By Timothy Gardner

Reuters

NEW YORK - An Alaskan village north of the Arctic Circle has filed suit in a U.S. District Court against 24 energy companies, in an attempt to link erosion damage from global warming to the defendants' actions.

Residents of Kivalina, a village of about 400 native Inupiat located on the tip of a barrier reef between the Chukchi Sea and two rivers, filed suit on Tuesday against the companies in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

The suit is one of many global warming cases that have been filed after the U.N.'s climate change panel last year squarely placed the blame for global warming on human actions.

Village residents claimed that greenhouse gas emissions from the companies help warm the atmosphere and melt sea ice that used to protect them from winter storms. "Houses and buildings are in imminent danger of falling into the sea as the village is battered by storms and its ground crumbles from underneath it," the suit said.

The residents seek relocation costs which could run to $400 million.

Late last year, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration offered a gloomy report on global warming's impact on the Arctic, finding less ice and hotter air.

The defendants, including Exxon Mobil Corp, BP Plc, Chevron Corp, coal miner Peabody Energy Corp, and power generator American Electric Power, are some of the largest producers of products that emit the main greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, or sell coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel.

Matt Pawa, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in an interview that under nuisance laws any major contributors to pollution problems can be sued.

He said since greenhouse gases combine together in the atmosphere to cause the overall problem of global warming, the biggest polluters can be blamed for contributing to the damage in Alaska. "Individual CO2 molecules don't have name tags," he said when asked if the companies could be directly linked to damage to the village.

The companies were chosen because they conduct some business in California, where the suit was filed. Pawa represented environmental groups in a successful automobile greenhouse emissions case in Vermont late last year that major automakers are appealing.

Gantt Walton, a spokesman for ExxonMobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, said the company had no comment on the case because it was still reviewing it.

He said ExxonMobil takes global warming "very seriously" and that the risks have warranted action by the company including reducing greenhouse gas emissions at its operations and supporting research into technology that could lead to breakthroughs.

Representatives of two other companies, Peabody and Chevron, did not immediately return telephone calls.

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Agence France Presse
Graphic on the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, designed to preserve crop diversity in case of large-scale catastrophe, in advance of its inauguration on February 26.

By Tony Paterson in Berlin

The Independent Eurpoe

The name alone makes it sound like a relict from the Cold War or something out of a Bond film: it is referred to as the "Doomsday Vault" and housed in an icy steel and concrete bunker, more than 100 metres deep inside the mountain permafrost of an Arctic archipelago. Yet the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is man's latest attempt to create a latter-day Noah's Ark, or insurance policy, for the planet in the event of a catastrophe such as devastating climate change induced by global warming.

After decades of planning and construction work, the vault will officially start operating Feb. 26. As the world's first global seed bank, it has the capacity to hold up to 4.5 million batches of seeds from all the known varieties of the planet's main food crops.

The vault has been built to withstand nuclear missile attacks and even dramatic rises in sea levels that would result from both the Greenland and Antarctic ice shelves melting simultaneously.

The vault aims to make it possible to re-establish crops and plants should they disappear from their natural environment or be wiped out by major disasters. Cary Fowler, of the Global Crop Diversity Trust which set up the project together with Norway's Nordic Gene Bank described the vault as the "perfect place" for seed storage.

The vault is made up of three large, airtight, refrigerated cold-storage chambers which are housed in a long trident-shaped tunnel bored through a layer of permafrost in to a mountain of sandstone and limestone on the archipelago.

Norway's Svalbard's islands lie some 620 miles south of the North Pole deep inside the Arctic circle. No trees grow on the archipelago, which is home to some 2,300 people. It was selected because of its inhospitable climate and remoteness. The average winter temperature on Svalbard is around minus 14C. The vault is protected by high walls of fortified concrete, doors armoured with steel plate and a home guard of free-roaming polar bears.

"The facility is designed to hold twice as many varieties of agricultural crops as we think exist," said Mr Fowler, "It will not be filled up in my lifetime nor in my grandchildren's lifetime, but at these temperatures, seeds for important crops like wheat, barley and peas can last for 1,000 years," he added.

The permafrost and rocks surrounding the tunnels are meant to ensure the seed samples remain frozen, even if the plant's refrigeration system fails and global warming raises the outside temperature. "It is an insurance policy for the planet," Mr Carey said.

When Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, and the Nobel Peace Prize-winning environmentalist Wangari Maathai arrive in Svalbard for the project's inauguration, the vault will contain 250,000 seed samples.

Scientists involved in the project pointed out that some of the world's biodiversity had already been lost as a result of war or natural disaster. Gene vaults have disappeared in Iraq and Afghanistan following the US invasion and seed banks in the Philippines and Honduras fell to natural disasters.

The Svalbard vault already appears to have survived its first environmental test. Last Thursday what was described as "the biggest earthquake in Norway's history" – a tremor with a magnitude of 6.2 – was registered near the archipelago.

Agence France Presse

PARIS - Scientists have discovered Antarctic krill living and feeding at crushing depths of 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) in waters around the Antarctic Peninsula, according to a study released Monday.

Until now the shrimp-like crustaceans were thought to only live within several hundred metres (yards) of the ocean surface, the study said.

The discovery radically changes the scientific understanding of the major food source for marine animals including fish, squid, penguins, seals and whales, said the study, published in the journal Current Biology.

"Most krill make their living in the ocean's surface waters," said Andrew Clark of the British Antarctic Survey.

"It was a surprise to observe actively feeding adult krill -- including females that were apparently ready to spawn -- close to the seabed in deep waters."

Antarctic krill feed on tiny phytoplankton and live in schools, called swarms, sometimes reaching densities of 10,000 individuals.

A key link in the Antarctic food chain, they grow to lengths of six centimetres (2.4 inches) and weigh up to two grammes (0.7 ounces). They have a lifespan of up to eight to ten years.

Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey and the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton used a deep-diving, remotely operated vehicle to film the krill in the nearly pitch-black depths.

REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch
Tourists sit in gondolas on the Grand Canal in front of the Rialto bridge in Venice September 2006.

by Phil Stewart
Reuters

VENICE - Sea levels in the lagoon city of Venice plunged to a 14-year low this week, beaching some gondolas and exposing the canal-beds of famed waterways.

The Centro Maree, whose forecasts are vital for organizing transport in Venice, said a high-pressure system set off a "Code White" alert that signals low sea levels.

Canals slipped on Monday to 80 centimeters (31.5 inches) below average sea level, the lowest since 1994, and remained at "Code White" levels on Tuesday. The lowest level recorded was 92 cm below in 1989.

"The forecasts have to be as accurate as possible because you can't go down certain canals (at extremely low levels), so ambulance services need to be informed, the firemen need to be informed," said Franca Pastore at the Centro Maree.

Venetians, long accustomed to floods and dry spells, were taking the swing in sea levels in their stride.

A gondola association said their business was still prospering, since only a tiny fraction of the city's canals were off limits.

Being beached is hardly a top worry for Venetians. Instead, they are building a more than a multi-billion euro underwater dam system to save them from future floods that threaten the city's survival.

Centro Maree said the low water levels were expected to persist throughout midweek before returning to normal.

By Yereth Rosen

Reuters

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Royal Dutch Shell has offered to scale back its oil drilling plans in the Beaufort Sea in order to win the lifting of an injunction against the activity, but the move is unlikely to placate opponents of the plans.

Alaska natives won a court order blocking Shell's plan to drill in the Beaufort last summer, but the major is hopeful that it can persuade the Alaska native groups that led the legal challenge to drop their opposition.

"We felt, let's digest this in digestible chunks, let's proceed in digestible chunks, so the communities can see from the experience of it that this is very manageable," Shell's U.S. president, John Hoffmeister, told Reuters on the sidelines of a industry conference this week.

Shell now plans to use one drilling rig instead of two when it tests its Sivulliq oil prospect off in the Beaufort Sea if the court lifts its injunction. Shell also plans to drill only partial wells -- called top-hole wells -- at the site which would not extend to the hydrocarbon reservoir.

But the proposed lower level of activity was not enough to convince some opponents.

"I just still don't feel reassured that there's a real good plan for oil spills with ice chunks as big as this building," said Siikauraq Martha Whiting, mayor of the Northwest Arctic Borough.

The Alaska native groups fighting the drilling plan are unlikely to go along with a less aggressive program either, said Erik Jorgensen, a Juneau-based lawyer for Earthjustice, an environmental law firm that represents the groups.

"They see all this activity as just being done far too fast, especially when the environment around them is changing so rapidly (due to climate change)," said Jorgensen.

"They want the government to carry out an entirely new environmental impact assessment study."

The waters of the Beaufort Sea are a traditional subsistence

hunting ground for Inupiat native communities that live on the northern coast of Alaska. The area where Shell plans to drill is near calving grounds of the Bowhead whale.

A federal appeals court in San Francisco heard oral arguments in the case in December but has yet to issue a ruling on the challenge to the drilling.

Shell paid $44 million for the Sivulliq prospect during a federal sale of Beaufort Sea drilling rights in 2005 in the first move of the major's big return to Alaska.

More recently, Shell paid more than $2.1 billion for drilling rights in the adjacent Chukchi Sea at a federal lease sale earlier this month. Higher commodity prices and a dwindling amount of available acreage globally led Shell back to Alaska, company officials said.

Environmental groups are already challenging in court the federal government's move to sell acreage in the Chukchi Sea, a major polar-bear habitat.

REUTERS/Paulo Santo
Para state policemen and government environmental inspectors patrol fields of former virgin Amazon rain forest destroyed by loggers, in Tailandia, 180 km (112 miles) south of Belem at the mouth of the Amazon River, February 15, 2008.

By Raymond Colitt
Reuters

MONTE DOURADO, Brazil - Buzzing chain saws and heavy machinery hauling logs through the Amazon jungle look at first like reckless destruction. But a forestry project on the Jari River in northern Brazil is being hailed as a model for preserving the world's largest rain forest.

Evidence in January that the pace of Amazon deforestation has increased after falling for nearly three years renewed a fierce public debate over saving the forest. It also opened a rift in President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government.

Loggers illegally clear vast swathes of forest for timber and farmland every year, wreaking environmental havoc while creating little long-term income.

But a handful of forest management projects have emerged as conservation models, extracting resources with little impact.

"Selling certified timber harvested in a sustainable way is the only solution for the Amazon," said Augusto Praxedes Neto, a manager at Brazilian pulp and paper company Grupo ORSA.

For five years ORSA has managed the world's largest private tropical forest, located on either side of the Jari River in the northeastern Amazon region.

It harvests only 30 cubic meters (12,713 board feet) of timber per hectare (2.47 acres) every 30 years, just under the natural regeneration rate. Trees are felled and transported so as to cause minimal impact on the forest and are recorded in a computerized inventory.

"I can tell a customer in Europe which tree his table is made of," said operations manager Euclides Reckziegel as blue and yellow macaws flew over a solid forest canopy that echoed with the growls of howler monkeys.

"Illegal loggers kill 30 trees to get one. These projects protect far more trees than they extract," said Ana Yang of the Stewardship Forestry Council in Brazil.

The Forest Stewardship Council, the international industry watchdog, certifies and inspects the Jari project every six months. Harvesting began in 2003.

Much of Para state surrounding the ORSA property is troubled by the kind of land disputes that cause death and destruction throughout the Amazon. In one such dispute in February 2005, Dorothy Stang, a U.S. nun and human rights activist, was killed by gunmen hired by ranchers.

Other conservation areas such as national parks or Indian reserves often lack resources for protection against illegal loggers and generate little income for local populations.

ORSA's security guards and forest dwellers, who receive company health care, help prevent intrusions, Neto said.

Communities still lack proper education and basic sanitation facilities but many residents say they are better off because of the project, which created 400 jobs.

"It's not a huge income but it makes a difference," said Zeneide Costa Pinto, aged 47, one of 14 women who make jewelry, baskets and cookies from rain forest products.

GOVERNMENT TAKES CAUTIOUS APPROACH

Jari's 1.7-million-hectare (4.2-million-acre) property is just over half the size of Belgium. Roughly 80 percent of it is standing forest and one-third is managed and FSC certified.

"If the government were to put the same effort into sustainable forest management that it put into developing agriculture in the 1970s and 1980s we could preserve much of the Amazon," said Judson Ferreira, a senior researcher with government farm research institute Embrapa.

The government is taking a more cautious approach. In March it will select three companies to manage just 96,000 hectares (237,200 acres) of forest, the first such tender of federal land.

"Forestry management is a great alternative and ORSA is a good example of it but we want to take things slowly," Tasso Rezende, head of Brazil's forestry service, told Reuters.

"We need several projects doing well over a long period -- private ownership in the Amazon is controversial."

For forestry management to take off, authorities need to tackle uncertainty over land ownership, crack down on illegal deforestation, and cut red tape, Yang said.

"It's still easier to get a license to cut trees than to plant or manage them," she said.

By Andrea Thompson
LiveScience Staff Writer

Lake Mead, a key source of water for millions of people in the southwestern United States, could go dry by 2021, a new study finds.

The study concludes that natural forces such as evaporation, changes wrought by global warming and the increasing demand from the booming Southwest population are creating a deficit from this part of the Colorado River system.

Along with Lake Powell, which is on the border between Arizona and Utah, Lake Mead supplies roughly 8 million people in the cities of Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Diego, among others, with critical water supplies.

The system is currently only at half capacity thanks to a recent string of dry years, researchers say.

The study’s findings indicated that there is a 10 percent chance that Lake Mead could be dry by 2014 and a 50 percent chance that reservoir levels will drop too low to allow hydroelectric power generation by 2017. There is a 50 percent chance the lake will go dry by 2021, the study says.

Researchers say that even if water agencies follow their current drought contingency plans, those measures might not be enough to counter natural forces, especially if the region enters a period of sustained drought or if human-induced climate changes occur as currently predicted.

"We were stunned at the magnitude of the problem and how fast it was coming at us," said study coauthor Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography of the University of California at San Diego. "Make no mistake, this water problem is not a scientific abstraction, but rather one that will impact each and every one of us that live in the Southwest."

Several studies in recent years have predicted a prolonged period of drought in the Southwest as a result of global warming.

The team's analysis of Federal Bureau of Reclamation records of past water demand and calculations of scheduled water allocations and climate conditions indicate that the system could run dry even if mitigation measures now being proposed are implemented.

"It's likely to mean real changes to how we live and do business in this region," said coauthor David Pierce, a climate scientist at Scripps.

By H. JOSEF HEBERT
Associated Press

The widespread use of ethanol from corn could result in nearly twice the greenhouse gas emissions as the gasoline it would replace because of expected land-use changes, researchers concluded Thursday. The study challenges the rush to biofuels as a response to global warming.

The researchers said that past studies showing the benefits of ethanol in combating climate change have not taken into account almost certain changes in land use worldwide if ethanol from corn — and in the future from other feedstocks such as switchgrass — become a prized commodity.

"Using good cropland to expand biofuels will probably exacerbate global warming," concludes the study published in Science magazine.

The researchers said that farmers under economic pressure to produce biofuels will increasingly "plow up more forest or grasslands," releasing much of the carbon formerly stored in plants and soils through decomposition or fires. Globally, more grasslands and forests will be converted to growing the crops to replace the loss of grains when U.S. farmers convert land to biofuels, the study said.

The Renewable Fuels Association, which represents ethanol producers, called the researchers' view of land-use changes "simplistic" and said the study "fails to put the issue in context."

"Assigning the blame for rainforest deforestation and grassland conversion to agriculture solely on the renewable fuels industry ignores key factors that play a greater role," said Bob Dinneen, the association's president.

There has been a rush to developing biofuels, especially ethanol from corn and cellulosic feedstock such as switchgrass and wood chips, as a substitute for gasoline. President Bush signed energy legislation in December that mandates a six-fold increase in ethanol use as a fuel to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022, calling the requirement key to weaning the nation from imported oil.

The new "green" fuel, whether made from corn or other feedstocks, has been widely promoted — both in Congress and by the White House — as a key to combating global warming. Burning it produces less carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas, than the fossil fuels it will replace.

During the recent congressional debate over energy legislation, lawmakers frequently cited estimates that corn-based ethanol produces 20 percent less greenhouse gases in production, transportation and use than gasoline, and that cellulosic ethanol has an even greater benefit of 70 percent less emissions.

The study released Thursday by researchers affiliated with Princeton University and a number of other institutions maintains that these analyses "were one-sided" and counted the carbon benefits of using land for biofuels but not the carbon costs of diverting land from its existing uses.

"The other studies missed a key factor that everyone agrees should have been included, the land use changes that actually are going to increase greenhouse gas emissions," said Tim Searchinger, a research scholar at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and lead author of the study.

The study said that after taking into account expected worldwide land-use changes, corn-based ethanol, instead of reducing greenhouse gases by 20 percent, will increases it by 93 percent compared to using gasoline over a 30-year period. Biofuels from switchgrass, if they replace croplands and other carbon-absorbing lands, would result in 50 percent more greenhouse gas emissions, the researchers concluded.

Not all ethanol would be affected by the land-use changes, the study said.

"We should be focusing on our use of biofuels from waste products" such as garbage, which would not result in changes in agricultural land use, Searchinger said in an interview. "And you have to be careful how much you require. Use the right biofuels, but don't require too much too fast. Right now we're making almost exclusively the wrong biofuels."

The study included co-authors affiliated with Iowa State University, the Woods Hole Research Center and the Agricultural Conservation Economics. It was supported in part indirectly by a grants from NASA's Terrestrial Ecology Program, and by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Searchinger, in addition to his affiliation with Princeton, is a fellow at the Washington-based German Marshall Fund of the United States.

The study prompted a letter Thursday to President Bush and Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress from nearly a dozen scientists who urged them to pursue a policy "that ensures biofuels are not produced on productive forests, grassland or cropland."

"Some opportunities remain to produce environmentally beneficial biofuels" while "unsound biofuel policies could sacrifice tens of hundreds of million of acres" of grasslands and forests while increasing global warming, said the scientists, including four members of the National Academy of Sciences.

'Think before you toss'

By MICHELE BESCHEN
DIY Network

"Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without"....New England proverb.

Recycling is certainly nothing new, but there is definitely a re-energized enthusiasm to the word and all it stands for.

To most people, it simply means diligently gathering up their papers and plastics, or their cans and bottles and delivering them to the nearest drop-off site.

But, to me, it is so much bigger than that --the whole concept of recycling gives all of us the exciting opportunity to exercise our imaginations and to be resourceful and innovative on a daily basis.

Think about it, from the time we get up in the morning until the time we go to bed, we're continually faced with "trash," or what I lovingly like to call life's leftovers.

Life's leftovers come in many forms -- from packaging materials to clothing, food, home and garden debris. We're constantly on the toss.

My challenge to you in the New Year is to think before you toss. Look at your trash in all its discarded glory and try to imagine another use for it.

Granted, some things are easier to re-use or repurpose than others, but it really is a simple exercise that every one of us can try, no matter where or how we live.

By doing so, you're opening yourself up to the possibility of discovering new materials to work with and innovative ways to use things -- and you're ultimately cutting down what gets sent to the landfill.

You, and everyone around you will benefit from this new level of awareness, and at the same time, it's a testament to your creative side.

Naturally, by doing this you'll be accumulating things you otherwise wouldn't have to store, so the key to successful recycling and repurposing is to be organized and orderly with the things you're saving.

A beautiful way to start is by putting your recycling efforts on display. It's a clever way to organize, store and decorate, all in one shot!

Set yourself up with an assortment of clear jars or containers in various sizes and organize them on a shelf or shelves and start collecting.

The golden rule is to always deal with life's leftovers immediately. Clean, disassemble, cut to size, remove labels, etc....so everything is ready to use.

Another important rule...don't be keeping things for the sake of keeping things. If you don't see another use for it, don't hang on to it.

Keep all like items together. You'll immediately identify what things you'll be collecting on a regular basis and arrange your jars accordingly.

I have all of my jars in a shelving unit in the kitchen, because so much of the waste we generate happens in that room. Everything is within reach, everything has its' own jar, so I can easily toss my bottle caps, rubber bands, corks and such. (Trust me, if you don't keep it simple and organized, you either won't be doing it for very long or you'll have a giant mess in one of your cupboards).

As your jars start to fill, you'll notice a beautiful, decorative display coming to life. Most of my materials end up getting used for various art projects, and if I find my supply is starting to run rampant, I neatly package them up and pass them along to friends or donate them to art programs, schools or thrift stores.

Treat life's leftovers with the same respect you would your newly purchased items, and you'll be enthralled with the ingenuity that comes of it. Cheers to a resourceful New Year!

Michele Beschen is creator of the B. Original series for the DIY Network. Visit www.diynetwork.com.