The Climate Interactive team has been combing the websites and public statements of various countries, in order to assess the state of the global deal to address climate change. The table here is the result of that research. Check it out here and see all the references here. And go here to see what climate results we’ll likely get if all these proposals actually happen.
More and more commitments every month, and still much further to go!
This week’s B-Green Collaborative feature story highlights Climate Interactive’s tools and their role in providing important information to climate negotiators.
The article begins by discussing the overall details of the C-ROADS model inputs and its potential uses in policymaker decisions. It proceeds to give a short analysis of our Climate Momentum and Dynamics tool, which was created to quickly display a pre-calculated set of climate scenarios based on actual C-ROADS output. Using this tool, they conclude that “if the people of the earth don’t change their ways, we will live in a world far warmer than it has been for the last 650,000 years…with an atmosphere and oceans far different than anything man has experienced before.” Thus, it is important that all nations work together to arrive at a path for reduction.
For more information on C-ROADS or to try out the Climate Momentum and Dynamics simulation, visit our Climate Interactive website.
Today we have a guest blogger, long time colleague, the system dynamicist and systems thinker Kris Wile of Systems Thinking Collaborative.
Chris Soderquist, of Pontifex Consulting, and I delivered another Climate Change Exercise in Albuquerque today. Sponsored by Sandia Labs. The participants included scientists from Sandia Labs and math and science teachers from middle schools around the country.
The most surprising thing occurred during the second round of negotiations. Usually this is the time when delegates from Developing A circle around the Developed countries’ table to talk. Instead, all the participants formed a standing semi-circle around the C-ROADS sim and demanded to experiment with proposals. Different voting blocs committed to increasingly larger and more immediate reductions until they realized what it would take to stabilize CO2 in the atmosphere. They broke back into their groups to finalize those commitments. (more…)
Thanks to Google Earth, citizen leaders around the world have access to satellite images of their local watersheds and forests. And increasingly, they are using the information to monitor the health of these places and to advocate for measures to protect them. Yale e360 has a good recent article on this trend, reporting that:
“Citizens and environmental groups are now using Google Earth to tracks threats to pristine rivers from hydroelectric projects, catalogue endangered species, help indigenous people in the Amazon protect their land, and alert citizens and government officials that boats are illegally fishing off the Canary Islands.”
News like this encourages our vision: that a democratization of access to climate change models could lead to a similar level of engagement and empowerment.
We are thrilled that C-ROADS simulation is finding increasing utility in supporting decision makers, like US Senator John Kerry, and US Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change, Jonathan Pershing.
But we see additional possibilities. Just as satellite information that used to be available only to those with special access is now being used much more widely by ordinary citizens and grassroots leaders, we think the output of climate models, until recently only available to scientists and climate policy makers, could be well used by youth activists, faith leaders, and community leaders, to build understanding, mobilize supporters and study the likely impacts of policy options.
We’re hosting a free webinar about the possibilites. See here for more information.
The climate bill put forward this week by Waxman and Markey lays out targets that are ambitious enough to make a significant contribution to the global effort to avoid the most dangerous consequences of human-caused climate change.
In a previous post I showed that Waxman-Markey, on its own, won’t achieve long-term climate goals (such as stabilizing atmospheric CO2 levels at 350-450 ppm or limiting temperature increase to less than 2°C). No one country can reduce emissions enough to achieve such goals. They can only be realized through global cooperation.
But that should not be taken to mean that Waxman-Markey (or any other proposed US emissions reductions policy) is insignificant. (more…)
If the governments of the largest GHG emitting nations had the vision and the mandate of the low-lying Indian Ocean nation, The Maldives, we’d be already be aiming towards a different world.
The Maldives President, Mohamed Nasheed, announced a plan for that country to become carbon neutral within a decade. If the rest of us followed that example, we’d be aiming for a world in which CO2 levels at the end of this century would stabilize near 350 ppm, rather than still be rising past the 900 ppm mark as they would under “Business As Usual” or the 730 ppm-mark as they are expected to if governments aren’t able to offer more than the current proposals under discussion around the planet. (see our previous post on these proposals). (more…)
Our partners John Sterman from MIT and Bob Corell from the Heinz Center are presenting C-ROADS and its latest findings this Wednesday (March 18) on the Hill! Senator John Kerry will provide introductory remarks. See announcement below.
What is the Climate-Rapid Overview And Decision Support Simulator (C-ROADS) and what was the motivation for its development? More importantly, how is this simulator intended to be used to assess the success or failure of various greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction policies, nationally and internationally, alone or in combination, to limit climate change? Is the tool scientifically robust? Who is its intended user? Are there examples of the use of C-ROADS to evaluate current legislative proposals to reduce GHG emissions? What was the outcome of those simulations? (more…)
In a session on “Enabling Long Term Climate Policy” at the IARU Climate Conference in Copenhagen yesterday, I presented on behalf of the Climate Action Initiative, the team that has formed to use C-ROADS and policy exercises created around it with leaders from government, business and civil society around the world.
Sharing our results and vision in just 15 minutes was a tough challenge. I had to: (more…)
One of the more interesting talks at the Climate Congress this week came a presentation by Nick Silver and Oliver Betts, professionals from the insurance industry who have been applying frameworks of risk analysis from that industry to the issue of climate change. It was fascinating (and alarming) to see climate change through their eyes.
They spoke about “risk of ruin” analysis common in their industry, where one takes the most conservative analysis of risks – in this case the high end of climate sensitivity (the temperature increase expected for a doubling of atmospheric CO2), the high end possible sea level rise, the low end of temperatures where irreversible change is thought to become probable.
Applying these methods they presented two conclusions:
(1) The uncertainties of climate change are too high to build a proper “risk of ruin” model, at the standards of practice in their field.
(2) They were able to do an approximate calculation and concluded that current atmospheric CO2 levels already present an unacceptable risk, and actions should be taken immediately to lower CO2 levels and protect against that risk.
So sad that collectively we are risking the ‘assets’ of our only planet to a level that the insurance industry wouldn’t allow for a business or home.
I hope they write up their findings, and share them widely, coming as they do in a language to which decision makers may be more accustomed to than the IPCC’s framing on risk.
OK – she wasn’t speaking to the C-ROADS team alone but to all of the assembled scientists:
“You scientists have to tell the politicians what you know loud and clear. Bring your best game make your case compelling to decision makers and all citizens.”
She spoke also to those of us attending the conference from the US. The essence of her remarks:
Obama’s pledge of 80% reductions relative to 1990 levels by 2050 is great, but the world needs the US to listen to the science and deliver real reductions in the short and medium turn. That will be the real key to bring forth movement toward a global deal.
