Citizen Power

This isn’t just about polar bears anymore. This video explains tipping points and feedback loops very well. Does that sound too geeky for you? Watch the video, it’s very enlightening. It’s called “Wake Up, Freak Out – then Get a Grip”, which I found on ClimateAction.au.

Here’s the bottom line: We need to get the carbon level in the atmosphere down to 350 ppm. At the highest, we could probably stand 400ppm. More than that and serious problems will occur. Methane is already leaking out of the permafrost in the north, and methane is our biggest, worst greenhouse gas. Unfortunately, we are currently on track to get up to 600ppm, or more, which would literally change the planet into a place where life might not survive. At least, not life as we know it. (Climate change evolution has already started in insects). What will solve this gigantic problem? The big question is, how can we stop this before we get to a tipping point after which there is no return.

The 8 leading industrialized countries have to take on much more ambitious plans than they have today, and get the developing countries to understand they can’t go where we have been. They need to start several steps ahead of our industrial revolution. How do we know this? A super computer program. This climate simulator was developed by MIT and several other entities. It’s called C-ROADS. Bob Correll of the Climate Action Initiative was recently interviewed on NPR and I’m going to play what he had to say in the next Futurism Now podcast. Bob Correll has been using the C-ROADS simulator to explore the long term impacts of several country-level commitments to address climate change. So far, the commitments are not adequate, but that’s what upcoming climate conferences are for. The following article is from Climate Interactive.

C-ROADS — The Climate Rapid Overview and Decision-support Simulator

Our team from Sustainability Institute, Ventana Systems, and MIT in the U.S. has developed “C-ROADS”, (formerly called “Pangaea”) a decision-maker-oriented international climate simulator and is engaging partners to use it to supporting climate policy design at the national and international scale.

C-ROADS stands for “Climate Rapid Overview and Decision-support Simulator.”

As opposed to most climate models, which take days or weeks to run and are designed for scientists, this simulator will be posted as freeware on the internet, can be used by most anyone, and runs in less than .1 second on a laptop.

The simulator operates at three levels of regional disaggregation — 3, 7, or 14 global negotiating blocs. So we can ask questions such as “what if all countries follow their current commitments?” IE, what if the EU really reduces emissions 80% below 1990 by 2050, the US follows something like the Warner-Lieberman Act, Mexico drops 10% below 2004 by 2014, and China continues decreasing its emissions intensity and so on?

In order to learn more, you could explore 1) our two page non-technical flier, 2) a powerpoint presentation that Drew Jones recently delivered on the simulation (with a bit of more technical background), 3) a five page more-technical overview of the simulator, 4) our 70+ page DRAFT technical reference document that outlines the assumptions in the model (available soon) and 5) some comments on the simulator by climate experts.

If our partnering and fundraising goes as planned, soon this model will available online for the world to use, adapt, extend, and translate into new languages, via our Climate Interactive effort and partnership with Forio.

It sounds like a very cool simulator — I wish I could see it myself. But at least it exists and scientists are using it as a guideline for what we must do, when and how much. That’s useful. And it’s also an indication that we need to spend much more on research.

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