Michael Richardson - The Japan Times

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Michael Richardson

For Michael Richardson's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

COMMENTARY

Aug 14, 2010

Iran will test U.S.-China ties

SINGAPORE — Relations between the United States and China — already under serious strain over trade and economic issues, human rights and, most recently, the Yellow Sea and the South China Sea — are about to be tested anew over Iran's controversial nuclear program.

COMMENTARY

Aug 5, 2010

China's claims make waves

Befitting its status as a rising global power, China says it is the third-largest country in the world, after Russia and Canada, with a land area of about 9.6 million square km. However, although China is a continental giant, it is a maritime minnow compared to other big countries.

COMMENTARY

Jul 31, 2010

Beijing's Asia power play

China's economic and military might has grown in recent years along with its overseas trade and investment. China is becoming an oceanic power with growing clout in the Asia-Pacific region.

COMMENTARY

Jul 22, 2010

Pond scum could save the world

Do we really need to keep pushing the frontiers in the search for oil? Must we venture into ever deeper and more dangerous waters, and into areas on land where technical challenges and political risks are rising? Some leading multinational energy companies evidently believe there may be a promising alternative much closer to home — algae, that slimy scum, often green or brown in color, that grows abundantly in oceans, along seashores, and in lakes, rivers and ponds, basically anywhere there is sunlight.

COMMENTARY

Jul 8, 2010

A losing battle against proliferation

Slowly but surely, the barriers preventing the spread of nuclear technology and materials that can be used to make weapons of mass destruction are being eroded.

COMMENTARY

Jun 21, 2010

Indonesia moving to reduce forest loss, warming emissions

SINGAPORE — Recent developments in curbing high levels of forest loss around the world, particularly in the tropics, are promising. They are significant because deforestation, including the clearing of trees from peat swamps in Southeast Asia, is the biggest source of global warming emissions from human activity after fossil fuel burning.

COMMENTARY

Jun 16, 2010

China ups the ante in Asia

In the opening session last month of the China-U.S. strategic and economic dialogue, Chinese President Hu Jintao said it was natural for the two countries to disagree on some issues. What was important, he added, was to "respect and accommodate each other's core interests and major concerns, appropriately handle the sensitive issues and strengthen the foundation of mutual trust."

COMMENTARY

Jun 3, 2010

NASA keeping a closer eye on space weather

The images from cameras and sensors on the latest satellite watching the sun are a dramatic reminder of the awesome power of the star that warms our planet. They show clouds of magnetized gas big enough to engulf the Earth breaking away from the outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere. These coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which are usually accompanied by solar flares with the explosive force of millions of atomic bombs, can last for several hours and travel through space at over 1 million kilometers per hour. Yet the sun has been in one of its quietest recorded phases for a century. The sun's activity ebbs and flows in a cycle that averages about 11 years.

COMMENTARY

May 25, 2010

China won't hear suggestions that it's a disarmament slacker

SINGAPORE — As the only country to have been attacked with atomic bombs, Japan has been a leader in the campaign for nuclear disarmament since the end of the Second World War.

COMMENTARY

May 13, 2010

China's navy changing the game

For much of the Cold War, China's navy was little more than an elaborate coast guard. It was barely a blip on the maritime horizons of Japan and Southeast Asia. Today the Chinese armed forces are in the midst of an intense and sustained modernization program, and the navy has emerged as a key service for protecting and advancing national interests. It gets more than one-third of the declared military budget.

COMMENTARY

May 9, 2010

Beijing projects power in South China Sea

SINGAPORE — Is China becoming more assertive in enforcing its claims to control as much as 80 percent of the South China Sea, a claim that includes sovereignty over dozens of islands disputed with several Southeast Asian states?

COMMENTARY

May 3, 2010

Plans for 'small' reactors nudge waste-disposal concerns to fore

Imagine a world in which midsize cities, factories and towns in many countries have their own small nuclear reactors to generate electricity and heat. Some would be in remote locations unconnected to the national grid but others would be in densely populated zones that need local sources of constant power supply.

COMMENTARY

Apr 20, 2010

Methane has scent of potential

SINGAPORE — Starting this month and extending through May, South Korea will resume exploratory drilling in waters off its east coast to find out whether a long-hidden energy resource can be turned into a new wellspring of natural gas. Other major energy users and importers, including the United States, China, Japan and India, are in the midst of similar research and development programs to unlock what they hope will be a treasure trove of methane hydrates on land and at sea. All of them aim to be in commercial production by 2020 at the latest.

COMMENTARY

Apr 8, 2010

New tool to monitor climate change

Some of the most dramatic signs of climate change are taking place in the vast and frigid polar caps, where relatively few humans live. We would know much less about them than we do but for recent advances in satellite technology and remote sensing.

COMMENTARY

Mar 14, 2010

Assuaging China's expanding 'core' concerns

SINGAPORE — Not long before U.S. President Barack Obama held his low-key meeting in the White House with the exiled Tibetan leader last month, the Dalai Lama, a Chinese Embassy spokesman in Washington issued a statement on the talks and the U.S. decision to provide a new package of defensive arms to Taiwan.

COMMENTARY

Feb 26, 2010

Damping the soot emissions could buy time

SINGAPORE — A team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences trekked across frigid highlands in Tibet to confirm a significant recent discovery about climate change. They drilled and analyzed five ice cores from various locations on the Tibetan Plateau to find that the concentration of black carbon, or soot, in the ice has increased by two to three times since 1975.

COMMENTARY

Feb 10, 2010

More research key to solving glaciers' riddles

Three years ago, a grim warning from the panel of scientists advising the United Nations on climate change caught the attention of policymakers in Asia.

COMMENTARY

Feb 4, 2010

The world's radioactive rubbish is piling up

The Pacific Sandpiper, a specially built cargo ship with safety features far in excess of those found on conventional vessels, left Britain's Barrow port bound for Japan the other day.

COMMENTARY

Feb 1, 2010

Nuclear plant construction up; South Korea challenging market

SINGAPORE — Recent startups hardly provide much evidence of the vaunted "renaissance" in civilian nuclear power that promises reliable supplies of electricity without the pollution and greenhouse gas emissions associated with fossil fuels, especially coal.

COMMENTARY

Jan 12, 2010

Push begins to clear electric-car obstacles

SINGAPORE — Does 2010 mark the start of a new era in road transport as electricity increasingly takes over from petrol and diesel engines as the source of power for vehicles?

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By Alex K.T. Martin

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