Climate Agreement, World Peace Meditations
GCP Event Number 500

I had decided to end the formal series of events when we reached number 500. This turns out to be a fortuitously interesting and complex "event" because two major happenings coincide. One is the culmination of the long and difficult negotiations on Climate Change, and the other is a huge collaboration of many groups organizing mass meditations for peace and a brighter future.

It is somehow fitting that this 500th formal event should be one that demonstrates one of the particular difficulties in testing the hypothesis that we may see data deviations corresponding to events that engage huge numbers of people. All events are embedded in a complex of happenings and engagements that make identifying a single source of possible effects quite difficult. Our methodology relies on precise timing and statistical leverage, and we have succeeded in making a persuasive general case, but interpretations of single events remains out of our reach. Nevertheless, the results for Dec 12 2015 are very interesting.

COP21 climate change summit reaches deal in Paris

A deal to attempt to limit the rise in global temperatures to less than 2C has been agreed at the climate change summit in Paris after two weeks of intense negotiations. The pact is the first to commit all countries to cut carbon emissions. The agreement is partly legally binding and partly voluntary. Earlier, key blocs, including the G77 group of developing countries, and nations such as China and India said they supported the proposals.

President of the UN climate conference of parties (COP) and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said: "I now invite the COP to adopt the decision entitled Paris Agreement outlined in the document.

"Looking out to the room I see that the reaction is positive, I see no objections. The Paris agreement is adopted."

And on the same day, we have one of the largest Global Consciousness Experiments ever organized. I give one example of the dozens of focused gatherings:

12.12.15 GLOBAL MEDITATION TO RAISE THE VIBRATION OF THE PLANET

The Master Shift has teamed up with 20 other meditation groups including the Dhammakaya of Thailand to create a shift in the collective consciousness. On 12.12.15 we will meditate together at 9:30 PM JST and again at 9:30 PM EST. The Master Shift will provide a free guided meditation that will be available the day of the event or feel free to create your own meditation event.

THE RESULTS OF THE COLLECTIVE MEDITATION EXPERIMENT WILL BE MEASURED by the The Global Consciousness Project (http://www.global-mind.org/) and the Global Coherence Initiative (https://www.heartmath.org/gci/). The results will be featured in a documentary called “Awaken – Time to Evolve” produced by a London based Film Production Company called Broxstar Films. Further details about the event can be found at: http://www.awakentimetoevolve.com/global-meditation-day/.

Specific Hypothesis and Results

The GCP event was set for the full day of December 12, to include the Climate Agreement reached at some unspecified time, as well as the first day of the World Peace Weekend of mass meditations around the world. The result is Chisquare 86821.188 on 86400 df, for p = 0.155 and Z = 1.013.

Interpretation

The following graph is a visual display of the statistical result. It shows the second-by-second accumulation of small deviations of the data from what’s expected. Our prediction is that deviations will tend to be positive, and if this is so, the jagged line will tend to go upward. If the endpoint is positive, this is evidence for the general hypothesis and adds to the bottom line. If the endpoint is outside the smooth curve showing 0.05 probability, the deviation is nominally significant. If the trend of the cumulative deviation is downward, this is evidence against the hypothesis, and is subtracted from the bottom line. For more detail on how to interpret the results, see The Science and related pages, as well as the standard caveat below.

Standard caveat

It is important to keep in mind that we have only a tiny statistical effect, so that it is always hard to distinguish signal from noise. This means that every success might be largely driven by chance, and every null might include a real signal overwhelmed by noise. In the long run, a real effect can be identified only by patiently accumulating replications of similar analyses.