Abstinence class delays teen sex, says one study

It’s the first strong evidence that abstinence-based sex-ed classes delay teen sex – but more evidence is needed to shape policy, says Ewen Callaway

UN agency boosts efforts to assist rising number of hungry in southern Sudan

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is ramping up efforts to assist nearly 4.3 million people in southern Sudan where the number of hungry has quadrupled over the past year due to conflict and drought.

Somali violence uproots 80,000 civilians in January alone, reports UN agency

The United Nations refugee agency today reported that a sharp rise in violence in Somalia in January left nearly 260 civilians dead, in addition to uprooting over 80,000 and causing widespread destruction.

Child labour impeding development efforts in Ecuador, says UN rights expert

Despite the commitment shown by Ecuador to eliminate child labour, the scourge remains a major obstacle to the country’s development efforts, said an independent United Nations human rights expert.

Payment for homemade power ‘too low to help’

Robin Pagnamenta, Energy Editor

New subsidies to encourage millions of British families to install roof-top wind turbines and solar panels were unveiled by the Government yesterday, but were criticised as too low to help to meet its ambitious targets for low-carbon energy production.
Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, said that by 2020 a tenth of British households would be generating their own green elecricity under the scheme, the Feed-in Tariff, which will take effect in April.
The scheme will reward households, communities and businesses generating electricity from wind turbines, hydro-electricity schemes or solar photovoltaic panels by paying an above-market rate for power they produce. Homeowners using photovoltaic panels to generate electricity could earn £900 a year and cut bills by £140.
However, critics said that the scheme’s average returns on investment, of 5 to 8 per cent, were too low to encourage its mass adoption. They said that returns were significantly below the 10 per cent average in Germany, where similar arrangements have led to a big expansion of renewable energy.

Alan John, of Osborne Clarke, the law firm, said: “Householders may still regard the initial outlay to purchase a low-carbon energy-generation system as being prohibitive. Installing a typical 2kW photovoltaic domestic system, for instance, currently costs in the region of £10,000.”
Dave Timms, of Friends of the Earth, said: “Ministers have been far too timid with a policy that could make a significant contribution to cutting emissions and boosting energy security.”
Mr Miliband rejected such concerns, saying that the scheme had a “very significant scale of ambition”, similar to other countries that have adopted similar arrangements. “The feed-in tariff will change the way householders and communities think about their future energy needs, making the payback for investment far shorter than in the past,” he said.
Britain aims to cut its emissions of carbon dioxide by a third by 2020.

World’s most powerful laser to trigger fusion reaction this year

A pivotal step in the march towards fusion power, the ”holy grail” of sustainable clean energy, could be taken this year.

Published: 7:30AM GMT 01 Feb 2010

Scientists in the US are preparing for the dramatic moment when the world’s most powerful laser unleashes the nuclear force that lights up the sun and achieves ”ignition”.
At that moment, 192 laser beams housed in a building the size of three football pitches will focus on a target the size of a peppercorn to trigger a self-sustaining fusion reaction.

If all goes according to plan, this could be achieved in October. Although no more than a test of the technology, it could mark the start of a revolution that will change the science and politics of energy for ever.
Scientists have spent decades chasing the dream of fusion power, which holds out the promise of producing unlimited amounts of clean energy from hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe.
Nuclear fusion happens when the nuclei of atoms are driven together so hard that they fuse to form a heavier particle. A self-sustaining chain reaction occurs as more atomic nuclei collide, releasing huge amounts of energy in the process.
Stars are driven by nuclear fusion, as is the immense destructive power of the hydrogen bomb. But no one has yet managed to contain and sustain a fusion reaction under controlled conditions.
The biggest problem facing fusion scientists is how to generate the enormous temperatures and pressures necessary for long enough in a confined space.
Self-sustaining fusion requires conditions more extreme than at the centre of the Sun, with temperatures of around 100 million centigrade.
At the new National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, scientists are closer to overcoming this hurdle than anyone has been before.
The 10-storey high NIF is a £2 billion sledgehammer built to crack a nut.
Opened last year, the facility houses an array of optical and electronic devices designed to split a laser 192 ways and boost the combined energy of the beams to 1.8 megajoules.
At its heart the ”nut” is a tiny beryllium capsule the size of a peppercorn, designed to hold a dash of nuclear fuel in the form of deuterium and tritium.
Both are isotopes, or different atomic versions, of hydrogen.
The aim is to focus the laser beams on the capsule and blast it with a pulse of energy that causes the fuel to implode in an instant, reaching temperatures and pressures greater than those at the centre of the Sun.
Crushed together, the deuterium and tritium nuclei will fuse, releasing a flash of energy. If the experiment is a success, more energy will be generated than was pumped into the capsule in the first place.
A report of the latest progress at the NIF published last week in the journal Science shows that the scientists are on target.
Dr Siegfried Glenzer and colleagues described the first experiments in which all 192 of the lasers were tested on targets empty of fuel, achieving a beam energy of about 40% the NIF’s maximum.
A major problem that had to be overcome was getting the capsule to implode evenly.
This was done by encasing it in a gold cylinder called a hohlraum, pierced by holes through which the laser beams were shone.
”We’re doing the real thing, and it’s going better than expected,” said Dr Glenzer, quoted in a Science news article.
The facility’s ”ignition campaign”, leading to the first attempt to produce a self-sustaining fusion reaction is due to start in earnest in May.
A decision will be made in July on whether or not to push ahead with full-scale fusion experiments paving the way to ignition in October.
British expert Professor Mike Dunne, director of the Central Laser Facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Didcot, Oxfordshire, said: ”It’s come up better than anyone thought. They’re ahead of the curve predicted.”

Government to reward renewable energy homes with higher feed-in tariffs

Household solar panels will get higher feed-in tariff than proposed but level of support to renewables industry unchanged

Ashley Seager
guardian.co.uk, Monday 1 February 2010 18.24 GMT
The government drew back from a step-change in its proposed levels of support scheme for small-scale renewable energy schemes amid attacks by the Conservatives and campaigners for a lack of ambition.
Unveiling the new so-called feed-in tariffs (FITs) paid to people, communities or businesses who generate electricity from solar panels, wind turbines or other renewable sources, energy secretary Ed Miliband said the government still only intended that the sector would supply 2% of the country’s electricity by 2020 – the same figure he proposed last summer.
Some technologies such as solar photovoltaic panels on household roofs will get a higher feed-in tariff, and, importantly, all tariffs will be uprated with inflation each year. But large-scale community wind turbines will get a lower tariff than proposed last year, leaving the overall level of support to the industry little changed.
The FITs for new projects will be held at the current rates for two years but then cut by 8.5%, more than originally planned.
Miliband said: “Our plans represent a significant level of ambition and are comparable to countries that are leading in this area.”
But he acknowledged that the overall aim was to produce 2% of the country’s electricity by 2020 – much less than the 6% campaigners say is realistic.
He also said the FITs would still only offer 5-8% return on investment, unchanged from last summer’s proposals and well below Germany’s typical level of 10%. But documents from his energy and climate change department show that the inflation-linking of tariffs will push nominal (not inflation-adjusted) returns up to 7-10%.
The Conservatives said this still lacked ambition and hinted they would do more if they win the election this spring.
Shadow energy secretary Greg Clark said: “FITs are essential to allow decentralised energy to play a major role in our energy mix, but Labour’s proposals today lack ambition. Ministers should have been bolder with this scheme so more jobs could have been created and greater emissions reductions achieved.”
His Liberal Democrat counterpart Simon Hughes said: “This will disappoint anyone looking to do their bit to contribute towards our energy supply. Another opportunity has been squandered. While dozens of countries already support home energy generation, Labour’s plans are too little too late. The government has given in to the nuclear lobby at the expense of community-led power generation.”
Miliband would not be drawn on whether the new system would mean more money flowing from the existing energy companies into renewables.
He pointed to an increase of almost all the FITs across the various technologies since the proposals were announced last summer. But the detailed documents showed that the proposed 5 pence per kilowatt hour for power exported to the grid had actually been cut to 3 pence.
Dave Timms, spokesman for Friends of the Earth, which led the FIT campaign said: “The introduction of cash incentives to boost small scale green electricity generation is welcome. However, ministers have been far too timid with a policy that could make a significant contribution to cutting emissions and boosting energy security.
“Installing renewable technologies will now be a good investment for many homes – but farmers, businesses, communities and others will get little or no extra incentive to invest in clean electricity.”
Last week a YouGov survey for FoE, the Renewable Energy Association and the Co-operative Group revealed that two thirds of people think that the government’s feed-in tariff plans are not ambitious enough, and 71% of homeowners said they would consider installing green energy systems if they were paid enough cash.
But Miliband insisted that the plans were good. He said a family installing a typical 2.5 kilowatt peak photovoltaic system would earn £900 a year and save them £140 on their annual electricity bill.
The Renewable Energy Association said that gave a return on investment of 9%, which they liked. Spokeswoman Gaynor Hartnell, said: “The potential impact on households, businesses, farmers, schools and virtually every other energy user you can think of should not be underestimated. The balance of power has shifted. Instead of being tied to fossil fuels and energy price fluctuations, people and communities can now take control of their energy supply and their energy bills.”
But the REA was concerned that biomass boilers had been removed from the FIT scheme and were not happy with the treatment of anaerobic digestion systems.
Campaigners were also unhappy that people who had invested in renewable energy systems in the past decade would not qualify for the full FITs of up to 40 pence per kwh, receiving only 9 pence. Officials defended the decision, saying they were aiming to bring new systems online, not reward existing ones, some of which had received a grant.

Americans cooling on climate change, survey says

Public concern about global warming and trust in climate leaders has dropped sharply in the U.S. according to a survey.

Fifty-seven percent of Americans polled at the end of 2009 and early 2010 believe climate change is happening compared with a figure of 71 percent in October 2008.

The report, “Climate Change in the American Mind” published jointly by Yale University and the George Mason University Wednesday also reveals a picture of falling trust in scientists, politicians and the media concerning climate change.

Anthony Leiserowitz, principal investigator and director of the Yale Project on Climate Change told CNN: “I’m not surprised by the direction of the results but I am surprised at the magnitude of them.

“These are steep drop offs and this is despite the fact that, if anything, the climate science is getting stronger and more concerning over the past year.”

Over 1000 American adults were interviewed for the report. Respondents answered questions on a range of climate change issues including rating their trust of public institutions and climate leaders as a source of information.

Trust in scientists dropped nine percent from 83 to 74 percent, while faith in the mainstream news media slumped from 47 percent in 2008 to 36 percent.

Along with the media, Al Gore experienced the biggest fall in trust according to the survey. In 2008, 58 percent of respondents said they “strongly trust” or “somewhat trust” the former vice president and climate activist. In 2010 that figure has fallen to 47 percent.

Support for President Barack Obama remained largely unchanged at 51 percent compared to 53 percent in October 2008.

Other prominent climate opinion makers faired poorly. 36 percent of people trust the former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin while only 35 percent rate Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger as a reliable source of information on climate change.

Leiserowitz thinks this widespread decline in support is down to two main factors.

“Clearly the economy is dominating all issues right now. People in the U.S. are, frankly, afraid and they’re angry at Washington, Wall Street and elected officials who don’t seem to be responding. As a result the climate has gone down in public priority,” Leiserowitz said.

“But I think also in the past few weeks and months some really troubling stories have been reported around climate science,” he added.

Leiserowitz points to the damage caused first by the so-called “Climategate” scandal in November 2009 which was seized upon by climate skeptics who argued scientists have been suppressing data.

And more recently concerns surrounding parts of the Himalayan glacier data published in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“They [climate skeptics] have taken these as opportunities to drive home their particular message, and I think they’ve been successful.”

What this all underlines, Leiserowitz says, is the need to educate the American people.

“There is a real need for improved public education and communication on this critical issue. The science is getting stronger and public opinion is going in the opposite direction.”

It should be pointed out that “Climate Change in the American Mind” also found, however, that despite the economic crisis, more than 90 percent of Americans said the United States should act to reduce global warming, even if it has economic costs. Likewise, 67 percent of Americans said, “The United States should reduce its greenhouse gas emissions regardless of what other countries do”.

Source:
Cable Network News, “Americans cooling on climate change, survey says“, accessed February 1, 2010

Sea Level in Israel Has Been Rising and Falling Over the Last 2,500 Years

Rising and falling sea levels over relatively short periods do not indicate long-term trends. An assessment of hundreds and thousands of years shows that what seems an irregular phenomenon today is in fact nothing new,” explains Dr. Dorit Sivan, who supervised the research. The Templar palace in Acre, seen here, is one of the sites where this study was carried out.
(Credit: Amir Yurman, Director of the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies Maritime Workshop at the University of Haifa; Courtesy of the University of Haifa)

The sea level in Israel has been rising and falling over the past 2,500 years, with a one-meter difference between the highest and lowest levels, most of the time below the present-day level. This has been shown in a new study supervised by Dr. Dorit Sivan, Head of the Department of Maritime Civilizations at the University of Haifa. “Rises and falls in sea level over relatively short periods do not testify to a long-term trend. It is early yet to conclude from the short-term increases in sea level that this is a set course that will not take a change in direction,” explains Dr. Sivan.

The rising sea level is one of the phenomena that have most influence on humankind: the rising sea not only floods the littoral regions but also causes underground water salinization, flooded effluents, accelerated coastal destruction, and other damage.

According to Dr. Sivan, the changing sea level can be attributed to three main causes:

• the global cause — the volume of water in the ocean, which mirrors the mass of ice sheets and is related to global warming or cooling;
• the regional cause — vertical movement of the earth’s surface, which is usually related to the pressure placed on the surface by the ice;
• and the local cause — vertical tectonic activity. Seeing as Israel is not close to former ice caps and the tectonic activity along the Mediterranean coast is negligible over these periods, it can be concluded that drastic changes in Israel’s sea levels are mainly related to changes in the volume of water.

In the present study, in light of earlier studies, research student Ayelet Toker and Dr. Sivan, set out to examine Israel’s sea level over the past 2,500 years, based on data deduced from many coastal archaeological findings. They made a careful selection of findings that have been reliably and accurately dated, and first focused on findings that were excavated by the Antiquities Authority in Acre of the Crusader period. These revealed that the sea level during the Crusader period — just 800 years ago — was some 50-90 centimeters lower than the present sea level.

Findings from the same period at Caesarea (right) and Atlit reinforced this conclusion. When additional sites were examined from periods before and after the Crusader period, it was revealed that there have been significant fluctuations in sea level: During the Hellenistic period, the sea level was about 1.6 meters lower than its present level; during the Roman era the level was almost similar to today’s; the level began to drop again during the ancient Muslim period, and continued dropping to reach the same level as it was during the Crusader period; but within about 500 years it rose again, and reached some 25 centimeters lower than today’s level at the beginning of the 18th century.

“Over the past century, we have witnessed the sea level in Israel fluctuating with almost 19 centimeters between the highest and lowest levels. Over the past 50 years Israel’s mean sea level rise is 5.5 centimeters, but there have also been periods when it rose by 10 centimeters over 10 years. That said, even acute ups and downs over short periods do not testify to long-term trends. An observation of the sea levels over hundreds and thousands of years shows that what seems a phenomenon today is as a matter of fact “nothing new under the sun,” Dr. Sivan concludes.

Source:
University of Haifa (2010, February 1). Sea level in Israel has been rising and falling over the last 2,500 years. ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 1, 2010

The ‘Green Jobs’ Myth

A European lesson in the pitfalls of industrial-environmental policy.
As he did for health care, President Obama has turned to Europe for inspiration on the environment. Countries such as Spain and Germany are “making real investments in renewable energy” and are “surging ahead of us,” he has warned.In last week’s State of the Union speech, Mr. Obama proposed to reverse the trend: “The nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy,” he said. “America must be that nation.”
By all means, let’s look at Europe’s experience. Consider Germany. An October 2009 study by RWI Essen, a leading economic research institutes, found that costly government handouts more likely destroyed than created jobs, and stifled rather than promoted technological innovation—and all without reducing CO2 emissions.
The study estimates that the total cost of subsidizing solar and wind power generators installed between 2000 and 2010 was €53.3 billion ($74.1 billion) and €20.5 billion ($28.5 billion), respectively. The price mark-up for electricity consumers in 2008 was about 1.5 euro cents per kilowatt hour, or 7.5% of a household’s average electricity bill. And with a price tag of up to €175,000, or $244,000, in subsidies per job, it’s also difficult to call Germany’s renewable energy policy a jobs miracle.
“We would . . . regard the country’s experience as a cautionary tale of massively expensive environmental and energy policy that is devoid of economic and environmental benefits,” the researchers concluded. Keep in mind that cash-for-clunkers was another German brainstorm.

It gets, er, better. Because the sun doesn’t always shine and wind doesn’t always blow, solar and wind power need conventional backup, which undermines the argument that they promote energy security. And Germany’s 20-year head-start in renewable energy promotion has not led to the expected technological breakthroughs, either. On the contrary, the system stifles innovation as it “compensates each energy technology according to its lack of competitiveness,” as RWI puts it. The guaranteed government aid thus “creates perverse incentives to lock into existing technologies” rather than develop tomorrow’s quantum leap.
The subsidies for renewable energy also failed in the goal of cutting CO2 output. True, the promotion of renewable energy reduces the electricity sector’s emissions. But in the presence of Europe’s cap-and-trade system—which the Obama Administration would like to impose on the U.S. economy—obsolete emissions certificates can be sold to other industries. The result is “merely a shift rather than a reduction in the volume of emissions,” according to the RWI.
But what about the jobs argument? A government can always put people to work in any number of ways. But “green” jobs turn out to be a uniquely expensive proposition. A study published last year by researchers at King Juan Carlos University in Madrid showed that Spain, which copied much of Germany’s system and which Mr. Obama also looks to as a model, spends €570,000 ($794,000) to get one worker employed at a solar-panel assembly line. As for the “sustainability” of those jobs, RWI notes that “It is most likely that whatever jobs are created by renewable energy promotion would vanish as soon as government support is terminated.” Translation: “green jobs” means taxpayer subsidies unto eternity.
Green jobs also mean forfeited opportunities, as subsidies crowd out jobs in the traditional energy-generation sector, job losses from the drain on the economy as a result of higher energy prices, consumers’ loss of purchasing power and the misallocation of funds from more productive investments. As RWI warned, “Governments should scrutinize the logic of supporting energy sources that cannot compete on the market in the absence of government assistance.” To which we would only add that here’s a case where President Obama really could benefit from studying the European model.