Census of Marine Life: Scientists Conduct Comprehensive Study of Ocean Species

For the first time since our ancestors first crawled out of the ocean onto dry land, mankind is returning to the sea to discover everything we left behind.

More than 2,000 scientists from 80 countries are engaged in the most comprehensive census of marine life ever conducted, a 10-year, $650-million effort to identify and catalog every species that lives in the world’s oceans, from the smallest microbes to the largest fish and marine mammals.

Obama’s EPA plans fewer toxic cleanups

For years, the Bush administration was criticized for not cleaning up enough of America's most contaminated waste sites. The Obama administration plans to do even less.

Environmental groups and some Democratic lawmakers railed against President George W. Bush's cleanup record. But this time, they're shying away from speaking out against a popular president who's considered an ally in the fight to clean up the environment.

In Obama's first two years in office, the Environmental Protection Agency expects to begin the final phase of cleanup at fewer Superfund sites than in any administration since 1991, according to budget documents and agency records. The EPA estimates it will finish construction to remove the last traces of pollution at 20 sites in 2009 and 22 sites in 2010.

During the eight years of the Bush administration, the agency finished construction at 38 sites on average a year.

"Certainly, we are very disappointed that we can't get our ... numbers up," said Elizabeth Southerland, the acting deputy of the EPA's hazardous waste cleanup program, known as Superfund.

Obama’s team gives familiar explanation
The explanation by the Obama team is the same one put forward time and time again by Bush officials: The sites on the list have become increasingly complicated, contaminated and costly. That means it takes years for sites to reach the final cleanup stage, and as a result fewer are getting there.

Of the 527 contaminated properties still needing cleanup on the Superfund list, 40 have progressed to the point where all that's left is removing the last piles of contaminated soil, building a treatment plant to strip the groundwater of toxic pollutants, or capping a landfill so contamination does not enter the drinking water or air in surrounding neighborhoods.

At the other 1,060 hazardous waste sites still on the list, construction is finished and the last stages of the cleanup are under way — a process begun before Obama took office.

When EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson explained this trend to a Senate committee this year, Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer replied: "That's the same answer the Bush administration gave us and I don't buy it

Later, in an interview with The Associated Press, Boxer elaborated. "It doesn't matter to me who the president is. What matters to me is these sites get cleaned up," she said.

But not everyone is so critical of Obama's Superfund numbers.

Lack of money plagues Superfund
Environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and some Democratic lawmakers who highlighted how little the Bush administration did on hazardous waste cleanups are now silent. They say it's because Obama, unlike Bush, wants to address the problem that has plagued Superfund for years — a lack of money.

A tax on petroleum, chemicals and large companies once helped EPA pay for the multimillion cleanups. It expired in 1995 and Superfund has been on financial life support since.

The pool of money ran dry in 2004, when Superfund cleanups that did not have a company to foot the bill ceased to be subsidized by the tax on polluters and started being paid by taxpayers.

Obama, unlike Bush, has called for the reinstatement of the tax in 2011. That will require action by Congress. It will also be up to Congress to set aside more money for cleanups if the tax is reinstated. In the past, when Superfund was flush in cash from the tax, Congress did not always provide more money for cleanups.

Sometimes, cleanup comes with delays
Supporters also point out that the Obama administration has asked for slightly more money in its budget for Superfund — $1.31 billion compared with the $1.29 billion in Bush's last year. There's also an extra $600 million from the economic stimulus plan for cleanups at 50 sites across the country.

But neither has helped boost the number of sites ready for the final stage of cleanup, although they could down the road.

Cleanups come with surprises. Workers can discover contamination they didn't know existed, leading to a new series of delays.

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Southerland, the Superfund manager, says that has happened more often in recent years as money has been more targeted on the cleanup, rather than studies to map out the contamination.

"The problems are the same," said Katherine Probst, an expert on Superfund at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Resources for the Future. "The point is they need more money, whether it is under Bush or Obama."

In the meantime, EPA officials say they are looking to find a new way to measure Superfund progress.

Atlantic Salmon returns to Seine

After an absence of nearly a century, Atlantic salmon have returned to France's Seine River, with hundreds swimming past the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame cathedral this year alone, researchers told AFP.

The reappearance of salmon and other species chased from these waters by dams and pollution is all the more remarkable because no efforts have been made to reintroduce them.

They came back on their own.

"There are more and more fish swimming up the Seine," said Bernard Breton, a top official at France's National Federation for Fishing.

"This year the numbers have exceeded anything we could have imagined: I would not be surprised if we had passed the 1,000 mark," he told AFP by phone.

2008 was already a record-breaking year, with at least 260 tallied on a video system in the fish passage of the Poses dam above Rouen, a city roughly half way between Paris and the Atlantic Ocean.

Historically, the Seine hosted a flourishing population of salmon, a migratory species that return from the sea to their freshwater birth place to reproduce.

But the construction of dams, and especially the fouling of the Seine with chemical runoff from industry and agriculture along with organic pollution, led to their local extinction sometime between WWI and WWII.

Today, Salmo salar, or Atlantic salmon, is listed as a threatened species throughout Europe.

Imagine the surprise, then, of the weekend angler who reeled a six-kilo (13-pound) specimen just downstream from Paris at the end of last month.

Or the dozing fisherman in Suresnes, also downstream from the city gates, who snagged an even bigger one last October, the first such catch in over seven decades.

Salmon are not the only fish in the Seine making a comeback.

In 1995, only four species were known to swim its waters -- eels, redeye, bream and carp -- and at least one of these is invasive.

Today there are at least 32, according to the water purification authority for the larger Paris region. The lamprey eel, sea trout and shad have all joined salmon in the Seine over the last few years.

The reason, say scientists, is simple: cleaner water.

In the mid-1990s, "between 300 and 500 tonnes of fish died in the Seine up river from Paris every year because of pollution," said Breton.

But massive efforts over the last 15 years, including a new water purification plant, have removed much of the river's pollutants.

The results suggest that when it comes to conservation, restoring an ecosystem is probably a better strategy than restocking depleted waters, notes Breton.

Scientists at France's National Institute for Agricultural Research who track salmon say it is a "bellwether species", a living indicator of their habitat's state of health.

To find out more about how Atlantic salmon are recolonising their ancient river haunt, they recently captured and released seven adults in the Seine.

Four had spent less than two years at sea before returning to fresh waters, two had returned in the Spring after two years in open waters, and one had waited three years before leaving the ocean.

Atlantic salmon were once abundant throughout the north Atlantic, from Quebec to New England in the west, and from the Arctic Circle to Portugal to the east.

But over the last three decades, their populations have plummeted, with commercial catches declining by more than 80 percent.

Adults spend most of their lives in small groups roaming vast distances at sea in search of food, mainly squid, shrimp and small fish such as herring.

Salmon fast during the arduous, upstream journey to their birth place, where females lay eggs and males fertilise them before dying.

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Renewable energy execs say change comes too slowly

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Renewable energy leaders on Monday said the United States is moving too slowly to turn the economy green, despite support of the administration of President Barack Obama.
Executives from companies seeking profits in the ever more popular world of "cleantech" aired their complaints at the National Clean Energy Summit sponsored by Senate Majority Leader and Nevada Democrat Harry Reid.
The conference, which included clean environment advocates and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and others, was a pitch session of sorts for new technologies from renewable energy chief executives.
More often than not, those executives said that they could better deploy the products to help the environment if the government did not make it so hard and provided better incentives.
High-tech building supplies and window maker Serious Materials Chairman Marc Porat said his company is retrofitting homes with insulating panes that were five times more effective than traditional ones.
But it wasn't going fast in terms of replacing all the windows in the United States. "We are on a 10,000 year trajectory," he said.
BrightSource Energy President and Chief Executive John Woolard said that he was "two and a half years into a one-year process" to get permission to build a California solar thermal plant, which would use heat from the sun to power a turbine.
"I'm here to tell you from the front lines, it is not an easy thing," he said, arguing that every project delay backed up the projects behind it. "If you look at the sense of scale, we are losing ground," he said.
Technology transfer of U.S. inventions overseas and lack of investment funds at home also concerned many around the table of more than 20 speakers, who were given a few minutes each.
"Most of our materials go offshore," said Stephanie Burns, chief executive of Dow Corning, which makes solar-power system components. Potential factory builders needed cash. "They need access to financing," she said.
The U.S. Southwest is full of deserts and windy mountain passes that are turning the region into a renewables leader, but not fast enough for many, even as the U.S. Congress considers a climate change bill.
"The technology is there, scalability is the issue," said Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington, summarizing speeches in the morning.
Clear policy would make building big projects easier, she added, echoing executives whose complaints ranged from red tape stopping large-scale solar power plants in the desert to the slow roll-out of efficiency products.
Gore sparked the only confrontation at a table resoundingly positive about the possibility for change, asking the head of utility Nevada Energy why his company was not capturing waste heat for further use at coal-fired plants.
"We'd keep after a question until it was answered," Gore said, recalling Senate hearings with Reid, after NV Energy Chief Executive Michael Yackira failed to satisfy him.

The executive said he would look into it.

GE sees tide coming in for water business

General Electric Co predicts that water purification could grow from a drop in the corporate bucket to a major growth driver within years, just as its wind unit did.
The largest U.S. conglomerate has taken about a decade to build its water unit, which focuses on large-scale treatment and purification for municipal and industrial water users, through five takeovers costing about $4 billion.
With an estimated $2.5 billion in revenue, the water business remains a sliver of the $156 billion in sales the world's largest maker of jet engines and electricity-producing turbines is expected to generate this year.
The unit's small size has lead some investors to wonder if GE might prefer to sell it to focus on businesses where it can better enjoy the benefits of scale.
But executives with Fairfield, Connecticut-based GE said water has the potential to become a major profit contributor.
"What GE tries to do is to align the company with some of the mega-trends, the mega-challenges of the world. Energy is one, healthcare is the other, and the third one is water," said Heiner Markhoff, president and chief executive of GE Water & Process Technologies.
While arid areas of the world, from the Middle East to the southwestern United States, have long coped with water shortages, rapid population growth and rising environmental regulations are making water scarcity and purification a more prominent issue in temperate, wetter areas.
GE does not disclose the profits or revenue of its water business, but the unit has been hit by the global recession.
In a conference call discussing the company's 36 percent second-quarter profit decline, GE executives noted that service revenue related to the water business, which does not include equipment sales, fell 18 percent in the quarter.
While some of GE's businesses, like lighting and appliances, have developed over a century, others take off more quickly.
Take wind turbines. When GE officials first pitched Chief Executive Jeff Immelt on the idea of getting into the business in 2001, he dismissed the technology as a "hula hoop." Immelt later changed his mind when Enron's bankruptcy provided a cheaper way into the business, and wind turbines last year generated about $6.5 billion in revenue.
"I hesitate to compare ourselves to (wind), but the space, clearly is similar," Markhoff said.
GE is not the only major multinational to see potential in water. Its rivals include German conglomerate Siemens AG and No. 2 U.S. chemical company Dow Chemical Co, as well as smaller companies including Danaher Corp and Nalco Holding Co.
LARGE SCALE FOCUS
GE and its rivals are focusing on scarcity, and the growing competition for water among residential and commercial users.



An example of GE's technology at work can be found in Loudon Water in Virginia, which serves 175,000 people. Located along the Potomac River in a commuter suburb of Washington, D.C., Loudon faces some of the state's strictest wastewater quality standards.
Last year, Loudon's Broad Run Water Reclamation Facility started treating wastewater with a GE system incorporating biological agents that clean the water of impurities and a membrane system that prevents them from escaping the plant.
That allows it to process higher volumes of water at lower cost than older, chemical-based options, said Tom Broderick, program manager for the facility.
The treated water is clean enough for the utility to offer it for industrial use, he said.
"More and more wastewater utilities are looking to water reuse, just from a sustainability standpoint," Broderick said.
"We have signed up our first customer approximately two miles to the north of us. It's a data center that will be using it for cooling water."
IN FOR THE LONG HAUL?
As it focuses on large-scale purification, GE has pulled back from residential water treatment. Last year it moved its residential business into a joint venture with U.S. industrial Pentair Inc, which owns 80 percent of the enterprise and handles sales and distribution.
Some analysts think GE may soon exit the water business.
"We think it is increasingly likely that GE may seek to divest its $2.5 billion water and process technologies platform over the next one to two years," said Bank of America/Merrill Lynch analyst John Inch. In a June note to clients he noted that the water business has lagged GE's typical profit margin and growth targets.
Markhoff, who would not confirm or deny Inch's estimate of GE Water's size, said the company remains committed to water.
"We have a lot of support throughout the energy infrastructure business, up to the chairman of the company," Markhoff said. "We see clearly the medium- and long-term potential of this business, and it is very well aligned with the major trends."

North America nations to cooperate on emissions trade

The United States, Canada and Mexico said Monday they would put in place infrastructure to cooperate on greenhouse gas emissions trading as part of efforts to fight climate change.
"We will build capacity and infrastructure with a view to facilitate future cooperation in emissions trading systems, building on our current respective work in this area," the three countries said in a statement.
They also said they would work toward reducing emissions from the transport sector, including "by striving to achieve carbon-neutral growth in the North American aviation sector in the context of global action."