The Associated Press
Published: January 29, 2009
BAY ST. LOUIS, Mississippi: The agency that sets fishing rules in the Gulf of Mexico has approved a plan to allow offshore fish farming.
The plan still would have to be approved by the U.S. Commerce Department before the Gulf becomes the first area of federal ocean waters off the U.S. where the farming's allowed. Some states allow fish farming close to shore.
Fishermen say the large cages and pens that would raise fish far offshore would pollute the ocean with fish waste and chemicals and drive them out of business.
But supporters say the farming could give the U.S. a bigger piece of the multibillion-dollar seafood industry.
The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council voted 11-to-5 Wednesday in favor of fish farming. One member abstained.
Thursday, 29 January 2009
Sun, sea and sewage in the playground of the rich in Dubai
The Times
January 29, 2009
A noxious tide of toilet paper, raw sewage and chemical waste has transformed Dubai’s most prestigious stretch of shoreline into a foul-smelling health hazard.
A stretch of the exclusive Jumeirah Beach — a magnet for Western tourists and home to a string of hotels — has been closed. “It’s a cesspool. Our tests show too many E. coli to count. It’s like swimming in a toilet,” said Keith Mutch, the manager of the Offshore Sailing Club, which has posted warnings and been forced to cancel regattas.The pollution is a blow to Dubai’s reputation as an international holiday destination offering almost guaranteed sunshine and clear seas.
The debate over who is to blame is also turning toxic, pitting the city’s wealthy expatriates against local authorities, who have been criticised for failing to stop lorry drivers dumping human and industrial waste into the ocean.
The row also illustrates how Dubai’s rapid development threatens to outpace the Emirates’ ability to enforce environmental standards, angering the foreigners that the boom town seeks to attract. Mr Mutch first detected trouble during a walk on the beach last summer. “The stench was unbearable and the water was a muddy brown. There was toilet paper in the sand,” he recalled.
He traced the sludge to a storm drain, buried behind a pile of rocks near the dock. It was spewing effluent into the sea. He followed the drain several kilometres inland to the Al Quoz industrial area, which houses the cement, paint and furniture factories that have helped to fuel the city’s rapid growth.
There he discovered that dozens of sewage lorries carrying human waste from Dubai’s 1.3 million inhabitants emptied their tanks into storm drains such as the one leading to the sailing club. The drains, all connected, were built to carry excess water that falls during Dubai’s short rainy season.
According to some truckers — mostly poor workers from southern Asia – illegal dumping of waste is a purely financial decision.
In interviews, several said that they were paid by the truckload to collect waste from the city’s septic tanks and transport it to the only sewage treatment plant in the area.
This involved a long drive into the desert with lengthy queues at the end — so they opted to dump their loads in the storm drains.“We are paid so poorly, we have no other choice,” said one driver, who insisted on remaining anonymous.
Mr Mutch spent several nights documenting the illegal dumping. He sent letters and photographs to the municipality and departments of tourism, health and environment.“At first I was ignored,” he said — but when the local press took up the story the city took action, imposing fines of up to $25,000 and threatening to confiscate tankers and deport drivers. City authorities have since promised to build another sewage pit as a “medium-term solution”, while insisting that the latest test results show water samples to be within safe standards.
Mr Mutch, however, disagrees, citing independent tests commissioned by the sailing club showing that the water is still badly contaminated with bacteria, human faeces and chemicals.
“The water is still not safe. It’s a bleak situation and we don’t know what else we can do,” he said.
January 29, 2009
A noxious tide of toilet paper, raw sewage and chemical waste has transformed Dubai’s most prestigious stretch of shoreline into a foul-smelling health hazard.
A stretch of the exclusive Jumeirah Beach — a magnet for Western tourists and home to a string of hotels — has been closed. “It’s a cesspool. Our tests show too many E. coli to count. It’s like swimming in a toilet,” said Keith Mutch, the manager of the Offshore Sailing Club, which has posted warnings and been forced to cancel regattas.The pollution is a blow to Dubai’s reputation as an international holiday destination offering almost guaranteed sunshine and clear seas.
The debate over who is to blame is also turning toxic, pitting the city’s wealthy expatriates against local authorities, who have been criticised for failing to stop lorry drivers dumping human and industrial waste into the ocean.
The row also illustrates how Dubai’s rapid development threatens to outpace the Emirates’ ability to enforce environmental standards, angering the foreigners that the boom town seeks to attract. Mr Mutch first detected trouble during a walk on the beach last summer. “The stench was unbearable and the water was a muddy brown. There was toilet paper in the sand,” he recalled.
He traced the sludge to a storm drain, buried behind a pile of rocks near the dock. It was spewing effluent into the sea. He followed the drain several kilometres inland to the Al Quoz industrial area, which houses the cement, paint and furniture factories that have helped to fuel the city’s rapid growth.
There he discovered that dozens of sewage lorries carrying human waste from Dubai’s 1.3 million inhabitants emptied their tanks into storm drains such as the one leading to the sailing club. The drains, all connected, were built to carry excess water that falls during Dubai’s short rainy season.
According to some truckers — mostly poor workers from southern Asia – illegal dumping of waste is a purely financial decision.
In interviews, several said that they were paid by the truckload to collect waste from the city’s septic tanks and transport it to the only sewage treatment plant in the area.
This involved a long drive into the desert with lengthy queues at the end — so they opted to dump their loads in the storm drains.“We are paid so poorly, we have no other choice,” said one driver, who insisted on remaining anonymous.
Mr Mutch spent several nights documenting the illegal dumping. He sent letters and photographs to the municipality and departments of tourism, health and environment.“At first I was ignored,” he said — but when the local press took up the story the city took action, imposing fines of up to $25,000 and threatening to confiscate tankers and deport drivers. City authorities have since promised to build another sewage pit as a “medium-term solution”, while insisting that the latest test results show water samples to be within safe standards.
Mr Mutch, however, disagrees, citing independent tests commissioned by the sailing club showing that the water is still badly contaminated with bacteria, human faeces and chemicals.
“The water is still not safe. It’s a bleak situation and we don’t know what else we can do,” he said.
Japan faces up to the prospect of ‘peak fish’
By David Pilling
Published: January 28 2009 19:18
Japan’s little secret is out. All over Asia, and indeed the rest of the world, people are discovering what the Japanese have known for centuries: fish is good for you.
This may seem a relatively benign discovery as far as cross-border proliferation goes. But in the case of seafood, as with any finite resource, it raises awkward questions about how spoils should be divided and what happens if competing interests cannot be reconciled.
Seafood has formed a crucial part of the Japanese diet for millennia, providing the main source of animal protein for a nation with little tradition of eating meat or drinking milk. Other countries have long prized an aquatic diet; some Chinese cuisine emulates the taste and texture of fish with ingenious use of vegetables. Now, as China and others become richer, they have converted dietary aspiration into reality.
Per capita consumption of fish in China has soared: from a mere 3.6kg in 1970 to 27kg in 2009. That is still some way off Japan, where people on average get through 67kg a year. But it might not be long before China catches up. Can the world sustain such an appetite?
The emergence of Japan as a global force in the 1970s changed the structure of global finance and manufacturing. That foreshadowed the challenges China now presents; only China has 10 times the population of Japan . When it came to Japan’s predilection for fish, globalisation initially worked in its favour. It sent an advanced fishing fleet to trawl the world’s oceans. Japan Airlines began a lucrative trade flying freshly caught tuna from America’s Atlantic seaboard to Tokyo. Until then those fish, highly prized in Japan, were pet food in the US. Such initiatives brought the Japanese a huge variety of fish all year round.
Then the rest of the world realised it could charge Japan for fish caught in its waters. Worse, it developed a taste for the Japanese diet. Sushi has caught on from Houston to New Delhi. Consumption of fresh fish is on the rise the world over.
Japan is still the world’s biggest importer by some way. It has gone from being a net exporter in 1964 to importing more than 40 per cent of its fish requirements today. But Japanese buyers are now regularly outbid in auctions. This month, two sushi bar owners, one from Hong Kong, paid $104,000 (€78,800, £73,800) for a 282lb blue-fin tuna, the highest price in years. (If the artist Damien Hirst had cut it in two, it might have been worth more still.)
Each year, about 100m tonnes of fish, 5 per cent of the 2bn tonnes of seafood biomass, are hauled from the oceans, according to a recent study published in Science. Many conservationists espouse “peak fish” theories, suggesting that catches have reached a limit, or gone beyond.
That may not be true for all species. But for some it is undeniable. In November, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, which includes Japan, sliced the 2009 blue-fin quota by a fifth. Japan gobbles 90 per cent of all blue-fin. Some scientists say the quota must be halved to let stocks recover.
Japan’s fishing industry faces crisis. The number of fishermen has sunk to 200,000 from a peak of 1m. That is still too many, compared with 10,000 in Norway. Too many boats chasing too few fish have devastated fish resources. By 2006, according to the Japan Economic and Social Research Institute, more than half of Japan’s fishing grounds had dangerously low stocks. Masayuki Komatsu, professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, says Japan needs a science-based quota system and a sustainable fisheries plan predicated on the concept that fish are a common property of the Japanese people not bona vacantia, ownerless goods belonging to whoever nets them first. Today’s policies stem from a desire to protect jobs and the notion that fishermen know better than scientists, he says.
It is far from Japan’s problem alone. Lida Pet-Soede of environmental group WWF says the Chinese taste for grouper, a top-predator reef fish, is destroying reefs and imperilling ecosystems. China is still only the world’s sixth biggest importer, producing most of its own fish, a lot on farms. Aquaculture may be part of the solution, though it is no panacea; artificially raised fish also need feeding, whether on marine products or on competing food sources, such as soyabeans. In any case, as the taste of Chinese and other emerging consumers turns to international varieties, fish stocks will come under increasing pressure.
Fish resources are devilishly difficult to manage internationally. Many fish species migrate wantonly across territorial waters. Indonesians have an economic incentive to grab juvenile tuna in their waters before they head for the high seas to be snagged – more rationally – as mature adults by stronger fishing nations. The idea of a war over fish is no more preposterous than that of a conflict over water or petroleum.
Nor, sadly, is the prospect of humans irreparably damaging, even destroying, a renewable resource. Jared Diamond, an evolutionary biologist, wonders what was going through the mind of the Easter Islander who cut down the last tree, thereby condemning his civilization to virtual extinction. It may have been: “We need more research, your proposed ban on logging is premature and driven by fear-mongering,” he speculates in his book, Collapse. It would be a tragedy if we come anywhere near asking the same question about the planet’s fish.
david.pilling@ft.com
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: January 28 2009 19:18
Japan’s little secret is out. All over Asia, and indeed the rest of the world, people are discovering what the Japanese have known for centuries: fish is good for you.
This may seem a relatively benign discovery as far as cross-border proliferation goes. But in the case of seafood, as with any finite resource, it raises awkward questions about how spoils should be divided and what happens if competing interests cannot be reconciled.
Seafood has formed a crucial part of the Japanese diet for millennia, providing the main source of animal protein for a nation with little tradition of eating meat or drinking milk. Other countries have long prized an aquatic diet; some Chinese cuisine emulates the taste and texture of fish with ingenious use of vegetables. Now, as China and others become richer, they have converted dietary aspiration into reality.
Per capita consumption of fish in China has soared: from a mere 3.6kg in 1970 to 27kg in 2009. That is still some way off Japan, where people on average get through 67kg a year. But it might not be long before China catches up. Can the world sustain such an appetite?
The emergence of Japan as a global force in the 1970s changed the structure of global finance and manufacturing. That foreshadowed the challenges China now presents; only China has 10 times the population of Japan . When it came to Japan’s predilection for fish, globalisation initially worked in its favour. It sent an advanced fishing fleet to trawl the world’s oceans. Japan Airlines began a lucrative trade flying freshly caught tuna from America’s Atlantic seaboard to Tokyo. Until then those fish, highly prized in Japan, were pet food in the US. Such initiatives brought the Japanese a huge variety of fish all year round.
Then the rest of the world realised it could charge Japan for fish caught in its waters. Worse, it developed a taste for the Japanese diet. Sushi has caught on from Houston to New Delhi. Consumption of fresh fish is on the rise the world over.
Japan is still the world’s biggest importer by some way. It has gone from being a net exporter in 1964 to importing more than 40 per cent of its fish requirements today. But Japanese buyers are now regularly outbid in auctions. This month, two sushi bar owners, one from Hong Kong, paid $104,000 (€78,800, £73,800) for a 282lb blue-fin tuna, the highest price in years. (If the artist Damien Hirst had cut it in two, it might have been worth more still.)
Each year, about 100m tonnes of fish, 5 per cent of the 2bn tonnes of seafood biomass, are hauled from the oceans, according to a recent study published in Science. Many conservationists espouse “peak fish” theories, suggesting that catches have reached a limit, or gone beyond.
That may not be true for all species. But for some it is undeniable. In November, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, which includes Japan, sliced the 2009 blue-fin quota by a fifth. Japan gobbles 90 per cent of all blue-fin. Some scientists say the quota must be halved to let stocks recover.
Japan’s fishing industry faces crisis. The number of fishermen has sunk to 200,000 from a peak of 1m. That is still too many, compared with 10,000 in Norway. Too many boats chasing too few fish have devastated fish resources. By 2006, according to the Japan Economic and Social Research Institute, more than half of Japan’s fishing grounds had dangerously low stocks. Masayuki Komatsu, professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, says Japan needs a science-based quota system and a sustainable fisheries plan predicated on the concept that fish are a common property of the Japanese people not bona vacantia, ownerless goods belonging to whoever nets them first. Today’s policies stem from a desire to protect jobs and the notion that fishermen know better than scientists, he says.
It is far from Japan’s problem alone. Lida Pet-Soede of environmental group WWF says the Chinese taste for grouper, a top-predator reef fish, is destroying reefs and imperilling ecosystems. China is still only the world’s sixth biggest importer, producing most of its own fish, a lot on farms. Aquaculture may be part of the solution, though it is no panacea; artificially raised fish also need feeding, whether on marine products or on competing food sources, such as soyabeans. In any case, as the taste of Chinese and other emerging consumers turns to international varieties, fish stocks will come under increasing pressure.
Fish resources are devilishly difficult to manage internationally. Many fish species migrate wantonly across territorial waters. Indonesians have an economic incentive to grab juvenile tuna in their waters before they head for the high seas to be snagged – more rationally – as mature adults by stronger fishing nations. The idea of a war over fish is no more preposterous than that of a conflict over water or petroleum.
Nor, sadly, is the prospect of humans irreparably damaging, even destroying, a renewable resource. Jared Diamond, an evolutionary biologist, wonders what was going through the mind of the Easter Islander who cut down the last tree, thereby condemning his civilization to virtual extinction. It may have been: “We need more research, your proposed ban on logging is premature and driven by fear-mongering,” he speculates in his book, Collapse. It would be a tragedy if we come anywhere near asking the same question about the planet’s fish.
david.pilling@ft.com
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Europe seeks global carbon trading market
The European Commission has called for a global emissions trading market, even as its own scheme comes under fire following a slump in the price of carbon.
By Josephine MouldsLast Updated: 12:52AM GMT 29 Jan 2009
Analysts suggest companies are flooding the market by cashing in their emissions allowances to raise money, rather than for any environmental benefit.
The EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) was set up as a market mechanism to help companies reduce carbon emissions. Polluters are granted a certain number of emissions allowances that can be traded. So a heavy polluter can buy carbon allowances from a company that has succeeded in reducing its emissions.
Almost €3bn (£2.8bn) worth of allowances have been sold since the beginning of December, driving the carbon price down by almost 30pc.
Consultancy IDEAcarbon said the sheer volume of sales suggests companies are not just selling their surplus, but also allowances that would normally be used to comply with the scheme.
"Companies may well be deciding to worry about EU ETS compliance later – their very survival is more important in the short run," it said.
The price of carbon has plunged 60pc since July last year also driven by a decline in industrial activity, which results in lower emissions and therefore lower demand for carbon allowances.
Alessandro Vitelli of IDEACarbon said: "[The scheme] is not serving its purpose. It's not the way that the architects envisioned emissions would be reduced. The fact that emissions are down means [companies] could sell these allowances and invest the revenues in low carbon technology, but because of the recession they are doing it just to survive.
"You may argue that governments should be able to interfere in the system by removing tonnes of carbon, but then you would remove confidence in the market."
The European Commission yesterday laid out proposals for a global pact on climate change to be discussed at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen in December. It said the EU should seek to build a carbon market across the developed markets of the OECD by 2015, by linking the EU ETS with other comparable systems.
By Josephine MouldsLast Updated: 12:52AM GMT 29 Jan 2009
Analysts suggest companies are flooding the market by cashing in their emissions allowances to raise money, rather than for any environmental benefit.
The EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) was set up as a market mechanism to help companies reduce carbon emissions. Polluters are granted a certain number of emissions allowances that can be traded. So a heavy polluter can buy carbon allowances from a company that has succeeded in reducing its emissions.
Almost €3bn (£2.8bn) worth of allowances have been sold since the beginning of December, driving the carbon price down by almost 30pc.
Consultancy IDEAcarbon said the sheer volume of sales suggests companies are not just selling their surplus, but also allowances that would normally be used to comply with the scheme.
"Companies may well be deciding to worry about EU ETS compliance later – their very survival is more important in the short run," it said.
The price of carbon has plunged 60pc since July last year also driven by a decline in industrial activity, which results in lower emissions and therefore lower demand for carbon allowances.
Alessandro Vitelli of IDEACarbon said: "[The scheme] is not serving its purpose. It's not the way that the architects envisioned emissions would be reduced. The fact that emissions are down means [companies] could sell these allowances and invest the revenues in low carbon technology, but because of the recession they are doing it just to survive.
"You may argue that governments should be able to interfere in the system by removing tonnes of carbon, but then you would remove confidence in the market."
The European Commission yesterday laid out proposals for a global pact on climate change to be discussed at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen in December. It said the EU should seek to build a carbon market across the developed markets of the OECD by 2015, by linking the EU ETS with other comparable systems.
Ocean iron plan approved as researchers show algae absorb CO2
Greenhouse gases trapped deep in ocean by iron-fertilised algae, scientists say, as experiment gets green light
Alok Jha, green technology correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 28 January 2009 18.47 GMT
Seeding the oceans with iron is a viable way to permanently lock carbon away from the atmosphere and potentially tackle climate change, according to scientists who have studied how the process works naturally in the ocean.
The study, from researchers at the University of Southampton, is published following the announcement earlier this week that scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany were finally given the go-ahead for a controversial experiment to drop several tonnes of iron into the Southern Ocean. Some environmentalists are concerned that the long-term ecological effects of iron seeding are unknown.
Ocean geo-engineering using iron as a fertiliser for microscopic creatures in the ocean is seen as a possible way to slow down global warming. Marine algae and other phytoplankton capture vast quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow, but this growth is often limited by a lack of essential nutrients such as iron. Artificially adding these nutrients would make algae bloom and, as the organisms grow, they take up CO2. When they die, some of the organisms sink to the bottom of the ocean, taking their carbon with them. But there has been little scientific work previously on whether the CO2 stays locked up for a significant period of time.
Understanding how much iron is needed, how it should be added and what effect it would have on the local ecology is crucial in assessing whether iron fertilisation would be a useful tool in reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
In the latest research, published tomorrow in Nature, the Southampton scientists studied a natural source of iron into the sea near the Crozet Islands at the northern boundary of the Southern Ocean, 1,400 miles south-east of South Africa. Their work showed that iron – which is added by the volcanic rocks to the north but not to the south of the island – successfully tripled the growth of phytoplankton and also the amount that sank to the bottom of the sea.
Peter Burkill, director of the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Sciences in Plymouth, said: "This is a significant result. It suggests that ocean iron fertilisation might work for reducing atmospheric CO2 through export of carbon into the ocean's interior. But the next step from natural experiments, such as this one, to artificial ones is crucial. We now need to know what the ecological impacts of artificial fertilisation experiments are."
Andrew Watson of the University of East Anglia, said that previous small-scale artificial ocean fertilisation experiments had already shown that plankton are stimulated by iron, but there had long been questions about how deep the carbon is sequestered. "This paper suggests that Southern Ocean iron fertilisation can be quite effective at sending the carbon into the deep ocean."
The Southampton study also made progress in understanding how iron fertlisation might work best. Their work showed that the amount of carbon that sank per unit of iron added, called the downward flux, was 77 times lower around Crozet than the flux measured in the only other survey of a natural iron source, carried out several years ago by French scientists in the Kerguelen Islands in the Southern Ocean.
Richard Sanders of the University of Southampton, who took part in the study, said that the difference in algal blooms between different locations might be a result of several factors, including the type of iron compound used and also how it gets into the water. Around the Kerguelen Islands, the iron source comes from the relatively shallow sea floor. "Around the Crozet islands the iron seems to be coming in horizontally. It's possible that iron that comes off the land in this manner is different in some way," said Sanders. In addition, the Crozet iron is mainly in the form of small rock particles that do not dissolve in the water.
Sanders says that the results have implications for the way iron-seeding experiments might be carried out in the future. For a start, they would probably require more iron than previously thought for any serious geo-engineering purpose and the compounds they choose to drop into the sea would need to be carefully chosen so that they stayed in the water long enough to take effect, rather than simply sinking straight to the bottom.
Later this year, the team from the Alfred Wegener Institute will go out on the Polarstern research ship to examine some of these questions. They plan to place several tonnes of iron sulphate onto the surface of the Southern Ocean , primarily to study the role of iron in the biochemistry of the ocean. Karin Lochte, director of the institute said that its project would "help in arriving at a substantiated and fact-based political decision on whether or not iron fertilisation in the ocean is a useful technique that could contribute to climate protection."
Environmentalists from the Canadian group ETC raised concerns last week about the research trip, arguing that it flouts an international moratorium not to dump iron into the oceans and its effects on local ecology were unpredictable.
Watson said: "It's interesting that [the Polarstern] has been at the centre of a lot of controversy because they wanted to do an artificial experiment with 10 or 15 tonnes of iron. As this [Southampton] paper shows, much larger amounts of iron are being added daily by natural processes around the Crozet Island, and it doesn't seem to have done the Antarctic ecosystem any harm."
Alok Jha, green technology correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 28 January 2009 18.47 GMT
Seeding the oceans with iron is a viable way to permanently lock carbon away from the atmosphere and potentially tackle climate change, according to scientists who have studied how the process works naturally in the ocean.
The study, from researchers at the University of Southampton, is published following the announcement earlier this week that scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany were finally given the go-ahead for a controversial experiment to drop several tonnes of iron into the Southern Ocean. Some environmentalists are concerned that the long-term ecological effects of iron seeding are unknown.
Ocean geo-engineering using iron as a fertiliser for microscopic creatures in the ocean is seen as a possible way to slow down global warming. Marine algae and other phytoplankton capture vast quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow, but this growth is often limited by a lack of essential nutrients such as iron. Artificially adding these nutrients would make algae bloom and, as the organisms grow, they take up CO2. When they die, some of the organisms sink to the bottom of the ocean, taking their carbon with them. But there has been little scientific work previously on whether the CO2 stays locked up for a significant period of time.
Understanding how much iron is needed, how it should be added and what effect it would have on the local ecology is crucial in assessing whether iron fertilisation would be a useful tool in reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
In the latest research, published tomorrow in Nature, the Southampton scientists studied a natural source of iron into the sea near the Crozet Islands at the northern boundary of the Southern Ocean, 1,400 miles south-east of South Africa. Their work showed that iron – which is added by the volcanic rocks to the north but not to the south of the island – successfully tripled the growth of phytoplankton and also the amount that sank to the bottom of the sea.
Peter Burkill, director of the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Sciences in Plymouth, said: "This is a significant result. It suggests that ocean iron fertilisation might work for reducing atmospheric CO2 through export of carbon into the ocean's interior. But the next step from natural experiments, such as this one, to artificial ones is crucial. We now need to know what the ecological impacts of artificial fertilisation experiments are."
Andrew Watson of the University of East Anglia, said that previous small-scale artificial ocean fertilisation experiments had already shown that plankton are stimulated by iron, but there had long been questions about how deep the carbon is sequestered. "This paper suggests that Southern Ocean iron fertilisation can be quite effective at sending the carbon into the deep ocean."
The Southampton study also made progress in understanding how iron fertlisation might work best. Their work showed that the amount of carbon that sank per unit of iron added, called the downward flux, was 77 times lower around Crozet than the flux measured in the only other survey of a natural iron source, carried out several years ago by French scientists in the Kerguelen Islands in the Southern Ocean.
Richard Sanders of the University of Southampton, who took part in the study, said that the difference in algal blooms between different locations might be a result of several factors, including the type of iron compound used and also how it gets into the water. Around the Kerguelen Islands, the iron source comes from the relatively shallow sea floor. "Around the Crozet islands the iron seems to be coming in horizontally. It's possible that iron that comes off the land in this manner is different in some way," said Sanders. In addition, the Crozet iron is mainly in the form of small rock particles that do not dissolve in the water.
Sanders says that the results have implications for the way iron-seeding experiments might be carried out in the future. For a start, they would probably require more iron than previously thought for any serious geo-engineering purpose and the compounds they choose to drop into the sea would need to be carefully chosen so that they stayed in the water long enough to take effect, rather than simply sinking straight to the bottom.
Later this year, the team from the Alfred Wegener Institute will go out on the Polarstern research ship to examine some of these questions. They plan to place several tonnes of iron sulphate onto the surface of the Southern Ocean , primarily to study the role of iron in the biochemistry of the ocean. Karin Lochte, director of the institute said that its project would "help in arriving at a substantiated and fact-based political decision on whether or not iron fertilisation in the ocean is a useful technique that could contribute to climate protection."
Environmentalists from the Canadian group ETC raised concerns last week about the research trip, arguing that it flouts an international moratorium not to dump iron into the oceans and its effects on local ecology were unpredictable.
Watson said: "It's interesting that [the Polarstern] has been at the centre of a lot of controversy because they wanted to do an artificial experiment with 10 or 15 tonnes of iron. As this [Southampton] paper shows, much larger amounts of iron are being added daily by natural processes around the Crozet Island, and it doesn't seem to have done the Antarctic ecosystem any harm."
Iron-fed plankton can seal carbon for a century in ocean depths
The Times
January 29, 2009
Plankton fed with iron will absorb carbon dioxide to prevent it acting as a greenhouse gas, scientists have shown.
Measurements taken in the Southern Ocean confirmed that so-called iron fertilisation would help plankton to grow and thus take in more carbon. Indeed, they took the carbon so deep under the water that it would be locked away for a century.
The results, achieved by a team from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, were hailed by rival researchers as a significant step in the search for ways to reduce carbon in the atmosphere. But hopes that the technique could be developed commercially to counteract global warming took a blow because far less carbon was taken out of circulation than some experts had predicted.
Iron fertilisation is one of several schemes that have been put forward to try to slow global warming. The theory is that if tonnes of iron particles are dropped into the ocean, they would stimulate the growth of plankton that would remove carbon from the atmosphere.
The theory was put to the test around the Crozet islands by an international team led by Professor Raymond Pollard. The area was chosen because to the north of the islands volcanic rocks offer a natural supply of iron — and a wealth of plankton — while to the south, there is far less iron — and far less plankton.
Iron was dropped to the south, the plankton flourished and spread as hoped and when they died, the carbon they had absorbed went with them more than 200m down into the water, where it was locked in.
The research, whose results are published in the journal Nature, was the first to demonstrate that extra iron in the sea could take carbon out of circulation for at least a century — the time it would take for the currents to lift the deepest water into the island shallows where the carbon would be released.
But the team added that the result still fell 15 to 50 times short of some expectations, and that that would have significant implications for plans to use the technique to mitigate the effects of climate change.
January 29, 2009
Plankton fed with iron will absorb carbon dioxide to prevent it acting as a greenhouse gas, scientists have shown.
Measurements taken in the Southern Ocean confirmed that so-called iron fertilisation would help plankton to grow and thus take in more carbon. Indeed, they took the carbon so deep under the water that it would be locked away for a century.
The results, achieved by a team from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, were hailed by rival researchers as a significant step in the search for ways to reduce carbon in the atmosphere. But hopes that the technique could be developed commercially to counteract global warming took a blow because far less carbon was taken out of circulation than some experts had predicted.
Iron fertilisation is one of several schemes that have been put forward to try to slow global warming. The theory is that if tonnes of iron particles are dropped into the ocean, they would stimulate the growth of plankton that would remove carbon from the atmosphere.
The theory was put to the test around the Crozet islands by an international team led by Professor Raymond Pollard. The area was chosen because to the north of the islands volcanic rocks offer a natural supply of iron — and a wealth of plankton — while to the south, there is far less iron — and far less plankton.
Iron was dropped to the south, the plankton flourished and spread as hoped and when they died, the carbon they had absorbed went with them more than 200m down into the water, where it was locked in.
The research, whose results are published in the journal Nature, was the first to demonstrate that extra iron in the sea could take carbon out of circulation for at least a century — the time it would take for the currents to lift the deepest water into the island shallows where the carbon would be released.
But the team added that the result still fell 15 to 50 times short of some expectations, and that that would have significant implications for plans to use the technique to mitigate the effects of climate change.
Recycling 'could be adding to global warming'
Recycling could be adding to global warming rather than reducing it, a key government adviser on waste management has said.
By Louise Gray and Gordon Rayner Last Updated: 7:50PM GMT 28 Jan 2009
Peter Jones suggested that much of the country's waste should simply be burnt to generate electricity
Peter Jones suggested that an "urgent" review of Labour's policy on recycling was needed to make sure the collection, transportation and processing of recyclable material was not causing a net increase in greenhouse gases.
Mr Jones, a former director of the waste firm Biffa and now an adviser to environment ministers and the London Mayor, Boris Johnson, also dismissed kerbside recycling collections in many areas as "stupid" because they mixed together different materials, rendering them useless for recycling.
He suggested that much of the country's waste should simply be burnt to generate electricity.
"It might be that the global warming impact of putting material through an incinerator five miles down the road is actually less than recycling it 3,000 miles away," he said.
"We've got to urgently get a grip on how this material is flowing through the system; whether we're actually adding to or reducing the overall impact in terms of global warming potential in this process."
Mr Jones's outspoken comments come amid increasing controversy over household recycling.
Last month, The Daily Telegraph disclosed that councils in England and Wales were dumping more than 200,000 tons of recyclable waste every year – up to 10 per cent of all the glass, paper, plastic and other materials separated out by householders. Thousands of tons of recyclables are shipped to China because of insufficient capacity and demand in Britain.
In some parts of the country, residents have to sort their waste into as many as seven containers, including food waste bins, which has helped councils to justify the scrapping of weekly bin collections.
Some town halls have admitted using anti-terrorism legislation to snoop on householders who fail to recycle properly, but councils have so far refused to test the Government's bin taxes, under which people would be fined for throwing out too much rubbish.
But a collapse in the market value of recyclable waste as a result of the global recession means many waste disposal firms are having to stockpile paper, metals and plastics in vast warehouses because they are unable to sell it on.
Mr Jones's comments will add to the suspicion of many householders that the Government's recycling strategy is in chaos.
He said: "In overall terms we are reducing our carbon footprint by diverting material from landfill, but we are in danger of losing those reductions through the wrong policy decisions."
Mr Jones suggested generating electricity by burning waste instead. Alternatively, organic rubbish could be pulverised and stored in vats so that it releases methane, which could be captured and used to generate electricity.
By Louise Gray and Gordon Rayner Last Updated: 7:50PM GMT 28 Jan 2009
Peter Jones suggested that much of the country's waste should simply be burnt to generate electricity
Peter Jones suggested that an "urgent" review of Labour's policy on recycling was needed to make sure the collection, transportation and processing of recyclable material was not causing a net increase in greenhouse gases.
Mr Jones, a former director of the waste firm Biffa and now an adviser to environment ministers and the London Mayor, Boris Johnson, also dismissed kerbside recycling collections in many areas as "stupid" because they mixed together different materials, rendering them useless for recycling.
He suggested that much of the country's waste should simply be burnt to generate electricity.
"It might be that the global warming impact of putting material through an incinerator five miles down the road is actually less than recycling it 3,000 miles away," he said.
"We've got to urgently get a grip on how this material is flowing through the system; whether we're actually adding to or reducing the overall impact in terms of global warming potential in this process."
Mr Jones's outspoken comments come amid increasing controversy over household recycling.
Last month, The Daily Telegraph disclosed that councils in England and Wales were dumping more than 200,000 tons of recyclable waste every year – up to 10 per cent of all the glass, paper, plastic and other materials separated out by householders. Thousands of tons of recyclables are shipped to China because of insufficient capacity and demand in Britain.
In some parts of the country, residents have to sort their waste into as many as seven containers, including food waste bins, which has helped councils to justify the scrapping of weekly bin collections.
Some town halls have admitted using anti-terrorism legislation to snoop on householders who fail to recycle properly, but councils have so far refused to test the Government's bin taxes, under which people would be fined for throwing out too much rubbish.
But a collapse in the market value of recyclable waste as a result of the global recession means many waste disposal firms are having to stockpile paper, metals and plastics in vast warehouses because they are unable to sell it on.
Mr Jones's comments will add to the suspicion of many householders that the Government's recycling strategy is in chaos.
He said: "In overall terms we are reducing our carbon footprint by diverting material from landfill, but we are in danger of losing those reductions through the wrong policy decisions."
Mr Jones suggested generating electricity by burning waste instead. Alternatively, organic rubbish could be pulverised and stored in vats so that it releases methane, which could be captured and used to generate electricity.
Gore urges action on stimulus plan's environmental provisions
Former US vice-president told Senate that environmental initiatives would help job growth
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 28 January 2009 19.25 GMT
Al Gore reprised his role as environmental prophet today, laying out a road map for Barack Obama to push through his ambitious green agenda and re-assert American leadership on global climate change negotiations.
The former US vice-president and Nobel prize laureate called for swift passage of Obama's economic recovery plan, with its emphasis on green jobs and renewable energy.
He said Barack Obama's multibillion-dollar stimulus plan was a first step to moving America away from fossil fuels and reaching an international treaty on climate change in Copenhagen later this year.
"The road to Copenhagen has three steps to it," Gore told the Senate foreign relations committee.
Gore urged Congress not to be distracted by the economic recessions. Recent opinion polls have also shown a decline in concern about the environment as economic worries take hold.Gore said the plan would spur economic recovery - not stand in its way.
"The solutions to the climate crisis are the very same solutions that will address our economic and national security crises as well," he said. "The plan's unprecedented and critical investments in four key areas - energy efficiency, renewables, a unified national energy grid and the move to clean cars - represent an important down payment."
He went on to call for "decisive action" towards mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions, saying the reductions achieved under the short-term economic recovery plan would make it easier for America to meet subsequent targets.
The knock-on effect would lay the foundation to a successful negotiation of a sequel to the Kyoto agreements later this year, Gore said.
"The United States will regain its credibility and enter the Copenhagen treaty talks with a renewed authority to lead the world in shaping a fair and effective treaty."
He said the scientific consensus of recent years would ensure support in Congress for an international treaty. Congress refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol a decade ago.
"The scientists are practically screaming from the rooftops," Gore said.
The largely reverential reception for Gore, from Republicans as well as Democrats on the Senate committee, was further evidence of the dramatic shift in thinking on the environment.
With Obama in the White House and Democrats in control of Congress, there is now broad support for dealing with climate change.
John Kerry, the incoming chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, has said he intends to use his new role to help further efforts for an international treaty on climate. "The committee is going to be relentless and super-focused," he said.
"As the new administration sets a new tone with the global community, this issue will be an early test of our capacity to exert thoughtful, forceful diplomatic and moral leadership on any future challenge that the world faces," Kerry said.
With Bush's exit from the White House, there was little sign today of the once formidable constituency of climate change deniers. Instead, the committee room was reduced to respectful silence as Gore deployed his now famous slide show on the urgency of dealing with climate change.
He included data showing that if emissions rise at current levels, the earth could see an 11 degree Fahrenheit rise in global average temperatures.
"This would bring a screeching halt to human civilisation and threaten the fabric of life everywhere on Earth," Gore said. "And this is within the century, if we don't change."
Obama took his first steps to make good on an election promise to put the environment at the top of his agenda on Monday.
In a pair of executive orders, Obama asked the Environmental Protection Agency to review its refusal to allow California and more than a dozen other states to enact stringent emission requirements.
Gore's testimony was part of a broader strategy by Obama to get Congress behind his stimulus package, but also to line up support further down the road for legislation to promote clean energy and counter the effects of climate change.
Since the success of his film An Inconvenient Truth, Gore has launched a public campaign for America to stop using fossil fuels entirely and move to clean energy sources within 10 years. Such targets are more ambitious than those set by Obama.
However, Gore did not refer to those targets today.
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 28 January 2009 19.25 GMT
Al Gore reprised his role as environmental prophet today, laying out a road map for Barack Obama to push through his ambitious green agenda and re-assert American leadership on global climate change negotiations.
The former US vice-president and Nobel prize laureate called for swift passage of Obama's economic recovery plan, with its emphasis on green jobs and renewable energy.
He said Barack Obama's multibillion-dollar stimulus plan was a first step to moving America away from fossil fuels and reaching an international treaty on climate change in Copenhagen later this year.
"The road to Copenhagen has three steps to it," Gore told the Senate foreign relations committee.
Gore urged Congress not to be distracted by the economic recessions. Recent opinion polls have also shown a decline in concern about the environment as economic worries take hold.Gore said the plan would spur economic recovery - not stand in its way.
"The solutions to the climate crisis are the very same solutions that will address our economic and national security crises as well," he said. "The plan's unprecedented and critical investments in four key areas - energy efficiency, renewables, a unified national energy grid and the move to clean cars - represent an important down payment."
He went on to call for "decisive action" towards mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions, saying the reductions achieved under the short-term economic recovery plan would make it easier for America to meet subsequent targets.
The knock-on effect would lay the foundation to a successful negotiation of a sequel to the Kyoto agreements later this year, Gore said.
"The United States will regain its credibility and enter the Copenhagen treaty talks with a renewed authority to lead the world in shaping a fair and effective treaty."
He said the scientific consensus of recent years would ensure support in Congress for an international treaty. Congress refused to ratify the Kyoto protocol a decade ago.
"The scientists are practically screaming from the rooftops," Gore said.
The largely reverential reception for Gore, from Republicans as well as Democrats on the Senate committee, was further evidence of the dramatic shift in thinking on the environment.
With Obama in the White House and Democrats in control of Congress, there is now broad support for dealing with climate change.
John Kerry, the incoming chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, has said he intends to use his new role to help further efforts for an international treaty on climate. "The committee is going to be relentless and super-focused," he said.
"As the new administration sets a new tone with the global community, this issue will be an early test of our capacity to exert thoughtful, forceful diplomatic and moral leadership on any future challenge that the world faces," Kerry said.
With Bush's exit from the White House, there was little sign today of the once formidable constituency of climate change deniers. Instead, the committee room was reduced to respectful silence as Gore deployed his now famous slide show on the urgency of dealing with climate change.
He included data showing that if emissions rise at current levels, the earth could see an 11 degree Fahrenheit rise in global average temperatures.
"This would bring a screeching halt to human civilisation and threaten the fabric of life everywhere on Earth," Gore said. "And this is within the century, if we don't change."
Obama took his first steps to make good on an election promise to put the environment at the top of his agenda on Monday.
In a pair of executive orders, Obama asked the Environmental Protection Agency to review its refusal to allow California and more than a dozen other states to enact stringent emission requirements.
Gore's testimony was part of a broader strategy by Obama to get Congress behind his stimulus package, but also to line up support further down the road for legislation to promote clean energy and counter the effects of climate change.
Since the success of his film An Inconvenient Truth, Gore has launched a public campaign for America to stop using fossil fuels entirely and move to clean energy sources within 10 years. Such targets are more ambitious than those set by Obama.
However, Gore did not refer to those targets today.
Stern calls for ‘green’ global stimulus
By Andrew Bounds in Manchester
Published: January 28 2009 23:22
The world needs a “green” stimulus of around $2,000bn to pull it out of recession, Lord Stern of Brentford, the climate economist, has said.
Lord Stern, author of the eponymous review in 2006 that laid out the economic case for fighting global warming, said that by spending about a fifth – $400bn – on green technologies the world could begin a path of sustainable growth.
However, he warned climate scientist and campaigners in a speech at Leeds University that there were only a few weeks to convince governments to back the idea.
“The arguments need to be made now because they need to get into the budgets being prepared by governments in the northern hemisphere which are announced in the spring. If we wait we will not succeed in giving a push to get it out of this recession. It will be too late.”
In an earlier interview, Lord Stern said that advances in science since he published his report had revealed the situation to be more alarming still. The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere should be kept lower than he recommended, requiring faster and deeper cuts in emissions.
Rather than the range of 450-550 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent, he said it would need to be capped at 500ppm. The level now stands at 430ppm and is rising at 2-3ppm a year.
The fiscal stimulus should provide work for unemployed builders fitting insulation in homes and fund low-carbon technologies such as research on installing equipment to capture carbon from power plants and store it underground, he said.
Lord Stern, who advises José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, said that he was cautiously optimistic that the world could clinch a deal on reducing greenhouse gas emissions at a meeting in Copenhagen this year.
He said the election of Barack Obama was of “huge importance” and if the US president took decisive action to match his words on cutting emissions it could convince India and China to agree long-term reductions.
“It has given a great boost to the prospects in Copenhagen and . . . the rest of the world will respond. They have to see actions as well as words,” he said. “There was a great hunger for American leadership.”
He was launching the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, a £5m joint initiative of the London School of Economics and Leeds University, which he chairs. Munich Re, the German reinsurance giant, has put in £3m and commissioned research on the risks and opportunities for its business from climate change.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: January 28 2009 23:22
The world needs a “green” stimulus of around $2,000bn to pull it out of recession, Lord Stern of Brentford, the climate economist, has said.
Lord Stern, author of the eponymous review in 2006 that laid out the economic case for fighting global warming, said that by spending about a fifth – $400bn – on green technologies the world could begin a path of sustainable growth.
However, he warned climate scientist and campaigners in a speech at Leeds University that there were only a few weeks to convince governments to back the idea.
“The arguments need to be made now because they need to get into the budgets being prepared by governments in the northern hemisphere which are announced in the spring. If we wait we will not succeed in giving a push to get it out of this recession. It will be too late.”
In an earlier interview, Lord Stern said that advances in science since he published his report had revealed the situation to be more alarming still. The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere should be kept lower than he recommended, requiring faster and deeper cuts in emissions.
Rather than the range of 450-550 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent, he said it would need to be capped at 500ppm. The level now stands at 430ppm and is rising at 2-3ppm a year.
The fiscal stimulus should provide work for unemployed builders fitting insulation in homes and fund low-carbon technologies such as research on installing equipment to capture carbon from power plants and store it underground, he said.
Lord Stern, who advises José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, said that he was cautiously optimistic that the world could clinch a deal on reducing greenhouse gas emissions at a meeting in Copenhagen this year.
He said the election of Barack Obama was of “huge importance” and if the US president took decisive action to match his words on cutting emissions it could convince India and China to agree long-term reductions.
“It has given a great boost to the prospects in Copenhagen and . . . the rest of the world will respond. They have to see actions as well as words,” he said. “There was a great hunger for American leadership.”
He was launching the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, a £5m joint initiative of the London School of Economics and Leeds University, which he chairs. Munich Re, the German reinsurance giant, has put in £3m and commissioned research on the risks and opportunities for its business from climate change.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Pumping iron into the ocean could help slow climate change
Pumping iron into the oceans could help to reduce global warming, according to a new study.
By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent Last Updated: 8:48PM GMT 28 Jan 2009
The nutrient leads to algae blooms which help to suck up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and take it to the sea-floor.
Scientists believe that by adding iron to vast areas of the ocean they may be able to take the greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere and therefore slow climate change.
The report, published in Nature, found that natural iron fertilisation from volcanic islands in the Southern Ocean increased algae blooms two to threefold and the quantity of carbon dispatched to the seabed 3,000 metres below by a similar amount.
The use of iron fertilisation of the oceans has been proposed alongside other forms of "geo-engineering" to stop global warming such as putting satellites into space to create a giant sunshade or covering the icecaps to prevent melting.
However it was difficult to clearly demonstrate how effective adding iron to the oceans would be in the long term and there is still an international ban on the proposal.
Professor Richard Lampitt, of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton where the study was carried out, said: "There is potential for that although until we have completed good experiments it is impossible to say.
"There could be some unacceptable consequences for marine life and even the production of other greenhouse gases that are released back into the atmosphere by phytoplankton," he said.
"There have been about a dozen studies so far into iron fertilisation and although they increased blooms of phytoplankton none have been long-term enough to see how effective it was at taking carbon out of the game."
By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent Last Updated: 8:48PM GMT 28 Jan 2009
The nutrient leads to algae blooms which help to suck up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and take it to the sea-floor.
Scientists believe that by adding iron to vast areas of the ocean they may be able to take the greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere and therefore slow climate change.
The report, published in Nature, found that natural iron fertilisation from volcanic islands in the Southern Ocean increased algae blooms two to threefold and the quantity of carbon dispatched to the seabed 3,000 metres below by a similar amount.
The use of iron fertilisation of the oceans has been proposed alongside other forms of "geo-engineering" to stop global warming such as putting satellites into space to create a giant sunshade or covering the icecaps to prevent melting.
However it was difficult to clearly demonstrate how effective adding iron to the oceans would be in the long term and there is still an international ban on the proposal.
Professor Richard Lampitt, of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton where the study was carried out, said: "There is potential for that although until we have completed good experiments it is impossible to say.
"There could be some unacceptable consequences for marine life and even the production of other greenhouse gases that are released back into the atmosphere by phytoplankton," he said.
"There have been about a dozen studies so far into iron fertilisation and although they increased blooms of phytoplankton none have been long-term enough to see how effective it was at taking carbon out of the game."
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