BRUSSELS (April 4, 2007): The new UN climate report to be released on Friday (April 6) here is expected to cast a gloomy picture of the consequencesof global warming.

The report will project that one-fifth of all animal and plant species are threatened with extinction if warming continues at the current pace, according to an advance look at the draft document by Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) study, six years in the making and drawing on the work of more than 2,000 experts, also projects that hundreds of millions of people will be threatened with flooding from rising sea levels, fed by ice melt
at the north and south poles.

Extreme rainfall will increase in frequency and intensity. In Europe alone, the report says that every year from now until 2080 could see up to an additional 2.5 million people affected by flooding.

The expected climate changes will hit hardest the poorest regions of the world that are least responsible for producing green house gasses like carbon dioxide, and threaten especially the health of their children.

Drought areas and desserts will expand. The risk of starvation will grow, the draft report says.

Friday’s report is also expected to say it may already be too late to prevent some of global warming’s impacts - humans can only adapt to so much, especially when it comes to rising sea levels flooding islands.

The scientists began meeting Monday (April 2) here, and are to vote by tomorrow evening on a consensus formulation for the final report.

”Many of us believe we are on the threshold of a massive extinction event,” Jeff Price of California State University at Chico, a lead author of the IPCC report’s chapter on ecosystems, told dpa last week.

All of the findings are already known through the reams of scientific research published since the IPCC’s last series of reports in 2001.

The job of the more than 2,000 scientists was to sift through those findings.

What singles out this report, scientists say, is the strong consensus found within the worldwide literature - and the development of new models since 2001 that have allowed scientists to set specific timeframes for events.

”We have for the first time started putting bounds, temperature limits on when things will start happening,” Price said.

Though Price would not discuss specific findings ahead of the April release, he said it was generally agreed that just a 2-degree-Celsius hike in global temperature would lead to a “serious conversion of habitats”, while anything above 2 degrees Celsius could result in “major ecosystems’ collapses”.

The IPCC report’s first section released in February, which dealt with the scientific evidence, found an “unequivocal” trend of rising global temperatures and sea levels and placed the blame squarely on man-made emissions.

It predicted the Earth would heat up between 1.8 and 4 degrees Celsius by the end of this century, and up to 6.4 degrees Celsius at the poles, which heat up twice as fast as around the equator.

Melting ice has led sea levels to climb 17cm in the 20th century, and at a rate of 3.1mm per year since 1993.

On Monday (April 2), the environmental group Friends of the Earth here called for “urgent assistance” for developing countries that will be hardest hit.

European Union Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas criticised the United States which produces 25% of green house emissions for dragging its feet and lashed out at
Australia for not supporting the Kyoto protocol under which international industrial nations have committed to cut greenhouse gases.

Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt called on the US, China and India “to get on board for more extended measures” in fighting climate change.

The IPCC’s third section will be released in Bangkok in May, offering specific advice on how policy makers can reduce global warming.

In a development related to climate change, the US Supreme Court on Monday (April 2) in Washington declared global warming a serious and urgent problem in its first ever ruling on the subject.

The court ruled tha tthe federal government has the authority under a 1990 clean air law to cap carbon dioxide and other emissions blamed for global warming.

It said the government is not obligated to control the emissions, but said the EPA would have to come up with scientific reasons for not doing so. – dpa

Japan nuclear at full power despite safety doubts

TOKYO (April 4, 2007): Cover-ups at Japanese nuclear plants have dented public trust, but the government looks set to forge ahead with plans to boost reliance on nuclear power, already providing almost one-third of the country’s energy needs.

While a series of confessions about unreported safety lapses and worries about earthquakes could boost local opposition to nuclear power, the long-term impact will probably be minimal, analysts said.

“Given the current situation of Japan’s high dependency on nuclear power, and the fact that switching to thermal power would be bad for the environment, it’s hard to think that the government will change its policy,” said Takeshi Shigemoto, an associate director who follows the industry at Fitch Ratings.

A strong earthquake struck the coast of central Japan last month near the site of a nuclear power plant, although the operator said it was prepared for big tremors.

“Not enough steps in general have been taken against quakes, so now fears are stronger than ever,” said Masako Sawai, at the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Centre.

Earthquakes are not the only thing rattling consumer confidence in the nuclear power industry this year.

Since mid-March, two separate electric power firms have admitted that mishandling nuclear fuel rods caused “criticality“ incidents - unintended self-sustaining nuclear fission chain reactions - one in 1978, one in 1984 and one in 1999.

Hokuriku Electric Power Co. has confessed to covering up the 1999 mishap at its Shika plant, near the site of last week’s earthquake, while Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said the same about the other two incidents, including the one in 1978 - which may have
gone on for as long as 7-O   hours.

None of the incidents led to any radiation leak, but there have been reports of other fuel rod mishaps, as well as emergency reactor stoppages that were never reported, five years after a scandal over long-term falsification of safety records by TEPCO.

FATAL ACCIDENTS

One of the nation’s worst nuclear accidents took place in September 1999, when workers at a nuclear facility in Tokaimura, northeast of Tokyo, set off an uncontrolled chain reaction by using buckets to mix nuclear fuel. Two workers were killed.

“People have to have electricity, so the companies can’t be punished in a significant way, such as shutting down plants,“ said Hideyuki Koyama, from an anti-nuclear group in western Japan.

In 2004, four workers at a nuclear power plant were killed by a leak of high-pressure steam from a pipe. Prosecutors recently said negligence was involved in their deaths but that management had been lax for so long it was impossible to prove those at higher levels had failed to take action, media reports say.

Despite these mishaps, Japan still plans to boost its nuclear power supply to 40% of total energy supply from the current roughly 30%, while power firms have announced plans to build 13 new generators on top of the existing 55 plants.

Officials say the incidents emerging now are the result of trade ministry orders to go through power plant records and report all mishaps by the end of March, an effort to restore public trust.

“These are all old incidents,” said Hisanori Nei, director of the Trade Ministry’s Nuclear Plant Inspection Division. “It’s much harder to hide such problems now.”

In 2003, inspection standards were tightened so inspectors work in teams instead of solo.

Fines for cover-ups of 300,000 to 1 million yen (US$2,500 to US$8,500) a person, and 100 million yen ($850,000) per company were introduced, along with the possibility of up to a year in prison.

Other changes are afoot.

Reporting rules may be tightened further, and TEPCO said that it will delay three of its four new nuclear projects. Hokuriku Electric also said it would keep its nuclear units shut through the business year that started on April 1.

Activists remain sceptical. “The government standards are way too soft, and there’s nothing there to intimidate the power firms at all,” said Sawai at the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Centre.

“I believe that more cover-ups will take place.”  ($1=118.86 Yen) - Reuters

Microsoft issues patch for critical flaws

SAN FRANCISCO (April 4, 2007): Microsoft Corp yesterday issued a software patch to fix a critical vulnerability in its Windows operating system and six other flaws.

The patch addressed the so-called Windows animated cursor vulnerability and was released a week ahead of the regular monthly patch date.

It was only the third patch since January 2005 to be posted outside the normal monthly schedule.

The vulnerability first surfaced last week, when Microsoft acknowledged ongoing attacks.

Since then, the bug which has been tagged as “very dangerous” by security experts, has been distributed by hundreds of malicious Websites and was the focus of multiple spam campaigns designed to dupe users into visiting criminal Web sites.

The vulnerability marks the first critical bug on Windows Vista since the operating system’s release on Jan 30, and the firs tflaw in Vista’s own code.

Users can obtain the MS07-017 patches via Windows’ Automatic Update or from the Microsoft Update service. - dpa