Category: Environment

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Environment

[1010] Of the upcoming IPCC Fourth Assessment Report

Whenever a debate on climate change occurs, more often than not, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC for short, will be cited. The IPCC is regarded by most, according to Wikipedia, as the authority in the science of climate change. Up to date, three Assessment Reports that summarize what we know of climate change have been published. The latest edition was issued in 2001. Come February 2007, the IPCC will release its Fourth Assessment Report.

Screenshot. Fair use. Original document by IPCC.
A screenshot of a page of the Report.

The third report affirms the relationship between human activities and current climate change we’re experiencing. Quoting a paragraph in page 10 of the Summary for Policymakers of the Third Assessment Report:

In the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.

It also projects an increase of average surface temperature between 1.4º and 5.8º C from 1990 to 2100. Sea level is expected to rise between 0.1 and 0.9 meter during the same period.

While the new report will only be release in February, The Telegraph offers the public a glimpse of what to expect from the report:

In a final draft of its fourth assessment report, to be published in February, the panel reports that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has accelerated in the past five years. It also predicts that temperatures will rise by up to 4.5 C during the next 100 years, bringing more frequent heat waves and storms.

The panel, however, has lowered predictions of how much sea levels will rise in comparison with its last report in 2001.

Based on the article at The Telegraph, the IPCC sets to restrict the average temperature rise between 1.5º and 4.5º C and decrease the ceiling for the sea level estimated rise from 0.9 meter to 0.4 meter.

Because the latest report tightens the expectation range, in the article:

Climate change sceptics are expected to seize on the revised figures as evidence that action to combat global warming is less urgent.

Before that happens, the point is that:

Scientists insist that the lower estimates for sea levels and the human impact on global warming are simply a refinement due to better data on how climate works rather than a reduction in the risk posed by global warming.

Also, it is expected that the IPCC will make a connection between global warming and stronger storms. The relationship was probably popularized after Katrina hit New Orleans. RealClimate has an article on the relationship between sea temperature and hurricane strength.

Talking about that relationship, some might be tempted to make a connection between climate change and the recent bout of typhoons that had hit eastern part of Southeast Asia. A connection might be made but I’d rather wait for an expert to offer an opinion, especially when El Niño is in the equation. For your information, El Niño transfers warm water from west to east Pacific. Keeping the relationship between warmer water and stronger storm, El Niño introduces weaker storms. Maybe, this is a good question to ask the people at RealClimate.

Regardless, one thing is certain: the 2007 report will maintain the connection between human activities and climate change.

Categories
Environment

[1007] Of Kiunga-Aiambak road project in Papua New Guinea

I was at the Malaysian Nature Society HQ today for the Great Green Promotion and I think it was pretty cool. Especially when I found out that one of my branch’s committee members is a fellow Wolverine! Go Blue baby!

I particularly enjoyed “An Inconvenient Truth” since I had been anticipating the documentary since May 2006. The most enlightening documentary however was “Paradise Bus”, produced by a Malaysian named Chi Too. It’s about how a community of aborigines in Papua New Guinea handles the devastation brought upon them by illegal logging activities. Within the documentary itself, a segment on Kiunga-Aiambak road project caught my attention.

Kiunga is located in the mid-western area of Papua New Guinea. It’s the red dot; the blue dot is Aiambak:

Fair use. Google Maps.

This map is taken from Google Maps. The exact location of Kiunga could be seen at Welt-Atlas.de. Barcelona Field Study Center might have a more accurate representation of the location of the road project on map. For the location of Aiambak, a map is accessible here; taken from the University of Taxes Libraries. Public domain.

At first, the aborigines thought the project was an innocent road project crossing their land. After all, it was presented to them by the government and a firm called Concord Pacific — a subsidiary of Samling group of companies which during that time was controlled by Malaysian Yaw Teck Seng — as a road project. The aborigines soon realize that the project is a proxy for logging activities. The road — earth road by the way — wasn’t designed to be straight. Instead, it was planned to be curvy from the start so the road would pass through areas with the best and the most timbers. Suffice to say, the whole project was a big fat lie perpetrated by Samling.

A person interviewed in the documentary, Galeva Sep, reserved some harsh comments for Malaysian logging companies operating in Papua New Guinea. He said that the companies, Rimbunan Hijau in particular, have corrupted the government of Papua New Guinea from the top to the bottom. His allegation is hard to ignore since reports as such one published in The Age, are common:

The Government’s review team is ringing alarm bells after visiting earlier this year, suggesting Rimbunan Hijau has transformed a local police taskforce into a private army to suppress opponents. The police must be immediately replaced by “trustworthy” officers “so that the Government of PNG regains control of law and order”, its report states.

If it means anything at all, the current chairman of Rimbunan Hijau, Hiew King Tiong has nearly 45% equity stake in Nanyang Press. He bought 20% stake back in October this year from MCA. In the same The Age article:

The multinational company has a net worth of nearly $2 billion and sits at the apex of political influence in PNG, branching out into restaurants, supermarkets, even one of the nation’s two daily newspapers.

Talking about the companies, you could read more about them here, though information there might be outdated.

The aborigines along with Greenpeace worked hard enough to fight off the Malaysian company. In July 2003, the company managing the Kiunga-Aiambak road project was served an injuction:

LMROA filed an injunction against Concord Pacific in July 2003, with the help of Celcor, an NGO which provides legal support to landowners. At the same time Association members protested by boarding the last barge to transport the illegally logged timber from the region.

The injuction stopped the whole operation, and earnings from the log sales were put into a national court trust account — a total of three shipments of logs worth about 1.7 million kina. That money is still there now.

If you are interested in watching the documentary, the Malaysian Nature Society will be screening it again for free on January 28 2007.

Categories
Activism Environment

[1004] Of An Inconvenient Truth at MNS HQ

In conjuction of the Great Green Promotion at the Malaysian Nature Society HQ, the society is screening “An Inconvenient Truth” to the public for free this Sunday, December 17.

An Inconvenient Truth is a documentary on climate change, narrated by the person that used to be “the next President of the United States”, Al Gore. I’ve blogged about the documentary back in May 2006.

While I might be most interested in the documentary, there are other programs lined up for the public:

Schedule for Talks and Documentaries

11.00am
Tiger conservation by Loretta Ann Soosayraj

12.00pm
Paradise Bus, a film on logging in Papua New Guinea by Chi Too, a Malaysian film maker

1.00pm
Save our Sharks by Kwang with clips from WildAid documentaries

2.30pm
An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary on Global Warming based on Al Gore’s book

3.30pm
Conserve Peat Swamp Forest, a documentary by Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, FRIM, Sarawak Forests Dept, Sabah Forestry Dept and Pahang Forestry Dept.

What is the Great Green Promotion, you might ask? Well, ask no further:

Fair Use. By Malaysian Nature Society.

For more information, visit home of the Great Green Promotion on the internet.

Come! Come!

And yes. I’m a member of the Malaysian Nature Society. Pardon me if I’m trying to promote my own society.

Categories
Environment

[1003] Of extinction of Chinese River Dolphin

A large mammal species, the Chinese River Dolphin has been presumed extincted after a recent international expedition failed to find one in the Yangtze River:

Wuhan, 13 December 2006 — The Baiji Yangtze Dolphin is with all probability extinct. On Wednesday, in the city of Wuhan in central China, a search expedition, under the direction of the Institute for Hydrobiology Wuhan and the Swiss-based baiji.org Foundation, drew to a finish without any results. During the six-week expedition scientists from six nations desperately searched the Yangtze in vain.

The Yangtze is also the location of the Three Gorges Dam.

According to the National Geographic Society, this is the first extinction of large mammal in recent decades:

If Pfluger’s team is correct, the baiji will be the first large aquatic mammal to have gone extinct since hunting and overfishing killed off the Caribbean monk seal in the 1950s.

This is truly a sad week.

We, Malaysians have our own river dolphin, the Fraser’s Dolphin, also known as the Sarawak Dolphin. Let not push them to extinction as the Chinese had done with theirs.

Categories
Economics Environment

[1001] Of a better and humane alternative to crows culling

Several of weeks ago, I had a meeting with a few people — Shin and Khalid Jaafar were two of them — at Bangsar. While committing myself to an impossible search for a parking space there, I saw a Kuala Lumpur city hall squad shooting down crows. There were countless of crows hovering the area at that time, producing annoying noise. It’s easy to hate the crows for that. While I agree that the noise is a nuisance, I completely disagree with the scourge. The city hall was, and very likely, is, attending to the symptoms, not the root cause. Therefore, there’s a better way to deal with the crows, as a friend advised me during the meeting.

First of all, it’s important to realize that crows in urban areas are scavengers. Despite the negative connotation the noun scavengers brings, scavengers, crows included, play important role in our ecosystem. Scavengers are practically cleaners, breaking down our food leftovers. As scavengers, crows are attracted to the leftover, essentially waste. Our environment as a whole would be a very bad place to live in without scavengers.

It’s highly likely that the reason why the flock of crows hover Bangsar, or any area of that matter, is the presence of waste. Hence, if city hall is really interested in solving the problem, city hall should clean up the waste produced by Bangsar, which is an affluent area. Or better yet, if the population and visitors of Bangsar wants to solve the problem, they will need to clean up.

The culling is barbaric, regardless whether it happened in Kuala Lumpur or Singapore. This is on top of the fact that the culling is ineffective and wasteful exercise, by the very fact that the act of culling attacks the symptom, not the root cause.