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OSLO (AFP) - Explorer and adventurer Lewis Gordon Pugh has begun a kayak expedition to the North Pole aimed at drawing attention to the dramatic impact of melting polar ice in the Arctic, his blog said Sunday.

"I want to bring home to world leaders, on this expedition, the reality of what is now happening here in the Arctic. The rate of change is clearly faster than nearly all the models predict, which has huge implications for climate change and how to tackle it," Pugh said in a message posted late Saturday.

Pugh, a 38-year-old environmentalist, swimmer and maritime lawyer, began his trek Saturday from Virgohamna in the Svalbard archipelago, in Norway's far north about 620 miles from the North Pole.

According to his blog, he hopes to paddle for five hours a day, with a support boat following close behind.

On the first day of his journey, he kayaked for almost three hours.

"We covered just under 13.6 miles — saw lots of puffins along the way," he wrote.

"The weather continues to be good to us. Although it is nearly September, the sea is relatively calm, and we made good progress," he said.

The Arctic ice cap is melting under the effects of global warming and in August it saw its second largest summer shrinkage since satellite observations began 30 years ago, US scientists said last week.

Measurements on August 26 showed an ice cap of 2.03 million square miles, just below the 2.05 million square miles observed on 21 September 2005, making it the second biggest summer Arctic ice-cap melt in history, said the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

The North Pole itself could even become free of ice by September for the first time in modern history, setting a new milestone in the effects of global warming on the Arctic ice shelf, NSIDC glaciologist Mark Serreze told AFP in late June.

Last year, Lewis Gordon Pugh became the first person to swim in the icy waters of the North Pole to raise awareness of the effects of global warming.

Pugh took 18 minutes and 50 seconds to swim one kilometre (0.6 miles) in the minus 28.8-degree Fahrenheit water — the coldest water ever swum in, he claimed.

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By Nicola Leske and David Milliken

BERLIN (Reuters) - Consumer electronic makers are bracing themselves for slower growth in the second half of this year and in 2009, but count on consumers turning to home entertainment amid tougher economic times and tighter budgets.

“When people don’t have much money, they cut on big stuff and buy things that make their lives a little bit better, like consumer electronics,” TomTom (TOM2.AS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) co-founder Corinne Vigreux said.

Vigreux said she expected the satellite navigation device company to be largely unaffected by the slowing economy in Europe and the United States, but retailers were being “very careful” on inventory levels in the run-up to Christmas.

Consumer electronics makers from around the world have descended on Berlin to showcase their products at the IFA electronics fair which runs from August 29 to September 3.

Many companies count on the fair for new orders as retailers shop for the upcoming holiday season, but are worried that a gloomy macroeconomic environment is casting a pall over sentiment.

“The overall market in 2008 is not very good and Europe is even worse,” Shin Ik Kang, president and CEO of LG (066570.KS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Digital Display.

A global economic slowdown, oil price increases and the subprime crisis had taken their toll, Kang added.

Euro zone retail sales posted their biggest ever yearly fall in June and British retail sales dropped at their sharpest pace in at least 25 years in August. 

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WASHINGTON - Congress is putting the short-term future of renewable energy companies in jeopardy even as the presidential candidates and most lawmakers hail windmills, solar panels and biofuels as long-term solutions to high gasoline prices and global warming.

Some $500 million in investment and production tax credits will expire Dec. 31 unless Congress renews them. Without that help, solar and wind power companies say they will reverse planned expansions and, in many cases, cut payrolls and capital investment.

Schott Solar has visions of quadrupling its operation in Albuquerque, N.M., to reach 1,500 jobs and $500 million in investment. But the investment tax credit, company spokesman Brian Lynch said, is what makes solar power cost-competitive. Without it, expansion plans must be reconsidered.

“We don’t want to build a giant factory that the market doesn’t need or want,” Lynch said.

The Solar Energy Industries Association says some 20 utility-scale solar power plants, many in California and together capable of producing power for a million homes, are at risk because of the uncertainty in Congress.

Proponents of wind power, a nascent industry that relies on skittish investors, are in a similar predicament. Greg Wetstone of the American Wind Energy Association says his group is predicting a loss of 76,000 jobs and $11.4 billion in investment if Congress allows its production tax credit to expire.

“Investors like to know what tax policies apply when they are putting millions of dollars down on a project. There’s a pretty clear history that these projects are less likely to go forward without a credit,” he said.

Congress let the credit expire in 2000, 2002 and 2004. In those three years, wind capacity installation dropped 93 percent, 73 percent and 77 percent, respectively, from the previous year.

Navigant Consulting, which advises on renewable energy technology, estimated that investments in wind and solar power in 2009 would amount to $26.6 billion with the credits; that would fall to $7 billion without them.

The credits are expected to total $334 million, according to congressional estimates.

“These companies are shutting down projects, firing people and it’s Congress’s fault,” said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Investment tax credits, available to homeowners and businesses that invest in solar power equipment, and the production tax credit, based on kilowatt hours of energy produced by wind, geothermal, biomass and other renewables, are only two of dozens of temporary tax breaks that die out after a year or two if Congress does not revive them.

This year Congress is considering tax-extenders worth more than $50 billion over the next decade. The production tax credit would cost $7 billion and two solar investment credits would cost $2.7 billion over 10 years.

In addition to breaks for renewable energy and energy conservation, several dozen other tax breaks are targeted to businesses and individuals. They include people paying state and local sales taxes; parents with higher education tuition costs; and teachers with out-of-pocket expenses.

Almost all the provisions are popular. But Senate Republicans have blocked consideration of tax-extender plans by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont. GOP lawmakers are protesting efforts to offset the costs with other taxes or other items attached to the proposals. In the House, conservative Democrats promise to block any extension that adds to the deficit.

That’s nothing new.

In 2006, Congress did not come together on a tax-extender deal until December, forcing the Internal Revenue Service to delay processing returns claiming several of the tax breaks. In 2007 Congress never agreed on extenders and again waited until December, causing more IRS disruption, to settle another annual tax crisis, the alternative minimum tax.

That tax was, enacted 40 years ago, was supposed to keep a tiny number of very rich people from avoiding taxes. But it never was adjusted for inflation and now reaches into the pockets of 4 million people, mainly upper middle-income. Millions more are threatened every year until Congress steps in, usually at the last possible moment. The Baucus bill has provisions to keep those affected by the tax from growing to 25 million, at a cost of $61 billion over the next decade.

“A big part of the problem is uncertainty,” said Marie Lee, a tax analyst with the American Electronics Association. “Our companies are getting tired of this game.”

The biggest concern for high-tech companies and manufacturers is the research and development credit, which expired at the end of last year. Some 17,700 corporations claimed $6.6 billion in credits in 2005, according to a recent study by Ernst & Young LLP. About 70 percent of that went to pay wages of scientists and engineers.

The credit has been allowed to expire 13 times since it was adopted in 1981. One repercussion, said Monica McGuire, executive secretary of the R&D Credit Coalition, is that more companies are taking their research dollars overseas.

“It’s a global race for R&D dollars,” she said, and the odds are not good when at least 20 developed nations offer tax incentives and the United States currently has nothing.

Putting expiration dates on tax breaks is a useful budget gimmick for lawmakers seeking to mask the growing federal budget deficit.

Because they are set to expire at a certain date by law, they do not count as revenue losses after that date even though most people assume Congress eventually will act to extend them. The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 are the biggest extenders of all in this respect. Trillions of dollars will be added to the federal debt if Congress chooses to make them permanent after they are set to expire in 2010.

___

On the Net:

Summary of the latest Senate extender bill: http://tinyurl.com/6xm3fw

Schott Solar: http://www.schott.com/solar

Solar Energy Industries Association: http://www.seia.org/

American Wind Energy Association: http://www.awea.org/

R&D Credit Coalition: http://www.investinamericasfuture.org/

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KAKUM, Ghana (AFP) - For five years now the heat has been less intense and the rainfall more abundant in a small cocoa farming area in Ghana's Upper Volta region, thanks to villagers bent on affecting climate change.

In this region in Afiaso in the country's south, their efforts have focused on conserving the nearby Kakum National Park.

"We used to cut down many trees for agricultural use, which brought us a lot of hardship including windstorms, decreased rainfall and increased solar intensity," said Nana Opare Ababio III, the traditional chief of a 620-member village.

But with conservation efforts, "the amount of rainfall has dramatically increased in the last five years and heat from the sun has reduced and we now have better yield," he said through an interpreter.

In recent decades, the forests in this west African state have been severely depleted, raising "serious concern for future economic development and sustained rural livelihoods," said Daniel Kwamena Ewur, manager of Kakum National Park which lies 160 kilometres (100 miles) south of the capital Accra.

In 1960, Ghana's tropical rain forests covered 63,400 square kilometres (24,500 square miles) but human activity has shrunk them down to about 13,500 square kilometres, or 25 percent of their original size.

Logging, slash-and-burn agriculture, poaching, mining and quarrying as well as wood collection for fuel have mainly been responsible for decimating the country's primary forests, Ewur said.

The current forest area includes seven national parks, six resource reserves, two wildlife sanctuaries and five coastal wetlands.

According to an official 1992 survey on national living standards, more than 33 percent of all the people in rural forest regions lived in abject poverty, hence their reliance on depleting the forests to make ends meet.

With deforestation having already transformed the north of Ghana into savannah lands and the central region facing a similar fate, the government took a radical turn in forest and wildlife management.

Until 1994, the central government had handled everything itself but that year changed tack to actively involve local communities living on the fringe of the country's forests.

"We were doing everything by ourselves but we realised that we were not achieving much and we now involve local communities around the forests, without whose help we would fail in our conservation efforts," said Ewur.

Instead of policing the vast parks on its own, the government set up village groups to monitor nearby parklands and report any suspicious or unauthorised activities to authorities.

The reform also differentiated Ghana's forests into three zones: "protection" areas for conservation, "production" for logging and "archaeological" zones for preserving national relics or areas with historical interest.

All seven national parks are classified as "protection" zones, and Kakum is the largest.

"Kakum is one of the last vestiges of the Upper Guinea forest and one of the biodiversity hotspots in the world," said park ranger Rockson Moro.

It covers 366 square kilometres and is home to 40 species of mammals including five endangered species, 200 bird species and over 400 species of butterfly, two of which are found nowhere else in the world, according to officials.

Like all the other "protection" zones, the reforms put it out of bounds for any reason other than tourism.

The trend towards ecotourism has generated huge revenues, forestry officials said without giving figures, and under a 2006 deal, some of the revenue made by parks is returned to local communities.

"The government now devolves more power to the forest communities in conserving the forests, and shares the revenues coming from the forests, and the results are quite remarkable," said Glen Asomaning, a forest officer with World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

Logging is one of Ghana's major revenue earners which it cannot stop completely but now the country is recording success regulating it and with a four-way revenue sharing system.

The government and logging firms each rake in 40 percent of the total revenue, while the farm owner gets 15 percent and the community benefits from five percent of the proceeds.

In return for keeping off the production zone, forest communities share in the ecotourism revenues and provide unskilled staff of the forest management authority as volunteers and tour guides.

Although the monies are meant for development projects, their use is left to the discretion of the local authorities which receive them, which sadly exposes them to mismanagement.

Two years after the enactment of this law, not a dime has gone to Afiaso due to bureaucratic obstacles. And the village needs the money.

"Despite the delay in receiving the (ecotourism) royalty, we are willing to continue with the conservation project and we want the government to bring more of the seedlings it promised us to plant because we have seen the benefits we can derive from them," chief Ababio III said.

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DALLAS (Reuters) - Hurricane Gustav is threatening to rain on the Republican festivities in Minnesota, drawing attention away from the party during its crucial national convention.

The killer storm has also revived memories of President George W. Bush's tardy response to Hurricane Katrina which devastated New Orleans three years ago.

The timing could not be worse for the Republicans. The storm is forecast to hit the U.S. Gulf Coast on the same day the party kicks off its four-day convention in St. Paul to anoint John McCain as its presidential candidate for the November 4 election.

"The timing is bad because it clearly is going to be a distraction from the convention. And it may for some people bring back memories of the Bush administration and its response to Hurricane Katrina," said Matthew Wilson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Top Republicans, including McCain himself, says it would be unseemly to be seen celebrating while a natural disaster unfolds 1,100 miles away.

"It just wouldn't be appropriate to have a festive occasion while a near tragedy or a terrible challenge is presented in the form of a natural disaster," McCain told Fox News Sunday in a pre-taped interview.

Politically, the convention presents the best opportunity the Republicans will have to make their case for McCain to the nation. Anything that draws attention away from them is a serious blow.

Gustav is expected to hit the U.S. coastline near New Orleans and could also cause dangerous flooding as it moves inland.

McCain and his running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin decided to go to Mississippi on Sunday to view preparations, in a pointed contrast to Bush's slow response to Katrina in 2005.

Leading Republican officials from the region including Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, a rising political star, were staying put to focus on emergency preparations.

NOT TAKING CHANCES

They cannot afford to take chance after the botched government response to Katrina, which killed about 1,500 people on the U.S. Gulf coast. New Orleans degenerated into chaos as storm victims waited days for rescue.

Decisive leadership could win the Republicans points even as Gustav competes with the convention for media attention.

Republican organizers said they were "considering contingencies" because of Gustav, suggesting they might change the convention program.

"Like all Americans, our prayers are with those who will be affected by Hurricane Gustav. We continue to closely monitor the movement of the storm and are considering necessary contingencies," Republican National Convention President Maria Cino said on Saturday.

Bush is due to address the convention on Monday night but his plans may also change, depending on the storm.

Gustav may have a political impact at the gas pump, reversing the recent drop in gasoline prices. Energy companies have shut three-quarters of oil production in the Gulf which produces a quarter of U.S. crude and 15 percent of its natural gas.

The Democratic Party had no such distractions last week at its national convention in Denver when Barack Obama, who would be the country's first black president if elected, accepted the party's nomination for the White House race.

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MIAMI (Reuters) - While powerful Hurricane Gustav bore down on the U.S. Gulf Coast on Sunday, Tropical Storm Hanna swirled east of Florida, embedded in a complicated climatic environment that made it impossible to forecast its destination and likely strength.

The eighth tropical storm of the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season could just as easily end up over Cuba, bring heavy rainfall to citrus country in central Florida or drift northward toward South Carolina. It was not possible to say if the storm might eventually end up in the U.S. oil patch in the Gulf of Mexico, hurricane experts said.

"Unfortunately there is still considerable uncertainty with the forecast," said Jamie Rhome, a hurricane specialist at the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. "It's impossible to say that this system is going to do this or that."

The cyclone was tangled up in a middle to upper level low that was making it difficult for Hanna to develop, and was likely to slow down in two days when it came across conditions of weak steering current that could make it meander.

Another trough would then swoop over the tropical storm, bringing with it considerable uncertainty as to the likely wind shear as Hanna drifted near the Bahamas. Wind shear — the difference in wind speed at different levels of the atmosphere — can tear storms apart.

"At the end of the forecast track the wind shear could let up a bit," Rhome said.

None of the computer models used to predict storm tracks actually took Hanna into the southeastern United States at this point, Rhome said.

Some oil analysts reported on Friday that one of the myriad computer models available to forecasters had indicated that Hanna could eventually make landfall on the U.S. Gulf Coast near New Orleans where Hurricane Gustav was expected to come ashore on Monday as a dangerous storm.

Those reports triggered concerns in energy markets of a potential one-two punch by Gustav and Hanna on some of the 4,000 Gulf of Mexico offshore platforms that provide a quarter of U.S. crude oil and 15 percent of its natural gas.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed more than 100 oil rigs in 2005 when they roared through, causing oil prices to soar to then record highs. Katrina went on to swamp New Orleans, kill 1,500 people on the U.S. Gulf Coast and cause $80 billion in damages.

Rhome said it was folly to highlight a single computer model, especially so far out. "It's a mistake, and often a grave one, to focus on a single model," he said.

The accuracy of hurricane forecasting has come a long way since the days when entire fleets of Spanish galleons sank in unexpected storms as they carried South American gold and treasure back to Europe.

But even with the start of "hurricane hunter" flights in 1944 and the advent of satellite imagery in the 1960s, long-range forecasts are prone to enormous margins of error.

The National Hurricane Center estimates the average error in its track forecasts is near 260 miles by day four and 345 miles by day five. The hurricane center does not project a storm's track beyond day five.

Intensity forecasts are even more difficult. The hurricane center calculates that the error in its forecasts for a storm's top sustained winds averages 23 miles per hour (37 km per hour) per day.

The last official forecast for Hanna takes it in five days to minimal Category 1 hurricane strength with 80-mile-per-hour (130 km per hour) winds by next Friday.

It might then be somewhere off central Florida. But its potential position at that point also encompasses the southern Bahamas, eastern Cuba, south Florida and South Carolina.

(Editing by Tom Brown)

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HOUSTON (Reuters) - Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) said 28,000 barrels per day in oil production and 180 million cubic feet per day in natural gas output were shut on Sunday due to Hurricane Gustav.

(Reporting by Erwin Seba; Editing by Derek Caney)

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JACKSON, Mississippi (AFP) - White House hopeful John McCain and running-mate Sarah Palin visited Mississippi Sunday as it braced for Hurricane Gustav, with the deadly storm forcing the Republican Party to radically scale back its convention plans.

Both President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have cancelled plans to attend the four-day nominating extravaganza which was set to open Monday in St. Paul, Minnesota, the White House said Sunday.

The deadly storm is on course to slam into the US Gulf Coast near New Orleans early Monday, almost exactly three years to the day after Hurricane Katrina obliterated whole areas of the city, leaving some 1,800 people dead across the region.

Republicans are still haunted by the disaster wreaked on the Gulf Coast region on August 29, 2005, when thousands were left stranded for days without food or proper sanitation and the Bush administration was angrily criticized for failing to act in time.

More than a million people have fled Louisiana and New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, desperate to avoid a replay of the Katrina catastrophe, ordered the city emptied in the face of what he called "the storm of the century."

Both McCain and Democratic nominee Barack Obama were carefully laying the groundwork to respond to Gustav's certain political fallout and test of their leadership skills.

McCain and Palin landed under sunny skies in Mississippi where they were to meet with Governor Haley Barbour and tour the state's emergency operations command center.

"It's to show his concern," said press secretary Brooke Buchanan, adding that they chose not to visit Louisiana because they did not want to divert resources from the evacuation.

McCain asked a rally of 10,000 flag-waving supporters in Washington, Pennsylvania to Saturday to pray for the people of the Gulf Coast.

"They need to know … that they're in our thoughts and prayers as this impending hurricane approaches.

"We pray to God that it will spare them and a minimum of loss that might result from this natural disaster."

Earlier, in an interview to be broadcast on Fox News Sunday, McCain suggested he might go as far as suspending the bulk of the convention where he and Palin must be officially nominated to the party's ticket for the November 4 election.

"It wouldn't be appropriate to have a festive occasion while a near tragedy or a terrible challenge is presented in the form of a national disaster," he said in an interview taped Saturday.

"So we're monitoring it from day-to-day and I'm saying a few prayers."

Obama, campaigning on Saturday with his running mate Joseph Biden in Ohio, said that his campaign was "deeply concerned" about the approaching storm.

"I've instructed my Senate staff to monitor the situation closely.

"You know, obviously we're going to be each day seeing what happens and we're praying for New Orleans but we want to make sure that people are making all the necessary precautions."

It was unclear whether Obama, who attended church services in Ohio Sunday morning, would also make an unscheduled visit to the Gulf Coast.

Hurricane Gustav took aim at the United States early Sunday after leaving at least 81 people dead in the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica and causing extensive damage in Cuba.

Forecasters said the storm could hit top category force as it moved toward the US Gulf Coast for a direct hit early Monday.

In any case, "Gustav is forecast to remain a major hurricane through landfall along the northern Gulf coast," the US National Hurricane Center said.

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WASHINGTON (AFP) - President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney will not attend the Republican national convention Monday as dangerous Hurricane Gustav closes in on the US Gulf Coast, the White House said Sunday.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said that Bush will keep his attentions on Gustav, a major category three storm, as it bears down on southern Louisiana, devastated by Hurricane Katrina three years ago.

She said Vice President Dick Cheney would also not attend the convention, set to formally nominate Senator John McCain as the party's candidate in the November 4 presidential election.

But First Lady Laura Bush will attend the convention, scheduled for September 1-4 in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Bush, whose administration took a major political hit after its sluggish and disorganized response to Katrina, spoke by telephone Sunday morning with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin about preparations for the storm.

Bush told Nagin that he was "getting ready to go through this with him again," Perino said, while Nagin said he was pleased with the coordination with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Bush also asked Nagin whether the evacuations of New Orleans were proceeding well, and whether the elderly were being taken care of.

More than a million people have already evacuated New Orleans and other coastal areas ahead of the monster storm now expected to slam into the Gulf Coast on Monday afternoon.

The relatively organized evacuation stands in contrast to late August 2005, when Katrina slammed the coast and caught Bush, Chertoff and FEMA off guard and FEMA exposed as incompetently managed.

But Nagin was also roundly criticized for mismanaging New Orleans' Katrina evacuation and allowing hundreds of aged and infirm to be left to fend for themselves in the storm, which ultimately killed 1,800 along the US Gulf Coast.

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HOUSTON (Reuters) - The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port said it was stopping all operations Sunday morning, including supplying refineries from onshore storage caverns, in order to evacuate employees Sunday afternoon ahead of Hurricane Gustav, a spokeswoman said.

"It's coming right at us," said LOOP spokeswoman Barb Hestermann of the forecast path for Gustav toward the Louisiana coast. "It looks like we're ground zero."

Gustav was forecast to slam into the Gulf Coast just west of the LOOP's onshore operations center at Galliano, Louisiana, on Monday.

The LOOP, the nation's only deepwater oil port, stopped offloading oil tankers on Saturday morning.

(Reporting by Erwin Seba; Editing by Derek Caney)

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Hurricane Gustav, churning toward the Gulf Coast now, has a small chance of becoming a Category 5 storm before it makes landfall, according to the National Hurricane Center. That would put its winds at 156 mph or stronger. Such winds would devastate most buildings and trees in the storms path. Little would be left standing.

There is no such thing as a Category 6 storm, in part because once winds reach Category 5 status, it doesn't matter what you call it, it's really, really bad.

Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale has no upper bound, on paper. But in theory, winds from a powerful hurricane could blow the scale out of the water, scientists say.

Pushing the limit

The scale starts with a Category 1, which ranges from 74 to 95 mph. A Category 5 storm has winds of 156 mph or stronger. An extrapolation of the scale suggests that if a Category 6 were created, it would be in the range of 176-196 mph.

Hurricane Wilma, in 2005, had top winds of 175 mph.

How much higher could hurricane winds blow? A hurricane gains strength by using warm water as fuel. With Earth's climate warming, oceans may grow warmer, too. And so, some scientists predict, hurricanes might become stronger.

But physics dictates there must be a limit. Based on ocean and atmospheric conditions on Earth nowadays, the estimated maximum potential for hurricanes is about 190 mph, according to a 1998 calculation by Kerry Emanuel, a climatologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This upper limit is not absolute, however. It can change as a result of changes in climate. Scientists predict that as global warming continues, the maximum potential hurricane intensity will go up. They disagree, however, on what the increase will be.

200 mph or more

Emanuel and other scientists have predicted that wind speeds - including maximum wind speeds - should increase about 5 percent for every 1 degree Celsius increase in tropical ocean temperatures.

Chris Landsea, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center, disagrees.

After Wilma, Landsea said that even in the worst-case global warming scenarios, where global temperatures ratchet up by an additional 1-6 degrees Celsius, there would be about a 5 percent change, total, by the end of the 21st century. That means that hurricane-force winds are unlikely to exceed 200 mph, Landsea said.

However, Typhoon Nancy in 1961, in the Northwest Pacific Ocean, was said to have maximum sustained winds of 215 mph, according to the World Meteorological Organization's Commission on Climatology, a new clearinghouse for climate records set up at Arizona State University to settle the many disputes on weather and climate extremes. (A typhoon is the same thing as a hurricane, just in a different part of the world.)

There are known records for wind speeds that outstrip anything ever measured in a hurricane. The fastest "regular" wind that's widely agreed upon was 231 mph, recorded at Mount Washington, New Hampshire, on April 12, 1934. During a May 1999 tornado in Oklahoma, researchers clocked the wind at 318 mph.

Fix the scale?

Shortly after Wilma topped out in 2005, Emanuel called the Saffir-Simpson scale irrational, in part because it deals only with wind, ignoring factors such as a storm's size, rainfall potential and forward speed. "I think the whole category system needs serious rethinking," Emanuel told LiveScience then.

But Herbert Saffir, co-creator of the scale, countered that his scale was useful because it was simple. "As simple as it is, I like the scale," Saffir said in a post-Wilma telephone interview. "I don't like to see it too complex."

Here's why no Category 6 was included: The scale was designed to measure the amount of damage inflicted by winds, and beyond 156 mph, the damage begins to look about the same, according to Simpson.

• Hurricane Gustav Updates
• Hurricanes: Our 5 Worst Fears
• Natural Disasters: Top 10 U.S. Threats

• Original Story: How Strong Can a Hurricane Get?

LiveScience.com chronicles the daily advances and innovations made in science and technology. We take on the misconceptions that often pop up around scientific discoveries and deliver short, provocative explanations with a certain wit and style. Check out our science videos, Trivia & Quizzes and Top 10s. Join our community to debate hot-button issues like stem cells, climate change and evolution. You can also sign up for free newsletters, register for RSS feeds and get cool gadgets at the LiveScience Store.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush said on Sunday he will travel to Texas on Monday to visit an operations center that is coordinating Hurricane Gustav's emergency response and warned that the storm was "dangerous."

Bush said there was a "serious risk of significant flooding" from Hurricane Gustav and advised residents to listen to local and officials instructions. He said he hoped to visit Louisiana "as soon as conditions permit."

Bush spoke with reporters after a briefing on the storm at Federal Emergency Management headquarters. (Reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky, editing by Chris Wilson)

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NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Authorities evacuating residents from New Orleans ahead of Hurricane Gustav are making amends with four-legged friends after thousands of pets perished in Hurricane Katrina three years ago.

Animal welfare groups tried to make sure that evacuees had their pets with them, while shelters away from the Gulf Coast accommodated animals this time around.

Many owners stayed in the city during the catastrophic 2005 hurricane because they could not take their pets to shelters and could not bear to leave without them.

"This city has been hit so badly, they've lost so much, and the last thing they have to hold on to is their animal," said Laura Bergerol, a volunteer with Animal Rescue New Orleans.

The group stacked up boxes for residents who planned to carry their small pets with them as part of an evacuation on buses and trains through the Union Passenger terminal.

Pet owners stood in line to register their furry friends. Then they were given a machine readable band to tag on to their pet, in case they became separated.

Among the horrors of Katrina three years ago were dead dogs bobbing in the drowned streets of the city, 80 percent of which was flooded.

Dog owner Julian Coleman lined up to register his feisty Rottweiler-German shepherd puppy Ali.

"I didn't want to just leave him to get hurt, like so many did in Katrina," Coleman said as Ali jumped up. "It makes me feel a little safer having him with me."

Evacuee Sylvania Moore was anxious about being separated from her mother, but relieved to be able to take her shitsu, Buddy, with her.

"He gets to ride the bus with us, which is good," said Moore, clutching Buddy in her arms outside the Amtrak terminal. "It's a relief that we didn't have to leave him behind."

(Reporting by Tim Gaynor; editing by Mary Milliken)

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NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - The port of New Orleans said it will shut down at 4 P.M. CDT (5:00 p.m. EDT) on Sunday in preparation for Hurricane Gustav.

The port finished cargo loading and unloading on Saturday evening and moved to give 10 vessels safe harbor in the port.

"We are prepared for Gustav to make landfall some time Monday evening, probably somewhere west of New Orleans," port president and CEO Gary LaGrange said in a statement.

(Writing by Mary Milliken)

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NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AFP) - More than a million people fled Louisiana as killer Hurricane Gustav on Sunday roared toward New Orleans, a fragile US coastal city still deeply scarred by the devastating 2005 Katrina storm.

Highways out of New Orleans have been crammed since before dawn as people scurried to escape a monster storm that could slam the Louisiana coast as early as midday Monday.

The state's governor, Bobby Jindal, said that more than a million people were on the move because of Gustav's destructive potential.

Officials are carefully watching whether Gustav strengthens as it crosses the warm water of the Gulf of Mexico.

A slightly weakened Gustav — still a dangerous Category 3 storm with winds near 125 miles (205 kilometers) per hour — battered Cuba Sunday after claiming at least 81 lives in its tear across the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica.

New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, desperate to avoid a replay of the 2005 Katrina catastrophe, ordered the city emptied in the face of what he called "the storm of the century" and roads quickly filled with fleeing residents.

"Get out of town," Jefferson parish president Aaron Broussard said in a public announcement Sunday morning. "Have the courage to disconnect yourself from your material things. You cannot protect yourself against what Mother Nature is going to throw at us."

Jefferson Parish includes the West Bank, where a "storm surge" of water pushed ashore by hurricane winds is expected to easily wash over levees guarding that area.

Weather models indicate a surge could be more than 20 feet (almost three meters) high, double the height of levees on the West Bank.

"We are going to see storm surge on the West Bank like we have never seen before," said Jefferson parish councilman Chris Roberts. "Now is the time to sound the alarm."

FEMA mobile homes or trailers, still housing people displaced by Katrina's destruction, were being hurriedly evacuated.

Louisiana director of homeland security Jerry Snead says 10,000 people were bused or taken by train out of New Orleans parish by Saturday night and that he expects the figure to reach 30,000 by the time they cut off "assisted evacuation" late Sunday.

Gun shops saw a run of customers through the weekend, indicating many were arming themselves for the lawlessness that marked Katrina's aftermath.

Local authorities promise intense police and National Guard presence and vow to arrest anyone caught roaming evacuated areas.

Charles Abbyad screwed plywood over windows and doors on ground floor of his 3-story New Orleans home. He pored over maps Saturday night, tracked the direction of the storm on his laptop into Sunday morning. He plans to hunker down and ride out the storm while his wife, Jill, reluctantly decided to leave with friends.

"I'm all American, but my family history is Palestinian so we are used to evacuating," Abbyad said as he screwed plywood to windows.

Mitch Landrieu, the Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana, said that "New Orleans evacuated 10,000 people Saturday and the estimate is 30,000 people needed to leave.

"The challenge seems to be that people aren't listening or they are listening and deciding to stay. All the coastal parishes are in very significant harm's way. While you can, it is critical to move," Landrieu warned.

"If people are scared, they should be scared. This is not a drill, we just need you to move now," he stressed.

In Cuba, Gustav tore off roofs, flattened buildings and plunged communities into darkness as it smashed through the Isle of Youth, then tore across mainland Cuba southwest of Havana, which has a population of more than two million. There were no immediate reported deaths in Cuba.

The storm lost some of its punch in the process, with US officials downgrading it from four to three.

Packing sustained winds of 120 mph (195 kmh) at 1500 GMT, the US National Hurricane Center said Gustav's eye was about 325 miles (520 km) southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River, as the storm moved northwest about 17 mph (28 km/h) and was expected to strengthen.

On this track Gustav will make landfall on the northern Gulf coast on Monday, the NHC added, warning "an extremely dangerous storm surge of 18 to 25 feet (more than six meters) above normal tidal levels is expected near and to the east of where the center of Gustav crosses the northern Gulf Coast."

President George W. Bush was no longer due to travel to the Republican Convention Monday as Hurricane Gustav closes in on the US Gulf Coast, the White House said in Washington. The Katrina catastrophe was a major political disaster for his administration.

Republican White House hopeful John McCain and his running-mate Sarah Palin also said they would suspend their normal election campaign and visit to Mississippi to inspect preparations for Gustav's arrival.

Major oil producers BP, ConocoPhillips and Shell on Thursday evacuated workers from their facilities in the Gulf where nearly a quarter of US crude oil installations are located.

"If one major deep-water production platform is destroyed, you're talking about a billion dollar or more loss," said Rice University engineering professor Satish Nagarajaiah.

"If it's multiple rigs and platforms in a variety of water depths, then we're talking billions of dollars."

Cuban national television reported that the scene on the Isle of Youth was one of devastation after the monster storm ground its way across the low-lying island of fishing villages, factories and citrus farms.

Homes were under water, warehouses toppled, and roads washed away on the Isle, state television said, adding there were some injuries though no immediate reports of deaths.

More than 250,000 were evacuated from western parts of mainland Cuba before the storm hit, the Cuban weather service said.

Earlier Gustav's path of destruction left 66 dead and 10 missing in Haiti. In neighboring Dominican Republic, the death toll stood at eight, while in Jamaica the toll stood at seven, with many thousands displaced.

Gustav loomed just after the third anniversary of Katrina, the deadliest US natural disaster in almost eight decades. More than 1,800 people were killed by the hurricane and related flooding, authorities say.

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LIMA, Ohio (AFP) - Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Sunday he will mobilize his vast donor list to send money or volunteer to help with recovery efforts in response to Hurricane Gustav which is bearing down on the Gulf Coast.

"We can activate an email list of a couple million people who want to give back," Obama told reporters after attending church in Lima, Ohio.

"I think we can get tons of volunteers to travel down there if it becomes necessary."

The deadly storm is on course to slam into the US Gulf Coast near New Orleans early Monday, almost exactly three years to the day after Hurricane Katrina obliterated whole areas of the city, leaving some 1,800 people dead across the region.

Obama said was planning to "stay clear of the area until things have settled down and then we'll probably try to figure out how we can be as helpful as possible."

Asked whether rival John McCain's visit to Mississippi Sunday was appropriate, Obama said concern about deadly storm is not a partisan issue.

"The thing that I always am concerned about in the middle of a storm is whether we're drawing resources away from folks on the ground because the Secret Service and various security requirements sometimes it pulls police, fire and other departments away from concentrating on the job," Obama said.

"I'm assuming that where he went that wasn't an issue."

Obama said it appears the storm preparations were well coordinated and that "we all learned from the terrible lesson that we saw after Katrina and Rita."

"We just hope that by the time this storm hits land that it has dissipated somewhat. Right now that doesn't appear to be the case."

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WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush said Sunday he will not attend the Republican National Convention this week due to the dangerous hurricane threatening the US Gulf coast, and that he will instead monitor the storm and evacuation operations Monday in Texas.

"In light of these events I will not be going to Minnesota for the Republican National Convention. I will travel down to Texas tomorrow to visit with the emergency operations center in Austin" where Texas and Louisiana responses to Hurricane Gustav are being coordinated.

"I'll have a chance to visit with residents of both states who have been evacuated," Bush said from the Washington offices of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Earlier the White House said that, with the category three Hurricane Gustav expected to strike the Gulf Coast Monday, neither Bush nor Vice President Dick Cheney would attend the convention Monday.

But First Lady Laura Bush would go as planned, they said.

The convention, in St Paul Minnesota over September 1-4, is to officialy designate John McCain as the Republican candidate in the November 4 presidential election.

Bush, whose reputation suffered severely from the massively botched government response to Hurricane Katrina almost exactly three years ago after it burst levees in New Orleans and killed 1,800 people along the Gulf Coast, warned that Gustav was dangerous.

But he assured that federal, state and local agencies were coordinating well for the more than one million people evacuating the storm from the Louisiana coast.

"Several states including Missouri, Texas and New Mexico are preparing to and have accepted a lot of evacuees," he said.

"There are millions of meal and millions of liters of water prestaged as well as a lot of blankets and cots," ready for people evacuating but with no place to go, he said.

"The Army Corps of Engineers assures me that while the levees are stronger than they have ever been, people across the Gulf coast especially in New Orleans need to understand that in a storm of this size there are serious risks of significant flooding," Bush said.

"The message to the people of the Gulf coast is, this storm is dangerous."

Bush added that he did not plan to visit Louisiana Monday "because I do not want my visit to impede in any way the response of our emergency personnel."

"I hope to be able to get to Louisiana as soon as conditions permit."

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