Thanks to State of the World Forum collaborator Peter Merry, Director of the Hague Center for Global Governance, Innovation and Emergence, Chair of the Board of the Center for Human Emergence (Netherlands), and a founding partner of Engage! for forwarding these Daily Telegraph articles.

According to Peter:  “The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research has announced that in order to keep below a 2 degree change, we need 70% reduction (of 1990 levels) by 2020. Our target of 80% (of 2006 levels) by 2020 is equivalent to 74% over 1990. So the mainstream is getting closer to what is really needed!”

ALSO here’s the link to a report released Thursday by the United Nations Environment Program which is “a new overview of global warming research aimed at marshaling political support for a new international climate pact by the end of the year, [and] highlights the extent to which recent scientific assessments have outstripped the predictions issued by the Nobel Prize-winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007,” according to the September 25, 2009 Washington Post article, New Analysis Brings Dire Forecast Of 6.3-Degree Temperature Increase by Juliet Eilperin (reprinted below).  Thanks to Paul Ray of State of the World Forum for forwarding the article, which concludes with this quote from Michael MacCracken, one of the scientific reviewers for the IPCC and a contributor to the UNEP report:

“We face a situation where basically everybody has to do everything they can.”  And the 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign cultivates individual and collective capacity to do just that.

A few days ago, NextNower Bruce Damer’s EvoGrid “Evolution Grid” project–an attempt to model the origins of life on Earth, a kind of “Artificial Origin of Life” experiment in a large computer simulation–was featured in the New York Times in an article written by veteran science and tech reporter John Markoff.  The article includes reflections from Prof. Richard Gordon and George Dyson and two color images from the original EvoGrid movie. We hope this will raise the visibility of the project tremendously, assisting in attracting funding sources or partners to allow Bruce’s team to expand the effort in 2010 and get the central simulation and the EvoGrid@Home portions fully operational.

If you like the article, please visit this link to recommend the article so it gets a higher ranking, and to share it using social media tools:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/science/29grid.html

Explore the project further and view the YouTube animated movies: http://www.evogrid.org

Wanted: Home Computers to Join in Research on Artificial Life

Ryan Norkus/DigitalSpace

BYTES Researchers seeking signs of artificial life generated by high-performance computers want to use a network of small computers to analyze data. The project, the EvoGrid, relies on two open-source software projects, including Gromacs which simulates digital evolution.

Having trouble discovering extraterrestrial life? Then you might consider evolving your own.

In October, a small team of Silicon Valley researchers plans to turn software originally designed to search for evidence of extraterrestrial life to the task of looking for evidence of artificial life generated on a cluster of high-performance computers.

The effort, dubbed the EvoGrid, is the brainchild and doctoral dissertation topic of Bruce Damer, a Silicon Valley computer scientist who develops simulation software for NASA at a company, Digital Space, based in Santa Cruz, Calif.

Mr. Damer and his chief engineer, Peter Newman, are modeling their effort after the SETI@Home project, which was started by the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, program to make use of hundreds of thousands of Internet-connected computers in homes and offices. The project turned these small computers into a vast supercomputer by using pattern recognition software on individual computers to sift through a vast amount of data to look for evidence of faint signals from civilizations elsewhere in the cosmos.

The EvoGrid goal is to detect evidence of self-organizing behavior in computerized simulations that have been constructed to model the first emergence of life in the physical world. Pattern recognition software on home computers would seem a perfect tool.

The project is a new effort in the field of computer-based artificial life research, which generated great interest among computer scientists and biologists in the 1980s and ’90s but waned as rapid progress was made in synthetic biology. In the past decade researchers have begun modifying genetic material for applications like drugs and the growth of fuels. Many scientists believe the field stands close to synthesizing biological life from basic materials.

Digital artificial life research is based on the original work of Stanislaw Ulam and John von Neumann at Los Alamos Laboratory during the 1940s. Von Neumann posed the idea of a cellular automaton, essentially an array of cells, like the squares of a checkerboard. Each cell could represent simple states like on and off, creating an ever-changing lattice that could be programmed with simple rules in a computer.

Later artificial life researchers created programs to take advantage of the growing power of computers to model evolution in simple, abstract universes. Tierra, in particular, first developed by the ecologist Thomas Ray in the early 1990s, drew a great deal of attention. The program, which ran on more than 100 workstations, demonstrated the mutation of digital forms and elementary aspects of evolution. More recently, Spore, from Will Wright, popularized many of the aspects of artificial life in a game that is now widely available on desktop computers, videogame consoles and even iPhones.

Yet despite widespread interest, the field has had difficulty escaping the critique that modeling such “toy universes” may be intellectually interesting but is unlikely to create digital forms with the incredibly complex properties of biological life.

“Every 10 years somebody revives these systems,” said George Dyson, a science historian, who worries the EvoGrid may be reinventing the wheel.

The project also has its defenders.

“My attitude is, let’s give the strong artificial life hypothesis a chance,” said Richard Gordon, a radiologist at the University of Manitoba, who has written widely on the subject and is an adviser to the project.

Answering skeptics, Mr. Damer said that by coupling far more powerful computing systems than previously available, with potentially tens or even hundreds of thousands of PC-based observers, the EvoGrid could make it possible to detect emergent behavior. “The main challenge,” he said, “is not the generation of some kind of novel molecular interaction. Rather, it’s the analysis and trying to see what’s going on.”

To quickly build the EvoGrid, the researchers are relying on two open-source software projects.

Boinc is a system financed by the National Science Foundation that uses the Internet to permit scientists to take advantage of free computing cycles available on network-connected computers. Last week, for example the system was composed of more than 500,000 computers that generated an average of almost 2.45 petaflops of computing power. By contrast, in June of this year, the world’s most powerful supercomputer, built by I.B.M. at Los Alamos National Laboratories, produced 1.1 petaflops.

To simulate digital evolution, the EvoGrid will use a second program, Gromacs, developed at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, to model molecular interactions. EvoGrid researchers hope to create a computer model that replicates the early ocean and then use it as a virtual “primordial soup” to quickly evolve digital forms.

Software simulations that can model evolution could be used by human designers, Mr. Damer argued. “We can’t build cars and airplanes or even toys these days without computer modeling and simulation,” he said. “So why not biochemistry?”

Google Earth has released this Climate Change Intro Tour, ahead of the United Nations’s climate conference in Copenhagen in December (COP15) as part of the Google Earth Outreach program. Below is the 5 minute intro video; you can view these tours on YouTube, or visit http://www.google.com/landing/cop15 to see scenarios including

NextNow Collaboratory is part of the Renaissance2 Great Shift Gathering which will take place in Perpignan, France from 22nd to 26th October, including a launch of the WorldShift Alliance.

Our partner, Renaissance2, a not-for-profit foundation dedicated to catalyzing global social innovation, is inviting NextNowNetwork members to join the Great Shift Gathering by offering a 30% discount on tickets to the event. The discount code will arrive in an email to NextNow members.  Please use this discount when registering to receive 30% off the fee.

The Gathering is designed around two main events.  Event 1 is on Designing a Resilient Civilization and focuses on new models forming the basis of Capitalism 2.0 and projects that can accelerate their adoption.  Event 2 emphasizes the importance of the role of Conscious Evolution, of shifting ourselves, our organizations and our families and communities to the next level of conscious co-creative capacity and the ability to act collectively intelligent, in harmony with nature’s intelligence.

Links:

R2 website http://www.renaissance2.eu/events/index.php and the t

Registration http://greatshiftgathering.eventbrite.com .

We hope to see you in Perpignan on October 22nd !

Global Footprint Network, our collaborator on the Summit of Ecological Creditor Nations, has just released its 2009 Ecological Footprint Standards, building on the 2006 standards (the first set of internationally recognized footprint standards), and including more than five substantial revisions.  You can download the Ecological Footprint Standards 2009 but be advised that the report is not for a general audience, lacking extensive, introductory material on analysis or communication.  Reading the report, however, is not necessary for non-experts to get excited about the evolution of consensus not only on Footprint standards themselves but on their increasing importance to sustainability and thrivability.  Good standards matter.  We agree with Global Footprint Network on why standards are important to calculating Footprint:

A growing number of government agencies, organizations and communities are adopting the Ecological Footprint as a core indicator of sustainable resource use. As the number of Ecological Footprint practitioners around the world increases, different approaches to conducting Footprint studies could lead to fragmentation and divergence of the methodology. This would reduce the ability of the Footprint to produce consistent and comparable assessments across applications, and could generate confusion. The value of the Footprint as a trusted sustainability metric therefore depends not only on the scientific integrity of the methodology, but also on consistent and transparent presentation of results across analyses. It also depends on communicating results of analyses in a manner that does not distort or misrepresent findings. To meet these goals, Global Footprint Network initiated a consensus, committee-based process for the development of standards governing Footprint applications, and for an ongoing scientific review of the methodology. Ensuring that Footprint results are both credible and consistent will encourage even more widespread adoption of the Ecological Footprint, increasing its effectiveness as a catalyst for a sustainable future.

Consensus on emerging standards has also been an important issue in corporate social responsibility for decades.  There weren’t always organizations like Global Footprint Network or B Corp to help shine light on which standards really matter, which practices really result in the intended goals instead of, for example, simply green washing.  And building this consensus has been a slow process.  Debate about the inadequacy of Gross Domestic Product as a standard by which the wealth of countries is judged is also decades-long, although today it’s much harder to successfully argue that money spent on things like building prisons and alarm systems actually adds to a country’s wealth–but the debate on standards had to actually (and painfully slowly) penetrate to the level of a collective questioning of what wealth really is for consensus to begin to swing toward new standards.  And such a debate is meaningless unless set in the context of consensus about the physical limits of our planet’s ability to regenerate itself and to therefore sustain our quality of life.

Which is why Global Footprint Network’s response to the Stiglitz report from the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, which has focused on one challenge–how we can move beyond GDP to broader measures of a nation’s economic, social and environmental well-being–merits significant attention:

The report synthesizes the complex field of economic performance and social progress indicators and substantiates the voices of early pioneers like Hazel Henderson and Hermann Daly. With this report, there is now wide agreement that humanity’s success in the 21st century depends largely on robust navigational tools. The report has built a productive platform for further discussions. However, there is still much work to do. The report points out that there is no consensus yet as to which indicators provide the greatest value, and how they should be applied in guiding public policy.

First, it is crucial to build on the important work of the Commission – and perhaps its most significant finding is the need to track distinct policy goals separately: economic, performance, quality of life, and environmental sustainability. We agree that combining these various aspects of well-being would dilute clarity and provide numerical results with little practical utility. However, there still remain some misconceptions about the Ecological Footprint and the overall significance of ecological constraints, as reflected in the report.   Environmental sustainability is an area that we believe affects all others – from the well-being of a nation’s economy to the well-being of its people. For this reason, we believe it is important to directly address some of the issues about the Footprint raised in the report.

The Commission created by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and chaired by Nobel Prize-winning economists Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia University and Professor Amartya Sen of Harvard, has opened a debate about human well-being in the 21st century. To succeed, we must ensure that the debate remains open, comprehensive, and relevant to emerging trends.

We’re strongly encouraging the Commission to work with the Global Footprint Network to build on this work, so critical to creating and accelerating the consensus that can lead to widespread adoption of standards that matter.

Download the Stiglitz Commission Report
Download Global Footprint Network’s Response to the Report

Bonnie DeVarco, co-founder of NextNowNetwork and one of the NextNow Collaboratory’s info viz gurus is facilitating the first Stanford University’s Media X Vanguard Visualization Collaboratory, “Collaborative Visualization for Collective, Connective and Distributed Intelligence:  Structured Data, Synthetic Minds–Visualizing the Dynamics of Knowledge” at Stanford this week.

Below is a description of the event.  We plan to post some key insights from the meeting after its conclusion. You can also visit Bonnie’s blog, Scale Independent Thought, for her deep reflections on the topic, and the Spaces and Places exhibit, created to inspire cross-disciplinary discussion on how best to track and communicate human activity and scientific progress on a global scale, at Stanford’s Wallenberg Hall until December 31, 2009.

“I agree with Nobel Laureate Murray Gell-Mann that the synthesizing mind will be the most valued mind in our century.”
Howard Gardner, Five Minds for the Future

Jeffrey Heer, Bonnie DeVarco, Katy Borner

The communication technologies we are creating today will be driven by a new generation of multidisciplinary thinkers, knowledge workers, global problem solvers and a more mobile, distributed workforce than ever before.  Our new generation has been raised on the Internet, game technologies, mobile landscapes, and new forms of social media as we progress into a knowledge economy that is altering our institutional and organizational practices.  The profusion of data and digital information at our fingertips requires new ways to support communication and collaborative sensemaking. In this emergent landscape, the role of visualization technologies to support synthetic perspectives is becoming increasingly valuable. Deep mapping of emergent science paradigms offer satellite views of humanity’s knowledge.  Lightweight visual knowledge systems for public data sharing have evolved to support access to the broader range of information we need to collectively address the world’s most pressing problems.  Open data hubs now support the social construction of knowledge in our digital and physical environments. At the same time, cyberinfrastructures offer us new tools for policy making and decision support in the academic, business and public sector.

This experience will bring together visualization vanguards from the leading edge of science mapping, collaborative visual sensemaking, social network analysis and the emerging semantic web.  Surrounded by the Places & Spaces: Mapping Science Exhibition at Wallenberg Hall and dynamic maps from Stanford’s Spatial History Project and the Human-Computer Interaction Lab, visual thinkers from four departments on campus, designers and special guests will share a series of case studies of their work to gain a synthetic perspective on the future of visualization for connective intelligence. New cyberinfrastructures of scholarly data, network analysis and visualization tools will be presented along with novel approaches to data sharing from the social semantic web. The Shape of Thought mural process will support visual brainstorming and documentation throughout the workshop to create a realtime “map” to the new territories presented.  Discussions will center around:

• the optimum user interface design approaches for collaboration and access between institutions, disciplines, academia and the general public
• richer visualization approaches to navigate and synthesize large bodies of networked data

The goal is to catalyze multi-institutional research projects that activate the convergence of new visualization approaches and design tools for distributed knowledge sharing and collaboration.

Facilitated by Jeffrey Heer, Bonnie DeVarco, Katy Borner and assisted by others.

SEE END OF POST FOR EVENT LIVE BROADCAST LINKS

NextNow Collaboratory is an organizational partner of State of the World Forum, launching the global 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign today in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.  This Forum marks the first time people will be coming together from around the world at this scale to strategize plans of action to reduce carbon emissions globally by 80% by 2020 (instead of 2050, widely accepted by governments but acknowledged by scientists as “too late”) not just through a change in behavior (which can be difficult to sustain) but by re-aligning our relationship to ourselves and to our values, to each other, to Earth and to Life itself.  It also marks the first time a major media company launches a national public education campaign on global warming intended to mobilize a nation to take action– from stopping clear-cutting of the Amazon to creating sustainable lifestyles.

Over 200 scientists, political leaders, business executives, academics, civil society activists and artists from 20 nations and across Brazil are in attendance.  But this initiative is about everyone becoming a climate leader, because that’s what it will take. We’re all part of this movement to build a future in alignment with our most deeply-held values, with the natural systems of Earth and all Life.  Increase your awareness by visiting the State of the World Forum 2020 Climate Leadership Media and Resources page, and join us for the next Forum in Washington D.C. February 28 – March 3, 2010.

Below is the press release for this historic meeting in Belo Horizonte:

PRESS RELEASE
August 4, 2009

Globo TV launches unprecedented national public education ads on global warming to support the 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign

The Globo Organization, the largest media company in Brazil and the fourth largest in the world, will premiere its national public education ads to support the 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign at the State of the World Forum in Belo Horizonte, Brazil August 4 – 7, 2009. The aim is to educate the public about the escalating dangers of global warming and to encourage “climate leadership” in reducing carbon emissions and developing sustainable lifestyles.

This action is unprecedented and marks the first time anywhere in the world when a major media company has taken up the issue of global warming and begun a sustained public educational effort in support of a national mobilization on global warming. “We are delighted at this demonstration of climate leadership,” said Jim Garrison, President of the State of the World Forum. “ We believe it will serve as a model for other major companies to join Globo and begin to educate their constituencies about the escalating crisis of global warming.”

Albert Alcouloumbre, Director of Planning and Social Programs at Globo, said, “We consider our support for the 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign to be part of our responsibility to our viewers. Globo has a long history of social responsibility going back to the founder Roberto Marinho, and we are proud of this tradition.”

Ricardo Young, President of the Ethos Institute, said, “Brazil is ready for a national 2020 mobilization on this critical issue.”

The Globo ads support the launch of a global 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign and a Brazil 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign in Belo Horizonte August 4 – 7, when scientists, government leaders, business executives and civil society activists from around the world and Brazil will meet to begin planning 2020 campaigns.

Says Garrison: “The urgency of global warming mandates that each and every one of us become climate leaders. For the first time in our lives, indeed for the first time in history, all of us must take responsibility for our climate, whether at the individual, community, company, institution, state, or national level. We are all responsible for global warming. We must all share in the leadership required to solve it, for nothing less than the fate of human civilization is at stake. The crisis is that stark, the choice is that clear, the leadership required is that urgent.”

At the heart of the Climate Leadership Campaign and the purpose of the Belo Horizonte conference is resolving the contradiction between what our governments are negotiating and what our scientists are asserting about the accelerating pace of global warming. Our governments are negotiating as if the world has another forty years to solve global warming. The Copenhagen negotiations call for an 80% reduction of CO2 by 2050.  But the more our scientists know, the more urgent the crisis becomes and the more urgently we must act. The current world situation with regard to climate change is worse than the worst cast scenario of the IPCC in its 2007 Report.

It is for these reasons that when he accepted the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the IPCC, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri said “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.” Thousands of scientists around the world agree. Lester Brown, who will keynote the Belo Horizonte Forum, states “The situation is so urgent it has come down to mobilizing to save civilization.”

Says Garrison:  “Climate leadership must be based on what is scientifically urgent, not on what is politically expedient. Thus our strategic intention and call is a very simple one: ‘2050 by 2020.’ What our governments are negotiating for 2050 must be accomplished by 2020 and we must all be prepared to demonstrate the climate leadership required to accomplish this.”

For further information: Leandro Grandi at FSB Communications at leandro.grandi@fsb.com.br or Jim Garrison at jgarrison@worldforum.org

For further information on the State of the World Forum in Belo Horizonte:
http://brasil2020.com.br

For further information on the State of the World Forum:
http://worldforum.org

TO WATCH LIVE BROADCASTS OF THE BELO HORIZONTE STATE OF THE WORLD FORUM:

6:00- 8:00 PM EST ON TUESDAY, AUGUST 4

9:00 AM- 5:00 PM EST ON WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5

In February, NextNow Collab helped launch the Ecological Creditor Nation Summit initiated by the Global Footprint Network.  Brazil is one of the approximately 20% of nations studied that maintains Ecological Creditor status.  Now NextNow Collab partner State of the World Forum is moving its Washington D.C. conference from November 2009 to February, 2010, largely due to the extensive involvement of Brazil, which is launching a Brazil 2020 campaign in partnership with the Forum in August 2009–the developments of which will go far in informing the subsequent Forum in Washington, D.C.– and which we plan to attend.  All of these efforts combined act to energize the emerging global 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign.  We’re really excited by these developments and inspired by Brazil’s commitment.

Below is the announcement from Jim Garrison as it appears on the State of the World Forum website.

Dear Friends of the State of the World Forum,

We want to inform you that the upcoming State of the World Forum has been rescheduled from November 12-14, 2009 to February 28 – March 3, 2010. This has come about due to the extraordinary success of our endeavors and the fact that what was originally an intent to convene a conference has morphed into a global strategy to develop a 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign.  Allow me to explain.

A year ago, we decided to convene the 2009 State of the World Forum in November 2009 to address the escalating crisis of global warming.  We decided to do so using an integral framework, a perspective that was unique to the debate and which would allow for very synergistic cross sectoral dialogue. In early March of this year, I was invited down to Brazil to give some lectures on climate change and to speak about the integral approach we were taking on the issue.  What took place can only be described as phenomenal.  Each place I went, the response was not only an affirmation of the urgency of the crisis global warming represents but a willingness to begin working to develop a national mobilization in Brazil to support our efforts to mobilize action by 2020. Similar responses have been forthcoming in Australia, Holland, and Mexico and from a range of organizations and companies around the world.

To make a long story very short, four months later, we are launching a global 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign as well as launching a national Brazil 2020 campaign in Belo Horizonte, Brazil August 4 – 7 with over a hundred international specialists in climate change and several hundred activists from all over Brazil.  The decision has also been made to convene the 2010 State of the World Forum in Rio de Janeiro August 30 – September 3, 2010.  The emergence of a global strategy and such dynamic movement in Brazil has necessitated a reframing of the 2009 State of the World Forum in Washington.

There are four main reasons we are changing the date:

1) By moving to the 2010 February 28 – March date we will have much more space available to us at the Washington Hilton hotel to accommodate more people and to design a more interactive event with more breakout rooms.

2) The new dates for the Washington Forum will place this event equidistance between the two other Forums, giving us the opportunity to respond to the developments from Belo Horizonte in August 4 -7, 2009 and incorporate the work from Washington February 28 – March 3, 2010 into the Rio Forum August 30 – September 3, 2010.  This Phase One plan is in keeping with our overall orientation as a  global Campaign as opposed to a single event.  Our intent is to convene State of the World Forums in major cities worldwide over the next ten years, through 2020, as we building support for our 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign.

3) We have recently established an important partnership with Globo TV, the largest media company in Brazil and South America, and are in the process of developing programming ideas, including the production of at least one special in conjunction with the Washington Forum.  This gives us the opportunity to create other global television distribution deals and give the rescheduled Forum world-wide exposure.  The new February dates will give us the time necessary to make these arrangements.

4) The new dates will place the conference in Washington at a time when the Congress is in session, thus providing us with an opportunity to involve members of Congress in the Forum and include some lobbying activity concerning the overall Forum 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign.  As you may know, the United States is essentially acting like a failed state in the climate change domain and so there is a serious and urgent need for further education and lobbying in the Congress.

We sincerely hope that you appreciate the logic of our need to reschedule the Forum and that this change of dates has not inconvenienced you in any way.

We would invite you to peruse our website, which as been transformed from featuring an event to describing an entire global strategy: http://www.worldforum.org/

The urgency of global warming mandates that each and every one of us become climate leaders. For the first time in our lives, indeed for the first time in history, all of us must take responsibility for our climate, whether at the individual, community, company, institution, state, or national level. We are all responsible for global warming. We must all share in the leadership required to solve it, for nothing less than the fate of human civilization is at stake. The crisis is that stark, the choice is that clear, the leadership required is that urgent.

If we rise to this challenge, if we take climate leadership, we will generate climate justice and climate prosperity because it is precisely our capacity to solve our greatest crisis that affords us our greatest opportunities for growth within the context of sustainability and alignment with natural systems.

Here’s the invitation.  All it requires is taking a little personal initiative while you’re on the beach: