Teblog

Microsoft and EEA's environmental early warning system

Confession time: I get a horrible sinking feeling when I hear terms like 'EU', 'human rights' or 'observatory'. When they come at me all at once, my usual temptation is to run away. But, this time I didn't. Perhaps it was curiosity about Microsoft's involvement, perhaps it was the hint of democracy, but I stuck with it. The 'it' being a recent announcement by the European Environmental Agency (EEA from now on) that it had entered into a five-year alliance with Microsoft to create an environmental observatory.

The observatory's purpose, as the name implies, is to gather information about local environmental conditions and share this with any interested party, including members of the public. The data will come from a multitude of sources including data satellites, NGOs, ornithological and wildlife organisations and the hoi polloi. Much of it will be real-time and it will be aggregated, analysed and presented back to enquirers in an appropriate form. That can include data tables for further processing or geo-spatial images in Microsoft's Virtual Earth. The hope is that such information will lead to rapid local action such as when a factory is spotted polluting the air or soil.

Microsoft will be playing its part in each of these elements: collecting, storing, analysing and sharing the results. It has been working with the EEA since the summer of 2007 and has gone public on the five-year agreement which it believes is entirely complementary to the company's own commitment to environmental sustainability.

Suspecting the worst, I investigated Microsoft's environmental credentials. After all, in cahoots with Intel, it did spend a lot of years more or less enticing people into equipment upgrades. My conclusion is that the company is sincere in its intentions and has already made great strides in dealing with its own environmental footprint, especially with regard to cutting travel and single occupant vehicle usage. It even runs a huge bus fleet for its staff which aims to reduce car traffic in the Redmond area by more than 250,000 miles per week. Not to mention saving the Microsoft campus land area needed for parking and garaging facilities. This is one of the sad aspects of environmental actions, they often save the company money so bragging runs the risk of appearing somewhat two-faced.

But, returning to the EEA project, Professor Jacqueline McGlade, its executive director, suggested that, "To sustain the improvements in the environment made over the past few decades, everyone needs to be involved and understand the consequences and impact of their actions." She added, "The only way to do this is by reaching out to the widest audience. This collaboration with Microsoft is a groundbreaking approach to bring environmental information to as many people as possible." This rather assumes they have a) access to a suitably equipped computer and b) the will to look. I would have thought that traditional media will be the best way to reach these people. The other issue with this statement, taken as a whole, is that she refers to improvements made over the past few decades. This suggests that the actions required are already understood and merely need communicating.

It seems to me that although this project is being billed as a citizen information system, it is actually much more of a citizen spying system. Most people would be more interested in snitching on local sources of pollution than in logging in periodically to check local environmental conditions. However, you can be sure that certain powers-that-be will be very keen on this sort of real-time information. It's a chance for them to swiftly crack down on miscreants, for which we should all be grateful, assuming that things don't get too petty.

In the end, I remain puzzled by the publicity exercise around this. I suspect that Microsoft considers the EEA to be a good notch to have in its corporate social responsibility stick. And maybe the EEA wanted a bit of profile and Microsoft provided an ideal delivery vehicle.

But I'd like to think I'm wrong. Perhaps you see it differently...

Lovelock and Lawson: read 'em both

Well, Earth Day was not the smartest day to jump on a plane to California to, among other things, meet some folk to talk about environmental sustainability. Still, I made up for it a bit by reading a couple of environmental books. Except, of course, they were made from mashed up trees. Oh dear.

One of the books was James Lovelock's The Revenge of Gaia - a couple of years old now, but worth a read. The other was Nigel Lawson's book, hot off the press, called An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming. An interesting juxtaposition of reading materials, to say the least.

Let's just say that the two men aren't even close to agreement when it comes to global warming, or global heating, as Cameron calls it. Lawson can't see what the problem is, even when he takes scientists at their most pessimistic. Lovelock, on the other hand, is convinced we're on the cusp of dramatic and devastating warming, with all of its attendant consequences for humankind.

Although they have different perspectives on the degree danger we face, both agree that something's going on and both think that some action makes sense. Broadly speaking, Lovelock wants all hands to the pumps while Lawson believes that we should behave in a more measured fashion.

But, having said that, I was quite astonished at how much they agree with each other. Not least when it comes to nuclear power. Both regard it as the most sensible way to deliver the power we need while minimising the damage to the environment. This seems to be an emerging theme whichever way I turn these days.

Lovelock tends to be quite respectful of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) while Lawson considers it far too biased for a supposedly objective organisation. He has fun with its estimates for global warming and wonders whether the massive amounts of money and inconvenience to today's population can possibly be justified by the anticipated benefits.

In one example, he uses the scientists' own best and worst case scenarios to show that, in one hundred years, the developing world will either be 8.5 or 9.5 times better off than it is now. Given that both outcomes are billed as equally likely, he wonders what level of sacrifice today would make the higher outcome worth pursuing.

Lawson's book has been diligently researched but he focuses on the narrow issue of global warming. Lovelock takes a more holistic view, essentially urging us to look after the planet, so that it will look after us. Lawson doesn't think that his book will 'shake the faith of the true believers', but it certainly contributes some reason to the debate. As, indeed, does Lovelock's.

Either book may jar with your present way of looking at things but, if we don't think about this stuff from multiple viewpoints, we'll never arrive at an informed opinion. We'll simply be believers of one position or another.

Tackling the CO2 issue

Here's a shock for all who know me: I say, "Good on you Tony Blair."

In one paragraph of a speech to the Gleneagles Dialogue on 15th March he gave a clear-eyed summary of the issues facing the world with regard to greenhouse gas emissions. Here it is:

Per capita GHG emissions are over 20 tonnes per year in the USA; in Europe and Japan over 10 tonnes; in China close to 5 tonnes. Some estimate they will need to be around 2-2.5 tonnes as a world average by 2050 to allow the necessary reduction of 50% in the global total. But since the poorer nations will see their emissions rise as they industrialize and since the world population may well grow from 6 to 9 billion, the emissions in the richer nations will have to fall close to zero and those in the poorer countries will have, over time, to fall as they industrialize.

Of course, this assumes that greenhouse gases are the primary cause of climate change. That's not a discussion to have here. Suffice it to say that our methods of production are fairly ruinous and if carbon awareness is the catalyst for change then this is all to the good.

Back to Tony Blair. Whatever you think of him, he has access to the world's power brokers. Thanks to his closeness to people like Sir Nicholas Stern, he is clearly aware of the issues and he is still has the ear of the great and the good acquired when he was Prime Minister of the UK.

A lot of talking is taking place, as is the way of the world, and global agreements aren't going to happen suddenly. This is the downside of the political process. But he is optimistic that these agreements can be achieved with a recognition that developing countries cannot be held back from their aspirations.

Here are some of his conclusions:

Personally I see no way of tackling climate change without a renaissance of nuclear power. There will have to be a completely different attitude to the sharing of technology and to the patent framework that allows it.

We will need a focus of a wholly different order on clean coal technology and carbon sequestration. Energy efficiency - often wrongly seen as less sexy as a means of reducing emissions - will have to be translated to its proper place at the centre of any global strategy.

Nuclear power stations take years to build while China, according to the Guardian, is cranking out the equivalent of two coal-fired power stations a week. The BBC reported China's plans to build 544 of them but didn't give a time-scale. While on the subject of China, it has a number of out-of-control fires in coal seams. A few years ago, the New Scientist reported a speech in which estimated that "the carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere from underground fires in China are equivalent to the emissions from all motor vehicles in the US"

Blair mentioned 'carbon sequestration'. This is usually done by grabbing CO2 at the point of emission and selling it to people who need a supply of of the gas or, more likely, by burying it somewhere safe. Pushed into oilfields, it not only fills the space left by extracted oil, it also helps recover more oil. (I know ... to generate more CO2 when it's burnt ...)

Localised sequestration - on factory chimneys and power stations - is a great idea and no doubt we'll see a lot more of it. But the third greatest emitter of greenhouse gases is the transport sector, at around 20 percent. This is difficult to grab and sequester and it becomes part of our atmosphere. The same goes for the Chinese coal seam fires and other CO2 sources - humans breathing out or animals venting perhaps. A number of scientists have been working on 'air capture' devices which grab passing CO2 molecules as they flow through.

The method requires electricity but, since the devices can be placed anywhere in the world, they could capitalise on local geothermal or other green energy. One of these 'artificial trees' the size of a shipping container would be able to remove a ton of CO2 from the atmosphere per day.

This is not a 'get out of jail free' card, but it's a promising idea which has already been demonstrated at laboratory scale by Global Research Technologies. It would be nice to think that this could go into general production and be funded by all polluting nations. It promises to be a "quick fix" while we get on with the more serious business of slashing our emissions in the first place.

Dealing with social media addiction

The internet is silting up with ego-driven dross. It's little wonder that the anti-network-neutrality brigade would like to turn it into freeways and side streets, depending on willingness to pay. And, equally, it's no wonder that the network neutrality supporters want everything to stay the same and for the pipes to be fattened ad infinitum.

With limitless capacity and fixed price access, anyone who can afford a few dollars a month is able to promulgate whatever they want out to an unsuspecting world. They could do it with blogs, podcasts, videocasts, social networking sites, Second Life or Twitter.

It doesn't matter that most of the utterances are ignored by most of the world. For most people the joy lies, I suspect, in the uttering. It's like vanity publishing. Everyone has a story and this is a way to get it out.

Most people like making connections and 'friendships'. By participating in a social site like Twitter, they can delude themselves about their connectedness. Enough of the digital glitterati hang out there to make it worth dropping by and picking up what these A-listers are up to. Even if it is as boring as 'stuck in traffic on 101', or whatever.

If we were able to really restrict our appetite for social media consumption to our genuine friends and work colleagues, for example, then we'd probably derive a lot of value from it. I wouldn't mind knowing what my four analyst colleagues at Freeform Dynamics were up to at any time although I really wouldn't welcome a continous stream of the stuff.

And this is the issue really. If you get involved in any big way with blogs, podcasts, videocasts and social sites, it can be like a drug. But this drug doesn't so much mess with your head as mess with your time. "I'll just see what [name your own guru] is up to at the moment" and that's another chunk of your life thrown away, never to be recovered. It's even worse with videos, which are becoming all the rage in Twitterati circles. A bit of puff and a tiny URL and, if you're not careful, you end up watching some nonentity on an ego trip.

I think we ought to start accounting for our time in the same way that lawyers do. And then measure the value extracted from each social media engagement. Did it entertain? Did it educate? Did it inform? Choose your own criteria and monitor your online activity. If you're dissatisfied with the outcome, ask yourself what else you would have spent that time doing. If the answer to that is 'something better' then you have a problem. Only by recognising the consequences of the addiction can you form your strategy for beating it.

PS For social accounting purposes, that probably took you 135 seconds to read.

Environmentalism: a by-product of making money

E F Schumacher became the first popular environmentalist when his "Small is Beautiful" book was published in 1973. His theme was "Economics as if people mattered" and he introduced the concept of 'sustainability' with respect to our exploitation of the planet's resources.

At the time the book was written, we all saw the planet as a source of raw materials to be plundered at will. It was natural capital which cost us nothing apart from the cost of extraction and, through war or purchase, the cost of securing the land for its exploitation.

We were equally ignorant of waste. The seas were huge and could easily cope with whatever we threw into them, whether directly or through rivers. We were much more aware of pollution of the land we lived on and the air we breathed but, where there was money to be made, we were somewhat less than conscientious.

I don't remember much about the detail of the book, except that it touched me profoundly. One story related to a manufacturing plant that sucked in river water at one end of the factory and pumped waste water out at the other. Schumacher suggested that the inlet be placed further downstream than the outlet. The idea was simple, but the implications profound.

At the time the book was published, I was running the IT department of a company whose products were made from petrochemicals. Fascinating stuff it was too. The chemists there were happy to explain how they manipulated hydrocarbon chains to create flavours, perfumes and colours.

As a direct consequence of reading the book and the earlier influence of tv programmes like the BBC's "Energy Crunch", I handed over to my deputy and went off to learn how to communicate, the idea being to then promulgate the 'green' message. It actually took me 29 years to return to the subject in any meaningful way, when Michael Moores' "Stupid White Men" pricked my conscience. Within weeks, and by an astonishing coincidence, I was invited to work on a major sustainability project with the Science Museum.

A huge influence on the museum work was another book, "Cradle to Cradle", written by William McDonough and Michael Braungart and published in 2002. Grossly oversimplifying, the idea was that we can reverse our negative environmental impact by treating industrial waste and end-of-life products as raw material to be used in creating new material of an equal or higher value.

The WEEE directive is a nod in this direction. It requires the recovery of raw materials from discarded electrical and electronic products. The ROHS directive aims to minimise the use of hazardous materials in manufacturing.

Many IT vendors, especially those with operations in Europe, are taking this stuff seriously. But, do you know what? The need to protect the environment is not their primary driver. They do it because they see it as a way of improving their image, conforming to regulations and cutting their costs.

Link: Can email save the planet?

Date: 28 Oct 2007

Audience: Small/Medium Businesses

Link: Can email save the planet?

Writer: David Tebbutt

Where: SmallBizPod's small business blog

Date: 28 Oct 2007

Audience: Small/Medium Businesses

Link: Can email save the planet?

Writer: David Tebbutt

Where: SmallBizPod's small business blog

Audience: Small/Medium Businesses

Link: Can email save the planet?

Writer: David Tebbutt

Where: SmallBizPod's small business blog

Audience: Small/Medium Businesses

Link: Can email save the planet?

Writer: David Tebbutt

Where: SmallBizPod's small business blog

Link: Wanna help Mariella?

Date: 26 Oct 2007

Audience: Information Professionals

Link: A chance to help Mariella

Writer: David Tebbutt

Where: Information World Review

End of an era. Albeit a short one.

On March 27 last year, I welcomed Strumpette with the words "My God, if PR professional Strumpette's blog posts are as good as her 'About me', she's a must-read from now on."

Well, she blew hot and cold, like most of us. When she was 'outed' as Amanda Chapel, most of us thought that this was a made up persona, despite immediately receiving personal emails to try and convince us otherwise. I received twenty, which I will treasure.

Anyway, (s)he's had enough. Hanging up the stilettos and moving on. We'll miss you, whoever you are.

Tom Foremski over at Silicon Valley Watcher used her departure as an opportunity to explain what is wrong with PR. He sees it as Wily E Coyote hanging in thin air - an industry going nowhere. The comments are as interesting as the post itself.

A Porsche = an environmental paragon?

A friend of mine (hi David!) drives a Porsche. He tried to convince me recently that it was an environmentally friendly car. His arguments centred around technical stuff that I couldn't quite follow - opposing cylinders or something. A few weeks later, I read an argument that a Jeep Cherokee is the most environmentally friendly car, because it goes on for about thirty years.

Now, while researching stuff about cradle to cradle (read the book: it's by William McDonough and Michael Braungart), I stumbled across this transcript of a speech by designer Ben Terrett of The Design Conspiracy. He bangs on about pointless packaging, silly promotional activities, aeroplane design and holds Porsche up as an environmentally friendly car. Why? Because sixty percent of all the Porsches ever made are still on the road.

He then muses on the impact on the environment if that sixty percent applied to other things. Computers for example. It's a great read. (A couple of rude words, but that's how it is these days.)

Freeform Dynamics snares Tebbo

Well, it's in the open. I am teaming up with Freeform Dynamics. Here's what I wrote to my nearest and dearest:

After a lot of discussion and thought, I am joining the Freeform Dynamics team and this will be my primary role in life, although I shall continue with my writing and training commitments wherever they fit comfortably with my new role. (And, so far, that means everywhere.)

Why have I done it? Primarily because I like the team and I like the work they do and the way they operate. We are very harmonious in our values and our outlooks.

Freeform Dynamics is a research and analysis firm rooted in the hard reality of properly conducted research. And it is this solid, fact-based, approach that appeals so much.

I reproduce, below, the official blog post on the subject:

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David Tebbutt comes out

There has been an ongoing debate in analyst relations (AR) circles (i.e. among the people who manage industry analyst relations on behalf of IT vendors) about what exactly constitutes an analyst. The emergence of expert bloggers has particularly confused things – people who investigate like analysts, think like analysts, write like analysts, but don’t actually call themselves analysts.

This is something that SAP has caught onto with its ‘blogger relations’ programme, which AFAIK, was the first of its kind in the industry from a major vendor. AR thought leaders like Barbara French, Jonny Bentwood and David Rossiter have also acknowledged that boundaries are becoming a bit fuzzy, which has led to tentative talk of ideas such as ‘Influencer Relations’.

Those who know us at Freeform Dynamics will be aware that we actively challenge boundaries and ‘labels’ ourselves as part of what we do, which is one of the reasons for the ‘Freeform’ part of our name. All of our analysts maintain a broad perspective and indeed much of our work is at the points where traditional boundaries are looking less and less relevant over time.

And by the same token, if you want to call us analysts, market researchers, consultants, misfits or anything else, we don’t really care that much. We even do some stuff which on occasions looks a bit like journalism. The important thing from our perspective is driving understanding, objectivity and harmony into the dealings between IT professionals and business people, IT vendors and their customers, and generally people and technology, based on solid market intelligence and a down to earth approach to figuring out what it all means in practical terms. We’ll continue to use whatever means are most effective to achieve this.

Which brings me on to the latest addition to the Freeform family. Against the above background, we are really chuffed to have one of the most well respected commentators and forward thinkers on the IT industry come to join us – David Tebbutt.

Some may know David as a journalist, others as a trainer, yet more as software publisher or enterprise consultant. Those with an interest in the enterprise aspects of social computing might know him for his expertise in this area in particular, where he has been operating at the forefront of activity for a number of years now with a pragmatic approach that is very akin to the way we do things at Freeform. Beyond this, his behind-the-scenes work on sustainable development with a major public body, which predated the current hysteria on the subject, places him in a position of authority with respect to the important 'greening of IT' agenda.

Truth is, much of what David has been doing over his career, particularly in recent times, can best be described as industry analysis if you use the generally accepted view of what that means. And what’s really interesting is that when we sat down to work through what David would be doing with us, it was pretty clear that not much would change in terms of his approach to investigating the market, writing style, consulting style, and so on. In fact, we are looking forward to David helping us to change and develop ourselves in some areas, such as the delivery of training services (watch this space) and the increasing use of social media to improve the way we communicate even further.

So, after working as a ‘closet analyst’ for so long, David is coming out, and the whole team here, Jon, Helen, Martin, Joyce, Tony and myself, are looking forward to welcoming him into the fold.
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And, if you want the official bio, it's on the team page

This blog will continue, as will my others at Information World Review and SmallBizPod, but I'm not yet sure quite what the emphasis will be.