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"Companies Underestimate Climate Related Risks"; according to KPMG-Sustainability, NL. "the Front-line, Dutch Wing" of KPMG.

What's all the fuss about!

THE DRAUGHT & FAMINE MAP- (Provisional)

RISK HOT-SPOT MAP
Why Bother?






Policy Matters

• Warning also given that all sectors under-estimate the full extent of climate change risk.
• Six major industry sectors are in particular danger from climate change risks, claims professional services organization KPMG today.

Aviation, health-care, tourism, transport, oil and gas and the financial services sector all feature in the “danger zone” in a report on climate change risks from KPMG* – meaning that they score highly on the risks which face them yet score poorly in terms of their preparedness to face these risks. Financial institutions are particularly exposed to climate risks through their investment portfolios and through the risk to reputation as consumer awareness grows. LINK

Types of Risk Reported: Regulatory, Physical, Reputation and Litigation







One of the famous Big 5 Company Accounts Auditors KPMG needs no introduction to the Business & Financial world. I for one was unaware of the details of their work and approach to Sustainable Development confirming my quite accurate diminutive "SusDev." This work may be less familiar to Environmentalists and Ecologists...

If readers require further references to the KPMG - Accountants & Consultancy Group, I have provided a couple of links below
KPMG won Five Best Company Awards in 2008

Full Report on Climate Change in Your Business


Full Report PDF Link

KPMG nl_ Full Sustainability report & Full Thumbs



My original reference to this "Business Interest" in Sustainability is due the the French Business Paper
Les Echos, 28th May 2008. "Entreprises et Marches" P19.

Innovative Discussion on Engineering Fresh Clean Water by Whisson of Subiaco-Australia in the International Journal of Global Environmental Issues

David Bradley has once again brought us an excellent "Millennium Project Issue" but "only" No.5 on the National Academy for Science, Engineering Grand Challenges for the 21st Century namely to "provide access to clean water" - "The Life Saver of Life Savers" No Clean Water, no food, no healthy food. No Drinking Water - no... brain,(80% water, roughly) no R&D remember!

David's article entitled, "Water Water Everywhere" a title coined from the Samuel Taylor Coleridge's' poem "The Ancient Mariner" ("and not a drop to drink!")- may be found on his highly rated Sciencebase web-log, . This sort of scientific journalism is the sort, I believe, will help drive some of the "Optimistic pessimism [Link] over luxurious hang-ups away from Jeff Sachs & The Dismal Science Assocs. with a little help and strong, solid material equipment and organisational input from his "Hard Science friends."

For those who don't know, Jeff is Director of the The Millennium Project - Home at the Earth Institute at Columbia Univ. NY, USA. - and Economics is widely known as The Dismal Science.

(cf. Previous hopefully constructive criticism with links and comments [Link 1] , [Technical-to-do list: Link 2], Comment for comment [Link 3 ] )

MORE FOCUS:
Focus again on the issue David reports namely that "Fresh, clean water is going to be increasingly in short supply" despite current insufficient efforts (both in direction, quality and amount).

He points-out that "Despite the recent heavy rains across Southern Europe, the building of desalination plants in such regions, and the shipping in of water supplies from elsewhere is likely to increase in coming years, while desertification will maintain its dehydrating crawl and some regions of the developing world will continue to die of thirst in hotter dry season, while squandering the precious harvest of the rainy season."

HOPE - MENACE - OPPORTUNITY ("Men-Ace"?):

In a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Global Environmental Issues (2008, 8, 224-232), M. Whisson of Subiaco, in Western Australia, discusses two serious alternatives for providing even the most parched lands with unlimited fresh water. Both approaches are reminiscent of ancient, old world technologies, but could provide a modern solution. Whisson explains the problem:

The world water crisis may be more serious than generally appreciated. One reason for this is that the main response has been to increase storage of rain rather than to increase the amount of fresh water. Another is that fossil groundwater has been widely seen as inexhaustible.

David solicits the readers attention to the "Millennium" issue with a very dramatic example involving huge numbers in terms of demography our friends in India.

"Storage and redistribution of rain water, of course requires processing plants while those suffering debilitating and ultimately fatal arsenic poisoning on the Indian sub-continent are all too familiar with the effects of the desiccation of aquifers. " There are similar recent tales involving various countries in the European Union with lessor demographic impact, Roumania comes to mind.

David rhetorically asks

"So, what’s the answer? Solar-powered desalination certainly,

or perhaps the extraction of the hydrate component of abundant desert minerals such as gypsum (calcium sulfate dihydrate, 20% water by weight)?

THE SCIENCE ref Whisson:

“There are two, and only two, unlimited sources of water: the sea and the air,” says Whisson. The Earth has 1.26 x 10²¹ litres of water, of which 98% is seawater. The surface is acted on by solar radiation, turbulence and wind, which liberates water into the atmosphere ensuring that the lower 1 kilometre of the atmosphere (volume of 5 x 10⁷ cubic kilometres contains 1 x 10¹⁵ kg of water, which turns over with a half life of a few days.

THE HISTORICAL BACK-GROUND:

Harvesting of water from the air on a very small but socially important scale has a long history, as does desalination of seawater but, says Whisson, in the context of current and growing world needs, these approaches will provide nothing but a short delay in the onset of global life-threatening water scarcity. This is especially so, given their small, centralised scaling as industrial units.

THE INNOVATIVE ENGINEERING SOLUTIONS:

Instead, Whisson suggests two complimentary fresh water collecting systems and argues that they have no ultimate limitations, either because of the availability of water or because of environmental constraints.

The first system is the Water Road, a macro-engineering concept, which produces fresh water from seawater without the energy and processing demands of conventional desalination. It also offers a distributed network system that precludes many of the issues facing an industrial-style desalination plant. This system uses a large surface area to allow a non-fresh water supply to be distilled by solar and wind energy and trapped as fresh clean water.

The distillation would occur during the transfer of seawater inland (essentially given a kick-start by tidal surges) to the area of need, explains Whisson. This seems counter-intuitive, but immediately provides a high surface area, while the slow flow rate through a wide pipeline under a transparent heat-insulating cover means a large surface area of water is exposed to the sun over several days, with wind turbulence on the seawater surface acting like the natural process of transfer of surface water to the air over the open sea. This system of evaporation also avoids the inhibitory effect of water vapour saturation of the evaporating air. The concentrated seawater formed as a byproduct could be used to produce common sea salt at much lower cost and efficiencies than traditional drying pools.

The second system is a Water from Air system that uses a wind turbine to extract moisture from the wind. Whisson points out that at a relative humidity of 60%, a temperature fall from 20 to 5 Celsius would only require 10 grams of water per cubic metre of air. However, once it is recognised that a wind-driven turbine with an aperture of 10 square metres facing into a moderate breeze of 10 kilometres per hour would acquire 100000 cubic metres of air containing 1000 kg water every hour. Even with an efficiency of just 20% that would be a useful system, especially given that thousands of turbines could be installed in dry regions.

The two systems are seen as complementary,” explains Whisson, the Water Road providing water to large arid geographic areas, such as Western Australia, and the Water From Air units providing dispersed multiple water collection from the air wherever it is needed, whether on high industrial buildings, farm buildings, coastal cliff-tops, remote sand hills or small isolated communities.

THE JOBS: (TD - To Do) Input from all concerned wholeheartedly encouraged.

DRUM UP ECONOMIC & FINANCIAL INTEREST IN THESE PROJECTS: as above, Echo

DIRECTLY CONCERNED GOVERNMENTS - PROJECT PLANNING

COMPANIES INVOLVED:

JOBS...

The Millennium Project - Home

Linkedin - CSE - Customised Search Engine Trial on this Blog

CSE-Trial [LINK-html] & Hypertext enhanced Materials Science paper.

Jobs - Calling all Innovative Concerned Scientists, Technologists and Engineers - Appel aux candidats- from your partners.

Put Simply: "I am Calling You... can you hear me now"*, especially the chaps in the Agropolis - Centres of Excellence (?) of my neighbours VITAGORA Dijon (East Burgundy), Bordeaux (Aquitaine) and Montpellier (Herault) [France] and last but not least my old school classmates who chose "Food-Science at Strathclyde Uni. in Glasgow [Scotland]. You are all warmly invited to chip in on the recently posted Innocentive challenge call; "for a healthy indigestible perfume"-(anti-oxidant?), among many others - all disciplines cf. links below. Sorry about the pedantic title "healthy indigestible perfume" but there is a "strong sent of contract bound confidentiality" around theses challenges and as in many cases the "Question is 80% of the answer... As your preferred Pan-EU English native speaking associate, I can only elaborate privately and personally. Further there is nothing whatsoever to stop you signing-up without my assistance at the proposers web site * "I am Calling You... can you hear me now" is of course the theme song from the film "Baghdad Cafe." Mea culpa; I have been outrageously ignoring my credo which led me to so focus my first web-log on Innovation. I have a couple of opportunities to improve and make no bones about cutting & pasting my fruit-full Google search using my longstanding partner "Innocentive" as the unique key word. (On the same Google search page I took note of the following link, NineSigma which is, I am ashamed to say, new to me! I have just signed-up today to NineSigma, hope to be of assistance to all "Innovative, Concerned Scientists, Technologists and Engineers - Scientifiques - Techniciens - Ingenieurs - Responsible. Both on NineSigma and Innocentive Open Marketplaces... NB. There is nothing whatsoever to stop you signing-up at either or both of these Initiatives either individually or as an autonomous group of solvers. I wholeheartedly approve of all initiatives to "solve the enormous Global (Millennium) challenges facing us as Concerned Scientists, Technologists, Engineers & Managers. Google Search Sponsored Link Requests For Proposals We Connect Scientists And Inventors w/ Top Companies Seeking Innovation NineSigma, InnoCentive . InnoCentive is an open innovation community of smart, creative people who provide solutions to tough problems in business, science, product development, ... www.innocentive.com/ - 12k - Cached - Similar pages Solvers Seekers Business and Entrepreneurship About Us Open Innovation Marketplace Engineering and Design Life Sciences Chemistry More results from innocentive.com » InnoCentive - Open Innovation Marketplace Welcome to the InnoCentive Open Innovation Marketplace™! Choose a Discipline and search for a Challenge ... 1999-2007 InnoCentive, Inc. All rights reserved. www.innocentive.com/open-innovation-marketplace - 11k - Cached - Similar pages InnoCentive - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia InnoCentive is an "open innovation" company that takes research and development problems in a broad range of domains such as Engineering, Computer Science, ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InnoCentive - 26k - Cached - Similar pages The Rockefeller Foundation - Innovation 18 Dec 2006 ... The Rockefeller Foundation-InnoCentive partnership will provide a web-based ... Rockefeller Foundation Looks for Innovation via InnoCentive; ... www.rockfound.org/initiatives/innovation/innocentive.shtml - 17k - Cached - Similar pages PR Agency Case Study for InnoCentive - Schwartz Public Relations InnoCentive, an e-business venture of Eli Lilly and Company, is an online forum that allows world-class scientists and science-based companies to ... www.schwartz-pr.com/case_studies_pages.php?id=81&ind=9 - 22k - Cached - Similar pages YouTube - InnoCentive Oil Spill Cleanup - Part 1 www.innocentive.comInnoCentive - Changing the world, one ... 2 min 26 sec - www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGaLUTpfxxo Innocentive: Crowdsourcing Diversity AssignmentZero 29 May 2007 ... Lilly to incubate nascent solutions like the one that became Bingham’s crowdsourcing company, Innocentive. But, launching Innocentive was ... zero.newassignment.net/filed/innocentive_crowdsourcing_diversity - 50k - Cached - Similar pages InnoCentive Inc.: Private Company Information - BusinessWeek Get InnoCentive Inc. company research & investing information. Find executive management and the latest company developments. investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=951754 - 46k - Cached - Similar pages InnoCentive REALNEO for all Founded in 2001, InnoCentive connects companies, academic institutions, and non-profit organizations, all hungry for breakthrough innovation, with a global ... www.realneo.us/blog/mcshane/innocentive - 28k - Cached - Similar pages Elixir Pulls IPO, Mascoma Runs With Marathon, InnoCentive Gets an ... Economy provides news and insights for business and technology leaders about Boston-area information technology, biotech, energy, and other sectors of the ... www.xconomy.com> - 34k - Cached - Similar pages

"Peace in Our Time" reminder for younger readers: VINEET KUMAR TRIPATHI -Open Exchange - Blog Comments limited so response requested published below

To VINEET KUMAR TRIPATHI

VINEET,
I am not in any manner expert in these matters, so I refer you to the experts. cf previous post & ref below.

Concerning paper agreements, probably useful to some extent, depending on the dependability of the parties involved (bilateral-2 or the more complicated Multilateral treaties - eg. Kyoto) however we in Europe have well learned our lesson from the the famous Munich agreement between Chamberlain, the UK Prime minister at the time (1939), and the the infamous totalitarian Hitler "where a paper signed by some"is not even worth the poorest quality toilet paper! Chamberlain's reputation, ruining, action as he waved the treaty above his head on return from Munich, saying "Peace in our Time". One year later Britain under Churchill was forced into WWII.

I have great respect for India, and and excellent memories of the people whom I met there in Hyderabad, and more especially worked with: Dr. Tamanka DG of the MIDHANI, MOD project, Mr. Mahapatra Technical Director at the time and his team too many to mention individually, many of whom studied with us at the Imphy plant in France and exchanged cultural and lifestyle concepts with my wife and I in Nevers, France. Later, Dr. Cherukuru, a friend of my MIDHANI colleagues, invited me to his company Kalyani Steel Ltd in Puna, Bombay Region, to offer assistance and exchange views on special processes.

I do not study politics or foreign policy-negotiation. I do try to stay abreast of current affairs and from the little I know of Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh of India, am fully confident in his ability to keep India on the rails to peace, health and prosperity for all.

I do hope and trust that no one group of silly individuals or misguided country(ies), will "push their luck now, too (Two?) far."

I feel I am sounding a bit too pedantic. Let me end on a lighter note hopefully as enjoyable as useful: cf "My Poem" entitled: "From Entropy to Poetry"

Strong Reference:
cf. Nobel Peace Prize winner "Pugwash".


Sincerely,

J.Alexander

OVER THE SKY: India-US Nuclear Deal-Part 2

Outlandish III:
May I bring the nuclear weapons non-proliferation experts attention to this interesting web-log, posted by our young Indian friend, Vineet. His reflections and speculations on Nuclear Weapons Non-Proliferation led me to post on recent declarations by no less than Two Eminent Nuclear Scientists in the short time lapse of the last month or so, both obviously powerful opponents to Nuclear Weapons Proliferation. I fully adhere to their competent, highly intelligent and experienced opinion in these matters.

May I add that the UN appointed "Nobel Peace Prize winning- International Atomic Energy Authority" are currently studying, so called "secret" reports according to press, ref. from memory: "The NY Times - Le Monde - Supplement in English" -my memory is still good: NY Times selected weekly articles by Le Monde, World Trends, Saturday, June 7, 2008. entitled "U.N.'s New Urgency On a Nuclear Iran".

Cheers and Best Wishes

refs: More information cf.
1. Nobel Peace Prize winner "Pugwash".
2. UN-IAEA Nobel Peace Prize 2005.
3. Systems Approach to the Arms Race in The 5th Discipline The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization by Peter M. Senge – Systems approach. & Last but not least,
4. My published talk on Project Management in this blog, 2006. Very well written in my, obviously biased but humble, opinion. This ref.4. deserves a more impartial highly critical judgement such as the huge excellent english speaking Indian Readership.

OVER THE SKY: India-US Nuclear Deal-Part 2

Conversations on Innovations: Website and Blogging Tools Bloc Notes - Blog Notes - Cool Analytics Tools

Conversations on Innovations: Website and Blogging Tools Bloc Notes - Blog Notes - Cool Analytics Tools

Blogging and Website Tools Bloc Notes - Blog Notes - Cool Analytics Tools

Following a "tip-off" from Entrecard user J. Smith, I decided for my person use to reference Smith's original source, full of helpful web and blog site building tools : [Six Revisions weblogs the Original Source LINK-html]

One example from "sixrevision" is the open source:

ClickHeat

Download from Source Forge I have yet to test it. So be patient but do not hesitate to comment with your experience.

Thanks in advance.

However, I have just tried crazyegg's free edition. Very nice, looks well worth a try. Good luck experimenting.

ps.
Thanks to:Blog source tip from Rev J. Smith Good work Rev.

Innovation : Science Business new free report, ESOF, Science Prize Awards

Information on innovation appears to be overwhelming. I pledge to do some ground work on the subject, since I chose this title and subject for this my first web-log series "Conversations" in the Theodore Zeldin sense remember. There are a number of critics from the world of literature, philosophy, human relations discipline on the wide spread belief of we scientists and engineers, including myself that the technology can fix all. Before looking at these criticisms which I trust will bring some balance and increased credibility to some of the themes defended more or less inadvertently, here are some Innovation dedicated initiatives.

1. Free report from Science Business, cf image and Link-html
2. NEWS from the European Science Organisation Forum.
3. Fraunhofer announces winners of the Science Prizes Award 2008
ref. ScienceBusiness -->
Winners of the Stifterverband Science Prize, the Joseph von Fraunhofer Prizes and the Hugo Geiger Prizes were announced at the annual Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft conference, held in Berlin on 28 May 2008. The prizes all celebrate success in applied research.

OVER THE SKY: India-US Nuclear Deal-The Countdown Begins

OVER THE SKY: India-US Nuclear Deal-The Countdown Begins

Climate Change 3 part series from FT-Financial Times-"No getting away from it" Follow-up from OCDE Forum 2008?

"Climate change – and its wider impact – is incontestably the most important issue facing mankind today – and tomorrow, too. It affects all people, regardless of nationality, faith or colour. In the first of a three part series Financial Times looks at the science of climate change-link html. "

The series is being run in association with another of my old cronies and major client GE of USA. as we used to say (CF56 central shaft in Alloy 718, aero-engine programme). Here is the GE Ecomagination site Home Page-link

Undoutably I shall come back to this FT up-date survey (incidentally following OCDE's Forum 2008 mentionned in the previous post) and your questions,suggestions and comment at this stage are most welcome, so do not be shy

Enjoy reading the FT's business and financial angle (view).

OCDE Forum 2008 : Climate Change, Growth , Stability: Prime Innovation Motivation Conversation 2-4 June 2008?

I was a lucky guest at the 2006 Forum to the forum thanks to the Club "e-reflexion" [Link in French] a group of young globally minded students in France.

The somewhat ambiguous title of the 2006 event was : Balancing Globalization. The 2006 full programme and paper links may be found in the [[Themes discussed-Link]. Could it possibly be that the Global Economy is "Unbalanced?"

I left the conference feeling that at least the notion had been addressed. Of course as a chemists, metallurgists and engineers we know well what thermodynamics and kinetics[poem link] has to say about exaggerated imbalance and short time scales=>EXPLOSION!

Now, in 2006 I was a very young blogger-tentative start Mid-2005, cf. My Profile on this blog "Conversations". By working to build my my web-log, posts and pages, I became acutely aware of the current major issue of Climate Change (& it's corollary Shortage of easily harnessed Energy) and their cumulative current & predicted incidence on Economic Growth and Global Balance(again) or Stability (Social peace?). These are precisely the themes of this weeks OCDE Forum 2008. Indeed and only "INDEED" will such a dire situation improve for the benefit of the Global Population. Fortunately the very intelligent Stearn Report, requested by the equally intelligent Economist & current UK-PM, Gordon Brown (a Scot, by the way) has set a serious, enlightening basis : "A big budget, no, a huge budget - Carrots for all? -Entrepeneur's wanted?".

Well, pun intended, I hope and must trust that OCDE-known as "The Club of the Worlds Rich Nations" will take theses pleas to heart, put dogma aside, and make this forum 2008 a big step in the "clean & proper direction" ie. advise on, participate in a gigantic global clean-up and use it's weight to bring the proper Balance & Prosperity! Strongly influence it's "so called rich"-for here too lies some ambiguity or more precisely, blatent imbalance."

However in Global terms, I trust that OCDE, Jacque Attali & I agree, that by Growth we meanS "Tropical Rain-forests, no? - N'est ce pas? cf. my "rainforest-design-choice" for my global visitor maps on all four of my web-logs... Let me make a perhaps radical sugestion that Tropical Rainforest's Units. be taken as the "Standard State" or Base measure equivalent to the "Solution" Standard State used in chemical thermodynamics. Just a first idea, requiring more R&D work to bring such "Millenium Project" Notions to life. Further as Jacque Attali reported in his recent (this week) radio chronic -"Europe 1 "Comment va le Monde"[in French]: "Rainforest -deforestation, due to fire and exploitation, eliminates a surface equivalent to that of the UK each year, and that no new technology is required to solve this major sustainable development problem for humanity ie. Action here constitutes one or many, the more the merrier, gigantic "Socolow Wedge(s)."[link-pdf]

NB. MAP of the Rainforests. Rainforests account only for 6% of the Earth's surface! Acknowledgement due to Caltech Space Radiation Lab.

NB. No visitors to date from Australia. Aussies most welcome. Nor from our friends in South America - Brazilians; come on lads, I worked for a short time on some steelmaking technology transfer -Brazilian partner at the time, APARACIDA Co. from memory and with an ex- Sheffield University PhD., Dr Bustamanti of APARACIDA incidentally a school colleague of my very good friend at Imphy SA. the late Dr. James Davidson, sadly missed.