An unsolicited endorsement, much appreciated — and a great read, even for the non-Kindle-anointed among us.

Robert Hormats
Under Secretary for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs
U.S. Department of State

Participants will enjoy a cocktail reception at 6:30 pm, followed by dinner,
the unveiling of SNS CEO Mark Anderson’s predictions for 2012
and our centerpiece conversation with Robert Hormats.

Read Mark’s predictions from 2011. 

Register for the 2012 SNS New York Predictions Dinner. 

LS: Arctic ice is melting more quickly than we thought.

For the last 100,000 years, CO2 has stayed within a very narrow band. As of 2008, it’s in a fairly vertical progression.

We need to reduce CO2 by 75% by 2050 to maintain global temp stability. Yet, projected emissions will double in that time period if we maintain the status quo.

In 2010, the CTO challenge worked on scaling up renewables. This year, we’re working on carbon sequestration to execute in combination with last year’s solution.

Greenhouse gas emissions are about 75% CO2. Unlike other GHGs, CO2 stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years. It does not dissipate.

Petroleum and coal are the chief sources of GHGs.

Ty Carlson: “Sleep will be in short order and passion will rule the day.” on CTO challenge.

Americans generate the equivalent of the lifecycle of 2.4 trees in carbon.

To compensate for global carbon production, we’d need to reforest the US 7X every year.

Cost of carbon capturing: Using existing technologies, you would need an additional 40% increase in tax. Using newer technologies, it’s only 10%

Storage techniques and carbon capture: alternatives are coming, but they aren’t here today.

Reuse: enhanced oil recovery, urea yield boosting, enhanced geothermal systems, polymer processing, algae production, mineralization.

Due to the size and scope, we’ll need to develop strong leadership.

• DOE investment $143mm/year: same as annual power plant lobbying
• Create a modern, post-industrial economy, low carbon, job creation–repurpose workers to low carbon
• no such thing as clean coal, but low carbon does esxist.
• engage global community

China and US dominate global emissions, followed by india, Japan and the Russian federation. We’ll need to look to the example of the Apollo-Soyuz space project to mobilize and unite nations that have traditionally been at odds through technology and innovation.

This month Shanghai hit an air quality index of 500, maxing out scale.

We need to create partnerships to solve the problem

• New meaning to international trade (we all need clean air and water)
• jointly develop models/solutions
• IP consortium of participating countries (waste energy, water treatment, etc in China, Abu Dhabi, etc)

Engaging China

• Us and China are the places to scale
• China may be a quicker adopter of change than the US
• China was net coal exporter, now importer
• power companies stopped producing electricity, refuse to operate at a loss
• People burning lower-grade coal will create more carbon dioxide, pollutants
• Impact to the overall economic growth
• China builing 3 LNG landing facilities
• Need to be sure that the plan is both mutually and individually beneficial

China and the US are both shutting down their most polluting coal facilities

Convert inefficient coal power plants to efficient natural gas to lower CO2

What to do?

• develop low carbon economy by starting a US pilot
• create public-private partnershipt to develop CCS technologies
• Tax current carbon-based energy creation (need to start paying true cost of electricity generation)
• Incent low-carbon, no carbon energy
• Review/align energy incentives/subsidies
• Drive innovation, not lobbying
• Need fundamental and applied research
• Design a modeling solution
• Generate creative solutions

CCS: Engaging the Industry

• leverage existing infrastructure

Enable People to Make Educated Choices

• Create baseline awareness, clear problem statement that resonates with the global economy
• develop communication tools and platforms: standard measurement system, global sensors, cost basis
• Educate on human cost: health implications, worker productivity
• Broad coverage of credible, factual, common understanding: BBC, Frontline story

Incent change

• X-prize competition — incentives based on reduction of CO2 emissions, removal from the environment
• Commit to Low Carbon economy: move to new power plants, update building codes, provide incentives, global shipping laws
• Create a common priority for subsidies
• Create Low Carbon-LEED; LEED-right idea, perhaps wrong incentives
• Create incremental carbon tax, w. 10-yr rolling rates, subsidies to incent change
• World agreement: non members pay carbon import tax,
• Raise awareness of the true cost of carbon: labeling on things we consume, individual carbon production numbers on your energy bill, citizen censors like color-changing CO2 sensors on t-shirts

Summary

• Time is critical
• Alternative energy and solutions strategy
• Cost and scale issues must be understood and communicated
• Global education, consensus on issues
• China is natural partner
• Leverage existing infrastructure and expertise

Gregory McRae: “I think it’s been one of the best conferences I’ve ever attended.”

Flood of good ideas. Generally, climate change conferences make you feel depressed.

“This is one of the first times I’ve actually felt tremendously energized.”

Liked: global nature of presentation, many solutions, but solutions that scale, education — helping people to make informed choices. Naive belief that if you give people the info to make decisions, they’ll generally make the right ones. Collaboration- there are real precedents for collaboration at scale.

Recommendations: Bring change-makers together at FiRe, without handlers.

Eric Openshaw: Crowd-sourcing aspect was fantastic.

LS: FiRe

John Delaney: 1/2 oxygen came out of ocean and it absorbs 1/2 of CO2

David Brin: This is exactly what we should do and cannot because of culture war, but it can spur a certain amount of change now.

GH: Imagining it’s 2030, what is happening in the last 20 years?

DB: 30 year prediction in science fiction is the most difficult, because people will still be around in 30 years. Half of what you see will be impressive, half lackluster. Surprising things: someone will try to clone mastadon DNA. You’ll see someone trying to attempt to switch Chimp DNA to make them more human. Results will be very bad. Speaking variants of chimpanzees, variants of robots. Red-blue split: fraction of population embraces change, a fraction is crippled by fear at the thought of change. This is a serious underlying problem.

Due to anti-mercantilist trade patterns, we’re boosting the economies of lesser countries. Even though we’re in a deep recessions, we’re lifting up China and India at the same time . .  through Walmart. Other countries will recognize this in the future.

Whether or not we can get past all this depends on whether or not we can overcome blue-red culture war, which David believes is being deliberately inflicted on us. Would like to think culture war has been solved by 2030 because we are awash in things that could be solved if the spirit of FiRe was swept across the country.

The one thing I do well is step back and take a new perspective. Global warming from a step back: Goldilocks zone of the sun: earth skates the continuously inner edge of the goldilocks zone. We can not make the greenhouse gases scarce enough for what’s coming in to leave.

The more a nation is interested in science fiction, the better it thrives. Chinese govt is very wary of it — allow 1930s little boy science fiction, but not thought experiments.

Working on Existence, which will be out in the next year. Details all issues we have to dance around to get to the future.

It’s not just about us and our kids. It’s about 20 years from now, 30 years from now.

Don’t assume everything has to be carbon-based. Other forms of life generally have to made by creative design.

BH: Need to get past CNN narrative that this is just about the arab spring, about teenagers with cellphones.

JD: Many journalists will say that this was predictable, due to underlying economic topics, etc. No one knew a few years ago that this was going to happen. Easy to connect the dots afterwards, but no one knew this was going to happen. Arab spring was preceded by. States evolved as war machines — their ability to control violence within a certain territory. When camera’s arent watching, bad things happen. The first adopters of social media were students, but not long after that, government took up social media.

Anas: Difference between Syria and Egypt — no censorship in Egypt, not sophisticated process, in Syria government manipulated, monitored social networks. Unleashed spam bots on twitter to clog Syrian hashtags. Steer public opinion in the direction the regime wants. Arrest activists and force them to give up their facebook login information to mine their data.

BH: Track record of twitter in Iran shows role of IT players in being brokers of information in foreign markets.

RM: Libyan cell phone system owned by the government. Priority has been to maintain status quo. One Libyan national bribed officials to tap into the cell system and set up a private system for the opposition. The problem with this is that once you back a side in conflict, you’re stuck with them. You always want to back a winner, whether its in horseraces or politics.

BH: How does fear of government monitoring affect your communications?

Anas: The more people who know about crimes, the better and the easier to hold parties responsible. Switched facebook security certificate to try to spy on users. Government as much as possible is trying to spy on users.

RM: What inherent biases do you have?

Anas: I don’t have any political affiliations. I just want democracy to spread. My bias is for people being able to talk freely and in a comfortable manner. You notice it more when you leave and you don’t have to worry about people around you trying to spy on you.

RM: I’m all in favor of public debate, but has bias with HB Gary. Looked at RM’s email account. Very dangerous when people start using social media to manipulate reality.

BH: What about airforce false FB accounts?

RM: If we really wanted to be sneaky about it, you wouldn’t know it.

JD: We’re fighting a networked enemy that’s very sophisticated and very good at hiding all over the world. But we’re also fighting a conspiracy theory. When you’re confronted with an enemy that lies, you have to avoid lying back. People believe crazy things, and they really believe them.

BH: Important role of IT companies in creating a public space for discussion.

Anas: Companies have a responsibility not to sell their software to authoritarian governments. FB not allowing

RM: Before Google was attacked, they were engaging with the Chinese. Then they got fed up. If you’re going to preach freedom of information than you need to practice it. I applaud Google for the stand that they’re all taking. And that’s an unpaid endorsement.

ISPs should take on a greater role in keeping internet clean. Keeping malware out of homes. Going to need to do a deeper look into the dpeths of the internet. But you have to be careful that ISPs filter out the bad, but not take political sides.

JD: When there was a massacre in Uzbekistan, the Kyrgistani govt turned off the internet to avoid mass movement across borders. Gave him a sense that they’re actually a low-capacity government.

Anas: My concern is that government meddling and online monitoring becomes an industry.

MP: We, as a species, love the ocean. The problem is that it’s transitory. Very difficult for us as a species to really get ahold of. We know almost nothing about the ocean and it covers more than 70% of the earth’s surface. Doug is able to bring an emotional experience to this project.

JD: When we study the sea it’s with our soul as well as our minds and heart. Ocean Neruda wrote about is not the same. It’s changing rapidly and unpredictably. Very sophisticated models, but almost no data. We will be present as citizens of the ocean through the internet. It’s a phenomenal education project. The ocean is the life support system for the entire planet. We understand small pieces of it, but not the whole and its processes.

National Science Foundation – building system that will allow people to have an observatory within the ocean for a long time. Upper part of ocean’s processes are driven by the sun. Lower part is driven by the heat of the earth’s core. Ocean is directly linked to growth of food on the continents. Atmosphere is a zephyr-like messenger between us and the surface of the ocean.

Station off the west coast has fiberoptical cables, which transmit a terabyte of data at one time. Power from the environment, digital imaging, ecogenomics, nanotechnology are all a part of the station. Within the year, there will be live transmission from the ocean floor. Cables are being laid this year, next year ocean floor substations will be installed, followed by connectivity by 2014.

DS: Will be my life’s work to tell the stories of Johns project and the ocean to the world. Will use broadband, stereoscopic energy, data to relate ocean and its processes to all life on earth. Idea will be to tell stories of earth’s inhabitants and processes and how they’re affected by the ocean. Entire project has a technological background, but the challenge will be in staying true to science while engaging audiences. Creating heroes for kids.

Very big challenge to tell a very engaging story in a scientific way.

JD: Because the ocean is opaque, we can’t map it comprehensively. Therefore we know less about the ocean’s bottom than we do about the moon’s behind.

DS: Stereoscopic imaging is like true human sight. We’ll be able to identify not just the organelles in a jellyfish, but their positioning.

JD: High chance that an underwater eruption will take place in the next decade, while were there. Currently rising at 15 cm/year.

Build wholesale data centers at Vantage. Large amounts of cooling, very discerning customer base, very expensive infrastructure.Can’t ever go down, very environmentally friendly.

HL: Runs DesignBuild bluff; students design home for Navaho family, spend semester designing a home, then move to Bluff, UT and build the green house. There’s no grid. Forced to come up with heating and cooling.

B: Retrofit homes. Service base today is hyperfragmented. Buildings use 75% of coal-based energy.

CF: What are challenges of motivation?

HL: Trying to expose architecture students to 2030 challenge — net zero by 2030. Putting students in situation where they have to find local solutions and use earth materials. Learn that in the field things are completely different — understand what works, what doesn’t. Return with a much better understanding of what it takes to meet the net zero challenge.

CF: What is process for homeowner?

BP: Tons of innovation, thought leaders, etc all flowing into tech scene, but the biggest challenge is integrating into mainstream homes. Howeowners — starting to wake up and want to improve carbon footprint. Existing goods and services in retrofitting are very fragmented, acting in competition. Demystifying home energy retrofitting.

JG: In CA, permitting process can be a real holdup, but the city is the greenest in the country. VS Texas – no permit problems, but no interest. Overriding concerns don’t exist in other place, so often wind up.

BP: People who want to do the right thing, but don’t know where to start. We need to educate them and show them there is an affordable, solution.

CF: How do you leverage corporate participation?

BP: Homes and buildings suck up energy, people want to do something, but then we have to go find them. One way of success is through points of leverage. Work with corporations who take CSR seriously. Through a corporate program, you access consumers with financial incentives.

CF: How can we go net zero?

HL: The first 8% is very simple. We’ve conveniently forgotten it in a world of cheap energy. Eg. navaho hogans — fireplace inside, geothermal energy. If we think back to how the earth works and how to leverage its processes, we’ll make a big difference.

JG: Need for electricity not only to fuel data centers, but also to cool them. Average data center in the US use 2 units of energy for every unit that is produced. Need to be deliberate in your choice of locale and then tax yourself in terms of available technologies. CFOs need to realize that they may pay more marginally now, but will benefit in the long term.

BP: Reality is that most homes are already out there. Building an energy efficient home is easy, just expensive. Net zero is actually problematic because it keeps us from making incremental changes to our homes.

HL: Good architects would make a huge difference.

BP: No residential market mechanisms today. In Austin, homes have energy ratings.

JL: LEED platinum ratings are expensive and customers don’t appreciate their significance.

HL: Incentivizing is something building inspectors will really need to work on. They tear down homes without any reason to try to salvage them.

Marshall:

I’m going to go back to 1985, I’m picking that to start because I think that was a watershed time frame when we started to see the rise in the internet (the ARPA net) and it was primarily designed for academic use. It’s important to remember that they were communicating with colleagues they trusted. They didn’t need to worry about the “man in the middle” attack. That then moved from the government to private sector, which was a positive move because they could come out with some phenomenal applications. There were a lot of fits and starts.

They were focusing on applications, security wasn’t even a thought. It was focused on reliability and ease of access. The point: Privacy was expected. The internet comes along, no one focuses on privacy at all.

** The technology advancement is incredible.

PERTI: in the late 90’s (nov 89) massive political change – the Berlin wall fell.

-          Political change in 89

-          Economic change from central to capitalism, fall of wall

-          Religious and culture shift inward (people returning to traditions and resistance to modernity)

-          Technology – the backbone of the change, technology has gone from a western invention to global invention

-          Information – the radical movement of info at a very high speed, large volumes, undigested

• Previously news was “pre-digested”, but not anymore
• Ex. The local paper was filtered through the lens of the local editor
• Today we have raw information made available to the public, so individuals place their own value and lens on it – that’s invaluable

Marshall:  “It is the height of arrogance to think that the best technology is developed here in the US. Or in the UK . .. it’s developed everywhere.”

The challenge is how to keep this technology safe, because it wasn’t developed to be safe.

Analogy: Roman road systems. Used for the same reasons: commerce, communication etc. As long as it was protected they were safe, but when it wasn’t it was disruptive to society.

A mindset developed in totalitarian states that I need to follow the rules, but I can survive better if I follow the rules as long as it works to my advantage. When not, I’ll make up the rules. They becomes cyber criminals. Clusters exist in Russia, Romania, China. There is substantial incentive. How do we change that environment?

The problem with the new stuff, is its designed to be backwards compatable, ie it can still communicate with the old stuff, and therefore is vulnerable.

Biggest fear: with all the software being backward compatible, we risk incorporating vulnerabilities and threats to a significant degree. The adversaries are like parasites, they want us to survive, but there’s the chance that they miscalculate and “bring it all down”.

Jesse Driscoll: 2001 is an equivalent transition to 1989. It made our government re-think how we were going to protect ourselves. Since 2001, how have things changed? We’ve created a huge system of information that is ripe to be data mined.

Marshall: It’s not unique to a local or political spectrum. The concern from privacy that erupted from WWII era (they were concerned about government overhearing conversations) continues to pervade their society even today. You cannot track phone calls, and phone numbers.

Brett Horvath: 2 questions

-          I’m very interested in anonymous, the “open source community that has distributed network with methods of taking down websites or companies etc.

-          Oracle and Microsoft have spent massive amounts of money creating closed systems, others would argue that open source could be safer

• Bit coin – non state, non bank distributed currency, no accounts , not central broker, anonymous has adopted this as their currency. Three major African telecom companies that have adopted this.
• How do you address bitcoin?

Jesse Driscoll: Can you address Wikileaks? Is it possible to go back to the pre-1984 type of information protection?

Marshall: Why do we need it to be classified? Why do we want to go back to classified information? Wikileaks demonstrates that. 99% of the info was more embarrassing politically, a few lives were threatened, but I question the amount of  effort and energy and resources we spend on protecting information that is of marginal value. Is it necessary to do this?

Movie to look out for: The man who invented lying

Horvath: I spent 6 months studying reputation. Networks work because they exist to gain reputation, the incentive to exist is to gain reputation. Some will say put all the info out there, and see what people have to say about it if you’re really interested in knowing.

Sridhar Jagannathan: I’m curious about advanced persistent threats on individuals. There’s a full spectrum of possibilities by which we can harmed as individuals. We’re more than halfway towards the very harmful side. Increasingly there are threats that can do harm to you and your identity. What are governments doing to regain privacy and anonymity?

Marshall: I think we as individuals need to be able to take control of our privacy. We need to configure it with personal privacy in mind. Technology exists that can maintain the safety.

Using other techniques to get carbon output down so that CCS is only part of the problem.

Complex challenge with global scope– Local decision making with global implications, timely delivery of solution under question.

To actually represent the costs of energy, taxes on energy are going to be 30-40% of current cost.

Biggest challenge is messaging — US will need to be a major driver and the public will have to support this effort.

Looking at real cost today and comparing that with cost. Doubling of price of electricity.

If we want to have new plants and use modern technology, we need to move from coal based energy base to a natural gas based.

Available methods of carbon sequestration:

1. Storage options – placed into ground in different locations, either in depleted oil and gas reservoirs, beneath deep saline formations onshore and offshore, using CO2 to drive out methane. Once it’s stored, not a high rate of leakage, but there are techniques to put carbon in the ground. Any one failing won’t destroy the world. Use tankers to transport carbon off-shore and bury it.

2. Re-use — enhanced oil recovery, urea yield boosting, enhanced geothermal systems, polymer processing, algae production, mineralization, concrete curing, liquid fuels.

3. Projected timeline to commercialization. Carbon sequestration would begin right away, but other tech can be developed in a not too distant time frame.

Challenges: federal/ state government regulations, scalability, real leadership for the future of the country, partnerships, compelling business case.

Scale – Americans create 5 metric tons/yr which equals the growth of  2.4 mature trees. You’d need to start talking about reforesting the US 7 times over to offset the world’s yearly carbon creation.

Need to create a modern economy that is post-industrial and carbon limited. There’s no such thing as Clean Carbon, but low carbon exists.

Easier to lobby than to innovate; we need to educate the public.

• Create a standard measurement system for global health based on carbon (think UV)
• Use global sensors to educate the world about where carbon is being generated and where it’s being consumed.
• Create a sense of responsible urgency
• Create a cost basis to look at costs relative to other items in the household budget.
• Allow educated choices and the ability to engage in dialogue.
• Create “State of the Climate” global report in different languages, delivered annually to educate society.
• Health implications, worker productivity.
• Taxing goods upon landing if they don’t pay carbon taxes in other countries.

Partnerships

• New meaning to “international trade”
• work together to develop models, solutions to the benefit of humanity; building turn-key water plants in China.
• Create an IP consortium of participating countries: using Abu Dhabi
• Involving oil companies and moving them toward carbon sequestration. (Reallocate oil subsidies to carbon sequestration)
• Collective community, social networks
• There’s an opportunity for investment in technology adaptation.

What is next? US

• US needs to be involved in order for others to participate
• Perform experiment on state level
  • Tax current carbon-based energy creation; ramp up tax to offset CCS costs
  • New industries will spring up around tax and people will be able to prepare
  • Invent low-carbon, non-carbon energy
  • review align energy incentives and subsidies
  • Drive innovation, not lobbying
  • do fundamental and applied research )Avoid testing on ourselves whenever possible)
  • Design a modeling solution
  • Create cement similar to how mollusks do (using biomimicry)

What is next? China

• China is the place to scale
  • ideal for scaling startups because of the ability for government to regulate policy
  • Keep in mind: India, Brazil
  • We need to scale in both locations to maintain ownership.
• Timing may be right
  • China was a net coal exporter, now an importer
  • Power companies refusing to produce power at a loss
  • People start burning lower-grade fuel
  • CO2 is fundamentally half of greenhouse gases, but CO2 stays there for years, whereas methane, etc, dissipates
  • 100,000 years from now a quarter of CO2 will still be in the atmosphere

Incent Change through x-prize competition, move to new power plants, building code incentives, create a common basis for subsidies, LEED, educate with impact and emotion, create understanding of the true cost of carbon, measure of swiss ecopoints, make it personal, awareness, citizen censors, 10-year rolling rate map of carbon tax, using subsidies to incentivize behavior. world agreement such as WTO, frontline story.

Partnering with BP: oil and gas industry know how to drill.

Industry has decided that this needs to happen asap, but havent yet taken action. Helping them take the next step.

McRae: liabilities once carbon is in the ground, pipeline infrastructure,

Carlson: need to prioritize structures carbon will be pushed into.

Incentivize oil companies to go after carbon, both on a long-term subsidy scale and on a larger x-prize based first responder scale.

Rainforests can carry 17 kg/meter squared of carbon.

Licensing IP into joint ventures with China and allowing China to commercialize it. Present China with research: what do we mutually agree with and how can we work together to make that happen. China National Offshore Oil Company has a mandate to put themselves out of business — get china off coal.

Australia has existing projects and needs financing. We need to all work together and let each country bring their own strengths to the table.

The difference in anonymous information and personal identifiable information requires a different standard of control that should be dependent on how sensitivity of the consumer, and what’s sensitive should be dependent on the perspective of the beholder. Anonymized data can still lead to the leaking sensitive material through third party observation of indiscriminate advertising. The research over the last ten years has shown that there is no such thing as not personal identifiable information in today’s world.

There exists a commercial opportunity in which you put people in control of their data through the development of a new system that makes allows for true autonomous browsing by preventing user leaks of targeting parameters to the operator.

The level of certification required to operate within a number of currently enacted programs can be considered extensive. If we applied the same level of stringency to all outlets, then it is possible to offer a ubiquitous certification and in doing so increase efficiency and potentially increase web consumer security. The regulators don’t seem to focus on transparency as much as control

Essentially there could be the ability to create a self-employed “do not call list” via opt in strategies.

“Do not track headers are a front runner for a top down mandate. This creates an opt in world that if done right will optimize information flow.” – David Brin

The subject of self-regulation of anonymous browsing  really doesn’t matter until it has governmental support.

Intellectual property should be treated more like patent rights rather than property rights.

“Users should have the tools to assert control on who has access to their content in the long term.” –Steve Sprague wave systems.

We need some very fundamental tools that enable the identification of consumption information, both visible and invisible.

“The pragmatic model….”do not track” will result in a crash of web publishers and a loss of billions of dollars of advertising leading them to have to choose between re-vamping target modeling or the introduction of in opt in wall which will circumvent the do not track and lead to further information exploitation by existing businesses.” – Simeon Simeonon.

it is absurd that the internet is being funded by advertising…its a public space. This could be solved with a micro payment system that will result in a world of empowered users.