'ORANG-UTANS' HOMES WILL BE GONE BY 2022'

Orang-tans could have nowhere left to live within a decade, a report has revealed.

New satellite images have uncovered levels of rainforest destruction in South East Asia which are 30 per cent faster than previously feared, says the United Nations.

It has repeated EIA’s recent call for countries, in particular Indonesia, to be helped in their fight against illegal logging.

“The rate of decline of the forests is the most alarming we have seen yet, anywhere in the world," said Christian Nellemann, one of the authors of the ‘Last Stand of the Orang-utan’ report.

The number of orang-utans, once common in the region has plummeted to only 7,000 in Sumatra and 45,000 in Borneo.

Burning of rainforests, often to make way for bio-fuel plantations like palm oil, is multiplying the threat – as well as adding hugely to global warming.

Orang-utans are often killed by loggers or captured and sold to foreign zoos and parks.
As the apes only breed once every seven years, it is feared their numbers could be seriously hit while their natural habitats vanish, says the report by the UN’s Environment Programme.

It had been estimated their habitats would be gone by 2032 but that date has now been put at 2022.

UNEP praised Indonesia’s recent crackdowns and arrests of illegal loggers but said it was only a drop in the ocean compared to the estimated 2.1 million hectares of forest cleared every year.

UNEP has echoed EIA’s calls for more help for Indonesia in the fight against illegal logging gangs.

Earlier this year, EIA’s report ‘The Thousand Headed Snake’ highlighted how corruption and failures in the Indonesian police, military and judicial system were letting timber barons off the hook.

The UNEP report was presented to the CITES conference on endangered species this week.

Speaking from The Hague, head of EIA’s Forest Campaigns Julian Newman said: “It’s not just up to Indonesia to solve this problem, it’s an international issue.

“A lot of the timber goes to international markets – to China, Malaysia and the EU. We need to close these loopholes and introduce a ban on importing illegal timber.”

It is thought 88 per cent of logging in Indonesia is illegal and is even being carried out in 37 of its 41 national parks, netting some £2 billion a year for logging and smuggling syndicates.

The UN has repeated EIA’s call for more resources for Indonesia to strengthen its enforcement and employ more forest wardens, alongside a global customs crackdown on illegal timber.

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Supermarket to sell wine in plastic bottles

Wine will be sold in recyclable plastic bottles instead of glass in Sainsbury's supermarkets as part of a trial, the retailer announced today.

Sainsbury's said the move will reduce carbon emissions by cutting the weight of wine packaging. A plastic bottle is one-eighth the weight of a regular 400g (14oz) glass bottle.

UK consumers buy around one billion bottles of wine every year, using around half-a-million tonnes of glass. Reducing the weight of wine packaging to 54g (2oz) by using plastic bottles could reduce carbon emissions by around 90,000 tonnes, according to the government-funded Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap), which is involved in the trial.

"That's equivalent to taking 28,000 cars off the road for a year," said a Wrap spokeswoman.

Wrap will assess how successfully the plastic bottles can be recycled and will measure the environmental impact of the scheme.

Wrap said that until its environmental analysis was published next month, "it is not in a position to compare" the energy use involved in recycling a glass bottle versus a plastic bottle.

Sainbury's will initially sell an own-label New Zealand sauvignon blanc and an Australian rose in the plastic bottles. The wine will be bottled in the UK, allowing nearly twice the amount of wine to be transported in each container. Bulk shipping also reduces carbon emissions.

Barry Dick, product technologist for beers, wines and spirits at the supermarket said: "The new wine bottle looks exactly the same as a glass bottle, holds the same amount of liquid and doesn't compromise the quality of the wine in any way."

The recyclable 75cl plastic wine bottles go on sale at Sainsbury's early next month, priced at £4.99 for the sauvignon blanc and the Australian rose at £3.99.

Sainsbury's move comes after Waitrose announced last month that it will start selling milk in plastic pouches. The Waitrose announcement came following concerns that plastic milk cartons threaten the environment

Article Source: guardian.co.uk

National Trust puts 3.5m members in front line against climate change

It controls 900-square miles of land and 710 miles of coastline and has far more members than the armed services, the teaching profession, the prison population, environmental groups and political parties combined.

Now the National Trust is hoping to become a new green army. To mark membership in England, Wales and Northern Ireland reaching 3.5 million - equivalent to the population of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow and Sheffield (Britain's four largest cities after London) - the trust yesterday declared that it wants to become "the largest green movement in the world".

In what the the conservation charity calls one of the most fundamental shifts in its 103-year history, the trust announced the intention to mobilise this vast public support "to drive conservation and quality of life agendas, and in particular to combat climate change".

From now on, said director-general Fiona Reynolds, the trust will advise people how to adapt their lifestyles to climate change and challenge government to be more ecologically aware. "If we think that public policy is not right, then we will say so."

In a strategy document, the trust said it was in a unique position to help counter climate change. "The biggest challenge of our time is climate change," said Ms Reynolds. "We are like a miner's canary anticipating the effects that others will feel. Our practical experience ranges from coastal erosion and 18th century drainpipes being overwhelmed by heavier rainfall, through to book collections damaged by pests now surviving warmer winters."

The trust is already confronting BAA on plans to expand Stansted airport in Essex on grounds of noise pollution, but declined to say on what else it intended to campaign. As Britain's biggest landowner it is known to want to influence agriculture to reduce damaging emissions.

"In the past we have been cautious about expressing our voice loudly. Now we recognise that we have to engage in public debate on a very wide scale. If our knowledge tells us, say, that expanding airports leads to problems, then it is right we should say so," said Peter Nixon, the trust's director of conservation. "If you have 3.5m members you can go to government with a different kind of authority."

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Texas turtles ending up in China soup pots

Growing up in East Texas, Dian Avriett loved to watch the turtles sunning on the banks of local rivers and lakes. But now she says it's rare to see them on those same waterways, and the reason is clear — China's taste for Texas turtle meat.

Hundreds of thousands have been sold to dealers who ship the animals to Asia where the meat is considered a delicacy with health benefits. Some also fetch high prices around the world as pets.

"In Texas, anyone with a $50 dollar non-game permit can take as many (turtles) as they want," said Avriett, who chairs the Piney Woods group of the Sierra Club.

Global turtle populations are at risk, but conservationists said the problem is growing acute in Texas, where there are no limits on the collection of unprotected varieties.

An average of 94,442 turtles per year are taken by dealers, mostly for export from the state, according to figures from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

Data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request showed more than 267,000 wild turtles were exported to Hong Kong from Dallas from 2002 to 2005, said Chris Jones, an environmental attorney who has lobbied for turtle protections.

Although there are no statewide statistics showing declines in Texas turtle population, Jones said abundant anecdotal evidence exists. For example in one section of the Rio Grande river that had been a trap site, an adult turtle has not been seen in 10 years.

"They are taking them so fast the scientists can't study them," Jones said.


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Ice keeps some buildings cool — and green

As the summer swelters on, skyscrapers and apartments around the city will crank up air conditioners and push the city's power grid to the limit — but some have found a cool alternative.

Some office towers and buildings are keeping their AC use to a minimum by using an energy-saving system that relies on blocks of ice to pump chilly air.

"If you take the time to look, you can find innovative ways to be energy efficient, be environmental and sustainable," said William Beck, the head of critical engineering systems for Credit Suisse, a financial services multinational corporation.

The systems save companies money and reduce strain on the electrical grid in New York, where the city consumes huge amounts of power on hot summer days.

Ice cooling also cuts down on pollution. A system in Credit Suisse's offices at the historic Metropolitan Life tower in Manhattan is equal to taking 223 cars off the streets or planting 1.9 million acres of trees to absorb carbon dioxide from electrical use for a year, according to the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.

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Dams being demolished to help fish

The largest dam removal in the Pacific Northwest in 40 years is under way, with 4,000 pounds of explosives used Tuesday to blast the top level of one structure into oblivion.

When the two dams are fully removed, one this summer and the other next summer, the Sandy River will be a free-flowing river for the first time in nearly a century — and no longer a hindrance to steelhead and salmon returning to spawn.

Eight feet of the 47-foot-tall Marmot Dam was removed Tuesday and over the next two months there will be five more blasts, along with jackhammers working daily, according to the dams' owner, Portland General Electric.

Portland General Electric, the biggest utility in Oregon, is spending $17 million to remove the two dams in coordination with 23 environmental, governmental and civic organizations.

"Today, this partnership took a great step toward restoring a breathtaking river for fish, wildlife and people," Portland General Electric CEO and President Peggy Fowler said in a statement. "We celebrate the future of a watershed that will provide unimpeded salmon and steelhead passage from the slopes of Mt. Hood to the Pacific Ocean." (General Electric is the parent company of NBC, which is a partner in the joint venture that operates MSNBC.com.)

"It's incredibly significant for the entire Sandy River Basin; it's going to breath new life into the basin and it's going to provide new recreational and fishing opportunities," added Amy Kober, a spokeswoman for American Rivers, a conservation group. "This was a region that was built by dams, but we are realizing the benefits of healthy rivers. We are getting back into balance."

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ethanol from citrus peel could result in a new Florida industry producing over 60 million gallons of fuel per year

FPL Energy, LLC, a subsidiary of FPL Group, has announced that it has signed a letter of intent with Citrus Energy, of Boca Raton, FL, to develop the first ever commercial scale citrus peel to ethanol plant. The cellulosic ethanol plant will be owned and operated by FPL Energy and is expected to produce four million gallons of ethanol per year. It will be located on the grounds of a local Florida citrus processor.

"FPL Energy is delighted to be working with Citrus Energy on this exciting new project to produce a clean, affordable, and domestically-produced biofuel utilizing Florida's existing citrus industry infrastructure and bringing new jobs to rural communities," said Mike O'Sullivan, senior vice president of development for FPL Energy.

"Citrus Energy's mission is to develop fuel ethanol that minimizes environmental impact and cost by using citrus waste and other biomass. FPL Energy, as the largest renewable energy generator in the U.S., is the ideal partner," said David Stewart, president of Citrus Energy.

FPL Energy said that ethanol from citrus peel could result in a new Florida industry producing over 60 million gallons of fuel per year, which could replace about one percent of Florida's annual gasoline consumption.

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Humans to blame for rain changes

Human activities that spur global warming are largely to blame for changes in rainfall patterns over the last century, climate researchers reported Monday.

The report was released as record rains caused severe flooding in Britain, China and Indonesia.

Human-caused climate change has been responsible for higher air temperatures and hotter seas and is widely expected to lead to more droughts, wildfires and floods, but the authors say this is the first study to specifically link it to precipitation changes.

"For the first time, climate scientists have clearly detected the human fingerprint on changing global precipitation patterns over the past century," researchers from Environment Canada, that country's environmental agency, said in a statement.

The scientists, writing in the journal Nature, found humans contributed significantly to these changes, which include more rain and snow in northern regions that include Canada, Russia and Europe, drier conditions in the northern tropics and more rainfall in the southern tropics.

Manmade climate change has had a "detectable influence" on changes in average precipitation in these areas, and it cannot be explained by normal climate variations, they wrote.

Weather experts in Britain raised the possibility that the current rains there may be related to climate change.

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China's Demand For Recycled Wastepaper: A Blessing And A Curse For The World's Forests

China's paper industry has built-up a massive recycling capacity that is shielding forests worldwide from destruction by supporting a strong international market for wastepaper as an alternative to pulpwood, according to a new report released by Forest Trends, a leading international forestry organization.

The Forest Trends report, Environmental Aspects of China's Papermaking Fiber Supply, notes that today about 60 percent of the fiber used to manufacture paper and paper board products in China is derived from wastepaper--a substantial portion of which comes from the US, Europe, and Japan. In the last ten years China's wastepaper imports increased by more than 500 percent--from 3.1 million metric tons in 1996 to 19.6 million metric tons in 2006--with most of that growth occurring between 2002 and 2006.

But the report warns that wastepaper alone is not sufficient to keep up with China's production demands, as high quality pulp and pulpwood are also being used to supply international buyers with high quality paper. The report finds that the same explosive growth that's created such a strong market for wastepaper is also boosting China's demand for pulp and pulpwood from developing countries already struggling to contain illegal and destructive logging. For example, China today buys some of its pulp and pulpwood from Indonesia and Eastern Russia where illegal, environmentally rapacious logging is widespread. And any increase in demand could exacerbate problems in those regions.

"China is by far the world's biggest consumer of wastepaper and that's a good thing because in the last four years alone, China has prevented 65 million metric tons of wastepaper from heading to landfills in the US, Japan, and Europe," said Brian Stafford, the lead author of the report and an expert on the international pulp and paper industry. "Just last year, China's use of wastepaper instead of trees to make paper products probably saved 54 million metric tons of wood from being harvested for pulp."

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Decoding Mushroom's Secrets Could Combat Carbon, Find Better Biofuels & Safer Soils

Researchers at the University of Warwick are co-ordinating a global effort to sequence the genome of one of the World’s most important mushrooms - Agaricus bisporus. The secrets of its genetic make up could assist the creation of biofuels, support the effort to manage global carbon, and help remove heavy metals from contaminated soils.

The Agaricus mushroom family are highly efficient ‘secondary decomposers’ of plant material such as leaves and litter – breaking down the material that is too tough for other fungi and bacteria to handle. How exactly it does this, particularly how it degrades tough plant material known as lignin, is not fully understood. By sequencing the full genome of the mushroom, researchers hope to uncover exactly which genes are key to this process. That information will be extremely useful to scientists and engineers looking to maximize the decomposition and transformation of plant material into bio fuels.

The mushroom also forms an important model for carbon cycling studies. Carbon is sequestered in soils as plant organic matter. Between 1–2 giga tons of carbon a year are sequestered in pools on land in the temperate and boreal regions of the earth, which represents 15–30% of annual global emissions of carbon from fossil fuels and industrial activities. Understanding the carbon cycling role of these fungi in the forests and other ecosystems is a vital component of optimizing carbon management.

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Catastrophic Flooding Changed The Course Of British History

A catastrophic megaflood separated Britain from France hundreds of thousands of years ago, changing the course of British history, according to research recently published in the journal Nature.
The study, led by Sanjeev Gupta and Jenny Collier from Imperial College London, has revealed spectacular images of a huge valley tens of kilometres wide and up to 50 metres deep carved into chalk bedrock on the floor of the English Channel.

Using high-resolution sonar waves the team captured images of a perfectly preserved submerged world in the channel basin. The maps highlight deep scour marks and landforms which were created by torrents of water rushing over the exposed channel basin.
To the north of the channel basin was a lake which formed in the area now known as the southern North Sea. It was fed by the Rhine and Thames, impounded to the north by glaciers and dammed to the south by the Weald-Artois chalk ridge which spanned the Dover Straits.
It is believed that a rise in the lake level eventually led to a breach in the Weald-Artois ridge, carving a massive valley along the English Channel, which was exposed during a glacial period.

Full story: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070718140833.htm

The deadly price of China's miracle

What is the price of economic growth? Death?

Hundreds of millions of people are being made ill every year or dying prematurely from pollution caused by China's breakneck economic growth, a leading economic thinktank has concluded following an 18-month investigation. The OECD study, prepared at China's request, draws on work by the government, World Bank and Chinese Academy of Sciences to spell out the scale of the ecological crisis now engulfing the country, poisoning its people and holding it back economically.

It says up to 300 million people are drinking contaminated water every day, and 190 million are suffering from water related illnesses each year. If air pollution is not controlled, it says, there will be 600,000 premature deaths in urban areas and 20m cases of respiratory illness a year within 15 years.
China's water quality gives the researchers greatest concern. One third of the length of all China's rivers are now "highly polluted" as are 75% of its major lakes and 25% of all its coastal waters. Nearly 30,000 children die from diarrhoea due to polluted water each year
Although China is the world's fourth largest economy, growing 10% a year and closing rapidly on the US, Japan and Germany, its environmental standards are often closer to those in some of the poorest countries in the world, says the report. More than 17,000 towns have no sewage works at all and the human waste from nearly one billion people is barely collected or treated. Nearly 70% of the rural population has no access to safe sanitation.

Read full story: http://environment.guardian.co.uk/waste/story/0,,2128827,00.html

Stop having children to combat climate change??

The simplest truths are sometimes the hardest to recognise. This month, according to the UN, world population will reach 6.7 billion, en route to a newly revised global total of 9.2 billion by 2050. The latest housing forecasts for England predict that we will need about 5m more homes in the next two decades.

The economist Jeffrey Sachs devoted this spring's Reith lectures to a planet "bursting at the seams". And the most recent Social Trends analysis from the Office for National Statistics painted a picture of a Britain driven mad by overcrowding. Meanwhile, Gaia scientist James Lovelock has been warning about ecological collapse and world resources able to support only 500 million people, with many extra millions driven to take refuge in the UK.

In the midst of all these alarms is a very quiet place where the green lobby should be talking about human population growth. Today has been designated World Population Day by the UN, but you will not see any of the big environment and development groups mounting a campaign on population. Indeed, you will be lucky if they even mention the P-word. Earlier this year, Nafis Sadik, former director of the UN's population fund, berated such non-governmental organisations for being more concerned with fundraising than advocacy. Their silence on population, she observed, was "deafening".

Read full story: http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2122949,00.html

Oil rigs could become coral farms

Decommissioned oil rigs off Australia's coastline could become hubs for marine-based businesses such as coral harvesting for aquariums, a fish expert says.Professor David Booth, of the Sydney Institute of Marine Science and University of Technology, Sydney, says there are up to 60 oil rigs in Australian waters that are due to be decommissioned in the next decade.Most are in the Bass Strait between Tasmania and mainland Australia.Booth was last year involved in Federal Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources (DITR) talks on the decommissioning of oil rigs.The future of Australia's ageing oil rigs is due to be on the agenda again with the DITR to release a discussion paper in the next two months.Booth says the options for decommissioning oil rigs include: leaving them intact and in place; towing them away for dismantling; removing the platform and using explosives to topple the remaining shell; and removing the platform and leaving the remaining shell in place.In the last two cases, the shell of the oil rig forms an artificial reef.Booth says in some cases keeping part of the rig in place could benefit the marine environment.

Read full story: http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2007/1979748.htm?enviro

London councils push for plastic bag ban

London shops could be banned from handing out plastic bags under a new law intended to make the capital more environmentally friendly.
Council leaders have suggested an outright ban on the bags, or the introduction of a 10p levy, in a bid to reduce the waste going into landfill.
The measures, proposed by the capital's 33 councils in a new London local authorities bill, will be put before MPs in November.
Merrick Cockell, Conservative leader of the London Councils organisation, said:

"The proposals for a plastic bag levy underline our commitment to addressing these concerns. We hope Londoners will join with us in commending these proposals to parliament to create a greener, safer city."

Source: http://environment.guardian.co.uk/waste/story/0,,2125825,00.html

New Study Suggests Climate Change Could Be The Root Of Armed Conflicts

Climate change, and the resulting shortage of ecological resources, could be to blame for armed conflicts in the future, according to David Zhang from the University of Hong Kong and colleagues. Their research, which highlights how temperature fluctuations and reduced agricultural production explain warfare frequency in eastern China in the past, has been published online in Springer's journal Human Ecology.

Zhang and his team looked at the impact of climate change on warfare frequency over the last millennium in eastern China. The agricultural production in the region supports the majority of the Chinese population. The authors reviewed warfare data from 899 wars in eastern China between 1000 and 1911, documented in the Tabulation of Wars in Ancient China. They cross-referenced these data with Northern Hemispheric climate series temperature data for the same period.
They found that warfare frequency in eastern China, and the southern part in particular, significantly correlated with temperature oscillations. Almost all peaks of warfare and dynastic changes coincided with cold phases.

Full story: http://www.terradaily.com

Eco-City to be built in Water-Scarce Northern China

Four locations in water-scarce northern China have been chosen as possible sites for an "eco-city" development with Singapore, a Chinese official was Thursday quoted as saying. The locations would allow the eco-city project to tap into Singapore's expertise in water technology, China's Vice Construction Minister Qiu Baoxing was quoted as saying in The Straits Times.
He was part of a delegation, led by Vice Premier Wu Yi, whose four-day official visit to the city-state was to end Thursday.
Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng said the plan was to build a "socially harmonious, environmentally friendly and resource conserving" city, the newspaper quoted him as saying.

Full story: http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Eco_City_Seen_In_Water_Scarce_Northern_China_999.html

Spiders can help scientists survey plant life by trapping tell-tale pollen in their webs

Spiders can help scientists survey plant life by trapping tell-tale pollen in their webs, says an international team of researchers.

Dr Cheng-Sen Li, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Beijing Museum of Natural History, and colleagues report their findings in the July issue of the journal Review of Palaeobotany and PalynologyCheng and colleagues studied pollen captured in spider webs of southern and central Yunnan, China, and showed that the sticky webs are good at capturing and hanging onto pollen grains from local plants. They say the method may be useful in plant surveys worldwide.

"The [type] of pollen and spores identified from the spider webs can reflect the
vegetation of the sampling site," says Cheng.

Read full story: http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2007/1964751.htm?enviro

India's hidden greenhouse gas source?

Methane from India's dams could boost the country's official greenhouse emissions by 40%, says a new study.According to a study by scientists from Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, carbon-containing vegetation in Indian dams is causing an annual release of methane equivalent to 825 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

"I am quite positive that surface methane emission estimations are correctly
estimated," says study lead author Dr Ivan Lima."I am confident that Indian dams
might be altering atmospheric methane although not precisely to what extent."

India's carbon emissions were around 1,890 million tonnes in 2000, according to the World Resources Institute, a Washington-based environmental think-tank. But the country has never

measured methane emissions from its 4,500 large dams and so such official estimates do not take these emissions into account.India, whose economy has surged between 8 and 9% in recent years, currently contributes around 4% of global emissions due to rising use of fossil fuels.As a developing nation, it is not required to cut emissions, said to be rising 2 to 3% annually, under the Kyoto Protocol, despite mounting pressure from environmental groups and developed nations.

Full story: http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2007/1964548.htm?enviro

China's huge dam changing weather

What promises to be the world's largest dam is already changing local weather two years before building has finished, say scientists. Scientists study the Three Gorges Dam on China's Yangtze River have used modelling and actual meteorological data to suggest that the reservoir is cooling its valley, which is causing changes in rainfall.

"In China there are a lot of people who complain because of the construction of
the dam" and specifically about changes in local weather, says climate
modeller
Dr Liguang Wu of the NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland in College
Park.

To find out if the dam was really to blame, Wu and his colleagues collaborated with Chinese scientists to study the changing climate around what will soon be a 1000 square kilometre reservoir of more than 19 trillion litres of water and a hydroelectric power plant 20 times more powerful than the Hoover Dam.The researchers combined satellite data and ground weather stations to create a computer climate simulation, which they then compared to what has already happened in recent years.

Full story: http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2007/1963499.htm?enviro

Our world is shrinking: Earth is roughly 5 millimetres smaller than the last measurement made 5 years ago

The world is smaller than we think, say scientists who say their new measurements could force other researchers to rejig their calculations.

Results of on international project show the Earth is roughly 5 millimetres smaller than the last measurement made five years ago.

But Dr Axel Nothnagel, a German researcher from the University of Bonn, says there is no evidence that the Earth itself is shrinking.

It's just that more accurate measurements, more data and better geophysical
models have led the researchers to come up with Earth's new size, a diameter of about 12,756.274 kilometres.

The researchers did not measure the diameter directly, however.

Nothnagel says that's impossible as the Earth has an irregular shape that indents and sticks out at certain regions by a hundred or so metres.

Their research, published in the Journal of Geodesy, used the technique of very long baseline interferometry or VLBI.

This uses radio telescopes in pairs or groups, as far away as several thousand kilometres, to receive radio waves from distant quasars.

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Penguin diet changed when humans arrived

Around 200 years ago, a group of Antarctic penguins switched from eating mostly big fish to a diet of tiny crustaceans. And new research suggests humans might have forced the change.

Associate Professor Steven Emslie from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and Professor William Patterson from the University of Saskatchewan publish their findings today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers analysed more than 220 fossilised penguin eggshells from 100 to 38,000 years old.

They collected the shells from abandoned Adélie penguin colony sites from three major regions in Antarctica: the Ross Sea, East Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula.

After crushing bits of the shells with a mortar and pestle, the scientists measured the ratio of carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes to determine past and present penguin diets.

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Recycling urine answer to phosphorus supply

Recycling urine may be the answer to a looming global shortage of phosphorus, an Australian researcher says.

Associate Professor Cynthia Mitchell, of the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), says the world's deposits of phosphorus are due to run out in about 50 years.



And she says recycling the 500 litres of urine each person produces a year is the solution.

"Urine is the most concentrated source of phosphorus," she says. "At the moment we dilute that through our sewage system and send it out to the ocean.
"In the industrialised world we must start moving to a resource-recovery approach rather than the current waste-treatment approach."

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Spanish Companies Pay Developer To Reduce Greenhouse Gases at Chinese Landfill

Spanish companies are paying a Chinese developer to cover a landfill site with a plastic cap to collect the greenhouse gases it emits, the World Bank said Monday.

The deal is the latest the World Bank has brokered allowing Europe and Japan to meet their greenhouse gas reduction pledges under the Kyoto Protocol by cutting emissions in China.

About a dozen similar deals have been signed in China, and more than 500 others are in the works, said Andres Liebenthal, the environment coordinator for the World Bank office in Beijing.
The Tianjin Clean Energy and Environmental Engineering Co. will collect the methane and other greenhouse gases emitted by the landfill and use it to generate electricity to sell to the North China Power Grid, a World Bank statement said. Excess gases will be burned.

In addition to electricity revenues, the company will get money from a consortium of Spanish companies for reducing the amount of greenhouse gases the landfill generates, according to the statement and Liebenthal.

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Florida Raises Ill-Fated Artificial Reefs

When people began dumping used tires in the ocean 40 years ago to create artificial reefs, they gave little thought to the potential environmental cost, or to how difficult it would be to pick them up.

"It was one of those ideas that seemed good at the time," said Jack Sobel, a senior scientist at The Ocean Conservancy, a Washington-based environmental group. "Now I think it's pretty clear it was a bad idea."

Now, local authorities are going after some 700,000 tires dumped off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, up the coast from Miami. A team of 40 divers from the U.S. Army, Navy and Coast Guard spent three weeks in June pulling up 10,373 sand-filled and slime-coated tires from the ocean floor.

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Everest at risk as new road conquers roof of the world

The harsh strip lighting of Lhasa's cavernous railway station illuminates a tiny Tibetan girl as her mother tucks her in on an oil-stained patch of ground. Dozens more rag-wrapped pilgrims on their way to Jokhang Temple settle in cheek by jowl in the darkness. Child porters scurry back and forward carrying the brightly coloured luggage of Chinese tourists and wicker baskets of yak dung, used to fuel stoves.
Crackling loudly over the PA system, a folk singer croons longingly of the Himalayas and the beauty of Qomolongma, known in the West as Mount Everest. 'It calls Everest mother earth,' says Kelsang, a Tibetan guide, grimacing at the static. 'They play this over and over again. It is a Chinese song written about Tibet. 'Propaganda,' he says, pointing at a huge TV screen showing images of demure, dancing Tibetans. 'It's part of the myth they want the Chinese tourists to buy into. They are turning Tibet into Everestland, that way it's easier to forget the past and make us into a theme park.'

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The man making the world's worst polluter clean up its act

He is not as well known as Al Gore or David Attenborough but among green campaigners, no one has a bigger role in tackling climate change than Ma Jun. As China's economic growth races on at breakneck speed and with more dirty, coal-burning power plants coming on line each year, the world's most populous nation will soon overtake the US as the biggest greenhouse gas emitter.
Ma, 39, has emerged as the powerful voice of a budding green movement that is forcing industry and China's tightly run state to be more accountable for the long-term consequences of their rush to get rich.


He founded the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, which is among those leading the charge to clean up the air and rivers of China, a monumental task. Pollution is leaking beyond its borders. Sand storms caused by desertification blast across Korea and Japan all the way over the Pacific to America. And as the dump for 50 billion tonnes of effluent annually, the rivers' toxic discharges threaten marine life hundreds of miles beyond China's seas.
The country's environmental importance was apparent last month when George Bush said he would not sign up to ambitious new goals to prevent global warming unless China was involved. President Hu Jintao rejected binding targets, but said China would reduce emissions voluntarily and has unveiled its first plan to deal with climate change. There is even talk that after years of red politics and black capitalism China may yet turn green.


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More than 40 years on, Spain revisits a nuclear accident

The year was 1966, the height of the cold war and the final years of the Franco dictatorship, when an American B-52 bomber carrying four thermonuclear bombs collided with a supply plane above the village of Palomares in south-eastern Spain.
Two bombs landed intact, one just outside the village of 1,200 people in the province of Almería, the other salvaged, unscathed, by a fisherman five miles offshore in the Mediterranean, at a depth of 760 metres (2,500 feet). The third and fourth bombs were damaged by a chemical explosion on impact, releasing about 20kg (44lb) of plutonium into the centre of Palomares and surrounding hills.



Nobody died or is known to have developed cancer, but Spain's worst nuclear accident took three months and the work of 1,600 US specialists to clean up before it was promptly forgotten outside of Spain. The amnesia was helped along with a now legendary stunt by the former minister of tourism under Franco, Manuel Fraga, who took a much-photographed swim in the Mediterranean with the American ambassador to prove the waters - and budding tourist industry - were safe.
More than 40 years later, the Spanish nuclear regulatory agency and a national research centre on the environment, energy and technology, CIEMAT, have concluded the first large-scale study of the extent of radioactive contamination around the village, now perched in the middle of the nationwide building frenzy.


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McDonald's goes green - but not all customers are lovin' it

McDonald's is a company on a mission. Tired of being held up as an example of corporate evil and greed, the fast food chain has been hitting out at critics with a series of environmental and social initiatives designed to prove that it cares.
Not content with that, the company is also going through a full makeover, redesigning some of its restaurants in a way that it hopes will revitalise the sites and attract more customers.

On Monday, the group announced its latest initiative: to turn its spent cooking oil into biodiesel fuel to power its vans in the UK.
This is the latest in a series of environmental and health moves. Recently, for example, the group swapped over to non-hydrogenated cooking oil in its restaurants.



The menus have changed to varying degrees over the past few years, with the introduction of sustainably grown coffee, organic milk and toasted deli sandwiches.

In the UK, a sheet of paper on customers' trays shows a photo of George Horton, a 43-year-old farmer in Wiltshire and a McDonald's supplier, who produces the food they eat. Even Greenpeace, which has worked with McDonald's on making sure the soya they source from Brazil is produced by companies that do not destroy the rainforest, says the company has been progressive. Pat Venditti, forest campaigner at the charity, says: "What we've seen is that they have taken a very good leadership role in terms of how they approach environmental issues."



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Temperature rises 'not caused by sun'

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Claims in a controversial Channel 4 programme that recent rises in global temperatures have been caused by the sun have been disproved by scientists.
The programme, the Great Global Warming Swindle, claimed that instead of greenhouse gases from human activity being to blame for a recent surge in temperatures, a change in solar activity was responsible because it influenced the number of cosmic rays that strike the Earth.

The film presented such changes in the sun as a viable alternative explanation for rising temperatures, and was widely cited in discussions of a recent poll that showed 56% of the UK public doubted the scientific cause of climate change.


But the new analysis, to be published in a Royal Society journal on Tuesday, shows that global warming since 1985 cannot have been caused by an increase in solar radiation or by a decrease in cosmic rays.
Mike Lockwood, a physicist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK, said: "It is absolutely clear that the sun is nothing to do with the recent warming.


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