C-Learn Simulation Puts High-Powered Climate Analysis in Hands of Educators and Students

Climate policy analysis is accessible to anyone with the online C-Learn simulation. Just plug in your estimates of what kind of emissions reductions you think it will take to limit global warming to 2 degrees (or whatever your goal is) to see the effect on the rise of temperature, sea levels, or global CO2 concentration. C-Learn is a valuable tool for anyone teaching audiences and exploring the impact of different levels of climate change mitigation on our planet.

Recently we updated C-Learn to make it particularly useful to the growing number of people running the World Climate Exercise, a role-playing game simulating the UN climate change negotiations. Coupled with World Climate, groups can act out what it is like to be UN climate change negotiators working to create a global climate agreement. By creating pledges and testing them in C-Learn, groups can plan how to prevent the highest costs of climate change. World Climate is played in classrooms throughout the Tyrolean school system in Austria and in many other classrooms worldwide. Materials to run World Climate are available in English, French, German, and Chinese. These latest updates to C-Learn make the integration of C-Learn and World Climate even easier by offering the same inputs as the proposals World Climate Delegations submit. The fossil fuel inputs now accept a stop growth year, reduction start year, and annual reduction.

Check out C-Learn, World Climate, and our other simulations by visiting our website!

Our Three Big Impacts

By Drew Jones, Beth Sawin, and Stephanie McCauley

What has our impact been?

Eight people, dozens of partners, five years, and two simulation models — what does it add up to?

Here’s our informal assessment of how much of a contribution we’ve made to the global effort to curb climate change

Together with our partners, we see three big areas. We have:

Christiana Figueres with Beth Sawin at the UN Climate Talks in Bonn, April 2010

1. Kept things honest. Our mentor Dana Meadows operated out of the theory that societies will only find fundamental solutions to the challenges we are facing when the escape hatches of wishful thinking have been closed, and we’ve been working hard to follow her lead. When, in the first week of the Copenhagen summit, some global organizations began proclaiming that success was close at hand, we re-grounded our global audience in biogeochemical realities and watched the “spinning” subside, with global effects. When, during the Durban summit, some parties argued that current pledges were good enough to meet climate goals, we ‘ran the numbers’ with clarity and precision, providing solid backing to the young people and climate advocates who were questioning such easy assertions (view our Durban results blog post). More recently, when voices rose to declare an energy miracle or natural gas bridge solution to climate, while dismissing efficiency and renewables, we ran the numbers, changed minds, and noted that the words of key thought-leaders changed as well.

“[Climate Interactive’s] software speaks numbers, not spin – and in the end it’s the numbers that count.” — Bill McKibben in the UK Guardian

2. Improved policy design by top decision-makers. We have helped powerful leaders advocate for sound long-term policy. We have made John Kerry better armed with scientific insight, Jonathan Pershing more exact, China’s climate ministry more able to reach targets, EU’s Jacquie McGlade more clear, Bill McKibben more numerate, international analysts empowered, Hal Harvey supported by modeling, the media more informed and millions of activists grounded in solid science.

The hundreds of C-ROADS users can be found worldwide in more than 70 countries.

3. Motivated, inspired, and empowered, creating new possibilities (while avoiding manipulation and zealotry). We have motivated action and reduced emissions through the hundreds of thousands of global professionals and citizens who have taught others with our tools (C-ROADS, C-Learn online, Scoreboard, iPad Pathways app, Climate Momentum, Bathtub), shown others our videos (Beth Sawin on the Scoreboard, Drew Jones on TEDx, Travis Franck’s webinar, John Sterman’s lecture), led their kids through our first or second science museum interactive exhibits, or lived a successful global climate deal through World Climate, our mock-UN “serious game” played around the world.

Not bad for eight people, dozens of partners, five years, and two simulation models. Let’s see what is next.

Please be in touch if you’d like to support our emerging work.

Climate Scoreboard on Climate Code Red

Scoreboard June 4, 2012

Our Climate Scoreboard has been broadcasting the state of global climate commitments since 2009. At the Copenhagen climate negotiations “Climate Scoreboard” and its readings were found on a confidential draft of the Copenhagen Accord that was leaked to the Guardian. In the years since, even with negotiations in Cancun and Durban, the results of the Climate Scoreboard have changed negligibly. Below David Spratt at the blog Climate Code Red recently reviewed the tool. As ever, the scoreboard calls for more ambitious action, as we work towards the day when the gap between climate proposals and climate goals is closed.

Projected warming increases as emissions rise, politics fails

David Spratt, Climate Code Red (May 29, 2012)

This chart needs no explanation. The Climate Scoreboard is an online tool that allows the public to track progress in the ongoing negotiations to produce an international climate treaty. The Scoreboard automatically reports, on a daily basis, whether proposals in the treaty process commit countries to enough greenhouse gas emissions reductions to achieve widely expressed goals, such as limiting future warming to 1.5 to 2.0°C (2.7 to 3.6°F) above pre-industrial temperatures. And users can explore the analysis behind the numbers. At time of posting, the scoreboard projected an increase in global temperature of 4.5°C by 2100.

Join a Free Webinar – New Features in C-ROADS Climate Simulation

In response to the needs of our users, Climate Interactive has updated the C-ROADS climate policy testing software with a suite of new features and analytic abilities.

In this one-hour webinar, three model developers and analysts from the Climate Interactive team will introduce the new features, from new output windows, to sensitivity testing, to more control over underlying model assumptions. The session will be interactive, with ample time for questions and discussion. Drs. Travis Franck, Phil Rice, and Lori Siegel will lead the webinar.

Title: New Features in C-ROADS 3.0
Date: Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Time: 15:00 GMT (10:00 EST)

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/728788440

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

Attendees will be able to receive a free copy of C-ROADS software.

UNFCCC Submissions Due February 28th: C-ROADS Assistance Available!

In anticipation of the Feb. 28th deadline, modeling and simulation analysis is available from Climate Interactive to support parties and observers who are preparing submissions with suggestions for increasing the level of ambition of the global climate negotiations.

Last December when the  Durban Platform was agreed to at COP-17 it included a call for negotiating parties and observer organizations to  submit “their views on options and ways for further increasing the level of ambition” in the global climate negotiations.

As one of many organizations around the world highlighting the scientific imperative for increasing that ambition we were pleased to see that solicitation, and now, with the deadline for submissions less than one month away, we are happy to announce that, during the month of February, Climate Interactive’s analytical team will be setting aside some time to assist those parties and observer organizations who are preparing submissions where scenario modeling could help clarify the submission or add rigor to the argument.

We can either help get your organization or delegation set up with the latest version of our freely available C-ROADS simulation in order to run your own analysis or, for a limited number of cases, we can provide customized analysis to support your submission. To see some examples of the types of questions that can be asked and answered with C-ROADS, take a look at our Climate Scoreboard pages, or some of our analysis of the Durban talks themselves.

To learn more and discuss what might be possible please contact CI co-director, esawin(at)climateinteractive.org

Transparent, Real-Time Analysis Works

Climate Interactive is a small team with big goals.

One of our founding goals was to offer rapid turnaround analysis of the most important climate and energy issues, and to make that analysis available ‘open source’. In doing so, we reasoned, we’d be boosting the effectiveness of the many, many parties –- from negotiators to civil society leaders — who are calling for climate policy ambitious enough to be consistent with the latest science. And, if such groups found our analysis helpful and clarifying, we assumed they would share it with their networks and constituencies, reaching more people than our small team ever would on its own.

Over the years, from Copenhagen to Cancun, this has been a productive formula for us, and it paid off again in Durban, where we analyzed the impact of waiting until 2020 to increase the ambition of pledges.

• The Washington Post covered our analysis on Dec 6th: U.N. climate talks move slowly as new studies urge more dramatic emissions cuts;
• Out of dozens of side events offered that day, the analyses from our team was included in the ECO – the Climate Action Network handout, widely read across the COP;
• In a youth briefing Jonathan Pershing was asked: “The current commitments that are on the table put us on a trajectory to around 4.3°C according to analysis by Climate Interactive.  Are you suggesting that the commitments that have been put on the table are good enough and we should now look at 2020 and beyond?”;
• Civil society groups 350.org and Avaaz organized a global online petition drive that got 700,000 signatures in 48 hours. The petition said: “The world cannot afford delay on climate action. I urge you to abandon your proposal to postpone a binding global agreement until 2020, and stand with vulnerable countries around the world by stepping up your ambition and accelerating your timeline for bold climate action.”;
• The “Climate Progress” blog of Joe Romm reposted our findings; and
• Our analysis was shared within the TckTckTck network (a global alliance of more than 300 civil society groups). It also was included in a joint press release from Greenpeace and WWF.

While celebrating our role in these remarkable events, we also soberly acknowledge that, in the end, Durban did not increase the ambition of 2020 pledges to be in line with a feasible 2°C pathway. Our efforts helped the world to see, without any illusion, what was being decided, but we didn’t get a better deal.

So, we’ll be keeping at it, in 2012 and beyond.  We’ll be ‘adding up’ current pledges, and we’ll be offering analysis of the ‘how-to’ of the  transition to a low carbon economy, which is, after all, the fundamental re-orientation needed to deliver a liveable climate. As long as there are leaders out there calling for policy that matches the science, we’ll be doing what we can to offer analysis that helps them make their case.

To Avoid Expensive and Disruptive Rates of Emissions Reduction In Coming Decades Parties Must Increase the Ambition of 2020 Pledges Today

To see a reposting on Joe Romm’s Climate Progress blog, click here. And a corroborating report by ClimateWorks Foundation here plus another by Climate Analytics here.

Postponing commitment to ambitious targets until after 2020 would commit countries to rates of CO2 emissions reductions in decades beyond 2020 that exceed those typically seen in the current generation of energy system models, making future efforts to limit temperature increase to 2°C more expensive and disruptive than needed. Without deeper reductions than are currently pledged by 2020, future generations will have sustain very rapid rates of reduction in emissions.

In the press and in the halls of the climate negotiations some parties, including the US, have been saying that 2020 pledges are essentially fixed in the form of the voluntary commitments made under the Cancun Agreement, and that current political and economic pressures mean that the time for more ambitious commitments to emissions reductions can come only after 2020.

Emissions Gap Exists, We Can Close It, says Dr. Elizabeth Sawin and 32 other Scientists

What’s the latest on the sufficiency of country mitigation pledges to the UN? Now Dr. Beth Sawin of Climate Interactive and 32 other top global scientists have spoken in the UNEP “Emissions Gap Report”. Watch yesterday’s webinar briefing on the work below:

(Click on “Vimeo” in the bottom right corner of the screen to see a larger version.)

The key conclusions of the study are:

• There is a gap between where we would like to be and where we are heading;
• The size of the gap depends on what happens in the negotiations;
• The options on the table now in the negotiations have the potential to reduce emissions by 7 GtCO2e versus what would have happened otherwise (business-as-usual);
• This can be achieved by realizing countries’ highest ambitions and ensuring “strict” rules result from the negotiations;
• It is feasible to bridge the remaining gap through more ambitious domestic actions, some of which could be supported by international climate finance; and
• With or without a gap, current studies indicate that steep emission reductions are needed post-2020 to meet temperature targets.

Some background to the work:

From Uplifting to Sobering: Perspectives From Dr. Beth Sawin on the UNFCCC session in Bonn

A few quick thoughts and reactions as I prepare to leave Bonn tomorrow after a few days working with a group of scientists assessing the ‘emissions gap’ and after spending some time at the site of the negotiations.

Most uplifting: a side event today by the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands on Low Emissions Development Strategies, featuring speakers from Indonesia, Ghana, and South Korea, each sharing about low carbon development planning in their countries, with many others actively involved in the process in the audience as well. The speaker from South Korea, Mr. Oh, several times went beyond technology (though there was plenty of good thinking about policy, investment and technology) to talk about the ‘human side’. His slides even included such goals as “changing peoples’ behavior and how they think!”After a lot of pessimism (see below) it was great to be reminded that around the world, people and governments are getting to work on transforming energy systems.

Live from Bonn: US-China Collaboration on Climate Analysis

Here in Bonn, Germany, at the UN climate conference, Dr. Elizabeth Sawin of Climate Interactive and Dr. Zhao Xiusheng of Tsinghua University collaborate on quantifying energy and climate futures. Here they are running experiments in the C-ROADS simulation.