Today we have guest post by Joe Laur of Greenopolis, who discusses understanding the carbon system.
Computer Simulators Show How Much Waste CO2 We Need To Cut!
Joe LaurIt takes a systems thinker to understand a system.
Systems move in mysterious ways. If you look at a wheel rotating clockwise, and then move to a position on the opposite side of the wheel- it will be moving counterclockwise! Sometimes if you step on the gas, the car stalls. Sometimes small changes, like moving the trim tab on a ship, make huge changes. And sometimes we need to and can make bigger changes than we thought possible to get where we need to go. Systems surprise us.
There’s an old story about lily pads on a pond. If the lily pads double in number every day, and the pond is covered by lily pads in 30 days, how much of the pond will be covered on day 29? One half. Day 28? A quarter. Day 27? An eighth. Day 26? A sixteenth! Only a few days from disaster, just a small portion of the pond is covered with lily pads. Those “chicken little “environmentalists, all worried about a few lily pads! Such is the nature of sudden systemic change.
Climate Interactive has been producing robust, science based computer simulators to explore the impacts of systemic rise in waste carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses and help leaders in places like the UN and the US Senate chart policy on carbon issues. [Read more…] about Greenopolis Post: Workshop on Learning How to Cut Waste CO2