After Gutenberg

Treehugger Kristin Underwood from Sacramento, California posts: “Climate Scoreboard is your new, easy to use tool that keeps you up to date on where we are with meeting those ppm carbon goals and how much further we have to go.” Which is an optimistic way of stating the concept, rather than stating that it indicates how much longer Life on the Planet as we know It has left. In any case, this blog has added a Climate Scoreboard page and you can, too.

“Podesta calls it a game-changer.”

The Climate Scoreboard uses C-Road technology to automatically update the thermostat based on which agreements pass and what those agreements mean for future global temperatures. The graphic created makes Copenhagen agreements easy to understand with just a quick glance. A thermostat graphic with several “colored” levels that identify business as usual, December (date) proposals, and the ultimate goal, anyone can easily tell just how close or far we are from that goal indicator of 1.5 degreeC temperature increase.

The Scoreboard was created by Climate Interactive, a group developed to make science more understandable and develop presentations and models to explain what is going on around the planet, particularly when it comes to climate change. Partnering with the Sustainability Institute, MIT, and Ventana Systems, the folks at Climate Interactive are attempting to make climate simulation models based on current scientific data that are also easy to understand and thus more accessible to the media and general public. If you Twitter, you can get updates to the scoreboard in real time this week. If you have a media website, you can easily download the Scoreboard widget and give your readers automatic updates as they come in.

There are several simulations already online, like MIT’s Greenhouse Gas Simulator that shows what it would take to stabilize global CO2 concentrations, or the Climate Bathtub Animation that colorfully depicts what we can expect if we cap carbon emissions at current levels today. The site also includes several videos, including one where John Kerry explains the Climate Scoreboard and how to use it.

More Treehugger Posts on Copenhagen (COP15)
The Climate Clock and Copenhagen
U.S. Pulls the Plug on Copenhagen
Countdown to Copenhagen: The Events That Will Rock the World Before Cop15 Does
Now It’s Super-Official: No Climate Treaty at Copenhagen

Related articles by Zemanta

• The century’s defining issue (economist.com)