Climate Change Education

Part 1: Climate Change, Biology and Systems Thinking

00:00:06.21 So, my name is Juliet Rooney-Varga, and I'm Associate Professor and Director
00:00:11.20 of the Climate Change Initiative at the University of Massachusetts and Lowell.
00:00:15.17 And today, I'm excited to talk to you about climate change biology and using
00:00:21.13 a systems thinking lens to look at climate change.
00:00:27.24 So, in this talk, I'd like to start off by giving a brief introduction to how climate change
00:00:32.07 intersects with biology, and then take a tour of some of the basic, well-understood
00:00:37.01 facts about climate change.
00:00:40.00 As I mentioned, we'll also show how tools from systems thinking can help us
00:00:43.24 make sense of complex dynamic systems in a way that's very relevant for understanding climate change,
00:00:50.07 and also how it affects biological systems and how we might address climate change.
00:00:59.01 I want to start off by making it clear what we're talking about when we're addressing
00:01:04.00 climate change.
00:01:05.00 So, there's weather and climate.
00:01:07.10 And often people get the two mixed up.
00:01:09.12 So, just to be completely clear, weather refers to atmospheric conditions
00:01:13.21 -- such as temperature, relative humidity, light, wind, and other atmospheric factors --
00:01:18.25 at a given time and
00:01:20.04 place.
00:01:21.24 That's different from climate, which is really the long-term, average weather that occurs
00:01:26.28 in a particular region.
00:01:28.13 Typically, we're talking about long-term being something like the average conditions
00:01:33.01 over a few decades, like 30 years.
00:01:36.02 So, here we're talking about changes in climate, not necessarily changes
00:01:40.01 in these short-term weather conditions.
00:01:43.10 And you might not think of biology and climate change as being closely linked, but they are.
00:01:48.22 Climate change impacts pretty much every type of biological activity.
00:01:53.08 And I guess we know that by how obsessed we are by the weather ourselves, right?
00:01:56.23 It affects human physiology.
00:01:58.11 It affects what we're able to do.
00:02:00.13 But it affects the physiology of plants, animals, microbes... pretty much any type of biological activity.
00:02:07.19 And at the same time, biological activity affects the climate.
00:02:10.23 So, we have the biosphere as a major driver of the carbon cycle, being critical for climate change,
00:02:18.01 and also of other properties like albedo, and other greenhouse gases,
00:02:22.22 such as methane and nitrous oxide, and many other.
00:02:25.24 So, these two are really intertwined, and very relevant for each other.
00:02:31.25 You may also not think of yourself as having a career that's gonna be impacted by climate change
00:02:35.10 if you're interested in biology.
00:02:37.10 But I think you'll find that, increasingly, biological careers and climate change
00:02:41.09 will be intertwined, and already are.
00:02:43.18 So, some examples would be biotechnology.
00:02:46.19 The development... the use of biotechnology to develop new biofuels, for example,
00:02:52.02 or ways to sequester carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
00:02:57.09 Drug discovery.
00:02:58.20 Increasingly, pharmaceutical companies are interested in, what are the drugs that
00:03:04.18 we're going to need in the future?
00:03:06.07 And many of those will be determined by the expansion or change in the geographic distribution
00:03:13.19 of diseases that are influenced by climate change,
00:03:17.04 like malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, and others.
00:03:21.24 Public health and medicine.
00:03:23.10 Increasingly impacted by climate change, and relevant to climate change.
00:03:29.04 Many of the first responders in natural disasters are people who are dealing with health problems.
00:03:35.04 And also, much of our public health is influenced by climate.
00:03:37.18 So, for example, asthma rates influenced by heat, relative humidity, and pollutants
00:03:45.10 sort of... in cities, especially.
00:03:50.02 If you're interested in ecology, I think it's kind of a no-brainer that climate change is relevant,
00:03:54.10 as the distribution and behavior and activities of organisms in the environment
00:04:00.05 are so controlled and so driven by temperature, moisture, and other factors related to climate.
00:04:08.09 The same thing with conservation biology.
00:04:10.15 How will we manage to preserve organisms, preserve species, manage our natural spaces
00:04:19.07 in the light of a changing climate?
00:04:22.14 And also, how will we adapt our agricultural systems to not only deal with changing climatic conditions
00:04:29.07 but also to perhaps be part of the solution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions
00:04:34.28 and making our systems more resilient to a changing climate?
00:04:38.08 Okay.
00:04:39.08 And I also mentioned systems thinking.
00:04:41.07 What do we mean by systems thinking?
00:04:42.23 Here, what we're really referring to is a framework or a perspective that examines
00:04:47.02 the whole system, rather than being analytical and focusing only on the elements of a system
00:04:51.25 in isolation, which would be more like a reductionist approach.
00:04:55.04 So, with something as complex and dynamic as climate change, and the human systems
00:04:59.21 that interact with it, it's really helpful to take a systems perspective.
00:05:04.09 And there are some basic concepts in systems thinking that can help us understand
00:05:07.12 those complex dynamic systems.
00:05:09.08 Okay.
00:05:10.10 Here, I want to start off with thinking about the atmosphere.
00:05:15.22 And if you're like me, you may enjoy, on a sunny day, walking outside,
00:05:20.20 looking up at the sky, and thinking about a vast open space.
00:05:25.14 From our vantage point, here on Earth's surface, the atmosphere seems like a vast open space.
00:05:31.28 But in fact, it's not.
00:05:35.16 About 90% of the molecules in Earth's atmosphere are in a thin layer that only reaches
00:05:41.06 about 12 kilometers, or 7 miles, above Earth surface.
00:05:45.00 Just to scale, that's roughly the same in thickness as the thickness of an apple skin
00:05:51.09 if the apple were the Earth.
00:05:52.27 So, it's this very thin layer.
00:05:55.08 Here's a visualization that shows that.
00:05:56.27 So, this is a visualization of the volume of Earth's atmosphere relative to the earth,
00:06:02.20 the Earth's volume.
00:06:06.11 So, that would matter except that we are using fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, and natural gas,
00:06:15.01 which... when the carbon-carbon and carbon-hydrogen bonds in those fossil fuels are oxidized or combusted,
00:06:21.13 they form carbon dioxide.
00:06:26.06 And carbon dioxide has been known for a very long time to trap heat.
00:06:30.11 It's a greenhouse gas, the most important greenhouse gas that we...
00:06:35.20 that is driving the climate system currently.
00:06:38.08 So, for over 200 years, carbon dioxide has been known to trap heat.
00:06:42.13 Okay.
00:06:42.27 So, that wouldn't be a problem except for the scale of emissions.
00:06:45.07 So, here we've got the average American omitting about 20 tons of carbon dioxide per year.
00:06:50.18 That translates roughly to about 100 pounds per day.
00:06:55.17 Collectively, all human activities currently release about 37 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year.
00:07:03.11 So, one way to visualize that would be to take the coal in the hoppers that you
00:07:07.03 see in that train, and all the carbon that's represented by that coal, transfer that to the atmosphere,
00:07:14.05 and, in order to make up 37 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, you would need
00:07:18.04 a train that wrapped around earth's equator about 54 times every year.
00:07:26.02 So, that carbon dioxide from both fossil fuel use
00:07:32.06 -- and in the bottom what you see is
00:07:33.25 3.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year as a result of land use and deforestation --
00:07:41.05 goes into the atmosphere.
00:07:43.18 But some of that... some of that... about 50% of it remains in the atmosphere,
00:07:48.06 and the other 50% is taken up either by land plants
00:07:52.05 -- you see the 26% represented by the terrestrial sink, or land plants --
00:07:56.20 and 24% is currently taken up by the oceans, primarily through abiotic diffusion.
00:08:05.00 So, together, the land plants sink and the oceans sink represents what we call net removals
00:08:13.17 from the atmosphere.
00:08:15.05 Okay?
00:08:16.05 So, we've got emissions into the atmosphere, and then flow, or removals, out of the atmosphere.
00:08:28.02 And indeed, if we look over time at the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide...
00:08:35.18 this graph goes back about 800,000 years using ice core data, and then the latter part of the graph
00:08:41.12 looking at actual observations of the atmosphere.
00:08:45.17 And so what you see there is, right up to the point of basically human agriculture being invented,
00:08:52.04 you've got carbon dioxide concentrations varying between glacial and interglacial periods
00:08:58.21 between about 180 and 280 parts per million, but really staying within that band.
00:09:05.27 Then, we've got human civilization kind of coming online, that stable period.
00:09:12.12 And then, since that time, since the start of the Industrial Revolution,
00:09:16.22 a quite dramatic increase of about 40% to, in 2014, 400 parts per million carbon dioxide.
00:09:28.05 Now we've got... looking out into the future what I see is our choice.
00:09:32.02 So, in one scenario is a low emissions scenario, which would put us at about 450 parts per million.
00:09:39.02 In another scenario, which is actually the track that we're basically on currently,
00:09:44.15 would be a high emissions scenario, which would put us well over 800...
00:09:49.00 closer to 900 parts per million by 2100.
00:09:52.16 So, that's really what the choice is, looking out into the future.
00:09:59.10 Okay.
00:09:59.26 So, how do we get there?
00:10:00.25 Let's just say that our goal is to stabilize atmospheric CO2 at around 450 parts per million.
00:10:11.17 What would we need to do to emissions in order to achieve that goal?
00:10:18.22 So, here's a graph of emissions from 2000 to 2100, and here are some choices.
00:10:25.09 The first choice is A, a shape that looks pretty much similar to the shape
00:10:30.05 that you just saw, stabilizing emissions.
00:10:34.06 Another choice would be B, decreasing emissions after a while, with a fairly moderate decrease.
00:10:41.06 And the last choice would be C. So, if you could just take a moment and think about
00:10:46.28 which one of these choices you think is appropriate if we want to stabilize carbon dioxide concentrations
00:10:54.17 at 450, that would be great.
00:10:57.26 And if you could even write it down -- A, B, or C -- that would be even better.
00:11:05.01 So, if you've committed to your answer
00:11:08.26 -- and I'm just showing you a reminder of what the concentration pathway looks like --
00:11:14.04 most people give the answer A.
00:11:17.21 So, I don't know if you fell in that category or not, but if you did you were in good company.
00:11:21.28 A lot of very well-educated people have given that answer.
00:11:25.18 The correct answer is actually C.
00:11:30.05 And that's clearly a very dramatic decrease in emissions in order to achieve a stabilization in concentration.
00:11:37.21 Why is that?
00:11:39.11 And I'm just gonna give a really simple example.
00:11:41.20 Here's my water jar.
00:11:44.02 And we can think about the jar as the atmosphere -- a finite volume.
00:11:50.19 And if I had another jar, and I was pouring emissions into that atmosphere,
00:11:55.05 the jar of water is filling up, right?
00:11:57.20 So, in order to stabilize the concentration, essentially I need to stop pouring into the jar.
00:12:04.27 And that's the same thing with emissions and concentration.
00:12:10.05 Here's one more choice.
00:12:12.01 Let's say that we decide to put off action, and choose a later date to start reducing emissions.
00:12:20.10 Because it's still the same jar, and it's still got the sort of memory of emissions
00:12:25.07 from previous times, if we still have the same stabilization goal
00:12:31.02 that means that we actually need to reduce emissions even faster -- be on a steeper rate of decline --
00:12:36.17 in order to meet that same goal, because we've taken up some of the space in the jar
00:12:40.27 by emissions that have already happened.
00:12:43.04 So, this brings up a key systems concept of accumulation,
00:12:48.05 as a result of flows into and out of stocks.
00:12:51.16 So, here we've got a simple system with a stock -- anything that can accumulate or decline --
00:12:56.15 and a flow into that stock, an inflow, as well as a flow out of the stock.
00:13:03.05 And just like my jar of water that either I pour into or drink out of, or I do both,
00:13:09.21 or the atmosphere, where we've got emissions and net removals,
00:13:13.19 anytime where we've got an inflow which is greater than the outflow,
00:13:18.08 the stock will accumulate.
00:13:21.05 So, here, in the case of atmospheric CO2, if emissions are greater than net removals,
00:13:28.11 as they currently are, atmospheric CO2 increases over time.
00:13:36.17 Okay.
00:13:37.13 So, this atmospheric CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
00:13:40.12 It traps heat; it's been known to for a long time.
00:13:43.19 And as it accumulates, it's a major driver of global temperature.
00:13:48.02 And this is also, you know, nothing that's contested.
00:13:50.27 It's very solid science.
00:13:52.24 We see a clear record of increase over time in global average temperature so far,
00:13:59.06 from 1892 to currently, of about 0.85 degrees C.
00:14:03.11 If we include the increase in heat content of the oceans,
00:14:11.09 where actually about 90% of the heat imbalance is accumulating,
00:14:17.12 you see a very clear signal over time of increase
00:14:21.08 in ocean heat content, even since, you know, the 1970s.
00:14:27.22 And actually, I just want to point out, too, that the energy budget of the Earth or of the oceans
00:14:36.09 can also be considered a stock and flow system.
00:14:38.07 And we'll come back to that, and why it matters, in a bit.
00:14:43.13 So, you might think 0.85 degrees C, or, looking out to the future, let's say 4 or 5 degrees C.
00:14:53.05 What's the big deal?
00:14:54.19 Why does that matter?
00:14:55.19 But if you're thinking about biology, you know that for yourself especially, or for most...
00:15:01.08 most mammals or endothermic organisms, it could matter a lot, right?,
00:15:04.12 if your temperature goes up.
00:15:06.08 Similarly for the climate, a small shift in mean can lead to a very large shift in extremes.
00:15:12.07 So, here what you see is two normal distributions, one showing the previous climate,
00:15:18.26 and then the other showing a shifted climate.
00:15:23.02 The same distribution, but with a new mean.
00:15:26.26 And what you see here is that in the old climate there was that pink area under the curve...
00:15:33.03 represented an extreme heat event, like a heat wave.
00:15:38.13 But, if we shift the mean a little bit, the area under the curve that's pink
00:15:43.13 has grown a lot.
00:15:44.24 And now you've got much more extreme heat.
00:15:47.26 But you've also got a new kind of extreme heat, that red heat,
00:15:52.11 which is an entirely different set of conditions than occurred previously.
00:15:56.21 So, you can see how a small shift in mean can lead to a large shift in extremes.
00:16:03.04 And for biological systems, especially, it's those extremes that matter.
00:16:07.05 Right?
00:16:08.05 It's a few days of extreme heat that can wipe out a wheat field, rather than the mean temperature
00:16:15.09 of the entire summer.
00:16:19.16 If we throw on top of the... or, if we take a look at the shift in variance as well as
00:16:25.20 a shift in mean, you also see extremes on both sides changing.
00:16:31.16 So, here we've got the same mean but more variability.
00:16:34.24 And here you see more cold weather on one side -- a new kind of cold weather --
00:16:40.10 and more extreme hot weather on the other side.
00:16:44.27 If we combine both of those things, basically shift the mean and also broaden the variance,
00:16:50.17 which is actually what climate scientists expect to see in the future and what
00:16:54.26 we've already witnessed a little bit of so far, then we actually see quite a large shift.
00:17:01.22 And especially on the heat side, much more extreme hot weather, and a...
00:17:07.00 sort of a new kind of hot weather.
00:17:10.25 Warmer air also means less frequent but more intense precipitation.
00:17:14.02 So, for example, on a cold winter's day, if you walk into a warm house, you'll often feel that
00:17:21.08 that air is very dry.
00:17:22.27 And that's because that cold air from outside has been warmed up, and now it's able to
00:17:27.15 take up more water... more water, exponentially more water, as a matter of fact.
00:17:32.24 So, all else equal, rain or precipitation occurs when a body of air is saturated with water.
00:17:44.07 So, you can think of it as, say, a bucket, or the capacity of a given body of air
00:17:50.16 to hold water, as a set volume.
00:17:54.14 All else equal... like... like a bucket is a set volume.
00:17:57.12 When that bucket becomes full, it dumps out, or creates a precipitation event.
00:18:02.28 If the body of air is warmed up, once again, all else equal, you've essentially created
00:18:08.25 a bigger bucket.
00:18:10.04 It's able to hold more water, so it takes longer for it to fill.
00:18:16.07 And then once it is full, or once the capacity for it to hold water has been reached or saturated,
00:18:22.00 there will now be more water that precipitates out.
00:18:25.20 So, that leads to both an increased likelihood of drought in some areas,
00:18:31.09 and an increased likelihood of intense precipitation.
00:18:37.19 Looking to the past, we have already observed an increase in atmospheric moisture
00:18:42.13 since the 1970s of about 4%.
00:18:48.02 We've also observed an increase in very heavy precipitation events.
00:18:52.01 In the part of the country where I live, by about 71%.
00:18:56.04 In others, less -- 5 to 37, 27, depending on where you live.
00:19:04.21 We also expect some parts of the US, and other parts of the world, to experience more droughts.
00:19:10.15 This is a slide showing a very extreme drought from 2012.
00:19:17.20 And as I mentioned, in some parts of the country, especially the Southwest,
00:19:21.06 we're expecting to see droughts become more prevalent and more intense.
00:19:25.25 Okay.
00:19:26.25 Another key systems concept that I want to bring up is the concept of feedback loops.
00:19:33.15 So, here's an example from the climate.
00:19:36.03 We've got an increase in temperature causing a decline in Arctic sea ice extent --
00:19:44.16 melting of sea ice.
00:19:47.09 If there's less sea ice, the surface is less white or less reflective,
00:19:50.20 and so there's less radiation that goes back to space and more that's absorbed by the oceans.
00:19:56.12 That leads to warming, or an increase in temperature.
00:19:59.13 So, a feedback loop is a situation where a change in one element in the system
00:20:06.20 leads to subsequent changes that feed back to cause another change in that same initial element.
00:20:12.17 So, in this case, we've got what we call a reinforcing feedback loop,
00:20:17.01 where an increase in temperature can lead to further increases in temperature through this feedback loop.
00:20:24.17 And this is actually what's responsible for much of what's called
00:20:27.22 Arctic amplification of warming.
00:20:30.23 And the Arctic is indeed warming about 2-3 times faster than the global average.
00:20:36.08 And I'll just bring in a little bit of my own work in microbial ecology,
00:20:39.18 where we're looking at the process of methane production, or methanogenesis, in Arctic peatlands.
00:20:47.00 And we were interested in how different types of peatlands responded to vegetation changes,
00:20:55.11 climate changes, and responded through methane production.
00:21:00.28 And so, here we've got in... in one case, a type of ecosystem which is low nutrient,
00:21:06.08 dominated by sphagnum moss.
00:21:08.05 And in this ecosystem, acetate accumulates, and does not lead to the production of methane.
00:21:15.07 And then, another system, which is minerotrophic, or high nutrient,
00:21:19.20 is s dominated by this sedge-like vegetation,
00:21:22.21 and methane is produced from acetate in these systems.
00:21:25.01 It doesn't accumulate; it just gets transformed into acetate.
00:21:29.20 That's important because methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas.
00:21:33.13 So, a change in these ecosystems can lead to a change in climate.
00:21:36.27 So, here we've got CO2 emissions leading to global warming.
00:21:41.14 That climate change is leading to shifts and temperature, and also shifts in vegetation
00:21:46.17 in the Arctic.
00:21:47.17 And actually shifting more systems towards that high-nutrient condition.
00:21:53.08 Stimulating the production of methane from acetate.
00:21:57.26 Leading to methane production.
00:21:59.12 And then ultimately leading to more warming.
00:22:02.20 And that's another example of a reinforcing loop.
00:22:07.17 So, leading to, basically, an exponential increase in methane from those sources over time.
00:22:19.13 So, these types of feedback loops can lead to another key system feature, which is non-linear behavior.
00:22:25.09 So, one example of non-linear behavior is exponential growth.
00:22:29.23 Another can be an abrupt or a threshold kind of behavior.
00:22:32.17 So, here we've got an image of surface melt of ice in Greenland.
00:22:39.26 Here on July 8th, in 2012.
00:22:42.23 4 days later, July 12th, going from something that looks pretty normal
00:22:49.23 -- about 40% surface melt in the summer -- to roughly 97%.
00:22:56.17 Something that was very rapid.
00:22:59.02 Okay.
00:22:59.16 And a last systems concept that's really critical in thinking about climate change is that of
00:23:04.23 time delays.
00:23:10.04 And this is really just a kind of cartoon animation to show you
00:23:14.03 how stocks, and accumulation in stocks, can lead to delays in systems.
00:23:19.09 So, at the top of the slide what you see is that first one that we started out with,
00:23:24.11 that first jar.
00:23:25.11 CO2 emissions leading to an increase in atmospheric CO2 because they're greater than removals.
00:23:34.11 Other examples of stock and flow systems in the climate are the energy balance
00:23:39.08 -- so, incoming energy leading to changes in global temperature.
00:23:44.20 And in this case, what we've got is atmospheric CO2
00:23:47.16 basically causing a decrease in the amount of energy that's escaping to space.
00:23:53.13 And then, of course, global temperature also influencing the melting of land-based ice
00:23:59.07 to influence the volume of the oceans.
00:24:01.01 So, one way to visualize that, then, is to see atmospheric CO2 builds up and then
00:24:06.07 ultimately causes a shift in temperature and a volume of oceans, but with a delay.
00:24:13.07 I'd invite you to explore these dynamics for yourself, and here's an example of
00:24:19.17 the climate momentum simulator.
00:24:21.27 And you can see how changing emissions leads to changes in atmospheric CO2,
00:24:30.17 changes in temperature, and also changes in sea level rise over time.
00:24:35.19 You can see that it takes a long time for sea level rise to respond to
00:24:40.02 the changes in emissions.
00:24:46.16 Okay.
00:24:47.05 So, I want to start wrapping up by thinking about what some of our choices are
00:24:51.02 looking out to the future.
00:24:52.05 So, here you see global surface warming from 1900 to 2000.
00:24:59.00 And then out from 2000 to 2100.
00:25:03.15 And some of the impacts that we're facing.
00:25:06.05 Depending on the trajectory... you see different... different possible trajectories that we
00:25:10.02 might follow from here to 2100.
00:25:12.16 So, one is locking in ice sheet melts, and with that, the potential for multi-meter sea level rise.
00:25:20.13 Another is extinction of plant and animal species from climate change alone.
00:25:25.28 So, that's something that we start to see further out, and that we could avoid
00:25:32.13 with a lower-emission scenario.
00:25:34.25 Also, there's the possibility of rapid sea level rise within decades
00:25:40.11 if we really push on a high-emission scenario.
00:25:46.08 And I also want to point out that we could take action,
00:25:49.12 and we could reduce our emissions substantially.
00:25:51.19 And if we do that, remember that we need to think about the scale of action.
00:25:55.22 It's too late for 2011 to be a peak emissions year, but here, if we look at
00:26:00.23 other possible emissions trajectories to meet a 2-degree goal
00:26:07.03 -- a goal of limiting warming to 2 degrees above pre-industrial times --
00:26:10.26 these are some examples of emissions trajectories that are
00:26:13.25 commensurate with that goal.
00:26:15.14 So, either way, we're talking about substantial change.
00:26:20.13 And an invitation to you that whatever you're interested in biology, it's likely to play
00:26:25.24 a key role in climate change moving into the future;
00:26:29.14 in understanding and projecting biological
00:26:31.16 impacts;
00:26:32.22 in adapting to climate change, changes that are now inevitable, some of them;
00:26:37.11 in developing new technologies to reduce fossil fuel emissions and to sequester greenhouse
00:26:42.02 gases;
00:26:44.03 to improve public health and make our... make our systems more resilient to a changing climate;
00:26:49.01 and to educating and communicating with others, so hopefully we can
00:26:52.08 address this problem effectively.

Part 2: Let the Games Begin: Climate Change Education

00:00:06.29 So my name is Juliette Rooney-Varga.
00:00:10.09 I'm an Associate Professor of Environmental Biology and
00:00:12.17 Director of the UMass Lowell Climate Change Initiative.
00:00:15.03 And I'm here to talk to you today about the use of games
00:00:20.05 and games, especially simulation-based role-playing games as an opportunity for climate change
00:00:25.22 education, communication, and also decision support.
00:00:33.07 So if you've ever felt that climate change is hard to learn about,
00:00:37.00 think about, to talk about,
00:00:39.05 and actually solve problems around,
00:00:41.20 you're right.
00:00:43.13 There are a lot of challenges related to climate change education and communication.
00:00:48.00 There's actually quite a growing body of cognitive and social science research
00:00:52.06 that pointed at some interesting reasons for these challenges.
00:00:57.05 And there's also some good news.
00:00:58.13 There's a growing group of tools for learning about climate change,
00:01:02.01 and the best part is they're fun.
00:01:04.06 As an educator, or student,
00:01:06.26 or anyone else who wants to bring the best available science to people you interact with,
00:01:11.20 we're developing freely available, accessible tools that you can use,
00:01:17.21 and I want to tell you a little bit about why
00:01:19.10 these tools might be a good approach
00:01:21.05 and introduce a couple of them to you.
00:01:27.15 So today, an overview of what I'm going to do in this talk
00:01:31.00 is to very briefly describe a need for integrating climate change education
00:01:37.09 into education in biology and into other fields.
00:01:40.06 And I'll just refer you to another iBiology seminar that
00:01:43.19 I've got if you want to learn more about climate change science, basics of climate change science,
00:01:49.04 and what that need really is.
00:01:53.26 I also want to talk about a challenge,
00:01:55.03 and that challenge is really why climate change is
00:01:58.26 so challenging to learn about and also to respond to effectively.
00:02:02.17 And that has to do with cognitive issues,
00:02:05.02 cognitive problems, cognitive challenges,
00:02:09.04 with challenges in the affective domain or really in our emotional responses to climate change,
00:02:14.15 and also social forces that influence how we understand or respond to climate change.
00:02:21.08 Then I want to talk about an opportunity that I see,
00:02:23.13 which is really around simulation-based role playing games,
00:02:27.01 which I'll explain in a little bit.
00:02:28.23 And as I mentioned an invitation,
00:02:31.13 an invitation to use these tools and to join this community,
00:02:33.03 this growing community of people around the world who are using it.
00:02:38.29 So just very very briefly, the need.
00:02:42.08 Scientific projections at this point are very clear.
00:02:46.28 We are facing a dynamic future.
00:02:51.15 If we don't act, we're talking about some potentially very serious impacts as a result of a change in climate.
00:02:59.18 So here you see a temperature rise,
00:03:00.25 global temperature rise over time from 1900 projected out to 2100
00:03:05.07 and some different possibilities with some different impacts from locking in
00:03:10.06 ice sheet melts, parts of ice sheet melts,
00:03:12.11 and sea level rise along with it
00:03:15.03 to plant and animal species being committed to extinction as a result of climate change
00:03:19.02 to go to higher temperature rises to rapid sea level rise
00:03:25.08 becoming possible with a really high warming scenario.
00:03:32.09 If we take action that is commensurate with this problem,
00:03:35.06 we're also gonna sea some changes.
00:03:37.25 So this is a graph to show emissions from 2005,
00:03:40.27 in this case, to 2050. And some different, possible trajectories of those emissions.
00:03:45.26 If we want to meet our best understanding
00:03:49.06 of the goal of limiting temperature rise to no more than 2 degrees C
00:03:54.25 above pre-Industrial levels, which is the currently internationally accepted
00:04:00.03 goal for averting dangerous human interference with the climate system.
00:04:04.26 So this just shows you some of the peak years in emissions
00:04:07.21 and what those emission trajectories might look like
00:04:09.13 if we push that decision out.
00:04:11.12 We can no longer act in 2011;
00:04:13.17 that's in the past.
00:04:14.29 So looking out to the future, 2015, 2020,
00:04:17.21 we push the decision out further, you wind up with a steeper decline,
00:04:21.03 and that's gonna impact our economy
00:04:23.13 and the way that we live and transition,
00:04:27.27 how rapidly we need to transition to a low carbon economy.
00:04:32.28 So clearly, in order to deal with the situation, innovate, and solve problems in it,
00:04:39.14 we have some challenges. We have a need for student citizens,
00:04:42.19 the decision-makers to understand this dynamic situation
00:04:46.02 who are empowered to solve problems and find new ways to address it
00:04:49.14 and who can meet those challenges.
00:04:52.18 So one area that is a challenge that is something we need to address
00:04:59.13 is in the area of mental models -
00:05:02.14 cognition around climate change.
00:05:04.09 So one concern is that we're not blank slates when it comes to climate change.
00:05:11.20 We have lots of mental models and mental constructs of how the world works around us,
00:05:16.27 and many of us have many msiconceptions or flawed mental models about dynamic systems generally
00:05:23.23 and about climate change in particular.
00:05:26.23 Another challenge is we need to engage affective processing,
00:05:31.06 so I'll explain why engaging the emotional side of climate change
00:05:38.02 could make a difference that could be important.
00:05:40.20 And a third is that we need to engage social learning.
00:05:43.22 Ok, I'm gonna start with mental models.
00:05:46.26 So here's an image,
00:05:49.14 and my first question for you is what do you see.
00:05:52.22 If you could maybe jot down on a piece of paper
00:05:57.04 or tell the person next to you what is this image.
00:06:01.04 If you are from a Western culture, most of us tend to say,
00:06:10.02 well, that's easy.
00:06:12.13 It's maybe an adult and a child,
00:06:14.10 and they're near a building, maybe inside the building or outside the building,
00:06:18.11 and there's a window.
00:06:19.23 But that's actually not what this image is
00:06:23.25 and not what it's intended to be by the person who drew it.
00:06:27.12 It's actually a mother and a child under a tree,
00:06:31.15 and she's got a basket with water in it on her head.
00:06:36.28 And my point is simply that your pre-existing ideas,
00:06:43.08 your pre-existing understanding of how the world works influences the inferences you make
00:06:50.06 about what you see in the world around you
00:06:52.08 and actually can influence what you see.
00:06:55.29 So our mental models are internal representations of how the world works around us
00:07:02.19 serve as a scaffold through which we incorporate new information
00:07:09.00 and also serve as a filter through which we don't incorporate information,
00:07:14.18 so we filter out information if it doesn't fit within our mental model.
00:07:19.10 They're really great because they help us to interpret the world around us
00:07:22.07 quickly and help us when making decisions about how to act and behave.
00:07:29.14 So where we run into some problems
00:07:34.19 is that around climate change especially,
00:07:37.03 there are many common mental models
00:07:40.07 that may not be correct - may be flawed. Here's one.
00:07:45.21 Climate change will be gradual,
00:07:47.20 and it's not gonna directly affect me.
00:07:50.12 Another common one is that if we just stop growing emissions,
00:07:56.07 the problem will be solved.
00:07:59.03 Another really common one that I've heard many, very intelligent people say:
00:08:07.17 if it turns out climate change is a problem, well,
00:08:09.10 we'll deal with it then. We'll wait and see.
00:08:13.03 And then another common one is that we have to make a choice.
00:08:16.25 It's either the economy,
00:08:18.09 or it's dealing with climate change. You can't do both.
00:08:20.11 And that's something we could discuss - is that a flawed mental model.
00:08:30.15 So this challenge is that once we have mental models in place,
00:08:35.10 it's not that easy to change them,
00:08:39.25 so what's especially true if they're entrenched
00:08:42.25 and if they're supported by other forces like social, cognitive, or emotional drivers.
00:08:48.15 So it's not like a typical education model
00:08:51.24 where me just delivering information to you will fix the information you've got,
00:08:56.28 and now you've got the fresh mental model,
00:08:58.00 and we're all set to do the next thing. It's not that simple.
00:09:01.22 Another challenge is that complex systems
00:09:06.22 including the climate system often behave in ways that are not intuitive,
00:09:11.11 so that creates a whole set of issues where we have mental models
00:09:17.19 that we think we understand how complex systems work.
00:09:19.14 We actually do a poor job simulating those complex systems mentally.
00:09:26.05 And then as I mentioned, our conventional approaches and
00:09:30.25 education and communication generally of sort of
00:09:32.27 delivering information has not shown to be sufficient to overcome the flawed mental models.
00:09:41.14 I want to talk a little bit about combining rational and analytical process
00:09:47.13 - processing of information with emtional and affective processing.
00:09:52.04 So this is kind of now fairly well established that we have two different physical locations
00:09:57.24 in our brains and two different types of processing systems -
00:10:00.19 one rational and analytic and the other emotional affective, but
00:10:05.01 they're called System 2 - System 1 with other names, but
00:10:07.07 here are the basics.
00:10:08.29 So the rational and analytic domain is
00:10:12.03 logical; it encodes reality using abstract encoding such as symbols, words, equations.
00:10:24.21 It uses algorithms,
00:10:28.04 and these algorithms must be learned and cued.
00:10:31.20 And it actually takes substantial effort to make that happen
00:10:35.16 to employ and to carry out rational and analytic processing.
00:10:44.17 In contrast, a more ancient part of our processing system
00:10:49.09 is our emotional and affective,
00:10:51.07 which is intuitive, relies on vivid concrete representations of reality
00:10:57.27 rather than abstract representations, uses stories and images
00:11:04.05 to understand the world around us,
00:11:07.01 and it doesn't need to be learned through cues; it's automatic - very rapid.
00:11:15.21 And interestingly, when in conflict,
00:11:19.25 if for example, some information that you're receiving and processing analytically
00:11:23.22 conflicts with your emotional or affective response to that information,
00:11:28.14 affective domain almost always trumps.
00:11:34.08 So we tend to rely on our affective processing than we frequently realize.
00:11:38.25 And of course, rational and analytic processing is key,
00:11:42.17 especially when we think about something as complex as climate change.
00:11:46.04 It provides us with the way to understand the scientific basis -
00:11:49.28 the causes and impacts, helps us to design technical responses
00:11:54.05 and to analyze the impacts of those responses.
00:11:57.27 But the emotional and affective domain's also important
00:12:01.05 when it comes to learning about climate change
00:12:03.23 because it can provide a means to sustain engagement
00:12:07.08 with the material to make you not want to turn away from it, for example.
00:12:11.26 It can provide motivation,
00:12:13.26 which is necessary for sustained effort even
00:12:16.18 on the rational and analytic side.
00:12:19.21 And it's also needed for action, so it's one thing to understand something.
00:12:24.16 It's another thing to do something about it.
00:12:26.22 And emotional and affective engagement is necessary in order to take something you understand and actually take action on it.
00:12:36.00 We also know that affective responses can even drive analytic processing.
00:12:41.09 So one example of that is motivated reasoning,
00:12:45.06 and that would be a case where decision-making and beliefs are
00:12:48.05 driven by the affective response. In other words,
00:12:51.03 you don't want to live with the cognitive dissonance of having one system
00:12:57.25 understanding a situation to lead to certain outcomes, and
00:13:01.21 the other system, say the affective processing, rejecting those outcomes.
00:13:07.29 In order to avoid that dissonance,
00:13:09.28 we actually can sometimes drive decision-making based on affective response alone.
00:13:17.12 And once again, delivering more information doesn't solve that problem.
00:13:22.07 So now we've talked about mental models and affective responses, and
00:13:29.13 I wanna also talk about the challenge of social and cultural forces
00:13:34.13 that can work against building robust mental models of climate change.
00:13:38.07 Or it can work for them.
00:13:41.20 So these are some data from a study actually in Australia but
00:13:46.22 fairly similar to data from the United States and shows belief in climate change,
00:13:56.21 so what you see on the X-axis are different groups.
00:14:00.08 There's a group that believes that human-induced climate change is not happening,
00:14:04.04 and they make up less than 10% of the population.
00:14:11.22 Interestingly, when they were asked to estimate how many people actually
00:14:19.26 agree with them and share the view that human-induced climate change is not happening,
00:14:25.00 they overestimate that number.
00:14:27.11 So even though they are less than 10% of the actualy population,
00:14:30.15 they estimated that about 43% of the population agree with them.
00:14:34.24 That's in contrast with people who believed that
00:14:40.09 human-induced climate change was happening,
00:14:42.24 and they actually made up more than 50% of the population.
00:14:47.17 But conversely, they underestimate the number of people that
00:14:53.24 agree with them and believe that only 40% of the population shares their view.
00:15:00.17 So why is this important?
00:15:03.06 It's important because both of those groups
00:15:06.22 underestimate the belief in human-caused climate change in the general population.
00:15:11.26 And just imagine you walk into a room full of people,
00:15:15.18 and you're estimating who believes in what.
00:15:21.03 And if you think that most of them disagree with you about something,
00:15:26.10 would you want to start talking to them about it?
00:15:29.12 Maybe not.
00:15:32.10 Ok, so at this point, we've introduced some challenges,
00:15:38.06 and now I want to introduce some tools to overcome that.
00:15:41.12 And these are simulation-based role-playing games.
00:15:45.13 So here is this opportunity,
00:15:49.01 and what I'm refering to here is the combination of using a computer simulation.
00:15:56.25 And this computer simulation or computer simulations can
00:16:00.26 represent the complexity of the physical and technical system.
00:16:04.19 And that's great because it actually reduces the cognitive load on people like, you know, me
00:16:11.04 who might want to interact with that system and explore its dynamics without having to fully understand all the different pieces that are simulated mentally,
00:16:20.20 so provides a means for us to explore complex systems and reduces the cognitive load needed to do so.
00:16:26.27 But the games also include role-playing, and that's social.
00:16:31.09 So that can actually represent the complexity of social interactions,
00:16:36.01 which is softer, maybe less predictable, and it's represented by real people.
00:16:43.20 I actually want to point out too that this is much like climate change itself.
00:16:47.08 We have a case right now where the geophysical condition
00:16:50.21 of our planet is being controlled at least to a fair degree by human activity.
00:16:58.11 And human activity, of course, includes all aspects of our social systems including,
00:17:04.27 you know, technical, economic, social, psychological, affective, etc.
00:17:13.00 So interestingly I think, we're taking a problem
00:17:17.07 which has all these different disciplines and complexities to it
00:17:20.29 and addressing it with an approach that also has those different disciplines and aspect to it.
00:17:31.19 So simulation-based role-playing games offer
00:17:34.04 some great opportunities because since it's really not reality
00:17:38.28 and we can introduce a time-step of pretty much whatever we want -
00:17:42.06 months, years, decades, centuries.
00:17:46.14 We can compress time and reality,
00:17:48.27 so you can play out long-term decisions and find out what are the effects
00:17:52.24 further on down the line in a way that we can't do in reality.
00:17:55.16 It allows us to experience the real thing
00:17:58.10 without requiring the real thing.
00:17:59.29 And when it comes something like climate change,
00:18:02.08 we're probably better off not quite doing the real experiment
00:18:06.06 because we can only do that once.
00:18:08.00 So we can explore the consequences of decisions that unfold over decades,
00:18:13.17 and we can learn really through the same iterative processes of scientific method.
00:18:18.12 If you think of it as scientists, what are we doing?
00:18:21.17 We pose a hypothesis, we conduct an experiment
00:18:25.16 or go out and collect data,
00:18:27.21 and that hypothesis is based on an initial mental model
00:18:31.01 as we look at the data that come in, we revise our mental model accordingly,
00:18:36.09 adjust it, and then pose a new hypothesis and start the iterative process again.
00:18:41.20 Yet, as scientists who are exploring climate change,
00:18:45.05 we're expecting other people to just take our word for it.
00:18:48.26 With this simulation-based role-playing game, we're not doing that.
00:18:52.13 We're saying, you know what, do the same thing scientists do.
00:18:55.14 Pose a hypothesis based on your existing mental models,
00:18:58.03 go out and collect data, find out if the data match
00:19:01.05 or don't match your mental model, revise, iterate, try again.
00:19:05.28 Learn for yourself - truly the same as the scientific process.
00:19:10.12 Ok, and in simulation-based role-playing games,
00:19:16.04 we're simultaneously engaging both analytic and affective processing.
00:19:22.07 As I mentioned computer simulations that represent the best available science
00:19:25.18 are clearly on the analytic side,
00:19:27.16 but we're also engaging in experiential learning, learning by doing,
00:19:32.23 and that includes often a visceral or affective response as well as a social experience.
00:19:39.22 So one example that I wanna mention to you is a game called World Climate.
00:19:47.01 And what this game does is it puts students in the roles of delegates or students
00:19:52.14 or it could be decision-makers, CEOs, we've run this with Presidents of Universities,
00:19:59.15 and policy-makers for that matter. And it puts, whoever these people are,
00:20:05.08 in the roles of delegates to the United Nations Climate Change Negotiations.
00:20:09.26 The game is framed by the consensus, the best available
00:20:12.22 consensus climate science through a computer simulation
00:20:16.11 called C-ROADS or Climate Rapid Overview and Decision Support.
00:20:20.23 And actually that model is developed initially to
00:20:26.26 address the need to improve policy-makers' mental models of the climate system.
00:20:31.22 I'm gonna give you very very brief overview of C-ROADS.
00:20:35.21 You can learn more about it at Climate Interactive's website.
00:20:38.29 Basically what you see here is in red
00:20:42.14 are User Input options, so you've got different country emissions
00:20:49.06 or negotiating block emissions that you can enter in and
00:20:52.01 what those emission trajectories might look like.
00:20:54.13 You can enter in options like deforestation and afforestation,
00:20:57.12 and options of other greenhouse gas emissions like methane,
00:21:02.07 nitrous oxide, SF gases, as well as, as you see,
00:21:10.07 land use changes, and then that feeds into a carbon cycle model,
00:21:16.06 other green house cycles, ultimately forcing the
00:21:20.04 climate influencing temperature and sea level rise.
00:21:26.05 So this is just a very very broad interview.
00:21:31.01 C-ROADS has been scientifically vetted by an external committee
00:21:33.17 and recommended as an official United Nations tool.
00:21:36.23 And I'm not gonna get into the details as I mentioned, but
00:21:39.21 here's an example of a little bit of the complexity of the carbon cycle component.
00:21:44.07 You can see, well, you can't see much in this slide,
00:21:47.01 but you can see that there is a lot more than you or
00:21:50.06 I can mentally simulate in our own minds.
00:21:54.05 C-ROADS has been calibrated to much more complex climate models -
00:21:58.03 here, you see from the AR4 the 4th assessment report of the IPCC.
00:22:01.22 Their projections with different emission scenarios, and in the circles you see
00:22:06.22 C-ROADS projections for those same emissions scenarios matching quite well.
00:22:13.08 The conclusions of the scientific review panel were quite favorable,
00:22:17.14 saying that the C-ROADS model reproduced the response properties of state-of-the-art climate models very well.
00:22:25.04 And the review panel supported its widespread use.
00:22:29.11 Indeed, it has been receiving widespread use including by our
00:22:33.21 Secretary of State and is actually used quite a bit
00:22:36.13 by our state department and by users around the world.
00:22:41.23 The game I'm gonna tell you about briefly today has been
00:22:45.16 played by people ranging from Nobel prize winning scientists
00:22:49.12 to EU government policymakers,
00:22:51.22 CEOs from major corporations in China,
00:22:54.10 and the EU, the US, oil executives,
00:22:57.04 University students on five continents, high school students, and more.
00:23:03.11 So when we run World Climate,
00:23:05.01 we start with the setup of a room.
00:23:06.28 So we have the wealthy countries, the US, the EU,
00:23:10.12 Japan, Australia, developed nations of the world.
00:23:13.25 We also have the rapidly developing nations.
00:23:17.29 They're an increasingly important geopolitical force in global negotiations -
00:23:23.15 China, India, Russia, Indonesia, and others.
00:23:27.29 And then we have low-lying ocean states,
00:23:32.16 sub-Saharan African countries,
00:23:34.15 much of South America - the less developed countries
00:23:38.06 who have done the least to contribute to this problem
00:23:40.19 because populations are growing and because emissions are growing as well.
00:23:45.12 Welcome to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
00:23:52.11 If I were running this game with you now,
00:23:56.00 I'd also take on a role.
00:23:57.04 As a woman, I'd take on the role of Christiana Figueres,
00:24:00.14 the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change currently.
00:24:06.04 If I were a man, I might become Ban Ki-moon,
00:24:08.26 but it's important for me also to get into a role and really set the stage,
00:24:13.10 so we can present in using all of our analytic, affective, and social processes.
00:24:19.15 So, here you are, welcome to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties.
00:24:29.07 What do you want to do?
00:24:31.19 What decisions will you make?
00:24:33.26 What would you do if you were representing a developing country
00:24:37.19 with many people who are below the global poverty line?
00:24:41.26 You haven't done much to contribute to this problem yet,
00:24:44.19 and you want to grow and to have an opportunity to have your economy lifted up.
00:24:49.15 What would you do if you were the US team?
00:24:51.20 You're just coming out of a recession.
00:24:53.26 Maybe you need to think about how you would transition to your economy
00:24:57.28 but protect that somewhat fragile economic situation.
00:25:01.22 What if you were a country from sub-Saharan Africa? What would your concerns be then?
00:25:09.03 So you have a chance to think about these questions
00:25:12.20 and think about what you would do in terms of emissions decisions,
00:25:17.03 decisions about protecting rainforests,
00:25:19.21 if you have them, decisions about afforestation, decisions about other greenhouse gases.
00:25:25.10 And here is just an example of what that might look like.
00:25:29.06 And this is C-Learn on-line version of C-ROADS simulation.
00:25:33.09 What you see here are fossil fuel emissions by country group,
00:25:37.03 in this case with the three block version -
00:25:39.11 developed, rapidly developing, and less developed nations.
00:25:43.04 And that's over on the left hand side,
00:25:45.16 and you also see choices that you can make about emissions from deforestation
00:25:48.25 or protecting rain forests and sequestration from afforestation
00:25:55.24 referring to planting trees or increasing the land area of forests and
00:26:03.26 therefore increasing the terrestrial carbon sink, or
00:26:06.17 the amount of carbon dioxide that's taken up by land plants.
00:26:11.22 And then what you see over here are impacts,
00:26:14.23 so we've got CO2 concentration in the atmosphere
00:26:17.16 and in this case in the lower panel, temperature.
00:26:21.03 And that is represented as temperature change over pre-Industrial times
00:26:24.28 with a goal of somewhere between one and a half degrees C
00:26:29.24 and two degrees C increase above pre-Industrial times.
00:26:33.25 And that two degrees C increase represents the internationally accepted goal
00:26:38.11 for avoiding dangerous human interference with the climate system.
00:26:44.23 That same goal is represented in the CO2 concentration
00:26:47.17 as 450 ppm CO2. You can see that line over there.
00:26:54.17 Ok, so what you can see in terms of decisions that are
00:27:00.09 made then is that if I were representing a wealthy country,
00:27:03.14 say the United States or the developed nations,
00:27:05.15 I would want to choose a year in which my emissions will stop growing
00:27:10.18 and then a year in which they start to decline and start to go down.
00:27:17.04 And then I also need to choose a rate for that decline.
00:27:21.16 And here's it's represented as an annual reduction rate, so year after year,
00:27:26.12 what would that decline; let's say I select two percent rate.
00:27:31.10 It would mean that year after year, we would have two percent compounded over time -
00:27:39.19 continue two percent reduction sustained.
00:27:43.10 So here I've got decisions being made where I'm putting in 2020
00:27:47.02 and 2030 for my stop growth year and
00:27:49.28 reduction start year with two percent decline.
00:27:52.26 You can see the impact that I've got, and then for developing nations,
00:27:57.07 2025, let's say, and 2030 also with a
00:28:00.20 pretty ambitious two percent annual rate of decline.
00:28:04.17 And for developing B nations or less developed countries,
00:28:07.29 they're deciding to do 2030, a little bit later,
00:28:11.17 and 2035 with also a two percent rate of decline.
00:28:16.16 So these are just some examples of some of the decisions that you might want to make.
00:28:18.23 You can see the changes in emissions.
00:28:21.22 We can also play with and can also see the changes in temperature and CO2 concentrations,
00:28:28.03 so we're making some headway towards our goal.
00:28:30.17 We're not there yet, but if we also add reducing emissions
00:28:35.04 from deforestation by protecting rainforests and planting trees through afforestation,
00:28:40.18 we're actually coming a lot closer to our goal.
00:28:43.26 So here what we've got then is something on the order of
00:28:49.07 520 ppm and something on the order of close to
00:28:56.12 2.8 degrees C rise in temperature by 2100.
00:29:02.06 So this particular set of decisions didn't quite meet the goal,
00:29:05.03 but it made quite a bit of progress.
00:29:06.24 And we can run this round again and see if decisions could come closer.
00:29:14.19 So I just want to point that it's not particularly exciting
00:29:17.15 to show you the simulation like this without you being
00:29:21.28 able to make your own decisions, but
00:29:24.02 I'll just give you an example of some students receiving one of my fabulous lectures.
00:29:30.01 You can see how engaged they are and that conventional approach.
00:29:33.14 I don't think I'm that bad at lecturing,
00:29:35.03 but that's one way to deliver information.
00:29:38.22 And here is the same group of students who are negotiating a deal, and they're
00:29:44.01 making their own decisions about what to do
00:29:46.04 and in this case arguing about who's fault it is
00:29:52.21 when China is emitting but the clothes are getting shipped to the US.
00:29:58.19 Who's emissions are those?
00:30:00.21 So they're getting into some of the details here and trying to figure what the best deal is.
00:30:05.21 This experience has been evaluated by an external team,
00:30:13.01 and here are some of the comments that came out of that evaluation.
00:30:17.29 It was cited as an activity that promoted the most learning.
00:30:23.08 It was very powerful at shaping students' understanding
00:30:26.26 of what it would truly take to enact climate change policy on a global scale.
00:30:32.01 And also something that I think is really important in terms
00:30:34.09 of systems thinking and really trying to understand how complex systems work
00:30:39.16 is having the opportunity to experience a point of view other than your own.
00:30:46.03 So this is just one of many tools that I want to introduce to you.
00:30:57.22 C-Learn and C-ROADS are available freely for download.
00:31:01.13 We've just developed a new simulation role-playing game around En-ROADS,
00:31:07.06 an energy policy simulation, and in this case,
00:31:12.03 in the game called World Energy,
00:31:14.14 participants get to take on the role of leaders of key energy
00:31:18.02 and economic sectors and make decisions about
00:31:20.27 things like R&D for new technology, policies for energy,
00:31:26.02 whether it's subsidies or prices, energy efficiency,
00:31:30.23 investment and R&D, population and consumption, and more.
00:31:35.18 So we're really excited about that. I'm happy to share that with you.
00:31:39.15 We've also got MOOC where you can learn more about systems thinking
00:31:46.17 as it applies to climate change called the Climate Leader.
00:31:50.19 And I just invite you to check out Climate Interactive's website
00:31:55.08 where you can find these tools and other simulations to help explore the dynamic aspects of climate change and solutions to it.
00:32:04.06 And then I just want to point that I think that we really have a great opportunity at the nexus of education,
00:32:12.06 communication, and decision support.
00:32:14.29 We have a growing number of decision support tools that
00:32:18.22 represent these complex physical and technical systems in a way
00:32:21.28 that's interactive and accessible and really created for decision makers, for policy makers.
00:32:28.28 We can take those tools and bring them in to interactive,
00:32:32.05 fun role-playing situations in education and communication
00:32:36.18 to help people experience both the complex physical
00:32:40.09 and technical systems but also the social systems that go along
00:32:44.08 with making decisions around those areas.
00:32:48.22 And I think we have an opportunity for students, leaders, and policy-makers,
00:32:55.15 and communities, and public simultaneously with these approaches.
00:33:01.09 So the best way to learn, of course, is by doing, not by listening to me.
00:33:07.29 So come and play. There's a growing recognition that games can provide a powerful tool
00:33:12.24 for understanding, communicating, innovating, and making decisions about climate change.
00:33:17.04 And it's also a great way to reach the people that you work with
00:33:21.29 or that you're interested in communicating with about these issues.
00:33:26.23 I'd like to end by thanking many people who worked on this project
00:33:30.10 including the Climate Interactive team - Ellie Johnston,
00:33:34.10 Andrew Jones, Travis Franck, Elizabeth Sawin,
00:33:37.19 Students at UMass Lowell who worked with me -
00:33:39.26 Devan Hawkins, Cecelia Hunt, Jared Nease, Ksenia Purekhovskaya,
00:33:43.18 Cameron Standley, and John Sterman and Kenneth Rath. Thank you.

Videos in this Talk

Part 1: Climate Change, Biology and Systems Thinking
Part 2: Let the Games Begin: Climate Change Education
Audience:
- General Public
- Student
- Researcher
- Educators
- Educators of H. School / Intro Undergrad
- Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad

Speaker: Juliette Rooney-Varga

Total Duration: 1:01:33

Recorded: July 2014

All Talks in Ecology

Talk Overview

Part 1: Rooney-Varga explains that a holistic, systems thinking approach is necessary to understand human-caused climate change. Systems thinking concepts that are critical to climate change science include the accumulation of atmospheric stocks of greenhouse gases, feedback processes that amplify or dampen the impacts of climate change, abrupt nonlinear change, and the delayed impacts of today’s actions, such as emissions today that will influence the climate for millennia.

Part 2: Rooney-Varga discusses the need for integrating climate change into biology education and why it can be difficult to understand and teach. She explains that introducing simulation-based role-playing games to students is an effective and fun way to teach how decisions and actions taken today will impact climate change in the future.

Speaker Bio

Juliette Rooney-Varga

Juliette Rooney-Varga is Director of the Climate Change Initiative and Associate Professor of Environmental Biology at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. She leads the NASA-funded Climate Education in an Age of Media Project, and works closely with Climate Interactive to design role-playing games that simulate the long-term outcome of today’s energy choices and policies…. Continue Reading