Climate Interactive Site Launches: Tackling the root cause of climate change

How can people take effective action to avoid our collective disaster if they don't understand the system they are trying to influence? Even smart people don't get climate that well. So people need help learning about climate. That's the basic strategy behind Climate Interactive, which aims to enable effective action on climate change, and which this month launched a new website built by ifPeople . Now the work of Climate Interactive is open to the public, which means a powerful resource for policy analysts, teachers, and organizations working to motivate public action on climate change!

Climate Interactive is a collaborative effort of Sustainability Institute, MIT, Ventana Systems, and others (see all partners). The initiative takes scientifically-based models and creates simulations that provide an interactive learning environment. As Drew Jones of the Sustainability Institute says, "We’ve got a set of user-friendly, scientifically grounded climate change simulators (and more on the way) that are badly needed -- they give fast, accurate answers to “what if” questions asked by decisionmakers and global citizens as they grapple with climate mitigation strategy." The simulations may leverage only a portion of the model -- like the Bathtub simulation, which seeks to illustrate simply how carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere -- and can also be more complex, giving the user many "policy levers".

CI's team recently visited Atlanta, GA to facilitate a role-playing exercise using one of the models. Drew Jones, acting as Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon lead a mock UN negotiation (part of the post-Kyoto Protocol process). Over 40 participants were divided into region-specific groups and tried to work out agreements that would preserve the wellbeing of the planet and its residents. Each round of negotiations was followed by a run of the C-ROADS simulator, which gave the participants information on where temperature, sea level, and carbon in the atmosphere would be with their agreements. The model drove home the magnitude of the challenge to make the changes and also just how big the changes that are needed are. Read more about the experience.

Complementary to the models and simulations, Climate Interactive's site hosts "sim media", the learning materials such as videos and presentations, that complement the simulations. For example, Drew Jones provided a de-brief video for the Bathtub simulation, which can be used as an educational tool (watch it on the website). The website is in the process of being prepared to allow more user-generated content and support a broader community to contribute their own web-based simulations based on the models from Climate Interactive.

ifPeople built the website with the open source content management system Plone and integrated Salsa's tools for email marketing, donation processing and event organizing. You can browse more information about ifPeople's services or contact us to discuss your website.