12 ms·

Minecraft Global Warming

524 points by nsporillo 8y ago

npunt 8y ago
Great idea for teaching in schools. I wonder if this works with Minecraft's Education edition? [0] Its nice the readme goes into detail on some lesson plan ideas. Global warming is such an abstract problem and if you can tie it to individual's behaviors inside a (small) simulated world, it can be a very powerful teaching tool. [0] https://education.minecraft.net https://education.minecraft.net
- nsporillo 8y ago
  Unfortunately it does not support Education Edition, but you make a good point in that this could be a great teaching tool. I have a good bit of Climate Change related content that I can try to integrate more into the game play itself. I'll add education edition support to my roadmap. Thanks!
  - npunt 8y ago
    Great to hear! Another suggestion is to provide some kind of setup guide or easy way to spin up a remote server. Just created an issue for that. I've spent the last hour trying to get up to speed with this and haven't yet got it set up. As you bring this project to maturity, if you're interested in the education context, you'll want to optimize for setup time. Educators and techs that help them are hugely time constrained in a school setting so the quicker they can get a lesson running the better. If setup takes considerable time (5-10min?) or domain expertise, it's a nonstarter.
  - brylie 8y ago
    Really cool idea! Would you consider making a Minetest version?
    - nsporillo 8y ago
      Wow I havent checked up on Minetest in years! I'll consider making a Minetest version, but I'd have to review their Lua modding api to see if it'd be feasible. Thanks
- sandov 8y ago
  Is education edition open source at least?. Because I don't think teaching proprietary software to kids is a good idea.
  - npunt 8y ago
    Thats an interesting ideological argument, whose practical effects would be negative. Vast majority of the high quality education software out there isn't open source.
    - drb91 8y ago
      Err, what is the point of the educational edition if not to hack on it?
      - npunt 8y ago
        Hacking IN it :)
  - TheDong 8y ago
    By that argument, children shouldn't be writing their documents in Word, nor their presentations in powerpoint, nor using computers that contain proprietary intel micro-code in any classes. The reality is two-fold: Proprietary software is used universally, so learning some of it will make you more marketable later on and help you in life. Knowing excel / word is valuable because many companies run on those pieces of software to some large degree. Secondly, it's pragmatic; there's no real viable option to using proprietary intel or amd hardware while using any computer, so we must use them.
    - 477353468463695 8y ago
      Micro-code, I don't care about. As you say you'd have to ban the use of computers entirely, but having to write your documents in Word etc., I do not think is good. As a student, you should be able to install the software that you use in class on your PC at home, without having to jump through infinite hoops or asking your parents to buy it for you. Sure, Microsoft Office, you can sort of expect to need and need again in the future. But with other software, you can hardly guess how often you're going to be using it. So, you're not going to buy it just to play around with it at home. You might even skip doing homework, if it's too much hassle to install. A required internet connection can also be particularly inpairing, depending on your situation. I was for example provided an educational version of Matlab in university, but ended up mostly learning in GNU Octave (which was thankfully fantastic), because I traveled to university by train and so did most of my learning in the train, where I had no internet connection. Another example is me having to pirate an outdated version of Delphi in middle school, because we were writing a program with that in school, that I wanted to continue at home. The teacher did not intend for anyone to continue working at home, so we weren't provided an educational version or similar. The version of Delphi we used was also so old that you actually couldn't buy it anymore. Lastly, if you can't transfer your LibreOffice knowledge to Microsoft Office, I don't think you should claim any particular computer skills on your CV. We're not talking about rocket science being done in Excel. You generally only need the most basic of features, which function almost identically even in Gnumeric.
- anon_lastname 8y ago
  Imagine public schools buying minecraft licenses just so kids can observe that "when you use the furnace too much, the world becomes more like hell." I think kids play minecraft too much already. I would much prefer it if we gave students shovels and let them dig up an empty plot of land in _real life_.
- anonlastname 8y ago
  Imagine public schools buying minecraft licenses just so kids can observe that "when you use the furnace too much, the world becomes more like hell." I think kids play minecraft too much already. I would much prefer it if we gave students shovels and let them dig up an empty plot of land in _real life_.
  - scarejunba 8y ago
    Hey, that's a good idea. You give the students actual wood stoves, and they'll cause global warming, and then they'll die when they're adults. That'll help illustrate the concept in a way that a simulated world can't.
    - anonlastname 8y ago
      Their lifespans would actually be prolonged by the obesity they don't have. The atmosphere will even out because of the computer power they're not using.
      - ben_w 8y ago
        Their lifespans would probably be shorter because breathing in that much smoke causes cancer at significantly high rates.
    - ams6110 8y ago
      Wood stoves are carbon neutral.
      - KineticLensman 8y ago
        > Wood stoves are carbon neutral Not compared with not burning the wood, but using it in something like construction, where the carbon dioxide remains locked up [0] [0] https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/wood-not-carbon-neutral-energy-source https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/wood-not-carbon-...
        8y ago
- aaron695 8y ago
  Or you could just tell them, how we've learned stuff for the past 2000 years. This is such a bad idea on so many levels. It's more or less the, add a computer (At great cost and time), kids become smarter myth. Literally why not tell them CO2 increases the heat, energy creates CO2, and show a picture of if you really really have to.
sjilo 8y ago
I love this
lalos 8y ago
Might as well add forest fires, in theory forests should get dryer (longer time under packed ice, hotter summers). Don't know if this mechanism exists on the game.
- wtallis 8y ago
  It's been a while, but my recollection is that forest fires can get started by exposed lava flows/pits or by lightning strikes. What's missing is variation in how easily fires are ignited and spread, ie. there's no biome-dependent dryness factor being applied to the fire mechanics.
  - haroldp 8y ago
    Forest fires would spread forever for a while back in Alpha: https://twitter.com/notch/status/72582596294483969 https://twitter.com/notch/status/72582596294483969 We all burned at least one house down.
- nvahalik 8y ago
  There are no concepts of seasons in MC, just day/night cycles. There is weather and some relationship of weather to biomes. I think that's it. I wonder how it handles unloaded chunks.
  - nsporillo 8y ago
    It will be a challenge to efficiently implement all of the in-game mechanics, especially to unloaded chunks. My ideas so far are to apply most of the effects once a chunk is reloaded, but I could also queue some changes to be applied later - even reloading the chunk to make some changes.
    - wuliwong 8y ago
      Could you keep some running score of the entire carbon footprint of the current chunk? Then if the player moved into a new chunk, you would use the old chunk's last score as having some effect on the current chunk? I guess that wouldn't account for continued tree growth or burning in the chunk you just left though...
jbattle 8y ago
It's been a few years since I played, but IIRC it is trivial to quickly or instantly (?) grow trees with bonemeal. I'd expect you could pretty easily sequester enormous amounts of carbon in chests full of logs (or maybe even toss the logs into lava). Sounds like a fun + ambitious project!
- nsporillo 8y ago
  Preventing industrial farm abuse is an outstanding issue. I think penalizing bonemeal usage might work, since keeping track of all planted trees and calculating their footprint is a very expensive task. If players have to sit and let the sapling grow on it's own, I think industrial farms might not be overpowering.
  - deadbunny 8y ago
    I think you would have to reduce the drop rate of saplings as well so it averages 1 per 10 trees or something or you could just go out for 20 mins and grind saplings from leaves fairly easily. So it might take a few in game days to grow but you could grow hundreds of trees fairly easily.
  - driverdan 8y ago
    Eliminate the growth effect of bonemeal on trees. It would require more land to have a tree farm. When you plant a large tree farm you eliminate the need for bonemeal anyway. The probability of one sapling growing each second approaches 1.
  - dannyw 8y ago
    Why not just keep track of all trees? If you destroy a tree, its carbon go back into the atmosphere. Just like normal trees; life doesn’t differentiate between planted or ‘natural’.
ReverseCold 8y ago
Might also be interesting to add a tech mod (EnderIO, Mine factory, etc) and make it so that every bit of RF (Redstone Flux, similar to kilojoules) generated from burning things causes CO2 emissions.
- tialaramex 8y ago
  In a way it feels as though most tech mods are biased towards sustainable energy already. It's common for end game power to be impossibly efficient solar, or nuclear type power sources which produce conveniently not so dangerous waste. In the really ludicrous modpacks the end game is usually infinite everything in some form. It is after all a game, if Thaumcraft's insanity mechanic drove your character to suicide or the Space mods actually left you adrift in empty space forever if you make the mistake of jumping off a space station that would not be fun.
  - deadbunny 8y ago
    I don't know, there is a small but noticeable audience for permadeath hard as nails games.
- SquareWheel 8y ago
  Forge mods don't generally play nice with Spigot/Bukkit plugins. Different ecosystems.
explorigin 8y ago
I'm not sure I like the concept of carbon offsets. In the real world, someone has to plant the trees, not just buy perri-air.
- nsporillo 8y ago
  Yeah I think a good way to keep things realistic is for the offsets to be fulfilled by other players. If someone is too busy generating in-game currency, they can just pay newer players or those looking for money to plant lots of trees.
  - explorigin 8y ago
    That'd be better. Now you have a currency and an economy. :-)
theyinwhy 8y ago
> Allow players to purchase "carbon offsets" which instantly reduce their personal carbon score I'd prefer buying carbon offsets doing exactly nothing as in real life. It is a cheat that's not benefiting anyone.
- 0xCMP 8y ago
  They do something, but I think it's not correct in Minecraft. In real life it increases costs which means lowering that cost has a benefit to the bottom line (i.e. a well meaning employee can justify this to people measured by profits/costs/etc.). However, in MC where is the profit and does a carbon credit actually encourage players to try to do something seems interesting thing to see.
  - bostik 8y ago
    Well, one could make them arbitrarily unfair. Purchasing a carbon credit could reduce a player's own emission score but increase a random opponent's score by the same amount.
crankylinuxuser 8y ago
Wow. I can see a few other things to increase the scariness.. 1. Boreal forests catch fire on hotter/higher CO2 (like they are in California now) 2. Temperate areas get terraformed to deserts if possible 3. Health heals slower, or not at all on high CO2 due to environmental effects 4. Sources of fire increase their sparking distance in which flammable things catch on fire easier. Encourages easier spread of forest fires and player-crafted fires. 5. Water turns acidic, and deals slow damage. (Like the coral reefs)
- nsporillo 8y ago
  I appreciate the ideas, I will definitely look to incorporate them! One of my current challenges is coming up with a balanced model, since I dont have any real server player data to analyze. Of course it will be configurable, but i'd like for the default models not spiral to a destroyed world quickly...
poisonarena 8y ago
I like how pollution is handled in factorio
- make3 8y ago
  how is it handled?
  - unimpressive 8y ago
    Looks like it attracts larger numbers of aliens to attack you: https://wiki.factorio.com/Pollution https://wiki.factorio.com/Pollution This seems...not quite the right message to send people. (Though it's not exactly wrong when you take into account climate refugees and resource wars)
  - mlpinit 8y ago
    "Higher pollution values decrease the time it takes for biters to join the attack force." https://wiki.factorio.com/Pollution https://wiki.factorio.com/Pollution
fuzzyanimals999 8y ago
It's too bad global warming doesn't exist. It would be better to teach kids how to program, instead of having them experience a communist fantasy. Yikes.
rhn_mk1 8y ago
> Currently, a tree growth will instantly reduce CO2 levels so players can commercially farm trees while still reducing emissions. This is not ideal. This sounds right to me. Having trees which keep reducing carbon levels without any effort would mean that low levels of burning have no effect on CO2. It's as if a unit of wood was gathering ever more and more carbon, but only released a fraction upon burning.
- rwcarlsen 8y ago
  The CO2->O2 process of plants puts the carbon inside the plant. So plants can only reduce carbon in the atmosphere if they are cumulatively increasing in mass. So steady-state farming operations will not decrease carbon in the atmosphere. [Edit] The tree farm in isolation does not help with CO2 - but using wood in ways that preserve it (e.g. for furniture) does.
  - flyingfences 8y ago
    Using the farmed wood instead of fossil fuels decreases the _net_ introduction of CO2 into the atmosphere.
    - rwcarlsen 8y ago
      But again - that has to do with how somebody acquires energy or materials (burning wood vs oil or building wood vs plastic furniture) - not necessarily (directly) with having a tree farm. The tree farm is a small part of possible carbon sequestration avenues - and without all the pieces, it is just carbon neutral.
  - strainer 8y ago
    The ecology of this issue seems more complicated than prevailing ideas about it, eg: Study finds fungi responsible for most carbon sequestration in northern forests. [1] "... they found that 47 percent of soil carbon found on large island samples came about due to fungi, as did a whopping 70 percent of carbon in small island soil samples. Thus far, the team is only able to guess why there are such differences in the soils, but theorize it's likely due to differences in decomposition rates. The amount of carbon stored in northern forests and how, is important because such trees cover approximately 11 percent of the Earth's surface and recent research has calculated that they hold approximately 16 percent of all worldwide sequestered carbon. " [1] https://phys.org/news/2013-03-fungi-responsible-carbon-sequestration-northern.html https://phys.org/news/2013-03-fungi-responsible-carbon-seque...
oxryly1 8y ago
https://www.strangeloopgames.com/eco/ https://www.strangeloopgames.com/eco/
driverdan 8y ago
I really like this. I've wanted climate effects in MC for a long time. I'd like to see mod support. Different machines should have different CO2 output (eg coal coke oven, coal generators). It would change the incentives of switching to green energy production, like electric machines with solar panels.
ajsharp 8y ago
This is incredibly cool and makes me want to play minecraft again.
sandworm101 8y ago
So the first step in reducing co2 is to cut down all the trees? I understand the why, but limiting it to new growth breaks from reality. Co2 reduction farms will be barren fields of saplings, atop mob grinders to create feralizer.
- NeutronStar 8y ago
  Coal would add new co2 to the atmosphere that was previously sequestered in land.
- divanvisagie 8y ago
  First bug report. Haha, I did look at the screen funny when it said saplings reduce carbon immediately.
  - sandworm101 8y ago
    Better answer: eliminate coal. All furnaces run on wood. Carbon neutral. People can now grow and sell wood. But wont be many trees around. Ya, green energy!
bcheung 8y ago
This sounds exactly like Factorio's pollution dynamic. It's a good system actually. Makes you balance production in your factories vs enemies coming and attacking you.
- Aardwolf 8y ago
  Nothing 4-8 laser towers with walls around them can't handle though :)
  - cjslep 8y ago
    I agree. Factorio pollution only really matters early game pre-military science even on death worlds. I wish survival was more of a challenge.
Terr_ 8y ago
I'm trying to think of ways to "destroy" CO2 that aren't ruled out by the readme-description, ex: 1. Burn a tree in-place. 2. Harvest wood blocks, and destroy them (lava, fire, cactus, TNT or creepers, abandoned until disappear.) 3. Same as above, but throwing stacks of wood-derived items like sticks, doors, boats, etc. 4. A wood-derived item which is placed and then destroyed by item-specific mechanics (boat crash, tool breakage)
- nsporillo 8y ago
  Yeah I think sequestering carbon in decoration, blocks, or items is okay. Burning a tree however should incur some penalty, after all - wildfires are a positive feedback loop in reality and it'd be trivial to detect. Might have to deviate from the idea that the global carbon score is the sum of everyones individual carbon score, since there will certainly be lots of events which contribute CO2 without player intervention. Thanks!
  - Terr_ 8y ago
    Always happy to nitpick :P In terms of minimizing exploits, perhaps the easiest approach is to pre-compute a carbon score for all blocks and items, and then focus on catching all the situations where those blocks/items can be destroyed. By default, assume 100% of the carbon goes back into the biosphere, and then write special-case logic for stuff like boats breaking into wood. A few more what-ifs: * If players toss wood-bits into the deep sea to disappear (as opposed to letting them disappear on land) should that count as sequestering it? Or would that almost be too easy? * I forgot about trades -- if a villager provides/accepts wood, perhaps it is best to assume it was just freshly grown or is about to be burnt. * Other dimensions. What should happen if players make a gate into a room in the Nether and do all their smelting there? Alas, we don't have that option in real life :P
guscost 8y ago
This is pretty cool. And it could be the first of other climate changing effects, like changing albedo based on reflectiveness of the landscape, or humidity and atmospheric dynamics leading to clouds, leading to more scattering/trapping/etc. I guess it might get hard to compute at some point, since the serious climate models don’t run on cellphones, and they don’t even try to run at “Minecraft block” resolution, but still.
GuB-42 8y ago
Acid rain? AFAIK acid rain and global warming are separate things. Global warming is caused mostly by CO2, while acid rains are caused mostly by SO2 and NOx. SO2 and NOx are very nasty due to their tendency to form sulfuric and nitric acid, hence acid rains. However, they also cause global cooling by reflecting incoming radiation. It looks like that mod is not really about global warming but pollution in general, which is fine, but calling it "global warming" does more harm than good IMHO.
- nsporillo 8y ago
  Acid Rain was more of less one of the suggestions I've gotten from players on the server I frequent. You are right though, we should keep things entirely factually accurate. I removed the acid rain section and scratched the plans to implement it.
  - hwillis 8y ago
    Nitrogen oxides are naturally caused by combustion (and volcanism), so it makes sense to me to have it. It's dependent only on the heat of the burn so wood and coal fires create quite a lot. Coal also produces a lot of sulfur oxides. Hydrogen-heavy fuels like light oil and natural gas are the only fuels that burn cool enough to not produce significant amounts of acid.
  - DonHopkins 8y ago
    It would also be beneficial for Minecraft to teach children not to eat yellow snow.
- hwillis 8y ago
  I don't see anything about acid rain. I see ocean acidification, which is caused by atmospheric CO2 dissolving into ocean water as carbonic acid.
netule 8y ago
I'm not sure if I'm missing it here, but what are the negative environmental effects in-game?
- drspacemonkey 8y ago
  From way down at the bottom: 14.0 C - No effects [Baseline] 14.5 C - | Minor changes | 15.0 C - | Localized Acid Rain | Some mobs spawn less | Some mobs spawn more | 16.0 C - | +1 Sea Level Rise | Tropical fish die | 17.0 C - |Global Acid Rain | Some trees no longer grow | +1 Sea Level Rise | Coral Reefs die | 18.0 C - |Noxious Area Potion Effect Clouds | Farm yields decrease | +2 Sea Level Rise | All Snow/Ice melts | 19.0 C - | All fish die | Random Forest Fires | Slower Health Regen | 20.0 C - "Devastation".. Highly polluted chunks get permanent severe area potion effects, forest fires, etc
  - netule 8y ago
    Thanks, I didn't notice it tucked into the bottom there.
    - nsporillo 8y ago
      Yeah that was hastily put together. I updated the readme with a real table for readability.
cbHXBY1D 8y ago
It would be great if one of the "climate damages" that takes place at 14.5° C (and a little more at each higher temp) was desertification. I think grassland turning into desert would be one of the more visible effects of global warming.
- nsporillo 8y ago
  That is certainly an option we'd like to support. The temperature thresholds and effects will be configurable, loaded from a file into memory. The sample damages I provided are mostly for illustration so development can have some guidance.
emsenn 8y ago
Really surprised I haven't seen Eco[0] mentioned anywhere here in the comments. It's a Minecraft-like built to focus on ecology and environment stuff. [0] https://www.strangeloopgames.com/eco/ https://www.strangeloopgames.com/eco/
thetwentyone 8y ago
Really like the diagram[1] (which I found the source in [2]. Another one on Wikipedia[3]. What's not clear is how is this changing over time? Given the greenhouse gas narrative (which I accept), how has the "back radiation" changed over time? Over the last century is it +0.1%, +1%? 1: https://camo.githubusercontent.com/55b611b5709a0e90b7e9ee319dff739107939c11/68747470733a2f2f692e696d6775722e636f6d2f6148644a7858632e706e67 https://camo.githubusercontent.com/55b611b5709a0e90b7e9ee319... 2: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/staff/trenbert/trenberth.papers/BAMSmarTrenberth.pdf http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/staff/trenbert/trenberth.papers/BAMS... 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget#/media/File:The-NASA-Earth%27s-Energy-Budget-Poster-Radiant-Energy-System-satellite-infrared-radiation-fluxes.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget#/media...
lapnitnelav 8y ago
There's actually a whole minecraft-esque game being built with sustainability / human footprint in mind. It's much more complex than this mod I believe but still in early release. http://www.strangeloopgames.com/how-to-save-the-environment-by-letting-kids-destroy-it/ http://www.strangeloopgames.com/how-to-save-the-environment-...
em3rgent0rdr 8y ago
"Imagine Earth" [1] is a game about competing firms engaging in colonization of a shared planet which heavily incorporates pollution and global warming into the gameplay...I've sunk many hours. Players need to balance economic development with reducing emissions, and have to pay an emission fee if they exceed a limit. [1] https://www.imagineearth.info/ https://www.imagineearth.info/
calimac 8y ago
pseudo science comes to Minecraft. .. Golf Clap
jimmcslim 8y ago
Planned Features list seems to omit the opportunity to integrate climate change deniers as a gameplay element...
- Fnoord 8y ago
  Does this game even exist?
  - js8 8y ago
    Democracy 3? You can have green policies and there is a "motorists" interest group which opposes them.
jojokoko 8y ago
This is how i dream to do!
Kiro 8y ago
For another game where you need to deal with CO2 pollution in a very interesting way see Oxygen Not Included.
js8 8y ago
While I like Minecraft a lot, unfortunately, in this game, it does no good. Minecraft is a game which completely ignores conservation of matter and energy, which is where you start with ecology. I wish there was a game which would get the physical foundations right* so that the ecology could be put on as a topping. What I imagine is something like a Civilization, where each map cell would be like 1 km2 and you could define what industries would be in that cell (perhaps even design the content of each cell). Each cell would contain a little piece of civilization and/or nature. These cells would then exchange different materials with each other, according to conservation laws. That could be used to educationally model ecology very nicely. Most games of this type will focus on military and/or logistical challenges of civilization. But this game would focus on production chains, land/resource use and sustainability. (*IMHO, the way to get the physical foundations right is to do proper accounting of materials. So in the game, you never really ever destroy anything, you just transform it. If you need to round a number for some reason, then it would become part of some global pool of "waste", from which it could be later retrieved by some industrial process.)
- zambal 8y ago
  I'd love to play that! Where can I track the development progress of this game? ;)
- Fordec 8y ago
  Sounds like Eco https://store.steampowered.com/app/382310/Eco/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/382310/Eco/
  - js8 8y ago
    While Eco is on my Steam wishlist, no, it doesn't. And please don't post further advertising for this game into this discussion, there is already plenty of people talking about this game. Edit: HN is funny. I could have downvoted the PP, and nobody would complain. Instead, I explain what I think is wrong with it... and get downvoted. I really think downvoting motivates people to silently disagree, as opposed to having a discussion.
zaarn 8y ago
That's quite an interesting plugin. Rather annoying it won't work with Forge, would be interesting to have to deal with this when your base runs on gigantic coal boilers from some of the Tech mods or using Magic to offset your CO2 footprint. I might setup a server with this and limit resources to see how it turns out with a couple players (build a wall around 0x0, 256 by 256 blocks long, delete everything else) once some resources turn scarce.
dsere 8y ago
I really liked the idea and encouraged me to look into Minecraft Plugin development as well. Cool Project!

524 points by nsporillo 8y ago

Great idea for teaching in schools. I wonder if this works with Minecraft's Education edition? [0] Its nice the readme goes into detail on some lesson plan ideas. Global warming is such an abstract problem and if you can tie it to individual's behaviors inside a (small) simulated world, it can be a very powerful teaching tool. [0] https://education.minecraft.net https://education.minecraft.net

nsporillo 8y ago
Unfortunately it does not support Education Edition, but you make a good point in that this could be a great teaching tool. I have a good bit of Climate Change related content that I can try to integrate more into the game play itself. I'll add education edition support to my roadmap. Thanks!
- npunt 8y ago
  Great to hear! Another suggestion is to provide some kind of setup guide or easy way to spin up a remote server. Just created an issue for that. I've spent the last hour trying to get up to speed with this and haven't yet got it set up. As you bring this project to maturity, if you're interested in the education context, you'll want to optimize for setup time. Educators and techs that help them are hugely time constrained in a school setting so the quicker they can get a lesson running the better. If setup takes considerable time (5-10min?) or domain expertise, it's a nonstarter.
- brylie 8y ago
  Really cool idea! Would you consider making a Minetest version?
  - nsporillo 8y ago
    Wow I havent checked up on Minetest in years! I'll consider making a Minetest version, but I'd have to review their Lua modding api to see if it'd be feasible. Thanks
sandov 8y ago
Is education edition open source at least?. Because I don't think teaching proprietary software to kids is a good idea.
- npunt 8y ago
  Thats an interesting ideological argument, whose practical effects would be negative. Vast majority of the high quality education software out there isn't open source.
  - drb91 8y ago
    Err, what is the point of the educational edition if not to hack on it?
    - npunt 8y ago
      Hacking IN it :)
- TheDong 8y ago
  By that argument, children shouldn't be writing their documents in Word, nor their presentations in powerpoint, nor using computers that contain proprietary intel micro-code in any classes. The reality is two-fold: Proprietary software is used universally, so learning some of it will make you more marketable later on and help you in life. Knowing excel / word is valuable because many companies run on those pieces of software to some large degree. Secondly, it's pragmatic; there's no real viable option to using proprietary intel or amd hardware while using any computer, so we must use them.
  - 477353468463695 8y ago
    Micro-code, I don't care about. As you say you'd have to ban the use of computers entirely, but having to write your documents in Word etc., I do not think is good. As a student, you should be able to install the software that you use in class on your PC at home, without having to jump through infinite hoops or asking your parents to buy it for you. Sure, Microsoft Office, you can sort of expect to need and need again in the future. But with other software, you can hardly guess how often you're going to be using it. So, you're not going to buy it just to play around with it at home. You might even skip doing homework, if it's too much hassle to install. A required internet connection can also be particularly inpairing, depending on your situation. I was for example provided an educational version of Matlab in university, but ended up mostly learning in GNU Octave (which was thankfully fantastic), because I traveled to university by train and so did most of my learning in the train, where I had no internet connection. Another example is me having to pirate an outdated version of Delphi in middle school, because we were writing a program with that in school, that I wanted to continue at home. The teacher did not intend for anyone to continue working at home, so we weren't provided an educational version or similar. The version of Delphi we used was also so old that you actually couldn't buy it anymore. Lastly, if you can't transfer your LibreOffice knowledge to Microsoft Office, I don't think you should claim any particular computer skills on your CV. We're not talking about rocket science being done in Excel. You generally only need the most basic of features, which function almost identically even in Gnumeric.
anon_lastname 8y ago
Imagine public schools buying minecraft licenses just so kids can observe that "when you use the furnace too much, the world becomes more like hell." I think kids play minecraft too much already. I would much prefer it if we gave students shovels and let them dig up an empty plot of land in _real life_.
anonlastname 8y ago
Imagine public schools buying minecraft licenses just so kids can observe that "when you use the furnace too much, the world becomes more like hell." I think kids play minecraft too much already. I would much prefer it if we gave students shovels and let them dig up an empty plot of land in _real life_.
- scarejunba 8y ago
  Hey, that's a good idea. You give the students actual wood stoves, and they'll cause global warming, and then they'll die when they're adults. That'll help illustrate the concept in a way that a simulated world can't.
  - anonlastname 8y ago
    Their lifespans would actually be prolonged by the obesity they don't have. The atmosphere will even out because of the computer power they're not using.
    - ben_w 8y ago
      Their lifespans would probably be shorter because breathing in that much smoke causes cancer at significantly high rates.
  - ams6110 8y ago
    Wood stoves are carbon neutral.
    - KineticLensman 8y ago
      > Wood stoves are carbon neutral Not compared with not burning the wood, but using it in something like construction, where the carbon dioxide remains locked up [0] [0] https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/wood-not-carbon-neutral-energy-source https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/wood-not-carbon-...
      - 8y ago
aaron695 8y ago
Or you could just tell them, how we've learned stuff for the past 2000 years. This is such a bad idea on so many levels. It's more or less the, add a computer (At great cost and time), kids become smarter myth. Literally why not tell them CO2 increases the heat, energy creates CO2, and show a picture of if you really really have to.

sjilo 8y ago

I love this

lalos 8y ago

Might as well add forest fires, in theory forests should get dryer (longer time under packed ice, hotter summers). Don't know if this mechanism exists on the game.

wtallis 8y ago
It's been a while, but my recollection is that forest fires can get started by exposed lava flows/pits or by lightning strikes. What's missing is variation in how easily fires are ignited and spread, ie. there's no biome-dependent dryness factor being applied to the fire mechanics.
- haroldp 8y ago
  Forest fires would spread forever for a while back in Alpha: https://twitter.com/notch/status/72582596294483969 https://twitter.com/notch/status/72582596294483969 We all burned at least one house down.
nvahalik 8y ago
There are no concepts of seasons in MC, just day/night cycles. There is weather and some relationship of weather to biomes. I think that's it. I wonder how it handles unloaded chunks.
- nsporillo 8y ago
  It will be a challenge to efficiently implement all of the in-game mechanics, especially to unloaded chunks. My ideas so far are to apply most of the effects once a chunk is reloaded, but I could also queue some changes to be applied later - even reloading the chunk to make some changes.
  - wuliwong 8y ago
    Could you keep some running score of the entire carbon footprint of the current chunk? Then if the player moved into a new chunk, you would use the old chunk's last score as having some effect on the current chunk? I guess that wouldn't account for continued tree growth or burning in the chunk you just left though...

jbattle 8y ago

It's been a few years since I played, but IIRC it is trivial to quickly or instantly (?) grow trees with bonemeal. I'd expect you could pretty easily sequester enormous amounts of carbon in chests full of logs (or maybe even toss the logs into lava). Sounds like a fun + ambitious project!

nsporillo 8y ago
Preventing industrial farm abuse is an outstanding issue. I think penalizing bonemeal usage might work, since keeping track of all planted trees and calculating their footprint is a very expensive task. If players have to sit and let the sapling grow on it's own, I think industrial farms might not be overpowering.
- deadbunny 8y ago
  I think you would have to reduce the drop rate of saplings as well so it averages 1 per 10 trees or something or you could just go out for 20 mins and grind saplings from leaves fairly easily. So it might take a few in game days to grow but you could grow hundreds of trees fairly easily.
- driverdan 8y ago
  Eliminate the growth effect of bonemeal on trees. It would require more land to have a tree farm. When you plant a large tree farm you eliminate the need for bonemeal anyway. The probability of one sapling growing each second approaches 1.
- dannyw 8y ago
  Why not just keep track of all trees? If you destroy a tree, its carbon go back into the atmosphere. Just like normal trees; life doesn’t differentiate between planted or ‘natural’.

ReverseCold 8y ago

Might also be interesting to add a tech mod (EnderIO, Mine factory, etc) and make it so that every bit of RF (Redstone Flux, similar to kilojoules) generated from burning things causes CO2 emissions.

tialaramex 8y ago
In a way it feels as though most tech mods are biased towards sustainable energy already. It's common for end game power to be impossibly efficient solar, or nuclear type power sources which produce conveniently not so dangerous waste. In the really ludicrous modpacks the end game is usually infinite everything in some form. It is after all a game, if Thaumcraft's insanity mechanic drove your character to suicide or the Space mods actually left you adrift in empty space forever if you make the mistake of jumping off a space station that would not be fun.
- deadbunny 8y ago
  I don't know, there is a small but noticeable audience for permadeath hard as nails games.
SquareWheel 8y ago
Forge mods don't generally play nice with Spigot/Bukkit plugins. Different ecosystems.

explorigin 8y ago

I'm not sure I like the concept of carbon offsets. In the real world, someone has to plant the trees, not just buy perri-air.

nsporillo 8y ago
Yeah I think a good way to keep things realistic is for the offsets to be fulfilled by other players. If someone is too busy generating in-game currency, they can just pay newer players or those looking for money to plant lots of trees.
- explorigin 8y ago
  That'd be better. Now you have a currency and an economy. :-)

theyinwhy 8y ago

> Allow players to purchase "carbon offsets" which instantly reduce their personal carbon score I'd prefer buying carbon offsets doing exactly nothing as in real life. It is a cheat that's not benefiting anyone.

0xCMP 8y ago
They do something, but I think it's not correct in Minecraft. In real life it increases costs which means lowering that cost has a benefit to the bottom line (i.e. a well meaning employee can justify this to people measured by profits/costs/etc.). However, in MC where is the profit and does a carbon credit actually encourage players to try to do something seems interesting thing to see.
- bostik 8y ago
  Well, one could make them arbitrarily unfair. Purchasing a carbon credit could reduce a player's own emission score but increase a random opponent's score by the same amount.

crankylinuxuser 8y ago

Wow. I can see a few other things to increase the scariness.. 1. Boreal forests catch fire on hotter/higher CO2 (like they are in California now) 2. Temperate areas get terraformed to deserts if possible 3. Health heals slower, or not at all on high CO2 due to environmental effects 4. Sources of fire increase their sparking distance in which flammable things catch on fire easier. Encourages easier spread of forest fires and player-crafted fires. 5. Water turns acidic, and deals slow damage. (Like the coral reefs)

nsporillo 8y ago
I appreciate the ideas, I will definitely look to incorporate them! One of my current challenges is coming up with a balanced model, since I dont have any real server player data to analyze. Of course it will be configurable, but i'd like for the default models not spiral to a destroyed world quickly...

poisonarena 8y ago

I like how pollution is handled in factorio

make3 8y ago
how is it handled?
- unimpressive 8y ago
  Looks like it attracts larger numbers of aliens to attack you: https://wiki.factorio.com/Pollution https://wiki.factorio.com/Pollution This seems...not quite the right message to send people. (Though it's not exactly wrong when you take into account climate refugees and resource wars)
- mlpinit 8y ago
  "Higher pollution values decrease the time it takes for biters to join the attack force." https://wiki.factorio.com/Pollution https://wiki.factorio.com/Pollution

fuzzyanimals999 8y ago

It's too bad global warming doesn't exist. It would be better to teach kids how to program, instead of having them experience a communist fantasy. Yikes.

rhn_mk1 8y ago

> Currently, a tree growth will instantly reduce CO2 levels so players can commercially farm trees while still reducing emissions. This is not ideal. This sounds right to me. Having trees which keep reducing carbon levels without any effort would mean that low levels of burning have no effect on CO2. It's as if a unit of wood was gathering ever more and more carbon, but only released a fraction upon burning.

rwcarlsen 8y ago
The CO2->O2 process of plants puts the carbon inside the plant. So plants can only reduce carbon in the atmosphere if they are cumulatively increasing in mass. So steady-state farming operations will not decrease carbon in the atmosphere. [Edit] The tree farm in isolation does not help with CO2 - but using wood in ways that preserve it (e.g. for furniture) does.
- flyingfences 8y ago
  Using the farmed wood instead of fossil fuels decreases the _net_ introduction of CO2 into the atmosphere.
  - rwcarlsen 8y ago
    But again - that has to do with how somebody acquires energy or materials (burning wood vs oil or building wood vs plastic furniture) - not necessarily (directly) with having a tree farm. The tree farm is a small part of possible carbon sequestration avenues - and without all the pieces, it is just carbon neutral.
- strainer 8y ago
  The ecology of this issue seems more complicated than prevailing ideas about it, eg: Study finds fungi responsible for most carbon sequestration in northern forests. [1] "... they found that 47 percent of soil carbon found on large island samples came about due to fungi, as did a whopping 70 percent of carbon in small island soil samples. Thus far, the team is only able to guess why there are such differences in the soils, but theorize it's likely due to differences in decomposition rates. The amount of carbon stored in northern forests and how, is important because such trees cover approximately 11 percent of the Earth's surface and recent research has calculated that they hold approximately 16 percent of all worldwide sequestered carbon. " [1] https://phys.org/news/2013-03-fungi-responsible-carbon-sequestration-northern.html https://phys.org/news/2013-03-fungi-responsible-carbon-seque...

oxryly1 8y ago

https://www.strangeloopgames.com/eco/ https://www.strangeloopgames.com/eco/

driverdan 8y ago

I really like this. I've wanted climate effects in MC for a long time. I'd like to see mod support. Different machines should have different CO2 output (eg coal coke oven, coal generators). It would change the incentives of switching to green energy production, like electric machines with solar panels.

ajsharp 8y ago

This is incredibly cool and makes me want to play minecraft again.

sandworm101 8y ago

So the first step in reducing co2 is to cut down all the trees? I understand the why, but limiting it to new growth breaks from reality. Co2 reduction farms will be barren fields of saplings, atop mob grinders to create feralizer.

NeutronStar 8y ago
Coal would add new co2 to the atmosphere that was previously sequestered in land.
divanvisagie 8y ago
First bug report. Haha, I did look at the screen funny when it said saplings reduce carbon immediately.
- sandworm101 8y ago
  Better answer: eliminate coal. All furnaces run on wood. Carbon neutral. People can now grow and sell wood. But wont be many trees around. Ya, green energy!

bcheung 8y ago

This sounds exactly like Factorio's pollution dynamic. It's a good system actually. Makes you balance production in your factories vs enemies coming and attacking you.

Aardwolf 8y ago
Nothing 4-8 laser towers with walls around them can't handle though :)
- cjslep 8y ago
  I agree. Factorio pollution only really matters early game pre-military science even on death worlds. I wish survival was more of a challenge.

Terr_ 8y ago

I'm trying to think of ways to "destroy" CO2 that aren't ruled out by the readme-description, ex: 1. Burn a tree in-place. 2. Harvest wood blocks, and destroy them (lava, fire, cactus, TNT or creepers, abandoned until disappear.) 3. Same as above, but throwing stacks of wood-derived items like sticks, doors, boats, etc. 4. A wood-derived item which is placed and then destroyed by item-specific mechanics (boat crash, tool breakage)

nsporillo 8y ago
Yeah I think sequestering carbon in decoration, blocks, or items is okay. Burning a tree however should incur some penalty, after all - wildfires are a positive feedback loop in reality and it'd be trivial to detect. Might have to deviate from the idea that the global carbon score is the sum of everyones individual carbon score, since there will certainly be lots of events which contribute CO2 without player intervention. Thanks!
- Terr_ 8y ago
  Always happy to nitpick :P In terms of minimizing exploits, perhaps the easiest approach is to pre-compute a carbon score for all blocks and items, and then focus on catching all the situations where those blocks/items can be destroyed. By default, assume 100% of the carbon goes back into the biosphere, and then write special-case logic for stuff like boats breaking into wood. A few more what-ifs: * If players toss wood-bits into the deep sea to disappear (as opposed to letting them disappear on land) should that count as sequestering it? Or would that almost be too easy? * I forgot about trades -- if a villager provides/accepts wood, perhaps it is best to assume it was just freshly grown or is about to be burnt. * Other dimensions. What should happen if players make a gate into a room in the Nether and do all their smelting there? Alas, we don't have that option in real life :P

guscost 8y ago

This is pretty cool. And it could be the first of other climate changing effects, like changing albedo based on reflectiveness of the landscape, or humidity and atmospheric dynamics leading to clouds, leading to more scattering/trapping/etc. I guess it might get hard to compute at some point, since the serious climate models don’t run on cellphones, and they don’t even try to run at “Minecraft block” resolution, but still.

GuB-42 8y ago

Acid rain? AFAIK acid rain and global warming are separate things. Global warming is caused mostly by CO2, while acid rains are caused mostly by SO2 and NOx. SO2 and NOx are very nasty due to their tendency to form sulfuric and nitric acid, hence acid rains. However, they also cause global cooling by reflecting incoming radiation. It looks like that mod is not really about global warming but pollution in general, which is fine, but calling it "global warming" does more harm than good IMHO.

nsporillo 8y ago
Acid Rain was more of less one of the suggestions I've gotten from players on the server I frequent. You are right though, we should keep things entirely factually accurate. I removed the acid rain section and scratched the plans to implement it.
- hwillis 8y ago
  Nitrogen oxides are naturally caused by combustion (and volcanism), so it makes sense to me to have it. It's dependent only on the heat of the burn so wood and coal fires create quite a lot. Coal also produces a lot of sulfur oxides. Hydrogen-heavy fuels like light oil and natural gas are the only fuels that burn cool enough to not produce significant amounts of acid.
- DonHopkins 8y ago
  It would also be beneficial for Minecraft to teach children not to eat yellow snow.
hwillis 8y ago
I don't see anything about acid rain. I see ocean acidification, which is caused by atmospheric CO2 dissolving into ocean water as carbonic acid.

netule 8y ago

I'm not sure if I'm missing it here, but what are the negative environmental effects in-game?

drspacemonkey 8y ago
From way down at the bottom: 14.0 C - No effects [Baseline] 14.5 C - | Minor changes | 15.0 C - | Localized Acid Rain | Some mobs spawn less | Some mobs spawn more | 16.0 C - | +1 Sea Level Rise | Tropical fish die | 17.0 C - |Global Acid Rain | Some trees no longer grow | +1 Sea Level Rise | Coral Reefs die | 18.0 C - |Noxious Area Potion Effect Clouds | Farm yields decrease | +2 Sea Level Rise | All Snow/Ice melts | 19.0 C - | All fish die | Random Forest Fires | Slower Health Regen | 20.0 C - "Devastation".. Highly polluted chunks get permanent severe area potion effects, forest fires, etc
- netule 8y ago
  Thanks, I didn't notice it tucked into the bottom there.
  - nsporillo 8y ago
    Yeah that was hastily put together. I updated the readme with a real table for readability.

cbHXBY1D 8y ago

It would be great if one of the "climate damages" that takes place at 14.5° C (and a little more at each higher temp) was desertification. I think grassland turning into desert would be one of the more visible effects of global warming.

nsporillo 8y ago
That is certainly an option we'd like to support. The temperature thresholds and effects will be configurable, loaded from a file into memory. The sample damages I provided are mostly for illustration so development can have some guidance.

emsenn 8y ago

Really surprised I haven't seen Eco[0] mentioned anywhere here in the comments. It's a Minecraft-like built to focus on ecology and environment stuff. [0] https://www.strangeloopgames.com/eco/ https://www.strangeloopgames.com/eco/

thetwentyone 8y ago

Really like the diagram[1] (which I found the source in [2]. Another one on Wikipedia[3]. What's not clear is how is this changing over time? Given the greenhouse gas narrative (which I accept), how has the "back radiation" changed over time? Over the last century is it +0.1%, +1%? 1: https://camo.githubusercontent.com/55b611b5709a0e90b7e9ee319dff739107939c11/68747470733a2f2f692e696d6775722e636f6d2f6148644a7858632e706e67 https://camo.githubusercontent.com/55b611b5709a0e90b7e9ee319... 2: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/staff/trenbert/trenberth.papers/BAMSmarTrenberth.pdf http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/staff/trenbert/trenberth.papers/BAMS... 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget#/media/File:The-NASA-Earth%27s-Energy-Budget-Poster-Radiant-Energy-System-satellite-infrared-radiation-fluxes.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget#/media...

lapnitnelav 8y ago

There's actually a whole minecraft-esque game being built with sustainability / human footprint in mind. It's much more complex than this mod I believe but still in early release. http://www.strangeloopgames.com/how-to-save-the-environment-by-letting-kids-destroy-it/ http://www.strangeloopgames.com/how-to-save-the-environment-...

em3rgent0rdr 8y ago

"Imagine Earth" [1] is a game about competing firms engaging in colonization of a shared planet which heavily incorporates pollution and global warming into the gameplay...I've sunk many hours. Players need to balance economic development with reducing emissions, and have to pay an emission fee if they exceed a limit. [1] https://www.imagineearth.info/ https://www.imagineearth.info/

calimac 8y ago

pseudo science comes to Minecraft. .. Golf Clap

jimmcslim 8y ago

Planned Features list seems to omit the opportunity to integrate climate change deniers as a gameplay element...

Fnoord 8y ago
Does this game even exist?
- js8 8y ago
  Democracy 3? You can have green policies and there is a "motorists" interest group which opposes them.

jojokoko 8y ago

This is how i dream to do!

Kiro 8y ago

For another game where you need to deal with CO2 pollution in a very interesting way see Oxygen Not Included.

js8 8y ago

While I like Minecraft a lot, unfortunately, in this game, it does no good. Minecraft is a game which completely ignores conservation of matter and energy, which is where you start with ecology. I wish there was a game which would get the physical foundations right* so that the ecology could be put on as a topping. What I imagine is something like a Civilization, where each map cell would be like 1 km2 and you could define what industries would be in that cell (perhaps even design the content of each cell). Each cell would contain a little piece of civilization and/or nature. These cells would then exchange different materials with each other, according to conservation laws. That could be used to educationally model ecology very nicely. Most games of this type will focus on military and/or logistical challenges of civilization. But this game would focus on production chains, land/resource use and sustainability. (*IMHO, the way to get the physical foundations right is to do proper accounting of materials. So in the game, you never really ever destroy anything, you just transform it. If you need to round a number for some reason, then it would become part of some global pool of "waste", from which it could be later retrieved by some industrial process.)

zambal 8y ago
I'd love to play that! Where can I track the development progress of this game? ;)
Fordec 8y ago
Sounds like Eco https://store.steampowered.com/app/382310/Eco/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/382310/Eco/
- js8 8y ago
  While Eco is on my Steam wishlist, no, it doesn't. And please don't post further advertising for this game into this discussion, there is already plenty of people talking about this game. Edit: HN is funny. I could have downvoted the PP, and nobody would complain. Instead, I explain what I think is wrong with it... and get downvoted. I really think downvoting motivates people to silently disagree, as opposed to having a discussion.

zaarn 8y ago

That's quite an interesting plugin. Rather annoying it won't work with Forge, would be interesting to have to deal with this when your base runs on gigantic coal boilers from some of the Tech mods or using Magic to offset your CO2 footprint. I might setup a server with this and limit resources to see how it turns out with a couple players (build a wall around 0x0, 256 by 256 blocks long, delete everything else) once some resources turn scarce.

dsere 8y ago

I really liked the idea and encouraged me to look into Minecraft Plugin development as well. Cool Project!