mercredi, juillet 23, 2014

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:
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:

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.



mardi, juillet 22, 2014

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... :-)

lundi, juillet 21, 2014

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.