World Energy Exercise: Putting You in Control of Our Energy Future

Climate Interactive has developed the World Energy Exercise to provide a simulation-based experience to help deepen participants’ understanding of potential policy and investment scenarios to address our global energy challenges. Recently, Drew Jones led a version of World Energy for 100 energy graduate students at Stanford University. More on the event is here. The video below summarizes that event.

World Climate Now in 4 Languages

Credit: officenow/Flickr

Our World Climate Exercise, a role-playing game that simulates the UN climate change negotiations, has been played around the world from classes of school children in Austria to a visiting group of Chinese officials at MIT. The interest and enthusiasm from the community of people leading this exercise has meant several have volunteered to translate our materials from English into French, Chinese, and German.

Materials for the exercise in French are the latest addition to the collection, which we recently received from Laurent Richard, a French math teacher in Boston. You can find these materials and our other translations among the facilitator’s resources on our website. Let me know if you’ve used World Climate — we are always interested to find out how our tools have been of use and would love further translation of our materials.

“World Climate” Mock-UN Exercise Energizes Youth

Youngest “World Climate” players yet!

Climate Interactive’s Drew Jones led a class of eleven seventh graders from Hanger Hall School for Girls through the “Mock-UN” policy exercise where three teams represent country groups and negotiate a global climate deal. They learned the biogeochemical carbon system through the “Bathtub” analogy and improved their understanding of climate dynamics.

Insurance risk industry takes notice of C-ROADS

The actuarial profession is full of models of risk and assessments of associated costs, but as Nico Aspinall explains in her piece published in The Actuary (UK), Climate Interactive’s C-ROADS is uniquely able to show the steps needed to keep climate change below 2 degrees C by the end of the century. In order to make sure the insights gained through C-ROADS are available to everyone we make the model freely available. Request a download today or try C-Learn, a lighter-weight version of C-ROADS.

Comment: Climate change could be a ‘serious game’

14 Nov 2011

by Nico Aspinall

C-ROADS doesn’t present itself as a computer game, but underlying its graphs and sliders is a serious challenge: designing CO₂ emissions policies to find one which can keep global warming to less than 2⁰C.

University of Albany Students “Driven to Make a Difference” with C-ROADS

Today we have guest post by Professor Eliot Rich at the University of Albany, SUNY, who recently held the World Climate exercise for a group of undergraduate students.

University at Albany students and faculty at the World Climate exercise, April 2011

“When I left the simulation, I was driven to make a difference”

In April 2011, students and faculty at the University at Albany, State University of New York, used the C-ROADS model and the World Climate Simulation to gain perspective on the environmental and political challenges facing their generation.  The simulation was part of a semester-long class on business strategy and sustainability offered to undergraduates by Prof. Eliot Rich, Department of Information Technology Management and the University’s Honors College.

Drew Jones Presents C-ROADS Lessons at EPA Climate Impact Simulation Conference

Last month, Drew Jones presented at the EPA’s “Integrated Modeling to Characterize Climate Change Impacts and Support Decision Making” conference in Atlanta, GA. In the video above, he discusses the lessons our Climate Interactive team has learned while developing and sharing our C-ROADS model and its climate insights with the world.

 

Serious Climate Games Launched in Asheville — With Drew Jones and C-ROADS

On February 24, several innovative climate simulation and gaming tools will be presented in Asheville, NC (most notably the new and cool “Fate of the World.”) Climate Interactive’s Drew Jones will be one of the presenters, showing C-ROADS.  For more information, download the event description and agenda here.

“World Climate” — Our Role-Playing Simulation-Based Policy Exercise is Spreading

More people around the world are getting to experience World Climate: A Computer-Simulation-Based Role-Playing Exercise! Here are a couple of recent examples.

Mike Goodman ran World Climate as part of a week long systems thinking workshop. There were about 25 participants who were part of Systems Approach for Natural Resource Problem Solving sponsored by the King Ranch Institute for Ranch Management in Texas. Attendees included wildlife managers, ranch managers, professors, & graduate students (masters & PhDs).

Top Eleven Extensions of the C-ROADS Climate Simulation

Since 2006, Sustainability Institute’s climate efforts — Climate Interactive and Our Climate Ourselves – operating along side our work with international policymakers, has achieved significant successes translating simulation-based insights in eleven different forms.

1. Embeddable Widget. The C-ROADS-based Climate Scoreboard spread virally through the climate policy world during the Copenhagen Conference and was embedded in thousands of blogs and webpages, reaching over half a million views.

2. Online Datasets. The International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, and Washington Post used the Excel files of model output that we post online, to create graphics for their media to report the Copenhagen Accord. And 350.org used the same data as part of a poster to influence delegates at the meetings.

3. Simulation Exhibits. A consortium of science museum exhibit designers convened by Brown University integrated the C-ROADS simulation into a “touch-table” exhibit that is now touring New England science museums.

4. “Sticky” Metaphors. Dr. John Sterman (a partner in Climate Interactive) developed the “carbon bathtub” as a framework that was published as the “Big New Idea” in National Geographic Magazine in December 2009.

World’s Countries Ratify Global Climate Deal! in a Dartmouth simulation at least…

Professor David Peart and Dr. Lori Siegel led a powerful learning experience for Dartmouth College students using the C-ROADS simulator as part of the Copenhagen Climate Exercise (now World Climate)

The College created an engaging video on the experience — check it out above. And their press release is here.

Sustainability issues and our team’s connections run deep at Dartmouth College. The founder of our organization, Sustainability Institute, Donella Meadows, taught there for several decades.  Professor David Peart serves on our board. And four members of our core C-ROADS and Climate Interactive team — Dr. John Sterman (MIT), Dr. Beth Sawin (SI), Dr. Tom Fiddaman (Ventana Systems), and me (Drew Jones — SI) — are all alums.