'Groundwater used faster than it can replenish'

Deutsche Welle, 14 Aug 2012

A new study has revealed that almost a quarter of the world's population lives in places where groundwater is being used up far too quickly. DW spoke to Dr. Marc Bierkens, a professor of hydrology at Utrecht University.

DW: Professor Bierkins, could you tell us what groundwater is and why we should be concerned about it.

Marc Bierkens: Groundwater is the water that is stored in the pores and fissures of the geological formations below the ground. If you dig a hole in the western part of the Netherlands, within one meter you will find that the hole will fill with water - that's groundwater.

Has it recently arrived or is it water that has been there for a long time?

That differs, depending on where you are. If you are tapping shallow groundwater in my country, the Netherlands, it might be a few months to a few years old. But if you go to the Sahara, they have actually found water there that has been dated up to a million years old. So, it is quite variable, but on average it's a little older than the water you find in the rivers. It's preferred for drinking water because it's usually much safer and much cleaner than surface water, and less bound to be polluted.

Irrigating crops with groundwater has improved production on Indian farms,
but the region's water tables are declining

Why is it cleaner than the other water available?

A lot of that water has travelled through the soil… there is air, sand grains and fissures. The water slowly percolates through that, sort like a sponge. And it is being filtered before it reaches the actual groundwater body.

Looking at your findings, can you tell us what you've discovered?

We looked at groundwater-carrying layers all over the world, these are called aquifers. For each aquifer, we checked how much rainwater percolates down to the groundwater per year. We also worked out how much water was extracted from the ground. If there is more water extracted than replaced, you are depleting those resources. It's like taking more money out of your bank account than you earn. 

Groundwater is being tapped in
areas with low rainfall

Your study shows that some regions are headed for real trouble if action isn't taken right away. Can you give me an example of a place where the problem is particularly bad?

The area that really stands out is north-western India and north-eastern Pakistan. Other areas are north-eastern China, the central United States, the central valley of California, places in Mexico and Saudi Arabia and Iran. Those are the hotspots of the world.

Can you tell us more about the situation in India?

In India, the western part is quite dry during the growing season. Now I have to explain, this area is tropical. There used to be just one growing season there in the past, only during the rainy season. But they figured out how to irrigate there so they are taking water from surface water, but also from groundwater and use it to irrigate crops.

Farmers in the US are redirecting surface water into the aquifers to prevent
catastrophic shortages

This means they can have two, sometimes three harvests per year. They can do that by continually irrigating those crops - including during dry periods. So you see an extension of irrigated areas and that's all driven by population growth.

Population numbers have soared in those areas. There's not enough surface water - not enough water in rivers and lakes - to supply them. So they have been taking it out of the groundwater. With this, they slowly entered a situation of overuse. There are areas there where the groundwater tables are dropping more than a meter a year.

Looking at the situation here in Europe, what were your findings in this part of the world?

Here the situation is quite different. If you talk about Germany and the Netherlands, this is an area where, on average, there is much more precipitation than evaporation. So, we have high rates of groundwater recharge. On average, we have sufficient groundwater to feed our needs. We also don't need to irrigate our crops so much because we have enough rainfall.

But there are other parts of Europe, not as severe as India, but look at south-eastern Spain, where there is not much rainfall. It's quite dry. They have been using groundwater as well, to irrigate crops. That has also led to groundwater depletion. Other areas include the lower parts of the Danube, Romania and Bulgaria. There you have irrigated crops that use groundwater. And, at least in the summer, much more groundwater is pumped up there than recharges during that period. So, there you also have some problems with groundwater depletion.

New legislation in Spain protects the groundwater from exploitation

What about places where they were using their groundwater in ways that were not sustainable, but are now meeting demand without overusing available resources?

In the southeast of Spain, legislation has come into place to limit the extraction rights of farmers, which means they have to start growing crops that are much less dependent on water. In the central United States, in the high plains or the Ogallala aquifer, they've been working on recharge projects. They have been redirecting surface water into those aquifers, thereby increasing groundwater recharge. That has reversed the decline of water tables, at least in the northern part of that aquifer.

Dr. Marc Bierkens is a professor of hydrology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He is a co-author on the report 'Water balance of global aquifers revealed by groundwater footprint' along with with Tom Gleeson of McGill University in Montreal.

Interview: Saroja Coelho

Editor: Mark Hallam

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'Severe abnormalities' found in Fukushima butterflies

BBC News, by Nick Crumpton, 13 August 2012

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The study found that mutation
rates were much higher among
butterfly collected near
Fukushima

Exposure to radioactive material released into the environment have caused mutations in butterflies found in Japan, a study suggests.

Scientists found an increase in leg, antennae and wing shape mutations among butterflies collected following the 2011 Fukushima accident.

The link between the mutations and the radioactive material was shown by laboratory experiments, they report.

The work has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Two months after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident in March 2011, a team of Japanese researchers collected 144 adult pale grass blue (Zizeeria maha) butterflies from 10 locations in Japan, including the Fukushima area.

When the accident occurred, the adult butterflies would have been overwintering as larvae.

Unexpected results

By comparing mutations found on the butterflies collected from the different sites, the team found that areas with greater amounts of radiation in the environment were home to butterflies with much smaller wings and irregularly developed eyes.

"It has been believed that insects are very resistant to radiation," said lead researcher Joji Otaki from the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa.

"In that sense, our results were unexpected," he told BBC News. 

The Japanese researchers
 have been studying the species
for more than a decade

Prof Otaki's team then bred these butterflies within labs 1,750km (1,090 miles) away from the accident, where artificial radiation could hardly be detected.

It was by breeding these butterflies that they began noticing a suite of abnormalities that hadn't been seen in the previous generation - that collected from Fukushima - such as malformed antennae, which the insects use to explore their environment and seek out mates.

Six months later, they again collected adults from the 10 sites and found that butterflies from the Fukushima area showed a mutation rate more than double that of those found sooner after the accident.

The team concluded that this higher rate of mutation came from eating contaminated food, but also from mutations of the parents' genetic material that was passed on to the next generation, even though these mutations were not evident in the previous generations' adult butterflies.

The team of researchers have been studying that particular species butterfly for more than 10 years.

They were considering using the species as an "environmental indicator" before the Fukushima accident, as previous work had shown it is very sensitive to environmental changes.

"We had reported the real-time field evolution of colour patterns of this butterfly in response to global warming before, and [because] this butterfly is found in artificial environments - such as gardens and public parks - this butterfly can monitor human environments," Prof Otaki said.

But the findings from their new research show that the radionuclides released from the accident were still affecting the development of the animals, even after the residual radiation in the environment had decayed.

"This study is important and overwhelming in its implications for both the human and biological communities living in Fukushima," explained University of South Carolina biologist Tim Mousseau, who studies the impacts of radiation on animals and plants in Chernobyl and Fukushima, but was not involved in this research.

"These observations of mutations and morphological abnormalities can only be explained as having resulted from exposure to radioactive contaminants," Dr Mousseau told BBC News.

The findings from the Japanese team are consistent with previous studies that have indicated birds and butterflies are important tools to investigate the long-term impacts of radioactive contaminants in the environment.

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'Trash for food' at Mexico City barter market

CNN News, by Rafael Romo, Senior Latin American Affairs Editor, June 19, 2012

Residents of Mexico City are embracing a creative recycling program
that is turning trash into food.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• New bartering scheme in Mexico City helping residents exchange trash for fresh food
• The Mercado de Trueque encourages people to recycle paper, glass and plastic
• In return, residents receive vouchers that are exchanged for produce at a farmers' market

Mexico City (CNN) -- A new barter market in Mexico City is helping residents trade their trash for food in an effort to reduce the mountain of waste produced by the mega city.

Mexico City's huge, infamous Bordo Poniente landfill site was receiving 12,600 tons of waste a day -- one and a quarter times the weight of the Eiffel Tower -- before it was shut down in December last year. But although the landfill is is no longer in operation, the city keeps churning out trash.

That's why the local government has launched several measures to reduce the waste created by the 20 million people who call the city home.

The Mercado de Trueque began in March this year and has proved an instant hit with residents.

Jose Luis Aranda is one of thousands of locals who are now making regular visits to the market held once a month in the city's Chapultepec Park. Along with his housemates, Aranda brings along glass, plastic and cardboard waste, which is separated and weighed. He is then given vouchers, which can be exchanged at a nearby farmers' market.

The vendors at the market hail from local farms, adding the benefit of attracting shoppers to locally produced food.

For Aranda, it's not just about buying vegetables to eat. He also picks up baby lettuce plants, which he plans to grow at home and sell at the market when he visits again.

If he does, it would bring the city's plan full circle, essentially turning trash into food.

EarthSummit: Can Rio +20 solve world's environmental problems?

US plans to shut down coal industry, China's could be damaged

Want ChinaTimes, Staff Reporter 2012-08-13

A coal storing site at Lianyun harbor in Jiangsu province. (Photo/Xinhua)

After the US Energy Information Administration announced that the US would close down a large number of coal-fired power-generation units, Chinese industry experts said the announcement could impact international coal prices and was bad news for China's coal-fired factories, which were witnessing a decline in investments, the Shanghai-based First Financial Daily reported.

The administration of President Barack Obama is expected to close down 57 coal-fired plants by the end of 2012. The goal is to bring a complete halt to the US coal industry. Meanwhile, the energy administration also said 175 coal-fired plants with a total generation capacity of 27 million kilowatts would suspend operations between 2012 and 2016, according to foreign media reports.

Lin Boqiang, director of Xiamen University's China Center for Energy Economics Research, doubts that the US will close down a large number of coal-fired units.

Lin told the newspaper that coal accounted for about 23% of the total energy consumption in the United States, while natural gas accounted for 27%, oil accounted for one-third and renewable energy accounted for only 1.7%. The proportion of natural gas in the US energy consumption was unlikely to increase sharply enough to replace coal in the next few years. Further, closing coal-fired plants is a very costly enterprise.

The new development, if it were to happen, would undeniably impact international coal prices, Lin admitted. The United States has the largest coal reserves in the world. After shutting down coal-fired power plants, its coal would be used for exports alone. As long as the global markets were aware that the US no longer used coal, coal prices would fall.

Currently, the US has about 500 coal-fired power plants. While coal provides about one-third of the electricity in the country today, it provided nearly half of it four years ago. The close dependence of electric utilities on coal has already been falling, the report noted.

Given the decline in US domestic coal consumption, an increase in exports had become inevitable.

In recent years, the US large-scale development of relatively inexpensive shale gas is expected to allow shale gas to gradually replace oil and coal. The energy administration said in their Short-Term Energy Market Forecast Report that the demand for coal by the US power industry this year would reduce to 884 million short tons (1 short ton=0.907 tons), a decline of about 5% year-on-year. The proportion of coal-fired power in the total capacity of the country would drop to 40.4% from 42.2%.

A major export market for US coal, Europe is seeing declining demand for coal due to its economic slowdown and increasing awareness of environmental issues. On the other hand, Asia's economy is relatively strong and has a strong demand for coal. Therefore, heavy Asian coal users such as China, Japan and South Korea are being targeted by the US for coal exports.

Industry experts predicted that US coal exports in 2012 would increase 16%, while European imports would decline 1 million tons.

According to China Customs' statistics, in June, China's total coking-coal imports were 6.49 million tons, an increase of 67.9% over the previous month and a 94.4% growth over the same period last year. Of the total imports, 998,000 tons were from the United States, accounting for 15% of the total.

Chinese industry experts said that since it would take time for the US to close its coal-fired units, this would not directly affect the Chinese market.

Zhao Yuwei, an industry expert, said he was more worried that their plan to shut down coal-fired power plants would negatively affect investments in China's thermal-power sector.

Drilling Discovers Ancient Antarctic Rainforest

Jakarta Globe, August 02, 2012

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Sydney. Drilling of the seabed off Antarctica has revealed that rainforest grew on the frozen continent 52 million years ago, scientists said on Thursday, warning it could be ice-free again within decades.

The study of sediment cores drilled from the ocean floor off Antarctica’s east coast revealed fossil pollens that had come from a “near-tropical” forest covering the continent in the Eocene period, 34-56 million years ago.

Kevin Welsh, an Australian scientist who traveled on the 2010 expedition, said analysis of temperature-sensitive molecules in the cores had showed it was “very warm” 52 million years ago, measuring about 20 degrees Celsius.

“There were forests existing on the land, there wouldn’t have been any ice, it would have been very warm,” Welsh told AFP of the study, published in the journal Nature.

“It’s quite surprising, because obviously our image of Antarctica is that it’s very cold and full of ice.”

Welsh said higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were thought to be the major driver of the heat and ice-free conditions on Antarctica, with CO2 estimates of anywhere between 990 to “a couple of thousand” parts per million.

CO2 is presently estimated at about 395ppm, and Welsh said the most extreme predictions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would see ice again receding on Antarctica “by the end of the century.”

“It’s difficult to say, because that’s really controlled by people’s and governments’ actions,” said Welsh, a paleoclimatologist from the University of Queensland. “It really depends on how emissions go in the future.”

Welsh described the findings as “very significant” in understanding future climate change, particularly given how important Antarctica and the “very large” volume of water stored on its surface would be for the entire planet.

“It shows that if we go through periods of higher CO2 in the atmosphere it’s very likely that there will be dramatic changes on these very important areas of the globe where ice currently exists,” he said.

“If we were to lose a lot of ice from Antarctica then we’re going to see a dramatic change in sea level all around the planet.”

Even a few meters of sea level rise would inundate “large portions of the habitable land around coasts of many major countries and low-lying regions,” he added.

The ice on east Antarctica is 3-4 kilometers thick, and is thought to have formed about 34 million years ago.

Welsh said there would also be major impacts to global temperatures were the ice to recede, because it is an integral cooling mechanism for the planet, regulating the temperature by reflecting the sun’s energy into space.

Agence France-Presse

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"Around the Horn" - (a message from Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll)

“… Now, in the process of all of this, there's going to be renewed interest in Antarctica, and you're going to find some interesting things about the land under the ice. The topography of the land under the ice does not match the topography of the ice above. Some astonishing shapes will be revealed when you map the actual land under the ice. Points of mountains are going to be revealed, giving an entire different idea of what Antarctica might have been and what its purpose really is. The continent that is uninhabitable by Human Beings may very well be the engine of life for Human Beings. And I will leave it at that. …”

Stiff breeze batters German wind energy sector

Deutsche Welle, 1July 2012

A quarter of German electricity already comes from renewable energy sources. Far out front, the wind energy sector is growing faster than it has for years. However, business could be a lot better.

Politicians love it when they get the chance to present a successful investment project - Germany's transport minister Peter Ramsauer was able to talk about "pioneering work with worldwide relevance" when he visited an offshore energy plant in Cuxhaven on Germany's North Sea coast this week. A harbor and industrial area has been built there in which offshore wind turbines, along with all the necessary components, can be built and shipped. Wind energy on the high seas could become a winning export with which Germany could score points worldwide, said Ramsauer.

But there's actually not a lot of energy being generated right now off the German coast. There were just nine offshore wind turbines with a total output of 45 megawatts supplying the electricity grid in the first half of 2012. For Thorsten Herdan, director of the wind industry association VDMA Power Systems, that is below expectations: "It's highly unsatisfactory in comparison to federal government targets, and highly unsatisfactory in comparison to the industry's targets and investment efforts." That applies to everyone who invested in the industry, trusting in the government's Energy Industry Act and its timetable for the provision of a network to bring the electricity to land.

Billions of euros in investments

But there's still nothing much for the offshore wind turbines to plug into. And it's not yet clear who is legally liable when things go wrong. Who has to pay if the network isn't completed on time, or if a technical error occurs on the cables? The question of the financing of the network also seems to be still unresolved. Herdan says neither he nor the banks understand how a network operator with an annual turnover of one billion euros ($1.23 billion) could be expected to manage a borrowing requirement of 15 billion euros.

The wind will be blowing in a distinctly less favorable direction for
the industry in 2013

The lack of clarity is ending up costing the offshore investors. The manufacturers and suppliers have delivered what was ordered, says Herdan, and they'd been paid. "Whoever wants to see how things are, should go to Bremerhaven, then they will see everything just stored there - it's all been paid for and it should already be standing in the water and what has been paid for and what should actually already be standing in the water. And we're talking about billions of euros."

More onshore wind turbines

The onshore wind industry also views the future with skepticism. The clear pattern of growth last year seems to have continued in the first half of 2012. An especially high number of tall wind turbines with large rotor-blades were installed in the states of Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt and Rhineland-Palatinate. Now, 22,664 wind turbines across the country provide a total output of more than 30 gigawatts. Around 25 percent more wind turbines were erected in the first half of 2012 than in the first half of 2011. With wind power forming the backbone of Germany's move to renewable energy, there'll soon be enough to replace nuclear power entirely, says Hermann Albers, President of the Federal Association for Wind Energy (BWE).

However, the wind will be blowing in a distinctly less favorable direction next year. Foreign markets, which are very important for German manufacturers, will be much tighter. Albers points out that construction of wind energy turbines in the US, for example, has nosedived. China also looks set to push its "gigantic surplus capacity" onto the global market in 2013. The outlook is bleak for German producers, who plan to tackle the situation with efficient and cost-effective technology. There are few options left if they don't want to find themselves in the same position as the majority of German solar panel manufacturers. They have already been forced to capitulate to China's superior power.

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Dream come true? A car that can run on water

The Times of india, Jul 28, 2012

ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani engineer has successfully developed a unique technology that uses water as fuel in vehicles instead of petrol or CNG, a feat once considered a farfetched dream. Waqar Ahmad drove his car using water as fuel on Thursday during a demonstration for Pakistani parliamentarians, scientists and students.

He claimed that on one litre of water a 1000 CC car can cover a distance of 40 km and a motorbike can run up to 150 km using this technology.

Ahmad said cars could be driven by a system fueled by water instead of petrol or CNG. The onlookers were taken aback when they saw the dream car and a cabinet subcommittee lauded Ahmad's 'Water Fuel Kit Project'. Religious affairs minister Syed Khurshid Ahmad Shah, panel panel, said Ahmad would have their full support, calling it "this years's Independence Day gift to the nation".

The water fueling system is a technology in which 'hydrogen bonding' with distilled water produces hydrogen gas to run the car.

What is the Higgs Boson?

Spirit Library, David R. Hamilton PhD,  12 July, 2012  (posted 27 July, 2012)

Particle of energy

David R. Hamilton

Quite a few people have asked me about the Higgs Boson – or ‘God’ particle, as it’s been named – that was discovered at CERN recently. They have asked what it is and what it means for us.

The Higgs boson is a particle that gives most other particles mass.  OK, that might not mean much so let me explain it a little differently.

You can actually think of it as a field of energy and that’s an ideal analogy for how I need to explain what it is.

It’s a bit like a swimming pool that objects have to pass through. Say you had a steel ball and a dustbin lid and you had to drag both through the swimming pool. Which do you think would be easiest? The steel ball, of course! The dustbin lid would have a much greater drag factor.

The drag factor is the ‘Mass’ (or weight if that is easier to think about). The swimming pool is the Higgs field and it exerts a drag on all other particles, which mostly accounts for the differences in their masses. The Higgs boson might be thought of as a droplet of water in the swimming pool.

There’s another way you could think about it. Let’s say you have Usain Bolt, the world record holder for the 100 metres sprint (9.58 seconds) and a much less famous sprinter. Usain is much more famous so if the two sprinters walked side by side through Trafalgar Square in London, Usain would get mobbed by people, slowing down his walk. The less famous sprinter would walk right through, virtually unimpeded. You would say that Usain had greater ‘mass’. The people are the Higgs bosons and they weigh Usain down as they interact with him.

So what does that mean for you and me?

If it wasn’t for the Higgs boson most elementary particles (like quarks – that we are made of) wouldn’t have any mass and we would just be a mish-mash of particles floating in the universe, devoid of form. You wouldn’t exist, and neither would the planet Earth or the Sun. It’s kind of why some people call it the ‘God’ particle (although most physicists don’t really like the term).

So for the ordinary person it doesn’t really change anything. You exist now, partly because of the Higgs boson just as you did a few days before it was discovered. Life goes on and you’ll enjoy your morning coffee just as you did before Peter Higgs even thought up the concept of that particular boson.

It’s absolutely not the end of physics. There are still many mysteries to be probed. The Higgs boson could turn out to be not exactly as it was thought and could actually be made of smaller bits. No one knows yet. It might even by a scientific gateway that leads physicists into the search for weird new physics and even different dimensions of space and time. I think it’s all really exciting. It’s the beginning of something new!

So if you want to explain to people what the Higgs Boson is, either you can use the simple descriptions above, or you can cut it down to this simple joke:

A Higgs boson walks into a church. The priest says, ‘What are you doing in here?’ The Higgs boson replies, ‘You can’t have mass without me!’

This message was originally posted here.

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Transparent & Flexible Solar Cells

ABC News/Yahoo, By Bill Weir, C. Michael Kim, David Miller, Justin Bare & Brad Marxer, Jul 26, 2012

Researchers at UCLA have created a new transparent polymer based solar cell that may eventually turn buildings, cars and smart phones into energy generating solar cells.

Every 15 minutes the Earth is hit with enough sunlight to provide energy for the entire planet - for a whole year! The goal is to harness that energy at the highest efficiency possible.

By absorbing infrared light instead of visible light, like current solar cells, the polymer solar cells are nearly 70 percent transparent to the human eye. So they can be applied to clear surfaces that were previously unable to house solar cells.

That means they could be applied to portable gadgets like smart phones, tablets and MP3 players. They could also be applied to the top of your car or to the side of skyscrapers.

The lead researchers from UCLA, Professors Yang Yang and Paul Weiss, joined us from their office at UCLA to discuss the breakthrough.

World Bank's Jim Yong Kim: 'I want to eradicate poverty'

World Bank president says he will bring sense of urgency to efforts to end global poverty in exclusive Guardian interview

guardian.co.uk, Sarah Boseley, health editor, in Washington, Wednesday 25 July 2012

Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, speaks at the opening session
 of the International Aids Conference in Washington on 22 July. Photograph:
Jacquelyn Martin/AP

The new president of the World Bank is determined to eradicate global poverty through goals, targets and measuring success in the same way that he masterminded an Aids drugs campaign for poor people nearly a decade ago.

Jim Yong Kim, in an exclusive interview with the Guardian, said he was passionately committed to ending absolute poverty, which threatens survival and makes progress impossible for the 1.3 billion people living on less than $1.25 a day.

"I want to eradicate poverty," he said. "I think that there's a tremendous passion for that inside the World Bank"

Kim, who took over at the World Bank three weeks ago and is not only the first doctor and scientist (he is also an anthropologist) to be president but the first with development experience, will set "a clear, simple goal" in the eradication of absolute poverty. Getting there, however, needs progress on multiple, but integrated, fronts.

"The evidence suggests that you've got to do a lot of good, good things in unison, to be able to make that happen," said Kim. "The private sector has to grow, you have to have social protection mechanisms, you have to have a functioning health and education system. The scientific evidence strongly suggests that it has to be green – you have to do it in a way that is sustainable both for the environment and financially. All the great themes that we've been dealing with here have to come together to eradicate poverty from the face of the Earth."

Kim, who was previously head of the Ivy League Dartmouth College, is probably best known for his stint at the World Health Organisation (WHO), where he challenged the system to move faster in making Aids drugs available to people with HIV in the developing world who were dying in large numbers. In 2003, he set a target of 3 million people being on treatment by 2005 – thereafter known as "3 by 5". The target was not met on time, but it did focus minds and rapidly speed up the pace of the rollout, which included setting up clinics and training healthcare staff.

Now, he says, he thinks he can do the same for poverty. "What 3 by 5 did that we just didn't expect was to set a tempo to the response; it created a sense of urgency. There was pace and rhythm in the way we did things. We think we can do something similar for poverty," he said.

Asked if he would set a date this time, he said he was sorely tempted, but would not yet. "We don't know what they will be yet, but [there will be] goals, and counting. We need to keep up and say where we are making successes and why, and when are we going to be held to account next for the level of poverty. If we can build that kind of pace and rhythm into the movement, we think we can make a lot more progress," he said in his office at the Bank in Washington.

Kim was seen by many as a surprise choice for president. During the election, critics argued there should be an economist at the helm. Some said that, as a doctor, he would focus too much on health.

But Kim, who co-founded Partners In Health, which pioneered sustainable, high-quality healthcare for poor people, first in Haiti and later in Africa, said his three years at the WHO have been the only ones of his career that were solely devoted to health.

"It's always been about poverty, so for me, making the switch to being here at the Bank is really not that much of a stretch. I've been doing this all my life and we're in a bit of the spotlight because of the stuff we did in healthcare but it was really always about poverty," he said.

Partners in Health offered HIV and tuberculosis treatment to poor people in Haiti for the first time. "We were trying to make a point. And the point we were trying to make was that just because people are poor shouldn't mean that they shouldn't have access to high quality healthcare. It was always based in social justice, it was always based in the notion that people had a right to live a dignified life. The good news is that this place – the Bank – is just full of people like that."

Kim, who has spent his first weeks talking to Bank staff with expertise in a huge range of areas, strongly believes in the integration of all aspects of development, and says the staff do too. He cites a new hospital Partners built in Rwanda, which led to the building of a road to get there and then the expansion of mobile phone networks in the area. "In a very real sense, we've always believed that investing in health means investing in the wellbeing and development of that entire community," he said.

Speaking to the International Aids Conference in Washington this week – the first World Bank president to do so – Kim told activists and scientists that the end of Aids no longer looked as far-fetched as the 3 by 5 plan had appeared in 2003. Science has delivered tools, such as drugs that not only treat but prevent infection.

But the cost of drugs for life for 15 million or more people is not sustainable, he says. Donors are unlikely to foot the bill. Hard-hit developing countries have to be helped to grow so they can pay for the drugs and healthcare systems they need.

Kim would like the highly active HIV community to broaden its focus. "We've had Aids exceptionalism for a long time and Aids exceptionalism has been incredibly important. It has been so productive for all of us," he said. "But I think that as we go beyond the emergency response and think about the long-term sustainable response, conversations such as how do we spur growth in the private sector have to be part of the discussion."

Every country wants economic growth, he says, and people want jobs. "If I care about poverty, I have to care a lot about investments in the private sector. The private sector creates the vast majority of jobs in the world and social protection only goes so far," he said.

Nevertheless, he is a big proponent of social protection policies. "I've always been engaged in social protection programmes. But now it is really a signature of the World Bank. We're very good at helping people look at their public expenditures and we say to them things like, fuel subsidies really aren't very helpful to the poor – what you really need is to remove fuel subsidies and focus on things like conditional cash transfer plans. The Bank is great at that."

New to him are climate change and sustainability, he says. "We are watching things happen with one degree changes in ocean temperature that we thought wouldn't happen until there were two or three degree changes in ocean temperature. These are facts. These are things that have actually happened … I think we now have plenty of evidence that should push us into thinking that this is disturbing data and should spur us to think ever more seriously about clean energy and how can we move our focus more towards clean energy."

But poor countries are saying they need more energy and we must respect that, he says. "It's hard to say to them we still do it but you can't … I think our role is to say the science suggests strongly to us that we should help you looking for clean energy solutions."

Satellites reveal sudden Greenland ice melt

BBC News, 25 July 2012

The first image shows Greenland's ice sheet on 8 July, the second
reveals the thawed area just four days later

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Greenland's massive ice sheet has melted this month over an usually large area, Nasa has said.

Scientists said the "unprecedented" melting took place over a larger area that ever detected in three decades of satellite observation.

Melting even occurred at Greenland's coldest and highest place, Summit station.

The thawed ice area jumped from 40% of the ice sheet to 97% in just four days from 8 July.

Although about half of Greenland's ice sheet normally melts over the summer months, the speed and scale of this year's melting surprised scientists, who described the phenomenon as "extraordinary".

Nasa said that nearly the entire ice cover of Greenland, from its thin, low-lying coastal edges to its centre, which is 3km (two miles) thick, experienced some degree of melting at its surface.

"When we see melt in places that we haven't seen before, at least in a long period of time, it makes you sit up and ask what's happening?" Nasa chief scientist Waleed Abdalati said.

"It's a big signal, the meaning of which we're going to sort out for years to come."

He said that because this Greenland-wide melting has happened before they are not yet able to determine whether this is a natural but rare event, or if it has been sparked by man-made global warming.

Scientists said they believed that much of Greenland's ice was already freezing again.

Until now, the most extensive melting seen by satellites in the past three decades was about 55% of the area.

Ice last melted at Summit station in 1889, ice core records show.

The news comes just days after Nasa satellite imagery revealed that a massive iceberg, twice the size of Manhattan, had broken off a glacier in Greenland.

"This event, combined with other natural but uncommon phenomena, such as the large calving event last week on Petermann Glacier, are part of a complex story," said Nasa's Tom Wagner.

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