NY Times: Arctic Ice Cap Shrank Sharply This Summer, Experts Say

Arctic Ice Cap Shrank Sharply This Summer, Experts Say

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: September 28, 2005
The floating cap of sea ice on the Arctic Ocean shrank this summer to what is probably its smallest size in a century, continuing a trend toward less summer ice that is hard to explain without attributing it in part to human-caused global warming, various experts on the region said today.

The findings are consistent with recent computer simulations showing that a buildup of smokestack and tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases could lead to a profoundly transformed Arctic later this century in which much of the once ice-locked ocean is routinely open water in summers.

It also appears that the change is becoming self sustaining, with the increased open water absorbing solar energy that would be reflected back into space by bright white ice, said Ted A. Scambos, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., which compiled the data along with NASA.

"Feedbacks in the system are starting to take hold," Dr. Scambos said. "The consecutive record-low extents make it pretty certain a long-term decline is underway."

The North Pole ice cap always grows in winter and shrinks in the summer, but the new summer low, measured on Sept. 19th, was 20 percent below the average minimum ice extent measured from 2000 back to 1978, when precise satellite mapping of the ice began, the snow and ice center reported.

The difference between the average ice area and the area that persisted this summer was about 500,000 square miles, or twice the size of Texas, the scientists said.

This summer was the fourth in a row with ice extents sharply below the long-term average, said Mark Serreze, a senior scientist at the snow and ice center and a professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

A natural cycle in the polar atmosphere, the Arctic Oscillation, that contributed to the reduction in Arctic ice in the past was not a significant factor right now, he said, adding that rising temperatures driven by accumulating greenhouse-gas emissions had to be playing a role.

He and other scientists said that there could be more variability ahead, including some years in which the sea ice will grow. But they have found few hints that other factors, like more Arctic cloudiness in a warming world, might reverse the trend.

"With all that dark open water, you start to see an increase in Arctic Ocean heat storage," Dr. Serreze said. "Come autumn and winter that makes it a lot harder to grow ice, and the next spring you're left with less and thinner ice. And it's easier to lose even more the next year."

The result, he said, is that the Arctic is "becoming a profoundly different place than we grew up thinking about."

Other experts on Arctic ice and climate disagreed on details. For example, Ignatius G. Rigor at the University of Washington said that the change was likely due to a mix of factors, including residual influences from the atmospheric cycle.

But he agreed with Dr. Serreze that the influence from greenhouse gases had to be involved.

"The global warming idea has to be a good part of the story," Dr. Rigor said. "I think we have a different climate state in the Arctic now."

NY Times: Chinese Internet Media Censorship

This from the NY Times. Not environmental specifically, but Chinese environmentalists have been very savvy in utilizing the media for their campaigns. This may put pressure on that.

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The New York Times
September 26, 2005
China Tightens Its Restrictions for News Media on the Internet
By JOSEPH KAHN

BEIJING, Sept. 25 - China on Sunday imposed more restrictions intended to limit the news and other information available to Internet users, and it sharply restricted the scope of content permitted on Web sites.

The rules are part of a broader effort to roll back what the Communist Party views as a threatening trend toward liberalization in the news media. Taken together, the measures amount to a stepped-up effort to police the Internet, which has become a dominant source of news and information for millions of urban Chinese.

Major search engines and portals like Sina.com and Sohu.com, used by millions of Chinese each day, must stop posting their own commentary articles and instead make available only opinion pieces generated by government-controlled newspapers and news agencies, the regulations stipulate.

The rules also state that private individuals or groups must register as "news organizations" before they can operate e-mail distribution lists that spread news or commentary. Few individuals or private organizations are likely to be allowed to register as news organizations, meaning they can no longer legally distribute information by e-mail.

Existing online news sites, like those run by newspapers or magazines, must "give priority" to news and commentary pieces distributed by the leading national and provincial news organs.

This restriction on the ability of Web sites to republish articles produced by the huge array of news organizations that do not fall under direct government control seems intended to ensure that the Propaganda Department has time to filter content generated by local publications before it can be widely disseminated on the Internet.

The new rules are the first major update to policies on Internet news and opinion since 2000.

"The foremost responsibility of news sites on the Internet is to serve the people, serve socialism, guide public opinion in the right direction, and uphold the interests of the country and the public good," the regulations state.

Although Chinese authorities have already effectively unlimited powers to control the gathering and publication of news, the Propaganda Department has sometimes struggled to censor information about delicate developments before it circulates on the Internet.

About 100 million Chinese now have access to the Internet. Though the government closely monitors domestic content and blocks what officials consider to be subversive Web sites from overseas, savvy users can obtain domestic and overseas information that never appears in China's traditional news media.

By the time officials have decided that a topic might prove harmful to the governing party's agenda, an item about it has often already been posted or discussed on hundreds of sites and viewed by many people, defeating some traditional censorship tools.

Experts who follow the Internet say one of the most significant changes is the ban on self-generated opinion and commentary articles that accompany the standard state-issued news bulletins on major portal sites.

Wall Street Journal: Thai 'Biofuel' Sector Takes Off

Thai 'Biofuel' Sector Takes Off
As Asia Seeks Alternative to Oil
By PATRICK BARTA
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
September 22, 2005; Page C14

BANGKOK -- Two years after emerging as the world's biggest new source of oil demand, Asia is getting serious about developing more homegrown oil alternatives, including renewable "biofuels" such as gasohol -- a mixture of gasoline and fuels made from the region's abundant crops.

For years, Asia mostly ignored such alternatives, especially when oil was cheap. But with oil prices hovering above $65 a barrel -- and competition for overseas oil heating up -- many Asian countries are re-examining overlooked domestic energy sources.

Gasohol is a prime -- if somewhat offbeat -- example. It is created by combining traditional gasoline with ethanol, a fuel that can be made from crops like sugar or corn. Though analysts are skeptical gasohol will ever replace ordinary petroleum products, some believe it could at least help make a dent in Asia's mushrooming reliance on foreign crude and help ease pressures on the global oil market.

Thailand is leading the pack. As fuel prices continue to rise there, gasohol prices have actually become cheaper at the pump than those of traditional gasoline. Platts, a commodity-industry news service, said demand for gasohol in Thailand increased sixfold in the first five months of this year compared with the same period a year earlier.


Esso Thailand, a Thai unit of Exxon Mobil, plans to install gasohol pumps at all 650 of its Thai stations by 2006; currently, it has 22 stations selling the fuel. Tuesday, Thailand's largest oil refiner, Thai Oil, said it plans to invest as much as $250 million to build a plant to make ethanol from cassava roots.

Other Asian countries are hopping on the bandwagon. Malaysian government officials said yesterday they are working on a national biofuels policy that aims to promote palm oil as a base for diesel fuel by 2007. Officials said the plan could include palm-oil "biodiesel" pumps at gasoline stations as well as subsidies to make the fuel more attractive. Malaysia is the world's biggest producer of palm oil.

Last year, the Chinese government issued a rule ordering mandatory use of gasohol in five provinces; and gas stations in some areas have stopped selling normal gasoline altogether. Gasohol initiatives are expected to extend to at least 27 cities in China by the end of this year.

Renewable fuels such as gasohol now satisfy only a tiny fraction of Asia's soaring energy demand, and the region's thirst for oil continues to grow. According to the International Energy Agency, Asia's daily oil demand is expected to work out to slightly more than 24 million barrels a day this year, 2.4% higher than in 2004. While that percentage growth is less than experienced last year, it still is twice the rate of increase North America will have in 2005.

Many analysts question whether biofuels are worth the effort given Asia's massive petroleum demand. Some studies have argued that the benefits of gasohol are wiped out once other factors -- such as the cost of fuel needed to raise crops for ethanol -- are included.

"Even a big [gasohol] program is small potatoes," said John Vautrain, an analyst in the Singapore office of international oil-and-gas consultancy Purvin & Gertz. In many cases, he notes, gasohol programs wind up helping farmers more than consumers of fuels.

All the recent interest in gasohol in Asia suggests the region is at least starting to think more seriously about ways to reduce its dependence on foreign oil, which is a potentially positive development for the global economy. Some countries, such as Brazil, have succeeded in making gasohol a major part of their fuel supply.

Meanwhile, Asian countries also are beginning to devote more resources to energy conservation. Some countries, like China, are making enormous investments in other nonoil energy sources such as nuclear power.

The growing interest in alternative fuels also bodes well for some Asian companies, analysts say.

Sean Darby, a Hong Kong-based equities strategist for Nomura International, is recommending clients switch away from stocks tied directly to oil, which he believes carries more risk, given its unusually high price and volatility. But he continues to believe long-term demand for power will remain high, which means investors should keep looking for energy plays. If investors avoid oil stocks, companies tied to alternative fuels look good, he said.

"What you're getting is very, very cheap [fuel] alternatives that governments ought to have initiated a long time ago," Mr. Darby said. Now that oil prices are high, "that tends to galvanize governments" to make investments in alternative fuels or create incentives for private companies to do it on their own, he adds.

However, trying to sort out which companies to invest in is hard. Many analysts don't follow ethanol producers. In other cases, ethanol production is handled by large companies of which primary investments are in other businesses, making it difficult to determine the value of their ethanol operations.

Nevertheless, Mr. Darby singles out a couple of Thai companies with "buy" ratings because of their strong position in the latest ethanol boom. One is Lanna Resources, a Bangkok-based company that mines coal but also controls one of Thailand's ethanol producers.

Nomura International also likes Khon Kaen Sugar Group, which is building an ethanol plant due to be completed in November.

In some ways, it is hardly surprising that countries such as Thailand would push for more gasohol. Besides not having enough domestic oil, the country is a major producer of sugar and the world's biggest exporter of molasses. Both commodities can be used to make ethanol.

Earlier this year, Thailand said all state-owned cars must run on gasohol or other alternative fuels. The government also has said it plans to phase out some popular gasoline products entirely in favor of gasohol by 2007.

--Kullawee Pongpattanajit in Bangkok and Ellen Zhu in Shanghai contributed to this article.

Write to Patrick Barta at patrick.barta@wsj.com

Dennis Hayes: Making China green (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

Sunday, August 21, 2005
Making China green
The world has a stake in the developing giant's balance of industry and environment

DENIS HAYES

My first trip to China, in 1984, was to a repressive Third-World country. Most of the people I encountered were terrified to talk with a Westerner. Conversations without an official interpreter were furtive; conversations with an interpreter were bland.

China's streets were filled not just with the famous throngs of bicycles but with horse carts, occasional oxen and a few crude vehicles with noisy, polluting, two-stroke engines. Most buildings were squat, ugly, Soviet-style concrete blockhouses. Men and women alike wore identical, threadbare blue Mao jackets.

Each of my subsequent four trips has been like a visit to yet another new country.

Napoleon, surveying a map in 1803, pointed to China and famously remarked, "There lies a sleeping giant. Let him sleep. For when he wakes he will move the world."

The giant is now fully awake. China has averaged 10 percent real Gross Domestic Product growth per year for the past quarter-century. With a GDP of $1.6 trillion, China is now the world's sixth largest economy and its third most active trading nation.

Last year, China consumed half of the world's cement production, 40 percent of its coal, one-third of its steel, nearly one-fourth of its copper and one-fifth of its aluminum.

Wealth and Poverty

With China's huge population, this wealth does not go as far as in the United States. The average American earns 30 times as much as the average Chinese.

But national averages are deceiving. In China's industrialized east, and especially in its cosmopolitan cities, the visible wealth can be disconcerting to anyone who still expects Mao jackets. College-educated, urbane, sleek Shanghai women have embraced fashions from Milan and cosmetics from Paris.

Urban bicycles no longer dominate the roads. Indeed, in downtown areas of Beijing and Shanghai, they are becoming an endangered species.

Last year, China was the world's largest market for Audi A6s and BMW 7 Series. China has 15,000 highway projects under way, enough road to span the breadth of America 25 times.

Yet even as 26-year-old software entrepreneurs in Shanghai pay cash for new Ferraris, hundreds of millions of peasants in Western China burn dried dung for warmth inside windowless mud huts. The cleavages between cities and the countryside, between owners and workers, between the superbly educated and the illiterate are perhaps the widest in the world. This is awkward, to say the least, in a nation that still formally clings to communism as its official political ideology.

China's national leaders are acutely aware that historical regime changes in China have usually grown out of peasant revolts. They believe that their most important challenge is to distribute wealth to the countryside without undermining the urban engines that produce the wealth.

China's Environment

Ten years ago, Chinese leaders popularized the slogan: "Development first. Environment later."

"Later" has arrived with a vengeance.

Despite tough new anti-pollution laws, savvy grass-roots activists and hard-nosed regulators, China's power plants, refineries, chemical factories and steel mills still spill countless tons of poisons into the air and waterways.

According to the World Health Organization, 16 of the world's 20 most air-polluted cities are in China. Breathing the air in any major Chinese city on a bad air day is like smoking three packs of cigarettes. Respiratory illness is the No. 1 killer in China. Every year, air pollution causes 400,000 premature deaths and 75 million asthma attacks.

Every major waterway has stretches in which fish cannot be eaten because they are too toxic. Skyrocketing demand for clean water is drawing down aquifers faster than they can recharge. The spreading Gobi Desert has already displaced 10 times as many farmers as were uprooted in the American Dust Bowl in the 1930s.

Feeding the Dragon

Between 1990 and 2003, China's consumption of iron ore increased tenfold; its consumption of aluminum increased sixfold; its use of copper and industrial platinum increased 80-fold.

However, the real pinch point for China is energy. Energy use is increasing 10 percent per year, and electricity production is growing 15 percent annually.

The country is adding a new 1,000-megawatt power plant every week. Still, 24 provinces experienced severe power shortages last year.

The Three Gorges Dam -- the world's largest hydroelectric dam -- has displaced nearly 2 million people and will destroy a complex, ancient ecosystem.

China uses twice as much coal as the United States does. Eighty percent of China's electricity and two-third of all its energy come from coal. This is a planetary problem because coal produces more greenhouse gas than any other fuel.

Oil is another huge energy problem for China. Twelve years ago, China was a net oil exporter. Today, it imports 45 percent of its oil and is the second-largest oil consumer in the world, after the United States.

Ironically, China's largest energy opportunity is a legacy of its former command-and-control economy. China uses nearly five times as much energy per unit of GDP as the United States does, and almost 12 times as much as super-efficient Japan. Efficiency investments are generally cheap and easy, and promising portents are emerging.

China's national leaders -- most of them trained as engineers -- strongly support efforts to improve efficiency. No top Chinese leader would dismiss energy efficiency as merely "a sign of personal virtue" of no relevance to national policy -- as did U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.

China's national energy efficiency improvement targets are four times as ambitious as those of the Bush administration.

China is implementing tough efficiency standards for appliances.

China's vehicle fuel efficiency standards are also stronger than ours. Most new U.S.-style sports utility vehicles will be illegal in China by 2008.

A new generation of Chinese leaders is also eager to leapfrog past 20th century energy sources and move directly to decentralized, renewable sources.

China passed a national law calling for all utilities to obtain at least 10 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2020 -- a proposal that has been rejected repeatedly by our Congress, most recently two weeks ago.

Strong, consistent policies to support wind energy development are leading to skyrocketing growth in Mongolia and the western provinces.

European wind companies have thus far dominated sales, but aggressive new Chinese wind companies are entering the field.

China is responding to the energy challenge much as the United States responded to sputnik. More than three times as many Chinese as Americans will earn Ph.D.s in engineering and the sciences this year. Bright young Chinese scientists who were sent abroad to study with the world's leading researchers of solar electricity and biofuels are returning home to build new industries.

This follows on China's decision a few years ago to get serious about solar water heating. After less than 10 years of rapid growth, China now accounts for more than half of all solar water heating in the entire world. Moreover, China's solar collectors are cheaper yet more sophisticated than most sold here.

China's decisions about energy are arguably the most important environmental decisions being made anywhere in the world. Massive coal consumption will affect not just air quality in Chinese cities, but also the climate of the entire planet.

A large Chinese commitment to nuclear power could cause nuclear to become the power source of choice in the developing world, which is seeking to emulate China's economic miracle. The implications for nuclear weapons proliferation would be almost too dreadful to contemplate.

Last year, President Hu Jintao announced that China is entering a new stage of development, which he termed "scientific development." His much-reported talk placed great emphasis on the need for environmental balance and social equity.

China and the rest of the world have a huge stake in his success.

Denis Hayes is president of The Bullitt Foundation.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer (2002): China hopes it can upstage U.S. on environment

Thursday, November 28, 2002
China hopes it can upstage U.S. on environment
Atlanta physicist to head up program at Peking University

By JULIE CHAO
COX NEWS SERVICE

BEIJING -- If China is looking for one area in which it can beat the United States, then Peking University is betting on the environment. And to better its chances, it's taking a gamble on an American.

C.S. Kiang, a physicist from the Georgia Institute of Technology who helped develop an environmental program there, has been chosen to run the newly established College of Environmental Sciences at China's most prestigious university. The college is the first of its kind in China.

"One reason they wanted to set up this college (is because President) Bush hasn't emphasized the environment too much," he said. "If China does something big on the environment, it will be almost like a Sputnik."

The Soviet Union shocked the world, humbled the United States and sparked the space race when it launched Sputnik, the world's first satellite, in 1957.

Two decades of rapid development have not come cheaply to China's environment. The country suffers from annual flooding in the south and a severe chronic drought in the north. Its massive dust storms have found their way across the Pacific Ocean and its cities are some of the most polluted on earth.

"This could all be the case in the future for developing countries, like in South America, Africa, Southeast Asia," Kiang said. "If China can solve these problems -- balance the environment and development -- they could be solved for the world."

Environmental degradation is one of the biggest factors threatening China's continued economic growth. Yet government officials have been slow to recognize that environmental issues must be dealt with proactively rather than reactively.

"The mind-set is the most difficult to change," Kiang said. Most Chinese think "once you develop the economy, then you fix the environment."

Peking University decided to merge several departments and research centers to form the college, which officially opened in June. Kiang hopes the interdisciplinary approach will promote a more comprehensive look at China's environmental problems, allowing, for example, urban planners to work with natural resources specialists.

Kiang also wants to emphasize innovation, a trait now lacking in China's manufacturing-oriented economy.

"Everything is made in China, but how many things come from China?" he asked.

The government has allocated about $128 million to Peking University and Tsinghua University, China's finest, over the past three years to make them competitive with the West's best schools.

Kiang is the first foreign dean at Peking University.

"People say, 'You gotta have someone from Harvard, someone from Berkeley.' Rarely do they say, 'You gotta have someone from Georgia,' " he said. "In that sense, Georgia Tech should feel pretty good."

Born in Shanghai and educated in Taiwan, Kiang has lived in the United States for 40 years, 35 of them in Atlanta. His wife runs the Kiang Gallery in Atlanta.

He has worked with Chinese scientists on studying the impact of industrialization in the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta. As a consultant for companies including Coca Cola and Bell South, as an academic and as an adviser on Atlanta trade missions, he visited China more than 100 times. But he had never spent more than two weeks here before taking the job.

Having retired only last fall from nearly 20 years at Georgia Tech, he wasn't planning on taking up a project requiring a commute between Beijing and Atlanta. But he said it was an honor and an opportunity too interesting to pass up.

As an Atlantan and an environmentalist, he is also trying to work with the Beijing city government, whose winning Olympic bid for the 2008 Games included a promise to hold a "Green Olympics." But Kiang is diplomatic on the question of how committed Beijing is to that concept.

"It's too early to say," he said. "They have a good idea . . . but implementation is the issue."

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Beijing clears air about smog problem

This is an old article I came across that suggests how China will clear the air for the 2008 Olympics. I've heard that Capital Iron and Steel has largely been moved out of the city and will be completely moved by 2008.

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Beijing clears air about smog problem

Wednesday, September 1, 1999

By JOSEPH ALBRIGHT and MARCIA KUNSTEL
COX NEWS SERVICE


BEIJING -- Authorities yesterday revealed a sooty secret long suspected by residents of this heavily polluted capital: that for vital state occasions, the Beijing government can switch off the smog.

Beijing officials promised to use that power to the hilt next month "to ensure a successful celebration" of the 50th anniversary of the communist takeover of China on Oct. 1, state media reported.

"About 25 large enterprises in Beijing that produce a lot of pollution every day . . . have been ordered to reduce production and stop using equipment burning fuel and coal from Sept. 21 to Oct. 1," the official state-run China Daily disclosed.

Among the enterprises instructed to cease burning coal before the revolutionary celebration was Beijing's most notorious polluter, Capital Iron and Steel Corp., which has been blamed for generating about 20 percent of the eye-stinging fumes that turned Beijing's sky into a gray curtain of smog on 256 days in 1997. Comparable figures since then are not available.

This is the first time anyone can remember that Chinese authorities openly acknowledged that they can close down the sources of pollution for political reasons.

When President Clinton visited Beijing in June 1998, China's Environment Minister Xie Zhenhua dismissed talk that Beijing would order a shutdown of smoke-spewing factories for the occasion.

Xie told a press conference that a factory shutdown would do little good. Then, no doubt by coincidence, Beijing was blessed with a rare run of sky-blue weather during the Clinton visit.

Five years earlier, some factories and hospitals were ordered to turn off their coal-burning heating plants to reduce smog at nearby sports complexes during a visit to Beijing by an Olympics inspection team.

This time around, the Beijing Public Security and Traffic Administration left no doubt about its determination to control the smog for the Oct. 1 celebration. "These measures are expected to improve the quality and visibility of the air above Beijing in a short period of time," China Daily reported.

Besides shuttering coal-burning factories, municipal authorities also prohibited all "large freight trucks, diesel locomotives and motorcycles using mixed fuels" from entering the city for 10 days before the celebration.

China Daily cited a painful episode five years ago: "In the last military review on the 45th anniversary of the People's Republic of China, Beijingers were unable to view the fighter planes flying in the sky because of low visibility of the heavily polluted air."

Another Beijing newspaper, Shopping Guide, reported that most radio transmitters supporting telephone pagers will be closed on Oct. 1 "to guarantee an absolutely unblocked radio system in the air above Beijing for the flight formation of the Air Force, which will fly over Tiananmen Square that day."