U.S. asks Japan to halt Iran oil field project - Report -

U.S. asks Japan to halt Iran oil field project - Report -:

The United States has asked Japan to suspend its multi-billion-dollar oil investment in Iran, a Japanese newspaper reported on Thursday.
Citing top U.S. government officials, Japan’s daily Sankei Shimbun reported that the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick and Undersecretary of State Robert Joseph informally asked the Japanese government to at least temporarily halt work in Iran’s Azadegan oil field, one of the world's biggest oil reserves.
Washington made its request because it believes that developing the oil field will generate income for Iran which could support its nuclear program, the newspaper said, adding that the there was a movement inside the U.S. Congress to make a similar request.
The U.S. Embassy in Japan said that Tokyo was aware of the U.S. opposition to investment in Iran. "We have discussed our views on this and related matters and Japan knows our position on this matter," a U.S. Embassy spokesman told AFP.
However, the Japanese government said that it will go ahead with the Azadegan project despite the U.S. opposition.
Japan's top government spokesman, Shinzo Abe, said the project isn’t a topic of discussion with the U.S., stressing that the it was vital for securing his country’s energy supplies.
"It is not the case that the Japanese government is holding concrete discussions at this juncture with the United States regarding the future direction of the development of the Azadegan oil field," said Abe, the chief cabinet secretary.
He added: "We would like to deal with this firmly based upon our basic recognition that both...the nuclear non-proliferation issue and stable crude oil supplies are important.”
The United States and the European Union accuse Iran of secretly developing an atomic weapons program. But Tehran denies their allegations, insisting that it has a right to work on a peaceful nuclear program as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The UN Security Council has so far failed to reach an agreement over a statement calling on Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities.
While a majority of the 15-nation Security Council supports the U.S., EU, veto-holding members Russia and China reject any language they feel will lead to punitive measures against Tehran.
Japan has been cautious in dealing with the Iranian case, backing the U.S. and EU calls for Tehran to abandon its nuclear program while trying to keep its close trade ties with the Islamic republic.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said last month that Japan's position towards the Iranian nuclear case won’t affect the major oil investment.
But Japan's largest oil refiner, Nippon Oil Corp., said last week that it would cut imports of Iranian crude by 15 percent this year over fears that the nuclear standoff escalates and affect the Iranian oil industry

Antarctic ice sheet decline startles scientists

Guardian Unlimited Special reports Antarctic ice sheet decline startles scientists

Losses contradict earlier climate forecast · New calculations based on satellite readings Alok Jha, science correspondentFriday March 3, 2006The Guardian
The Antarctic ice sheet, which contains 90% of the world's ice, has lost significant mass in the past few years. The discovery comes as a surprise to scientists, who thought that the continent would gain ice this century because of increased snowfall in a warming climate.
A research team from the University of Colorado used satellite data to estimate that the ice sheet is losing up to 36 cubic miles of ice every year. By comparison, a city the size of Los Angeles uses one cubic mile of fresh water every year

"This is the first study to indicate the total mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet is in significant decline," said Professor Isabella Velicogna of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (Cires).
Most of the ice loss measured by Professor Velicogna - around 35 cubic miles - came from the West Antarctic ice sheet.
According to the British Antarctic Survey, if the West Antarctic ice sheet - which is about eight times smaller in volume than the East Antarctic ice sheet -melted completely, global sea levels would rise by more than six metres (20 ft).
At twice the size of Australia, Antarctica is the Earth's fifth largest continent and contains 70% of its total fresh water resources. An ice sheet covers about 98% of the continent with an average thickness of about 2,000 metres (6,500 ft).
Understanding how the mass of this ice sheet changes over time is important in working out how sea levels around the world change, with obvious impacts on society. In a paper published online today in Science Express, the researchers said that there have been significant improvements in monitoring the ice sheet in the last few years but that there is also confusion: many studies give contrasting estimates of the changes to Antarctica.
The latest assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was completed in 2001 and it predicted the Antarctic ice sheets would gain mass in the 21st century. This was due to increased snow falling on the continent in a warming climate.
Recent radar measurements have shown an increase in the thickness in the interior of the East Antarctic ice sheet in the last decade. But the IPCC calculations do not consider possible changes in coastal Antarctic regions. Prof Velicogna said that her study got around the limitations of the IPCC prediction.
"The overall balance of the Antarctic ice is dependent on regional changes in the interior and those in the coastal areas," she said. "The changes we are seeing are probably a good indicator of the changing climatic conditions there."
Previous studies have shown that the glaciers on the Antarctic peninsula, which sticks out from the West Antarctic ice sheet towards Argentina, began melting rapidly after the collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf in 2002. Ice shelves there have decreased by more than 5,200 square miles in the past three decades.
The researchers calculated that the loss of ice they measured in the new study represents a seal level rise of around 0.4mm every year (with a margin of error of 0.2mm).
The change in Antarctic ice mass is hard to measure because of the size and complexity of the ice sheets. Previous methods could only provide estimates of changes in specific regions of the continent and even studies that brought together results from several experiments have suffered from sparse information from critical areas of the continent.
Instead, Prof Velicogna used data from the two gravity recovery and climate experiment (Grace) satellites in orbit around the Earth to make her calculations. Launched in 2002, they sense tiny changes in the Earth's gravitational field caused by changes in various regions of our planet. Scientists can track differences in the satellites' spacing of less than 1/50th the width of a human hair.
The Antarctic ice sheet's loss of mass tugged one satellite away from the other as they passed overhead, allowing scientists to work out the amount of ice lost.
"The strength of Grace is that we were able to assess the entire Antarctic region in one fell swoop to determine whether it was gaining or losing mass," said John Wahr of Cires.
The Grace satellites allow scientists to differentiate between the East and West Antarctic ice sheets. More subtle changes occurring in coastal areas and even on individual glaciers are better measured with instruments like radar and altimeters, however, said Prof Wahr.

Consensus grows on climate change

BBC NEWS Science/Nature Consensus grows on climate change

The global scientific body on climate change will report soon that only greenhouse gas emissions can explain freak weather patterns.
Simultaneous changes in sea ice, glaciers, droughts, floods, ecosystems, ocean acidification and wildlife migration are taking place.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had previously said gases such as CO2 were "probably" to blame.
Its latest draft report will be sent to world governments next month.
A source told the BBC: "The measurements from the natural world on all parts of the globe have been anomalous over the past decade.
"If a few were out of kilter we wouldn't be too worried, because the Earth changes naturally. But the fact that they are virtually all out of kilter makes us very concerned."
He said the report would forecast that a doubling of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere would bring a temperature rise of 2-4.5C, or maybe higher.
This is an increase on projections in the last IPCC report, which suggested that the rise could be as little as 1.5C.
Uncertainties remain
The scientists will say there is still great uncertainty about the pace and scope of future change, although by the end of the century global temperatures could increase by up to 5.8C.
The doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial stable levels (270 parts per million) is expected to happen around the middle of the century.

Extreme weather events indicate man-made change, the IPCC saysWhat really worries the scientists is that we are already seeing major disruptions despite having increased CO2 by just 30%.
A recent scientific report commissioned by the UK government warned that the world might already be fixed on a path that would begin melting the Greenland ice cap. That in turn would start raising sea levels throughout the world.
There will be sceptics, predominantly in the US, who will accuse the IPCC of trying to scare policy-makers into action with their report.
But the broad international expert consensus embodied in the IPCC will make it harder for the US administration to say that climate change is a problem for the future which can be solved by technological advances.
In a meeting with climate campaigners, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said the world needed to engage the Americans, Chinese and Indians in agreement over a figure for CO2 stabilisation.
But this is unlikely to happen while US President George W Bush is in office; his representative told the December climate conference in Montreal that the US would not agree any targets for reducing CO2.
President Bush's chief adviser, James Connaughton, said recently that it was pointless discussing a safe CO2 level, as we could not be sure how resistant the world would be to greenhouse gases.
Maybe we could double CO2 with impunity, or maybe we could increase it threefold or fourfold; the issue was not worth discussing, he said.
Targets and timetables needed
Mr Blair echoed President Bush's call for new technologies to combat climate change.
But both men were told by international business leaders last year that more expensive new technologies would not supplant cheap dirty technologies unless governments set binding targets and timetables for reducing greenhouse gases, which the US has rejected.

There is little sign of President Bush changing direction on climateThe prime minister confirmed that his long-delayed climate strategy review would be published this month, and would strive to meet his unilateral target of cutting Britain's CO2 emissions by 20% by 2010.
BBC News has been told that the central policy in the review, the CO2 cut for big business, is still being contested, with the prime minister's industry adviser Geoffrey Norris urging a more lax target than the one demanded by the environment department Defra.
Central figures in the review process are now admitting that the 20% target will be virtually impossible to hit, and are looking for a "respectable" near miss.
The definition of "respectable" is still under ferocious debate.