Fossils of Martian bugs found on meteorite that landed on Earth 13,000 years ago

Kompas, THURSDAY, 26 NOVEMBER 2009 | 6:17 PM

Life on Mars: Studies of the Allen Hills meteorite have revealed what appear to be fossils of bugs from the planet

KOMPAS.com - The fossilised remains of Martian bugs have been discovered on a meteorite that crashed into the Antarctic 13,000 years ago. The rock - named name Allen Hills 84001 - sparked a huge debate when it was found in 1996 and both Nasa and U.S. President Bill Clinton announced the possible discovery of life from Mars.

It was initially thought that the fossils were bacteria from Earth that contaminated the meteorite while it lay in the frozen wasteland. But according to a leaked report from Nasa, scientists now believe the fossilised remains originated on Mars.

Using advanced High Resolution Electron Microscopy not available 13 years ago, experts looked specifically at carbonate discs and magnetite crystals. The scientists, led by Kathie Thomas-Keprta, concluded that 'unusual chemical and physical properties' in the meteorite were 'intimately associated within and throughout these carbonate discs'.

This is evidence of interaction with water on Mars over 3.5billion years ago, they said. Dr Emily Baldwin, deputy editor of Astronomy Now magazine, told The Sun: 'Many scientists argued that what looked like fossils in the meteorite were really caused by the explosive event, such as an asteroid impact, that blasted the rock out of Mars in the first place.

'But the Nasa team is now saying they have proved that they could not have been produced by the blast itself.

'If the features turn out to have an extra-terrestrial, biological origin and were not formed during the 13,000 years the meteorite spent lying on Earth, this will have profound implications for our understanding of how life evolved in the solar system.'

Nasa is expected to make an announcement revealing the findings, from its Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, in the next few days.

Fossils: A close-up of the Red Planet shows the craters on its surface

Mars expert Professor Colin Pillinger, who was behind the failed Beagle 2 probe to the planet in 2003, told The Sun: 'This is good quality work and more compelling evidence to add to the mix.

'These guys have been plugging away at this for years. It is a very careful study by very reputable people.'

Editor: jimbon

Source : The Daily Mail

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Norway: Iran seizes Nobel laureate Ebadi's medal

Google/AP

Shirin Ebadi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003
for her human rights work (CNN)

OSLO — Norway's Foreign Ministry says it has lodged a formal complaint with Iran after authorities there confiscated human rights activist Shirin Ebadi's Nobel Peace Prize medal.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Ragnhild Imerslund said Thursday that someone had informed Norwegian authorities that the medal was seized "within the last week or so" along with Ebadi's personal effects from a safe-deposit box in Iran. She wouldn't name the source of the information.

Ebadi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for promoting democracy and human rights in Iran. The prize is awarded by a Norwegian committee.

Imerslund says the Foreign Ministry called in Iran's charge d'affaires in Norway Wednesday to protest the confiscation.

The Iranian embassy in Norway refrained from giving a comment.

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Saudi rare floods kill 48, strand hundreds

The Jakarta Post, (AP) , Mount Arafat, Saudi Arabia | Thu, 11/26/2009 4:41 PM

Muslim pilgrims running for cover as heavy rains wash down a street in the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on Wednesday, the first day of the hajj. (Photo: Mahmud Hams, AFP)

Officials say 48 people have died in Saudi Arabia and 900 were rescued after the heaviest rainfall in years.

A spokesman for the Saudi interior ministry, Brig. Gen. Mansour al-Turki, said Thursday that none of the casualties were among the millions of pilgris who are in Saudi Arabia for the hajj.

The four-day pilgrimage, which started Wednesday, draws more than 3 million people from every corner of the globe. The downpours ceased Thursday but there were fears of more rain to come.

The state-run Saudi Press Agency said Wednesday's deaths were in the port cty of Jiddah, Rabigh and Mecca. The statement blamed the deaths on flooding and collapsed homes.

Source: AP

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S&P downgrades Dubai govt entities on debt worry

Reuters, Wed Nov 25, 2009 3:36pm EST

Moody's Investors Service has downgraded the ratings of all six government-related issuers (GRI's) in Dubai and left them on review for possible downgrade.

NEW YORK, Nov 25 (Reuters) - Standard & Poor's on Wednesday downgraded its ratings on several Dubai government-related entities after the government said it will ask creditors of two flagship firms for a standstill on billions of dollars of debt.

The government said the request is a first step toward restructuring Dubai World, the conglomerate that spearheaded the emirate's breakneck growth.

"In our view, such a restructuring may be considered a default under our default criteria, and represents the failure of the Dubai government (not rated) to provide timely financial support to a core government-related entity," S&P said in a statement.

The agency lowered its issuer credit rating on DIFC Investments LLC by four notches to BBB-minus, or one notch above junk status.

It cut its rating on DP World Ltd Jebel Ali Free Zone by two notches to BBB-minus and lowered Dubai Holding Commercial Operations Group LLC by two notches to BBB-plus.

S&P lowered Emaar Properties PJSC by two notches to BBB-minus.

It left Dubai Multi Commodities Centre Authority and Thor Asset Purchase (Cayman) Ltd at BB, or two notches into junk, but placed their ratings on review for a possible downgrade.

The agency will resolve the CreditWatch placement following a review of the full impact of the restructuring announcement, which it expects to complete within three months.

Dubai has been hit hard by the credit crunch, which ended a six-year boom in the region and sent the emirate's property sector into a steep decline.

Dubai World has $59 billion of liabilities, while its Nakheel NAKD.UL unit has total debt of $80 billion.

The government's announcement sent the cost of insuring Dubai's debt against potential default sharply higher on Wednesday, while bond prices tumbled.

Five-year credit default swaps rose 100 basis points to 420.6 from a close of 318 a day earlier. Nakheel's Islamic bond prices fell more than 20 points to 87. (Reporting by Ciara Linnane; Editing by Leslie Adler) ((ciara.linnane@thomsonreuters.com; Tel: +1 646 223 6342; Reuters Messaging: ciara.linnane.reuters.com@reuters.net))

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum (C), Ruler of Dubai and United Arab Emirates' Vice President, attends the opening ceremony of Metro Dubai September 9, 2009. (REUTERS/Dubai Ruler Media Office/Handout)

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U.S. urges Americans to help feed their neighbors

Reuters, by Jasmin Melvin, Tue Nov 24, 2009 6:15pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government on Tuesday urged Americans to volunteer to help feed their neighbors, noting that almost 15 percent of the country's households had a hard time getting enough to eat last year.

Every American can chip in to fight hunger, the Agriculture Department said as it unveiled the Obama Administration's new Feed a Neighbor initiative, encouraging activities such as volunteering time at local food banks, helping the elderly get fresh produce, and planning ways to feed children who depend on free school lunches when school is out.

A USDA survey last week found one in seven Americans struggled to get enough to eat in 2008, the highest level since the report began in 1995.

More than 49 million people "had difficulty obtaining food...due to a lack of resources" during 2008, the report said. This includes 17 million children.

"It was a wake up call," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a conference call about the initiative, predicting the worst is yet to come.

"It's likely, given the recession, that the 2008/09 figures, which will be published next year, will paint an even more unsettling picture."

The USDA has created a "toolkit" of ideas to get people involved in helping their neighbors, available at www.serve.gov.

The USDA will spend $58.3 billion next year on food stamps to help poor people buy groceries, up from about $54 billion this year. It will spend $16.9 billion on school lunch and other feeding programs, up from $15 billion this year.

Vilsack said USDA wants to improve school lunch programs, and the government stimulus package has given more money to food stamps to help people hit by the recession.

"But the money is just part of it. It is important for people in communities across the country to understand that this is a problem in their community," he said.

The Obama administration has said it sees ending childhood hunger by 2015 as a top priority, Special Assistant to the President Joshua DuBois said.

Feeding America has been forced to turn people away from more than half of the more than 200 food banks in its network, said DuBois, who heads the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

The Meals-on-Wheels program that provides food and company for the elderly needs a million more volunteers to clear its waiting list, DuBois said.

"This initiative piggybacks on the president's call to get more people involved in service and will help reverse the trend of increased hunger," DuBois said.

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Analysts speculate Israeli-Iranian war scenario in wake of Iran defense maneuver

www.chinaview.cn, David Harris, 2009-11-24 04:30:29

Clergymen watched a missile during war games Thursday near Qum, Iran. The exercise was conducted by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. (NYT, Fars News Agency, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images)

JERUSALEM, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Iran's military is staging five days of exercises this week in an attempt to test its defenses, particularly around its nuclear installations. Amongst other issues, it is trying to establish, in the eyes of analysts, whether it could survive any strike by Israel.

Israel and the United States have consistently refused to rule out the possibility of military strikes against Iran over its refusal to halt its nuclear program. While Iran has said on numerous occasions that if it is attacked by Israel or the United States it will destroy the Israeli city of Tel Aviv.

These bring suppositions being made about how the two sides would act in the event of warfare.

DEFINING THE SCENARIO

The war game will cover about 600,000 square kilometers of central, western and southern parts of Iran, Iran's state television reported, adding that both the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) and Iran's regular armed forces will participate in the exercises dubbed "Asemane Velayat 2."

Brigadier General Ahmad Miqani, head of the air-defense headquarters of Iran's armed forces, said Saturday that the maneuver is aimed at developing the country's aerial defense against any potential attacks -- especially on the country's nuclear plants.

During the practice "we will experience an authentic war situation and we will harness all our defensive facilities and the systems for an electronic war," the semi-official Fars news agency quoted IRGC's air force commander Amir-Ali Hajizadeh as saying, where he mentioned the possible offensive on Iran by Israel.

However, what follows is pure speculation, with the analysts stressing that their guesswork is based on what information is currently available on the Israeli and Iranian militaries.

The analysts who spoke with Xinhua do not suggest the Iranians would launch a pre-emptive strike, but rather assume that if there were to be military action it would be an Israeli attempt to destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities.

The war scenario as it unfolds below is the combination of the thoughts of Francis Tusa, the editor of the London-based newsletter Defense Analysis and Barbara Opall-Rome, the Israel bureau chief for Defense News.

ISRAEL STRIKES

An Israeli attack on Iran would be led by the Israel Air Force, with backing from the Israel Navy and potentially with additional fire power supplied by ground-based intermediate-range ballistic missiles, according to analysts.

The target bank is constantly being updated by Israel's military intelligence staff and the military believes it is very much on top of its game, as opposed to its 2006 war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, where there were clear disagreements between the soldiers and the politicians as to the best way to fight against the enemy.

"The Israel Defense Forces is very confident that if called by the political leadership to respond militarily they could do so," said Opall-Rome.

The working assumption is that Israel would have to hit multiple targets, presumably at roughly the same time. The sites, that would have to be taken out, number anywhere from six, according to Tusa, up to two dozen in Opall-Rome's estimate.

In terms of aircraft required, for every one strike fighter jet at least two more, or even three, would be needed to deal with Iranian military defenses, including aircraft, missiles, radar, ground forces and military headquarters.

Even then, Tusa does not believe Israel would have sufficient strike power. In his opinion, Israel could not commit all of its aircraft to Iran, and it would have to retain some at home in the event that Hezbollah to the north, Hamas to the south and even Syria to the northeast were to attack Israel in retaliation to its strikes against Iran.

Tusa also wonders whether Israel lacks the refueling aircraft necessary for such a mission. One solution would be for aircraft to take with them larger long-range supplies of fuel, but that would mean a reduction in the size of their attack payload. Another factor to be taken on board is whether Israel would be granted permission to fly over Saudi Arabia or the Gulf states, to dramatically reduce the flight time required to reach Iran and return home.

Given that Israel's airpower may be insufficient, it would therefore also have to rely, for example, on cruise missiles fired from the sea. It has been reported that Israeli submarines have been investigating waters close to Iran. These missiles would most likely not be used to hit underground nuclear facilities but rather to destroy Iranian ground defenses.

Israel could also consider deploying ground forces but they would have to be in situ for several weeks, if not months, beforehand to prepare for any strike, said Opall-Rome.

Another option available to Israel is its own nuclear arsenal, something it will not confirm exists, but whose existence is internationally agreed. Tusa thinks it highly unlikely Israel would use nuclear weapons in an initial strike.

What Israel would have to be certain of is its ability not to damage Iran's nuclear capabilities but to destroy them. Merely taking down power lines, for instance, would achieve little.

IRAN BEFORE AND AFTER S-300s

Iran has been preparing for Israeli or other foreign attacks for some time now and, according to Tusa, has been talking with other states that have been attacked by the West about their experiences.

Iran's most obvious response to any airborne attack, including missiles fired from sea, would be with aircraft and missiles.

It is assumed that Iran's air force pilots are not in the same league as their Israeli counterparts. "I think you'll have the Israel Air Force pilots queuing up to be the guys to do the air-superiority role because they would end up being combat aces in the first three minutes," said Tusa.

If Iran has done its preparation work properly it will also adopt deception techniques, analysts suggest. One example would be by creating dummy nuclear sites with lots of activity that would be picked up by Israeli radar. It would require the installation of large blast doors in a hillside and trucks arriving and departing from the site. Israeli aircraft would then waste their weaponry attacking such non-existent facilities.

Israel remains confident of its capabilities as the military balance stands today. However it is concerned that the potential delivery of Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missiles could make the guarantee of success that bit smaller. The S-300s are used to defend against aircraft, cruise and ballistic missiles.

"They make Patriots look pretty old fashioned. The radars are incredibly powerful and agile. They are very difficult to jam and once there's engagement you are talking about simultaneously guided surface-to-air missiles," said Tusa.

However, for the time being Iran has not taken receipt of the S-300s. As it stands, the analysts believe the question of the success of an Israeli attack depends more on Israel's capabilities than Iran's defenses.

There is one additional factor though. Iran could call on its regional allies, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas to attack Israel at home. While their combined prowess would not normally be much of a challenge to Israel, if its focus was entirely on Iran, it could suffer serious damage before coming to terms with the new front, analysts suggest.

While Opall-Rome does not believe Iran could successfully thwart an Israeli attack, she does see psychological warfare coming into play. If the Iranians were to down a single Israeli plane, even an unmanned drone, or capture just one Israeli pilot and display, that would be a "devastating blow" to Israeli moral and public opinion.

All of this guesswork is trying to extrapolate what might happen if Israel decided to attack Iran. However, as war planners are sitting in bunkers in Tel Aviv, Tehran and elsewhere doing precisely the same thing, Opall-Rome believes both Israel and Iran are very wrong to be conducting highly-publicized military exercises.

"This is just more of the psychological operation that both sides are irresponsibly waging to deflect serious attention from the type of negotiations that need to be done, it's getting out of control," she said.

Tusa does not believe it is beyond the realms of possibility that Israel will attack Iran, especially if Israel feels its back is against the wall in the international arena.

Israel fears that when Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks of wiping Israel off the world map he is not joking. When he adds messianic messages in to mix it only increases the concern amongst Israel's decision-makers that Iran has or will very soon have nuclear weapons, said Tusa.

Israel, the United States and some other countries have accused Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program. Iran has denied the charges and insisted that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Editor: Mu Xuequan

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China families protest mine disaster; toll hits 104

Reuters, by Maxim Duncan, Mon Nov 23, 2009 10:39am EST

Relatives of miners who were killed in a gas explosion wait to meet officials at the entrance of Xinxing Coal Mine in Hegang, Heilongjiang province, November 23, 2009. (REUTERS/Aly Song)

HEGANG, China (Reuters) - Relatives of miners killed by a gas blast at a coal pit in northeast China scuffled with police and demanded answers from the owners on Monday as the toll hit 104 and hopes faded that any more survivors would be found.

The protest came a day after another 11 miners were killed in a blast at a pit in the southern province of Hunan, the official Xinhua agency said. China's stability-obsessed government is nervous about protests, and keen to control discontent.

China has the world's deadliest coal-mining industry with more than 3,000 people killed in mine floods, explosions, collapses and other accidents in 2008 alone.

Saturday's explosion at the mine in Hegang in the frigid province of Heilongjiang came as more than 500 miners were underground, though most were rescued.

Mine operators were at fault because they failed to evacuate workers fast enough after dangerously high gas levels were detected in the mine, said Luo Lin, head of the country's safety watchdog, the State Administration of Work Safety

(SAWS).

Nearly an hour before the explosion, a gas detector showed levels five times the trigger for an evacuation, Xinhua said. An official said the mine was too big for workers to escape in time.

Four miners were still unaccounted for on Sunday with almost no hope for survival, but even as smoke drifted out of the mine mouth near the site of the explosion, other miners were heading into undamaged parts of the pit to start the evening's shift.

A dozen women, relatives of the dead, had braved the freezing temperatures on Monday morning to take their complaints about a lack of information to the mine's entrance, where they argued and scuffled with police and mine security.

"None of the officials have died, all of the dead are the workers," one shouted. "Not one of those officials has even been down into that mine."

Some of the women were taken inside the mine compound, while others were put into a large white van. Men who declined to identify themselves tried to stop reporters speaking to the women, putting their hands in front of cameras.

SUFFERING FAMILIES

Anxious families were also milling around the hospital where 54 miners, six of them seriously injured, are being treated. Hospital staff were trying to calm tensions.

"When the patients see their families going through this suffering, they become very emotional, overemotional, and they can become restless," said Wang Jun, Director of the surgical department at Hegang mining hospital.

In 2007, after more than 180 miners died in a flooded coal mine in the northern province of Shandong, relatives stormed the offices of the company that operated the mine, smashing windows and accusing managers of not telling families what was happening.

Compared with other manual jobs, Chinese coal miners can earn relatively high wages, tempting workers and farmers into rickety and poorly ventilated shafts.

The Xinxing mine in Hegang lies near China's border with Russia and produced more than a million tonnes of coal in the first 10 months of this year, local reports said.

It is owned by the Heilongjiang Longmei Mining Holding Group, making it larger than most operations where accidents occur.

(Additional reporting by Emma Graham-Harrison in BEIJING, Writing by Ben Blanchard)

Philippine gunmen 'kill' 21 politicians and journalists

BBC News,

Twenty-one politicians and journalists abducted in the southern Philippines have been found dead, the army says.

The group were seized on the southern island of Mindanao early on Monday.

The military said they were taken by armed men as they tried to file a nomination for a candidate for forthcoming elections.

The Philippines is to hold national elections in May 2010. Registration for local and national positions began earlier this month.

According to local reports, those killed were on their way to an election office in Maguindanao to file papers on behalf of a candidate in the gubernatorial race.

The military blamed armed men loyal to a rival politician - the incumbent - for the attack.

"Our army troopers have reached the area where the vehicles and those held were taken... they were shot by the armed men," Maj- Gen Alfredo Cayton told local radio.

"We have recovered 21 bodies. Our men are continuing to scour the area to find the others."

The bodies of 13 women and 8 men were found, the military said.

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Gold hits new record high on weakening dollar

BBC News,

The price of gold has hit a new all-time high, boosted by continued concerns about the weakening dollar.

Gold hit a record of $1,167.35 an ounce, up by about $15 from Friday's closing prices.

The expectation that US interest rates will remain low has put pressure on the dollar, making gold more attractive as an investment.

Growing demand from emerging markets, particularly in Asia, is also helping to drive the price of gold higher.

Emerging market governments are looking to diversify their foreign exchange holdings and are buying gold as a result.

"Sentiment is very upbeat and gold is looking increasingly attractive," said Stefan Graber at Credit Suisse.

Analysts expect the price of gold to continue rising.

"It looks like $1,200 will be seen much sooner than expected," said Afshin Nabavi at gold bullion refiner MKS Finance.

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The 16 Ships Create As Much Pollution As All Cars in The World

Kompas, SUNDAY, 22 NOVEMBER 2009 | 7:52 AM

Waiting game: Tankers moored off Devon waiting for oil prices to rise even further

KOMPAS.com - Last week it was revealed that 54 oil tankers are anchored off the coast of Britain, refusing to unload their fuel until prices have risen.

But that is not the only scandal in the shipping world. Today award-winning science writer Fred Pearce – environmental consultant to New Scientist and author of Confessions Of An Eco Sinner – reveals that the super-ships that keep the West in everything from Christmas gifts to computers pump out killer chemicals linked to thousands of deaths because of the filthy fuel they use.

We've all noticed it. The filthy black smoke kicked out by funnels on cross-Channel ferries, cruise liners, container ships, oil tankers and even tugboats. It looks foul, and leaves a brown haze across ports and shipping lanes. But what hasn’t been clear until now is that it is also a major killer, probably causing thousands of deaths in Britain alone.

As ships get bigger, the pollution is getting worse. The most staggering statistic of all is that just 16 of the world’s largest ships can produce as much lung-clogging sulphur pollution as all the world’s cars.

Because of their colossal engines, each as heavy as a small ship, these super-vessels use as much fuel as small power stations. But, unlike power stations or cars, they can burn the cheapest, filthiest, high-sulphur fuel: the thick residues left behind in refineries after the lighter liquids have been taken. The stuff nobody on land is allowed to use.

Thanks to decisions taken in London by the body that polices world shipping, this pollution could kill as many as a million more people in the coming decade – even though a simple change in the rules could stop it. There are now an estimated 100,000 ships on the seas, and the fleet is growing fast as goods are ferried in vast quantities from Asian industrial powerhouses to consumers in Europe and North America.

The recession has barely dented the trade. This Christmas, most of our presents will have come by super-ship from the Far East; ships such as the Emma Maersk and her seven sisters Evelyn, Eugen, Estelle, Ebba, Eleonora, Elly and Edith Maersk. Each is a quarter of a mile long and can carry up to 14,000 full-size containers on their regular routes from China to Europe.

Emma – dubbed SS Santa by the media – brought Christmas presents to Europe in October and is now en route from Algeciras in Spain to Yantian in southern China, carrying containers full of our waste paper, plastic and electronics for recycling.

But it burns marine heavy fuel, or ‘bunker fuel’, which leaves behind a trail of potentially lethal chemicals: sulphur and smoke that have been linked to breathing problems, inflammation, cancer and heart disease.

James Corbett, of the University of Delaware, is an authority on ship emissions. He calculates a worldwide death toll of about 64,000 a year, of which 27,000 are in Europe. Britain is one of the worst-hit countries, with about 2,000 deaths from funnel fumes. Corbett predicts the global figure will rise to 87,000 deaths a year by 2012.

Part of the blame for this international scandal lies close to home. In London, on the south bank of the Thames looking across at the Houses of Parliament, is the International Maritime Organisation, the UN body that polices the world’s shipping.

For decades, the IMO has rebuffed calls to clean up ship pollution. As a result, while it has long since been illegal to belch black, sulphur-laden smoke from power-station chimneys or lorry exhausts, shipping has kept its licence to pollute.

For 31 years, the IMO has operated a policy agreed by the 169 governments that make up the organisation which allows most ships to burn bunker fuel.

Christian Eyde Moller, boss of the DK shipping company in Rotterdam, recently described this as ‘just waste oil, basically what is left over after all the cleaner fuels have been extracted from crude oil. It’s tar, the same as asphalt. It’s the cheapest and dirtiest fuel in the world’.

Bunker fuel is also thick with sulphur. IMO rules allow ships to burn fuel containing up to 4.5 per cent sulphur. That is 4,500 times more than is allowed in car fuel in the European Union. The sulphur comes out of ship funnels as tiny particles, and it is these that get deep into lungs.

Thanks to the IMO’s rules, the largest ships can each emit as much as 5,000 tons of sulphur in a year – the same as 50million typical cars, each emitting an average of 100 grams of sulphur a year.

With an estimated 800million cars driving around the planet, that means 16 super-ships can emit as much sulphur as the world fleet of cars.

A year ago, the IMO belatedly decided to clean up its act. It said shipping fuel should not contain more than 3.5 per cent sulphur by 2012 and eventually must come down to 0.5 per cent. This lower figure could halve the deaths, says Corbett.

It should not be hard to do. There is no reason ship engines cannot run on clean fuel, like cars. But, away from a handful of low-sulphur zones, including the English Channel and North Sea, the IMO gave shipping lines a staggering 12 years to make the switch. And, even then, it will depend on a final ‘feasibility review’ in 2018.

In the meantime, according to Corbett’s figures, nearly one million more people will die.

Smoke and sulphur are not the only threats from ships’ funnels. Every year they are also belching out almost one billion tons of carbon dioxide. Ships are as big a contributor to global warming as aircraft – but have had much less attention from environmentalists.

Both international shipping and aviation are exempt from the Kyoto Protocol rules on cutting carbon emissions. But green pressure is having its effect on airlines. Ahead of next month’s Copenhagen climate talks, airlines have promised to cut emissions by 50 per cent by 2050.

But shipping companies are keeping their heads down. A meeting of the IMO in July threw out proposals from the British Chamber of Shipping, among others, to set up a carbon-trading scheme to encourage emissions reductions.

Amazingly, they pleaded poverty. Two-thirds of the world’s ships are registered in developing countries such as Panama. These are just flags of convenience, to evade tougher rules on safety and pay for sailors.

But at the IMO, governments successfully argued that ships from developing countries should not have to cut carbon emissions. IMO secretary-general Efthimios Mitropoulos insisted: ‘We are heavily and consistently engaged in the fight to protect and preserve our environment.’ Yet without limits, carbon emissions from shipping could triple by 2050.

The failure brought calls for the IMO to be stripped of its powers to control the world’s ships. Colin Whybrow, of Greenwave, a British charity set up to campaign for cleaner shipping, says: ‘The IMO is drinking in the last-chance saloon.’

Burning low-sulphur fuel won’t cut carbon emissions from ships. But there are other ways. More efficient engines could reduce emissions by 30 per cent, according to British marine consultant Robin Meech.

Cutting speed could reduce emissions by as much again. And there are even wackier ways, such as putting up giant kites to harness the wind as in the days of sailing ships. However you look at it, the super-ships are rogues on the high seas, operating under pollution standards long since banished on land; warming the planet and killing its inhabitants. Santa’s sleigh, they are not.

Robert Pedersen, of Maersk, said: ‘The sulphur content varies according to where you get your fuel. Our average sulphur content is, I believe, 2.5 per cent. It’s rather rare you get anything close to 4.5 per cent.’ He added that ‘the sulphur issue is one for the whole industry’ and that there would be a ‘huge cost implication’ to switch to cleaner fuel.

Editor: jimbon

Source : The Daily Mail

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