Carbon emission reduction IS feasible, if...

This article is actually comforting me into my positions: true carbon reduction will only come from fossil fuel majors. To continue existing they will find the way to reduce carbon emission. The only thing that needs to be done is Worldwide government laws and act to fiscalize or penalize carbon emission, fossil fuel production... only then will they, as a mean of survival, accept to invest in carbon reduction plans.

The wonders of chemistry ^_^

Nature published the Chemist's choices of 2014, within this review a lot of amazing stuff that makes you realize that Mother Nature can do it all, but not necessarily needs to! Here is a selection of my preferred ones:
A new plastic material imitates veins to heal itself:

A robo-chemist for organic synthesis

Heating up any organic material to make biofuel

Turning photons into fuel

Bath-salt chemical promises safer solar cells

Chemical treatment could cut cost of biofuel

CCS infografics for UK policies

I love infografics, it take a couple of seconds to read and you feel more intelligent afterward! Well it is not entirely true but at least if you want to get deeper in a subject it is a doorsteps. So the UK government issued lately a document showing the possibility of a phase 2 development in CCS. And they did put a couple of infografics that I will paste here, for you guys to appreciate their vision. The document is retrievable here and the infografics are below.

In this first infografics they show the 3 phases of development for an ideal CCS implementation plan. Phase 1 (in blue) is not entirely implemented but the idea is to build main pumping units (phase 1) and satellites (phase 2 and 3) to inject CO2 and also being able to retrieve extra oil reserves. It is the most realistic way to implement further CCS, through the integration with Extended Oil Recovery (EOR) techniques of aging oilfields.

This second infografic show their first power generation project integrating CCS as a plan to reduce Carbon emission (White Rose CCS project), and how it will still be able to fulfill it's goal of powerhouse, in a greener manner than it's predecessors.

This last infografics is their second large power generation project integrating CCS (Peterhead CCS project). 

Both projects plan offshore storage which most probably will be integrated as EOR feedstock. The document claims they should provide 40% of UK's energy by 2050!

Now that is a blue sky plan :-)

The Guardians of the Earth

I read this very interesting article today  talking about carbon and nitrogen cycles from a seminar held in Brazil. The country might suffer the aftermath of a badly organized World Cup (FIFA did very well, but the host country forgot that the entertainment firm would not prepare the country... and all at a sudden it stopped just to accommodate a couple of athletes!!). The R&D is growing steadily and getting into speed with international level. Recently there was this conference on biodiversity from FAPESP A couple of very interesting talks were held talking about the nitrogen and carbon cycles and how the anthropogenic factor modified it.
You can find the Nitrogen Cycle presentation here:

Biota - Biodiversidade e Ciclagem de Nitrógeno (Parte 1) 

The Carbon Cycle presentation is found below. It is actually part of the same video, I just pinpointed at the correct time for you not to wait 45 min:

Biota - Biodiversidade e Ciclagem de Carbóno (Parte 2)

What is interesting is the way the debate is elevated and we seem to see the practical solutions pointing from the smog. From a project management point of view, we can identify the problems to assess and define a road-map which will look better than a chat room of grown-up kids trying to "save the forest" like it was at the early days. Not saying we do not need them, actually these dreamers are crucial because they are the reasons the practical people are looking into these issues. The earlier clear the smog for the latter to work more efficiently.
Also from the Stockholm Resilience Center, Nine Pillars of our planet have been defined, boundaries after which uncontrollable events will occur to try to re-establish the balance:

• Stratospheric ozone layer
• Biodiversity
• Chemicals dispersion
• Climate Change
• Ocean acidification
• Freshwater consumption and the global hydrological cycle
• Land system change
• Nitrogen and phosphorus inputs to the biosphere and oceans
• Atmospheric aerosol loading

The image on top is an estimation of how these factors changed since 1950.

Third pilar of the Earth

Last week the leaders of the BRICS nations met in Fortaleza to sign a new Multilateral Bank into existence. The New Development Bank (NDB) is born, will be headquartered in Shanghai and will open its doors to developing nations from 2016. It will have an initial capital pool of $50 billion that should rise to double if all goes according to the plan(s). The bank will also have a "Contingency Reserve Arrangement" of some $100bn to insulate developing countries from the “short-term liquidity pressures” of the financial markets. The primary goal of the NDB will be to drive economic progress in the developing world by fostering much-needed infrastructure projects. Currently, such projects in developing nations are costing an estimated $800 billion per annum. By 2025, it will be three times that amount, necessitating a global monthly spend of $200 billion – that’s an outlay analogous to the GDP of the Czech Republic every 30 days. Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa account for 42% of the world's population, and 30% of global GDP based on Purchasing power parity (PPP). In term of global energy numbers, the nations giving birth to the NBD possess 31% of the world's recoverable shale oil and 28% of the world's shale gas. Although the BRICS $50 billion initial war chest represents a small 12% of the subscribed capital of the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, the collaborative intent is there - the recent $400 billion Russo-Chinese gas deal signed between Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) is a testament to that. By the way, NDB also stands for Never Done Before... :-)

France, French and Reforms... One of these do not apply

Bonjour, j'ai lu en Juillet un article sur le Nouvel Économiste qui parlait des difficultés de la France à se réformer.  L'article ne répond pas à la question sous-jacente et qui est le parfait reflet de la France d'aujourd'hui: celle qui ne répond pas aux vraies questions. Quand Mr Sarkozy est arrivé au pouvoir je pensais qu'il allait jouer le rôle du jeune politique dynamique donnant un coup de pied dans la fourmilière. Déception devant son populisme peureux. Mr Hollande est encore plus populiste puisque de fibre mittérandienne (que je considère comme l'empereur des populistes). Nos politiques sont plus préoccupés par leurs résultats de campagne que par le développement économique de la France. Vu l'état de notre pays aujourd'hui les mesures pour le redresser vont être très impopulaires mais un politiciens devrait savoir que sa vocation est de voir au delà du mécontentement immédiatiste du peuple (ce qui se définit dans une ligne très fine entre démocratie et autocratie). Les propositions mettront fin au rêve ludique des français qui sont devenu trop paresseux et pensent que tout ce brouhaha international ne les concernent pas. Ils se fustigent de voir les chinois racheter en masse leur Art, vider le notre (dans la foulée) ou encore acheter notre vin en masse ou un village entier dans le Vercors. Ils n'aiment encore moins les investisseurs qui réussissent (pourtant moteurs du pays). 
Une question me vient à l'esprit: pourquoi envie-t-on plus facilement le petit patron que le grand? Les français ont tendance à aimer voir les "patrons payer" surtout ceux des petites PME, les plus fragiles. À première vue envier un patron de petite PME n'est pas tant sexy que d'envier Bill Gates ou feu Steve Jobs. Pourtant les deux dernier ont un train de vie beaucoup plus digne de Richard Gere dans "pretty woman" que le premier. Voici quelle peux être la raison: C'est plus simple d'envier quelqu'un un tout petit peu au dessus de toi, que tu vois tous les jours et avec qui tu arrives à te mesurer parce que les paramètres ne sont pas trop différent, ni les racines sociales. Maintenant quelqu'un qui est vraiment très au dessus de toi ou qui n'a pas eu la même éducation, pas fréquenté les mêmes lieux et qui a tendance à vouloir se cacher tu ne peux pas trop l'envier parce que tu ne le vois pas et en plus tu ne comprends pas vraiment ce par quoi il passe. Enfin les sommes en jeu sont tellement faramineuses parfois que tu ne vois même pas l'utilité de la dépense. Donc il est plus simple d'envier son patron dans une entreprise de 50 personnes que 50000.

Arctic: the last frontier... to spill out?

Back in April: Greenpeace has never been an NGO I liked, I consider them as a bunch of playboys always trying to run the spotlights and never really acting where they should (like in the delta region of Nigeria for instance, or in Congo... ). But the Arctic activism activities in Russia are not that bad as Russia is not really an easy country. The testosterone-driven president-of-a-lifetime just-like-african-nation Poutin is puttin' on (:-P) a show of muscle-full brainless responses to the Greenpeace activists.

Partiality in Recorded Violence: Social Media Influence

Ultimately I am not keeping in touch with my followers, if any.. :-), and I do apologize. It is true that I got a bit dry in term of writing inspiration, it has never been my main strength and I am still at a moment of my life where I question a lot of things that will direct my next 20 years. But that will be for another time! What I wanted to talk about today was the multiplication of violent videos on the main social media since the organization of the 2014 edition of the FIFA World Cup. Facebook is currently an easier way to express your revolt upon injustice, even if it seems sometimes futile and useless you can still vent off, therefore the video came out of this platform but it could easily have come out of twitter or Google+. I decided to comment on the last of these videos, being short it wot be a problem and it symbolize a current revolt of the Brazilians against a restricted fraction of their police force behaving like during the old days where they were empowered to do a bit of whatever they wanted. That was 40 years ago. It is easy to generalize, then you end up discriminating and not trusting an entire task force over the act of a small fraction. Therefore I would like to see the entire history behind this video's event. Like I said earlier, I see many videos of outrageous happenings, but nobody mentions why we arrived at this point of violence. In this video, what did this guy in shorts do? Who is he? Are the cops really policemen, militia or actors who are finding a reason to revolt the mob (now any fantasy can seem real with a camera of poor quality, like in "Blair Witch" or "Clover Field" where they can hide cheap visual effects with bad camera)? A phrase that is out of context can be very misunderstood, fundamentalists use it as a basic enrollment techniques (whether Christian, Jews or Muslim fundamentalists). The same thing can happen with a video. I want to have a fair point of view based on irrefutable arguments and not driven by emotion and part-witnessed violence from an event without which we don't know neither why nor how nor the parties involved.

Brazil looking for quick energy tap?

My opinion: recent international politic choices of pdt Dilma might suggest that Brazil did not get good output with some (hypothetical) north american negociation about energy delivery, therefore Brazil is looking for some other neighbors to close some more interesting deals (Venezuela? Cuba?). I'd say that is the current line of decision pdt Dilma is opting for. Therefore the cuban deal with BNDES, the latest and rather unexpected support on Maduro's political (and rather hectic) decisions.

Samba corruption... bad trip

Just a couple of days before Carnival (2 days to be exact) the brazilian Supreme Court ruled out one conviction of racketeering on the worst corruption case of the '00 decade. You can follow the twitter thread of indignation of Brazilians that thought they were done with big thieves. I already made two post about the corruption, which saga really looks like a poor version of the Hangover (that is already not very good): 1, 2 and now the latest sequel which nobody wanted to hear. Now the only hope is that the man behind the original judgement, Joaquim Barbosa, decides to step down from STF to engage the presidency race!!!

FIFA missing one point with Brazil

Curitiba's stadium, Feb 2014...

Mr Blatter missed a very important point, that hopefully (for him) is not irreversible: he got angry at Brazilian people during the Confederation Cup when there are the only one that can help him put this World Cup together on time. Brazilian protests over corruption are exactly what he needs for cities like Curitiba to finish what needs to be finished on time. Now that he positioned himself and FIFA against the Brazilian people, nobody wants FIFA there. He should not put 200 million people against his organization it's dangerous. When a man thinks his organization is above the very own people he depends on, it is a sign of perverse deviation from the original philosophy of the company. Last April Mr Blatter apparently got cleaned of bribery accusation, by his own Ethic's Committee. Well, I leave you with the thought of that when Qatar is cleaning the Nepalese population with the 2022 World Cup, and Brazil has a death toll of five (true it's not a lot, but still, 5 persons over a pressurized leather skin sport!).

Accident in SP's stadium, 2 casualties

Patrick MacDonald is right here, but not only Human Right division should be hurting FIFA's feeling, also an audit team and an independent Ethic's Committee to check on both Blatter and his internal Ethic's Committee.
Conclusion: I will not watch the World Cup, I have decided long ago the boycott was a wise decision to hit where it hurts the most, the (FIFA's) wallet through not buying, not watching TV. Instead I will rent my flat in Rio and go to France, anyone interested?? :-)))




Addendum: Just one day after my post, Financial Times published this nice article. I guess this is what we can call telepathy!

Uhuru: because a Nation Spying them All kills globalization and brings back regionalization

French anti-virus Uhuru is just a reflex of the fear of the end of the virtual in the name of security (of one country). Unfortunately it comes late, but better late than never. Even the Open Source systems are mainly US-based companies (Linux, Firefox...) which mean they are vulnerable ultimately to US government intimations and intimidations. Europe has too few IP in the virtual World and needs to get back to the game. Is this a first step?

Brazilian creativity

I was with my wife walking back from some place I do not remember when we passed a place that smelled like a dirty homeless guy was sleeping somewhere, except we could not not see him (important point for this post, my wife is brazilian, I'm not). So my wife said "it is a ghost" which made me trip a bit but as I am not a 7 year old anymore (30 years ago I was) I quickly came back to Earth and told her the same thing I just told you. But she was convinced, so I strat to trip again... until I came back to my sences and asked what she meant. A ghost is actually the rag these guy used and that catches their smell, so when they are not here it seems they still are linging around but you cannot see them... a "ghost"! That reminded me that I was always impressed by the way the brazilian people I was hanging with always had that sort of game of contextual nicknaming, more than other cultures (USA, France... you name it). The game is to find the funniest nickname that would immediately have you understanding a fact by the context relating the two (in fact here, the "smeely" ghost and the homeless rag left which smell reminds the presence of the person). That creativity is hardly matched.

Yesterday I watched that documentary about creativity as well, and was interviewed Paulo Barros, the director of the carnival of the samba school União da Tijuca. He said that while he was doing something (irrelevant) he saw a truck with thousands of cooking panels that would go to trash, that gave him an idea as he had to create the carnival's car which was about Oz. The panels where used to create a huge tin man. 

Creativity is something that Brazil has a lot, maybe from the fact (e.g.) that they need to make something important (allegoric cars and costumes) out of not much every year for carnival, and it drags throughout the entire society. Counterpart is that they have trouble to monetize correctly that creativity, which seems to be more an north american quality.

Happy Carnival!!

Multinational Ramping up to Tackle Climate Change

I have not been writing for a little while. Not that I have nothing to say but rather, I'm kept busy lately. I just came across a great article from Coral Davenport, who keeps an economical blog in the New York Times. His article is on how multinational companies are taking measure to tackle Climate Change as it affects their economy. It actually is very close to my opinion on international energy companies (mostly oil and gas) investing in renewable energy sources as a response to the more and more volatile environment in which they evolve. I copied/pasted his article below as a matter of commodity, the original article can be found here.


The article:
Industry Awakens to Threat of Climate Change

Coca-Cola has always been more focused on its economic bottom line than on global warming, but when the company lost a lucrative operating license in India because of a serious water shortage there in 2004, things began to change.

Today, after a decade of increasing damage to Coke’s balance sheet as global droughts dried up the water needed to produce its soda, the company has embraced the idea of climate change as an economically disruptive force.

“Increased droughts, more unpredictable variability, 100-year floods every two years,” said Jeffrey Seabright, Coke’s vice president for environment and water resources, listing the problems that he said were also disrupting the company’s supply of sugar cane and sugar beets, as well as citrus for its fruit juices. “When we look at our most essential ingredients, we see those events as threats.”

Coke reflects a growing view among American business leaders and mainstream economists who see global warming as a force that contributes to lower gross domestic products, higher food and commodity costs, broken supply chains and increased financial risk. Their position is at striking odds with the longstanding argument, advanced by the coal industry and others, that policies to curb carbon emissions are more economically harmful than the impact of climate change.

“The bottom line is that the policies will increase the cost of carbon and electricity,” said Roger Bezdek, an economist who produced a report for the coal lobby that was released this week. “Even the most conservative estimates peg the social benefit of carbon-based fuels as 50 times greater than its supposed social cost.”

Some tycoons are no longer listening.

At the Swiss resort of Davos, corporate leaders and politicians gathered for the annual four-day World Economic Forum will devote all of Friday to panels and talks on the threat of climate change. The emphasis will be less about saving polar bears and more about promoting economic self-interest.

In Philadelphia this month, the American Economic Association inaugurated its new president, William D. Nordhaus, a Yale economist and one of the world’s foremost experts on the economics of climate change.

“There is clearly a growing recognition of this in the broader academic economic community,” said Mr. Nordhaus, who has spent decades researching the economic impacts of both climate change and of policies intended to mitigate climate change.

In Washington, the World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, has put climate change at the center of the bank’s mission, citing global warming as the chief contributor to rising global poverty rates and falling G.D.P.’s in developing nations. In Europe, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Paris-based club of 34 industrialized nations, has begun to warn of the steep costs of increased carbon pollution.

Nike, which has more than 700 factories in 49 countries, many in Southeast Asia, is also speaking out because of extreme weather that is disrupting its supply chain. In 2008, floods temporarily shut down four Nike factories in Thailand, and the company remains concerned about rising droughts in regions that produce cotton, which the company uses in its athletic clothes.

“That puts less cotton on the market, the price goes up, and you have market volatility,” said Hannah Jones, the company’s vice president for sustainability and innovation. Nike has already reported the impact of climate change on water supplies on its financial risk disclosure forms to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Both Nike and Coke are responding internally: Coke uses water-conservation technologies and Nike is using more synthetic material that is less dependent on weather conditions. At Davos and in global capitals, the companies are also lobbying governments to enact environmentally friendly policies.

But the ideas are a tough sell in countries like China and India, where cheap coal-powered energy is lifting the economies and helping to raise millions of people out of poverty. Even in Europe, officials have begun to balk at the cost of environmental policies: On Wednesday, the European Union scaled back its climate change and renewable energy commitments, as high energy costs, declining industrial competitiveness and a recognition that the economy is unlikely to rebound soon caused European policy makers to question the short-term economic trade-offs of climate policy.

In the United States, the rich can afford to weigh in. The California hedge-fund billionaire Thomas F. Steyer, who has used millions from his own fortune to support political candidates who favor climate policy, is working with Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, and Henry M. Paulson Jr., a former Treasury secretary in the George W. Bush administration, to commission an economic study on the financial risks associated with climate change. The study, titled “Risky Business,” aims to assess the potential impacts of climate change by region and by sector across the American economy.

“This study is about one thing, the economics,” Mr. Paulson said in an interview, adding that “business leaders are not adequately focused on the economic impact of climate change.”

Also consulting on the “Risky Business” report is Robert E. Rubin, a former Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration. “There are a lot of really significant, monumental issues facing the global economy, but this supersedes all else,” Mr. Rubin said in an interview. “To make meaningful headway in the economics community and the business community, you’ve got to make it concrete.”

Last fall, the governments of seven countries — Colombia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, South Korea, Norway, Sweden and Britain — created the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate and jointly began another study on how governments and businesses can address climate risks to better achieve economic growth. That study and the one commissioned by Mr. Steyer and others are being published this fall, just before a major United Nations meeting on climate change.

Although many Republicans oppose the idea of a price or tax on carbon pollution, some conservative economists endorse the idea. Among them are Arthur B. Laffer, senior economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan; the Harvard economist N. Gregory Mankiw, who was economic adviser to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign; and Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the head of the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank, and an economic adviser to the 2008 presidential campaign of Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican.

“There’s no question that if we get substantial changes in atmospheric temperatures, as all the evidence suggests, that it’s going to contribute to sea-level rise,” Mr. Holtz-Eakin said. “There will be agriculture and economic effects — it’s inescapable.” He added, “I’d be shocked if people supported anything other than a carbon tax — that’s how economists think about it.”

Hope you enjoyed it. Do not hesitate to comment here or on the NYT's page.