Sailing To Noonkanbah  

Rupert Murdoch's announcement that News Corp is to go carbon neutral resulted in one of those black-is-now-white moments - the Greens praising Murdoch and The Australian not saying rude things about the Greens. Is everyone turning Viridian this year ?

THE Australian Greens have congratulated media mogul Rupert Murdoch on his pledge to make News Corporation carbon-neutral by 2010. The News Corp chairman and chief executive officer announced the plan, which applies across the media group's global operations, in New York last night. With the company's carbon footprint estimated at 641,150 tonnes, Mr Murdoch said his strategy would be to reduce energy use as much as possible and switch to renewable energy sources.

“Can I congratulate Rupert Murdoch for moving to have a carbon-neutral News Corporation,” Senator Brown told reporters. “I think we do need leadership from the big end of town on that. I'm not in the habit of being a eulogiser of Rupert Murdoch, but credit where it's due, and that's a great move, and I hope that example will be followed by other people in the business.”

The Australian's Nigel Wilson (by far the best local reporter on straight energy news) has an interesting look at the politics of offshore WA gas development called "Circling sacred ground". Once again a government is riding roughshod over property rights - in this case the rights of the native owners.

FLYING in a light plane over the shimmering sea of Australia's remote Kimberley coast, Sylvester Mangolomara looked out of the window and down at a couple of jagged islands below.

What he saw shocked him and two or three other Kimberley traditional owners taking the same flight last week. "We could see a drilling rig just offshore," Mangolomara told The Australian. "It made me feel sick in my heart that people were drilling on our country, and without our permission."

The arrival of the yellow platform on four thick black legs is symbolic of a gas-driven resources boom that is about to hit the Kimberley coast. Depending on your outlook, it will deliver untold wealth to an industry-poor pastoral frontier, or comprehensively trash one of Australia's last wilderness areas.

So radical are industry plans that the various proponents have kept very quiet until now, while anti-development groups have scrabbled to unearth the details. What is undisputed is that the plans require some of Australia's biggest resource infrastructure to be placed smack in the middle of remote coastline that is not easily reached by road.

So what do we know so far, and who are the players? The source of Mangolomara's angst is Japanese-owned INPEX, a petroleum exploration company eyeing the uninhabited Maret Islands, tiny specks in the spectacular Bonaparte Archipelago off the Kimberley coast.

Last week, INPEX floated a drill rig close to the Maret Islands' southern beaches to begin geotechnical tests. Meanwhile, it is negotiating with the West Australian Government for permission to build a $US10 billion ($12billion) gas plant and loading facility on the islands. The idea is to transport liquefied natural gas via undersea pipeline from its Ichthys deposit 200km out to sea.

Then there's Perth-based Woodside, Australia's biggest domestic gas producer, which also needs a site for an LNG processing plant along the Kimberley coast - if it opts not to go with an alternative processing platform out at sea near gas deposits.

What INPEX and Woodside have in common are their respective stakes in rich gas and oil condensate reserves at the Browse Basin, lying almost directly north of the Kimberley town of Broome in the Timor Sea. The Browse is a world hot spot for exploration, with dozens of companies probing an area with total gas volumes of 40 trillion cubic feet or more - as much as the North-West Shelf gas reserves and probably substantially more. Shell, Chevron, BP, BHP Billiton, Santos, Italian company ENI and France's Total are only some of the players appearing on the Kimberley scene.

The federal Government is favourably inclined towards developing the Browse gas, not least because it would elevate Australia to become the world's second-biggest supplier of LNG before 2020. Pushing the go button on Browse also fits with the Government's argument that Australia can cut the world's greenhouse gas emissions by exporting its natural gas, which has half the carbon emission rate of coal.

Add in the West Australian Government's enthusiasm for developing Browse Basin gas, and multi-billion-dollar LNG plants materialising along its pristine coast may be inevitable. ...

EK director Maria Mann says the Kimberley needs renewable industries such as well-managed tourism and pastoralism, pearling and native plant harvesting. EK also accepts small-scale mining, where once the mining is completed the area can be rehabilitated. But that doesn't include concreting an offshore island or two and installing an LNG plant. "What's the cumulative impact of all these projects on the Kimberley coast?" Mann asks. "We need to find out what they propose to destroy and, secondly, force industry to form a single industrial hub."

Mann also articulates a widespread fear that the snowball effect of readily available gas could radically alter Australia's northwest wilderness over coming decades. "A local supply of natural gas means an energy source which, linked with bauxite (found in the Kimberley region's Mitchell Plateau) or other mineralisation, could lead to massive industrialisation, much like the Pilbara region," Mann says. "For some people, that might be just what they want, but to those who value the cultural and environmental assets of the Kimberley, it's horrendous."

Western Australia's Chamber of Mines and Energy chief executive Tim Shanahan argues that the Kimberley gas resource is of such national importance it cannot be ignored. "LNG plants and resource projects generally have got a small footprint. The amount of disturbed area is relatively small compared with other industries such as agriculture, for example," Shanahan says. "It is clearly in the national interest for us to look to develop that resource (and) bring it to market."

Yet former BP Australia chief Greg Bourne, who now heads the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, offered a more cautionary view when he addressed the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association's conference in Adelaide last month. Pure commercial exploitation of the Kimberley is inappropriate, Bourne says, arguing that the region needs a form of strategic assessment, based on UN models, of the economic, social and environmental effects of development. "The whole of the Kimberley is not well known to most Australians who live in the cities and towns around our coast," Bourne told oil and gas executives, "but anyone who goes up to the Kimberley knows how important and iconic it is, both from a social and environmental point of view." ...

AP reports on the growing US thirst for natural gas.

Just down the road from this isolated fishing hamlet in the bayou country of southwestern Louisiana, a massive complex is rising to handle the nation’s growing demand for natural gas.

Cranes tower over arena-sized containers that stand 170 feet tall and 250 feet in diameter as hundreds of construction workers bustle about. Sempra Energy Inc. expects the $750 million terminal to begin operating in 2008 as the arrival point for tankers carrying liquefied natural gas.

While the energy industry regards LNG as a vital step in keeping up with the demand for natural gas in the United States, proposals to build terminals are raising environmental and safety concerns.

Largely little used until natural gas prices jumped in recent years, gas cooled to minus 260 degrees and turned into liquid is the only practical way to import supplies from overseas. Energy companies have proposed 35 new U.S. terminals in 10 states and five offshore areas near the coast. Eighteen terminals have been approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The majority of the projects are proposed for the Northeast, which has seen huge price increases for heating oil and public distrust of nuclear power; California, where natural gas is in high demand for power generation; and the Gulf Coast, where LNG processors can easily plug the finished gas product into interstate pipelines. ...

The United States consumes about 60 billion cubic feet of gas per day — about a quarter of its energy consumption. Gas heats more than 60 million U.S. homes and is the fuel of choice for generating power in many areas.

At the same time, gas supplies are getting tighter. In the Gulf of Mexico, production has declined by more than 4 billion cubic feet per day since 2001, while production in the North Sea is dropping by 15 percent a year as easy-to-reach deposits play out. Alternatives such as deepwater drilling in the Gulf, drilling deep into the bottom of shallower Gulf waters and going after gas in the Rocky Mountains are more expensive.

The WSJ reports Indian gas imports are falling short of demand.

India was able to import only a third of the gas it wanted to ship into the country in 2006-07, owing to uncertainties in the global gas trade and inadequate infrastructure in the country to handle gas imports, resulting in a shortage of the fuel that affected several companies, including power utilities and fertilizer manufacturers.

The country had originally planned to import 15 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of gas, but ended up importing a third of that amount, according to a senior official at the ministry of petroleum and natural gas, who did not wish to be identified.


India has only two LNG (liquefied natural gas) regasification terminals with a combined capacity of 7.5mtpa. Gas is shipped in liquid form and regasified when the ship berths. “In the 10th-Plan period (2002-07), four LNG terminals were planned, of which only two terminals with a combined capacity of 7.5mtpa were commissioned. This has hampered our import capacity,” said the official at the ministry.

UPI reports the Indians are saying they want to decide their own energy suppliers - meaning they need Iranian natural gas.

India says it is free to pursue ties with any country, a position with implications for two deals: the IPI pipeline and the U.S.-India nuclear deal. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee told the upper house of India's Parliament that New Delhi had informed Washington in the context of the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline that it is free to pursue its energy relations with any country.

The remarks were reported by the semi-official Press Trust of India. No direct quotes were provided. Mukherjee said India's message was given to U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman by Indian Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Murli Deora during a recent meeting in New Delhi, PTI reported Wednesday.

The $7.4 billion, 1,700-mile IPI pipeline would run from Iran to India via Pakistan and supply some 90 million cubic meters of Iranian gas to India and 60 million cubic meters to Pakistan every day. Talks have been stalled on that issue because of two factors: the price of Iranian gas and transit fees that India must pay to Pakistan.

Iran wants to sell natural gas to the two countries at $4.93 per mBtu, using the price of oil at $60 per barrel as a benchmark. The future of the IPI pipeline is uncertain, however, because of strong U.S. opposition to the deal. Washington fears international agreements with Iran will only embolden the country to acquire nuclear weapons. Funding may also be difficult because of the countries the pipeline would traverse. Washington has said it backs a pipeline that supplies Turkmen gas to South Asia.

Technology Review has an article on "Supplying the World's Energy Needs with Light and Water" - using liquid fuel as an energy storage mechanism for sunlight. Just like nature...

While researchers and technologists around the world scramble to find cleaner sources of energy, some chemists are turning to nature's own elegant solution: photosynthesis. In photosynthesis, green plants use the energy in sunlight to break down water and carbon dioxide. By manipulating electrons and hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon atoms in a series of complex chemical reactions, the process ultimately produces the cellulose and lignin that form the structure of the plant, as well as stored energy in the form of sugar. Understanding how this process works, thinks Daniel Nocera, professor of chemistry at MIT, could lead to ways to produce and store solar energy in forms that are practical for powering cars and providing electricity even when the sun isn't shining.

What's needed are breakthroughs in our understanding of the fundamental chemical processes that make photosynthesis possible, according to Nocera, a recognized photosynthesis expert. He is studying the principles behind photosynthesis and applying what he learns to making catalysts that use solar energy to create hydrogen gas for fuel cells. Nocera's goal: a world powered by light and water.

Technology Review: What's the biggest challenge related to energy right now?

Daniel Nocera: The real challenge with energy is the scaling problem. We're going to have this huge energy need, and when you start looking at all the numbers, there's only one supply that has scale, and it's the sun. But it's still a research problem. Technologies all follow lines; then there's a discovery and a new line that's better. We're on a very predictable line now in solar. Most things you hear about are incremental advances.

TR: You're studying photosynthesis to get ideas for how to convert sunlight into a chemical fuel--hydrogen--for use when the sun isn't shining or in powering fuel-cell vehicles.

DN: You can use the electricity directly when the sun is out, in places that have sun. [But] you need storage. There's absolutely no way around it. I am distilling the essence of photosynthesis down to be able to use it.

TR: Why is photosynthesis attractive in finding a source of clean energy?

DN: [Photosynthesis] does three things. It captures sunlight, and [second,] it converts it into a wireless current--leaves are buzzing with electricity. And third, it does storage. It stores the converted light energy in chemical energy. And it uses that chemical energy for its life process, and then it stores a little.

It turns out [that] photosynthesis is one of the most efficient machines in the world for energy conversion. But it's not great for storing energy because that's not what [a plant] was built to do. It was built to live and grow and reproduce.

And so that's the approach we take. Can we now do what the leaf is doing artificially, which is the capture, conversion, and storage in chemical bonds? But my device doesn't have to live: it can take a lot more of that energy and put it into chemical bonds. ...

The SMH reports that the local truck racing circuit is switching to biofuels.

IT IS an unlikely partnership, racing truck rigs and green fuels, but it could be the first to create a brand - and hopefully demand - for alternative fuels.

The Supertruck Nationals has become the first motor racing series in the world to be entirely powered by biodiesel fuels. Late last month when a new lap record was made in a biodiesel-powered truck at Oran Park it was proof that a mixture of soybeans, canola oil, sugarcane and even animal fats carries just as much grunt as traditional fuels

Now plans are being laid to create a mother brand for biofuels in much the same way that the Meat & Livestock Association has done in its Red Meat campaign for beef and lamb.

Greg Legg-Bagg, CEO of Momentum Worldwide, the marketing agency that organised naming rights of the Biodiesel Supertrucks tournament, said: "As marketers we can turn this into something that can create a lot of interest for the [haulage] industry." Hauliers and truckers use the vast majority of diesel fuel and are a key target of the campaign, as are farmers who stand to benefit from growing the raw materials used in the fuel.

The BBC has a report on a UN study on the impacts of biofuels

A UN report warns that a hasty switch to biofuels could have major impacts on livelihoods and the environment. Produced by a cross-agency body, UN Energy, the report says that biofuels can bring real benefits. But there can be serious consequences if forests are razed for plantations, if food prices rise and if communities are excluded from ownership, it says.

It concludes that biofuels are more effective when used for heat and power rather than in transport. "Current research concludes that using biomass for combined heat and power (CHP), rather than for transport fuels or other uses, is the best option for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade - and also one of the cheapest," it says.

The European Union and the US have recently set major targets for the expansion of biofuels in road vehicles, for which ethanol and biodiesel are seen as the only currently viable alternative to petroleum fuels.

The UN report, Sustainable Bioenergy: A Framework for Decision Makers, suggests that biofuels can be a force for good if they are planned well, but can bring adverse consequences if not. "The development of new bioenergy industries could provide clean energy services to millions of people who currently lack them," it concludes, "while generating income and creating jobs in poorer areas of the world."

But the prices of food, land and agricultural commodities could be driven up, it warns, with major impacts in poorer countries where people spend a much greater share of their incomes on food than in developed nations.

On the environmental side, it notes that demand for biofuels has accelerated the clearing of primary forest for palm plantations, particularly in southeast Asia. This destruction of ecosystems which remove carbon from the atmosphere can lead to a net increase in emissions.

The report warns too of the impacts on nature: "Use of large-scale mono-cropping could lead to significant biodiversity loss, soil erosion and nutrient leaching." Water is also a concern. The expanding world population and the on-going switch towards consumption of meat and dairy produce as incomes rise are already putting pressure on freshwater supplies, which increased growing of biofuel crops could exacerbate.

Coby at "A Few Things Ill Considered" has another one of his mammoth global warming news round-ups up. I challenge anyone to read every link.



Jamais Cascio at Open The Future has some interesting snippets on the green panopticon, micro-hydro and light coloured green roofing. Jamais also reckons he owns the number "24 EB 93 14 E0 4B C0 BD 99 44 65 AD 86 CC DE 92" - I wonder when someone will base a song on it.

• Green Panopticon Begins: UC San Diego's Shannon Spanhake has come up with a small pollution monitor built to send data to cell phones. She calls it Squirrel.

Squirrel fits in the palm of your hand and can be clasped to a belt or purse. The small, battery-powered mobile device can sample pollutants with its on-chip sensor. The current prototype measures carbon monoxide and ozone, but eventually the device will be able to sample nitrogen oxide and sulphur dioxide in the air, as well as temperature, barometric pressure and humidity.

It’s what happens next that makes Squirrel a powerful tool in the fight against pollution. Using a Bluetooth wireless transmitter, the device connects to the user’s cell phone. A software program called Acorn allows the user to see the current pollution alerts through a screensaver on the cell phone’s display. The phone also periodically transmits the environmental data to a public database on the Internet operated by the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), which is funding Squirrel’s development.

Hmmm. Any of this sound familiar?

• Micro-Dam It!: Gregg Zachary writes in the May 2007 edition of IEEE Spectrum about the growth of micro-hydro in Africa as a way around the ongoing energy production crisis across most of the continent. Small dams, which can produce anywhere from a few kilowatts to a few megawatts of power, have proven to be more reliable, more environmentally sound, and more flexible than traditional hydroelectric megaprojects. The microhydro dams, which produce no more than 100 kilowatts, have become especially popular, as they can be built and maintained with minimal demands on government or outside support.

It will come as no surprise, then, that most African governments are opposed (or at best unwelcoming) to microhydro. The primary reason, though, is interesting:

It's a reminder that the electricity issue in Africa, as elsewhere, is as much political as it is technical. Big dams are prestige projects, symbols of national power that drive employment and industry. Small hydros, dispersed and difficult for the government to keep track of, let alone manage, seem vaguely subversive.

That reminded me of something I dug up back in the late 1980s, doing research on Pakistan's development of atomic weaponry. The driver for most Pakistanis wasn't military might or even deterrence against India, but prestige: building an atomic bomb would demonstrate to the world that Pakistan was as advanced, as capable, as any other top-ranking nation.

The connection between mega-projects and national pride -- especially in areas historically the target of other nations' whims -- should not be ignored by those of us seeking to change behavior. ...

• The Roof, The Roof, The Roof is Oddly Bright: And finally, Summer has arrived. Less than a week ago, it was windy and rainy here; today, it's set to be in the low-to-mid-90s. Good thing we had to replace our roof.

One of the first pieces I ever wrote for WorldChanging that got a bit of attention was Green and White, talking about some research done by the Lawrence Berkeley Labs indicating that light-colored (or, best of all, white) roofs made such a dramatic difference in warmer climes that replacing a roof with white shingles would save more power (from cooling) than would be generated by replacing that roof with solar panels.

When it came time to replace the roof of our house, you'd better believe we went white. Or Ash Grey, which was a newer generation shingle with a slightly better efficiency rating than the white shingles. The additional cost over the basic cheap shingles (which only come in faux-wood dark colors) will be easily matched by the greatly reduced air conditioning bills and the one-time rebate from PG&E, the local power company. Best of all, no more sweltering at midnight.

Behavior changes matter. System changes matter. But let's not forget the value of offering people a chance to do the right thing when they need to meet existing needs.

The LA Times reports that changes to rebate rules have had some nasty side effects for the solar power industry in California.

California homeowners are rejecting new rebates for solar power equipment, saying the state has made installing the rooftop panels far more costly than expected. As a result, Public Utilities Commission reports show a decline of 78% in rebate requests in the first three months of this year, compared with last year, and the solar installation industry says it is threatened with collapse across much of California.

At issue is a requirement the state added Jan. 1 for getting a rebate under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Million Solar Roofs program. Applicants must first sign up for costly pricing plans offered by utilities that charge more for their electricity during hours of peak demand.

Alfred Cellier had plans to install a $17,000 solar system at his Rancho Palos Verdes home until he penciled out the cost of the new state requirements and decided against it. The retired electronics engineer said he was all for solar power "because it's green and the right thing to do, but I don't want to be treated unfairly."

Sue Kateley, executive director of the California Solar Energy Industries Assn., said the rebate changes backfired. "It's a mess," she said. "It was everyone's intent to expand the use of solar in California, not throw it into the ditch."

Many homeowners quickly decided that it might not be worth going solar under the new requirements. The costs would be burdensome for those who couldn't afford or lacked the roof space to buy systems that would supply all of their electricity needs. The unintended glitch was created in December, when the PUC moved to implement the law by requiring that solar users switch to the higher "time of use" rates for their supplemental electricity.

Industry experts say that with the higher rates, solar power offers less savings on electricity bills and may not justify the investment of more than $10,000 in solar panels — even with a rebate of as much as 50% of the cost and a federal tax credit.

Jeff Vail has a look at the deteriorating situation in Nigeria. Jeff also has some thoughts on the merits of legislation against petrol price gouging - summary - there aren't any. Given the oil industry's past record of price fixing I personally think this sort of stuff is worthwhile - not because it will make any difference to prices or availability - but because its just one more stick to beat them with (and a popular one at that), which might drain some energy they would otherwise use to frustrating efforts to move to cleaner and non-depleting energy sources.

The situation in Nigeria is escalating--as expected, geologically-driven declines in oil production are spawning geopolitically-driven increases in disruptions from "above-ground factors." The recent attacks on major oil pipelines in Nigeria cut all oil flow to AGIP's Brass Export Terminal, taking a further 200,000 barrels per day off the market. On top of that, take a look at the latest unclassified figures on kidnappings in Nigeria, courtesy of the CIA:

2006:
Total Hostages (Unresolved): 66 (0)
American Hostages (Unresolved): 0 (0)

2007:
Total Hostages (Unresolved): 106 (17)
Amercan Hostages (Unresolved): 17 (5)

And 2007 is only half over! That represents a rougly 200% year-on-year increase in total hostages, and a huge leap in the "value" of these hostages, as reflected by the sudden shift toward higher-skill and western workers, as shown by the sudden prevalence of American hostages.

The coordinated nature of the recent triple pipeline attack suggests that broader, hierarchal organizations such as MEND are alive and well. This doesn't, however, mean that the kind of localized criminal organizations that I spoke of in my recent Oil Drum article on Nigeria are going away. On the contrary, it means that politically-motivated groups such as MEND must now differentiate themselves from the criminal gangs if they wish to put weight behind their political demands. If MEND and criminal gangs resort to the same tactics, there is no motivation on the part of either the Nigerian government or foreign oil companies to cave to MEND's political demands when this won't end the disruption caused by criminal gangs. MEND must pursue increasingly coordinated, high-impact attacks to give them a bargaining chip that is unique, a bargaining chip that is not shared by criminal gangs who won't participate in a cease fire. Logic dictates that differentiating themselves from criminal gangs requires a new targeting focus: offshore oil facilities. MEND has demonstrated a limited ability in the past to operate in the offshore environment. The Nigerian navy is certainly in no shape to effectively counter them. Expect a wave of significant offshore attacks to be the next major development in Nigeria. Offshore facilities are highly vulnerable and minimally defended--consider the destruction caused by mistake or malfunction at the Piper Alpha platform. Now consider how long it takes to repair a major offshore facility in today's economy. An attack on a major offshore facility is the next logical targeting choice, and MEND is at a critical juncture where it must demonstrate its political relevance or fade away as a centralized, unified organization.

The Encyclopedia Of Life launched this week - sounds like an excellent topic for a collaborative research project.

Many of the world’s leading scientific institutions today announced the launch of the Encyclopedia of Life, an unprecedented global effort to document all 1.8 million named species of animals, plants, and other forms of life on Earth. For the first time in the history of the planet, scientists, students, and citizens will have multi-media access to all known living species, even those that have just been discovered.

The Field Museum of Natural History, Harvard University, Marine Biological Laboratory, Smithsonian Institution, and Biodiversity Heritage Library joined together to initiate the project, bringing together species and software experts from across the world. The Missouri Botanical Garden has become a full partner, and discussions are taking place this week with leaders of the new Atlas of Living Australia. ...

“The Encyclopedia of Life will provide valuable biodiversity and conservation information to anyone, anywhere, at any time,” said Dr. James Edwards, currently Executive Secretary of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility who today was officially named Executive Director of the Encyclopedia of Life. “Through collaboration, we all can increase our appreciation of the immense variety of life, the challenges to it, and ways to conserve biodiversity. The Encyclopedia of Life will ultimately make high-quality, well-organized information available on an unprecedented level. Even five years ago, we could not create such a resource, but advances in technology for searching, annotating, and visualizing information now permit us, indeed mandate us to build the Encyclopedia of Life.”

Over the next 10 years, the Encyclopedia of Life will create Internet pages for all 1.8 million species currently named. It will expedite the classification of the millions of species yet to be discovered and catalogued as well. The pages, housed at http://www.eol.org, will provide written information and, when available, photographs, video, sound, location maps, and other multimedia information on each species. Built on the scientific integrity of thousands of experts around the globe, the Encyclopedia will be a moderated wiki-style environment, freely available to all users everywhere.

I got the latest email from the future in my in-tray today - lots of interesting snippets as always - here are some of the most relevant ones:

A Global Democratic Movement Is About to Pop – (Orion Magazine – May 1, 2007)
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/51088/?page=1
An essay by Paul Hawken on the enormous proliferation of small groups of people working toward ecological sustainability and social justice. His conclusions: this is the largest social movement in all of history, no one knows its scope, and how it functions is more mysterious than what meets the eye. This is the first time in history that a large social movement is not bound together by an "ism." What binds it together is ideas, not ideologies.

'Killer bees' Seem Resistant to Disorder – (Azstarnet – April 30, 2007)
http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/176000
Although experts are stumped about what's causing the colony-collapse disorder (CCD) die-off in U.S. commercial beehives, there is some speculation that Arizona's famed Africanized – or "killer bee" – wild-bee population is somehow immune. The Africanized bees are aggressive, slightly smaller wild bees that produce bumper crops of honey and bad press. They also appear to be more resistant to whatever is causing CCD than the European honeybees.

Taiwan Stung by Millions of Missing Bees – (Reuters – April 26, 2007)
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyid=2007-04-
26T104754Z_01_TP162481_RTRUKOC_0_US-TAIWAN-BEES.xml&src=rss&rpc=22
Taiwan's bee farmers are feeling the sting of lost business and possible crop danger after millions of the honey-making, plant-pollinating insects vanished during volatile weather.
Over the past two months, farmers in three parts of Taiwan have reported most of their bees gone.

Scientists Identify Pathogens That May Be Causing Global Honey-Bee Deaths – (Science Daily – April 26, 2007)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070426100117.htm
Using a new technology called the Integrated Virus Detection System (IVDS), originally designed for military use to rapidly screen samples for pathogens, scientists have identified both a virus and a parasite that are likely to be behind the recent sudden die-off of honey-bee colonies.

Ebola-like Virus Killing Fish in Great Lakes – (USA Today – April 29, 2007)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-04-29-virus-fish_N.htm
A deadly Ebola-like virus is killing fish of all types in the Great Lakes, a development some scientists fear could trigger disaster for the USA's freshwater fish. Last year, the aggressive virus resulted in large fish kills that struck at least 20 species. Scientists are watching to see whether the disease returns in mid-May when water in the lakes warms to temperatures at which the virus attacks.

Singapore Wants Dutch Dikes – (Spiegel – April 24, 2007)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,479061,00.html
Singapore has decided not to wait for sea levels to rise, preferring to plan ahead. The city-state has contacted experts from the Netherlands for help with dike construction as it prepares for the effects of climate change. The 663 square kilometer city-state has begun researching such technology, "because by the time the waters have risen… that is too late," said former prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew.

China Creates Tibetan Snow as Glaciers Melt – (Reuters – April 18, 2007)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/PEK10840.htm
China has created artificial snow for the first time in Tibet to head off possible drought. Chinese scientists have warned that rising temperatures on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau will melt glaciers, dry up major Chinese rivers and trigger drought, sandstorms and desertification. The snowfall was measured at 2.2 mm and the accumulated snow on the ground reached one cm after the artificial snowfall.

'Sex Change' for Chinese Trees – (The Australian – April 20, 2007)
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21590997-1702,00.html
While there are 300,000 poplar trees in China's capital, only some "female" trees are being injected with a "sex change" substance. The experiment aims to change their nature so no pollen will be produced. Hospitals in Beijing have received increasing numbers of patients who suffer from asthma or allergies after inhaling the pollen, which blankets the city in a snowfall of white fluff

The Century of Roots – (A.M Samsam Bakhtiari – April, 2007)
http://www.sfu.ca/~asamsamb/THE%20%20CENTURY%20%20OF%20%20ROOTS/
THE%20%20CENTURY%20%20OF%20%20ROOTS.htm
Dr. Ali Bakhtiari is a retired senior energy expert, employed by the National Iranian Oil Co. (NIOC) of Tehran between 1971 and his mandatory retirement due to age in 2005. At the time he retired, Dr. Bakhtiari was attached to the director's office in the Corporate Planning Directorate of NIOC, specializing in issues related to the global oil, gas, and petrochemical industries. He is now an independent consultant with no official affiliation with NIOC. In this essay, Dr Bakhtiari begins to examine what may be the psychological impacts of Peak Oil.

Solar Silicon Solution Wins MIT Energy Plan Contest – (PES Network – May 02, 2007)
http://pesn.com/2007/05/02/9500469_RSI_Silicon_wins_MIT_contest/
Reaction Sciences, Inc (RSI) won the "People's Choice" award and first place in MIT's energy business plan contest for its ultra-disruptive process which provides solar grade Silicon at a fraction of the cost of current Silicon process plants, with only 10% of the capital cost. Once RSI is in high-volume production, the price of photovoltaic solar products will be able to drop significantly, making solar energy 35-60% cheaper than at present.

Buildings Could Save Energy by Spying on Inhabitants – (New Scientist – April 28, 2007)
http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/mg19426016.500?DCMP=NLC-nletter&
nsref=mg19426016.500
A SMART building, one with a network of motion detectors, can improve the energy efficiency and safety of the building while remaining deaf and blind to the activities of individuals. Such systems could use their knowledge of where groups congregate to turn down the air conditioning when there are only a few people in one part of the building, for example. In an emergency, electronic signs could direct people to the nearest available escape route when one becomes congested

Riding the Solar Wind on a 30-Mile Sail – (Wired – May 08, 2007)
http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2007/05/solarsail
A spinning web of electrified wire 30 miles wide may become the spacecraft propulsion system of the future. A team from the Kumpula Space Center in Finland is proposing a huge electronic sail for spacecraft that may dramatically reduce journey times across the solar system. The giant sail, which would be twice the length of Manhattan, is made from about 100 wires spun up into a whirling disk. Electrified by an onboard, solar-powered electron gun, the negatively charged wires repel the positively charged protons of the solar wind, providing thrust.

Around Globe, Walls Spring up to Divide Neighbors – (Reuters – May 01, 2007)
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=inDepthNews&storyID=2007-05-01T183252Z
_01_N25298747_RTRUKOC_0_US-WALLS.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTM
odLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage1
Walls that divide neighbors, cause controversy and form part of an array of physical barriers are going up around the world. When completed, the barriers will run thousands of miles, in places as far apart as Mexico and India, Afghanistan and Spain, Morocco and Thailand, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. By an irony of history, the United States - the country that hastened the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 - has emerged as a champion wall builder.

A FINAL QUOTE...

The future influences the present just as much as the past. - Friedrich Nietzsche

TreeHugger has a post on China's plans to increase investment in renewable energy.

As China chases the US for the title of world’s biggest consumer for everything from timber to energy—and with “biggest CO2 producer” already in the bag—no one doubts the need for lots of renewable power. While the government’s been revving up its cleaner engines for a couple of years, state-run China Power International’s announcement on Monday of a 30 billion yuan (US$3.1-US$3.9 billion) investment in renewables heralds the country’s biggest single such investment by any company, Chinese or not. By 2010, it plans to put into operation 1,000 megawatts (MW) of renewable energy capacity -- including wind, hydropower and biomass -- have another 1,000 MW under construction and have a further 1,000 MW in the pipeline. The company hopes to bankroll its investment, which beats those of Shell (an estimated $1.25 billion from 1996 to 2006) and BP ($900 million since 1999), by listing shares on the mainland's booming stock exchanges, Chief Executive Li Xiaolin told reporters on Monday. And it also anticipates benefiting from the government’s increasing affinity for clean energy, be it in the form of smarter regulation or financial incentives.

China has said it intends to spend an estimated US$200 billion on renewable energy over the next 15 years, partly to build hydropower, wind- and solar-powered plants to fuel its growth. Greatly boosting the country's renewable energy development, as the New York Times reports today and as we have reported previously, is Kyoto's Clean Development Mechanism. China gets about $3 billion of the $4.8 billion in yearly subsidies, but, it seems, to the detriment of clean energy in other developing nations.

WorldChanging's latest post in their "Priunciples" series is on Cradle to Cradle and Closing the Loop - one of the cornerstones of a sustainable industrial future - see the original for a set of links.

The 20th century industrial model follows a linear course -- what many people now call "cradle to grave" -- meaning that products we manufacture die when they're no longer useful to their owner, sent to a point of no return in a landfill somewhere. It's a model that epitomizes a wasteful and unsustainable system. In a sustainable industrial world, we take that fatal end point and reconnect it to the beginning, closing the loop and creating the possibility of reusing those dying industrial ingredients to manufacture a new generation of useful items. Instead of a linear "cradle to grave" model, we now have a cyclical "cradle to cradle" model.

In their book, Cradle to Cradle, William McDonough and Michael Braungart illustrate the potential of closed loop manufacturing to bring about a new industrial revolution, free of waste and pollution, which promises a sustainable material civilization. It's an idea that's been widely adopted by sustainable designers and architects, developed into certification criteria for sustainable products, and used as a clear and basic teaching tool for comparing the practices we need to leave behind with the ones that can carry us well into the future. ...

Jesse Walker at Reason has a good post on The Washington Post's effort to marginalise anti-war candidates and keep the selection to set of warmongers, fascists and fundamentalists on the Republican side and a by and large bland group on offer from the Democrats (though Barack Obama and John Edwards seem reasonable options amongst the mainstream contenders).

From a repellent unsigned editorial in today's Washington Post:

If you tuned in to the recent Republican and Democratic presidential debates, you may have had the same reaction as many viewers looking at the crowded stages: Who's that? The Democratic debate in South Carolina featured eight candidates, while 10 crammed into the GOP debate in California last Thursday. Voters trying to sort out their presidential choices aren't helped by debates cluttered with the likes of Mike Gravel (hint: he's a former senator from Alaska) on the Democratic side and Ron Paul (hint: he's a libertarian House member from Texas) among the Republicans. If the standard is that any declared candidate is entitled to a podium, we're going to end up with even more crowded stages in 2012.

Now, there were plenty of candidates on those stages who really were clutter: They don't have a chance to win and their messages are indistinguishable from the people who do have a shot. But it's telling that the Post didn't single out, say, Chris Dodd or Jim Gilmore. It singled out the two most anti-war and anti-establishment figures in the race, two men who clearly are alternatives to the frontrunners. Unlike the clutter candidates, Gravel and Paul said things at the debates that actually generated some buzz afterwards, on talk radio and online if not in the Post or with the Sunday-morning dinosaurs. I don't know if they won any votes, but they did more than anyone else to add ideas to the conversation.

Yes, I'm biased: I'm a Paul supporter, and while Gravel gives off a dotty-old-man vibe I think his anti-war, anti-IRS platform is preferable to any other Democrat's program. But I'm also glad to see small-scale candidates I don't agree with onstage, whether it's Tom Tancredo and his border-control campaign or Dennis Kucinich and his plans to regulate everything up to and including the sky. It's people like that who introduce actual debate to the debates. That concept might be foreign to the Post, which seems eager to whittle the political spectrum to a manageable centimeter, but for some of us it's the only thing that might make the race interesting.

Dick Cheney is in Iraq hooking up some of the local inhabitants' genitals to electrodes in the hope of getting new oil laws passed so that his buddies finally get their hands on the greatest prize of all.

US Vice-President Dick Cheney, on a surprise visit to Baghdad, pressed Iraq's leaders today to move without delay to reach power-sharing accords that Washington says are vital to ending sectarian violence. Mr Cheney's visit, part of a Middle East tour, signalled growing US impatience at Iraq's slowness in passing laws on oil distribution and other key measures as US military commanders build up troops to secure Baghdad.

Mr Cheney said talks also centered on the crackdown in the capital, involving the deployment of 30,000 extra US troops in what is seen as a last-ditch effort to stave off civil war between majority Shi'ites and once-dominant Sunni Arabs. "I emphasised the importance of making progress on the issues before us, not only on the security issues but also on the political issues that are pending before the Iraqi government," Mr Cheney said.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite, said his government was committed to restoring order, achieving national reconciliation and ensuring all Iraqis were able to share in the country's vast oil wealth.

Underscoring Iraq's huge security challenges, a suicide truck bomber killed 14 people and wounded 87 in Arbil, capital of the relatively peaceful Kurdish region in the north. ... Near the city of Kirkuk, three Iraqi journalists and their driver were dragged from their car, tortured and shot dead.

An explosion, apparently caused by a mortar bomb, rattled windows at the building in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone where Mr Cheney and reporters travelling with him were working. "His business was not disrupted," said Anne McBride, a Cheney spokeswoman. "He was not moved." Mortar attacks on the Green Zone are frequent.

US President George W Bush is under pressure to show progress in the four-year war, in which more than 3300 US soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed.

Alternet reports that a "Majority of Iraqi Lawmakers Now Reject Occupation".

More than half of the members of Iraq's parliament rejected for the first time on Tuesday the continuing occupation of their country. The U.S. media ignored the story.

On Tuesday, without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members of Iraq's parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country. 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, according to Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Al Sadr movement, the nationalist Shia group that sponsored the petition.

It's a hugely significant development. Lawmakers demanding an end to the occupation now have the upper hand in the Iraqi legislature for the first time; previous attempts at a similar resolution fell just short of the 138 votes needed to pass (there are 275 members of the Iraqi parliament, but many have fled the country's civil conflict, and at times it's been difficult to arrive at a quorum).

Reached by phone in Baghdad on Tuesday, Al-Rubaie said that he would present the petition, which is nonbinding, to the speaker of the Iraqi parliament and demand that a binding measure be put to a vote. Under Iraqi law, the speaker must present a resolution that's called for by a majority of lawmakers, but there are significant loopholes and what will happen next is unclear.

What is clear is that while the U.S. Congress dickers over timelines and benchmarks, Baghdad faces a major political showdown of its own. The major schism in Iraqi politics is not between Sunni and Shia or supporters of the Iraqi government and "anti-government forces," nor is it a clash of "moderates" against "radicals"; the defining battle for Iraq at the political level today is between nationalists trying to hold the Iraqi state together and separatists backed, so far, by the United States and Britain.

The continuing occupation of Iraq and the allocation of Iraq's resources -- especially its massive oil and natural gas deposits -- are the defining issues that now separate an increasingly restless bloc of nationalists in the Iraqi parliament from the administration of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose government is dominated by Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish separatists.

By "separatists," we mean groups who oppose a unified Iraq with a strong central government; key figures like Maliki of the Dawa party, Shia leader Abdul Aziz Al-Hakeem of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq ("SCIRI"), Vice President Tariq Al-Hashimi of the Sunni Islamic Party, President Jalal Talabani -- a Kurd -- and Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish Autonomous Region, favor partitioning Iraq into three autonomous regions with strong local governments and a weak central administration in Baghdad. (The partition plan is also favored by several congressional Democrats, notably Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware.)

Iraq's separatists also oppose setting a timetable for ending the U.S. occupation, preferring the addition of more American troops to secure their regime. They favor privatizing Iraq's oil and gas and decentralizing petroleum operations and revenue distribution.

But public opinion is squarely with Iraq's nationalists. According to a poll by the University of Maryland's Project on International Public Policy Attitudes, majorities of all three of Iraq's major ethno-sectarian groups support a unified Iraq with a strong central government. For at least two years, poll after poll has shown that large majorities of Iraqis of all ethnicities and sects want the United States to set a timeline for withdrawal, even though (in the case of Baghdad residents), they expect the security situation to deteriorate in the short term as a result.

That's nationalism, and it remains the central if unreported motivation for many Iraqis, both within the nascent government and on the streets.

While sectarian fighting at the neighborhood and community level has made life unlivable for millions of Iraqis, Iraqi nationalism -- portrayed as a fiction by supporters of the invasion -- supercedes sectarian loyalties at the political level. A group of secular, Sunni and Shia nationalists have long voted together on key issues, but so far have failed to join forces under a single banner. ...

Asked about the Americans' reaction to the growing power of the nationalists, Mutlaq said, "We're trying our best to reach out to the U.S. side, but to no avail."

That appears to be a trend. Iraqi nationalists have attempted again and again to forge relationships with members of Congress, the State Department, the Pentagon and the White House but have found little interest in dialogue and no support. Instead, key nationalists like al-Sadr have been branded as "extremists," "thugs" and "criminals."

That's a tragic missed opportunity; the nationalists are likely Iraq's best hope for real and lasting reconciliation among the country's warring factions. They are the only significant political force focused on rebuilding a sovereign, united and independent Iraq without sectarian and ethnic tensions or foreign meddling -- from either the West or Iran. Hassan Al-Shammari, the head of Al-Fadhila bloc in the Iraqi parliament, said this week, "We have a peace plan, and we're trying to work with other nationalist Iraqis to end the U.S. and Iranian interventions, but we're under daily attacks and there's huge pressure to destroy our peace mission."

A sovereign and unified Iraq, free of sectarian violence, is what George Bush and Tony Blair claim they want most. The most likely reason that the United States and Britain have rebuffed those Iraqi nationalists who share those goals is that the nationalists oppose permanent basing rights and the privatization of Iraq's oil sector. The administration, along with their allies in Big Oil, has pressed the Iraqi government to adopt an oil law that would give foreign multinationals a much higher rate of return than they enjoy in other major oil producing countries and would lock in their control over what George Bush called Iraq's "patrimony" for decades.

Al-Shammari said this week: "We're afraid the U.S. will make us pass this new oil law through intimidation and threatening. We don't want it to pass, and we know it'll make things worse, but we're afraid to rise up and block it, because we don't want to be bombed and arrested the next day."

I'll close with Kevin at Cryptogon taking a look at the CFR's recent article on "The End of National Currency". Lots more at the link and some interesting interpretations in the comments on gold banking.

The End of National Currency is the most astonishing thing that I have read since Zbigniew Brzezinski’s appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this year.

Foreign Affairs is the most important and influential journal of International Relations in the world. It is the mechanism by which the Council on Foreign Relations disseminates the game plan to people in polite circles. CFR’s positions on core issues represent the raw building blocks for most of the gibberish spewed by the corporate media and the maniac fascist policies of the “developed world.” Publications like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are dumbed down versions of Foreign Affairs that are published daily. Television news is the same thing, but dumbed down again. Foreign Affairs is also where politicians from several countries look to determine what’s safe to say, which policies are doable and what needs to be done. A degree in International Relations is largely a certification of a student’s ability to internalize CFR jargon and concepts.

Got the picture?

Now, what did the most important and influential journal of International Relations in the world just say about the U.S. Dollar and the global economy?

In summary: The U.S. dollar is an “absurdity” and the only way to stave off a global disaster is for most countries to join one of three global currencies, based loosely on: the dollar, the euro and a pan Asian currency.

I encourage everyone to read The End of National Currency in its entirety, but I’ll quote some of the more remarkable parts below:

The dollar’s privileged status as today’s global money is not heaven-bestowed. The dollar is ultimately just another money supported only by faith that others will willingly accept it in the future in return for the same sort of valuable things it bought in the past. This puts a great burden on the institutions of the U.S. government to validate that faith. And those institutions, unfortunately, are failing to shoulder that burden. Reckless U.S. fiscal policy is undermining the dollar’s position even as the currency’s role as a global money is expanding.

Four decades ago, the renowned French economist Jacques Rueff, writing just a few years before the collapse of the Bretton Woods dollar-based gold-exchange standard, argued that the system “attains such a degree of absurdity that no human brain having the power to reason can defend it.” The precariousness of the dollar’s position today is similar. The United States can run a chronic balance-of-payments deficit and never feel the effects. Dollars sent abroad immediately come home in the form of loans, as dollars are of no use abroad. “If I had an agreement with my tailor that whatever money I pay him he returns to me the very same day as a loan,” Rueff explained by way of analogy, “I would have no objection at all to ordering more suits from him.”

With the U.S. current account deficit running at an enormous 6.6 percent of GDP (about $2 billion a day must be imported to sustain it), the United States is in the fortunate position of the suit buyer with a Chinese tailor who instantaneously returns his payments in the form of loans — generally, in the U.S. case, as purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds. The current account deficit is partially fueled by the budget deficit (a dollar more of the latter yields about 20-50 cents more of the former), which will soar in the next decade in the absence of reforms to curtail federal “entitlement” spending on medical care and retirement benefits for a longer-living population. The United States — and, indeed, its Chinese tailor — must therefore be concerned with the sustainability of what Rueff called an “absurdity.” In the absence of long-term fiscal prudence, the United States risks undermining the faith foreigners have placed in its management of the dollar — that is, their belief that the U.S. government can continue to sustain low inflation without having to resort to growth-crushing interest-rate hikes as a means of ensuring continued high capital inflows …

At the turn of the twentieth century — the height of the gold standard — Simmel commented, “Although money with no intrinsic value would be the best means of exchange in an ideal social order, until that point is reached the most satisfactory form of money may be that which is bound to a material substance.” Today, with money no longer bound to any material substance, it is worth asking whether the world even approximates the “ideal social order” that could sustain a fiat dollar as the foundation of the global financial system. There is no way effectively to insure against the unwinding of global imbalances should China, with over a trillion dollars of reserves, and other countries with dollar-rich central banks come to fear the unbearable lightness of their holdings. ...