Inhalt:

A study of satellite measurements of Pine Island glacier in west Antarctica reveals the surface of the ice is now dropping at a rate of up to 16m a year.

Since 1994, the glacier has lowered by as much as 90m, which has serious implications for sea-level rise.
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Calculations based on the rate of melting 15 years ago had suggested the glacier would last for 600 years. But the new data points to a lifespan for the vast ice stream of only another 100 years.

The global land-ocean temperature anomaly for July 2009 was +.60 Celsius or +1.08 F. Only July of 1998 (a strong el nino year) was warmer.

The image below shows the July 2009 anomalies across the globe (warm is red, cool is blue). Clearly the reds and oranges far outweigh the blues on this map.

"We've seen about a third more people than before," said Jean Hagopian, a volunteer at the New Life food pantry, part of the New Life Assembly of God church in Roseville, a suburb some 20 miles northeast of Detroit.

Gleaners, an agency that distributes excess food donated from food processors, says their distribution is up 18% from last year. Michigan Department of Human Services, which handles federal food assistance like food stamps, WIC checks and such, has seen a 14% spike in applications since October. Calls to the United Way's help line have tripled in the last year.

Now it's middle class folks who lost their $60,000-a-year auto job, or home owners who got caught on the wrong side of the real estate bubble.

"In parts there's just small channel, one or one-and-a-half feet deep." In the same stretches of the river last year the water was as deep as five feet and "the wildebeest and zebra were up to their chests or necks, or even swimming," he adds.

So, over the next few months, there may be increased drought in Africa, India and Australia, heavier rainfall in South America and increased extremes in Britain, of warm and cold. It may make 2010 one of the hottest years on record.
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At present, forecasters do not expect this El Niño to equal that of 1998, but it may be the second-strongest, and concerned groups, from international insurance companies to commodity traders, to aid agencies such as Oxfam, have begun to follow its progress anxiously. Its potential for economic and social impact is considerable.
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El Niño is a periodic warming of the normally cold waters of the eastern tropical Pacific, the ocean region westwards out from South America along the line of the equator. Since the Pacific is a heat reservoir which drives wind patterns around the world, the change in its temperature alters global weather. An El Niño is defined by ocean surface temperatures rising by more than 0.5C above the average.

This El Niño is well beyond that, says the Climate Prediction Center of the US National Weather Service. "Sea surface temperatures remain +0.5 to +1.5 above average across much of the equatorial Pacific Ocean," the centre reported last week. "Observations and dynamical model forecasts indicate El Niño conditions will continue to intensify and are expected to last through the northern hemisphere winter of 2009-10."

The last El Niño was in 2006-07 and, at its peak, sea surface temperatures averaged about 0.9 degrees above normal. But this is a stage which has already been reached by this one.

An increase of just 1.0 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) over current average temperatures would more than double the CO2 escaping from the peatlands.

Northern peatlands contain one-third of the planet's soil-bound organic carbon, the equivalent of half of all the CO2 in the atmosphere.

Peat is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation found in wetlands or peatlands, which cover between two and three percent of the global land mass. While present in all climate zones, the vast majority of peatlands are found in sub-Arctic regions.

A team of European researchers led by Ellen Dorrepaal of the University of Amsterdam artificially warmed natural peatlands in Abisko, in northern Sweden, by 1.0 C over a period of eight years.

The experimental plots exhaled and extra 60 percent of CO2 in Spring and 52 percent in Summer over the entire period, reported the study, published in the British journal Nature.

Methods put forward include reflecting solar radiation back into space using giant mirrors or aerosol particles.

But the authors warn that such attempts to control the climate could also cause major changes in precipitation.

They want the effect on rainfall to be assessed before any action is taken.

Gabriele Hegerl of the Grant Institute at University of Edinburgh and Susan Solomon of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at Boulder, Colorado, write that "if geo-engineering studies focus too heavily on warming, critical risks associated with such possible "cures" will not be evaluated appropriately".

The finding is based on an examination of past extinctions, but could help current conservation efforts.

Researchers say that this phenomenon can result in the loss of an entire branch of the "tree of life".

Justin Lin, the World Bank’s chief economist, warned last month that half-empty factories risk setting off a “deflationary spiral”. We are moving into a phase where the “real economy crisis” bites deeper – meaning mass lay-offs and drastic falls in investment as firms retrench. “Unless we deal with excess capacity, it will wreak havoc on all countries,” he said.

Mr Lin said capacity use had fallen to 72pc in Germany, 69pc in the US, 65pc in Japan, and near 50pc in some poorer countries. These are post-War lows. Fresh data from the Federal Reserve is actually worse. Capacity use in US manufacturing fell to 65.4pc in July.

Oil production has already peaked in non-Opec countries and the era of cheap oil has come to an end, it warned.

Several industry sources estimated that there were 70 million barrels of oil being stored at sea. While the estimates vary from around 60 million to 100 million barrels, most sources agree offshore storage levels rose by around 10 million barrels in the last two weeks alone.

But the real problems are still ahead for German shipping companies. The 1,550 new ships that were on order in mid-2008 are to be delivered in the next few years. The major Asian shipyards are unwilling to accept cancellations.

Some ship financiers have already decided to forfeit down payments already paid to the shipyards, which can amount to up to 40 percent of the total price, because they lack the additional millions needed to take delivery of the ships on order. Most others are trying to negotiate with the shipyards to at least delay construction, in the hope that the situation will improve significantly in a few years.

The orders for new container ships now on the shipyards' books represent a total capacity of 5.3 million TEUs, or about 50 percent more than current worldwide container fleet capacity. Even if global trade recovers by next year, this glut of new ships will create enough excess capacity to depress shipping prices.
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Lucien Wong, the chairman of the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore, reported in April that roughly 450 container ships are now idle worldwide -- about 10 percent of the global fleet.

The State Statistics Committee did not give figures for the volume of gas transported through Ukrainian territory but according to last year's statistics, 74 billion cubic metres of gas was sent through Ukraine.

In the full year of 2008, some 120 billion cubic metres of gas was transited through Ukraine. Russia sends 80% of its gas exports to Europe through its southern neighbour.

Auf 7,1 Prozent beläuft sich laut Statistikamt das BIP-Wachstum, doch bis auf sieben Provinzen meldeten alle Regionen höhere Werte.

Many couples will be excluded from the new diktat, but if both parents were an only child, like most newly-weds in the city, they will be encouraged to conceive again, in an effort to ensure that the city's workforce is not outnumbered by its pensioners.

Moreover, three million university graduates, including those who had left last year, were still unemployed, he said.

China's urban registered unemployment rate stood at 4.3 percent in the second quarter, unchanged from the first three months and up from 4.2 percent at the end of 2008, Wang said.
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However, the actual jobless figure may be much bigger than the official rate, which does not include migrant workers and university graduates.

Power consumption rose to 342 billion kilowatt-hours last month, the National Energy Administration and the China Electricity Council said separate statements today. Power demand between January and July fell 0.9 percent to 2 trillion kilowatt-hours.

Industrial production climbed 10.8 percent in July after a 10.7 percent advance in June, the statistics bureau said earlier this week. Power production expanded for the second month in July as China recovered from the economic slowdown helped by the government’s 4 trillion-yuan ($585 billion) spending, according to the statistics bureau.

Bundesweit verbuchten die Hotels und Pensionen nach Angaben des Statistischen Bundesamtes im ersten Halbjahr einen Rückgang um zwei Prozent bei den Übernachtungen. Besonders betroffen sind, so der Hotelverband Deutschland, Flughafenhotels, 5-Sternehotels und die Regionen, die vor allem Geschäftsreisende empfangen. Denn viele Firmen streichen wegen der Krise Tagungen, Kongresse, Feiern und Ausflüge.

Zwar waren die deutschen Hotels insgesamt im Juni sogar besser besucht als im Vorjahr, weil die Deutschen wieder mehr Urlaub im eigenen Land machen, etwa an der Ostsee. Aber eine Sprecherin des Hotelverbands warnt: „Wir haben noch einen sehr steinigen Weg vor uns. Selbst die beste Reisesaison kann die Ausfälle bei den Geschäftsreisen nicht ausgleichen.” Deswegen rechnet sie für die Gesamtbranche aufs Jahr gesehen mit fünf Prozent weniger Umsatz und „erhöhtem Preiswettbewerb”, wenn auch nicht mit einem Preiskrieg.

"This year is different, as it has come in two waves," said Sebastien Chantereau, from the national shellfish producers' body, the Comité National de la Conchyliculture. "Although each was less violent than the one that struck last July, together the damage is roughly the same. If we have one more wave between now and September it will be a total catastrophe," he told the Daily Telegraph.

It blames deforestation, over grazing, forest fires and the indiscriminate use of agro-chemicals.

The report also warns of a potential water crisis in the country, pointing out that in the past, a combination of rainfall and surface and groundwater supplies were sufficient for the population.

But now it says that rainfall has become more erratic, groundwater supplies are becoming more depleted and surface water is becoming more polluted.

Captain Alok Bhatnagar, director of naval plans at India’s ministry of defence, said on Thursday that 32 warships and submarines were under construction in the country’s shipyards. Work on 75 more ships, including aircraft carriers, destroyers, frigates and amphibious vessels, would begin over 10 years.

Falling agricultural production means that Iraq, once a food exporter, will this year have to import nearly 80% of its food, spending money that is urgently needed for reconstruction projects.
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This summer and last have seen more than twice as many dusty days as the previous four, he said. And 35% of the time, dust is reducing visibility to less than three miles, the point at which it is normally considered unsafe to fly. On many of those days, visibility was zero, delaying flights, disrupting military operations and sending thousands of people to hospitals with breathing problems.

"The lack of available water is a huge issue and it's having a huge effect on Iraqi society," said Silverman, social science advisor for strategic communications with the Army's Human Terrain System, a program that links social scientists and anthropologists with combat brigades. He emphasized that he was not speaking on behalf of the military.

Weak demand during the downturn and the fall in the price of oil have put downward pressure on prices.
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Recent data showed consumer prices had fallen by a record 1.7% in the year to the end of June.

The Caisse took the unprecedented move of announcing interim financial results Tuesday – indicating that an overall writedown of $5.7-billion on real estate and other investments completely wiped out gains on stocks in the first half of the year – in part to quell growing rumours about trouble in its property portfolio.

The Caisse, which manages the assets of 25 provincial funds including the Quebec Pension Plan, was stung by criticism last fall that it was too secretive, when it continuously rejected calls to reveal the extent of the damage it suffered as a result of October's stock market meltdown.
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The Caisse was badly bruised in 2008 by its oversized position in currency and futures contracts and third-party asset-backed commercial paper holdings, posting a $40-billion loss last year, equal to a return of minus 25 per cent.
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The writedowns this year erased the 5-per-cent return that the Caisse had earned on other investments to June 30, leaving it with “neutral” overall performance, Mr. Sabia said. “No one here thinks that neutral returns is what we should be aiming for,” he told reporters on a conference call. “There's a lot of work to do in repositioning the Caisse and changing our strategies, and we're going to continue to do that.”

Kenya’s corn production may fall 65 percent below consumption this year, putting 10 million Kenyans at risk of hunger or food insecurity, said Odinga.

Drought has cut hydropower generation by 46 percent, leading to the start of scheduled power-rationing last week as generation dropped to 900 megawatts. This is 200 megawatts below peak demand, he said.

Kenya will maintain load-shedding until at least mid- October when 222 megawatts of new generating capacity will be added to the grid and the short rains start, he said.

The contraction, the worst since quarterly records began in the Baltic nation in 1995, gathered pace after gross domestic product shrank 18 percent in the first quarter, the central statistics office in Riga said today, citing preliminary figures. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of eight economists was for a 22 percent decline. The final report will be released on Sept. 8.

“The steepest decline is behind us,” said Andris Vilks at SEB AB’s Latvian unit, who had estimated an 18 percent contraction for the second quarter. “The third and fourth quarters may see a decline of about 12 percent to 15 percent.”

National production averaged 2.59 million b/d in the second quarter of the year and 2.67 million b/d in the first quarter.
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Even before Pemex revised its outlook to 2.65 million b/d for 2009, consultancy IPD Latin America was expecting the company to be producing less than 2.5 million b/d going into next year, managing director John Padilla told BNamericas.

George Baker, director of Houston-based consultancy Baker & Associates, said Pemex would be following statistical trends if it finished the year with production of 2.5 million b/d.

The Mexican state-owned oil monopoly Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, estimates some $720 million worth of oil products were stolen from it in 2008, slightly higher than 2007. The robberies have sapped the oil behemoth--the second-largest exporter to the U.S.--for years. But the number of discovered clandestine taps into national pipelines has steadily climbed in recent years, adding to frustrations over falling production at its prize field Cantarell.

“The plan acknowledges the need to speed up privatization,” said Prime Minister Donald Tusk at a press conference in Warsaw today. The budget “requires a cash injection to cover basic spending.”

President Dmitry Medvedev blamed the country's reliance on energy and commodity exports, saying the economy "crumbled" as the global crisis hit.

"We can't develop like this any further. It's a dead end," he told party leaders. "We're hovering in place, and the crisis brought this home. We will have to make decisions on changing the structure of the economy. Otherwise our economy has no future. The situation is outrageous and has been for a long time. We continue to ship raw timber for export, and processing isn't being developed."

The slump has played havoc with state finances. The Kremlin's war chest is vanishing fast as the budget deficit rises to 9.4pc this year. While there are still funds to cover $80bn (£48bn) of stimulus measures, the picture could turn ugly if there is a second leg to the global downturn. The World Bank says unemployment may reach 13pc this year as household spending "collapses".

Gross domestic product declined 1 percent from the previous quarter, when it shrank 1.9 percent, the Madrid-based National Statistics Institute said in a preliminary estimate. From a year earlier, G.D.P. contracted 4.1 percent.

The statistics stood in contrast to data Thursday showing stronger-than-expected performances by the French and German economies, each of which grew 0.3 percent in the second quarter from the first quarter.

Official data revealed that youth unemployment has soared, with more than 700,000 18 to 24-year-olds and 206,000 16 to 17-year-olds jobless.

In the three months to June, the number of 16 to 17-year-olds in work dropped to only 28.6 per cent, from 34 per cent a year earlier. The employment rate for people aged 18 to 24 dropped to 59.8 per cent, from 64.1 per cent.

The figures formed part of what economists described as a "ghastly" set of employment data, which showed that the jobless total had hit a 14-year high of 2.44 million and that the jobless rate had reached a 13-year-high of 7.8 per cent.
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The number employed fell by a record 271,000.
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"Even if the economy does return to growth in the third quarter, we suspect unemployment will rise for the rest of this year and much, if not all, of 2010."

North Sea gas has served Britain well, but supply peaked in 1999. Since then the flow has fallen by half; by 2015 it will have dropped by two-thirds. By 2015 four of Britain’s ten nuclear stations will have shut and no new ones could be ready for years after that. As for coal, it is fiendishly dirty: Britain will be breaking just about every green promise it has ever made if it is using anything like as much as it does today. Renewable energy sources will help, but even if the wind and waves can be harnessed (and Britain has plenty of both), these on-off forces cannot easily replace more predictable gas, nuclear and coal power. There will be a shortfall—perhaps of as much as 20GW—which, if nothing radical is done, will have to be met from imported gas. A large chunk of it may come from Vladimir Putin’s deeply unreliable and corrupt Russia.

GM’s unusual, government-engineered bankruptcy allowed the Detroit automaker to emerge as a new company — and to shed billions in liabilities, including claims that governments had against GM for polluting.

Environmental liabilities estimated at $530 million were left with the old GM, which has only $1.2 billion to wind down.

Administrative fees and other claims will soak up that money, and state and local officials told the Free Press they fear the cleanups will be shortchanged.
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GM said the issue rested with Motors Liquidation Co. — what’s left of the old GM — which declined to comment.

In the year-ago period, the company posted a loss of $2.48 billion.

Revenue during the quarter fell 28 percent to $1.27 billion from $1.76 billion.

The bulk of the latest quarterly loss stems from a $1.6 billion charge related to the company's mortgage business. GMAC also incurred a $1.2 billion tax charge on its conversion from a partnership, or LLC, to a privately held corporation. The company remains a preferred lender to General Motors Co.

Excluding those charges, GMAC said its second-quarter loss was about $400 million.

Personal incomes, which include interest income, dividends, rents and other payments as well as wages, tumbled 1.3 percent in June, more than forecast and the biggest drop in four years, yesterday’s Commerce report showed. Excluding the effects of the stimulus plan, June incomes would have dropped 0.1 percent after no change in May, according to the report. In May, one-time additional payments to Social Security recipients boosted incomes 1.3 percent.
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The savings rate in June fell to 4.6 percent as incomes dropped, yesterday’s Commerce Department report showed. The rate, which reached a 14-year high of 6.2 percent the previous month, is likely to keep climbing, Rosenberg said. A rate as high as 15 percent can’t be ruled out, he said.

The percentage of “underwater” loans may rise to 48 percent, or 25 million homes, as prices drop through the first quarter of 2011, Karen Weaver and Ying Shen, analysts in New York at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a report today.

As of March 31, the share of homes mortgaged for more than their value was 26 percent, or about 14 million properties, according to Deutsche Bank. Further deterioration will depress consumer spending and boost defaults by borrowers who face unemployment, divorce, disability or other financial challenges, the securitization analysts said.

“Borrowers may also ‘ruthlessly’ or strategically default even without such life events,” they wrote.

Foreclosure Rate is actual foreclosures in process: "Everything with NOD and Trustee's Sale filing."

REO Rate: "Everything foreclosed but still held by bank or servicer. This category is separate from other two."

Foreclosure activity jumped 7 percent in July from June and 32 percent from a year earlier as one in every 355 households with a loan got a foreclosure filing, RealtyTrac said on Thursday.

Filings -- including notices of default, auction and bank repossession -- have escalated with unemployment.

"July marks the third time in the last five months where we've seen a new record set for foreclosure activity," James J. Saccacio, RealtyTrac's chief executive, said in a statement.

Stimulus programs and a surging money supply aren’t likely to “solve a problem of excess debt generation that resulted from greed and living way beyond our means,” the firm wrote yesterday in an unsigned report on its Web site. “We could wind up with a lost couple of decades.”

The CHART OF THE DAY shows U.S. total debt and gross domestic product since 1952, along with the ratio between them, based on data compiled by Bloomberg. The ratio rose in the first quarter to 372 percent even as household borrowing dropped for a second straight quarter, an unprecedented streak.

The quagga mussels first came to America in the ballast of ships from Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe in the 1980s. It was not until recently, however, when the molluscs turned up in Lake Mead, which supplies drinking water to Las Vegas and other large desert cities, that the catastrophic scale of the invasion became clear.
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There are now believed to be at least three trillion of them in Lake Mead, and scientists say it is only a matter of time before they spread throughout the West’s vast network of reservoirs and aqueducts, causing damage estimated at billions of dollars.

At the Hoover Dam there are sometimes 55,000 mussels per square foot in the intake towers, hampering the facility’s electricity-generating equipment.
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Apart from their ability to reproduce at an astonishing rate — a female quagga mussel can produce as many as one million eggs a year — the molluscs can attach themselves to almost anything, clogging drains and pipes and ruining boat engines.

They also feast on phytoplankton, which is an important food source for zooplankton, and so can radically change the ecosystem within a lake.

The mucus-wrapped excretion of the mussels can eventually turn a lake more acidic. Emergency measures already in place include the decontamination or quarantine of boats travelling in infested areas, and the use of sniffer dogs that can identify mussels.