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Published On Tue Nov 24 2009
In this Friday, Aug. 5, 2005 file photo, mining trucks carry loads of oil sands after being loaded by huge shovels at the Albian Sands oils sands project in Ft. McMurray, Alberta.
AL GORE ‘THINKING GREEN’ IN ONTARIO
What: Speech by Al Gore titled Thinking Green: Economic Strategy for the 21st Century
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Extracting oil from Alberta’s tar sands jeopardizes the survival of our species, says Al Gore.
“Gas from the tar sands gives a Prius the same carbon footprint as a Hummer,” the former U.S. vice-president told the Star in an interview prior to a Toronto speaking engagement scheduled for Tuesday evening.
“I know that doesn’t make me popular in Alberta,” said the jet-hopping environmental activist, best known for the movie and book An Inconvenient Truth.
“But it’s simply a fact. A lot of money is at stake, but a lot of lives and the future of human civilization are also at stake.”
If Gore’s warnings are heeded, expect housing prices to fall fast and far in Fort McMurray, the northern Alberta boomtown where single-family dwellings sold for a reported average of $629,582 in October thanks to the Athabasca tar sands megaproject.
If not, then you might as well pack your bags for Armageddon, because that is where Gore believes the planet is headed unless humankind radically shifts from carbon-based fuels. Time is short, he warns, and political will in the United States and elsewhere is lagging far behind what’s needed.
The U.S. Senate has yet to pass a bill setting tough limits on carbon emissions, for example, something that should have been done by now, according to a prediction Gore makes in his newly released book, a blueprint for planetary salvation titled Our Choice.
Meanwhile, a global conference on climate change, set for Copenhagen early next month, is no longer expected to produce breakthrough agreements restricting the pumping of greenhouse gases into the planet’s atmosphere, a practice that continues at what Gore regards as a catastrophic pace.
“Is it disappointing?” he said. “Yes. The pace of negotiations has been slow this year. The stark truth is, at present, the maximum we can imagine to be politically possible still falls far short of the minimum necessary to solve the crisis. We put 90 million tons of CO² into the atmosphere every 24 hours, and the amount is increasing decade by decade. It’s not okay.”
Still, as he surveys a planet in crisis, Gore also sees reason for optimism. The U.S. House of Representatives has moved to curb carbon emissions, narrowly passing a bill this summer that Gore calls “a very solid first step, if not as tough as I would like.”
Republicans have mostly been absent from efforts to draft legislation limiting carbon emissions, but at least one prominent Republican senator, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, has joined the fight and is encouraging others to follow his lead.
And Gore says emerging industrial powers, including Brazil, China and India, are now seriously addressing the challenges of global warming.
“The world is in the early stages of a massive shift away from carbon-based fuels,” Gore said. “Slowly but surely, leaders around the world are coming to grips with the fact it would be extremely irresponsible to impose this burden on future generations.”
In his new book, Gore explores what sustainable energy sources such as wind and solar power can do to wean humankind from oil and coal, while also creating economic wealth. He is far more skeptical about other vaunted solutions, including nuclear energy and carbon-capture and storage, both of which he regards as uneconomic.
If world leaders follow his blueprint for action, Gore foresees a future that seems almost too good to be true – a planet humming on abundant supplies of clean, affordable energy, achieved at little or no net cost to global prosperity or employment.
In a recent interview, the man who nearly became U.S. president in 2000 conceded the outlook is somewhat more complex, but said he is not sugar-coating the future in order to make it politically palatable.
“Inevitably, a transition like this will advantage and disadvantage some more than others,” he said. “But I don’t believe it’s sugar-coating to say our civilization will be more prosperous and better off.”
In his campaign to save the environment, Gore has encountered plenty of critics, many of whom insist the environment is not in need of saving. Some question his use of scientific evidence.
Gore dismisses much of the opposition he faces as “artificially created by large carbon polluters.”
Other global-warming deniers might be sincere, he says, but they’re wrong.
“Because this crisis is so unprecedented, it triggers the natural tendency we all have to confuse the unprecedented with the improbable.”
As for the Athabasca megaproject, Gore has derided Western Canada’s oil-sands developments before. In a 2006 interview with Rolling Stone, he called such projects “crazy.”
“They have to tear up four tons of landscape, all for one barrel of oil. It is truly nuts. But, you know, junkies find veins in their toes.”
By one estimate, Canada’s vast oil-sands petroleum reserves provide the country with 15 per cent of the world’s oil supply, a share exceeded only by Saudi Arabia.
Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, Gore is on the road these days promoting his new book.
Despite its title – Our Choice – Gore argues that humans really have no option but to stop treating the atmosphere as “an open sewer.”
“It sounds absurdly difficult,” he said, “but we really have no choice.”
EDC’s forecast, released this morning, contains sectoral and regional outlooks that will be of interest to sector and geographic groups and posts and is available at the following link: http://www.edc.ca/gef
EDC projects that Canadian exports will grow by 6% in 2010 after a 23% contraction in 2009. For Canadian GDP, EDC’s forecast remains at the lower end of the range, projecting 1.9% GDP growth in Canada in 2010, versus the Canadian banks that average at 2.5% and the Bank of Canada at 3%.
The Clean Energy Portal is a repository of information related to Canadian climate change mitigation expertise and relevant Canadian or international organizations, initiatives and events. It lists activities, directories, products, international projects, financing from all CleanTech sub-sectors.
The enhanced Canada Business Network website came on line on October 19th. The site includes export related information for Canadian businesses as well as a search engine for Canadian companies looking for grants and financing.
This funding search engine has drop-down menus including,
”Purpose of financing” (one option is “To export my products or services”),
“Your Industry” (where you can make one or more selections based on NAICS codes).
Should be very useful when looking for sector-specific funding options for Canadian clients.
The October 19th news release “Canada Business Network enhanced website to offer better service to businesses” can be found here.
The Guardian and Cleantech Group, providers of leading research, events and advisory services for the cleantech ecosystem, are proud to present the Global Cleantech 100 – the first ever list of this scale highlighting the most promising private clean technology companies around the world.
The Global Cleantech 100 recognizes companies at the forefront of cleantech innovation offering solutions to some of the planet’s most pressing environmental challenges.
The final list represents the collective opinion of hundreds of leading experts from cleantech innovation and venture capital companies in EMEA, North America, India and China, combined with the specific input of an expert panel of 35 individuals from respected organizations, detailed below.
Their inputs were then combined with insights from the Cleantech Network™, an industry association of international clean technology investors, entrepreneurs, large corporations and other industry insiders.
Some 3,500 companies were nominated/considered. Read all about the program and this year’s winners at the links below.
Expert panel and methodology
By sector and geography
Energy generation – solar
Energy generation – other
Agriculture
Energy efficiency
Energy storage
Manufacturing
Recycling and waste
Transportation
Water and wastewater
FTSE Develops Classification System for Environmental Products and Services
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14 July 2009 As most major economies move toward the adoption of such tools as carbon pricing to combat climate change, the need for investors to have a system by which they can identify companies engaged in clean technologies grows. To supply a solution to this need, FTSE Group, the UK-based index company, has developed the FTSE Environmental Markets Classification System (EMCS), which the company describes as “the world’s first comprehensive global classification system for environmental markets.”
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http://www.wbcsd.org/includes/getTarget.asp?type=DocDet&id=MzUwNzQ
North America’s High-Tech Economy: The Geography of Knowledge-Based Industries ranks the top high-tech centers in the U.S., Canada and Mexico in their ability to grow and sustain thriving high-tech industries.
The top 25 markets are listed on the left, showing the 2007 and 2003 rankings. An interactive map of the metros is directly below and scroll down for a full listing of all 393 high-tech centers ranked.
Data is also available for each of the 19 specific high-tech industries. Click here for industry specific data.
The full report and executive summary of North America’s High-Tech Economy: The Geography of Knowledge-Based Industries is available for free download after registration.
Top 10 tips from the Business and Internet Search Tips workshop that UK information professional Karen Blakeman ran for a group at Manchester Public Library on 26th March. They are the tips that the participants themselves suggested at the end of the day.
1. Site search
This one crops up again and again, but so many people have not yet discovered how powerful this command can be. Use the advanced site and domain search to limit your search to just one web site or a type of organisation (e.g. UK government, US academic). It is ideal for searching individual web sites which have diabolical navigation or appalling site search engines, and for searching for types of information, for example site:ac.uk for UK academic research papers on a particular topic. Use the advanced search screen in Google and Yahoo, or the ’site:’ command as part of your search strategy in the standard search box on Google, Yahoo, Live.com and MSE360.com. For example:
carbon emissions trading site:ac.uk
If you are searching for PowerPoints or PDFs, use both Google and Yahoo. Google indexes the first 101 K of a document whereas Yahoo indexes the first 500 K so the results can be significantly different when it comes to larger files.
2. Filetype search
There are lots of goodies to be found on the advanced search screens of Google and Yahoo. Think about the type of information you are looking for and focus your search by file format. For example statistics and research data are often left in spreadsheet format (xls). If you are looking for an expert on a subject limit your search to PowerPoint (ppt, and also pdf as many presentations are converted into this format before being loaded onto the web). Industry, market and government reports are often in PDF format. Yahoo and Google have the more common file formats in a drop menu on their advanced search screens. If the one you want is not listed use the filetype: command followed by the file extension as part of your strategy in Google, Live.com and MSE360.com. In Yahoo, use ‘originurlextension: ”
3. TripleMe
http://www.tripleme.com/
Enter your search and TripleMe displays results from Google, Yahoo and Live side by side. The fourth column contains the inevitable ads.
4. Google Finance
http://www.google.co.uk/finance , http://www.google.com/finance
A worthy competitor to Yahoo Finance although it does not have the wide range of stock exchange coverage of Yahoo. It does, though, beat Yahoo when it comes to the share price graphs. The graphs are ‘annotated’ with labels at the appropriate time point and these link to news articles that are listed to the right of the graph. Both offer free, daily historical share prices in figures.
5. PIPL.com and 123 people.com for people search
http://www.pipl.com/ , http://www.123people.com/
As well as web sites, blogs, images and directories PIPL and 123People search social media and networking sites for a person by name.
6. Slideshare
http://www.slideshare.net/
A service that allows presenters to upload PowerPoint presentations and make them available in various formats. Ideal if you are looking for information or an expert on a topic, a speaker for an event, or just some ideas for your own presentation.
7. Videos
Use services such as YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/) to track down “how to” videos and news. Also, why not create your own videos to promote your services or business and put them on YouTube?
8. Google CSE
Google Custom Search Engines (Google CSE) at http://www.google.com/coop/cse/
Ideal for building collections of sites that you regularly search, to create a searchable subject list, or to offer your users a more focused search option.
9. SCoRe Search Company Reports
http://www.score.ac.uk
A catalogue of current and historic printed company reports held in UK libraries. The catalogue does not provide links to digitised documents but is a very quick and easy way of identifying libraries that hold hard copy reports. The participating libraries include London Business School, the British Library, Manchester Business School, City Business Library, Guildhall Library, Strathclyde University and the University of Warwick. A full list is available at http://www.score.ac.uk/collections.asp.
10. Bureau van Dijk’s (BvD) “A Taste of Mint”
http://mintportal.bvdep.com/
A free directory from BvD giving basic information on companies world-wide. One experienced researcher at an earlier workshop commented: “It found the company I have been looking for when every other directory failed!”
USDA Launches New Country Web Pages
In an effort to expand information available to exporters, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) today added country pages to its Web site. Grouped into four regions – Western Hemisphere, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and Asia and Oceania – these country pages provide essential demographic, economic and political information.
The new country pages will allow users to find comprehensive links, all in one place, on import requirements for each country, as well as travel and market information, the status of trade negotiations, trade development and important contacts. These pages are available on the FAS Web site at http://www.fas.usda.gov/countryinfo.asp.
In addition, the FAS Web site includes many searchable databases providing export, import, production, supply, and distribution data, as well as export sales reports and market reports from U.S. agricultural trade experts stationed in 97 offices around the world. A link to this information may be found at http://www.fas.usda.gov/fassearch.asp.
Via: ResourceShelf
* ResourceShelf and Docuticker have long been on my goto list for whats ‘out there’ in terms of authoritative Internet resources and documents. This recent post is an excellent example of why this free service offered by information professionals is so very valuable. Thanks for all the hard work you guys do!
Resources of the Week: Quality Business RSS Feeds
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor
Business information was a high interest item on both ResourceShelf and DocuTicker even before the dog days of the global financial crisis. We use RSS to monitor high-value sources for items of interest to post on both sites. Here are five of our favorite feeds; some you may already know about, but we think you’ll find a couple unique ones here.
1. Harvard Business School Working Knowledge — A steady source of high-quality working papers, interviews with professors about their current research and articles of general business interest, such as:
- The Surprisingly Successful Marriages of Multinationals and Social Brands
- Marketing Your Way Through a Recession
- Achieving Excellence in Nonprofits
If you work with business information, it’s well worth monitoring the feeds of other leading business school publications, such as the “Knowledge@” series:
Those interested in the hospitality industry might want to explore the feeds available from Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration.
2. Large international consulting firms like Deloitte, Ernst & Young, and PriceWaterhouseCoopers offer a surprisingly large amount of high-quality reports, podcasts/webcasts and other resources — at no cost. Free registration is usually required.
3. USA.gov aggregates a nice collection of business/economics feeds from federal agencies. One you may otherwise overlook — the “What’s New” feed from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service — Yes, it’s about agricultural prices, but this agency also publishes data and reports of more general interest. A few recent examples:
- Rising Food Prices Take a Bite Out of Food Stamp Benefits
- Behavioral Economic Concepts To Encourage Healthy Eating in School Cafeterias: Experiments and Lessons From College Students
- Household Food Security in the United States, 2007
The feeds from the different Federal Reserve System banks are worth a close look, since they focus on economic conditions in a given geographic area. (Sometimes you may have to hunt around the websites for the feeds.) I regularly follow the Atlanta Fed (because I live in the southeast) and the New York Fed (because it generates some awesome stuff, such as Dynamic Maps of Bank Card and Mortgage Delinquencies in the United States and Dynamic Maps of Nonprime Mortgage Conditions in the United States).
4. If you want to keep up with business and economics in the European Union, you can pick through the large selection of EU feeds and find the ones that interest you — such as Enterprise and industry, Transport, Information society and media, Economic and monetary affairs, Financial programming and budget, and many more, including feed from individual agencies.
For the UK — Scott Vine, Senior Information Officer at Clifford Chance, a UK law firm, maintains a blog called Informationoverlord. On this blog, I found a large, detailed collection of feeds extracted from “all the bodies listed as ‘Central government departments, executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies’ on DirectGov” — the UK equivalent of USA.gov. Pick and choose according to your specific interests. (This resource was posted to the blog last August, so be aware that “stuff” may have moved.)
For Canada — The Government of Canada’s News Centre offers a large RSS feed collection. These are organized into categories:
News by Audience (which includes a business-specific feed), News by Province, and News by Government of Canada organization.
For Australia — Check the Australian Government RSS Feed and Podcast Index. Most of the business-oriented feeds are offered by business.gov.au. Also worth checking: Austrade and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
For New Zealand — Check the selection of feeds on the official government website, Beehive. Scroll down to the “By portfolio” section for topical feeds.
See Also: A collection of government RSS feeds from many nations. Compiled and maintained by Scott Vine who also compiles a detailed list of UK feeds (see above).
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