Democrats and seven Republicans.

The difficulty will come when the bill hits the Senate floor, where it will surely need 60 out of 100 votes to pass. Boxer's committee is the most important of several that will take up the issue and then report legislative language to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. Congressional Quarterly reports that Reid has pushed back his deadline for committee work by 10 days, to 28 September. That's certainly not enough to derail the whole process, but every day counts.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on July 09, 2009
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John Holdren, science advisor to President Barack Obama, swung by Blighty today for some tea and crumpets with the Brits. But before embarking on a who's who tour of UK science policymakers, he joined the press in the basement of the US embassy for some all-American cookies and black coffee.

Most of his hour-long round table was spent discussing climate change. He expressed some disappointment with the climate change legislation winding its way through the US Congress, but sees it as a make-or-break step for getting an effective international accord out of the UN's Copenhagen conference, which will take place in December. Some of the reporters expressed scepticism that a bill could be passed in time, but Holdren was optimistic, noting that the administration only needed around 12-15 additional votes in the Senate to pass the legislation. "I would still bet that it will happen, but I have to admit that it's going to be a challenge," he said.

Holdren believes a big part of the solution to climate change will come from nuclear energy. He reiterated his longstanding support of that technology, but poo-pooed commercial reprocessing of old nuclear fuel, an approach advocated by previous president George W. Bush (but not by Nature). He also dismissed the US's deeply-troubled nuclear waste disposal site in Yucca Mountain, Nevada, advocating instead for a number of regional interim storage facilities. Such facilities, he notes, would get the current waste off the sites of commercial power plants, while minimizing the distance it will have to travel. There's a good political reason for regional sites as well—it won't force the US to choose a single location for waste disposal, something that's difficult in the highly decentralized federal system.

Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, Holdren reiterated his belief in a coordinated international approach for supplying nuclear fuel. "I would personally like to see uranium enrichment around the world put under international management," he said. Putting enrichment under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency, for example, would discourage nations from developing dual-use enrichment capabilities that could be used for nuclear weapons. Holdren pointed out that the Obama administration has yet to take any firm stand on the issue.

None of these positions are really new, but it was good to hear them from the horse's mouth.

By the way, I've decided that the US and UK are in some sort of twisted competition to see who can have the ugliest embassy in the other nation's capital. I've now visited both buildings, and they're absolutely hideous.

Image: Harvard University

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on July 09, 2009
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The world's biggest greenhouse gas polluters are poised to adjourn a series of meetings in Italy without any significant breakthroughs between developed and developing nations. Though hardly surprising, the news certainly reaffirms fears that it could be a long slog to Copenhagen.

In this week's issue of Nature, we take a look at some of the positions and ideas being put on the table by developing nations. The upshot is that many developing countries, recognizing the threats posed by climate change, are doing quite a bit to clean up their economies. Nonetheless, they remain understandably wary of binding requirements that might restrict their ability to lift themselves out of poverty.

Countries like India, China, Brazil and others are focusing on per-capita emissions within a historical context. From this perspective, industrialized nations have pumped far more than their fair share of pollution into the atmosphere, which provides a limited cushion for development powered by fossil fuels. The way China runs the numbers, industrialized nations would have had to stop emitting all together two years ago. Recognizing that it will be virtually impossible to achieve parity under such terms, Bolivia has proposed the concept of a "climate debt," illustrated in this graph, which is basically the difference between what industrialized nations should be allowed to emit on a cumulative, per-capita basis and what they actually emit.

In other words, industrialized nations can use up more than their fair share of the allowable emissions, but they must pay for it. This transfer of wealth is likely to be the crux of any deal that might be struck this year; developed countries know they are going to have to write checks, but they want assurances that those checks will be put to good use. One solution is to start out with sectoral approaches that guarantee certain types of policy and technology changes, which can reliably be counted on to reduce emissions.

As it happens, a PNAS paper out this week takes a different approach to climate equity by targeting wealthy individuals rather than wealthy nations. Although the end result is similar, their proposal does not cover historic emissions, which are at the heart of the proposals outlined above.

One thing is sure: No agreement can be struck unless the gulf between developed and developing nations is bridged. Barack Obama's ascension to the White House makes political progress possible in the United States, but politicians in the US and Europe know that slashing emissions in developed countries alone simply cannot solve the problem. Indeed, this is one of the principle arguments being raised against climate legislation that is poised to be taken up in the US Senate. And from this perspective, it's possible that progress on the international front is just as critical for striking a deal within the US as US participation is at the international level.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on July 09, 2009
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An international crew of academics this week boldly declared that the world is headed down the wrong track in trying to put a lid on global greenhouse gas emissions. But with global leaders pressing the issue in Italy this week, it's not clear that anybody is listening.

The team includes Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics and Steve Rayner of Oxford University, who made a splash with their 2007 indictment of the Kyoto Protocol, dubbed The Wrong Trousers (Nature also published a summary of the article). Their latest paper, which includes additional authors, including Roger Pielke, Jr. at the University of Colorado in Boulder, maintains a hard line and advocates policies that directly promote energy efficiency and decarbonization in place of a messy global carbon market that might or might not do the work it is intended to do. The researchers see a model in Japan, long a leader on energy efficiency thanks in part to a dearth of domestic resources.

Although the BBC posted a story and the New York Times' Andrew Revkin included a blurb in his blog, the paper hasn't garnered much traction. To be sure, Japan has lessons to teach the world, and carbon markets are unlikely to solve all of the world's problems. But like it or not, given the amount of time and political capital that has been invested in the current negotiations, there's little appetite for radical new ideas.

This perspective was nicely summed up in the BBC's coverage by Tom Burke of Imperial College. He acknowledged that many of the authors' criticisms are valid but suggested that "nothing could be more harmful" than the solution they propose, which is to reverse course.

So far, however, that doesn't appear to be a danger. On Wednesday, G8 leaders backed the establishment of a global carbon market as part of a commitment to curb their emissions by some 80 percent by 2050. They also signed on to a goal, long held by the European Union, to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. The question facing the Major Economies Forum, to be convened Thursday by US president Barack Obama, is whether major developing countries such as China and India will agree to the 2-degree goal and commit themselves to halving global emissions by 2050 in order to make it happen.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on July 08, 2009
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Using data from NASA’s ICE-Sat (Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite), Ron Kwok of the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and colleagues found overall Arctic sea ice thinned by 17 cm a year between 2004 and 2008.

The area of ice that survived the summer shrank by 42% says the team, which has published its work in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

The new results match findings from last year, published in Geophysical Research Letters. That paper, by Katharine Giles and colleagues from the UK’s National Centre for Earth Observation, also used satellite data to assess average sea ice thickness and found that, during the 2007/08 winter, thickness was 26 cm below the average thickness of the past six years. (See: Arctic ice is back, but only in the news - October 28, 2008.)

“The new analysis … is the latest of many findings supporting the idea that the region has shifted to a new state in which seasonal ice, which forms in winter and melts in the summer, dominates,” writes Andrew Revkin on the NY Times Dot Earth blog.

Meanwhile, a report from the IUCN says the polar bear is feeling the impact of changes in ice.

“They’ve been weighing and measuring polar bears and they’ve been able to demonstrate there is a clear downward trend in the body mass of adult females,” says Erik Born, chair of the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (Canadian Press). “There is also evidence [of] decreased survival of very old bears and younger bears which can be linked to the change in sea ice.”

More
NASA data shows 'dramatically thinned' Arctic ice – AFP
Arctic ice thinned dramatically since 2004 – NASA – Reuters

Images: NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 08, 2009
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A tiny monkey new to science has been named after the ethnic group local to to the remote Amazonian region where it was discovered.

Mura’s saddleback tamarind (saguinus fuscicollis mura) was first seen on a 2007 expedition in the Amazonas state in north-western Brazil. Newly described in the International Journal of Primatology, the 240 mm long monkey is named for the Mura Indians.

“This newly described monkey shows that even today there are still major wildlife discoveries to be made,” says Fabio Röhe of the Wildlife Conservation Society, an author of the new paper on the tamarind (press release).

“This discovery should serve as a wake-up call that there is still so much to learn from the world’s wild places, yet humans continue to threaten these areas with destruction.”

Like other saddlebacks, Mura’s has distinct mottling on its back in the shape of a saddle, hence the name. It is dwarfed by its own tail, which adds 320 mm to its length.

More
New long-tailed monkey discovered in Amazon – MSNBC
New monkey discovered in Brazilian Amazon – Reuters

Image: Stephen Nash.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 08, 2009
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Perhaps the biggest question facing the international climate community is how to divvy up the burden of reducing emissions. The arguments tend to centre on historical responsibility in the wealthy world versus future growth in developing countries, but a new study offers up a different metric: wealthy individuals everywhere (see Reuters, CNN).

The Kyoto Protocol requires developed countries to take on mandatory targets while giving developing countries a temporary pass, but international negotiators hope to craft a new agreement this year. This time around wealthy nations say they are willing to take on more substantial cuts but only if developing countries agree to slow, and eventually reverse, the rapid growth in emissions.

They have a point: like it or not, tackling climate change is impossible without the help of developing countries that are now, according to a recent analysis by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, responsible for more than half of the global emissions. On the other hand, poor countries are wary of restricting economic development that could lift billions of people out of poverty.

Continue reading "A new climate proposal: target rich people, not rich nations " »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on July 07, 2009
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I got to hear Al Gore speak today at the close of the Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment in Oxford, and I was amazed to be treated to a pop neuroscience lecture.

Rather than climate, Gore opened by talking about human psychology and physiology. Climate change, he said, is "ultimately a problem of consciousness". He went on: "What is being tested is the proposition of whether or not the combination of an opposable thumb and a neocortex is a viable construct on this planet".

That's pretty deep, but Gore got deeper. Evolution, he said, had trained us to to respond quickly and viscerally to threats. But when humans are confronted with "a threat to the existence of civilization that can only be perceived in the abstract", we don't do so well. Citing functional magnetic resonance imaging, he said that the connecting line between amygdalae, which he described as the urgency centre of the brain, with the neocortex is a one way street: emotional emergencies can spark reasoning, but not the other way around.

Gore went on to speak about lots of other stuff: how better management of soil would be critical to solving the climate crisis. How geothermal energy had the potential for enormous development, and how existing technologies, such as coal-fired power plants had to become more efficient.

But in the end, he brought it back to human consciousness. Until the majority of citizens perceive climate change as a true crisis, he said, politicians will be sluggish to act. That's the bad news. The good news, though, is that when we do decide to act, we will be able to do so more rapidly than anyone currently thinks is possible. "Just remember, when we become aware of what we have to do, and when we have the tools available to us to get the job done, it can change", he said. "We ought to approach this challenge with a sense of joy."

I'm not sure what it says about human consciousness, but it certainly is an interesting insight into Mr. Gore's psychology. I'm curious to hear what neuroscientists make of his analysis.

If you want to hear the whole speech, have a listen here (audio quality isn't brilliant, sorry about that).

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on July 07, 2009
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The G8 meeting in L’Alquila, Italy kicks off tomorrow, although exactly what the agenda will be is still being debated – and the Italian leadership criticised by some quarters. (For a round up of the trials and tribulations facing Silvio Berlusconi, try here.)

Ahead of the meeting, Oxfam has released a report about climate change and the world’s poorest people. The report, introduced by Diana Liverman, director of Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute, lists a number of examples where climate change is affecting people’s lives already. “The reality of life under climate change is largely missing from the big debate,” the report says.

The headline of a press release that came out shortly after that to accompany the report outlines Oxfam’s opinion: “More than 3 million face death while Berlusconi and the G8 fiddle”.

The timing is, of course deliberate – the report has been put out to urge the G8 leaders to make serious decisions about tackling climate change. And the exposure has been widespread. The New York Times blog highlights the reports economic warning, which ought to hit home to the G8 leaders. Elsewhere around the world the report has received much coverage, in Canada the Globe and Mail, China’s Xinhua agency, the BBC, to name a few.

Nature News will be keeping you updated on science news from the G8. Watch this space.

Image: Soil in Uganda, James Akena/ OXFAM

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on July 07, 2009
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Normally when world leaders meet at their summits these days they like to wrangle about climate change before setting a target that doesn’t go as far as many scientists think is needed. Equally normal is a storm of media coverage with various unnamed sources speculating about what is going to happen.

According to the BBC at the G8 summit in Italy, which starts Wednesday, leaders may break from their bickering routine. The Beeb reports that a target to cut greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050 is to be set, with leaders also to “call for any human-induced temperature rise to be held below 2 degrees Celsius”.

The Guardian says US President Barack Obama is also ready to back the ‘no more than 2 degrees’ target at the meeting in L’Aquila, according to “a draft communiqué”.

This is a bit of a change from 23 June when Reuters was reporting that the US was having less-than-none of European attempts to push the <2 target, “according to a draft summit text”. Reuters also said then that the target would be for a 50% reduction by 2050, rather than 80%.

The Australian is playing safe, telling its readers that unnamed negotiators told it that “progress had been slow and even the framework for a possible deal last night remained unclear”. It does note that Kevin Rudd, prime minister of Australia, is behind the <2 target.

To drive home how important all this is, Mohamed Nasheed, the president of the Maldives gave an exclusive interview to The Times (who repaid the favour by misspelling his name, but that’s by-the-by).

“We feel that climate change is not an environmental issue, it’s a security issue, it’s a human rights issue,” he said at a meeting in Oxford. “If you thought that defending Poland was important [from Nazi Germany], defending the Maldives is important. If you can’t save the Maldives today you can’t save yourself tomorrow.”

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 06, 2009
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Just in case the world’s public were growing inured to tales of rising sea level, drought and crop failure, scientists have come up with a new reason climate change is bad. It makes sheep shrink.

Despite the fact that larger sheep are more likely to survive when young, the Soay sheep (Ovis aries) on the Scottish island of Hirta have been shrinking in size over the last 20 years. Tim Coulson, of Imperial College London, UK, and his colleagues have been working out which of the myriad of possible factors is most responsible for this change.

In Science they report their analysis of the body-weights and life-history of female sheep from Soay. They found that the animals are not growing as quickly as they once were and that more of the smaller sheep were surviving their early years.

“In the past, only the big, healthy sheep and large lambs that had piled on weight in their first summer could survive the harsh winters on Hirta,” says Coulson (press release).

“But now, due to climate change, grass for food is available for more months of the year, and survival conditions are not so challenging – even the slower growing sheep have a chance of making it, and this means smaller individuals are becoming increasingly prevalent in the population.”

Continue reading "Scotland’s shrinking sheep shocker" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 03, 2009
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2010 marks a fairly ambitious deadline for the globe: no more species going extinct. With six months to go, and human activities continuing their tear through wildlife-rich habitats like rainforests and oceans, it’s pretty clear that we’re going to need an extension. Now the world’s authority on species conservation, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), is waving the latest assessment of its venerable Red List around to raise the alarm.

The 2010 biodiversity target originated in 2001, when the European Council concluded that “biodiversity decline should be halted with the aim of reaching this objective by 2010”. In 2002, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) softened the goal to “a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss”, and a few months later the World Summit on Sustainable Development echoed the CBD’s pledge. In celebration, the UN declared 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity.

But despite the nominal unity, things are looking pretty grim. On 2 July the IUCN released its assessment of threatened species, which looked at whether the statuses of threatened species were improving or deteriorating. In a laborious analysis, described by its authors as “a labour of love”, the group assessed 1,500 randomly selected species from each species group (e.g. dragonflies, freshwater crabs, gymnosperms). The conclusion: 2010 isn’t going to happen.

The lack of progress doesn’t come as a surprise, considering that the primary driver of species extinction — habitat destruction — continues to charge along, albeit at a slower clip in temperate regions. But the CBD notes that “this may not necessarily translate, however, into lower rates of species loss for all taxa because of the nature of the relationship between numbers of species and area of habitat, because decades or centuries may pass before species extinctions reach equilibrium with habitat loss, and because other drivers of loss, such as climate change, nutrient loading, and invasive species, are projected to increase".

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on July 02, 2009
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Posted on behalf of Lizzie Buchen

Six weeks ago, a 47-million-year-old, beautifully-preserved primate fossil named Ida swamped headlines in a media blitz, generating harsh criticism of the scientists’ publicizing strategies and the lemming-like media.

But before Ida’s fame tumbles too far, a new primate’s fossils are swooping in to ride in her media wake. And though the remains are no more than jaws and a handful of teeth, they’re bent on trumping the notorious Ida’s perch on our primate tree.

Continue reading "The latest fossil frenzy" »

Posted by Alex Witze on July 02, 2009
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New images of the Great Beyond’s volcano of the year (to date): Sarychev Peak in the Russian Kuril Islands.

Although not quite on a par with the awesome shot from last week (see: Picture post: BOOM!) this double act show the impact of an eruption like the one that Sarychev experienced beginning 12 June. The ‘before’, top, was taken 26 May while the ‘after’, below, is from 30 June.

Acquired by the ASTER instrument that graced this blog yesterday, these false-colour images show vegetation as red, water as dark blue, and bare rock as brown / gray. The white patches are either ice or clouds.

NASA notes:

The most striking difference between these two images is the cap of new volcanic rock coating the northwestern half of the island in June 2009. While vegetation on the rest of the island appears lush, little or no vegetation remains on the northwestern end. A close look at the top image also reveals that the recent volcanic activity appears to have expanded the island’s coastline on the northwestern end.

Hat tip: Eruptions blog

Image: created by Jesse Allen, using data from NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS/ASTER Science Team

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 01, 2009
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Well, it's finally happened: a year and a half after denying California's petition to set its own greenhouse-gas emissions standards for vehicles, the US Environmental Protection Agency has reversed itself and granted the waiver request. That's what a change of administration will get you in Washington.

Lisa Jackson, the EPA's new administrator under President Barack Obama, said she had "decided this is the appropriate course under the law". The prior administrator, Stephen Johnson, rejected California's request and said that a national standard was needed, not a patchwork of state regulations. In April, the EPA declared carbon dioxide emissions a danger to human health.

California requested the waiver in 2005; it regularly asks for national standards to be waived so that it can set more stringent environmental standards.

Interest groups were split along predictable lines in their reaction. Reuters points out that the American Petroleum Institute argues that the waiver will "impose costly requirements" on businesses. David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council called the waiver granting "a win for everyone".

Posted by Alex Witze on June 30, 2009
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Duck-billed dinosaurs, the hadrosaurs, have puzzled palaeontologists for years. The puzzle? How did these, the dominant herbivores of their time, manage to chew their food with their funny-looking bills?

Mark Purnell of the University of Leicester Department of Geology, UK, has worked it out, and published it in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Press release).

Purnell and his colleagues looked at tiny microscopic scratches on the hadrosaur Edmontasurus’s teeth. They decided that rather than moving the bottom jaw like most living creatures today, it was their upper jaw that was hinged and moved up and down, and side to side.

The news has been chewed over (sorry) by a number of outlets, including MSNBC, Zee News and the AP, who get the prize for best headline with “Hadrosaur chowdown_grind, grind, grind”

The research also tells us that the hadrosaurs probably ate mainly leaves, because the scratches weren’t consistent with chomping on twigs or other tough treats.

Image: Vince Williams, University of Leicester

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on June 30, 2009
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NASA and Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry yesterday released what they say is the “most complete” topographic map of Earth.

Until now the most complete set of data available publicly to researchers covered 80% of the Earth’s landmass. Now new Aster (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) satellite data takes that up to 99%, says the American space agency (press release).

“Aster’s accurate topographic data will be used for engineering, energy exploration, conserving natural resources, environmental management, public works design, firefighting, recreation, geology and city planning, to name just a few areas,” says Mike Abrams, leader of the science team leader behind the new map.

Image: view of the Bhutan Himalayas generated by draping simulated natural colour image over data from the new ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model / NASA

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 30, 2009
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The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is once again being accused of politicizing science, only this time conservatives are the ones crying foul.

At issue is a 98-page "comment" on the EPA's recent finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are endangering human health. The comment was authored by an EPA economist Alan Carlin, and claimed, among other things, that the EPA was relying on outdated data because it used the last assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to help shape its finding. Carlin also echoes the old arguments of climate sceptics, which say that solar cycles, not human activity, are responsible for the recent increase in global temperatures.

Continue reading "Hot air and politics at the EPA" »

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on June 29, 2009
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The legislative process wasn't pretty, but the US House of Representatives voted 219-212 on 26 June to approve the most sweeping piece of energy and environmental legislation in history. (New York Times)

The predictable result is a bill that almost nobody likes. Greenpeace's opposition illustrates a general sentiment on the left side of the political spectrum that the bill's Democratic sponsors, Henry Waxman of California and Edward Markey of Massachusetts, compromised too much. The US Chamber of Commerce says they compromised too little. And even the American Farm Bureau, whose members sought and won massive concessions in a deal that secured enough votes for passage, maintained its opposition (for a rather scathing take on this issue, see Steven Pearlstein's column in the Washington Post).

What holds the current coalition together is a core group of seasoned legislators backed by pragmatic environmentalists and businesses who understand and are willing to play by the rules on Capitol Hill. And of course a president who supports the idea. In this respect, it's hard to imagine a more concrete example of the political transformation wrought by the past two elections (whether this momentum will carry through a third election in 2010 is an open question - and one that increases pressure on Democrats to get the job done this year).

At its core, the bill would create a cap-and-trade system that would reduce covered greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. But the legislation contains a host of initiatives meant to boost things like energy efficiency and renewable power while controlling costs on industry and consumers. Nearly every one has its critics.

Continue reading "Climate bill clears US House, faces long road ahead" »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on June 27, 2009
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EU environment ministers have agreed that more urgently needs to be done to stop European biodiversity from declining further.

Meeting in Luxembourg yesterday, the ministers stated they are "alarmed" by the threats to biodiversity posed by invasive alien species and "deeply concerned" by the European Commission's assessment that the EU is unlikely to meet its target of halting biodiversity loss by 2010.

Ministers called for the Commission to prepare by 2010 a new strategy to tackle invasive species, which the Commission estimates costs the EU over 12 billion euros per year. As well as setting out methods of detection, monitoring and containment, the strategy should include steps to establish a comprehensive inventory of invasive alien species, the ministers said.

Continue reading "EU environment ministers 'alarmed' by biodiversity threat" »

Posted by Ananyo Bhattacharya on June 26, 2009
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It’s been an up-and-down week for supporters of carbon capture and storage (CCS) – the technology that aims to capture carbon dioxide emitted from power plants and bury it underground.

The European Commission announced yesterday that it would put €50 million towards an investment scheme to co-finance a CCS demonstration plant in China (costing around €300-500 million), fulfilling an agreement made by the EU and China in 2005.

Earlier in the week, the New York Times noted a sea change in China’s attitude towards carbon capture. Noting China’s swift progress on its GreenGen project, Julio Friedmann, head of the carbon storage programme at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, told the paper: "Five years ago, you'd have a discussion [with China] on CCS and you'd meet the 'C' team. Now, you meet the 'A' team. They take this stuff seriously."

But in Germany, politicians dropped a pending national CCS legal framework, postponing agreement until after general elections in September. "It's really frustrating," Reuters quoted Staffan Goertz, Vattenfall's chief media officer for CCS. "It is the result of the local public having questions and hesitations about this."

And in the US, two companies said on Thursday they would withdraw from participating in the government-backed FutureGen CCS project in Mattoon, Illinois. American Electric Power and Southern said they’d rather spend the money on their own CCS projects instead (Reuters).

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on June 26, 2009
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Jim Hansen has released a statement about his arrest earlier this week at a protest against coal mining by the company Massey Energy in West Virginia.

The NASA scientist and doyen of climate change protestors was arrested after those protesting against Massey’s mountaintop mining faced off against the company’s supporters. While Hansen describes local police as “courteous and professional”, he backs allegations made by some protestors that a supporter of the mining company assaulted one of their number. He also says that local man Larry Gibson, who has refused to sell his property for mining, has been the target of drive-by shootings.

However, he adds, “If Gandhi had the sequence right (first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win), we are already three-quarters of the way there. I noticed that it was only a handful of Massey people who were really vocal.”(PDF.)

Image: Hansen arrested at the protest / by Antrim Caskey for the Rainforest Action Network

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 26, 2009
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Scotland has set itself the world’s toughest climate change targets, in legislation passed yesterday. The country is looking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 and by 42% by 2020 (press release, bill pdf).

“Scotland can be proud of this Bill, the most ambitious and comprehensive piece of climate change legislation anywhere in the world,” says climate change minister Stewart Stevenson (press release).

Ministers in the ruling Scottish National Party have admitted this will make little difference to global emissions overall, but they hope it will set an example to other nations (BBC).

And here lies the catch. As passed, the bill gives the country the option to move rapidly backwards from its ‘Tartan Targets’ if the rest of the world doesn’t come up with similarly tough targets at the forthcoming global summit in Copenhagen (Reuters). Targets can also be downgraded if the UK government’s advisors say they are unrealistic (Guardian).

“We will be looking for any weakening of the position being slipped out during a summer or Christmas recess,” warned Duncan McLaren of Friends of the Earth (The Herald). “A key will be the international reaction to this. If it is well-received and there is praise for Scotland’s leadership in adopting the world’s best targets, it will be harder for Ministers to back down.”

McLaren take heart from one thing: Arnold Schwarzenegger is on his side.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 25, 2009
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Climate guru and NASA scientist James Hansen has been arrested after taking part in a protest against mountaintop coal mining.

Hansen, along with actress Daryl Hannah and other protesters, apparently planned to deliberately trespass on the property of mining company Massey Energy in the appropriately named Coal River Valley, West Virginia (press release).

However, a counter protest by miners and coal industry supporters forced them to change their plans. Instead, according to the Charleston Gazette, they sat down in the road outside Massey Energy's Goals Coal preparation plant in Raleigh County and were arrested for obstructing the police and impeding traffic.

Some reports say Hansen and other actually did trespass. Another account alleges a coal supporter assaulted members of the Hansen protest group.

Hansen, of course, has a long history of opposing coal power. He even appeared with Hannah before at a climate change protest, where Nature reporter Jeff Tollefson noted “Hansen says he is willing to get arrested”.

Willing and able, it seems.

More
Photos of the protest and arrests – RAN
A Plea To President Obama: End Mountaintop Coal Mining - Hansen on the Enivronment 360 blog

Image: Hansen at a previous protest / Jeff Tollefson

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 24, 2009
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Australia’s carbon emissions trading scheme has run into political squalls. Delaying tactics in the country’s upper house, the Senate, mean that a vote on the cap-and-trade legislation looks likely to be put off until August – when the bill in its current form will probably fail anyway.

Though the legislation passed through the Labor-controlled House of Representatives earlier this month, Conservative opposition in the Senate this week has proved less tractable. "They have been filibustering, wasting time, using every tactic they can to delay debate on this bill,'' climate change minister Penny Wong told reporters (Reuters, The Australian).

Now, in the last week of Parliament before the winter break, senators have voted to bring debate on nine unrelated bills, and it would be “very difficult” to find the time to debate the climate bill, Wong said (Bloomberg).

Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal and its per-capita carbon emissions are among the highest in the world, and rising. Mindful of the effect of the scheme on the cost of coal and other energy-intensive exports, the Conservative opposition want the vote on legislation delayed until after the US passes its own bill, and until after a climate treaty is debated in Copenhagen in December (New York Times, Bloomberg).

Yet, as Wong told reporters on 30 March, "The best chance of an agreement at Copenhagen is for as many countries as possible to act – Australia is one of those." (Nature, 458, 554-555; 2009, subscription required.)

Continue reading "Australian carbon trading hits political wall" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on June 23, 2009
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It seems that everybody has a set of numbers to explain how climate legislation moving through the US House of Representatives could impact the economy, but it's the official Congressional Budget Office score that really counts. That document came out Friday, estimating net costs of the program at $22 billion annually, which translates to an average impact of $175 dollars per household.

It's a remarkably low number, ringing in around 48 cents per day (supporters of the legislation say it would cost households little more than a daily postage stamp). And it turns out even that is misleading: If you divide households up by income into five groups, the lowest quintile would actually save $40 annually while the second-lowest quintile would spend only $40 extra each year; for everybody else (those who can afford it most), the cost comes in between $235 and $340.

CBO director Douglas Elmendorf kindly provides a quick summary of how his organization arrived at these figures in his blog. Notably, although CBO's model is able to capture some savings (gross costs are higher than $22 billion), Elmendorf admits that the model doesn't pick up all of them.

Continue reading "Climate costs: What's in a number?" »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on June 22, 2009
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A husband-and-wife team of British evolutionary biologists, Peter and Rosemary Grant, were on 19 June awarded the Kyoto prize in basic science for their studies, over more than three decades, documenting evolution by natural selection in finches on the Galapagos Islands.

"I can't think of any other scientists who deserve it more," Kenneth Petren, of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, tells The Scientist.

In one typical paper, (Grant P. R., et al. Science, 313. 224 - 226; 2006), the Grants – both Professors Emeritus at Princeton University – described the struggle between the medium ground finch (Geospiza fortis) and the large ground finch (Geospiza magnirostris), in the harsh environment of the tiny Galapagos Island Daphne Major (see Nature, doi: 10.1038/news060710-11, subscription required).

Environmental changes, including a drought, caused the beak size of generations of medium finches to shrink through natural selection. Smaller-beaked medium finches were able to gobble up smaller seeds that the greater-beaked ground finches missed, and so survived longer to pass their traits to their offspring. The Grants starred in Jonathan Weiner’s book, The Beak of the Finch.

Isamu Akasaki won the Advanced Technology award, for his work on gallium nitride p-n junctions and related contributions to the development of blue light emitting devices. French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez won the Arts and Philosophy category. Each award is worth 50 million yen (US$520,000).

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on June 22, 2009
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The 2009 meeting of the International Whaling Commission has begun in Madeira, Portugal. Once again, participants are looking to construct a compromise between those who wish to hunt whales and those who think want to stop that sort of thing.

Earlier this year a key sub-committee of the IWC failed to agree a compromise between pro-whaling nations such as Japan and their opponents, chiefly Australia. This would have seen Japan resuming coastal whaling of its coasts but giving up its annual Antarctic hunt.

Now Japan has again indicated that it might be willing to put similar offers on the table (see meeting agenda, page 9).

UK environment minister Huw Irranca-Davies told the BBC this was not going to be uncontroversial.

Continue reading "Whaling meeting faces deadlock, again" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 22, 2009
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Peru's Congress has overturned two laws that would have allowed foreign companies to exploit mineral resources and gain mining rights in the Amazon forest, according to BBC News. The volte-face came after weeks of protests from Indigenous groups, who say they were not consulted about the laws which would threaten their way of life.

The laws were passed 2007 and 2008 under powers Congress had granted Peruvian president, Alan Garcia, to implement a free trade agreement with the US, the BBC News report says.

Continue reading "Peru overturns laws allowing exploitation of Amazon forest " »

Posted by Natasha Gilbert on June 19, 2009
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Since erupting on June 12 the Sarychev volcano continues to wreak havoc for air travellers.

According to CBC Canada, Air Canada, Air China, Asiana Airlines and Korean Airlines all cancelled or delayed flights in and out of Vancouver International Airport on Tuesday. These are all routes that would pass near to the volcano.

The dust plume has now spread as far as 1500 miles from the site.

The NASA Earth Observatory has a nice series of pictures that for the moment is updated daily.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on June 17, 2009
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Biologists need to take a more nuanced view of ‘same-sex behaviour’ in animals, say the authors of a new review article on the topic.

Male-male and female-female interactions have been “extensively documented in non-human animals”, write University of California, Riverside researchers Nathan Bailey and Marlene Zuk. However they want to see scientists looking more towards the evolutionary consequences of same-sex behaviour, not just on why it occurs.

“It’s clear that same-sex sexual behaviour extends far beyond the well-known examples that dominate both the scientific and popular literature: for example, bonobos, dolphins, penguins and fruit flies,” says Bailey (press release).

He adds that researchers may be looking at widely different behaviours under the same ‘same-sex behaviours’ banner. “For example, male fruit flies may court other males because they are lacking a gene that enables them to discriminate between the sexes. But that is very different from male bottlenose dolphins, who engage in same-sex interactions to facilitate group bonding, or female Laysan Albatross that can remain pair-bonded for life and cooperatively rear young.”

Continue reading "Birds do it, bees do it…" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 17, 2009
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The White House opened its gates to a gaggle of science reporters Tuesday as administration officials and scientists released a much-anticipated assessment of global warming's impacts on the United States. The message - global warming is upon us - was delivered clearly and forcefully, several times over.

Hardly a novel finding, but, in a sign of the times, the audience proved receptive. The report echoed over the wires (see the Washington Post, New York Times) and filled up email in-boxes as environmental groups and politicians put their seal on the document.

President Barack Obama's chief science adviser, John Holdren, called the report "the most up-to-date, comprehensive and authoritative assessment" of global warming in the United States. The document focuses on regional impacts, he added, "talking about climate where people actually experience it: in their back yards."

Continue reading "US releases assessment of climate impacts" »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on June 16, 2009
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The research that allowed an endangered butterfly to be successfully reintroduced to the UK has finally been published this week.

The large blue butterfly (Maculinea arion) became extinct in the country in 1979. However, before this happened, Jeremy Thomas of the University of Oxford camped out with the last surviving colony to collect information that would be vital to their successful reintroduction.

Now he has published his research in Science (online Thursday).

“I was living with the last UK colony, measuring everything, including their behaviour, how many eggs they laid, the survival of individual eggs, how many caterpillars were in the plants. It was a bit like a detective story,” he says (press release).

“I’ve been saving this paper up, as it were, for 25 years.”

Continue reading "Saving the large blue butterfly" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 16, 2009
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Posted for Quirin Schiermeier

The American astronomer Jack Eddy, famed for his studies on the connections between solar activity and terrestrial climate, died last Wednesday in Tucson, Arizona.

Born John Allen Eddy in 1931 in Pawnee City, Nebraska, Eddy was in 1949 appointed to the US Naval Academy where he crawled out on the roof one night to look at the stars. After graduation, he served for four years in the Korean War. In 1957 he became the first student in the astro-geophysics graduate school at the University of Colorado in Boulder. After a period of teaching he joined the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). When laid off from NCAR’s High Altitude Observatory in 1973 he was hired by NASA.

In a famous study published in 1976 in Science, Eddy demonstrated a link between unusually low solar activity and the coldest period of the so-called little ice age.

Continue reading "Sunspot veteran dies at 78" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 15, 2009
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Sarychev Peak on Matua Island in the Russian Kuril Islands is blowing its top and the ash cloud is threatening aircraft flying over the area.

The volcano began spewing on June 12, and since then, according to US Air Force Weather Agency, that ash has now spread 700 nautical miles (1,300 kilometers) east-southeast and 400 nautical miles (740 kilometers) west-northwest of the volcano. The image was taken by the moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite.

The plume reaches up 5 miles (8 kilometers) into the air, which is why air traffic controllers and ships in the locality have been warned, “The ash cloud presents a threat to aeroplane engines and may lead to communications systems failures,” Olga Shestakova, a spokeswoman for the Marine Geology and Geophysics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences told the Telegraph.

The particles that can cause havoc are often too tiny to be picked up by weather monitoring systems (see "Volcanoes ignite monitoring efforts")

Volcano fans can keep up to date over at the blog Eruptions, where they will also find more details about this, and other volcanoes.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on June 15, 2009
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Alaska’s Rat Island needs a new name this week.

The US Fish and Wildlife service reports that a massive poisoning campaign appears to have rid the island, which is in the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, of the rodents brought there by a shipwreck in 1780. Native bird populations were heavily damaged by the rampaging rats.

“After more than two weeks of intensive field monitoring … biologists have found no sign of the invasive rats that have decimated native bird populations for more than 200 years,” says the FWS.

However the poisoning may have had some sad side effects.

Continue reading "Rat Island now rat free" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 15, 2009
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Pack your bags and head for the hills. The end is near. That's what you might be led to believe if you read one of the many reports out today about a paper in Nature. A duo of French researchers has modeled the future of the solar system. They've shown that chaotic gravitational perturbations could lead Mercury to swing out of its normal orbit, and that in turn could cause Venus or Mars to smash into the Earth.

"Could" is the operative word here: the chances of it actually happening stand at well under 1%. There's no way to improve the odds because of the chaotic nature of the model, but whatever the outcome, don't panic. Any collision that might occur will happen over three billion years from now.

You can listen to an interview with one of the authors, Jacques Laskar, on this week's Nature Podcast.

Image: IMCCE-CNRS

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on June 11, 2009
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Posted for Anjali Nayar
The international airline industry has pledged to curb growth in their carbon dioxide emissions by 2020 and reduce carbon emissions by 50% by 2050, the head of the global aviation association IATA said on Monday.

“No other industry is as ambitious,” said Giovanni Bisignani at the International Air Transport Association’s annual meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. “Demand will continue to increase but any expansion of our carbon footprint will be compensated.”

Bisignani pointed out that international aviation emissions dropped by 7% this year. But only 2% of the drop is because of investments in technology and fuel efficiency; the other 5% drop is because of reduced capacity linked to the global recession.

Global aviation accounts for about 2% of all human-caused carbon dioxide emissions and this could rise to 3% by 2050, according to the International Panel on Climate Change. A system to keep the industry’s emissions in check was never included in the Kyoto Protocol climate deal because of the “special” international nature of the business: who is responsible for emissions reductions, for example, on an Air France flight from London to Madrid, using an American-made jet, with passengers and freight from around the world?

Continue reading "Airline industry to cut growth in carbon emissions by 2020" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on June 09, 2009
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Posted for Anjali Nayar
Last week Reuters and The Economist reported on corruption within a yet-to-start programme to save tropical forests and curb climate change. Allegedly, the government of Papua New Guinea has illegally sold the rights to at least 40 projects aimed at averting deforestation, each worth about 1 million tonnes of carbon.

A priority of December’s UN climate change negotiations in Copenhagen is to formulate a global agreement on cutting greenhouse gasses for the period after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires.

Continue reading "Don’t count your carbon before it’s credited" »

Posted by Mark Peplow on June 09, 2009
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Do they wind up in a standoff, beating their chests as the other primates stand by angry and embarrassed? Or might they initiate an inspiring public display of mutual respect and cooperation, if not affection?

The United States' lead climate negotiator, Todd Stern, is hoping for the latter and will depart for China on Saturday in search of ways to make it happen. "We're the two gorillas in the room," Stern told a crowd gathered at the Center for American Progress in Washington this week. "If we can join hands, it will truly change the world."

Among those accompanying Stern will be White House Science Adviser John Holdren and David Sandalow, assistant secretary for policy and international affairs at the Energy Department. It is only the latest in a string of delegations shuttling back and forth between the two countries, and it comes at a potentially revealing time.

The rest of the international climate community will be focusing on Bonn, where the United Nations is currently holding the latest round of global warming talks. With 184 days before Copenhagen, where the talks are scheduled to come to a close, the two countries appear to be seeking a little quiet time together.

The US-China relationship has sparked a fair bit of speculation as of late, spurred in part by an article about "secret" bilateral talks in the Guardian last month. In truth, the talks weren't all that secret, and in any case it would have been surprising if such talks weren't under way. But the sense of optimism raised plenty of eyebrows.

Continue reading "Two gorillas walk into a UN climate meeting... " »

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on June 05, 2009
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The ‘White Nose Syndrome’ that has been devastating America’s bat populations since at least 2007 is “unprecedented” and could have economic and human health ramifications, a US House of Representatives hearing heard yesterday.

At a joint meeting of two subcommittees, experts lined up to warn of potential consequences not just for bats but also for human health and the economy.

Marvin Moriarty, Northeast Regional Director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, said it is estimated that somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million bats have died so far as a result of the fungus-related syndrome, which is named for the white fungus build up on bat noses. “The rapid onset and high mortality associated with this disease is unprecedented, making WNS the greatest challenge to bat conservation we have ever faced,” he says.

He points out that bats eat vast numbers of insects, thus protecting both crops and reducing human disease transmission by these bugs. Less bats = more insects = potentially more disease.

Continue reading "Bat disease ‘threatens humans’" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 05, 2009
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US energy secretary Steven Chu hasn’t ruled out the use of tar sands as an energy source, which has delighted Canadian oil producers.

Chu’s comments came at a Reuters energy summit . His message was that the tar sands issue (see here for some background, subscription required) is complicated, but hinted that he thinks technological advances might help to bring down the energy costs for extracting oil from the tar sands.

“It's a complicated issue, because certainly Canada is a close and trusted neighbor and the oil from Canada has all sorts of good things. But there is this environmental concern, so I think we're going to have to work our way through that," Chu said. "But I'm a big believer in technology."

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on June 03, 2009
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Good news for the great bustard, the heaviest flying bird in the world: Great bustards have nested and chicks hatched in the UK for the first time since 1832.

The secret location of the chicks, somewhere on the Salisbury Plain, is home to two nests, and three chicks, which are apparently about the same size as a blackbird. Occasionally great bustards have wandered over to the UK from the European continent since the last native birds died in 1840, but these chicks are the first home-grown great bustards.

The Great Bustard Group, which arranged the importing of great bustards from Russia, and their subsequent reintroduction to the UK, is delighted. “It has been a hard struggle to get this far. I am exhausted and nearly broke, but to see Great Bustards breeding after an absence of 177 years is brilliant,” says GBG’s founder and director David Waters.

The GBG started the reintroduction in 2004, with birds from Saratov Oblast in southern Russia. The birds, which lived on prairie land, were at risk from agricultural developments.

The Brit press has heralded the birth (The Register, Independent, BBC), which comes only days after beavers were reintroduced into the wilds of Scotland.

Welcome back to the great bustard!

Image: the Great Bustard Group

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on June 03, 2009
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For the first time in more than a decade, scientists have penetrated the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench.

Nobody's been to the Challenger Deep since 1998, when Japan's Kaiko submersible last visited the bottommost part of the ocean. On Sunday, a remotely operated vehicle called Nereus made it, clocking in at a dive depth of 10,902 meters, or nearly seven miles.

Nereus is an odd sort of beast called a 'hybrid remotely operated vehicle', or HROV (see earlier Nature feature on its development, subscription required). That means it can either be attached to shipboard scientists by a thin tether, or disconnect and 'fly' itself autonomously through the depths before returning to the surface.

At the Challenger Deep this weekend, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which built Nereus, dropped it with a tether from the research vessel Kilo Moana. It spent 10 hours on the bottom, gathering samples and sending back video. What's it look like down there? Flat and mud-colored, apparently (see image).

Nereus is likely to be the only explorer of the briny deep anytime soon. Kaiko was lost at sea in 2003, and no nations are planning a repeat of the record-setting manned dive of the bathyscape Trieste, which took Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh to the bottom in 1960.

WHOI has more images and background here.

Image: WHOI

Posted by Alex Witze on June 02, 2009
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The Global Humanitarian Forum certainly attracted some publicity last week when it published a report suggesting that global warming kills 315,000 people each year and seriously harms another 300,000. Total price tag: $125 billion annually.

Such numbers are as appealing to journalists as they are to those who put them out, precisely because they are easy to understand and explain. They should also raise alarms, and for the very same reasons. It's not that anybody really doubts that global warming is impacting ecosystems and communities and thus affecting lives, but these are complex issues that resist quick attempts at quantification.

The New York Times published a quick story about the report while raising some basic questions about the estimations. The story quotes Roger Pielke Jr., who has been researching these issues for years, calling the report a "methodological embarrassment" that simply glosses over socioeconomic factors (like people moving into hurricane-prone coasts). For an in-depth discussion, check Pielke's blog.

Although the GHF didn't shy away from using the eye-catching estimates, the authors do explain their calculations in the report. Among other things, they cite data from Munich Re estimating that 40 percent of the increase in weather-related disasters from 1980 to present is due to climate change. As it happens, Pielke says Munich Re itself has come to the opposite conclusion when it comes to assessing the data and assigning blame.

Pielke's message appears to be getting out there. Reuters followed up its initial story with a second, more thematic piece raising various questions about this kind of research.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on June 01, 2009
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The US Forest Service (USFS) must halt road-building in 58 million acres of national forest for one year, according to a directive issued yesterday by the US agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack. The move is a reversal of a Bush-era environmental policy, which in turn undermined a rule Clinton instated late in his presidential term.

The Clinton and Bush rulings spawned numerous lawsuits, according to today's AP report. Vilsack, who oversees the USFS, said in a statement yesterday that "this interim directive will provide consistency and clarity that will help protect our national forests until a long-term roadless policy reflecting President Obama's commitment is developed."

Continue reading "End of the roads" »

Posted by Lucas Laursen on May 29, 2009
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African countries are slow to address problems about who owns forested land, according to a report from the International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO) and the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI).

The report, which was presented at an ITTO and RRI-organised forestry conference in Yaoundé, Cameroon, shows that “less than 2 percent of Africa’s tropical forests are owned by or designated for use by the region’s forest communities and indigenous groups compared to nearly one-third of all forests in Latin America, Asia and the Pacific.” (Press release).

By lagging behind in working out ‘tenure reform’ – ensuring land rights for local communities – Africa is not only threatening the planet but also putting local people at risk, the report says. “Inaction on land reform and the separation of forests into national parks or industrial concessions exacerbate civil strife and limit community development and conservation efforts,” so says RRI’s Andy White, who was an advisor for the study.

The news has travelled far, if not yet wide. The UN’s humanitarian news site IRIN, has it covered,
as does the BBC, and in the African press, of course, news of the report and the meeting is being reported (All Africa, Africa Science News).

The meeting runs until May 30, for a closer look at the agenda look here.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on May 27, 2009
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These shadowy images are snapshots from a short film that shows a sperm whale stealing black cod from a fishing ship's long line by tugging at one end until the fish comes off at the other.

The film is part of a study from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego, and is published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

In the video, the whale's clicking can be heard quite clearly, and it is this, rather than any sneaky fish-nicking, that the scientists were interested in.

"The sounds can be louder than a firecracker," said Aaron Thode, Scripps researcher. "But until this video recording was made, scientists had not been able to get a measurement of the size of the animal's head and the foraging sounds at the same time." (Press release)

Watch it for yourself, and try to work out if it's real, or just shadow puppetry.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on May 27, 2009
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Posted for Lucas Laursen

For a petrified primate with a broken wrist, Ida seems to get around. Last night, the History Channel premiered a 2-hour documentary about the fossil, which was unveiled last week at the American Museum of Natural History. Yesterday, Ida appeared at the Natural History Museum across the pond in London, and then spent the afternoon at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in Picadilly, where a crowd of nearly 200 viewers gathered for an advance screening of the 1-hour British version of the film.

Jørn Hurum and Holly Smith, authors on the scientific study of the fossil which raised a media storm last week, were there, along with a handful of paleontologists from the Natural History Museum and University College London.

After the screening, the paleontologists chuckled about some of the technical errors in the documentary, including a claim that the common ancestor of modern-day lemurs and monkeys must have lived "hundreds of
millions of years ago" when in fact the common ancestor probably dates a mere fifty or sixty million years back. This version of the film, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, made a few other claims the scientists left out of the peer-reviewed PLOS One article, such as hinting that Ida belonged on the anthropoid branch of the family tree
because she lacks certain characteristics associated with the main alternative, the ancestors of modern-day prosimians such as lemurs.

"How lemur it is and how monkey it is is what we're trying to figure out," Philip Gingerich, another author on the study, told the cameras. That, perhaps, is the take-home message of most members of the research team, though it does not come across so clearly in the film, which made use of Matrix-like zooming shots, a relentless score, and shadowy reconstructions of the fossil's finding to suggest that much of the figuring out has already been done. "The next stage is for the experts to obsess over the details," says Christopher Dean of University College London.

Posted by Mark Peplow on May 27, 2009
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The European Union’s fishing quota system doesn’t work. Even the European Union appears to admit this, and released a green paper in April suggesting some serious reforms.

Yesterday, Europe’s fish ministers met in Brussels and had what the European Commission calls “frank and open discussion” and a “thorough and honest exchange of views”. Obviously this is normally diplomatic-speak for a stand up row.

Key to the Commission’s plans is eliminating ‘discards’, whereby caught fish that could be eaten are thrown back into the sea as they do not fit the quota of the fisherman who has hauled them in.

Danish Fisheries Minister Eva Kjer Hansen said yesterday that quotas should be based on how much fish is caught, rather than how much is landed and eventually sold.

“We should move from landing quotas to catch quotas -- meaning that everything that is caught is brought to land,” she said (Reuters).

This could even be monitored with video cameras on boats, a method piloted in Denmark. “You can clearly see what kind of fish are being caught and you can control what they are bringing back to land,” Hansen told the BBC.

Image: Punchstock

Posted by Daniel Cressey on May 26, 2009
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A leading climate scientist from New Zealand is taking his claim for unfair dismissal against a government-owned environmental consultancy company to the country’s Employment Relations Authority.

Jim Salinger told Radio New Zealand that mediation with the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research had failed. “Unfortunately, common sense did not prevail,” he said (NZPA).

Salinger claims he was sacked in April for unauthorised discussions with the media on issues related to climate change. “It was very shocking,” he told Nature at the time. “I was talking about my publicly funded science.”

According to Radio New Zealand, Salinger expects the authority to rule on his case in August or September.

Earlier this month NIWA claimed mediation was progressing positively, but could not comment further due to confidentiality agreements.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on May 26, 2009
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Posted for Rex Dalton

The royals of three Scandinavian nations are heralding the dangers of climate change.

The Royals from Denmark, Sweden and Norway will travel Wednesday 27 May to Greenland to see first hand through 1 June the impact of greenhouse gas warming on glaciers, industry and Arctic life.

Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark, Crown Prince Haakon of Norway and Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden will be accompanied by six scientists, who will show the Royals direct evidence of climate change.

“We hope they will raise awareness about what is occurring,” says Minik Rosing, a geologist at the University of Copenhagen who helped organize the trip.

Continue reading "Scandinavian royals to visit Greenland " »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on May 26, 2009
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The storyline is familiar by n