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Browser-based climate change simulation

231 points by hendler 7y ago

track_star 7y ago
Everyone get your thinking hats on. Based on this model, increasing building efficiency is the #1 way that we as entrepreneurs can have an impact. Passivhaus anyone?
- IanCal 7y ago
  Buildings and Industry is the heading, which covers a lot more than just housing.
  - track_star 7y ago
    Correct but there is nothing preventing the use of Passivhaus technology in commercial buildings.
    - willyt 7y ago
      Includes heavy industry presumably? e.g. no such thing as passivhaus blast furnance or a passivhaus lime kiln.
      - ben_w 7y ago
        That makes me wonder, could the waste heat from those be used for residential district hearing? Or desalination? Not just technically, but usefully.
Thermolabile 7y ago
We observe the power of a carbon tax
- lucb1e 7y ago
  I'm also surprised how much of a difference nuclear can make. I mean, I know that nuclear is great as a stopgap until we build solar panels that we can actually recycle and install all the wind farms, etc. But the trouble is that a nuclear plant takes 30 years to build and for the public's opinion we might as well be proposing to move their backyards to a high tsunami risk zone or repeating all the actions that led up to the Chernobyl disaster. I've given up on this happening. Can it still make such a big difference, even if we only start building today? It makes me wonder if I shouldn't be giving up on the option of nuclear.
  - DennisP 7y ago
    > a nuclear plant takes 30 years to build Only if your country isn't serious about it. South Korea builds modern nuclear plants in about five years: https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/2027347/south-korea-second-fastest-nuclear-plant-building-country https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/2027347/south-korea-s...
    - lucb1e 7y ago
      Oh, wow, okay. That changes the perspective quite a bit. Thanks!
      - mlyle 7y ago
        There's a lot of issues with depending upon solely nuclear to solve these problems, but I'd like to see nuclear in the mix. Unlike the MIT model, components of electric generation are not simple linear systems that exhibit the superposition principle. Renewables need a whole lot of moderate-term storage and over-provisioning to get to where we want to be, and nuclear could help ease that by providing a source of dependable base load. If we're transitioning to electric cars and homes away from gas heat, we need a whole lot of power in the middle of the night-- where photovoltaic doesn't help and wind can be iffy for days at a time.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
- nabla9 7y ago
  If well implemented, the steering effect for economy from billions of people trying to avoid the cost of carbon at the same time would be immense.
Yajirobe 7y ago
what does 'new technology' even mean and how does it enter the calculations?
- zamadatix 7y ago
  From the app: "Discover a brand-new cheap source of electricity that does not emit greenhouse gases. Some speculate that such a breakthrough could be nuclear fusion or thorium-based nuclear fission, however, there are unknown risks associated with any new energy supply. Decide when the breakthrough occurs, its initial cost relative to coal, and how long the delays in commercialization and scale up would be."
staltz 7y ago
Interesting tool. It basically says you can: - Tax coal, oil, natural gas, bioenergy - Subsidize renewables, nuclear, new technology - Increase efficiency and electrification of transports, buildings, and industry - Reduce population growth - Reduce economic growth - Reduce deforestation - Increase afforestation For an effect that puts us at +2.1C by 2100 https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?p1=120&p7=100&p10=6&p16=-0.07&p23=30&p30=-0.07&p35=2&p47=5&p50=5&p53=5&p55=5&p57=-10&p63=1.3&p64=1.7&p65=100&g0=1&g1=86&v=2.7.6 https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?p1=120... OR you can do these three things: - Set a high price on carbon - Reduce emissions of methane and other gases - Increase usage carbon removal technologies for a similar effect of +2.1C by 2100 https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?p39=250&p59=-100&p67=100&g0=1&g1=86&v=2.7.6 https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?p39=25... All optimistic actions combined puts us at +1.0C by 2100 https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?p1=120&p7=100&p10=6&p16=-0.07&p23=30&p30=-0.07&p35=2&p39=250&p47=5&p50=5&p53=5&p55=5&p57=-10&p59=-100&p63=1.3&p64=1.7&p65=100&p67=100&g0=1&g1=86&v=2.7.6 https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?p1=120...
- zamadatix 7y ago
  It makes sense, setting a high price on carbon is like lowering one end of the teeter totter vs raising the other for everything listed - the same thing just spelled out different ways.
- rwc 7y ago
  There comes a point where the model no longer accepts any progress beyond a +1.0C increase. No matter how many additional actions taken, the floor is +1.0C. It seems the immediate extinction of the human race would still result in an increase in temperature. Is there research that backs this up?
  - dluan 7y ago
    We're already well into the anthropocene: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...
onion2k 7y ago
If you drag all of the bars to their ideal position (lowest on the bad things, highest on the good things) the temperature still goes up by more than a degree.
- bluesign 7y ago
  It is calculating from 2000, from 2020 (which is already at +1.3C) it will be like -0.3C, more important part is trend.
- lopis 7y ago
  It helps to show that we're screwed. But the degree to how screwed we are can vary a bit.
  - goatlover 7y ago
    We're not screwed if it's limited to just a degree. Things start getting dicy at 2 degrees, more severe at 3, and so on. To what extent society can adapt and mitigate is a guess. The climate modes are about the climate, not how human civilization handles it.
    - xbmcuser 7y ago
      We are are already screwed at the current temperature the 2 degrees is just the point that the politicians thought they could sell to each other.
    - breakyerself 7y ago
      There is some disagreement that 1.5C might be where the diceyness kicks in although there is a fair amount of it happening now.
  - mar77i 7y ago
    I wonder what it helps to show, except that we're screwed, because I believe to have already presumed that.
- nizmow 7y ago
wiz21c 7y ago
it'd be nice to have a body count somewhere...
- Waterluvian 7y ago
  Yeah merge this with a beautiful GIS that simulates sea level rise and loss of land. As well as extinction estimates of plants and animals.
  - lopmotr 7y ago
    You can't really see sea level rise on a map because most of our developed sea shores are already at least a meter or two above water. It's not going to change the shape of the coastlines near cities or other developed places, which is where it's important. Instead, it's predicted to increase the frequency and severity of flooding.
    - Waterluvian 7y ago
      True. So we look at floodplain maps and how they change.
- lucb1e 7y ago
  Also a count of people newly entering poverty, being displaced, increased spending on recovery from extreme weather events, increased spending on dikes (I'm Dutch, but a lot of countries will have to do that), increased mortality from the pollution (currently it's already in the millions of premature deaths per year but very few people know this), which animal and plant species will go extinct, etc.
- jokoon 7y ago
  Well a good start would be to try to predict agriculture outputs with those temperature. Honestly I tried asking this question but got no answer. Cereals might be just fine, and growing food in places where it's not possible to grow food is also a solution. But I'm terribly curious about the impact on food. Heatwaves will probably cause a lot of deaths at first, but once it happens, there are easy things cities can do to mitigate them.
wiz21c 7y ago
Reducing all energy sources to the mminium doesn't change much... That's sounds strange because if we reduce energy, then, well, we emit less CO2. Am I missing something ?
- IanCal 7y ago
  That doesn't have it reduce the energy, it's just shifting between them I think. So total energy use seems to remain the same, you're just changing where people get it.
  - lopmotr 7y ago
    Yes. An interesting effect of this is that subsidizing bio fuels makes climate change worse because it takes away from other renewables.
- mapleoin 7y ago
  CO2 is still in the atmosphere.
  - lucb1e 7y ago
    For those who would like to fix that, https://climeworks.com https://climeworks.com They seem to currently be the only reliable way of taking CO2 out of the air that is available to consumers. (I've got a subscription with them but am not vested in them in any other way. Well, other than for the survival of our current ecosystem.) You can also plant trees with a thousand and one different organisations, much cheaper than Climeworks per kilogram of CO2, but I haven't yet found one that (1) explains where this land comes from that somehow has no trees yet and yet can support them indefinitely and (2) claims the full-grown trees remain there indefinitely or are somehow prevented from releasing their CO2 again. I guess it's not that cheap anymore if you have to protect the forest for many decades from turning back into whatever it was before (maybe farmland?) and also have a liability after the main growth is over to care that it doesn't release it all back by dying or being burned.
    - 7y ago
Waterluvian 7y ago
These are too abstract for most humans. Someone needs to do a layer on top of this that instead has options like: - fake meat becomes widely adopted and we stop farming cattle - electric cars see 50% market share adoption Tangible things anyone can wrap their head around.
- rimliu 7y ago
  Also having very little effect.
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  > - fake meat becomes widely adopted and we stop farming cattle You can simulate that by tuning deflorestation to a minimum and methane to a lower value. Spoiler: it makes approximately no difference.
lazyjones 7y ago
0,5 degrees difference only for a population change of 5 billion people? Not very plausible (low vs. high growth). These simplistic models are counter-productive IMHO.
- nabla9 7y ago
  It's very plausible after you realize how much warming comes from processes that are already in effect and that the change in population is gradual.
- zamadatix 7y ago
  Any option introduces well delayed output in temperature, I don't see why population would be any different. Why is the model overly simplistic, because it didn't match your expectation?
dluan 7y ago
This is a fantastic use of science communication using design principles - particularly when you use the minigraphs and you can see the small multiples the impact and outcomes. I've always felt like more stuff like this would help bring home the imperceptible nuances of this complex web. It'd be cool to see some of this stuff for personal daily things. Just now I figured out that each time I charge my macbook pro, it's about equivalent to burning a quarter of a charcoal briquette in raw energy. It would be cool to see something like this for things like riding the bus, buying a new car, flying, eating meat, etc.
- mattrp 7y ago
  It would be nice to see the economic cost of each of the options as well.
plytheman 7y ago
About 5 or 6 years ago towards the end of my undergrad my professor picked up on this and we held some mock UN Climate assemblies using this tool.[1] The class divided up into first world, developing, and poorer nations and each had to bring their needs to the table while trying to compromise. I got to actually lead a session at MIT for some incoming freshman which was fun. The dashboard is super handy to drive home the numbers on our energy production/use and its effect on the climate but the workshop really drives home the political implications and how hard it will be to actually implement these changes. [1] https://www.climateinteractive.org/tools/climate-action-simulation/ https://www.climateinteractive.org/tools/climate-action-simu...
- mistermann 7y ago
  > The class divided up into first world, developing, and poorer nations and each had to bring their needs to the table while trying to compromise. Modeling the debate on the dimension of national wealth seems like a good idea. I'm curious, was there any discussion about potential value in modeling on other dimensions, such as political affiliation?
  - plytheman 7y ago
    Not that I know of. We were just running off the materials En-Roads provided. From what I remember, though, each bloc is given cues as to what industries and population they represent which then plays into their arguments. So it isn't outright said that someone should argue a conservative or liberal angle, but knowing you need to defend your nation's industrial production or vulnerable communities lends itself towards some political talking points on one side or the other.
DennisP 7y ago
A simpler version of this was used for a while as part of MIT's ClimateColab, which attempted to crowdsource creative solutions to climate change. https://www.climatecolab.org/ https://www.climatecolab.org/ (They're still running contests, but they've scaled down a lot.)
arctangos 7y ago
The authors don't include some extremely nasty feedback loops the appear to currently be happening. For example, methane release from permafrost melt. As a result, the simulation appears to be misleadingly optimistic. - This tool is based on climate interactive's previous one, C-Road. - in the C-Road simulation when you click on parameters -> assumptions to add parameters about methane release through permafrost melting and human activities. By default, it's set to zero, but even their maximum values don't seem as impactful as I would expect. - in EN-Road simulation (this one) the methane release parameters are removed! So, no possibility to add any positive feedback loops. It feels like the relation between CO2 and temperature is a simple linear equation, or close to it.
- koheripbal 7y ago
  While negative feedback loops are big in the media, they are not well understood and difficult to model. Also, other feedback mechanisms seem to get little attention. Are we only looking to model the feedback mechanisms that reinforce a narrative of cataclysm? Don't other feedback mechanisms exist that lessen CO2 concentrations, or temperature dissipation?
  - breakyerself 7y ago
    No. They aren't "only looking at feedback mechanisms that reinforce cataclysm." Modelers include every feedback that they can quantify well enough to include and the ones they don't understand well enough are studied carefully to be able to work out what the uncertainties are. Scientists 50 years ago predicted that we would be at around 1C (1.8F) of warming by 2020 with a 40% over preindustrial co2 level. That's exactly what we have now. They predicted almost perfectly today's climate decades before it came to pass. That may not seem like a big deal until you understand that global temperatures haven't been this high in 130,000 years. It isn't being recognized properly yet in the media, but the stunning accuracy of predictions by climate modelers is one of the greatest achievements in the history Earth sciences.
    - mistermann 7y ago
musha68k 7y ago
High taxation of fossil energy together with rolling-out of new energy/carbon-removal technology seem to be a real way out of this catastrophe. Does anyone have a list of startups and established companies actively working on any of those crucial solutions? Only found this through a quick Github search: https://github.com/flamato/awesome-climate-change-ressources/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/flamato/awesome-climate-change-ressources...
- ben85ts 7y ago
  There's a tech group https://techimpactmakers.com/ https://techimpactmakers.com/ with a couple startups in the slack workspace.
- koheripbal 7y ago
  These are both big projects not well suited to startups. Taxation needs to be agreed upon at the international level. CO2 has an atmospheric half-lifetime on the order of decades. If we would just switch to zero emission energy, like nuclear power, we could get through the next century and survive.
- jokoon 7y ago
  Don't solutions already exist? There is a lot to do with engine size and vehicle size and weight, especially in the US. Nuclear energy and trains are possible, even if they require electrifying the railroads. Drastically reduce beef consumption is also a thing to do. Not sure about those "carbon removal" techs. A lot of the CO2 tends to go in the atmosphere. The biggest problem is a political one: You can't fight unemployment and inequality and try to reduce emissions. I can see ideology being a big problem when dealing with climate change. Although fighting climate change can also be an opportunity to steer away from an ideology of competition and go back to cooperation, because politically it WILL BE a nightmare. Things can also derail into complete anarchy where it becomes everyone for himself, where poor people will have to bear high temperatures.
  - semi-extrinsic 7y ago
    > The biggest problem is a political one: You can't fight unemployment and inequality and try to reduce emissions. Why do you believe this is true? It seems to me like many efforts to reduce emissions are also likely to reduce inequality, some also increase employment. For instance: * Make public transport free and increased capacity, good on all three counts * CO2 tax on big emitters will reduce profits of these companies, which are usually high margin industries with few unskilled/low-pay workers * Higher taxes on air travel affect poor people less than rich people * Current trends point towards rich countries committing to subsidise emissions reductions in poor countries
EA 7y ago
What happens if we run the simulation backwards through time?
- EdSharkey 7y ago
  <glitch>
jokoon 7y ago
I'm curious what those carbon removal techs are exactly. Because a lot of the CO2 tends to stay in the atmosphere.
- chinathrow 7y ago
  One example is https://www.climeworks.com/ https://www.climeworks.com/, others are e.g. the production of synthetic fuels by using ambient CO2 to produce CO2-neutral enegery.
- Ohn0 7y ago
  Trees
  - jokoon 7y ago
    trees are not really a good way to capture carbon
yrro 7y ago
Refuses to run for me. with Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:71.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/71.0 "Detected Characteristics - Mobile browser" Don't tell me the web developers now assume that Linux == Android...
LoSboccacc 7y ago
even at the lowest setting the world gdp still shows an exponential growth. doesn't seem sustainable to me, at some point efficiency in industrialized country has to flatten out, even if just because there are so many customers to sell products to so there's an equilibrium somewhere to be reached, especially since increase efficiency suppresses wages reducing demand.
sampo 7y ago
What value of Climate Sensitivity is assumed in the model? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity Edit: Found it in sec. 9.2 in the manual. It's 3. https://www.climateinteractive.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/En-ROADS_Reference_Guide_v92.docx https://www.climateinteractive.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/1...
- nabla9 7y ago
  You can change the sensitivity. First from top menu simulation -> assumptions. Then from below > "Climate system sensitivities" you can alter Climate sensitivity, Ocean mixing index, CO2 fertilization index, Sea level rise from ice sheet melting and Carbon cycle land and ocean uptake
hanniabu 7y ago
This is great and all, but what can we do about the people that don't believe this data? That's where the real issue is. I have a bunch of coworkers that think scientists are making up this data and skewing results because their jobs depend on it and they want to continue to get funding. "Follow the money" is a common thing they say in regards to this, but also conveniently disregarded and deny that big oil/coal have more to lose. It's very difficult to fight ignorance, especially when they don't believe facts. This is the main issue with climate change deniers, not the inability to visualize the data.
- adventskalender 7y ago
  It is clearly made up data, as for example they predict the outcome of policies like carbon costs. Afaik even economists don't agree on the results of such policies. They are just making an assumption and the whole app is merely advertising for their preferred type of policy.
  - mattnewton 7y ago
    I think you are being mistaken for saying the climate data they are using is made up, but your point is more subtle- they don’t show their work to tell you what the biofuel subsidies, for example, will do to CO2 levels.
    - adventskalender 7y ago
      I don't know about their climate data, I just think their claims of the impact of carbon costs are pure speculation. If they had a calculator for determining temperature increase depending on carbon output, it would be more credible. They are piping two complex system into each other - economic and climate. At least economics are not understood well enough to really make such predictions. And if the output of the economic model is unreliable, so is the result of the climate model.
  - Brakenshire 7y ago
    You’re right, the climate data is likely to be solid but the economic modelling dubious.
mar77i 7y ago
No sane setting gets us down to 2°C. I don't feel taken seriously. Can I get a slider for the frequency of volcanic eruptions? On a slightly more serious note, can we tame volcanoes by somehow - ideally - producing energy and ... prevent eruptions, somewhat comparable to the way earth wires actively do so with lightning strikes?
- papreclip 7y ago
  I want a slider that lets you shrink the population (not just "low growth"). Climate change is just one of many ways that overpopulation is negatively impacting all life on earth.
  - pharke 7y ago
    What would be the units? Number of gas chambers?
    - papreclip 7y ago
      I was thinking more along the lines of IUDs
programminggeek 7y ago
This model is sort of absurd. It doesn't take into account the most important factor... people. If you made a model of the world today back in 1920, it would be comical. Imagine you went back to say 1920 and told people that in 2020 they would be surrounded by talking televisions, phones, that we'd be sending people and ships to the moon, mars, etc. and that they could instantly talk to any person on the planet (including loved ones on the other side of the world), they would not believe you. In the last 100 years (heck even the last 20-30) we've invented a staggering amount of new and interesting things. In the last 100 years people created interstate highway systems, nuclear power, the internet, radio data networks, self guided weapons, self guided vehicles, robots, rudimentary AI, etc... What if in 100 years we make fusion work (probably for space travel/war?) and then we replace the existing infrastructure with that. And what if we can do enough carbon removal or storage to solve this? Any model that doesn't model the history altering inventiveness of humans is not an accurate model at all. It's just really fancy navel gazing.
- EthanHeilman 7y ago
  You can't model things like innovation on a hundred year time scale. The reason the predictions from the 1920s "would be comical" is not because people in the 1920s where all fools but because modeling future innovation over a 100 year time scale is extremely challenging. Even if you could include innovation it would reduce the benefit of such a model. Imagine you have a model that has access to a global temperature oracle and it says: "global temperature decreased 0.1 C in 2120 because of innovation". You don't know why that happened and so such a model would be mostly useless to achieving any result. What you are proposing is like a software performance analytics tool that already includes the fact that you will improve the software performance in the current metrics. However the purpose of such a tool is to figure out where the performance problems are so that you can fix them. Adding such a feature makes the tool useless. What you want to see the baseline and then you want to model the impact of solutions after you discover them. >What if in 100 years we make fusion work (probably for space travel/war?) and then we replace the existing infrastructure with that. I think fusion will happen faster than that. However the model we are discussing only goes out 81 years so it doesn't cover the impact of events 100 years hence.
- 7y ago
pmontra 7y ago
The single most effective parameter in this simulation is Carbon price. Sliding it all the way to the right lowers the temperature increase from 4.1 to 3.0. Most of the other parameters do little or nothing. Of course setting a high price for carbon is different from actually making people/companies pay for it.
kgabis 7y ago
It's surprising how rarely intentional geoengineering (because we're doing it anyway, just unintentionally) is mentioned when discussing climate change. Stratospheric aerosol injection seems like a plausible way of slowing down the warming of earth yet it's too taboo to be even discussed as a viable option.
ohgreatwtf 7y ago
The single biggest line item in this program is agricultural methane emissions. The second single item is drastic reduction of energy usage in industrial applications. Even now the farmers in the hague are protesting the former. The latter is simply impossible. This programme for climate control is an unrealistic plan thought up by a bunch of nerds. You should all elect me dictator for life and do what I, the cyber-fuhrer, command you. Step one: we must recognize this is OUR planet and OUR environment, so we can do whatever the hell we want with it. Step two: Reshape carbon level perspectives. carbon levels above 500 PPM are unhealthy and we are on track to reach that in a few years. Canned air is a thing now. We must curb our carbon emissions and reduce carbon levels in order to be more healthy, not control global warming. Everyone, even the critics, recognize Co2 above 1000 is bad for your health and everyone has experienced high CO/CO2 levels. Step three: The climate can go fuck itself. We'll glass over a portion of arid desert or mountain land the size of texas, divided into plots of land 100 square miles each in remote areas around the globe, and cover them in mylar reflective sheeting. The increased albedo will more than counteract the temperature trends estimated from greenhouse gas based warming. I have done the math. Step four: We must observe that it is not merely renewable energy but renewable infrastructure that must exist to fix this problem. Batteries and solar panels and devices that wear out too quickly exhaust our resources, and infrastructure costs make up a large portion of the factors limiting adoption. A Renewable Society becomes our focus as a total propaganda and government mandate worldwide. Step five: we create a global research funding scheme and open patent pool that internationally maximizes research effort into renewable infrastructure. We establish trade agreements that create international laws which incentivize renewable energy adoption through guaranteeing adoption payoff by establishing long-lived warranties and government subsidized repair and renewal programs, ensuring that your investment into the future is a safe bet. Step six: we hang anyone who disagreed with this post.
hmd_imputer 7y ago
So, in the best-case scenario, there will be a mere 1.0degree Celcius increase and in the worst-case scenario, the average increase will be 6.5degree Celcius. I don't know how it is possible to model technological breakthroughs. I mean if we have a working Nuclear Fusion technology by 2100, that could drastically change everything - (almost) free energy = unlimited desalinated water = full aforestation, even in the desert areas.
- pharke 7y ago
  The knock on effects from unlimited energy go a lot further. We could use technology we have today for CO2 capture since it is heavily energy dependent and simply scale it massively. The bulk of industry processes that currently require coal, oil, or gas to provide cheap heat could be fully electrified. Prices of a lot of commodities would drop dramatically. Indoor farming would be a cinch. People and governments would abandon internal combustion for the cheaper alternative. We could do absurd things that no one would even consider today like greening deserts as you mentioned or settling the arctic. You might be able to replace concrete with basalt if you could cleverly design a system for melting stone and casting the resulting lava in a form. Hell, you could banish winter by putting radiant heat in everything, walls, sidewalks, streets, and adding supplemental lighting like Moonlight Towers[0] except I suppose they would be Sunlight Towers in this case. The list goes on. The world would change so much it would be like living through the first half of the 20th century again. From horses, coal, and brick buildings to jet aircraft, nuclear power, and glass skyscrapers. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_tower
- lopmotr 7y ago
  Nuclear fusion won't be free energy at all. The plants will still cost money to build and operate. If you're only counting fuel cost, then solar and wind are already free energy. Even conventional nuclear fission is also almost free by that standard, and indeed people used to imagine it would be "too cheap to meter".

231 points by hendler 7y ago

Everyone get your thinking hats on. Based on this model, increasing building efficiency is the #1 way that we as entrepreneurs can have an impact. Passivhaus anyone?

IanCal 7y ago
Buildings and Industry is the heading, which covers a lot more than just housing.
- track_star 7y ago
  Correct but there is nothing preventing the use of Passivhaus technology in commercial buildings.
  - willyt 7y ago
    Includes heavy industry presumably? e.g. no such thing as passivhaus blast furnance or a passivhaus lime kiln.
    - ben_w 7y ago
      That makes me wonder, could the waste heat from those be used for residential district hearing? Or desalination? Not just technically, but usefully.

Thermolabile 7y ago

We observe the power of a carbon tax

lucb1e 7y ago
I'm also surprised how much of a difference nuclear can make. I mean, I know that nuclear is great as a stopgap until we build solar panels that we can actually recycle and install all the wind farms, etc. But the trouble is that a nuclear plant takes 30 years to build and for the public's opinion we might as well be proposing to move their backyards to a high tsunami risk zone or repeating all the actions that led up to the Chernobyl disaster. I've given up on this happening. Can it still make such a big difference, even if we only start building today? It makes me wonder if I shouldn't be giving up on the option of nuclear.
- DennisP 7y ago
  > a nuclear plant takes 30 years to build Only if your country isn't serious about it. South Korea builds modern nuclear plants in about five years: https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/2027347/south-korea-second-fastest-nuclear-plant-building-country https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/2027347/south-korea-s...
  - lucb1e 7y ago
    Oh, wow, okay. That changes the perspective quite a bit. Thanks!
    - mlyle 7y ago
      There's a lot of issues with depending upon solely nuclear to solve these problems, but I'd like to see nuclear in the mix. Unlike the MIT model, components of electric generation are not simple linear systems that exhibit the superposition principle. Renewables need a whole lot of moderate-term storage and over-provisioning to get to where we want to be, and nuclear could help ease that by providing a source of dependable base load. If we're transitioning to electric cars and homes away from gas heat, we need a whole lot of power in the middle of the night-- where photovoltaic doesn't help and wind can be iffy for days at a time.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
nabla9 7y ago
If well implemented, the steering effect for economy from billions of people trying to avoid the cost of carbon at the same time would be immense.

Yajirobe 7y ago

what does 'new technology' even mean and how does it enter the calculations?

zamadatix 7y ago
From the app: "Discover a brand-new cheap source of electricity that does not emit greenhouse gases. Some speculate that such a breakthrough could be nuclear fusion or thorium-based nuclear fission, however, there are unknown risks associated with any new energy supply. Decide when the breakthrough occurs, its initial cost relative to coal, and how long the delays in commercialization and scale up would be."

staltz 7y ago

Interesting tool. It basically says you can: - Tax coal, oil, natural gas, bioenergy - Subsidize renewables, nuclear, new technology - Increase efficiency and electrification of transports, buildings, and industry - Reduce population growth - Reduce economic growth - Reduce deforestation - Increase afforestation For an effect that puts us at +2.1C by 2100 https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?p1=120&p7=100&p10=6&p16=-0.07&p23=30&p30=-0.07&p35=2&p47=5&p50=5&p53=5&p55=5&p57=-10&p63=1.3&p64=1.7&p65=100&g0=1&g1=86&v=2.7.6 https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?p1=120... OR you can do these three things: - Set a high price on carbon - Reduce emissions of methane and other gases - Increase usage carbon removal technologies for a similar effect of +2.1C by 2100 https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?p39=250&p59=-100&p67=100&g0=1&g1=86&v=2.7.6 https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?p39=25... All optimistic actions combined puts us at +1.0C by 2100 https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?p1=120&p7=100&p10=6&p16=-0.07&p23=30&p30=-0.07&p35=2&p39=250&p47=5&p50=5&p53=5&p55=5&p57=-10&p59=-100&p63=1.3&p64=1.7&p65=100&p67=100&g0=1&g1=86&v=2.7.6 https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?p1=120...

zamadatix 7y ago
It makes sense, setting a high price on carbon is like lowering one end of the teeter totter vs raising the other for everything listed - the same thing just spelled out different ways.
rwc 7y ago
There comes a point where the model no longer accepts any progress beyond a +1.0C increase. No matter how many additional actions taken, the floor is +1.0C. It seems the immediate extinction of the human race would still result in an increase in temperature. Is there research that backs this up?
- dluan 7y ago
  We're already well into the anthropocene: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...

onion2k 7y ago

If you drag all of the bars to their ideal position (lowest on the bad things, highest on the good things) the temperature still goes up by more than a degree.

bluesign 7y ago
It is calculating from 2000, from 2020 (which is already at +1.3C) it will be like -0.3C, more important part is trend.
lopis 7y ago
It helps to show that we're screwed. But the degree to how screwed we are can vary a bit.
- goatlover 7y ago
  We're not screwed if it's limited to just a degree. Things start getting dicy at 2 degrees, more severe at 3, and so on. To what extent society can adapt and mitigate is a guess. The climate modes are about the climate, not how human civilization handles it.
  - xbmcuser 7y ago
    We are are already screwed at the current temperature the 2 degrees is just the point that the politicians thought they could sell to each other.
  - breakyerself 7y ago
    There is some disagreement that 1.5C might be where the diceyness kicks in although there is a fair amount of it happening now.
- mar77i 7y ago
  I wonder what it helps to show, except that we're screwed, because I believe to have already presumed that.
nizmow 7y ago

wiz21c 7y ago

it'd be nice to have a body count somewhere...

Waterluvian 7y ago
Yeah merge this with a beautiful GIS that simulates sea level rise and loss of land. As well as extinction estimates of plants and animals.
- lopmotr 7y ago
  You can't really see sea level rise on a map because most of our developed sea shores are already at least a meter or two above water. It's not going to change the shape of the coastlines near cities or other developed places, which is where it's important. Instead, it's predicted to increase the frequency and severity of flooding.
  - Waterluvian 7y ago
    True. So we look at floodplain maps and how they change.
lucb1e 7y ago
Also a count of people newly entering poverty, being displaced, increased spending on recovery from extreme weather events, increased spending on dikes (I'm Dutch, but a lot of countries will have to do that), increased mortality from the pollution (currently it's already in the millions of premature deaths per year but very few people know this), which animal and plant species will go extinct, etc.
jokoon 7y ago
Well a good start would be to try to predict agriculture outputs with those temperature. Honestly I tried asking this question but got no answer. Cereals might be just fine, and growing food in places where it's not possible to grow food is also a solution. But I'm terribly curious about the impact on food. Heatwaves will probably cause a lot of deaths at first, but once it happens, there are easy things cities can do to mitigate them.

wiz21c 7y ago

Reducing all energy sources to the mminium doesn't change much... That's sounds strange because if we reduce energy, then, well, we emit less CO2. Am I missing something ?

IanCal 7y ago
That doesn't have it reduce the energy, it's just shifting between them I think. So total energy use seems to remain the same, you're just changing where people get it.
- lopmotr 7y ago
  Yes. An interesting effect of this is that subsidizing bio fuels makes climate change worse because it takes away from other renewables.
mapleoin 7y ago
CO2 is still in the atmosphere.
- lucb1e 7y ago
  For those who would like to fix that, https://climeworks.com https://climeworks.com They seem to currently be the only reliable way of taking CO2 out of the air that is available to consumers. (I've got a subscription with them but am not vested in them in any other way. Well, other than for the survival of our current ecosystem.) You can also plant trees with a thousand and one different organisations, much cheaper than Climeworks per kilogram of CO2, but I haven't yet found one that (1) explains where this land comes from that somehow has no trees yet and yet can support them indefinitely and (2) claims the full-grown trees remain there indefinitely or are somehow prevented from releasing their CO2 again. I guess it's not that cheap anymore if you have to protect the forest for many decades from turning back into whatever it was before (maybe farmland?) and also have a liability after the main growth is over to care that it doesn't release it all back by dying or being burned.
  - 7y ago

Waterluvian 7y ago

These are too abstract for most humans. Someone needs to do a layer on top of this that instead has options like: - fake meat becomes widely adopted and we stop farming cattle - electric cars see 50% market share adoption Tangible things anyone can wrap their head around.

rimliu 7y ago
Also having very little effect.
marcosdumay 7y ago
> - fake meat becomes widely adopted and we stop farming cattle You can simulate that by tuning deflorestation to a minimum and methane to a lower value. Spoiler: it makes approximately no difference.

lazyjones 7y ago

0,5 degrees difference only for a population change of 5 billion people? Not very plausible (low vs. high growth). These simplistic models are counter-productive IMHO.

nabla9 7y ago
It's very plausible after you realize how much warming comes from processes that are already in effect and that the change in population is gradual.
zamadatix 7y ago
Any option introduces well delayed output in temperature, I don't see why population would be any different. Why is the model overly simplistic, because it didn't match your expectation?

dluan 7y ago

This is a fantastic use of science communication using design principles - particularly when you use the minigraphs and you can see the small multiples the impact and outcomes. I've always felt like more stuff like this would help bring home the imperceptible nuances of this complex web. It'd be cool to see some of this stuff for personal daily things. Just now I figured out that each time I charge my macbook pro, it's about equivalent to burning a quarter of a charcoal briquette in raw energy. It would be cool to see something like this for things like riding the bus, buying a new car, flying, eating meat, etc.

mattrp 7y ago
It would be nice to see the economic cost of each of the options as well.

plytheman 7y ago

About 5 or 6 years ago towards the end of my undergrad my professor picked up on this and we held some mock UN Climate assemblies using this tool.[1] The class divided up into first world, developing, and poorer nations and each had to bring their needs to the table while trying to compromise. I got to actually lead a session at MIT for some incoming freshman which was fun. The dashboard is super handy to drive home the numbers on our energy production/use and its effect on the climate but the workshop really drives home the political implications and how hard it will be to actually implement these changes. [1] https://www.climateinteractive.org/tools/climate-action-simulation/ https://www.climateinteractive.org/tools/climate-action-simu...

mistermann 7y ago
> The class divided up into first world, developing, and poorer nations and each had to bring their needs to the table while trying to compromise. Modeling the debate on the dimension of national wealth seems like a good idea. I'm curious, was there any discussion about potential value in modeling on other dimensions, such as political affiliation?
- plytheman 7y ago
  Not that I know of. We were just running off the materials En-Roads provided. From what I remember, though, each bloc is given cues as to what industries and population they represent which then plays into their arguments. So it isn't outright said that someone should argue a conservative or liberal angle, but knowing you need to defend your nation's industrial production or vulnerable communities lends itself towards some political talking points on one side or the other.

DennisP 7y ago

A simpler version of this was used for a while as part of MIT's ClimateColab, which attempted to crowdsource creative solutions to climate change. https://www.climatecolab.org/ https://www.climatecolab.org/ (They're still running contests, but they've scaled down a lot.)

arctangos 7y ago

The authors don't include some extremely nasty feedback loops the appear to currently be happening. For example, methane release from permafrost melt. As a result, the simulation appears to be misleadingly optimistic. - This tool is based on climate interactive's previous one, C-Road. - in the C-Road simulation when you click on parameters -> assumptions to add parameters about methane release through permafrost melting and human activities. By default, it's set to zero, but even their maximum values don't seem as impactful as I would expect. - in EN-Road simulation (this one) the methane release parameters are removed! So, no possibility to add any positive feedback loops. It feels like the relation between CO2 and temperature is a simple linear equation, or close to it.

koheripbal 7y ago
While negative feedback loops are big in the media, they are not well understood and difficult to model. Also, other feedback mechanisms seem to get little attention. Are we only looking to model the feedback mechanisms that reinforce a narrative of cataclysm? Don't other feedback mechanisms exist that lessen CO2 concentrations, or temperature dissipation?
- breakyerself 7y ago
  No. They aren't "only looking at feedback mechanisms that reinforce cataclysm." Modelers include every feedback that they can quantify well enough to include and the ones they don't understand well enough are studied carefully to be able to work out what the uncertainties are. Scientists 50 years ago predicted that we would be at around 1C (1.8F) of warming by 2020 with a 40% over preindustrial co2 level. That's exactly what we have now. They predicted almost perfectly today's climate decades before it came to pass. That may not seem like a big deal until you understand that global temperatures haven't been this high in 130,000 years. It isn't being recognized properly yet in the media, but the stunning accuracy of predictions by climate modelers is one of the greatest achievements in the history Earth sciences.
  - mistermann 7y ago

musha68k 7y ago

High taxation of fossil energy together with rolling-out of new energy/carbon-removal technology seem to be a real way out of this catastrophe. Does anyone have a list of startups and established companies actively working on any of those crucial solutions? Only found this through a quick Github search: https://github.com/flamato/awesome-climate-change-ressources/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/flamato/awesome-climate-change-ressources...

ben85ts 7y ago
There's a tech group https://techimpactmakers.com/ https://techimpactmakers.com/ with a couple startups in the slack workspace.
koheripbal 7y ago
These are both big projects not well suited to startups. Taxation needs to be agreed upon at the international level. CO2 has an atmospheric half-lifetime on the order of decades. If we would just switch to zero emission energy, like nuclear power, we could get through the next century and survive.
jokoon 7y ago
Don't solutions already exist? There is a lot to do with engine size and vehicle size and weight, especially in the US. Nuclear energy and trains are possible, even if they require electrifying the railroads. Drastically reduce beef consumption is also a thing to do. Not sure about those "carbon removal" techs. A lot of the CO2 tends to go in the atmosphere. The biggest problem is a political one: You can't fight unemployment and inequality and try to reduce emissions. I can see ideology being a big problem when dealing with climate change. Although fighting climate change can also be an opportunity to steer away from an ideology of competition and go back to cooperation, because politically it WILL BE a nightmare. Things can also derail into complete anarchy where it becomes everyone for himself, where poor people will have to bear high temperatures.
- semi-extrinsic 7y ago
  > The biggest problem is a political one: You can't fight unemployment and inequality and try to reduce emissions. Why do you believe this is true? It seems to me like many efforts to reduce emissions are also likely to reduce inequality, some also increase employment. For instance: * Make public transport free and increased capacity, good on all three counts * CO2 tax on big emitters will reduce profits of these companies, which are usually high margin industries with few unskilled/low-pay workers * Higher taxes on air travel affect poor people less than rich people * Current trends point towards rich countries committing to subsidise emissions reductions in poor countries

EA 7y ago

What happens if we run the simulation backwards through time?

EdSharkey 7y ago
<glitch>

jokoon 7y ago

I'm curious what those carbon removal techs are exactly. Because a lot of the CO2 tends to stay in the atmosphere.

chinathrow 7y ago
One example is https://www.climeworks.com/ https://www.climeworks.com/, others are e.g. the production of synthetic fuels by using ambient CO2 to produce CO2-neutral enegery.
Ohn0 7y ago
Trees
- jokoon 7y ago
  trees are not really a good way to capture carbon

yrro 7y ago

Refuses to run for me. with Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:71.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/71.0 "Detected Characteristics - Mobile browser" Don't tell me the web developers now assume that Linux == Android...

LoSboccacc 7y ago

even at the lowest setting the world gdp still shows an exponential growth. doesn't seem sustainable to me, at some point efficiency in industrialized country has to flatten out, even if just because there are so many customers to sell products to so there's an equilibrium somewhere to be reached, especially since increase efficiency suppresses wages reducing demand.

sampo 7y ago

What value of Climate Sensitivity is assumed in the model? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity Edit: Found it in sec. 9.2 in the manual. It's 3. https://www.climateinteractive.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/En-ROADS_Reference_Guide_v92.docx https://www.climateinteractive.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/1...

nabla9 7y ago
You can change the sensitivity. First from top menu simulation -> assumptions. Then from below > "Climate system sensitivities" you can alter Climate sensitivity, Ocean mixing index, CO2 fertilization index, Sea level rise from ice sheet melting and Carbon cycle land and ocean uptake

hanniabu 7y ago

This is great and all, but what can we do about the people that don't believe this data? That's where the real issue is. I have a bunch of coworkers that think scientists are making up this data and skewing results because their jobs depend on it and they want to continue to get funding. "Follow the money" is a common thing they say in regards to this, but also conveniently disregarded and deny that big oil/coal have more to lose. It's very difficult to fight ignorance, especially when they don't believe facts. This is the main issue with climate change deniers, not the inability to visualize the data.

adventskalender 7y ago
It is clearly made up data, as for example they predict the outcome of policies like carbon costs. Afaik even economists don't agree on the results of such policies. They are just making an assumption and the whole app is merely advertising for their preferred type of policy.
- mattnewton 7y ago
  I think you are being mistaken for saying the climate data they are using is made up, but your point is more subtle- they don’t show their work to tell you what the biofuel subsidies, for example, will do to CO2 levels.
  - adventskalender 7y ago
    I don't know about their climate data, I just think their claims of the impact of carbon costs are pure speculation. If they had a calculator for determining temperature increase depending on carbon output, it would be more credible. They are piping two complex system into each other - economic and climate. At least economics are not understood well enough to really make such predictions. And if the output of the economic model is unreliable, so is the result of the climate model.
- Brakenshire 7y ago
  You’re right, the climate data is likely to be solid but the economic modelling dubious.

mar77i 7y ago

No sane setting gets us down to 2°C. I don't feel taken seriously. Can I get a slider for the frequency of volcanic eruptions? On a slightly more serious note, can we tame volcanoes by somehow - ideally - producing energy and ... prevent eruptions, somewhat comparable to the way earth wires actively do so with lightning strikes?

papreclip 7y ago
I want a slider that lets you shrink the population (not just "low growth"). Climate change is just one of many ways that overpopulation is negatively impacting all life on earth.
- pharke 7y ago
  What would be the units? Number of gas chambers?
  - papreclip 7y ago
    I was thinking more along the lines of IUDs

programminggeek 7y ago

This model is sort of absurd. It doesn't take into account the most important factor... people. If you made a model of the world today back in 1920, it would be comical. Imagine you went back to say 1920 and told people that in 2020 they would be surrounded by talking televisions, phones, that we'd be sending people and ships to the moon, mars, etc. and that they could instantly talk to any person on the planet (including loved ones on the other side of the world), they would not believe you. In the last 100 years (heck even the last 20-30) we've invented a staggering amount of new and interesting things. In the last 100 years people created interstate highway systems, nuclear power, the internet, radio data networks, self guided weapons, self guided vehicles, robots, rudimentary AI, etc... What if in 100 years we make fusion work (probably for space travel/war?) and then we replace the existing infrastructure with that. And what if we can do enough carbon removal or storage to solve this? Any model that doesn't model the history altering inventiveness of humans is not an accurate model at all. It's just really fancy navel gazing.

EthanHeilman 7y ago
You can't model things like innovation on a hundred year time scale. The reason the predictions from the 1920s "would be comical" is not because people in the 1920s where all fools but because modeling future innovation over a 100 year time scale is extremely challenging. Even if you could include innovation it would reduce the benefit of such a model. Imagine you have a model that has access to a global temperature oracle and it says: "global temperature decreased 0.1 C in 2120 because of innovation". You don't know why that happened and so such a model would be mostly useless to achieving any result. What you are proposing is like a software performance analytics tool that already includes the fact that you will improve the software performance in the current metrics. However the purpose of such a tool is to figure out where the performance problems are so that you can fix them. Adding such a feature makes the tool useless. What you want to see the baseline and then you want to model the impact of solutions after you discover them. >What if in 100 years we make fusion work (probably for space travel/war?) and then we replace the existing infrastructure with that. I think fusion will happen faster than that. However the model we are discussing only goes out 81 years so it doesn't cover the impact of events 100 years hence.
7y ago

pmontra 7y ago

The single most effective parameter in this simulation is Carbon price. Sliding it all the way to the right lowers the temperature increase from 4.1 to 3.0. Most of the other parameters do little or nothing. Of course setting a high price for carbon is different from actually making people/companies pay for it.

kgabis 7y ago

It's surprising how rarely intentional geoengineering (because we're doing it anyway, just unintentionally) is mentioned when discussing climate change. Stratospheric aerosol injection seems like a plausible way of slowing down the warming of earth yet it's too taboo to be even discussed as a viable option.

ohgreatwtf 7y ago

The single biggest line item in this program is agricultural methane emissions. The second single item is drastic reduction of energy usage in industrial applications. Even now the farmers in the hague are protesting the former. The latter is simply impossible. This programme for climate control is an unrealistic plan thought up by a bunch of nerds. You should all elect me dictator for life and do what I, the cyber-fuhrer, command you. Step one: we must recognize this is OUR planet and OUR environment, so we can do whatever the hell we want with it. Step two: Reshape carbon level perspectives. carbon levels above 500 PPM are unhealthy and we are on track to reach that in a few years. Canned air is a thing now. We must curb our carbon emissions and reduce carbon levels in order to be more healthy, not control global warming. Everyone, even the critics, recognize Co2 above 1000 is bad for your health and everyone has experienced high CO/CO2 levels. Step three: The climate can go fuck itself. We'll glass over a portion of arid desert or mountain land the size of texas, divided into plots of land 100 square miles each in remote areas around the globe, and cover them in mylar reflective sheeting. The increased albedo will more than counteract the temperature trends estimated from greenhouse gas based warming. I have done the math. Step four: We must observe that it is not merely renewable energy but renewable infrastructure that must exist to fix this problem. Batteries and solar panels and devices that wear out too quickly exhaust our resources, and infrastructure costs make up a large portion of the factors limiting adoption. A Renewable Society becomes our focus as a total propaganda and government mandate worldwide. Step five: we create a global research funding scheme and open patent pool that internationally maximizes research effort into renewable infrastructure. We establish trade agreements that create international laws which incentivize renewable energy adoption through guaranteeing adoption payoff by establishing long-lived warranties and government subsidized repair and renewal programs, ensuring that your investment into the future is a safe bet. Step six: we hang anyone who disagreed with this post.

hmd_imputer 7y ago

So, in the best-case scenario, there will be a mere 1.0degree Celcius increase and in the worst-case scenario, the average increase will be 6.5degree Celcius. I don't know how it is possible to model technological breakthroughs. I mean if we have a working Nuclear Fusion technology by 2100, that could drastically change everything - (almost) free energy = unlimited desalinated water = full aforestation, even in the desert areas.

pharke 7y ago
The knock on effects from unlimited energy go a lot further. We could use technology we have today for CO2 capture since it is heavily energy dependent and simply scale it massively. The bulk of industry processes that currently require coal, oil, or gas to provide cheap heat could be fully electrified. Prices of a lot of commodities would drop dramatically. Indoor farming would be a cinch. People and governments would abandon internal combustion for the cheaper alternative. We could do absurd things that no one would even consider today like greening deserts as you mentioned or settling the arctic. You might be able to replace concrete with basalt if you could cleverly design a system for melting stone and casting the resulting lava in a form. Hell, you could banish winter by putting radiant heat in everything, walls, sidewalks, streets, and adding supplemental lighting like Moonlight Towers[0] except I suppose they would be Sunlight Towers in this case. The list goes on. The world would change so much it would be like living through the first half of the 20th century again. From horses, coal, and brick buildings to jet aircraft, nuclear power, and glass skyscrapers. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_tower
lopmotr 7y ago
Nuclear fusion won't be free energy at all. The plants will still cost money to build and operate. If you're only counting fuel cost, then solar and wind are already free energy. Even conventional nuclear fission is also almost free by that standard, and indeed people used to imagine it would be "too cheap to meter".