Today on New Scientist: 8 February 2010

Today’s stories on newscientist.com at a glance, including: how your gadgets could become truly wireless, a secret hidden in the big bang’s echoes, and a tour of the UK’s most secret science sites

West African collaboration for gender equality enhanced by new UN initiative

Gender equality, respect for women’s rights and the fight against sexual violence in West Africa received a new weapon in its arsenal today with the launch of a United Nations initiative to enhance cooperation among all stakeholders in the region.

Haiti: UN agricultural agency kick starts irrigation clearing programme

The United Nations agricultural agency has launched a scheme for some 600 Haitians affected by the Caribbean country’s devastating earthquake to quickly clear irrigation canals in a bid to save this season’s bean and maize crops, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) announced today.

UN mission welcomes release of Red Cross worker abducted in eastern Chad

Another international aid worker abducted in the strife-torn Sudanese-Chadian border area has been released in a move hailed by the joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID), which has had some of its own members kidnapped.

MICE leaders gather in Subic Bay

This is Mark Cochrane here jumping into Paul’s blog space…

I just returned from the annual Philippine MICE Conference. This year more than 300 delegates attended the event in Subic Bay. The conference featured leaders from all corners of Asia’s MICE industry. MICE China’s managing director, David Zhong, charted the growth of China’s outbound meetings market which started from close zero just ten years ago. David noted that favourite destinations of mainland groups such as Singapore and Thailand have taken notice as the average group size has risen now to 300 persons with an average per head budget of RMB10,000.

Catherine McNabb, formerly of the Singapore Tourism Board, explained Singapore’s knack for winning mega events. (It is a laser-focus on events that match its strengths and the alignment of all government departments like only Singapore can manage. “Nothing is done in isolation in Singapore.”)

Social media was top of mind and featured prominently in the plenary sessions. Morris Sim, CEO ofCircos, a brand analytics consultancy, urged event organisers to use Twitter as an “in conference tool” to open two-way communications and to use it after the event to steer participants back to the event website.

Iraq: UN envoy condemns killing of female election candidate

The leading United Nations official in Iraq today strongly condemned the assassination of a female candidate in the northern city of Mosul ahead of the start of the electoral campaign for the 7 March general elections.

Arctic climate changing faster than expected

Climate change is transforming the Arctic environment faster than expected and accelerating the disappearance of sea ice, scientists said on Friday in giving their early findings from the biggest-ever study of Canada’s changing north.

The research project involved more than 370 scientists from 27 countries who collectively spent 15 months, starting in June 2007, aboard a research vessel above the Arctic Circle. It marked the first time a ship has stayed mobile in Canada’s high Arctic for an entire winter.

“(Climate change) is happening much faster than our most pessimistic models expected,” said David Barber, a professor at the University of Manitoba and the study’s lead investigator, at a news conference in Winnipeg.

Models predicted only a few years ago that the Arctic would be ice-free in summer by the year 2100, but the increasing pace of climate change now suggests it could happen between 2013 and 2030, Barber said.

Scientists link higher Arctic temperatures and melting sea ice to the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming. The Arctic is considered a type of early-warning system of climate change for the rest of the world.

“We know we’re losing sea ice — the world is all aware of that,” Barber said. “What you’re not aware of is that it has impacts on everything else that goes on in this system.”

The loss of the sea ice is taking away areas for the region’s mammals to reproduce, find food and elude predators, said Steve Ferguson, a scientist with the Canadian government who took part in the study.

Whale species (below right) previously not found in the Arctic are moving into the region because there is less sea ice to restrict their movements.

Climate change is also bringing more cyclones into the Arctic, dumping snow on the sea ice, which limits how thick it can get, and bringing winds that break up the ice, Barber said.

The study is part of the International Polar Year, a large scientific program focused on the Arctic and Antarctic. The scientists have not yet produced conclusions, but they expect to publish dozens of academic papers.

The cost of the Arctic’s rapid melt will be $2.4 trillion by 2050 as the region loses its ability to cool the global climate, the U.S.-based Pew Environment Group said on Friday. The group released a report showing the Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the planet.

Both the Canadian government and the oil and gas industry are keenly interested in the possible environmental impact of development further north in the Arctic, said professor Louis Fortier of Laval University.

Currently, development is focused on mainland regions such as the massive gas fields in the Mackenzie River Delta on the Beaufort Sea.
But receding ice levels may make the wider Arctic more accessible to ships and make drilling in more areas possible.

“Conclusions will come later, but … up to now there’s no indication that the impacts would be larger (further north) than elsewhere in the Arctic,” Fortier said.

Source:
Reuters, “Arctic climate changing faster than expected“, accessed February 6, 2010

Low carbon building fund closes with £70m

By Fiona Harvey
Published: February 7 2010 09:14
A property fund focusing on “greening” buildings has closed with nearly £70m (€80m, $110m) of equity.
Climate Change Capital, the low-carbon fund manager, aims to generate returns by refurbishing commercial buildings to save energy and other resources.
The fund’s managers work with the occupiers of the buildings to raise their environmental standards, for instance by installing better insulation, more energy efficient lighting and water-saving devices.
Improvements result in reduced operating costs, the benefits of which can be shared and increase the re-sale value of the buildings.
Climate Change Capital said the fund was 40 per cent invested, with two assets in Birmingham and Edinburgh, and said further investments were “under active consideration”.
Tim Mockett, managing director of the fund, said investors were looking for exposure to green property because they were “increasingly aware” that new and tightening regulations, on issues such as carbon dioxide and the energy efficiency of buildings, were making such properties more attractive.
“The trend to more energy efficient buildings driven by legislation, occupiers and investors, is irreversible,” Mr Mockett said.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.

UK should press EU for tigher carbon caps-report

Reuters, Monday February 8 2010
* EU carbon scheme needs tighter caps on emissions
* Auction revenues should go to tackle climate change
* UK govt should consider carbon tax, price floor
By Nina Chestney
LONDON, Feb 8 (Reuters) - Prices for European carbon emissions permits are too low to deliver low-carbon investment and the British government should press the EU to tighten limits on emissions, a UK Parliamentary committee said on Monday.
The European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is the 27-nation bloc’s main weapon against climate change. It forces companies to buy permits for each tonne of carbon they emit. Carbon output is capped and the level is lowered year by year.
As industrial output slowed in the recession, many companies had more carbon permits than they needed to cover their lower emissions. Many sold the surplus permits to raise cash, cutting the price more than half to under 15 euros a tonne.
Experts say carbon permits called EU Allowances (EUAs) need to rise to around 100 euros a tonne in 2020 to drive low-carbon investment. Analysts forecast prices to be some 30 euros by then.
“At the moment the price of carbon simply isn’t high enough to make it work. If the Government wants to kick-start serious green investment, it must step in to stop the price of carbon flat-lining,” said Tim Yeo, chairman of the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC).
The government should press the EU to significantly tighten the scheme’s emissions caps, cancel new entrant reserve allowances and auction as many EUAs as possible instead of giving them to heavy polluters like utilities for free, the EAC said.
The EU ETS allows member states to set aside a national pool of spare EUAs called New Entrant Reserves for new or expanding industrial firms. Unused quotas from firms that close down are added to the pool.
Deutsche Bank estimates the total number of reserves in the EU will be over 300 million by 2012. Cancelling them, rather than auctioning or giving them away, would avoid too many permits flooding the market, the committee said.
The EU should also commit to a tougher emissions cut target of 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, instead of 20 percent, the committee urged.
PRICE
To overcome current low prices, the government should consider the scope for a carbon tax, the committee advised. It should also encourage other member states to increase auctioning with reserve prices and press for a price floor in the EU ETS.
Under the EU ETS, governments can auction some of their national EUA quotas. The Carbon Trust estimates the government could receive 4 billion euros to 8 billion a year from its monthly auctions from 2013 to 2020.
Currently such revenue goes to the UK Treasury, but the government should show the profits go towards tackling climate change, the committee said.
The EAC said the use of offset credits means nations and industries with high emissions can buy their way out of making carbon cuts themselves. The government should therefore press for a limit on offset use.
Linking the EU ETS with other worldwide carbon schemes should not be done without setting an exchange rate, so that all the participants in a wider market are on a level playing field, the committee said.
“This report is yet another nail in the coffin for the government’s deeply flawed reliance on carbon trading to tackle climate change,” said Sarah-Jayne Clifton, Friends of the Earth’s International Climate Campaigner. (Editing by David Holmes)

We might err, but science is self-correcting

If claims about climate change need to be debunked, you can rely on scientists to do it. Scepticism is what we are all about
John Krebs

My non-scientist friends are beginning to ask me “What’s gone wrong with science?” Revelations about melting glaciers and potentially dodgy emails about global warming, the resurfacing of Andrew Wakefield and the MMR scare, and the sacking of the Government’s drugs adviser, have created the impression for some people that science is in a mess.
Of course science isn’t in a mess, nor has anything changed. But the stories underline two important features of scientists and science. First, scientists, just like every other trade — bus drivers, lawyers and bricklayers — are a mix. Most are pretty average, a few are geniuses, some are a bit thick, and some dishonest.
Second, science itself is often misunderstood. Scientists tend to be portrayed as voices of authority who are able to reveal truths about arcane problems, be it the nature of quarks or the molecular basis of ageing. In fact, science is almost the opposite of this. In The Trouble With Physics, physicist Lee Smolin considers how to describe science and concludes that Nobel Prize winner Richard Feyman’s phrase says it best: “Science is the organised scepticism in the reliability of expert opinion.”
An Oxford colleague, one of the world’s top climate scientists, made the same point last week when he said to me: “It’s odd that people talk about ‘climate sceptics’ as though they are a special category. All of us in the climate science community are climate sceptics. It’s our job to question and challenge everything.” Any scientist will tell you that when you turn up at a conference the audience will do its best to tear your findings to pieces: no one takes anything for granted.
This philosophy of science was formally instituted 350 years ago in London by the small band of men, including Christopher Wren and Robert Boyle, who founded the Royal Society, the world’s oldest national academy of science. Their motto, Nullius in verba (“Take nobody’s word for it”) embodies the Royal Society’s founding principle of basing conclusions on observation and experiment rather than the voice of authority. Scientists don’t have all the answers, but they do have a way of finding out, and the fact that our lights come on, our computers compute and our mobile phones phone are among the myriad daily reminders that the scientific way works.
You might retort that science and scientists often don’t live up to this ideal. And you would be right. Scientists, like everyone else, have human frailties and are susceptible to fashion and orthodoxy. Nevertheless, over time, science is self-correcting because someone will have the courage to challenge the prevailing view and win the argument, provided he or she has sufficient evidence.
There is, of course, no excuse for scientists who over-egg or massage their results, or who underplay the uncertainties in their conclusions. The prevailing view in many areas of science will include significant uncertainties (as with climate change), so challenge is central to the progress of understanding. The claim that Himalayan glaciers would melt in the next 30 years is an example of this self-correction. It was debunked from within the scientific community and not by outside commentators, it does not undermine the core conclusions about man-made global warming, and the mistake that the Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made was to dismiss this challenge without studying the evidence.
Scepticism is fine but science is not a free-for-all. Whether or not you accept the sceptics’ view should depend on careful weighing of the evidence. Dr Wakefield had no good evidence to support his claim of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Equally, the Department of Health’s claim that the “MMR vaccine is perfectly safe” is wrong. No vaccine is perfectly safe, but not vaccinating your children exposes them to a far bigger risk than the tiny risk associated with the vaccine.
Given what I have said, it is not surprising that the interaction between science and government can be edgy. Ministers look to their expert advisers for clear-cut answers, a unanimous view, and preferably one that is politically convenient. Scientific advisers are prone to disappoint on all fronts. “I am sorry minister, but science is not clear-cut, what is more, different experts take a different view, and our best advice is to do X” (where X is not a vote winner). When I was asked to advise, in 1996, on whether or not to kill badgers as a way of controlling bovine tuberculosis, I said that without a proper experiment it is not possible to tell whether or not the policy would work. To its credit, the Ministry of Agriculture set up what was perhaps the largest ecological experiment ever carried out in this country. The result showed that killing is not a cost-effective policy, and disappointed farmers.
Last year David Nutt, Chairman of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs, was sacked by the Home Secretary for being too outspoken about the Government’s rejection of his committee’s advice on the classification of cannabis and Ecstasy. If ministers are going to reject expert advice, they should explain why. What they should definitely not do, as both the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary did in this case, is to announce, before they have received the expert advice, that they have made up their mind.
Equally, independent experts should not be gagged by ministers, even if their views are inconvenient. Science, warts and all, is still the best way of finding out, and is absolutely vital in informing government policy. That is why the Government must strongly reaffirm its commitment to freedom of expression for independent scientific advisers. At the same time, if scientists have a right to be heard, they have a responsibility to be scrupulously honest and not to claim more than is justified by the evidence.
Lord Krebs is Principal of Jesus College, Oxford