People, Planet, Profits & Projects

A recent article in the New York times discusses the possibility of sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere in existing rock in the Oman Mountains (see Google Earth image). 

As a rockhound myself (I mined my own collection of Herkimer Diamonds - actually just doubly-terminated quartz crystals, example above), I find any story that involves minerals and rocks to be anything but boring (excuse the pun).

When the story intersects with project management and sustainability – now you really have may attention.  Let’s see if it gains any of yours.

Let’s start with a short video that explains the process of Mineral Carbonation:

What is Mineral Carbonation or Carbon Mineralization?

Now let's go to the New York Times story that got my attention.Here's a brief extract:

Scientists say that if this natural process, called carbon mineralization, could be harnessed, accelerated and applied inexpensively on a huge scale — admittedly some very big “ifs” — it could help fight climate change. Rocks could remove some of the billions of tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide that humans have pumped into the air since the beginning of the Industrial Age.

And by turning that CO₂ into stone, the rocks in Oman — or in a number of other places around the world that have similar geological formations — would ensure that the gas stayed out of the atmosphere forever.

Direct-air capture, as it is known, is sometimes described as a form of geoengineering — deliberate manipulation of the climate — although that term is more often reserved for the idea of reducing warming by reflecting more sunlight away from the earth.

The “rocks” being discussed in the article look a little like the photo below, and are part of the Hawasina Nappes in Oman, which are excellently preserved examples of deep-water Mesozoic basins developed on the southern Tethyan margin. Jurassic to Cretaceous successions consisting of radiolarian cherts, shales and carbonate gravity-flow deposits are beautifully exposed.¹

Some organizations have focused on this technology of carbon sequestration, knowing that simply reducing CO2 emissions alone will not get us to the numbers needed to prevent climate change from accelerating.  One of these organizations is The Center for Carbon Removal.

Their mission statement:

Our mission is to accelerate the development of scalable, sustainable, economically-viable carbon removal solutions. Our goal is to halt—and then reverse—climate change by restoring atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to sustainable levels.

In the figure below, from their website, you can see the “technological solutions” are the ones which involve storing CO2 in rocks (or in engineered materials such as cement and other construction elements).

You also note that it has “greater R&D needs”, and this is where the research projects (yes, projects – many of them) are chartered to gain knowledge about the geology, the chemistry, and the processes which could accelerate carbon mineralization.

The New York Times also ran a story about this idea about 4 years ago, involving a material called olivine, and an effort to absorb CO2.  From this story:

UTRECHT, the Netherlands — The solution to global warming, Olaf Schuiling says, lies beneath our feet.

For Dr. Schuiling, a retired geochemist, climate salvation would come in the form of olivine, a green-tinted mineral found in abundance around the world. When exposed to the elements, it slowly takes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Olivine has been doing this naturally for billions of years, but Dr. Schuiling wants to speed up the process by spreading it on fields and beaches and using it for dikes, pathways, even sandboxes. Sprinkle enough of the crushed rock around, he says, and it will eventually remove enough CO₂ to slow the rise in global temperatures.

“Let the earth help us to save the earth,” said Dr. Schuiling, who has been pursuing the idea single-mindedly for several decades and at 82 is still writing papers on the subject from his cluttered office at the University of Utrecht.

But these are not only the wild-eyed ideas of individual retired geochemists.  Legendary mining company DeBeers recently announced that they were in this game as well, per this press release from about a year ago:

De Beers Group today announced it is leading a ground-breaking research project that aims to deliver carbon-neutral mining at some of the company’s operations in as few as five years.

The company’s scientists are working in close collaboration with a team of internationally-renowned scientists to investigate the potential to store large volumes of carbon at its diamond mines through the mineralisation of kimberlite ‘tailings’, the material that remains after diamonds have been removed from the ore.

I find this fascinating from a Project Management perspective, from the chartering of these projects, to the considerations of secondary risk (for example, what about the CO2 generated from the processes which are intended to capture CO2?).

If you have any interest in chemistry or geology, I suggest you learn more about the project in Oman by visiting this page from Southampton University, or even by getting updated from their actual project page.

¹https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/insu-00392892/

The intersection of project management and sustainability shows up in odd places.  This week, the intersection was pointed out to me by Boston University PM professor Dr. Vijay Kanabar.  We were to have a discussion about planning an upcoming course and he needed a little time to finish watching a segment of “60 Minutes”.   “What’s so fascinating?”, I asked him.

“It’s about farming seaweed”, he said.

I was hooked.

I didn’t get to see it live, but I did go back and found the segment on CBS News’ website: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/seaweed-farming-and-its-surprising-benefits/

Take a moment and watch this.  It’s only about 14 minutes.  You can handle it.

The idea is quite stunning.  It posits that farming the ocean can actually help it.  Note the difference – fishing the ocean has definitely HURT it.  But this type of farming may help it, as described in this extract of an article from Yale University, referenced below:

“…his brand of integrated “ocean farming” actually revitalizes degraded or dying ecosystems by creating seaweed groves that become nurseries and sanctuaries for many marine species. It’s a pro-active approach to conservation, he says, that goes beyond the growing movement to create no-fishing reserves. “In an era of climate change, you could set aside the entirety of the world’s oceans in preserves and they are still going to die,” he says. “What we really need is engines of restoration within our conservation zones.” 

Kelp, it turns out, helps absorb the acid in the increasingly acidic ocean.  This led me to investigate the main character of the story, Bren Smith – a fascinating man.  You can (and should) learn more about his story here:

On the academic side, it was also interesting to learn about the research behind this, mainly from Dr. Charlie Yarish. To learn about Dr. Yarish’ work, here is an article from Yale University:

https://e360.yale.edu/features/new_breed_of_ocean_farmer_aims_to_revive_global_seas

In addition, have a look at this short video:

Smith has become a bit of a project initiator himself, having helped launch GreenWave.  Have a look at the work this organization does – which involves launching sea-farming projects.

What is GreenWave?

GreenWave is a non-profit ocean farmer and fisherman-run organization dedicated to building a new blue-green economy that creates jobs, mitigates climate change, and grows healthy food for local communities. We run a farmer-in-training program for aspiring ocean farmers and operate a kelp hatchery to provide free seed to our farmers as they learn the ropes of this farming type and species. We partner with educational institutions and other organizations to expand the body of knowledge around kelp and regenerative 3D ocean farming, and we work to support 3D ocean farming in new regions. We incubate small farmers and small businesses pioneering in this new ocean-farming space.

What is 3D ocean farming?

3D ocean farming is a vertical polyculture farming system that utilizes the entire water column to grow a mixture of seaweed and shellfish that require zero inputs (no fertilizer or freshwater) and provide important ecosystem services--such as water filtration, and nitrogen and carbon sequestration.

What I really enjoy about this story is the combination (as in the blog title) of people, planet, profit, and projects.  All elements are in play.  This isn’t only about saving the planet, nor is it only about creating jobs, and it’s not only about making money, it’s about all of those things brought together in an interesting and powerful way.

What do you think about this?

Would you have kelp noodles (instead of fettuccine)?  Are you aware of any other efforts like this in which the result is not only to reduce environmental impact, but to reverse it?

Oh.  And if you were wondering about the reference to the Beatles, well, it's of course in honor of their album not about kelp but about HELP!

In part 1 of “A Complex, Swirling Mess”, I introduced the ideas from a brief story from NPR (link to the broadcast and transcript repeated here for your convenience).  The story discussed how some companies are (in a valid, ethical way) profiting from the effects of climate change, by way of consulting and advising other organizations which need to deal NOW with changes that (whatever their cause) are going to happen in the next 1, 5, 10, 25, or 100 years.  For a short story (the audio is only 3.5 minutes long!) it sent me on a journey of discovery about the fascinating business of actuarial science (see Part 1) and how climate change, in the spirit of secondary risk, is opening an opportunity for some companies.

One of the companies featured in the story is Jupiter Intelligence. Jupiter is featured in this recent story from the Washington Post, entitled, “Climate change could put businesses underwater. Start-up firm Jupiter aims to come to the rescue”.

Before you read about Jupiter, take a look at this report, entitled Risky Business, sponsored by Co-Chairs: Michael R. Bloomberg, founder, Bloomberg Philanthropies; 108th Mayor of the City of New York; founder, Bloomberg L.P., Henry M. Paulson, Jr., Chairman of the Paulson Institute; former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, and Thomas F. Steyer, retired founder, Farallon Capital Management LLC.  You can download the full report here. 

The key paragraph in the Washington Post story is:

“This week, a high-powered, well-funded start-up company has barged onto the scene to help businesses and governments confront their increasing vulnerability to climate change and weather disasters. Using cutting edge technology, it could revolutionize how they receive information about weather and climate threats and make critical planning decisions.

Known as Jupiter, the company was founded in 2017 by Rich Sorkin, a serial entrepreneur who has worked with Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk. Sorkin was Musk’s first boss as chief executive of Zip2, a company that provided business directories to online newspapers in the late 1990s.”

If you go to the “Team” page of Jupiter Intelligence you will see that they have hired many top experts in the area of climate science.  Many of these have become available as the ‘difference in philosophy’ between the Obama and Trump administrations about climate change and science in general has become apparent.

The demand is there.  A recent article in Nature describes “The Rise of Demand-Driven Climate Services”.  It’s important to note that this is different – very different – from weather forecasting.  This is about climate – sweeping, significant, impactful change over longer periods of time.

Jupiter offers tools that predict the impact of climate-related incidents in a specific place and accounting for very local issues, Including FloodScore™ and HeatScore™.  They’re built on a platform called ClimateScore™ which “leverages cloud computing to run and link multiple prediction models that ingest data from millions of ground-based and satellite sensors”.

“FloodScore and HeatScore predict not only precipitation and temperature changes, but also simulate their interactions with the built environment and the surrounding landscape and how they’re altered by climate change. In the assessing flood risk in New Orleans, for example, the analytical framework would take into account the convergence of wetlands and concrete and sea level rise”, says Richard Sorkin, the Founder of Jupiter Intelligence.

Below is an example output of one of the analyses for flooding potential in New York City.

Jupiter is also featured in this article from The New York Times.  In it, a key extract is:

As global warming advances, experts say that governments will ultimately have to invest more in their own local climate prediction tools to help cities and industries adapt. But they also see a role for private climate forecasters, much as weather companies have sprung up to supplement the work the National Weather Service does.

“The federal government could be doing a lot more,” said James L. Buizer, who studies climate adaptation at the University of Arizona. “But there’s still an important role for the private sector. If companies are going to benefit from this information, they ought to be paying for it. After all, it’s their infrastructure that’s going to get trashed.”

That private sector, exemplified by Jupiter Intelligence, has a chance to turn a profit on climate change.  As they do so, it also may bring more attention to the issue, but the point here is that – like project managers - long-term planners are best off making decisions from solid data, based in science, and that’s what Jupiter and others such as Coastal Risk are aiming to provide.

Of course, you can read more about Jupiter or Coastal Risk on their websites.

Blogger's Note: There is indeed a Part 2 coming to "A Complex, Swirling Mess".  But in the interim, I thought I would share this interesting and mildly-related post.

Here's a trivia question for you:

What is it that indirectly contributes US$23 billion (that's with a "b") to the US economy?

• Hint: it uses echolocation (sonar)
• Hint: it uses echolocation to find prey
• Hint: it is a mammal
• Hint: the prey is typically insects
• Hint: it flies... as... in the air
• Hint: the name of the animal can be used as American English adjective for 'crazy'

Got it?

Yes, it's a bat.  Bats help keep plant-eating insects under control by preying on such bugs and also by hunting down bugs that, in turn, prey on pollinator insects.  In short, without them, a natural form of pest-control goes away, and farmers suffer huge losses.

Now, let's apply some of our project management fundamental knowledge. 

To bake a cake, we need to procure the ingredients. We need a recipe.  Those in hand, we can mix the ingredients per the recipe and form a batter.  We then can pour that batter into a pan and put it into a pre-heated oven. Once baked, we can take it out of the oven, let it cool, and apply frosting.  Can we do this in a different order, or can we do these tasks all in parallel?  No.  There are dependencies. 

I can't speed things up by frosting the cake before the baking is done.  I can't mix the ingredients until I have them.  The dependencies define the 'logic' of our schedule and provide a true end-time for the cake being ready to deliver.  Without the dependencies, the entire schedule goes... well, it goes batty.

So that takes us back to the bats.  It turns out that very recent research (Scientific American, Volume 318, Number 5, May 2018) indicates that, possibly because of a warming climate, bats are showing up much earlier than they did as little as 20 years ago, at cave locations where the bats spend the summer consuming crop-eating insects. The bats in question travel from Mexico to a cave near San Antonio, Texas.

The schedule - the natural schedule - calls for the bats to arrive in time for their meal.   But now, the system is 'out of sync'.  It would be equivalent to us putting the raw ingredients in the oven without mixing them, or trying to frost the batter and then baking the cake.

The study referred to in the article was done by the Rothamsted Research laboratory and used data from about 160 US weather stations to analyze activity of these bats from 1995 through 2017.

A separate study in Indiana which was published last year also found that temperature variations affected arrival and departure times of the migrations of bats - another indication of dependency on temperature.  A full-fledged connection to climate change is yet to be made, but there's certainly a suggested link since there is also a corresponding rise in temperatures during this period.

^{Bats exiting Bracken Cave near San Antonio}

I recommend a visit to this site which has the report from the Rothamsted researchers.  I also recommend holding off on frosting that cake until you have taken it out of the oven and let it cool down. 

People, Planet, Profits, and Projects – that’s been the name of this blog since its inception.  If ever there was a post that truly lived up to this blog name, it’s this one (well, actually two, because it’s too good to fit in only one post).

This post was triggered by a very short story on NPR which you can listen to right now, and I suggest that you could do just that – stop reading and have a listen:

The gist of the story is that People, concerned with how the Planet's climate is changing, are able to generate Profit by initiating Projects and starting up companies that focus on how to best deal with the changes that are predicted.  See that?  People, Planet, Profit, and Projects!

In this Part 1, I’ll focus on the high level ideas raised in the story and some follow-up research.  In Part 2, I will take you into some of the details and take a look at one of the companies which has arisen with this specialized expertise in climate change and its effects on cities, regions, and organizations.

The title of this post, “A Complex Swirling Mess”, comes from a description given by actuary Rebecca Owen, who advises healthcare companies and insurers about the effects of climate change based on data.  Between heat waves, droughts, dust, pollen, rainfall, and traffic accidents (just as a sample), she describes the combined effects of climate change with that term.

It turns out that the entire aspect of actuarial science and the factual study of climate data is very interesting to me as a project manager, who wants decisions based on facts.  Actuaries – well, that’s what they do.  They aren’t politicians, they don’t work for Greenpeace, they have no “axe to grind”, they simple bear down and focus on statistics and what it means for the future.  What does an actuary do?  According to the Society of Actuaries, they are “professionals in the modeling and management of financial risk and contingent events”.  Sounds interesting to us as project managers, right?  In fact, this is the theme of Chapter 11 of the PMBOK® Guide, isn’t it, although focused on a particular project rather than an entire business.

So what does the actuarial field find when they study climate change?  Well, they find the risk trigger for a complex, swirling mess, as indicated by findings such as a steadily increasing amount and intensity of extreme weather and issues related to such things as sea level rise.

The SOA, or Society of Actuaries, has created a Actuaries Climate Index™ and it shows a troubling trend when it comes to extreme weather.  Here is their press release:

Organizations representing the actuarial profession in Canada and the United States today updated the Actuaries Climate Index™, an objective, quarterly measure of changes in extreme weather frequency and sea level. The Actuaries Climate Index value for fall 2016 was 2.07, the highest seasonal level recorded for the United States and Canada combined. The current five-year moving average is 1.07, the highest level recorded for that measure. The index is available online at ActuariesClimateIndex.org.

The key ACI chart is show below:

So the next question, and the topic of the larger Part 2 of this post, is, what can we do with this information?  Just as in a project, when we get information about risk, we can ignore it, or we can work it into our planning for the future (the better choice, I would argue).  Some organizations are working with the information themselves, and other businesses have sprung up which specialize in advising and consulting with solid information from these actuarial sources and directly from scientists and researchers.  They’re taking the best from business, government, and academia to sell intelligence on how to plan for a changing climate.  And it’s no small deal.  In 2017 there were 16 major weather disasters which cost over $300B in damage, affecting an estimated 16% of the US population alone.

So, some companies are turning this threat into an opportunity.

Tune in to Part 2 to see why and how they are doing it.