December 17th, 2009

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

Personally, I’ve taken a low carbon emissions position on Copenhagen, watching the action from my desk here in the U.S.

You may be too. If so, I wanted to offer cool Internet tool you can use to assess how policy and science intersect. (Earlier I mentioned a Copenhagen Target Converter by SandbagClimateGame.org — where you can adjust emissions targets against various years so they can be better compared.)

This one, and apologies I’m a little late with this, is a scoreboard at Climate Interactive.

This calculator projects ahead to estimate how much hotter the planet would be, and how thick atmospheric carbon would be, under these scenarios: business-as-usual; if proposals on the table at Copenhagen are passed, and what the tool calls “goals” or the  “low emissions path.” The latter would involve rolling back emissions big time and spending enough on green technology and in developing nations to hold the planet to an increase of just 1.5 degrees Celsius, which theoretically should keep the carbon at 450 ppm (which isn’t really even enough according to a growing chorus of groups).

At that last level, scientists say we might avert climate disaster. Even better if emissions were held to 350 ppm. Some say we MUST hold to 350 ppm. Others point out that new technologies could help us pull down emissions further as the world focuses its brainpower on climate change.

(Notice the really high carbon levels at the “business as usual” projection; frightening what this would mean for ice, oceans, agriculture, aquifers, asthmatics etc. In fact, by anyone’s estimation this is meltdown territory.)

But you need to look at this graphic and fiddle with it to really understand. After you do, you’ll know why some climate activists just aren’t satisfied with the level of commitment from world leaders on this very critical issue at this turning point in time.

Climate Interactive, by the way, is not an advocacy group, but a collaboration of businesses, philanthropies and scientists focused on creating models that we can use to assess how to create a sustainable future.

In computer speak, they specialize in “sims” or simulations, and they’re not dabblers. Groups signed on and actively working to make sense of the science include MIT, Sustainability Institute, Ventana Systems.

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