The Great Beyond

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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (28) | TrackBacks (0)

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (32) | TrackBacks (0)

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Energy, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | 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.

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Energy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | 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.

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Energy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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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