Indian minister attacks weather office as monsoon death toll nears 600

Updated 4 hours 51 minutes ago

Rescuers recovered scores of bodies from the Ganges river in northern India Friday, as the death toll from flash floods and landslides neared 600, with thousands of mainly pilgrims and tourists still stranded or missing.

Dozens of helicopters and thousands of soldiers have been deployed to rescue more than 35,000 trapped people, the home ministry said, almost one week after floods and landslides from torrential monsoon rains struck the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand.

Raging rivers have swept away houses, buildings and entire villages, and destroyed bridges and narrow roads leading to pilgrimage towns in the mountainous state, which is known as the “Land of the Gods” for its revered Hindu shrines.

“556 bodies have been noticed by the army… either floating or buried in slush,” Vijay Bahuguna, state chief minister told local TV channel CNN-IBN on Friday evening.

Scores of bodies were recovered from the Ganges river earlier Friday, with the death toll expected to rise further as flood waters recede to reveal the extent of the devastation, and rescue workers reach more isolated areas.

“This kind of disaster has never happened in Himalayan history,” Mr Bahuguna said.

He attacked the India Meteorological Department for not issuing adequate warning ahead of the heavy rains, which struck earlier than expected, saying the local government was unable to prepare for the deluge and evacuate people on time.

The IMD warning was not clear enough,” he said, adding that it would take another 15 days to evacuate all the tourists.

Monsoon rains came weeks early

Torrential rains four and a half times heavier than usual have hit Uttarakhand – known as the “Land of the Gods” – where Hindu shrines and temples built high in the mountains attract many pilgrims.

“There are some 3,000 of us stuck in Gangotri [a pilgrimage site] for the past few days and there is no food, no drinking water or assurances from the government,” pilgrim Parwinder Singh said.

The military operation was focused on the worst-hit Kedarnath temple area, as families of the missing faced an anxious wait in Uttarakhand capital’s Dehradun.

Ganesh Godiyal, a chairman of a trust in charge of several shrines in Kednarth, says bodies are “scattered all around”.

“We estimate more than 1,000 people have died,” he said.

Some of those rescued told of scrambling to higher ground to escape raging waters, only to watch helplessly as buildings, cars and even dead bodies were swept away before them.

One of those stranded was Indian cricket star Harbhajan Singh, who was attempting to reach a Sikh pilgrimage site but had to take refuge in a police station.

“Some people are saying that we’re stuck but I wouldn’t say that we’re stuck, I’d say we’ve been saved by God,” said the spin bowler, who was later flown out of the flood-hit area by military chopper.

“With the kind of rainstorm we witnessed, anything could have happened. Many people lost their lives,” the cricketer said.

Figures for the death toll have varied considerably, underscoring the difficulty of reaching isolated areas. An Uttarakhand state lawmaker, Shaila Rani Rawat, put the death toll at 2,000, but disaster management officials could not confirm this.

Nearly 10,000 soldiers, along with 13 teams from the National Disaster Response Force, have been deployed for the rescue and relief effort, the government said.

Indian paramilitary officers have been building rope and log bridges across raging rivers to try to reach those stranded.

Relief camps have been set up to house evacuated residents and tourists, and 22 helicopters are ferrying many of those rescued to the camps.

The air force and the government say 14 tonnes of food and relief aid has been dropped in remote areas.

The monsoon, which covers the subcontinent from June to September, usually brings some flooding but the heavy rains arrived early this year, catching many by surprise and exposing the country’s lack of preparedness.

AFP

Topics: floods, weather, disasters-and-accidents, india, asia, nepal

Algae farmers spruik potential for WA biofuel boom

Updated 2 hours 57 minutes ago

A report by a Western Australian think tank says algae farming has the potential to generate $50 billion a year and create up to 50,000 new jobs across Australia.

Future Directions International says the west coast is ideally suited to build a biofuel industry from algae because of its abundant sunshine, innovative farmers and the resource industry’s huge demand for fuel.

At Karratha, the US company Aurora Algae is expanding its microalgae operations with a $300 million facility being built next year to produce omega oils, aqua-feed and biofuels.

Marketing manager Paul Brunato says a $10 million pilot study over the last three years has proven the viability of production based on Nannochloropsis, an algae which the company breeds in California’s Silicon Valley and imports to Australia under strict quarantine conditions.

“What we’ve learned is we can grow algae at tremendous rates here in the Pilbara,” he said.

 

“The species of algae we’re working with … is able to double in volume on a daily basis.”

While the company’s main profit driver is omega oil products for the health supplement market, it will subsidise ongoing biofuel production and hopes further research will realise the heroic predictions now being made for the industry.

“We can sell biofuel for market price no matter what it is and be profitable based on the omega-3s,” he says.

“What we see when we look out over the desert area here is potentially the next Saudi Arabia of biofuel production.”

Algae expert says biofuel boom still a pipedream

 

Professor Michael Borowitzka from Murdoch University’s Algae Research and Development Centre says the production of biofuels is not yet cost-effective.

His centre has studied about 400 algal strains in the last 15 years.

It was part of a recent biofuel pilot study at Karratha and is involved in a joint venture building a demonstration plant at Whyalla in South Australia.

Professor Borowitzka says biofuel can be produced for between 50 cents and 80 cents a litre.

“There’s great demand for renewable sustainable fuels, the challenge is to produce biofuel cost-effectively,” Professor Borowitzka said.

“It’s still actually quite a long way away. We have to reduce the cost of production by at least a factor of 10.”

Growing global demand for natural food colouring

The real money in algae farming, for now, is in functional health products such as food colouring which can earn as much as $3,000 a kilogram.

BASF operates the world’s oldest algae farm at Hutt Lagoon, north of Geraldton, producing natural food colouring for global food and beverage manufacturers.

The farm harvests Dunaliella salina, a natural occurring algae, which turns pink when stressed, releasing a range of carotenoids, high in vitamins.

Production manager Harry Haikalis says there is a growing global demand for its products because of their high levels of antioxidants.

“We like to say it’s food colouring, but the colour comes for free,” he said.

Sean Murphy’s report on the algae industry in WA will be on Landline on ABC 1 from midday on Sunday.

Topics: biotechnology-industry, industry, business-economics-and-finance, alternative-energy, environment, sustainable-and-alternative-farming, rural, karratha-6714, geraldton-6530, wa, australia

First posted 3 hours 16 minutes ago

China warns it will execute serious polluters

By John Upton

There are carrot and stick approaches to tackling pollution. China is reaching for the stick. The country announced Wednesday that it is willing to impose the harshest possible penalty on polluters. From Reuters:

Chinese authorities have given courts the powers to hand down the death penalty in serious pollution cases, state media said, as the government tries to assuage growing public anger at environmental desecration. …

A new judicial interpretation which took effect on Wednesday would impose “harsher punishments” and tighten “lax and superficial” enforcement of the country’s environmental protection laws, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

“In the most serious cases the death penalty could be handed down,” it said.

 

The announcement comes at a time when China is attempting to turn a new leaf in environmental protection following decades of unchecked pollution and a slew of anti-pollution protests.

China also said it is reducing the amount of damage that must be caused by a polluter before they are prosecuted. From South China Morning Post:

The [new judicial] interpretation … states that a person can be convicted if he or she causes pollution that seriously injures a person. Previously, an incident would have had to result in a death before a person was convicted.

And only one death arising from an incident will be enough to see a sentence increased, rather than three deaths.

[Court spokesman Sun Jungong] said the lowering of the threshold for convicting polluters demonstrated authorities’ determination to “fight and deter environmental crimes”. …

[T]he interpretation details 14 activities that will be considered “crimes of impairing the protection of the environment and resources”.

Dumping radioactive substances into sources of drinking water and nature reserves, and incidents that poison more than 30 people or force more than 5,000 people to be evacuated, will be considered environmental pollution crimes for the first time.

Executing polluters is certainly a more dramatic approach to reining in pollution than is carbon trading, which also began in China this week.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

18 June 2013, 2.21pm EST

Australian media failures promote climate policy inaction

Four months ago, the big media proprietors were fighting proposed federal government press reforms, arguing that “the press” needs freedom if it is to defend the public interest. But these arguments were raised only to defend the media’s system of self-regulation. What was absent then, and since, was…

Four months ago, the big media proprietors were fighting proposed federal government press reforms, arguing that “the press” needs freedom if it is to defend the public interest. But these arguments were raised only to defend the media’s system of self-regulation. What was absent then, and since, was any demonstration that Australia’s news media hold politicians morally accountable on the public issues that really do matter. The most pressing example is climate change.

The science is clear. Over 97% of climate scientists and every major national science academy agree that the planet is warming due to human activity. Leading public health organisations and prestigious peer-reviewed journals have recognised that “Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century”.

Why are they getting away with it?

In our previous articles we focussed on the (un)ethical position of politicians who don’t accept the science of climate change, or won’t act on it. But what about the journalists who should be holding them to account?

You would think most journalists would be forensically questioning any politician who denied the science or failed to devise and support adequate policies to address this threat.

Unfortunately very few, if any, of our mainstream journalists have ever really challenged climate-science-denying politicians.

In fact the opposite has been true. According to research by Robert Manne, many major media outlets – notably the Murdoch media, and particularly The Australian – have actively created doubt about the science. They have misreported the science and supported inaction among politicians who should be developing climate policies and offering national and international leadership on the issue.

The news media have largely failed to cover the science and the solutions to the problems it raises. A report on coverage of the carbon price by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (University of Technology, Sydney) said that some major Australian newspapers were “so biased in their coverage that it is fair to say they ‘campaigned’ against the policy rather than covered it”.

The number of environmental journalists in Australian newspapers has declined, leaving the ABC and pockets of Fairfax as the only outlets to tackle climate change politics and science. This is a significant problem in Australia that has broad implications for national and international efforts to combat dangerous climate change.

Recent analyses of the statements made by our federal politicians have found that a large number of MPs and Senators have publicly denied the findings of climate science. Around half of all coalition MPs and over two thirds of coalition Senators have publicly denied the science. Because the overwhelming majority of the science-deniers are from the Liberal and National parties, the failure of the press to hold them to account becomes a major political and anti-science bias by the media.

More insidious than outright denial of the science is a new form of denial where the science is accepted but where the need for carbon pricing and government intervention and regulation is denied. This appears to be the current position of the Federal coalition. Again this goes almost completely unchallenged. This is media bias in the form of silence and failing to adequately scrutinise politicians’ claims. Why aren’t journalists scrutinising politicians when they claim that they “support the science”? Why aren’t they assessing the ability of climate policies to do what the political proponents claim they can do and whether they are capable of being scaled up to deliver the emission reductions that are required to prevent dangerous climate change?

Can you imagine if we had a large group of politicians who accepted the science supporting the life-saving benefits of vaccination programs but denied the role of governments in legislating for child vaccination?

Given that they have a duty to ensure public policy is based on scientific evidence, why is it that journalists haven’t questioned and challenged climate science-denying and policy-free politicians to explain their positions on scientific and ethical grounds?

The culture of Australian media

That such positions can be held but not defended while the science itself is attacked in Australia says much about the culture of commercial media in this country.

As in the US (according to Pew) most Australians get their news from commercial TV (see page 9 of the Convergence Review). This format is suited to reporting live events, violence and conflict but not to the background needed for understanding big, global issues like climate change. Even when extreme weather events are covered, the dramatised suffering of individuals – rather than big-picture science – is highlighted.

This kind of news is all that politicians feel obliged to respond to, as they do their routine overflights of disaster zones and give nationalistic speeches about how Australians always pull together in a crisis.

In Germany, by contrast, where newspapers (in print or online) have traditionally been the most important news source, climate change policy features much more than it does in Australia and the US.

The enormous concentration of media ownership in Australia limits the diversity of reporting needed to cover climate change in depth. One company – News Ltd – controls 72% of capital city newspaper circulation. The same commercial values that legitimate this kind of monopoly in news (which also exists in the coal and energy industries) are unlikely to be challenged by journalists.

For example, business editors at News Ltd have long run the line that Australia’s coal industry (its associated jobs and balance of trade) would be hurt if politicians allowed climate change science to govern investment regulation. In the face of this, it has taken an international social movement like 350.org to initiate a divestment campaign in Australia, rather than the issue being chased by the media.

As the level of global emissions continues to increase and the urgency for real change grows, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has gone above 400 parts per million for the first time in millions of years

Yet Australia continues to avoid committing to the steep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that are required to avoid dangerous climate change. The current bipartisan national emissions reductions targets (e.g., 5% by 2020) mean that Australians will use four times as much of the carbon budget as the average global citizen, making us a nation of emissions bludgers and hurtling the world ever closer to climate disruption.

What will future generations think about the climate science-denying media bias of today and the failure of Australia’s journalists to seriously challenge the group of science-denying leaders and politicians?

Floods, hailstones and snow as freak weather causes chaos across Europe

Dear Neville, Last night I slept in a sleeping bag, on a sheet of cardboard, in the centre of Canberra as one of over 1000 CEOs, political leaders and public servants who took part in Vinnie’s ‘CEO Sleepout’ to fundraise and raise awareness about Australia’s housing crisis. I spent just eleven hours ‘sleeping rough’ in Canberra’s sub-zero temperatures – and got a glimpse of what it must be like for the thousands of Australians sleeping rough, or living in insecure situations every, single night. But I got to come home in the morning. Every Australian deserves somewhere to call home. Stand with us as we make homelessness matter at this election. Our political leaders have a responsibility to ensure every Australian has somewhere safe and secure to live. That’s why the Greens developed our Homelessness Action Plan – to make sure every Australian sleeping rough will have somewhere to call home by 2020. The 7000 rough sleepers are the tip of the iceberg. Homelessness can affect us all – whether you’re stranded between properties and having to stay with friends and family, or having to live in your car, a caravan park or short term accommodation. Job insecurity or a relationship breakdown can happen to anyone. On any given night more than 105,000 Australians are homeless including 18,000 children under the age of twelve. Every winter, Australians sleeping rough die from exposure. While the reasons for homelessness may be complex, the solution is simple: match the funding for housing and essential support services to the level of need in our communities. Add your voice and tell the two old parties that every Australian deserves somewhere safe to spend the night. In 2008 the government committed to tackle homelessness. Four years on, and the number of homeless people in Australia has grown. In 2011-12, Australians were turned away from homelessness services 137,000 times because the resources just aren’t there to meet community needs. While the old parties are busy point-scoring and playing political games, there are thousands of Australians sleeping on our streets with nowhere to go. Please help us to put homelessness back on the agenda. This election, let’s make homelessness matter. Yours Sincerely, Scott Ludlam P.S. More than 230,000 people used homelessness services in 2011/12, but in 61% of cases the request for crisis accommodation was unable to be met. Help us to do better than that for those in need.

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