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Jennifer Perron

Sep 28, 2015
08:24

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Dear Thomas and Saïd,

Thank you so much for beginning your proposal on climate mobilization under the Global Climate Action Plan contest of MIT's Climate CoLab. I am one of the Fellows for this contest, here to serve as a liaison to the CoLab, answer questions, and help provide substantive feedback to strengthen proposals. Fellows will also play a role in the evaluative portion of this contest. 

You are off to a good start with your concept introduction, and I like your focus on grassroots organizing, people-power, and use of social media as an educational and organizing tool. 

The climate mobilization website you link to at the onset appears quite well-developed. It would helpful if you would explain/detail your relationship to that initiative at the start of your summary. Are you actively involved in the organization of this effort, and, if so, in what region(s) of the globe? What are the positive messages and incentives for participation that you reference at the start? You could additionally detail prior mobilization efforts that have been organized under this initiative, and/or future ones in the works. 

As you know, in this contest, we are asking participants to draw from concepts within the various regional and national contests, to help inform a global strategy. The next step for your proposal will be to take a look at the submissions in the regional and national contests, to assess which among them would mesh well with your mobilization efforts, and how they might be combined into a globally actionable plan.

Additionally, it would be useful to detail what are the 18 areas of focus referenced in your pitch, and how were they selected?

Finally-- but importantly-- it will be essential that you concretely link your contest proposal to tangible emissions reductions, that is, explain how this grassroots organizing and public mobilization will lead to activities that reduce emissions. This is an important element of this mitigation-focused contest. 

Looking forward to seeing how you continue to develop your proposal, and thanks once again for your contributions to the CoLab! 


Michael Hayes

Oct 13, 2015
06:02

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Tom, Said and team members,

WARNING!!!!!

There has been a recent rule change which disallows the use of national/regional plans which anticipate the needs of a global plan. This rule change is profoundly non-logical and clearly aimed at disallowing proposals that anticipate the needs of a global plan such as my WENN Protocol.

You have selected the WENN Protocol proposals for inclusion in your proposal and thus your proposal can now be attacked simply for using my proposals.

I'm lodging protests as broadly as possible using the below text:

The logical basis and the three key elements of a global plan proposal, as envisioned by the CoLab team, is stated as:

“Any comprehensive combination of actions to address climate change across the world as a whole must necessarily involve:

  • multiple sectors of the economy, especially segments of the energy and agricultural industries;

  • activity at multiple geographic levels (international, national, regional, and local),

  • interventions in the technical, biological, and geological systems that directly affect the earth’s carbon cycle as well as interventions in the economic and political systems, and behavioral patterns, that shape the relevant physical systems.”

The most seemingly logical and common sense approach to addressing the above widely diverse 3 problem sets first requires that the most common denominators, at the STEM problem set level, be isolated and that the most appropriate STEM solution(s) be adopted as the pivot or starting point for the balance of the global plan.

This reductionist approach to complex problem set evaluation and resolution is well understood and long recognized in multiple professional fields such as science, technology, medicine, engineering, business and policy development.

In simple words:logic encourages us to find a singular (even if complex) concept for managing vast amounts of carbon. This will require vast scale investments in carbon negative technology/infrastructure.

However, in this MIT Climate Colab Global Plan challenge, the CoLab team informs the authors and judges that global plans will be rejected if they they include national/regional plans which anticipate global plan needs. This is fundamentally contrary to well accepted problem set evaluation and resolution logic and methods.

As stated in a recent CoLab alert message to all Global Plan authors: “IMPORTANT **For example, plans will not be advanced that offer a singular idea that can be applied globally.”In view of how complex problems are routinely solved by most professionals,this judging standard and its logic should not be set aside lightly. It should be hurled with great force!

If the universally accepted logic standards, as normally used by most professionals in complex problem resolution calculations, are to be followed, it does seem logical that a synergistic core suite of profitablecarbon negative technologies should be isolated which can:

  • be useful to all nations and regions regardless of natural resource and or environmental limitations found within those nations/regions

  • be attractive to institutional level green investment funds, green business interests and governmental/intergovernmental green investment fund managers

  • be rapidly scalable to meaningful climate change mitigation levels

  • be supportive of a wide range of ancillary mitigation and adaptation technologies

  • be supportive of a wide spectrum of culturally sensitive climate change education regimens

  • be supportive of future STEM advancements

The WENN Protocol regional proposals were designed with the global plan in mind. In that, the WENN Protocol offers a universally adaptable carbon negative suite of technologies which all regions/nations can use.

We need unity in efforts and funding not divergence.

It is critical that a carbon negative infrastructure investment platform, which is large enough, focused enough, simplified enough and universal enough to attract institutional green growth funding, be developed.

Dissipating the substantial strength of the institutional green investment funds over countless small scale green projects/investments is a weak strategy compared to one which is focusing. 

(End of text)

I greatly appreciated your invitation to be a team member yet my work is clearly under attack and, by simple association, continuing to have me on your team may well negatively effect your standing in this competition. 

As such, I request that you remove me from your team so as to not taint your team with this rather nasty struggle for the freedom of intellectual expression within the CoLab. However, please keep in mind that if you or any member of your team wishes to join my efforts, you simply have to request. 

Warmest regards,

Michael


Laur Hesse Fisher

Nov 3, 2015
03:14

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Having trouble finding regional plans to integrate into your Global Climate Action Plan?

We have added some “seed proposals” — national and regional plans that have already been proposed by governments or organizations around the world, that you can incorporate into your Global Climate Action Plan.

For example, now on the website are:

- the emission reduction commitments submitted by countries in advance of the UNFCCC's 2015 climate negotiations, known as the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, or INDC’s; and

- scenarios through which countries around the world could reach significant carbon reductions, prepared by the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project (DDPP).
The INDC’s and DDPP plans have been uploaded to the Regional Plan Workspace for the 6 major nations/regions: United States, European Union, India, China, Other Developed Countries and Other Developing countries.

If you would like to use any of these plans in your Global Climate Action Plan, you can select them under the proposal field, “Which plan did you select for…?”  They are located in the Regional Plan Workspace, under the titles: "Seed Proposal: Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project in…” and "Seed proposal: INDC submitted to 2015 UN climate negotiations by…”.  Feel free to link to them now; the content will be completed before your revision deadline.


Jacob Hollander

Nov 21, 2015
07:20

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This is really where it's at, any attempt to force people to change their lifestyle is futile. It's about opening up a dialog with folks and getting them involved in the process of change. Not idealism, not looking at numbers on a spreadsheet and saying "lets eliminate factory farming" for example, you'll never get the majority of people on board if there's any sense of moral superiority how the message is communicated is very important, stressing personal responsibility not pointing the finger and blaming people or creating boogeymen.


Michael Hayes

Dec 4, 2015
03:19

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There has been reluctance from the judges as far as accepting the national/regional proposal selection within this proposal. I'm the author of those national and regional proposals and thus I feel it is important for me to defend them in support of this global plan. The following text attempts to provide a reasonable and rational response to the judge's criticism.

  Response to Judge’s Remarks


(Judges Comments 1) “iWENN Management Protocol has several commendable features -– especially its scale of vision. However, we have hesitations about this proposal. The Protocol as outlined here is not realistic under current socio political conditions. Neither public nor private sector actors are ready to pursue this model. Green minded fund managers (almost an oxymoron) are extremely unlikely to invest in the high cost, high-risk ventures described in the sub-proposal.”


(Response 1) As the Pope succinctly noted in a recent statement seen here in Rueters:


"I am not sure, but I can say to you 'now or never.' Every year the problems are getting worse. We are at the limits. If I may use a strong word I would say that we are at the limits of suicide.".


The Pope is not the only leader to realize the urgency which we now face and there is a growing number of leaders in the financial community which have also awaken to the need for strong new measures which inherently will be somewhat risky during initial development.


Business as usual is simply suicidal and going beyond business as usual will require some degree of risk.


One excellent example of financial leaders realizing this existential need for moving beyond business as usual is found within CERES’s Clean Trillion Initiative.


(Response 2) As to the comment concerning “high cost, high-risk ventures described in the sub-proposal” and or the previous comment of "BECCS is not proven at large scales”:


It is well understood at the IPCC (WG3) level that the only limiting factor in establishing vast scale BECCS operations is the availability of sustainable low cost upstream biomass. The technical aspects of marine biomass production are also well understood and the use of the Oxyhydrogen Reaction in Algae is well understood as well and is, in fact, currently used at the industrial level.


Please read this relevant patent:


Use of oxyhydrogen microorganisms for non-photosynthetic carbon capture and conversion of inorganic and/or c1 carbon sources into useful organic compounds


4HwtZSY3B1z8yQkMm_BHpwXtCc9Xp_YQ660iy1oGanqNsJEDoTyLMTJFUU5JlkAEXzE0YkX_PH9IkHG3sqVZI1dqzDcwD-1gWo7PwocChl4MiEjWL0x9RR6iwuqF7qFKZpmpy5-d3qB_3iODqpV2x4N3sE4wvWXl7ebMuZ9ksIoljfEelPQzUP-vbJRw_QtKvDM_CWOmOhYBnxnw4lTEC-dlP6AFnlX7KAlulf8JNr9h9BAiKYSdsqlr6BpCnAXDm8SnNj0YK-wwa-mJfeL0Jml6VSzyP6e4RUSdTVacgsdePSEURz-LK_Sfsih5CESSK3rSAfOHaRRt9icw7sTxrjNK2rnu8Pi2Ig2kwi0wTVCjIQJkBgItgfuuZreICxwXaG9a7GPP0CRdoUy8hs5ce_LVa6x6H2ICYZq5snAMnsduqAjpxO_JZW26IvIjU6_j8Q3XDwOkWS1c0bZG0R8cUUD5Rz-eL78nfQgtx7VQuIm8Qj_d3cComkIS_Mpf9QaQCGOMl5N1dFX5OmPv6tf4XeV6v0-Yeq1Ehoh8aJUDg_c=w977-h389-no


In brief, the judges who discredited the use of the above biotechnology, used in the previous national/regional proposals, simply did not understand the science!!!!


I ask this panel of judges to not make that same mistake. Stating confidently that the Oxyhydrogen Reaction in Algae is not 'feasible' is much like that professor who 'proved beyond all reasonable doubt' that heaver than air flight is impossible...3 months after the first flight at Kitty Hawk!!!!

Finally, the position that high level investors are not inclined to aggressively fund new technology is problematic as current developments seem to show the opposite view.


Please see: Breakthrough Energy Coalition


“The existing system of basic research, clean energy investment, regulatory frameworks, and subsidies fails to sufficiently mobilize investment in truly transformative energy solutions for the future. We can’t wait for the system to change through normal cycles.”


As such, the Global Plan, A Carbon Negative Infrastructure and Economy: A Systems Design/Mngmt Approach should be viewed as being within a reasonable, although advanced, spectrum of near term options as the science is well understood (by those that bother to read the science) and the technology is fundable as the science is currently...in use at the industrial level.


To conclude, this proposal attempts to stretch the envelope as far as STEM and socially responsible global scale business development using components which are, in fact, in use today and can be rapidly scaled up to global significance. This proposal, however, is also a volunteer effort which is not meant to be a fully developed business plan and should be judged in that regards.


With proper resources, a fully detailed business plan/proposal can be developed for those executives who actually understand the need for large scale and globally coordinated advanced mitigation/adaptation near term actions using state-of-the-art STEM and a socially responsible business model (as this proposal offers).   


Respectfully,


Michael 


Michael Hayes

Dec 4, 2015
04:15

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Further,

The Global Plan: Make Climate a Top Priority for Action by Every Global Citizen and Organization is, without exception, the most well thought out, actionable and inclusive of any proposal ever submitted within the CoLab experiment and should be selected/supported by those that truly understand that we need such broad based efforts if we are to realistically challenge the power base which has brought us to this global scale point of collective suicide.

All of the other 4 Global Plan proposals, currently in the voting stage, are supported, either directly or indirectly, within this proposal (including my own) and thus voting for this highly inclusive plan would be supporting the entire spectrum of proposals.

In brief, we fundamentally need to rally around a comprehensive and inclusive central plan, such as this proposal offers, so that the effort(s) and funding can be focused with the most strength and done so in the shortest possible time: for time is not our ally in this life or death struggle.

To reject this proposal would be to be to reject the existential need to substantially confront the power base which threatens our very existence. 

In the simplest words: which side of the struggle do you wish to support?


Michael


Moses Seenarine

Dec 5, 2015
02:34

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I would like to point out that there maybe massive voter fraud in the contest, committed by the Mobilize Now team in support of their proposal, “Make Climate a Top Priority for Action by Every Global Citizen and Organization” in MIT Climate CoLab's Global Climate Action Plan 2015 contest, on the last day of the voting period.

During the 3-week voting period, the Mobilize Now team followed a pattern of large periods of relative inactivity, lasting 1 or 2 days, interspersed with short periods of intense voting lasting around one hour. The Mobilize Now team's voting activity was related to the number of votes that our team gained, and their brief voting periods always brought them close to our lead in the contest during the 3-weeks. This pattern of voting suggests some form of pre-planning.

As of approximately 8:00am on Friday, 12/4/15, Meat Climate Change team had 159 votes for our proposal, “Reducing Footprints by Reducing Animal Consumption,” in the Global Climate Action Plan 2015 contest, while the Mobilize Now team had 139 votes.

At approximately 6:00pm on Friday, 12/4/15, Meat Climate Change proposal had around 173 votes, and Mobilize Now proposal had 143 votes in the contest.

Then remarkably, during the course of the next approximately 3 hours, the Mobilize Now team added 66 votes, at an average of one vote every 2.7 minutes. While not impossible, this large number of votes in such a short time suggests some form of pre-planning. Of the 66 votes, 36 were from new members who joined MIT Climate CoLab within this 3-hour period. The 66 voters have no description in their profile, and only a few have a stock photo as their profile picture.

Interestingly, during the 3-hour period, 30 of the Mobilize Now voters, were members with 3 or 4 Activity points. These 30 members had voted in the Mobilize Now team's previous proposal, “Unleash the energy of millions by making climate action simple, relevant and fun” by 9/12/15. The fact that these previous members were voting at the same time as the 36 new members that joined during the 3-hour period also suggests some form of pre-planning.

I did not check, but it is possible that many of the Mobilize Now team's 143 voters who voted earlier than 12/4/15 for their current proposal, were also accounts with 3 or 4 Activity points, suggesting they were used to vote in the Mobilize Now team's other proposals during the last few days of voting period.

As of 9:00pm on Friday, 12/4/15, the Mobilize Now team had amassed 216 votes, compared to Meat Climate Change team's 185 votes.


Dave Finnigan

Dec 5, 2015
04:46

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Mosessite -

With regard to our sudden spurt in last minute votes, in order to cool the "arms race" that was going on, we put off asking our colleagues for votes until the end and that is all you are seeing.  There is nothing untoward here, just a lot of hard work over the past 24 hours, corralling voters.  We do not have a natural constituency, like vegetarians, who can be easily found, so we have waited to ask our concerned friends to register and to vote.  It does take about 3 minutes to contact a colleague, explain CoLab and ask them to register and vote.  This is the natural process.  Wonder how Citizens Climate Lobby got 401 votes in 2015 and 1247 in 2014 for the same proposal?  They worked their lists and asked their concerned colleagues to vote.  That is the established and legitimate process. 

We would like to offer members of your team, and your voters, the If you don't like the plan, ask to join our team and offer ways that we can strengthen the plan to make it work for you.  We are not exclusive, we are inclusive.  Please join us and make it better.  This plan is not a finished product, it is a work in process.  If you have the heart for the work, please join us.

One part of our existing proposal is that people should cut back on their meat consumption.  If we win, please join the team and help us to mobilize consumers to follow a pathway from skipping meat once a week to totally converting to a plant-based diet.  As we say over and over, our plan is an umbrella and we hope that all of the finalists will join us to work together with the dozens of other proposals we have identified, and that together we can find, or come up with, ideas not yet formalized into proposals.  This is not the time to start an argument, it is the time to unite for a common good.

Then we can go to the funding agencies as a broadly based consortium of MIT sanctioned proposal authors and supporters and get the money necessary to carry out all of our proposals.  In our opinion, this contest is not only about a single noble idea, like becoming vegetarians, but is about a huge range of ideas that have in common the fact that they are all about "bubble up" rather than "trickle down."

We look forward to working with your team.  Let us not wrangle, but let's create a "super team."

Dave Finnigan


Laur Hesse Fisher

Dec 5, 2015
12:37

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Dear Climate CoLab community,

Please note that during the voting period, we regularly remove any votes made without a valid email address, which is the requirement for voting.  At the end of the voting period, we perform a thorough investigation of all votes cast and remove any that seem fraudulent in accordance with our Voting Rules and voting algorithm, including evidence of the use of bots, third party voting services or payment for votes.

After an initial investigation, it does not seem that any fraudulent behavior has occurred in the voting for this proposal.  However, we will be investigating mosessite's claims once voting completes.


Moses Seenarine

Dec 5, 2015
01:45

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"We are not imbeciles, so please don't treat us as such. You are ruining this excellent program and important initiative by fraudulent voting. We regret linking to your proposal and will never join any team committing blatant voter fraud.

Your claim of working hard during 24 hours to get older members to vote within a 3-hour period on the last day lacks credibility. The 30 older members who voted in the 3-hour period have no description on their profiles besides an occasional stock photo. They had three months to add something to their profiles, yet these remain completely blank. Group members typically identify their affiliation and interests, but not in your case. The 30 older members did not say anything about your proposal or why they are voting for it. They only voted, and none became supporters of your proposal. These 30 members apparently have no other interest in climate change besides voting twice at the last minute in two contests, and they took an average of 2.7 minutes to communicate with you, log in and vote. Highly dubious.

And if your strategy is to have members only vote at the last minute, then how do you explain your 136 votes prior to 12/4/15? These members should have also waited until the last day to vote, but they did not. And during the 3-week voting period, your 136 votes also came in spurts, with just enough votes to keep up with our lead in the contest. So were you also preparing them to vote in spurts like you did on the last day with the 66 votes in 3 hours?

And there is no explanation of how 36 new members joined in the 3-hour period, also taking an average of 2.7 minutes to join and vote as older members. This is not enough time to explain your program to 36 new members, and for them to find a computer, search for the Climate CoLab website, register and then vote. And, you got 36 new members at the same time that you were contacting 30 older members to log on and vote. The 36 new members also have blank profiles, and do not say anything about why they are supporting your proposal, or why they became members. How unusal.

We have a large and committed constituency, and worked tirelessly during the 3-week voting period to get 180 people to join and vote. Most of our voters created a profile and expressed their interests in our proposal on their profiles. We have legitimately won this contest, but we were cheated out of this win. As a result, we will no longer participate in Climate CoLab activities, due to voter fraud."


Moses Seenarine

Dec 5, 2015
01:16

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You are starting to make obvious fraudulent mistakes in creating fake accounts. For example, today you are creating multiple profiles with similar names and screen names with only slight variations.

The following 6 accounts  were all created minutes apart on 12/5/15 around 6:00am
- Nouhaila Bezoui (nouhailabezoui)
- nouhaila bezoui (bezouinouhaila1998)
- Hamid Bezoui (hamid.bezoui)
- Lamyaa Bezoui (lamyaab)
- lamyaa bouzi (lamyaaaaa), and
- lamyaa baroud (lamichaa)

Also, the following 2 accounts  were all created minutes apart on 12/5/15 around 5:00am 
- imad iraki (imadoo)  and
- imad iraqi (imadhgdjugcb)

You are using obviously fake names, like "imad iraki" - seriously? There is no such name as imad. There is "Amad" but no "imad."

Please stop this fraudulent behavior!


Michael Hayes

Dec 5, 2015
02:31

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Dear Mosessite,

I've closely observed the CoLab operation for some time now and I am also the most active contributor. In the time I've spent doing such, I've seen this type of voting surge happen on a number of occasions. Also, I have good reason to believe (which I can not go into details here) that the CoLab team adheres to an extremely high ethical standard and should be trusted to do the right thing.

Please keep in mind, moreover, such accusations of misconduct should be directed, through private email, to the CoLab team before openly accusing others of serious misconduct. If fraud has happened, 1) there is no ruling out that a supporter of another proposal did the dirty deed simply to discredit the innocent team or 2) a supporter of the innocent team took it upon themselves to try to game the votes and please keep in mind that 3) a number of participants actually prefer to remain anonymous, through using a pseudonym, for various reasons.

Further, many proposal authors/supporters pay close attention to the timing of many aspects of the contest. Such as, not just last minute voting surges but also it is not unusual for an author to wait until the last few minutes before the submission deadline to post or edit their proposal simply so that their proposal gets posted at the top of the list. I've seen this type of maneuver happen many many times!

In brief, trust the CoLab team to walk the high road on these issues and give them time before openly and publicly insulting (and royally pissing off) many innocent fellow participants. Do you realize that the way you phrased your concern that you actually accused....ME....of wrong doing??? That does not make me a Happy Camper;))

To conclude, I ask that the CoLab team simply remove the comments associated with this public accusation of wrong doing as there is, at this time, no benefit to anyone by having such unsubstantiated and embarrassing comments as part of the permanent record. Mosessite's concerns are noted and will be properly reviewed and he should be allowed the benefit of rethinking what he actually wishes to be apart of....his....CoLab permanent history. 

One truly great service that the CoLab team offers is that they can and will 'Let You Take Your Comments Off The Record' and they have been kind enough to me to do such on multiple occasions when I, myself, very publicly insert both feet into my rather ignorant mouth.  

Warmest regards (from a profoundly honest man),

Michael


Lia Totty

Dec 24, 2015
05:37

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Dear Thomas and Saiid, I am excited to see that your final submission received honorable mention in the global colab contest. I have entered "Impact Fashion Coalition: Campaign and Concert" into the Materials Matter competition and value your feedback. Please take a look at it.

My entry is inextricably linked to yours and I have identified key areas to implement fundraising development.

I would like for you to rally your voters to Support My Proposal to keep this momentum going!

To keep the energy going in your direction, my proposal for a fashion show and coding camp can be cleaned up to reflect the most economically feasible project goal.