TheTideOfBattle

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Sat, 28 Oct 2023 05:30:00 +0000

HOPE (Zeeba)

HOPE

Zeeba

Hope

Don’t lose your hope

Don’t stop believing

Believing, cause we will get there

Hold

On to your goals

Trust and let go

We’re a kite and the wind will take us

Everyday life will show us something

That can make you lose it

Or make you stronger yeah

It it’s up to you now

We’ll no matter what you gotta keep it moving

Keep driving in this road

See your dreams get close to you

To you yeah

Don’t stop believing

Don’t stop

Trust

Always trust you heart

Learn and own the past

There’s an open field of good luck tides all over

Sun’s

Up till it’s gone

And night’s can be fun

Enjoy the sky full of joy that you always wanted

Everyday life will show us something

That can make you lose it

Or make you stronger yeah

It it’s up to you now

We’ll no matter what you gotta keep it moving

Keep driving in this road

See your dreams get close to you

To you yeah

Don’t stop believing

Don’t stop...

SMOKE SCREEN [THE UNSPOKEN TRUTH ABOUT THE AMAZON FOREST] (BY BRASIL PARALELO)

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Thu, 06 Oct 2022 03:08:00 +0000

SMOKE SCREEN

[THE UNSPOKEN TRUTH ABOUT THE AMAZON FOREST]

(BY BRASIL PARALELO)

Don't Look Up! - Cornucopians, Doomers and Stagnationists

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 17:38:00 +0000

2021 Movie

the Hipcrime Vocab

What's a Hipcrime? You committed one when you opened this blog. Keep it up. It's our only hope.

Cornucopians, Doomers and Stagnationists

Closing out this series, it strikes me that your view of the future boils down to one central question: energy or innovation?

Most people are unaware of how recent our ever-growing technologically-based society is. In the beginning of this series, we featured some economic history showing that the lifestyles we take for granted began on a grand historical scale only yesterday – 1870 seems to be a good starting point of longer life expectancy, decreased infant mortality, population explosion, height increases, abundant goods, and the plentiful jobs. I was unaware myself of just how recent this all was. Yet we assume that it will not only continue into the future, but accelerate. It has become "the new normal" for the modern world.

But what caused it? Some say it was the scientific revolution which did it. Others that was institutional reforms allowing capitalism to flourish and preventing elites from harvesting any and all gains from innovation for themselves. Some say it was Enlightenment social reforms banishing religious domination over the lives and thinking of common people and allowing them to advance. Some say it was the resources from the plundering of the new world.

One view of the future sees change and progress (in their view) as exponential and accelerating. They see scientific discovery driving limitless innovation, as each discovery builds upon previous ones. Things formerly unimaginable have become commonplace, and reality has consistently defied predictions of what was possible, as well as past predictions of doom. They envision a world of mastery over materials through nanotechnology, limitless energy from fusion, robotic servants tending to our every need, plentiful goods thanks to 3D printing, intelligence embedded into everything via computer chips and artificial intelligence, and the elimination of sickness and aging via biotechnology.

The other sees humans as rapacious locusts temporarily burning through a one-time windfall of fossil fuels. As that windfall is used up, scientific progress and innovation will slowly grind to a halt. Humans will regress to simpler and more basic forms of social and political organization, as they will no longer have the energy needed to sustain the complexity of the modern globalized economy. We will end up as squatters among the ruins of past civilizations, marveling at what we were able to accomplish using the bounty of fossil fuels which can only be used once. No longer able to sustain such a huge population, it will fall either slowly or rapidly, and the world will come to resemble the pre-fossil-fuel era of low growth and Malthusian limits. There will be a recrudescence of things like starvation, disease, economic depressions, famine, resource wars, social breakdown and political strife.

Now the fundamental difference between these two views rests on where you think human progress (yes, I’m aware of the pitfalls of the term, but it will have to suffice) comes from.

If you believe that the primary engine driving progress and change is innovation, you see innovation continuing apace and accelerating. By contrast, if you believe that the driving engine behind change and progress is energy, and more generally, resources, you are likely to see a marked decline in the human condition as we pass the peak of various fossil fuels and are forced to use lower net energy sources, as well as looming scarcity in key materials like fresh water, arable land, topsoil, phosphorus, copper, uranium, rare earth metals, etc. One side takes a materialist view. The other side sees resources as an incidental factor, with human inventiveness as an "the ultimate resource" that is inexhaustible, as economist Julian Simon put it.

One common argument is that before the modern era, our knowledge was "compounding" and that it only reached a critical mass in this time period, allowing us to make a quantum leap:
Suppose, I give you a magic coin worth 1 cent, which multiplies itself 100 times every year.

At the end of 1 year, you would have a negligible amount: $1.
At the end of 2 years, you would have a very small sum: $100.
At the end of 3 years, you would have barely enough: $10,000.
At the end of 4 years, you start seeing a modest $1 million dollar heap.
At the end of 5 years, you would have a good $100 million.

Now, at the end of the fifth year, you come to me and say, "I have kept the coin with me for 5 years, but 99 percent of the money it made came in last year. What was the coin doing before that?"

So, to answer in one word: compounding.
Why Has 99 Percent of the Technological Progress by Modern Humans Come in the Last 10,000 Years? (Slate)

This is the "back half of the chessboard" idea; that change is exponential, and therefore tends to move more and more rapidly over time. This idea has been most forcefully argued by Ray Kurzweil, who projects this trend out into the future:
When people think of a future period, they intuitively assume that the current rate of progress will continue for future periods. However, careful consideration of the pace of technology shows that the rate of progress is not constant, but it is human nature to adapt to the changing pace, so the intuitive view is that the pace will continue at the current rate. Even for those of us who have been around long enough to experience how the pace increases over time, our unexamined intuition nonetheless provides the impression that progress changes at the rate that we have experienced recently. From the mathematician’s perspective, a primary reason for this is that an exponential curve approximates a straight line when viewed for a brief duration. So even though the rate of progress in the very recent past (e.g., this past year) is far greater than it was ten years ago (let alone a hundred or a thousand years ago), our memories are nonetheless dominated by our very recent experience. It is typical, therefore, that even sophisticated commentators, when considering the future, extrapolate the current pace of change over the next 10 years or 100 years to determine their expectations. This is why I call this way of looking at the future the “intuitive linear” view.

But a serious assessment of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential. In exponential growth, we find that a key measurement such as computational power is multiplied by a constant factor for each unit of time (e.g., doubling every year) rather than just being added to incrementally. Exponential growth is a feature of any evolutionary process, of which technology is a primary example. One can examine the data

in different ways, on different time scales, and for a wide variety of technologies ranging from electronic to biological, and the acceleration of progress and growth applies. Indeed, we find not just simple exponential growth, but “double” exponential growth, meaning that the rate of exponential growth is itself growing exponentially. These observations do not rely merely on an assumption of the continuation of Moore’s law (i.e., the exponential shrinking of transistor sizes on an integrated circuit), but is based on a rich model of diverse technological processes. What it clearly shows is that technology, particularly the pace of technological change, advances (at least) exponentially, not linearly, and has been doing so since the advent of technology, indeed since the advent of evolution on Earth.
The Law of Accelerating Returns (Kurzweil Hub)

Less extreme conrnucopian views have been argued most recently by bailed-out banker Matt Ridley ('The Rational Optimist'), silicon valley investor Peter Diamandis ('Abundance:The Future Is Better Than You Think'), former Microsoft executive Ramez Naam ('The Infinite Resource'), financial journalist Daniel Ben-Ami ('Ferraris For All'), Bjorn Lomborg ('The Skeptical Environmentalist'), Stewart Brand, Steven Pinker, and as we featured last time, Joel Mokyr. The belief is that human ingenuity solves all problems, and that we have left behind the Malthusian world forever. Human society is progressing, we've just hit a temporary bump in the road, and we just need to iron out the difficulties.

The innovation case rests on two arguments. One is the fact that large-scale, collaborative, empirical, experimental, peer-reviewed science has become the lifeblood of modern growth-based economies, and that we have never seen that institutionalized before now. As the eminent historian of science Alfred North Whitehead put it, “the greatest invention of the nineteenth century is the method of invention.”

“The stone age didn’t end for lack of stones,” is the popular platitude here. There are many just-so stories trotted out – energy-dense coal replaced wood that became scarce through deforestation; kerosene replaced oil from declining populations of overhunted sperm whales; gasoline-powered automobiles made sure that cities could continue grow without drowning in horse manure; shellac from southeast Asian beetles which was used to insulate electronics was replaced by plastic, nitrogen fixed from the atmosphere replaced dwindling sources of South American guano, and so on.

But note that all of the above depend on fossil fuels. This brings up the counter-argument that the only thing that allowed us to escape the Malthusian trap was the harvesting of a massive store of solar energy that had been harvested by the earth over geologic time-scales, just waiting for humans to discover how to use it.

The case for energy as the primary driver is well summarized in this essay by Nate Hagens:
The chemical potential energy available from the burning of things (e.g. wood) is rather astounding when compared with the energy which we supply our bodies in the form of food, and the fossil fuels of coal, oil, and natural gas burn even hotter while also being much easier to store and transport. We quickly learned that using some of this heat to perform work would transform what we could accomplish in massive ways. One barrel of oil, priced at just over $100 boasts 5,700,000 BTUs or work potential of 1700kWhs. At an average of .60 kWh per work day, to generate this amount of 'labor', an average human would have to work 2833 days, or 11 working years. At the average hourly US wage rate, this is almost $500,000 of labor can be substituted by the latent energy in one barrel of oil that costs us $100. Unbeknownst to most stock and bond researchers on Wall Street, this is the real ‘Trade’.

The vast majority of our industrial processes and activities are the result of this ‘Trade’. We applied large amounts of extremely cheap fossil carbon to tasks humans used to do manually. And we invented many many more. Each time it was an extremely inefficient trade from the perspective of energy (much more energy used) but even more extremely profitable from the perspective of human society. For instance, depending on the boundaries, driving a car on a paved road uses 50-100 times the energy of a human walking, but gets us to where we are going 10 times faster. The ‘Trade’ is largely responsible for some combination of: higher wages, higher profits, lower priced goods and more people. The average American today consumes ~60 barrel of oil equivalents of fossil carbon annually, a 'subsidy' from ancient plants and geologic processes amounting to ~600 years of their own human labor, before conversion. Even with 7 billion people, each human kWh is supported by over 90kWh of fossil labor, and in OECD nations about 4-5 times this much.

Technology acts as an enabler, both by inventing new and creative ways to convert primary energy into (useful?) activities and goods for human consumption and, occasionally, by making us use or extract primary energy in more efficient ways. Even such services that appear independent of energy, are not so- for example, using computers, iPhones, etc in aggregate comprise about 10% of our energy use, when the servers etc are included. Technology can create GDP without adding to energy use by using energy more efficiently but:

a) much of the large theoretical movements towards energy efficiency have already occurred and b) energy saved is often used elsewhere in the system to build consumption demand, requiring more and more primary energy (Jevons paradox, rebound effect).

Despite the power in the Trade, its benefits can be readily reversed. Firstly, if we add obscene amounts of energy, even cheap energy, the wage increases/benefits start to decline. But more importantly, and has been happening in the past decade or so, as energy prices increase, so too do the benefits of the “Trade” start to wane. The graph to the right (source, page 18) shows that as the price of energy doubles or triples the benefits of this 'Trade' quickly recede. This is especially true for the extremely energy intensive processes, like aluminum smelting, cement manufacture- fully 30% of US industry falls into this category. This reduction in 'salary' can only partially be offset by efficiency measures or lean manufacturing moves, because the whole 'Trade' was predicated on large amounts of very cheap energy. Basically, the benefits to human societies from the mammoth bank account we found underground are almost indistinguishable from magic. Yet we have managed, over time, to conflate the Magic with the Wizard.
Twenty (Important) Concepts I Wasn't Taught in Business School (The Oil Drum)

This view has also been forcefully argued by Chris Martenson:
The really big picture goes like this: Humans discovered about 400 million years worth of stored sunlight in the form of coal, oil, and natural gas, and have developed technologies that will essentially see all of that treasure burned up in just 300 to 400 years.

On the faulty assumption that fossil fuels will always be a resource we could draw upon, we fashioned economic, monetary, and other assorted belief systems based on permanent abundance, plus a species population on track to number around 9 billion souls by 2050.

There are two numbers to keep firmly in mind. The first is 22, and the other is 10. In the past 22 years, half of all of the oil ever burned has been burned. Such is the nature of exponentially increasing demand. And the oil burned in the last 22 years was the easy and cheap stuff discovered 30 to 40 years ago. Which brings us to the number 10.

In every calorie of food that comes to your table are hidden 10 calories of fossil fuels, making modern agriculture and food delivery the first type in history that consumes more energy than it delivers. Someday fossil fuels will be all gone. That day may be far off in the future, but preparing for that day could (and one could argue should) easily require every bit of time we have.

What galls me at this stage is that all of the pronouncements of additional oil being squeezed, fractured, and otherwise expensively coaxed out of the ground are being delivered with the message that there's so much available, there's nothing to worry about (at least, not yet.) The message seems to be that we can just leave those challenges for future people, who we expect to be at least as clever as us, so they'll surely manage just fine.

Instead, the chart above illustrates that on a reasonably significant timeline, the age of fossil fuels will be intense and historically quite short. The real question is not Will it run out? but Where would we like to be, and what should the future look like when it finally runs out? The former question suggests that "maintain the status quo" is the correct response, while the latter question suggests that we had better be investing this once-in-a-species bequeathment very judiciously and wisely.

Energy is vital to our economy and our easy, modern lives. Without energy, there would be no economy. The more expensive our energy is, the more of our economy is dedicated to getting energy instead of other pursuits and activities. Among the various forms of energy, petroleum is the king of transportation fuels and is indispensible to our global economy and way of life.

To what do we owe the recent explosion in technology and living standards? To me the answer is simple: energy. Because a very large proportion of our society was no longer tied up with the time-consuming tasks of growing their own food or building and heating their own shelter, they were free to do other very clever things, like devote their lives to advancing technology. When energy starts to get out of reach either economically or geologically, then people revert to more basic things, like trying to stay warm

Like every other organism bestowed with abundant food – in this case, fossil fuels that we have converted into food, mobility, shelter, warmth, and a vast array of consumer goods – we first embarked on a remarkable path of exponential population growth. Along with these assorted freedoms from securing the basics of living, we also fashioned monetary and economic systems that are fully dependent on perpetual exponential growth for their vitality and well-being. These, too, owe their very sustenance to energy.

It bears repeating: Not just energy is important here, but net energy. It's the energy left over after we find and produce energy that is available for society to do all of its complicated and clever things.
The really, really big picture: There isn't going to be enough net energy for the economic growth we want (Peak Prosperity)

Such views have also been argued by Richard Heinberg, Jeremy Grantham, John Michael Greer, and others. It's more extreme views are argued by James Howard Kunstler, Michael Ruppert and Guy McPherson (who believes climate change will bring about near-term human extinction). Note that people that do not have access to this abundant source of energy are still living in the Malthusian world. As A Farewell to Alms points out:
English workers of 1800 could purchase much more of most goods than their Malawian counterparts...If a Malawian had tried to purchase the consumption of an English worker in 1800 he would have been able to afford only 40 percent as much. Thus living standards in England were possibly 2.5 times greater than those of current-day Malawi. Yet the meager wage in Malawi is still above the subsistence level for that economy in healthy modern conditions, since the Malawian population continues to grow rapidly...Hundreds of millions of Africans now live on less than 40 percent of the income of preindustrial England. (p. 44)
But need we be limited by fossil fuels? One author doesn't think so. Here's Ramez Naam:
So we’re at a crucial point in human history – a race between destruction and creation. On the one side, we have the pace at which we’re consuming finite resources and warming and polluting the planet – a trend with disastrous consequences should it continue unchecked. On the other side, we have our vigorous progress in innovating to tap more efficiently and cleanly into a truly enormous supply of fundamental natural resources the planet provides.

Are we on track to win this race?

That’s not at all clear. Consider, for a moment, climate and energy. Multiple groups have proposed plans by which the world could be powered almost entirely by renewable energy by 2050, or, in the most ambitions plans, by 2030.

Yet even as those plans are articulated, worldwide CO2 emissions are rising, not falling. In 2012, the planet as a whole emitted a record-breaking 35.6 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. And the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is surging along with our annual emissions. In 2012, atmospheric CO2 concentrations rose by the largest amount in 15 years to a new level of 395 ppm, most of the way to the 450ppm that climate scientists have articulated as the threshold for dangerous warming.

The fundamental driver here is economics. Consumers, businesses, and industry want energy. They need energy. That’s true everywhere in the world. And they will buy whatever sort of energy is cheapest. Indeed, if a new source of energy is sufficiently cheaper than the old, consumers will switch their energy consumption from the old to the new.

If we want to win the race against climate change, one thing matters more than all others: make renewable energy (including storage) cheap. Dirt cheap. And do it fast.

How do we do that? Fundamentally, we need to increase the pace of innovation. And there are two clear strategies to do so.

The first is to invest more in clean energy R&D. In 2012, the US suffered $100 billion in damage from the climate-linked disasters of Hurricane Sandy and the still-ongoing drought. Yet we spent only $5 billion on clean energy R&D, an amount that’s roughly half of what we spent in the 1980s. It’s also a small fraction of the $30 billion the US spends each year on medical research and the $80 billion the US spends each year on defense R&D. Yet in a very real sense, clean energy R&D is an investment in both future health and in national security. Bill Gates proposed last year that this amount should be roughly tripled to $16 billion. That’s a fine start.

The second is to be more inclusive in our cost accounting. The market is a brilliant algorithm that does a masterful job of allocating resources and driving incentives – so long as costs are fully transparent to it. But sometimes, a cost is completely missing from the books – missing in such a way that the market can’t see it.

Fossil fuels have substantial side effects that those who burn them aren’t charged for. The damage done to the environment – and thus, to others – is a cost that society pays, which isn’t passed on to the polluter. That cost is high. Peer-reviewed research suggests that every ton of CO2 emitted inflicts somewhere between $55 and $250 of damage on the environment and others.

Because that cost isn’t passed on as part of the price of fossil fuel use, the market misbehaves. The overall cost of coal, natural gas, and oil is higher than the price paid at the pump or on the power bill. But the part that’s missing is being inflicted on others, spread out over billions of people on the planet, and smeared out over years to come.

By driving the cost of renewable energy down, a carbon price has a global effect – those cheaper renewable energy sources become more attractive to consumers around the world, whether their own country has a carbon price or not.

I’ve focused here primarily on climate, because it’s the threat that touches all others. But similar approaches apply to food, to water, and to fish in the ocean. In all of those cases, there’s room for substantially higher federal R&D – to invest in crops that have higher yields, particularly for the developing world; to develop new low-cost ways to cut water usage in farming; and to put more sensible prices and restrictions on the over-fishing of deep ocean fish, and thus accelerate the shift to sustainable fish farming.

Ultimately, there are two paths forward for us, the easy way and the hard way.

In the easy way, we acknowledge the evidence that we are causing real harm to our planet, leaving it worse off for future generations, and flirting with the possibility of sudden and dramatic consequences. We retain our optimism, that we can both address these problems and be far richer in the future than we are today. We take our wildly successful economic system and we fix it so that it recognizes the value of our shared resources and encourages their protection, restoration, and careful, efficient, sustainable use. We invest in action to reduce the risk of even worse future disasters caused by our unwise past. Nothing is certain in life. But on that path, the most likely outcome is that we’ll solve the problems that plague us and grow progressively richer even as we reduce and eventually reverse our negative impact on the planet.

On this path, there’s no sign that economic growth needs to end. There’s no sign that we’re anywhere near the wealth limit of this planet. We have sufficient energy, sufficient water, and the capacity to grow sufficient food to provide 9 or 10 billion people with a level of affluence far beyond what even the richest in the world enjoy today.
The Limits of the Earth, Part 2: Expanding the Limits (Scientific American)

A third view does not look so much at energy, but believes that epoch-changing inventions can only be invented once, and once they are, growth rates will stagnate. They talk about the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when certain countries escaped the Malthusian trap as a temporary period of extraordinary growth, and that we have now reached a plateau in living standards and innovation. They predict that there will be a "time out" from the manic economic growth we have seen previously, and an economic slowdown that we are ill-prepared to deal with. This has been argued by Robert Gordon, Tyler Cowen and Jan Vijg. As New York Magazine put it in their introduction to the following article, "What if everything we’ve come to think of as American is predicated on a freak coincidence of economic history? And what if that coincidence has run its course?":
Picture this, arranged along a time line.

For all of measurable human history up until the year 1750, nothing happened that mattered. This isn’t to say history was stagnant, or that life was only grim and blank, but the well-being of average people did not perceptibly improve. All of the wars, literature, love affairs, and religious schisms, the schemes for empire-making and ocean-crossing and simple profit and freedom, the entire human theater of ambition and deceit and redemption took place on a scale too small to register, too minor to much improve the lot of ordinary human beings. In England before the middle of the eighteenth century, where industrialization first began, the pace of progress was so slow that it took 350 years for a family to double its standard of living. In Sweden, during a similar 200-year period, there was essentially no improvement at all. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the state of technology and the luxury and quality of life afforded the average individual were little better than they had been two millennia earlier, in ancient Rome.

Then two things happened that did matter, and they were so grand that they dwarfed everything that had come before and encompassed most everything that has come since: the first industrial revolution, beginning in 1750 or so in the north of England, and the second industrial revolution, beginning around 1870 and created mostly in this country. That the second industrial revolution happened just as the first had begun to dissipate was an incredible stroke of good luck. It meant that during the whole modern era from 1750 onward – which contains, not coincidentally, the full life span of the United States – human well-being accelerated at a rate that could barely have been contemplated before. Instead of permanent stagnation, growth became so rapid and so seemingly automatic that by the fifties and sixties the average American would roughly double his or her parents’ standard of living. In the space of a single generation, for most everybody, life was getting twice as good.

At some point in the late sixties or early seventies, this great acceleration began to taper off. The shift was modest at first, and it was concealed in the hectic up-and-down of yearly data. But if you examine the growth data since the early seventies, and if you are mathematically astute enough to fit a curve to it, you can see a clear trend: The rate at which life is improving here, on the frontier of human well-being, has slowed.

If you are like most economists – until a couple of years ago, it was virtually all economists – you are not greatly troubled by this story, which is, with some variation, the consensus long-arc view of economic history. The machinery of innovation, after all, is now more organized and sophisticated than it has ever been, human intelligence is more efficiently marshaled by spreading education and expanding global connectedness, and the examples of the Internet, and perhaps artificial intelligence, suggest that progress continues to be rapid.

But if you are prone to a more radical sense of what is possible, you might begin to follow a different line of thought. If nothing like the first and second industrial revolutions had ever happened before, what is to say that anything similar will happen again? Then, perhaps, the global economic slump that we have endured since 2008 might not merely be the consequence of the burst housing bubble, or financial entanglement and overreach, or the coming generational trauma of the retiring baby boomers, but instead a glimpse at a far broader change, the slow expiration of a historically singular event. Perhaps our fitful post-crisis recovery is no aberration. This line of thinking would make you an acolyte of a 72-year-old economist at Northwestern named Robert Gordon, and you would probably share his view that it would be crazy to expect something on the scale of the second industrial revolution to ever take place again.

“Some things,” Gordon says, and he says it often enough that it has become both a battle cry and a mantra, “can happen only once.”
The Blip (New York Magazine)

Some see this plateau as essentially permanent, others as temporary, with growth heating up again once we have adapted our most recent inventions and integrated them into society. They do not believe that we will collapse back into the Malthusian world of pre-1870, but neither do they see exponential growth continuing forever like the cornucopians. I call these stagnationists. Note that no stagnationist, to my knowledge, has taken dwindling net energy sources into account.

Cornucopians, doomers, stagnationists. Whom to believe? And where does the truth lie? The various camps are talking past each other, but I think that the fundamental difference between the views is, whether the primary driving factor behind change over time is innovation or energy. It's an important question, because whether innovation or energy is the main factor driving growth and progress will largely determine which of these two competing views is a better predictor of humanity’s future trajectory. This fundamental question needs solving if we are ever to resolve this argument.

Well, we’re not going to solve that question here on this blog, obviously, but next time I'll put forward a few concluding thoughts on the subject.

http://hipcrime.blogspot.com/2013/09/cornicopians-doomers-and-stagnationists.html?m=1

EARTH HOUR 2021: What COVID-19 has tought us about our planet, and ourselves.

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 20:35:00 +0000

Our first-ever Earth Hour "Virtual Spotlight"

Over the years, the lights-off moment saw entire streets, buildings, landmarks, and city skylines go dark - an unmissable sight that drew public attention to nature loss and the climate crisis.

This year - amidst the current global circumstances - in addition to switching off your lights, we also invite you to raise awareness and create the same unmissable sight online, so that the world sees our planet, the issues we face, and our place within it, in a new light.

👉 How? It's simple. On the night of Earth Hour (March 27), we'll be posting a must-watch video on all our social media pages - and all you have to do is share it.

Share it to your Stories or to your wall, re-Tweet it, send it via DM, tag friends in the comments - the choice is yours!

🌍👀 Our goal is simple: put the spotlight on our planet and make it the most watched video in the world on March 27 (or beyond!) so that as many people as possible hear our message.

✅ Be sure to follow us on Instagram / Facebook / Twitter to stay updated!

Nations United: Urgent Solutions for Urgent Times

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Sun, 22 Nov 2020 19:07:00 +0000

COVID-19 impacts and the SDGs

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Tue, 30 Jun 2020 21:28:00 +0000

COVID-19 impacts and the SDGs

https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sdgs-framework-for-covid-19-recovery/

The Novel Corona Virus lesson learning.

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Fri, 13 Mar 2020 19:31:00 +0000

There is learning in all of this, the world is one, people have the same weaknesses and needs in any part of the globe, and governments and institutions can act together for the protection and well-being of populations. I hope we don't let this opportunity pass us by to realize that we are a global community.

EMBRAER Electric Demonstrator Aircraft

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Tue, 20 Aug 2019 00:01:00 +0000

Embraer advances in the development of the demonstrator aircraft with electric propulsion technology

São José dos Campos-SP, August 16 2019 – Embraer unveiled today, on the eve of its 50th anniversary, images of the demonstrator aircraft with 100% electric propulsion technology, which is currently under development. The prototype has a special paint scheme and is ready to receive systems and components.

The aircraft's electric motor and controller are being manufactured by WEG at the company's headquarters in Jaraguá do Sul, Santa Catarina, Brazil, as part of the scientific and technological cooperation agreement for jointly development of electrification technologies.

Advances on the project include the partnership with Parker Aerospace that will be responsible to supply the cooling system for the demonstrator aircraft.

On the forthcoming months, the companies' technical teams will continue to test the systems in the labs preparing the integration in the demonstrator aircraft for testing under real operating conditions. The first flight of the prototype is scheduled for 2020.

About the technological cooperation

The proposed scientific development program of aeronautical electrification, formalized through the cooperation between Embraer and WEG announced in May 2019, constitutes an effective and efficient instrument for experimentation and maturation of the technologies before they are applied in future products.

The partnership, in the context of pre-competitive research and development, seeks to accelerate the knowledge of the necessary technologies to increase the energy efficiency of an aircraft, considering the use and integration of electric motors into innovative propulsion systems. A small single-engine aircraft, based on the EMB-203 Ipanema, will be used as test bed, carrying out the initial evaluation of the electrification technology.

The electrification process is part of a series of efforts carried out by Embraer and the aeronautical industry aimed at ensuring the commitment with the environmental sustainability, as already done with biofuels to reduce carbon emissions.

By establishing strategic partnerships through more agile cooperation mechanisms, Embraer is stimulating knowledge networks to allow a significant increase in Brazil’s competitiveness and the construction of a sustainable future.

Follow us on Twitter: @Embraer

About Embraer

A global aerospace company headquartered in Brazil, Embraer celebrates its 50th anniversary with businesses in Commercial and Executive aviation, Defense & Security and Agricultural Aviation. The company designs, develops, manufactures and markets aircraft and systems, providing Services & Support to customers after-sales.

Since it was founded in 1969, Embraer has delivered more than 8,000 aircraft. On average, about every 10 seconds an aircraft manufactured by Embraer takes off somewhere in the world, transporting over 145 million passengers a year.

Embraer is the leading manufacturer of commercial jets up to 150 seats and the main exporter of high value-added goods in Brazil. The company maintains industrial units, offices, service and parts distribution centers, among other activities, across the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe.

https://embraer.com/global/en/news?slug=1206637-embraer-advances-in-the-development-of-the-demonstrator-aircraft-with-electric-propulsion-technology

Embraer X

https://embraerx.embraer.com/global/en

Extinction Rebellion: What do they want and is it realistic?

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Thu, 18 Apr 2019 21:16:00 +0000

Extinction Rebellion's attempts to clog the heart of London and other cities across the UK have undoubtedly driven the issue of climate change up the news agenda.

But amid the die-ins - where protestors pretend to be dead - bridge swarmings and arrests, there hasn't been too much consideration of the group's actual plans to tackle rising temperatures.

As a solution to the "climate breakdown and ecological collapse that threaten our existence", Extinction Rebellion is proposing three key steps.

The government must, in their words, "tell the truth" about the scale of the crisis the world now faces.

Secondly, the UK must enact legally binding policies to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2025.

The third step is the formation of a Citizens' Assembly to "oversee the changes" that will be needed to achieve this goal.

Extinction Rebellion: Will protests against climate change force a response?

Is zero emissions by 2025 realistic?

Getting to net zero carbon emissions in the UK by 2025 would be an extremely difficult target, given that, right now, the government is mulling a plan to commit to net zero by 2050.

Consider the changes that would be needed to get to net zero in just six years.

Gas boilers across the UK would have to be replaced with electricity, and you'd need to massively ramp up renewable energy, on a scale not yet seen, to meet this extra demand.

Researchers at Zero Carbon Britain suggested that if the UK wanted to get to net zero by 2030, Britain would need about 130,000 extra wind turbines mostly off shore. This would take up an area twice the size of Wales.

There would also have to be significant dietary changes, with people cutting back on meat and dairy.

Flying would have to be restricted. Severely.

"You could have an air flight every couple of years, but we can't allow the world to continue flying for hen parties in New York every couple of weeks," said Paul Allen who co-ordinates the Zero Carbon Britain research project.

"The numbers don't stack up. We can't do this, we have to be honest with ourselves."

What would need to change to get to zero in six years?

Achieving net zero five years earlier than the Zero Carbon Britain plan would be an unprecedented challenge, akin to a wartime situation. It would not be impossible but it would depend on a fierce political commitment.

"The honest answer about whether you can hit net zero by 2025 is that until you go for it, nobody knows if you'll get there," said Andrew Simms from the Rapid Transition Alliance, which promotes solutions to climate change that could transform the world over the next 12 years.

"We tend to forget what can be achieved in really compressed periods of time when the whole of industry and the whole of government put their minds to it.

"It's like the speed with which we responded to the financial crisis in 2008.

"If we treated the wellbeing of the biosphere with the same integrity and seriousness with which we treated the integrity of the banking system you would rapidly see the alignment of resources and planning that would achieve these kind of goals."

Those involved with Extinction Rebellion say that the nature of the climate crisis is such that even large-scale carbon cutting plans just won't be enough.

"This is not the time to be realistic, this is the time for humanity to completely change course," said Dr Gail Bradbrook, a co-founder of the organisation.

"This is not about fiddling around the edges, and adding a few solar panels to a few roofs; we have left it so late that we have to step up in a semi-miraculous way to deal with this situation."

Who is going to make the tough decisions on emissions cuts?

Extinction Rebellion says that the key elements of their plan to get the UK to net zero will be set by a Citizens Assembly, composed of people representatively selected from across Britain.

"Let's have people decide what matters most to them, is it the health and safety and the ability to feed their own kids or does it matter to them that they carry on having holidays and meat?"

"We need Joe the bus driver and Frances the hairdresser to get their heads around it," said Dr Bradbrook.

Supporters of this approach point to Ireland as a country that has embraced the Citizens Assembly idea to tackle difficult societal questions.

The Assembly considered the question of Ireland's restrictions on abortion and suggested that a referendum be held to remove the ban. The significant majority that supported repeal indicated that Assembly was an accurate barometer of public opinion.

On climate change, Ireland's Assembly has also been an advocate of strong action, with big majorities favouring higher taxes on carbon-intensive activities among a number of recommendations.

Protestors in the Netherlands pretend to be dead during a climate protest.

This in turn gave real political impetus to the establishment of a parliamentary committee on climate action.

"This led this committee to issue what is the strongest cross-party political statement of intent on climate action," said John Gibbons, an Irish environmental writer and commentator.

"It certainly has its weaknesses, but Ireland is, in the Taoiseach's own words, an international laggard on tackling climate change, so this report is a good deal better than expected."

Mr Gibbons points out that despite the actions of the Citizens Assembly and politicians, the country is way off target when it comes to cutting carbon.

"Huge compliance penalties are due to kick in post-2020, making ongoing inaction expensive as well as embarrassing for Ireland," he says.

Is there political momentum behind drastic cuts?

The government has to uphold UK law on climate change, that mandates a series of emissions cuts over time.

Extinction Rebellion believes that many politicians want to go much further. They say that political forces are happy to see their protestors on the streets, disrupting traffic and transport.

It believes the group is creating the space for a joined-up approach among politicians that has been absent until now.

"We've just got to get away from these left-right political fights - this is beyond that. I want to see people sitting in a room and bringing the solutions and being real together and saying how do we get out of this?" said Gail Bradbrook.

"It'll bring the best out of ourselves through that process."

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47947775

How Do Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles Work?

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Fri, 01 Mar 2019 20:20:00 +0000

How Do Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles Work?

Fuel cell vehicles use hydrogen gas to power an electric motor. Unlike conventional vehicles which run on gasoline or diesel, fuel cell cars and trucks combine hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity, which runs a motor. Since they’re powered entirely by electricity, fuel cell vehicles are considered electric vehicles (“EVs”)—but unlike other EVs, their range and refueling processes are comparable to conventional cars and trucks.

Converting hydrogen gas into electricity produces only water and heat as a byproduct, meaning fuel cell vehicles don’t create tailpipe pollution when they’re driven. Producing the hydrogen itself can lead to pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions, but even when the fuel comes from one of the dirtiest sources of hydrogen, natural gas, today’s early fuel cell cars and trucks can cut emissions by over 30 percent when compared with their gasoline-powered counterparts. Future renewable fuel standards—such as the requirements currently in place in California—could make hydrogen even cleaner.

Because fuel cell vehicles are only beginning to enter the U.S. market, interested drivers should ensure they live near hydrogen refueling stations.

Electric Cars & Global Warming Emissions

Hydrogen fuel cell features

Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles combine the range and refueling of conventional cars with the recreational and environmental benefits of driving on electricity.

Refueling a fuel cell vehicle is comparable to refueling a conventional car or truck; pressurized hydrogen is sold at hydrogen refueling stations, taking less than 10 minutes to fill current models. Some leases may cover the cost of refueling entirely. Once filled, the driving ranges of a fuel cell vehicle vary, but are similar to the ranges of gasoline or diesel-only vehicles (200-300 miles). Compared with battery-electric vehicles—which recharge their batteries by plugging in—the combination of fast, centralized refueling and longer driving ranges make fuel cells particularly appropriate for larger vehicles with long-distance requirements, or for drivers who lack plug-in access at home.

Like other EVs, fuel cell cars and trucks can employ idle-off, which shuts down the fuel cell at stop signs or in traffic. In certain driving modes, regenerative braking is used to capture lost energy and charge the battery.

Consumers Union and UCS found that 42 percent of U.S. households could use an electric vehicle.

Differences between fuel cell cars and other EVs

Battery electric vehicles run off an electric motor and battery. This offers them increased efficiency and, like fuel cell vehicles, allows them to drive emissions-free when the electricity comes from renewable sources. Unlike fuel cell cars and trucks, battery electric vehicles can use existing infrastructure to recharge, but must be plugged in for extended periods of time. Learn more about how battery electrics work >

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles are similar to battery electric vehicles but also have a conventional gasoline or diesel engine. This allows them to drive short distances on electricity-only, switching to liquid fuel for longer trips. Although not as clean as battery electric or fuel cell vehicles, plug-in hybrids produce significantly less pollution than their conventional counterparts. Learn more about how plug-in vehicles work >

Conventional hybrids also have conventional engines and an electric motor and battery, but can’t be plugged-in. Though cleaner than conventional cars and trucks, non-plug-in hybrids derive all their power from gasoline and diesel, and aren’t considered electric vehicles. Learn more about how hybrids work >

Learn more about electric vehicle technology here, including its potential as a nationwide oil-saving solution.

Last revised date: March 14, 2018

https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/how-do-hydrogen-fuel-cells-work

Operation Carwash Task Force: Anti-Corruption Award winners 2016

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Fri, 26 May 2017 01:32:00 +0000

Operation Carwash Task Force: Anti-Corruption Award winners 2016

Google Earth Timelapses show climate change 1984 - 2016

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 19:44:00 +0000

Google Earth Timelapses show climate change 1984 - 2016

Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution | World Economic Forum

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Wed, 05 Apr 2017 18:11:00 +0000

The Forum’s Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution invites and catalyses global cooperation dedicated to developing policy principles and frameworks that accelerate the application of science and technology in the global public interest.

The Center is a platform to discuss ethical issues, values and regulation of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies such as the internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence/machine learning. Targeted projects engage multiple stakeholders, including regulators, to develop policy frameworks that can be applied across industries and national borders.

A global hub of expertise, knowledge-sharing and collaboration, the Center is located at the Presidio in San Francisco, USA, in close proximity to the world’s foremost technology companies, start-ups, investors, venture capital firms and leading academic institutions.

https://www.weforum.org/focus/the-fourth-industrial-revolution/

Hundreds create aerial art to stand up to fossil fuels and protect the AMAZON REEF

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Thu, 30 Mar 2017 00:10:00 +0000

Hundreds create aerial art to stand up to fossil fuels and protect the Amazon Reef

Press release - 29 March, 2017

Rio de Janeiro, 29 March 2017 - More than five hundred people joined together to form the messages “Defenda os Corais da Amazônia” and “Petróleo Não” (“Defend the Amazon Reef” and “No Oil”, in English) around a huge butterfly fish on the sands of Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, this morning to show their support for protection of the reef discovered at the mouth of the Amazon River. The Amazon Reef is threatened by the possibility of a spill from nearby oil drilling.

The Amazon Reef biome, considered unique and of great scientific importance, was seen underwater for the first time earlier this year on a Greenpeace expedition.[1] The French oil company Total and the British company BP, operator of the Deepwater Horizon platform that spilled 5 million barrels of oil in 2010, want to explore the Brazilian seabed for oil near the Amazon Reef. Oil activity would put this ecosystem under the constant threat of an oil spill.

"Oil exploration is a thing of the past. In the face of so many accidents that have devastated marine life and nearby communities, we can’t accept drilling near the Amazon Reef", said Pedro Telles, Greenpeace Brazil's Climate and Energy campaigner. In addition, the burning of fossil fuels is a major cause of climate change. "We are living at the end of the oil age. Clean, renewable energy can supply our demand without causing environmental damage", Telles added.

The aerial art was coordinated by the internationally renowned artist and activist John Quigley, famous for his installations of gigantic proportions. For John Quigley, ensuring kids and teenagers participated in forming the huge fish was a way of alerting future generations to their role as agents of change.

"The youth of Brazil have inspired me by helping create the giant human butterfly fish and Amazon Reef Defender Shield. They are standing up for our future by calling for the Amazon Reef to be protected from the potentially devastating impacts of an oil spill. They are leaders of a new generation of Brazilians who recognize the crucial importance of accelerating the transition to renewable energy and protecting the natural world", Quigley he said.

On Monday, in Paris, 30 Greenpeace activists joined Brazilians in protesting against Total's desires to carry out new oil drilling in the mouth of the Amazon by creating a fake oil spill at the entrance to Total's headquarters. Meanwhile in Belgium, activists, including Greenpeace International Executive Director Bunny McDiarmid, deployed their own action at Total’s operating center in the port of Antwerp. [3]

Both activities in Belgium and the human art in Brazil are part of Break Free, a global wave of people taking a stand against dirty energy. All around the world, From Chile to Thailand, South Africa to Poland, tens of thousands of people, and hundreds of organisations, are taking action to demand that companies and governments quit fossil fuels. To save the climate and environment that we all depend on, we must opt for a more sustainable future and accelerate the shift to an era of renewable energy.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/press/releases/2017/Hundreds-create-aerial-art-to-stand-up-to-fossil-fuels-and-protect-the-Amazon-Reef/

AMAZON REEF: First Images of NEW Coral System

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 23:53:00 +0000

The first pictures of a huge coral reef system discovered in the Amazon last year have been released by environmental campaigners.

The Amazon Reef is a 9,500 sq km (3,600 sq miles) system of corals, sponges and rhodoliths, Greenpeace says.

The reef is almost 1,000 km (620 miles) long, and is located where the Amazon River meets the Atlantic Ocean.

Oil drilling could start in the area if companies obtain permits from the Brazilian government, the group warns.

"This reef system is important for many reasons, including the fact that it has unique characteristics regarding use and availability of light, and physicochemical water conditions," researcher Nils Asp, from the Federal University of Para, said in a statement.

"It has a huge potential for new species, and it is also important for the economic well-being of fishing communities along the Amazonian coastal zone."

Can 'super coral' save the Great Barrier Reef?

Scientists were surprised by the discovery, in April 2016, as they thought it was unlikely that reefs would be found it the area given unfavourable conditions," they said in a paper in the scientific journal Science Advances.

The reef ranges from about 25-120m deep (82-393ft)

Mr Asp now says that his team wants to gradually map the system. At the moment, only 5% of it has been mapped.

"Our team wants to have a better understanding of how this ecosystem works, including important questions like its photosynthesis mechanisms with very limited light."

But Greenpeace says drilling in the area means a "constant risk of an oil spill".

Campaigner Thiago Almeida said environmental licensing processes for oil exploration there are already under way.

"The Cape Orange National Park, the northernmost point of the Brazilian state of Amapa, is home to the world's largest continuous mangrove ecosystem and there is no technology capable of cleaning up oil in a place of its characteristics," the group said.

"In addition, the risks in this area are increased due to the strong currents and sediment that the Amazon River carries."

The group said that, so far, 95 wells have been drilled in the region, and 27 of them were abandoned as a result of mechanical incidents - the rest due to the absence of economically or technically viable gas and oil.

Images shows coral reef discovered in the Amazon

Images copyrightGREENPEACE

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-38789009

ZERO EMISSIONS: BMW Motorrad Vision Next 100 Concept Motorcycle.

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Tue, 14 Mar 2017 14:18:00 +0000

BMW Motorrad Vision Next 100 Concept

BMW Motorrad Vision Next 100 Review

FORBES: 7 Ways The Internet Of Things (IoT) Will Change Businesses In 2017

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 05:18:00 +0000

7 Ways The Internet Of Things Will Change Businesses In 2017

Okay, marketers and technology enthusiasts have been talking about the coming of the Internet of Things (IoT) for years. But with products like Google Home and Amazon Echo emerging and gaining popularity, it’s reasonable to suspect that 2017 is the year that IoT finally starts taking off.

Even though original estimates held that we’d see 50 billion “connected” devices by 2020, revised estimates are still targeting nearly 30 billion, representing an industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars in the near future.

So here’s the question—is your business ready for the IoT? Even if you don’t deal directly with technology, IoT devices are going to have a massive impact on how you do business.

Here’s how.

1. Data, Data, Data

Marketers and entrepreneurs love data, and with IoT devices connecting consumers in new ways with more interactions, they’ll have greater access to that data than ever before. Smart devices will be able to track and record patterns of consumer behavior, and possibly even learn from them, making intelligent product recommendations and customizing searches in new, innovative ways.

Companies can start taking advantage of this by using these data-based insights to come up with more effective advertising, and get to know their target demographics on a more specific, qualitative level. Chances are, you’ll have more data at every stage of the consumer buying cycle, from research to purchase and implementation.

2. Inventory Tracking and Management

Next up, IoT will likely revolutionize how companies track and manage their inventory. If you’re a business that relies on warehousing, manufacturing, or storage, you probably use remote scanners and similarly high-tech devices to help your workers keep track of inventory item by item. In the near future, smart devices should be able to keep tabs on inventory changes completely automatically, freeing up your workers for more important, cognitively demanding tasks. It’s not just about the “smart home” anymore—it’s also about the “smart office” and “smart warehouse.”

3. Remote Work

On the other hand, if your business doesn’t directly deal with any physical inventory, the IoT could open up a world of new possibilities for remote work. With multiple devices all wired into the same network, your remote working employees will be more connected than ever before, and may be able to accomplish new types of tasks from remote locations by tapping into devices in your office or factory floor. Remote workers tend to be happier and more productive, so the arrangement could also help improve your bottom line.

4. Speed and Accessibility

Since consumers will have access to new forms of research and purchasing, the buying cycle will likely diminish in length. Consumers will, with a handful of spoken phrases, be able to find and order exactly the product they’re looking for, and they’ll demand delivery of the product sooner (since all our technological advances tend to emphasize instant gratification). Fortunately, your partners, suppliers, and logistics providers will all have similarly advanced technology at their disposal, meaning you’ll be able to serve your customers faster.

5. Efficiency and Productivity

It’s not all about speed—you’ll also be able to get more done in less time. In addition to instant gratification, technological evolution also tends to favor productivity and efficiency. The latest and greatest IoT developments will likely allow you and your workers to accomplish large-scale tasks faster and with greater precision, including data analysis and management. You may find that you need fewer staff members, or else you’ll be able to scale operations in new areas that allow you to expand your business.

6. New Consumer Needs

Speaking of expanding your business, don’t forget that consumers who gain access to and familiarity with these new types of devices are going to have new needs. They’ll want things they didn’t know they wanted before, and they’ll expect more out of every new purchase they make. “Smart” devices will become the new standard for appliances, gadgets, and maybe even items like furniture. Consumers will also demand more integration, more efficient tools, and accessories that make their new smart home-enabled lives smoother and more efficient. It will be your job to dream up the ideas that can make that a reality.

7. New Staffing Needs

I already mentioned the fact that you may have to cut some staff members or reassign them to new areas, but in addition to that, you may find yourself in need of some new team members. You’ll need experts in IoT technology if you’re going to be successful in integrating these devices into your current procedures, and data analysts if you want to make the best use of the data. These are highly skilled positions, but will serve to ensure you get the most out of your new investments.

Charting a Timeline

So how quickly is IoT technology going to take off? As I mentioned earlier, the initial estimates (from a few years ago) were somewhat ambitious; they overestimated how quickly consumers would be ready to adopt these devices, and assumed that there would be more consistency tying these devices together. Instead, we’ve had a bit of a clunky start, but with two major “home base” devices on the market and dozens more to come, I suspect that 2017 will be the year that IoT devices explode in popularity, with at least a third of all homeowners owning at least one smart device.

Beyond that, it’s too hard to predict a timeline accurately, but the changes are coming. The question is, will you be ahead of or behind your competition when they come?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2017/01/11/7-ways-the-internet-of-things-will-change-businesses-in-2017/#eb559b339e6b

How the Internet of Things Enables the Circular Economy

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 04:55:00 +0000

How the Internet of Things Enables the Circular Economy

Ellen MacArthur, founder of Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and a global expert on circular economy, gave a keynote during the first European Circular Economy Summit, held in Barcelona together with the Smart City Expo World Congress. After describing her experience as a sailor, and how going solo around the world taught her about finite resources, she gave a comprehensive explanation of the Circular Economy concept and why we need to embrace a new way to manufacture and consume products.

In her presentation, she introduced the report “Intelligence Assets”, and how the internet of things (IoT) is enabling the Circular Economy. “[IoT] it’s allowing the Circular Economy to develop at a much faster pace than it ever could without into ICT and the internet of things in telemetry”, she said.

The fundamental role of cities in catalyzing transition towards a Circular Economy.

The key to make it happen, she argued, is the implementation of internet of things (IoT) technologies, with reuse and repurpose in mind, in the design and manufacturing of today’s products. While the IoT is already present in industries such as transportation, where busses, metros, railways, and aviation are taking advantage of billions of sensors to schedule maintenance, and reduce waste, many other markets are still behind, especially consumer products, and they are ripe for transformation.

The IoT and intelligent assets, which can sense, communicate, and store information about themselves, will enable the fusion of manufacturing and digital technologies, creating products that can signal any problem, determine when need to be repaired, and schedule their own maintenance. MacArthur said:

“Digital technologies are driving a profound transformation of our economy. Guiding this wave of change by applying circular economy principles could create value, and generate wider benefits for society, as this report shows. Intelligent assets are a key building block of a system capable of ushering in a new era of growth and development, increasingly decoupled from resource constraints.”

Inexpensive sensors could be fitted in everything from dishwashers to coffee makers, and from drills to lawn mowers, and help keeping them in perfect working condition for longer.

It is necessary to make products easy to maintain and repair, and help local communities share their use. The drill that people store in their garage, for example, is used an average of 45 minutes over its lifetime. People buy them because they are cheap and convenient to have on hand. You probably have one stored in a drawer or toolbox. Do you remember when was the last time you used it? Chances are you don’t.

A new generation of IoT enabled products could help eliminate waste if those are manufactured to be shared. Apps like Uber and AirBnb could be used to share rarely used equipment and charge a small price per use. For example, a lawn mower could be reserved, located, and rented as needed. It is like having a library where, instead of borrowing a book, you can borrow some tools only when you need them.

That could also be a new business for manufacturers. If a company such as Black & Decker could produce a durable drill, equipped with sensors to charge people per minute of use, as well as indicate when a component needs be replaced. Instead of making millions of drills every year, it could make thousands and collect usage fees.

One example of pay per use is electric-cars’ batteries. Most manufacturers, including Nissan, Renault, and Tesla, are starting to use a lease per km model. The electric vehicle owner leases the battery from the manufacturer, who charges a rental price per distance traveled or hours used, and the replaces the battery when its performance falls below 80%. Those batteries are then being repurposed to store electricity produced by renewable energy sources, where they can have a much longer operating life. At the end of their life cycle, batteries will be disassembled, and their still good components will be used to make new ones.

Another example is solar power. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation report Intelligent Assets explained:

“For instance, an ecosystem of intelligent asset-enabled services could jointly open widespread access to reliable, grid-free renewable energy. Solar panels could be provided as a service to individuals and businesses without access to the capital to buy solar panels themselves, through weekly online payments. Battery health monitoring, predictive maintenance of panels, automated management of distribution systems and other IoT-enabled services could complement this model to avoid the massive investment in capital and resources needed to develop a centralized grid infrastructure.”

Unfortunately, the consumer electronics market is one of the biggest culprits. If you look at the smartphone vendors, they are making their products more difficult to repair all the time, and impossible to upgrade. Companies such as Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Sony, and others have moved from removable batteries to fixed ones, and they do not allow memory upgrades on many of their flagship models. They just want power users to replace their smartphones every two years.

A recent short film about the circular economy directed by Ed Scott-Clarke, in partnership with Dell and the Ellen McArthur Foundation, explains the circular economy and the problem of consumer electronics waste:

Circular Cellular

While most of the replaced high-end smartphones are still used for a couple of more years, as they are handed down to other family members, or sold on eBay, the inexpensive, low-end models have no such luck. They are completely discarded as soon as their owners can purchase a more powerful model. The best thing that can happen to those low-end smartphones is that they will be dismantled and some of the key components and metals recycled.

Ellen MacArthur was outspoken about the need to embrace the circular economy. She asked key questions:

- What economic model can actually function for the long term?

- What model could be regenerative and restorative?

- What can actually allow us to thrive with the growing population?

She answered:

“An economy which is restorative and regenerative by design, an economy which is resilient, an economy which looks at the entire world through a different lens, where by design the first line on a design brief is: we need to be able to keep this product at its highest value at all times, and when it gets to the end of its life, if we can’t recover the components, we need to be able to recover those materials, and feed that back into the economy again.”

http://www.ebnonline.com/author.asp?doc_id=282304&page_number=1

BRICS New Development Bank first investments: $811 million in renewable energy.

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Mon, 06 Mar 2017 07:50:00 +0000

Delegates of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) attend a special meeting of New Development Bank Board of Governors in Washington D.C., the United States, April 14, 2016 [Xinhua]

BRICS Bank announces first set of loans

April 16, 2016, 4:16 am

The New Development Bank, the just-opened institution co-owned by the BRICS countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, has announced its first investments.

The BRICS Bank on Friday announced that its Board of Directors has approved its first set of loans involving financial assistance of $811 million, to be disbursed in tranches, supporting 2,370 MW of renewable energy capacity.

The fifth board of directors meeting was held in Washington on the sidelines of the IMF and the World Bank group spring meetings.

The new lender is providing $300 million to Brazil, $81 million to China, $250 million to India and $180 million to South Africa.

The project from India entails provisioning of a multi-tranche loan of $250 million to Canara Bank for lending to renewable energy ventures.

“Each loan modality is different based on project specific features and borrower preferences. Government approvals, where necessary, will be sought as part of follow-up procedures,” said a statement from the New Development Bank.

The first batch includes four projects, one each in Brazil, India, China and South Africa.

“This is an important milestone for the Bank and we are delighted to have met the goals and the time schedules envisioned by the leaders of the BRICS countries. With this we embark on a journey to provide speedy assistance to projects across developing nations. We are pleased that the projects deal with green and renewable energy and hope they will act as catalysts for development in our member states,” BRICS Bank President Kundapur Vaman Kamath said in Washington.

The BRICS have brought in capital of $1 billion as initial contribution for the new lender.

“There are many more new projects in the pipeline including projects from Russia. They are at various stages of consideration or appraisal,” the NDB spokesperson said.

The NDB board has approved the issuance of five-year bonds in Chinese yuan, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov was quoted on Friday as saying.

“The bank will raise funds on the Chinese market and once it receives a rating from international rating agencies it will also tap international markets,” Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted Siluanov as saying.

http://thebricspost.com/brics-bank-announces-first-set-of-loans/#.WL0Rb_krLDd

Bloomberg New Energy Finance: New Energy Outlook 2016 "Powering a Changing World"

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Sat, 04 Mar 2017 05:41:00 +0000

Watch the story unfold.

New Energy Outlook (NEO) is Bloomberg New Energy Finance's annual long-term view of how yhe world's power markets will evolve in the future. Get the executive summary.

Overview

Focused on the electricity system, NEO combines the expertise of over 65 country and technology specialists in 11 countries to provide a unique view of how the market will evolve.

What sets NEO apart is that our assessment is focused on the parts of the system that are driving rapid change in markets, grid systems and business models. This includes the cost of wind and solar technology, battery storage, electricity demand and consumer dynamics among others. Get the report.

Cheaper coal and cheaper gas will not derail the transformation and decarbonisation of the world’s power systems. By 2040, zero-emission energy sources will make up 60% of installed capacity. Wind and solar will account for 64% of the 8.6TW of new power generating capacity added worldwide over the next 25 years, and for almost 60% of the $11.4 trillion invested.

Power Findings

8 eye-catching findings from this year’s report

1. Coal and gas prices stay low. A projected supply glut for both commodities cuts the cost of generating power by burning coal or gas, but will not derail the advance of renewables.

2. Wind and solar costs drop. These two technologies become the cheapest ways of producing electricity in many countries during the 2020s and in most of the world in the 2030s. Onshore wind costs fall by 41% and solar PV costs fall by 60% by 2040.

3. Asia-Pacific leads in investment, representing 50% of all new investment worldwide. Despite slower growth in the near-term, China remains the most important center of activity.

4. Electric car boom. EVs increase global electricity demand by 8% – reflecting BNEF’s forecast that they will represent 35% of new light-duty vehicle sales in 2040, some 90 times the 2015 figure.

5. Cheap batteries everywhere. The rise of EVs further squashes the cost of lithium-ion batteries, boosting power storage and working with other flexible capacity to help balance renewables.

6. A limited ‘transition fuel’ role for gas outside of the US, with only 3% growth in gas demand for power to 2040, and generation peaking in 2027.

7. Coal’s diverging trajectories. Coal generation plummets in Europe and peaks in 2020 in the US and in 2025 in China; however it increases 7% globally due to rapid growth in other Asian and African emerging markets.

8. 2⁰C scenario. On top of the forecasted $9.2tn investment in zero-carbon power, an extra $5.3tn is needed by 2040 to prevent power-sector emissions rising above the IPCC’s ‘safe’ limit of 450 parts per million.

https://www.bloomberg.com/company/new-energy-outlook/

GOODBYE OIL, GAS AND COAL: Ireland votes to be world’s first country to fully divest from fossil fuels.

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 19:57:00 +0000

In a historic move, Ireland may become the world’s first country to fully divest from all fossil fuels, according to 350.org’s FossilFree Europe. The country’s parliament just passed “first-of-its-kind fossilfuel divestment legislation” with a majority vote.

The historic bill could enable Ireland to fully divest their sovereign wealth fund, which is worth more than 8 billion Euros or around $8.5 billion, from oil, gas, and coal. Fossil Free Europe and Trócaire reported today that the bill passed in the Irish parliament’s lower house, the Dáil. Fossil Free Europe described the event as “an important moment in the history of the divestment movement.”

Trócaire Executive Director Éamonn Meehan said in a statement, “The Irish political system is now finally acknowledging what the overwhelming majority of people already know: that to have a fighting chance to combat catastrophic climate change we must phase out fossil fuels and stop the growth of the industry that is driving this crisis.”

The bill is now headed for the committee stage, according to Trócaire and Fossil Free Europe, who noted last week all major political parties support it, except the Fine Gael political party.

Ireland Parliament

Meehan thinks the move could send a powerful message to the rest of the world, as a climate change denier takes control of the White House, and said, “The support of a majority in the Dáil for this bill is an incredibly important moment for the climate justice movement in Ireland and will inspire other countries to follow our lead.”

A few years ago Norway’s sovereign wealth fund also made a move to divest from some fossil fuel companies, but not all; according to EcoWatch they still had billions in other fossil fuel companies.

Via Fossil Free Europe and Trócaire

http://inhabitat.com/ireland-votes-to-be-worlds-first-country-to-fully-divest-from-fossil-fuels/

A FILM WORTH WATCHING: How to keep cool without costing the Earth

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Wed, 22 Feb 2017 22:09:00 +0000

How to keep cool without costing the Earth

A film worth watching

ABOUT 6% of the electricity generated in America is used to power air-conditioning systems that cool homes and offices. As countries such as Brazil, China and India grow richer, they will surely do likewise. Not only is that expensive for customers, it also raises emissions of greenhouse gases in the form both of carbon dioxide from burning power-station fuel and of the hydrofluorocarbons air conditioners use as refrigerants.

As they describe in a paper in this week’s Science, Ronggui Yang and Xiaobo Yin of the University of Colorado, in Boulder, have a possible alternative to all this. They have invented a film that can cool buildings without the use of refrigerants and, remarkably, without drawing any power to do so. Better yet, this film can be made using standard roll-to-roll manufacturing methods at a cost of around 50 cents a square metre.

The new film works by a process called radiative cooling. This takes advantage of that fact that Earth’s atmosphere allows certain wavelengths of heat-carrying infrared radiation to escape into space unimpeded. Convert unwanted heat into infrared of the correct wavelength, then, and you can dump it into the cosmos with no come back.

Dr Yang and Dr Yin are not the first to try to cool buildings in this way. Shanhui Fan and his colleagues at Stanford University, in California, demonstrated a device that used the principle in 2014. Their material, though, consisted of seven alternating layers of hafnium dioxide and silicon dioxide of varying thicknesses, laid onto a wafer made of silicon. This would be difficult and expensive to manufacture in bulk.

Dr Yang’s and Dr Yin’s film, by contrast, was made of polymethylpentene, a commercially available, transparent plastic sold under the brand name TPX. Into this they mixed tiny glass beads. They then drew the result out into sheets about 50 millionths of a metre (microns) thick, and silvered those sheets on one side. When laid out on a roof, the silver side is underneath. Incident sunlight is thus reflected back through the plastic, which stops it heating the building below.

Preventing something warming up is not, though, the same as cooling it. The key to doing this is the glass beads. Temperature maintenance is not a static process. All objects both absorb and emit heat all the time, and the emissions are generally in the form of infrared radiation. In the case of the beads, the wavelength of this radiation is determined by their diameter. Handily, those with a diameter of about eight microns emit predominantly at wavelengths which pass straight through the infrared “window” in the atmosphere. Since the source of the heat that turns into this infrared is, in part, the building below, the effect is to cool the building.

That cooling effect, 93 watts per square metre in direct sunlight, and more at night, is potent. The team estimates that 20 square metres of their film, placed atop an average American house, would be enough to keep the internal temperature at 20°C on a day when it was 37°C outside.

To regulate the amount of cooling, any practical system involving the film would probably need water pipes to carry heat to it from the building’s interior. Manipulating the flow rate through these pipes as the outside temperature varied would keep the building’s temperature steady. Unlike the cooling system itself, these pumps would need power to operate. But not much of it. Other than that, all the work is done by the huge temperature difference, about 290°C, between the surface of the Earth and that of outer space.

This article appeared in the Science and technology section of the print edition under the headline "A film worth watching"

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21716599-film-worth-watching-how-keep-cool-without-costing-earth

ZERO HUNGER: Latin America and the Caribbean could be first developing region to eradicate hunger.

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Wed, 22 Feb 2017 20:48:00 +0000

Latin America and the Caribbean could be first developing region to eradicate hunger

Community of Latin American and Caribbean States food security plan offers a clear pathway to zero hunger within ten years, FAO Director-General says

25 January 2017, Dominican Republic - Latin America and the Caribbean could be the first developing region to completely eradicate hunger if its governments further strengthen their implementation of a food security plan developed by the CELAC bloc, FAO’s Director-General José Graziano da Silva said today.

Speaking at the Summit of Presidents and Heads of State and Government of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, Graziano da Silva stated that, "CELAC’sFood Security, Nutrition and Hunger Eradication Plan (FNS) represents the crystallization of governments’ political will to eradicate hunger before 2025."

Approved by CELAC in 2015, the plan promotes comprehensive public policies to reduce poverty, improve rural conditions, adapt agriculture to climate change, end food waste and face disaster risks.

In his address, FAO’s Director-General noted that the CELAC FNS plan is fully in line with high-level global commitments such as the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

And the region has made an even more ambitious commitment, he noted: to eradicate hunger by the year 2025, five years before the target established by SDG 2: Zero Hunger.

"This region has all the necessary conditions to achieve this, starting with the great political commitment that sustains the CELAC FNS Plan," explained Graziano da Silva.

The plan is already bearing fruit throughout the region: Bolivia, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela relied on it to diagnose their food and nutrition security policies, while Peru used it as a base for the creation of laws regarding food donation and to minimize food losses and waste.

Tackling the double burden of malnutrition

The integral nature of CELAC’s FNS Plan allows countries to not only address hunger but also obesity, which affects 140 million people in the region according to the FAO / PAHO report Panorama of Food and NutritionSecurity.

Malnutrition generates enormous economic and social costs, as public health systems must now cope with increasing levels of diabetes, hypertension and heart disease, as well as the consequences of child stunting, wasting and undernourishment.

According to the FAO, one of the worrying trends in the region is the increase in female obesity: the rates of obesity for women are ten percentage points higher than that of men in more than twenty countries in the region.

As a way to o confront this situation, Graziano da Silva highlighted the CELAC FNS Plan’s Gender Strategy, which will ensure that the plan benefits women and men equally and which is already being implemented as a pilot program in four countries: El Salvador, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

Strengthening family farming to tackle climate change

According to FAO’s Director-General, the impacts of climate change have the potential to reverse the gains made in the fight against hunger and extreme poverty in the region.

"Agriculture is the sector most affected by climate change and one of its main victims are small family farmers, men and women, many of whom struggle daily for their survival," said Graziano da Silva.

Together with CELAC, FAO is developing a plan of action for family agriculture and rural territorial development that promotes sustainable intensification of production, public procurement and food supply systems, rural services and greater opportunities for rural youth.

FAO is supporting CELAC in putting together a Regional Strategy for Disaster Risk Management for Agriculture and Food Security, which supports resilience and adaptation of farmers through sustainable farming techniques and resource management.

Graziano da Silva stressed that eleven countries in the region have already adhered to the Port State Agreement, which seeks to eradicate illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, and called on all countries to join in taking care of the sustainability and conservation of their fishery resources.

Peace, food security and sustainable development

In Colombia, the CELAC FNS Plan has supported the creation of a strategy aimed at rehabilitating the livelihoods of vulnerable communities in the central area of the country.

According to FAO’s Director-General, the peace process in Colombia illustrates the indissoluble link between peace, food security and sustainable development, an issue that is at the heart of the 2030 SustainableDevelopment Agenda.

"There will be no social stability or peace as long as there is hunger, poverty and inequality. Nor can we move forward if we continue to exploit our natural resources. Sustainability is a pre-condition for development," said Graziano da Silva.

http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/468062/icode/

"This Famine Is Man-Made": 100,000 South Sudanese Facing Starvation.

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 02:09:00 +0000

100,000 South Sudanese facing starvation

About 100,000 people are facing starvation in parts of South Sudan, the United Nations warned on Monday.

A formal declaration of famine means people have already began dying of hunger, the UN said.

Monday's declaration was the first issued by the UN since it announced in 2011 that famine was underway in parts of Somalia.

The total number of food insecure people is expected to rise to 5.5 million at the height of the lean season in July if nothing was done to curb the severity and spread of the food crisis, said a joint statement by FAO, Unicef and WFP.

Humanitarian partners

According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) update released on Monday by the government, the three agencies and other humanitarian partners, 4.9 million people – more than 40 per cent of South Sudan’s population – were in need of urgent food, agriculture and nutrition assistance.

Unimpeded humanitarian access to everyone facing famine, or at risk of famine, was urgently needed to reverse the escalating catastrophe, the UN agencies urged.

"Famine has become a tragic reality in parts of South Sudan and our worst fears have been realised,” said Mr Serge Tissot, the FAO representative in the country.

“Many families have exhausted every means they have to survive," Mr Tissot noted, saying the three-year-long civil war had severely disrupted agriculture.

Poor diet

“Insecurity, displacement, poor access to services, extremely poor diet (in terms of both quality and quantity), low coverage of sanitation facilities and deplorable hygiene practices are underlying the high levels of acute malnutrition,” the update noted.

"This famine is man-made,” declared Ms Joyce Luma, the South Sudan director for WFP.

Aid organisations have been conducting a massive relief operation in South Sudan, Ms Luma noted, but she added: “there is only so much that humanitarian assistance can achieve in the absence of meaningful peace and security, both for relief workers and the crisis-affected people they serve.”

Civil war

At least 57 aid workers have been killed in South Sudan since the outbreak of civil war, the UN said last August.

Failure to halt the fighting in South Sudan has pushed the country to an economic breakdown.

An annual inflation rate of 800 per cent has reduced access to food for many South Sudanese reliant on market purchases, the UN said.

Severely malnourished

The Unicef representative for South Sudan, Mr Jeremy Hopkins, also raised an alarm over malnutrition saying it was a major public health emergency that was exacerbated by the widespread fighting, displacement, poor access to health services and low coverage of sanitation facilities.

“More than one million children are currently estimated to be acutely malnourished across South Sudan; over a quarter of a million children are already severely malnourished. If we do not reach these children with urgent aid many of them will die,” Mr Jeremy said.

http://www.africareview.com/news/Thousands-of-South-Sudanese-facing-starvation/979180-3820860-e6bkk2z/

World's Largest Solar Plant in India: The Kamuthi Solar Power Project

noreply@blogger.com (Celso Shimura) — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 00:54:00 +0000

World’s largest solar plant built in Tamil Nadu, will provide clean power to 1.5 lakh [150,000] homes

THINK CHANGE INDIA , 30 NOVEMBER 2016

[n.e.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakh | A lakh is a unit in the Indian numbering system equal to one hundred thousand...]

At a time when pollution and the effects of climate change are making headlines almost everywhere in India, this comes as welcome news. The Kamuthi Solar Power Project, completed in Tamil Nadu recently, has been hailed as the world’s largest solar power plant.

Image: National Geographic

The plant covers an area of 2,500 acres, which, to put it in perspective, is enough space to organise 476 parallel football matches. It has a capacity of 648 MW of clean, green power, and will provide electricity to 1.5 lakh [150,000] homes. The cost of building the plant was $679 million (approximately Rs 4,500 crore).

The solar power plant contains 25 lakh [2,500,000] individual solar panels. These panels are cleaned on a daily basis by a robotic system, which is in turn charged by solar power, thereby making it a self sustaining system.

The plant, built by Adani Power, took only eight months to complete, and has now become the world's largest solar plant. This title previously belonged to the Topaz Solar Farm in California, which has a capacity of 550 MW, reports Al Jazeera.

National Geographic Megastructures: featuring Adani's Solar Power Plant

Gautam Adani, Chairman of the Adani Group, told Newsweek, "We have a deep commitment to nation-building. We plan to produce 11,000 MW of solar energy in the next five years, putting India on the global map of renewable energy."

https://yourstory.com/2016/11/kamuthi-solar-power-project/