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Blanketing Greenland’s glaciers against the melt could buy us time

Aaron Gray-Block — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:56:26 +0000

In a race against time, American glaciologist and Nobel prize winner Jason Box is thinking big by proposing to cover Greenland’s coastal strip with a blanket to prevent its receding glaciers from melting into the ocean.

The technology has already been applied on a smaller scale in the Austrian Alps by ski resorts using a material designed by Dutch synthetics company TenCate, which says its TopTex material is intended to protect snow and ice against the sun’s solar rays.

“The material reflects solar rays so that their heat doesn’t penetrate the cloth and its texture ensures that snow doesn’t slip away,” TenCate says on its website. It adds using the cloth minimises the possibility of avalanches.

Box and experts from the Byrd Polar Research Center have already covered an area of 8,000 square metres in Greenland with 31 rolls of TenCate’s polypropylene fabric.

TenCate says researchers will collect the results of the study on August 25 and, if they prove positive, Box wants to cover Greenland’s coastal strip, about equal in size to Britain, to minimise rising sea levels and coastal flooding.

While the idea might seem like a desperate, last-ditch bid to protect Greenland’s glaciers while failing to tackle the cause of the melt to which greater effort should be placed, Box says the alternative may be worse.

Two of the largest glaciers in Greenland are at risk of disintegrating, with NASA satellite images suggesting a third of the Petermann glacier could soon break off, he says.

“I’ve got a vision that could save the planet,” Box says on a Discovery channel video. “It is going to be expensive, but when you consider the cost of re-engineering our coastlines this may actually be cheaper.”

The ‘blanket’ solution could therefore buy the globe some vital time.

The question is; who would pay for it?

(Images: top a fjord behind the town of Ilulissat in Greenland August 16, 2007, middle: An iceberg reflected in the calm ocean at the mouth of teh Jakobshavn ice fjord near Ilulisassat, May 15, 2007. Both by Bob Strong/Reuters)

Expenses row saps Brown’s authority

Keith Weir — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 08:19:39 +0000

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Setting out plans to reform MPs’ unpopular allowances and announcing it on YouTube too.

A week later, Gordon Brown finds his plan in tatters in the face of of opposition from rival parties and disquiet in his own Labour ranks.

Talking to the Taliban and the last man standing

Myra MacDonald — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 23:55:52 +0000

The debate about whether the United States should open talks with Afghan insurgents appears to be gathering momentum — so much so that it is beginning to acquire an air of inevitability, without there ever being a specific policy announcement.

The U.N. special envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, became the latest to call for talks when he told France’s Le Monde newspaper that reconciliation was an essential element. “But it is important to talk to the people who count,” he said. ”A fragmented approach to the insurgency will not work. You need to be ambitious and include all the Taliban movement.”

His remarks follow much more guarded comments by President Barack Obama who said in an interview with the New York Times that Washington might look for “comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and in the Pakistani region” as it did in Iraq, involving “reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us.”

Vice President Joe Biden has also said that U.S. assessments were that only five percent of the Taliban were “incorrigible”. He told a news conference in Brussels that whatever happened would have to be initiated by the Afghan government. “But I do think it is worth engaging and determining whether or not there are those who are willing to participate in a secure and stable Afghan state.”

According to the New York Times, the Afghan government has already begun exploring the potential for negotiations with the Taliban leadership council of Mullah Omar and with mujahideen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Al Jazeera has also reported that the Afghan government has begun talks with Hekmatyar, while the Christian Science Monitor said Kabul had opened preliminary negotiations with the network of mujahideen commander Jalaluddin Haqqani.

I have just written an analysis on what any U.S. dialogue with Afghan insurgents would mean for India and Pakistan, two countries with a major stake in any political settlement, and am still trying to pin down the implications for other major regional players, including Russia, Iran and China.

One theme that is emerging is the extent to which any dialogue with the Afghan insurgents would aim to peel them away from the Islamist ideology of al Qaeda by stressing their Pashtun identity above their religious affiliation. (The Pashtun lost their dominant position in Afghanistan when the Pashtun Taliban were toppled by the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.)

According to C. Raja Mohan, quoted in my analysis, “Addressing Pashtun grievances is indeed the key to any settlement. The real problem is different: all Taliban are Pashtun; not all Pashtun are Taliban. Finding the space here is the real challenge.”

The distinction between stressing the Pashtun identity over the religious identity of the Afghan insurgents could prove to be fundamental in the coming months (and that is not to suggest that the insurgents can be reduced to a single identity — you have to assume that like everyone else they have multiple loyalties, to religion, tribe, nationality, ethnic group, family etc etc).

And that brings me to what I think are the most interesting questions about any U.S.-backed talks with Afghan insurgents. How would you frame these talks in such a way as to reach a political settlement that would satisfy both the people of Afghanistan and the regional players?

Would you, for example, use Saudi Arabia as an intermediary, as has been done in the past? Saudi Arabia had close links with the Taliban before they were ousted in 2001, and is also a U.S. ally. At the same time, its foreign policy tends to have a religious tint to it, and its involvement could create problems with Iran - a major rival in the Islamic world, which also wants to be sure that any government in Kabul respects the rights of Afghanistan’s non-Pashtun Persian-speakers and of its Shi’ite minority.

Does the United States have a choice? Or, facing financial mayhem at home, will it accept any settlement in Afghanistan as long as it eliminates al Qaeda as a global threat? (Shazia Rafi at The Women’s Media Center and Fareed Zakaria at Newsweek both have interesting takes on how far the United States should be ready to compromise with hardline Islamists.)

I don’t have answers, but I did scroll back to a blog I posted last May asking: Who will be left standing when the Afghan war ends? At the time, I asked the Reuters reporter who covered the fall of Saigon in 1975 for his answer to that question. He quoted me the following truism of asymmetric warfare; “the strong lose if they don’t win and the weak win if they survive.”

The situation in Afghanistan seems to have moved very quickly since then, until we are now asking not whether the United States should support dialogue with the insurgents, but how.

(Reuters photos: U.S. troops on patrol in Afghanistan, and President Barack Obama)

It’s in the Genes

Chris Kaufman — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:02:02 +0000

The market may be sickly, but Genentech investors are in that most rare place, holding a stock that is close to its lifetime high of just over $100 with a suitor repeatedly raising its bid for the company like it was 2006 all over again.

While Swiss drugmaker Roche says its latest official bid of $93 per share for the U.S. biotech, made last Friday, is fair, a source tells us they are prepared to go to $95, valuing the deal at $46.7 billion. Roche shareholders seem happy with the bidding so far, trading the shares higher today as the company talks to investors at its AGM.

Genentech would give Roche a big shot of lucrative cancer drugs and other medicines, including Avastin, which is approved to treat advanced colon, breast and lung cancers and is being tested for several other uses. And with Big Pharma marriages all the rage in ‘09, Genentech investors must feel like the best natural selection in the market right now.

Deals of the Day:

* The parent of China Shipping Development may sell its LNG business with the parent of PetroChina to the listed vehicle, analysts said.

* China is reviewing Coca-Cola’s bid to acquire China Huiyuan Juice Group under the anti-monopoly law, Commerce Minister Chen Demin said on Tuesday.

* Santander, Spain’s biggest bank, bought out Tokio Marine Holdings’ stake in a jointly owned Brazilian insurance group for 678 million reais ($284.9 million), aiming to strengthen its position in Brazil.

* Precious metals company Hochschild Mining PLC said on Tuesday it agreed to buy Southwestern Resources for $17.5 million in cash.

(PHOTO: A forensic expert points on the image of a genetic blueprint in the DNA lab at the new building for the crime tech institute in Wiesbaden February 29, 2008. REUTERS/Alex Grimm)

Did he push bars of soap barefoot, uphill, both ways?

Brad Dorfman — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 23:52:52 +0000

You think you’ve got it it bad in the recession?

Altria CEO Mike Szymanczyk says it is all a matter of perspective.

When asked about how bad this recession was, Szymanczyk harkens back to the 1970s, when he was a 20-something selling bar soap for Procter & Gamble in Chicago.

“Then the hardest part of your job was finding gasoline,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the Consumer Analyst Group of New York conference in Boca Raton, Fla.

Back then, during the Arab oil embargo, long lines for gasoline were the norm, if you could find a pump with gas.

Later, in the 1980s, Szymanczyk moved to P&G’s headquarters in Cincinnati, where he had a 16 percent mortgage.

On the other hand, he had never heard of credit default swaps back then. Or of the Engle cigarette case, which he is shown testifying during in the photo above.

(Reuters photo)

Antarctic soccer, barbecues and warming

Alister Doyle — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:02:50 +0000

For anyone who thinks (like I did) that Antarctica is a bone-chilling freezer lashed by constant blizzards, a visit to the Antarctic Peninsula is a surprise.

As you can see from the picture, you can even play soccer at the British Rothera research station — Stuart Mc Dill of Reuters TV (a skilled left winger) and I (unskilled) joined in a game last night and I have the grazes to prove it. Our team managed to win, 4-2, on the gravel pitch outside the plane hangar — meteorologist Ali Price brilliantly knocked in three, even though he was wearing a pair of clunking hiking boots.

And last weekend, staff had an outdoor barbecue with steaks and a cooler for drinks made from snow scooped up by a bulldozer.

At Rothera, summer temperatures now are comparable to the winter in England, where the British Antarctic Survey has its headquarters in Cambridge. On “warm” days, when temperatures climb to about 7 Celsius, some in Antarctica staff wander around outside in tee-shirts and even shorts.

Temperatures today are 0.5 Celsius (32.9 Fahrenheit), not much cooler than 4.4 Celsius (39.9 F) at BAS headquarters.

In recent days, it has rained at least as often as it has snowed at Rothera.

Of course there has been rain here long before anyone ever thought about global warming. But BAS glaciologist David Vaughan (who took the picture above) says that temperatures on the peninsula have risen by up to 3 Celsius (5.4 F) in the past 50 years – making rains more likely.

And all of Antarctica is getting warmer, according to a report in this week’s edition of the journal Nature. Until now, scientists have reckoned that the warming is limited to the Antarctic Peninsula but the U.S. study (for a story, click here) says that warming extends far wider across the frozen continent.

Staff at research bases, who relax by playing soccer, are trying to work out the risks of warming — a melt of ice sheets would add to sea level rise and have unknown impacts on wildlife from penguins to tiny mosses that have adapted to freezing temperatures.

Kurdish city prospers as Baghdad struggles

Aseel Kami — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 14:50:15 +0000

Five years ago, the city of Sulaimaniya in the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan was pretty nice, but Baghdad wasn’t that bad either.

Now, after years of sectarian bloodshed in Baghdad, and comparative peace and stability in Kurdistan, Sulaimaniya has shot ahead, as I saw on a recent reporting visit.

In the last five years, Sulaimaniya has built tall buildings, cleaned its streets, imported modern cars and attracted foreign companies.

In the same time, Baghdad has retreated behind blast walls and sand bags, investors are waiting on the sidelines and only a handful of buildings are being built.

When I went to Sulaimaniya in 2003, just after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, to escape the heat of Baghdad, I thought then that if I spent a month there that would be enough time to allow the authorities in the capital to restore electricity to a city that had sunk into darkness.

I did not realize that Baghdad would still be in tatters five years later.

Sulaimaniya, in contrast, feels more prosperous now than the last time I saw it.

Relative security has allowed foreign companies to crowd into the city, especially Turkish and Iranian firms. Huge hotels have been built on top of the hills overlooking beautiful scenery and adding to the city’s elegance.

A lack of security has left Baghdad looking like a vast anchaotic military base, with districts cordoned off by concrete walls and squads of soldiers and police deployed at checkpoints in almost every street.

In Sulaimaniya, residents look happy and satisfied. One taxi driver wearing traditional Kurdish clothes of baggy trousers and a sash, told me: “We live a comfortable life. What more do we need?”

    That is not the sort of thing you hear from most people in Baghdad.
    The taxi driver continued: “The government provides us with 15 hours of electricity (a day) and for the rest we depend on private generators. Sometimes in summer they (the government) provide us with 22 hours of electricity.”

I thought about my situation and that of others who live in Baghdad, where we are lucky to get a few hours of electricity a day to deal with temperatures that average 50 degrees Celsius in the summer. Water, which has to be pumped, only flows when the power is on.

Ask a Baghdad resident his or her opinion on the election win of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, or on any other issue, and they will likely tell you they are too busy worrying about the chronic problem of power and water shortages to think about anything else.

In popular Mawlawi street, I spent some time on one of my favourite past-times — shopping. While standing near a nuts and sweets shop, I met a couple from Baghdad with their three-year-old son. I seized the opportunity to chat with them while they asked the shop keeper to weigh out half a kilo of dried figs.

”We came here three years ago,” the man said. “We feel content living here. There is security here.”

One other thing that amazed me about Kurdistan was how western the women looked, wearing jeans and tops that would be condemned in other parts of Iraq, where religious passions have been rising during years of sectarian fighting between minority Sunni Arabs and majority Shi’ites.

    So I took advantage of the opportunity and slipped on jeans and a Western-style top.
    I strolled past Azadi Park, or Freedom Park, where I was told couples could go to romance each other. There was also a platform on which I was told anybody could climb to have their say, like the famous Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park.

Baghdad still suffers daily car bombings and suicide blasts even though the violence is much reduced from two years ago.

I usually spend my annual vacation abroad but this year I think I may go to Kurdistan.

Kurdish city prospers as Baghdad struggles

Aseel Kami — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 14:36:46 +0000