Climate Interactive

Partner John Sterman in Powerful Video — Red State Goes Green

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Check out the following post from Climate Interactive partner Dr. John Sterman of MIT’s Sloan School. View a post here on Joe Romm’s Climate Progress blog.  Start with “Amber Waves of Green,” directed by Randy Olson:

And Dr. Sterman’s commentary:

On May 4, 2007, Greensburg, Kansas, was destroyed by an F5 tornado.  Almost every building in town was leveled.  Eleven were killed, dozens injured.  Yet within days, the people of Greensburg had committed to rebuild their town, and to rebuild green.  Today, Greensburg is the greenest town in the USA, and maybe the world.  Much of their electricity now comes from wind.  There’s some solar.  There’s geothermal.  And there’s highly efficient buildings.  There are more LEED Platinum rated buildings in Greensburg per person, and per acre, than anywhere in the United States.  All town buildings are now LEED Platinum.  There are Platinum rated homes, a beautiful, LEED Platinum school for the children of Kiowa county, and Platinum-rated private businesses.  People come from all over the world to see how a small farming community pulled together to rebuild and transform.  When I visited this September with Randy Olson, we met two visitors from China’s leading teacher training university who were touring Greensburg’s new school to learn how they can develop green schools in China. [Read more…] about Partner John Sterman in Powerful Video — Red State Goes Green

The Benshi: “It was very cool. Very very cool.”

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Today we have guest post by the Science Communicator Guru Randy Olson, who wrote an excellent book “Don’t Be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style ” and has a great blog as well, The Benshi. The original is here.

Climate Interactive Simulation

Randy Olson, April 29th, 2010

Last Thursday night I was on a panel discussion at M.I.T. for Earth Day about communicating science in today’s information-overloaded world. On the panel was John Sterman of M.I.T. Sloan School of Management whom I met last December when he was in Los Angeles giving a talk (somewhat incongruously at the biggest talent agency in Hollywood to a crowd of entertainment industry gadflies). I found his presentation shockingly interesting, so when he invited me on Thursday to take part in his Climate Interactive simulation exercise the next morning, I figured why not.

He’s part of a team called “Climate Interactive” — a consortium including M.I.T., the Sustainability Institute, and Ventana Systems — who have assembled a simulation model about the climate fate of the planet which is simple enough for people to take part in a role playing version that only takes a few hours, yet opens your eyes up to the dangerous dynamics now unfolding in our planetary atmospheric experiment. He was on our Earth Day panel at M.I.T. on Thursday evening and invited me to join his presentation of the role playing game the next morning at a workshop, which I did.

It was very cool. Very, very cool.

[Read more…] about The Benshi: “It was very cool. Very very cool.”