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Published online: 30 October 2006; | doi:10.1038/news061030-1

The United Kingdom’s Stern report calls for investment into technologies and adaptation.

Jim Giles

The costs of climate change are mounting as cars and factories continue to belch carbon dioxide. Getty

Today the UK government releases a report by their chief economist, Sir Nicholas Stern, on the financial costs of climate change, and the counter-costs of efforts to mitigate or adapt to the changing world. Here news@nature.com unpicks how this report differs from those that have come before, and why it is important.

What’s the main conclusion?

That acting now would save enormous sums in the long run. Stern has run models of future economic development and studied estimates of the financial impact of middle-of-the-road estimates for future climate change. He concludes that climate change will knock between 5% and 20% off global gross domestic product (GDP) by the beginning of the next century. That could be reduced to 1% if steps are taken immediately to limit emissions, he says. Investment now will lead to huge savings in the future.

Is that in line with previous economic studies?

Mainly, although the upper figure of 20% is higher than most other estimates, and most previous work has focussed on specific industries, such as agriculture, rather than tackling everything all together. Stern says his estimate is higher because his team considered factors ignored by some other models, such as the fact that poor countries are less well equipped to deal with the impacts of climate change.

Why is this report such a big deal?

Partly because Stern’s analyses are much more thorough than previous studies (the review is more than 500 pages long). Also because of who he is. Environmental groups often issue such forecasts. But Stern used to be chief economist at the World Bank. His message will carry a lot more weight with policy-makers around the world.

Is there any shift evident in the report about how people are thinking of tackling climate change?

Yes. Climate debates tend to centre on how to reduce emissions, but Stern has included three chapters on how to adapt to climate change. That makes sense, say economists, because climate change is already happening.

How close are we to Stern’s goals for investing in new technologies to reduce emissions or adapt to their consequences?

Nowhere near. The review points out that public spending on energy technologies has actually dropped in recent years. Stern says that the private sector also needs more help in deploying new low-carbon technologies: he wants global spending on the necessary incentives to be increased two- to fivefold.

What about political incentives to reduce emissions, such as the Kyoto Protocol?

Stern’s message is that change cannot happen with coordinated political action. The report doesn’t go into much detail about the best ways forward, although it does discuss making a global version of the current European emissions trading scheme. That could form a part of the next round of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012; discussions on this are due to take place next week in Nairobi, Kenya.

What will happen with the report now?

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Two immediate barriers stand in the way of implementing Stern’s message. The United States needs to join an international agreement on emissions (Stern is said to be travelling to the United States later this year to discuss his report). China and India, whose economies are rapidly expanding, also need to be persuaded to buy into low-carbon technologies. If the Stern report helps to convince them of the need to do so, it will have a huge impact.

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Published on October 30 2006, Page 1

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	HT ONLY IN - Defence forces lose over 2,000 officers
	FROM GENERALS and rear ad- mirals to lieutenants, officers at all levels are quitting India’s armed forces, worsening an al- ready severe manpower shortage. Figures made available by the army and the navy reveal that 2,712 officers sought discharge over the past five years. Of these 2,061 were al- lowed to leave. The air force refused to provide figures, saying the infor- mation “may be indica- tive of morale (and)… will prejudicially affect the security of the State”. The figures are the first such publicly shared estimates by the armed forces. According to official records, many offi- cers are dissatisfied with their professional growth and leave for better options. “There are a large num- ber of people seeking bet- ter opportunities outside the army, which is a sad thing, be- cause obviously they are leaving the profession that was their first choice,” General (retd) V.P. Malik, former army chief, told the Hin- dustan Times. “On one side are the material aspects like pay, al- lowances, etc. On the other are the prolonged periods of service without much respite in field ar- eas, like insurgency-affected places, when they may have to be separated from their families.”
TOP
www.bodhtree.com	www.pressmart.net

_uacct = “UA-234045-2″; urchinTracker();

What we know, and are trying to find out, about North Korea’s recent nuclear test.Geoff Brumfiel
What more have we learned about last week’s North Korean test?

The WC-135W aircraft, dispatched by the United States, reportedly picked up ‘debris’ from the blast. USAF

Scientists have been able to confirm that it was indeed a nuclear weapon. US intelligence is reporting that the explosive force of the bomb was less than a kiloton of TNT, and used plutonium as opposed to uranium.

How do we know all that?

The first clues came from seismic data immediately after the blast. A sharp pulse of seismic waves meant it was a man-made explosion and the size suggested it was too big to be a conventional weapon but too small to be a successful nuclear test - more likely a ‘fizzle’ (see ‘The fizzle heard around the world‘).

Satellites trained on the site caught additional details, such as signs of activity around the test site (including, apparently, a volleyball game going on at the dorms nearby).

But the critical information came in the days following the blast, when Japan and the United States dispatched reconnaissance aircraft to the edge of North Korean airspace. Those planes scooped up huge volumes of air looking for radioactive traces. US officials say they detected some “radioactive debris” from the blast.

What “radioactive debris” exactly?

That information, considered highly sensitive, has not been released. The most likely candidate would be Xenon-133, a radioactive isotope created in nuclear explosions. Xenon-133 is a noble gas, which means it’s chemically inert and can hang around in the air for days after the blast.

But Xenon-133 alone wouldn’t be enough to tell that the bomb was made of plutonium, according to Ivan Oelrich, a chemist and nuclear expert at the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington-based nuclear watchdog. To narrow it down to plutonium would require further information about the isotopes released by the blast.

Oelrich notes that during the Cold War, the word “debris” was used to mean unexploded particles from a bomb, which sometimes leak out from underground tests. If such trace particles have been collected, they would tell us a lot more about the exact makeup of the bomb.

Why does the exact composition of the bomb matter?

The fact that it is apparently a plutonium bomb makes it highly likely that it came from North Korea’s long-standing, indigenous plutonium-based programme, rather than imports. If the exact composition of the bomb can be determined, then intelligence agencies might be able to learn a great deal about how this programme refines plutonium. The composition might also provide hints as to why the bomb ‘fizzled’.

The Japanese and South Koreans have said the North may be preparing a second test. What might this mean?

It might suggest that the problem with the first bomb was relatively simple: perhaps a miscalculation with the conventional explosives used to set off the nuclear charge, rather than a problem with the fissile material. If the plutonium material was not made correctly, this would present a problem that would take much longer to fix.

So does North Korea have a useable bomb?

At the moment, it seems unlikely. The test probably used a bomb too heavy to put atop a missile, and the yield suggests that the North hasn’t yet perfected their device. But there are worries that they could be close to building a much improved weapon.

What we know, and are trying to find out, about North Korea’s recent nuclear test.Geoff Brumfiel

What more have we learned about last week’s North Korean test?

The WC-135W aircraft, dispatched by the United States, reportedly picked up ‘debris’ from the blast. USAF

Scientists have been able to confirm that it was indeed a nuclear weapon. US intelligence is reporting that the explosive force of the bomb was less than a kiloton of TNT, and used plutonium as opposed to uranium.

How do we know all that?

The first clues came from seismic data immediately after the blast. A sharp pulse of seismic waves meant it was a man-made explosion and the size suggested it was too big to be a conventional weapon but too small to be a successful nuclear test - more likely a ‘fizzle’ (see ‘The fizzle heard around the world‘).

Satellites trained on the site caught additional details, such as signs of activity around the test site (including, apparently, a volleyball game going on at the dorms nearby).

But the critical information came in the days following the blast, when Japan and the United States dispatched reconnaissance aircraft to the edge of North Korean airspace. Those planes scooped up huge volumes of air looking for radioactive traces. US officials say they detected some “radioactive debris” from the blast.

What “radioactive debris” exactly?

That information, considered highly sensitive, has not been released. The most likely candidate would be Xenon-133, a radioactive isotope created in nuclear explosions. Xenon-133 is a noble gas, which means it’s chemically inert and can hang around in the air for days after the blast.

But Xenon-133 alone wouldn’t be enough to tell that the bomb was made of plutonium, according to Ivan Oelrich, a chemist and nuclear expert at the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington-based nuclear watchdog. To narrow it down to plutonium would require further information about the isotopes released by the blast.

Oelrich notes that during the Cold War, the word “debris” was used to mean unexploded particles from a bomb, which sometimes leak out from underground tests. If such trace particles have been collected, they would tell us a lot more about the exact makeup of the bomb.

Why does the exact composition of the bomb matter?

The fact that it is apparently a plutonium bomb makes it highly likely that it came from North Korea’s long-standing, indigenous plutonium-based programme, rather than imports. If the exact composition of the bomb can be determined, then intelligence agencies might be able to learn a great deal about how this programme refines plutonium. The composition might also provide hints as to why the bomb ‘fizzled’.

The Japanese and South Koreans have said the North may be preparing a second test. What might this mean?

It might suggest that the problem with the first bomb was relatively simple: perhaps a miscalculation with the conventional explosives used to set off the nuclear charge, rather than a problem with the fissile material. If the plutonium material was not made correctly, this would present a problem that would take much longer to fix.

So does North Korea have a useable bomb?

At the moment, it seems unlikely. The test probably used a bomb too heavy to put atop a missile, and the yield suggests that the North hasn’t yet perfected their device. But there are worries that they could be close to building a much improved weapon.

Ordinary Least Squares Estimation
****************************
Dependent variable is NUMACC
8 observations used for estimation from 1 to 8
******************************
Regressor Coefficient Standard Error T-Ratio[Prob]
INPUT 15.8571 2.3190 6.8381[.000]
SHIFTHOUR 1.1429 .45922 2.4887[.047]
******************************
R-Squared .50794 R-Bar-Squared .42593
S.E. of Regression 2.9761 F-stat. F( 1, 6) 6.1935[.047]
Mean of Dependent Variable 21.0000 S.D. of Dependent Variable 3.9279
Residual Sum of Squares 53.1429 Equation Log-likelihood -18.9257
Akaike Info. Criterion -20.9257 Schwarz Bayesian Criterion -21.0051
DW-statistic 3.0376
****************************

Diagnostic Tests
****************************
* Test Statistics * LM Version * F Version *
****************************
* * * *
* A:Serial Correlation*CHSQ( 1)= 2.4771[.116]*F( 1, 5)= 2.2426[.195]*
* * * *
* B:Functional Form *CHSQ( 1)= .014337[.905]*F( 1, 5)= .0089767[.928]*
* * * *
* C:Normality *CHSQ( 2)= .44269[.801]* Not applicable *
* * * *
* D:Heteroscedasticity*CHSQ( 1)= .52281[.470]*F( 1, 6)= .41953[.541]*
******************************
A:Lagrange multiplier test of residual serial correlation
B:Ramsey’s RESET test using the square of the fitted values
C:Based on a test of skewness and kurtosis of residuals
D:Based on the regression of squared residuals on squared fitted values

Published online: 11 October 2006; | doi:10.1038/news061009-9

Authors of study deny accusations of political bias.Jim Giles

This bomb in Baghdad reportedly killed at least eight people and wounded 31. MOHAMMED HATO/AP/EMPICS

Have over 650,000 people, or 2.5% of the population, really died in Iraq as a result of the US-led invasion?

That’s the conclusion of a study published in The Lancet this week. But the number has attracted criticism from other researchers who say the result is a major over-estimate, and may have been published for political reasons.

The team behind the figures strongly denies the criticisms. They stress that their methods are well established, and the assumptions they use are validated by other data.

The new number comes from a survey of 1,849 households in 16 regions of Iraq. Teams of questioners organised by the Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad asked people about household members that had died between January 2002, before the invasion, up to July 2006. They documented 82 deaths in the period before the invasion, and 547 during the conflict.

An extrapolation of this data suggests that the number of deaths per thousand people per year has leapt from 5.5 to 13.3 over that period. Across the whole country, say the researchers, that figure equates to a total of 654,965 more deaths than would have been expected from pre-invasion rates. Just over 600,000 of those were caused by direct violence, the team adds.

The figure is much bigger than previous estimates.

Conflict figures

“I doubt it is large as they say,” says Jon Pedersen, a social scientist at Fafo, an independent research centre is Oslo, Norway. Pedersen helped run a United Nations study that concluded between 18,000 and 29,000 people died as a result of violence between the start of the war and May 2004.

He says that violence has become more frequent since his study, but doubts whether the real number can be so much bigger than media reports suggest. Iraq Body Count, a website that collates mortality figures from media sources, puts the current figure at around 45,000.

“We are told about at least 30 to 40 deaths per day just from news reports,” says Pedersen. “But 500 per day is very different.”

Pederson also points out that the pre-invasion death rate recorded by the Al Mustansiriya team is very low. Figures from the United Nations Children’s’ Fund from before the war put the number at around 13 deaths per thousand per year. If correct, this suggests almost no increase that can be attributed to the conflict.

But Gilbert Burnham, co-director of the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland and a member of the team that helped design the study, says that neither criticism stands up to scrutiny. He says that pre-war mortality figures from other sources, such the US Central Intelligence Agency, are in line with his data.

Reports of deaths, adds Burnham, were backed up by a death certificate in 92% of the 629 cases they collected. “We recorded what people told us,” he says. “We’re not making up deaths.”

Election countdown

Burnham’s group is having also to fight off criticism that its work is somehow political in nature. When he released a previous estimate of Iraqi death tolls in 2004, one team member said that they had wanted to get the result out before the US presidential election, so that “both candidates would be forced to pledge to protect civilian lives in Iraq”. The quote was then used by supporters of the Iraq war to brand Burnham’s research as politically biased.

With mid-term US elections due next month, Burnham’s team is open to the same accusations. Debarati Guha-Sapir, director of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters in Brussels, says that Burnham’s team have published “inflated” numbers that “discredit” the process of estimating death counts.

“Why are they doing this?” she asks. “It’s because of the elections.”

“Absolutely not,” replies Burnham. He says that the paper has been delayed and that he hoped to have it out in July or August. “In our team we have some people who are opposed to the war and some who are in favour,” he notes. He points out that Iraq has been in the news constantly over the past year, and so his team would have been accused of playing politics no matter when the paper was published.

http://www.nature.com/news/2006/061009/full/061009-9.html

Published online: 9 October 2006; | doi:10.1038/news061009-3

North Korean blast seems small for a nuke

News@nature.com looks at how much we know about the country’s nuclear abilities.Katharine Sanderson & Jim Giles

What has happened?

The seismic rumble was detected near Kimchaek. USGS

On Monday morning, North Korea announced it had performed an underground test of a nuclear bomb, apparently warning China about 20 minutes beforehand. North Korea has been asked to step back from nuclear ambitions; the news of this first test has brought widespread international condemnation.

An official North Korean government statement said: “It has been confirmed that there was no such danger from radioactive emission in the course of the nuclear test, as it was carried out under scientific consideration and careful calculation. The nuclear test was conducted with indigenous wisdom and technology, 100 percent.” But international observers say there are signs that the test may not have gone perfectly.

Was the blast detected?

The South Korean Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources reported that at 10:35:27 AM, local time on 9 October 2006, a seismic tremor measuring 3.58 to 3.7 on the Richter scale was detected. The US Geological Survey later announced that they recorded seismic activity rating at 4.2 on the Richter scale.

Does that confirm the North Korean claims?

The seismic trace recorded at Inchon, South Korea, on Monday morning. USGS Live Internet Seismic Server

Probably, but not in isolation. It is easy to say that the blast was an explosion rather than an earthquake by looking at the seismic signal: an explosion has a much sharper start than a quake. But to identify the details of a nuclear explosion will take more delving. Scientists will pour over seismic data in the coming days. To get a complete picture, the geology of the rock will also need to be considered.

Radionuclide analysis of particles leaked into the atmosphere by the blast can also give evidence of a nuclear explosion. But again these data need to be collected and analysed, which should take 2 or 3 days.

International networks of seismology and radionuclide stations exist to do this kind of testing and verification.

Satellite images of any subsidence craters may also help confirm the underground test.

How big was the blast?

The Nevada nuclear test site in the United States shows craters from previous underground explosions. US Department of Energy

Estimates for the bomb’s yield (the amount of energy discharged when the weapon is detonated, in the equivalent mass of trinitrotoluene, or TNT) differ widely, from 550 tons of TNT to 5-15 kilotons (this last a Russian estimate). By comparison, the Hiroshima bomb was about 12.5 kilotons.

The lower estimate is very small: it would be difficult to build a bomb with a critical mass of plutonium that creates a blast like this. It may be that the bomb didn’t completely detonate, or that the chain reaction didn’t go to completion.

Does anyone know what kind of bomb it was?

Most likely plutonium, although North Korea has been under suspicion for having a uranium enrichment programme. North Korea is estimated to have between 7 and 24 kilograms of plutonium, which depending on how much is needed for a bomb (4 to 8 kilograms) could produce only just enough for one bomb or up to four.

To create a blast this size without a nuclear reaction, a huge amount of TNT would be needed — and a very large underground hole would have to be excavated, which would be easily spotted by spy cameras.

Could North Korea launch a nuclear attack?

Rumours are rife that an arms race will ensue. Japan, China and South Korea are under close scrutiny. As far as North Korea’s progress goes, they tested a missile in July this year, which exploded on take off. The worry is now that North Korea could piggyback a nuclear device onto a missile. This would require a small and light nuclear device, and miniaturizing nuclear fission is a very technical domain. How far North Korea is in succeeding, only they know.

http://www.nature.com/news/2006/061009/full/061009-3.html