The Philippines will host the annual International Renewable Energy Conference (IREC) in July this year.

The Congressional Commission on Science and Technology and Engineering (COMSTE), headed by Senator Edgardo Angara, will organize the IREC 2009.

Participants in this year’s IREC would include local and foreign academics, scientists, energy investors, and entrepreneurs.

Similarly, there is another IREC that started in 2004 as a result of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, where renewable energy was discussed a critical component for worldwide development.

Nigeria was last year’s host.

In a statement, Angara said the hosting of IREC in the Philippines would strengthen the country’s plans to use renewable energy sources after Senate Bill 2046 or the Renewable Energy Act was passed in 2008.

Angara expects that results of the IREC would include programs to help the Philippines develop its domestic renewable energy sources.

Angara also hopes to create linkages with Spain and Brazil, which are already establishing their own domestic renewable energy sources.

“The Philippines, as cited by Moody’s, moved a step in the right direction with long term solution of passing a comprehensive renewable energy law.But more importantly, it is a step towards sustainable growth, towards clean development,” Angara said.

By Dennis Posadas
Contributor

THE ongoing debate between the environmentalists and the pro-nuclear advocates simply illustrates what is missing in most arguments around the world on clean energy and climate change. Too often, the typical argument by the environmentalists is to position renewable energy as the alternative to nuclear energy.

What many people don’t realize is that it is not as simple as not going nuclear, not going with coal and then just going renewable. It is nice to hear, and as a clean energy blogger (I run a blog called GO Clean Energy), I am also not that naive to say that renewable energy will solve all our problems in the near future. This notwithstanding the fact that technology is advancing in this arena; for example on the day of Barack Obama’s inaugural address as President, the firm FirstSolar announced that it had breached the $1/watt mark, at $0.98c/watt for its solar photovoltaic thin film cells.

Granted that we can do a lot by conserving energy both voluntarily and technologically (think microchips to make appliances automatically adjust their demand), and that we Asians can tap energy sources like geothermal, and maybe even some good operating practices like staggered turn-on of large electricity consuming appliances like chillers and motors in our factories and shopping malls, the fact is that Asian societies have to move beyond simply mouthing phrases like No to Nukes or No to Coal, and actually educate themselves about what is out there as well as what is the state of the art.

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By Andrew Beatty
Agence France-Presse

CROFTON–A robot named Cosmo has become six-year-old Kevin Fitzgerald’s unlikely ally in his uphill everyday battle with developmental difficulties.

At a strip mall clinic in suburban Maryland, Kevin is at the unlikely intersection of new efforts to treat symptoms of autism, cerebral palsy and other developmental disorders with robotics and computer work.

Here, he scrambles onto a swivel chair to examine a half-metre- (1.6-feet-) tall robot on the table in front of him.

Prodding four brightly-coloured buttons near the robot’s feet, he directs a cartoon version of the machine around a computer monitor, furtively glancing up at the real thing for encouragement.

Kevin showed the first signs of learning difficulties when he was 18 months old, and was later diagnosed with developmental dyspraxia.

“It is like having a stroke,” his mother Patty Fitzgerald said. “His brain is intact, but his body doesn’t do what he wants it to do.”

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By Marlowe Hood
Agence France-Presse

PARIS–Manmade climate change is set to hasten the disintegration of a massive ice sheet in Antarctica by 100,000 years, boosting sea levels some five metres (16 feet), according to a pair of studies published Thursday.

The research, which matches new ice core data with a simulation of past and future changes in the West Antarctica Ice Sheet (WAIS), reveals for the first time regular cycles of “catastrophic collapse” and reformation reaching back five million years.

Cycles lasted 40,000 years during the first three-fifths of this period, but have since more than doubled in length, explained David Pollard, a scientist at Pennsylvania State University and lead author of one of the studies.

“But with global warming we are cutting short a natural cycle,” he told AFP by phone.

“The two studies combined show it is really likely that the WAIS will collapse in the next few thousand years. In the absence of human influence, it would probably happen only 100,000 years from now,” he said.

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By Izah Morales
INQUIRER.net

MANILA, Philippines–Colored tags attached to tuna species like the “tangi” or “tambakul” can earn fishermen or consumers money rewards, an official of the Department of Agriculture said Monday.

“This tuna tagging project carries a $10 reward for yellow tag, $50 for green tag and $250 for orange tag. The latter two have accompanying devices inserted in the body cavity of the fish (near the abdomen). The tag on the former is attached on the back of the fish near the second dorsal fin,” said Malcolm Sarmiento, director Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources in DA’s press statement.

“We are calling on our fishermen and the consuming public to surrender to BFAR or the LGUs, any tag found in fishes particularly big-eye, skipjack, or yellowfin tuna and other marine fishes, as these are part of scientific studies,” Sarmiento said.

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