From the UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS LOWELL and the “SIMCITY beat them to it six years ago” department comes news of a climate role-playing game, where you get to be a U.N. delegate going to COP conferences, complete with a buffet. What kid could resist that?
A graphic prepared by MIT to cater to kids:
Is the key to sparking climate action a game?
81 percent of participants in a role play simulation increased motivation to combat climate change, regardless of political orientation
Research published by PLOS ONE found that 81 percent of participants in the World Climate Simulation, a role-playing game of the UN climate talks, showed increased motivation to combat climate change, even among Americans who are free market proponents, a belief strongly linked to denial of human-caused climate change in the United States.
Prof. Juliette Rooney-Varga of the UMass Lowell Climate Change Initiative led the research into how the game affected participants’ beliefs, emotional responses, and intent to take action on climate change. The study examined how World Climate affected more than 2,000 participants from eight countries and four continents, ranging from middle school students to CEOs. Across this diverse population, and regardless of political orientation, cultural identity, age, or gender, participation in World Climate was associated with increased understanding of climate change science, a greater sense of urgency and hope, and increased motivation to learn and do more about climate change. The more people learned through the game, the more their sense of urgency increased. As Rooney-Varga explains, “it was this increased sense of urgency, not knowledge, that was key to sparking motivation to act.”
The researchers also found that the game reaches people outside the traditional climate change “choir,” including free-market proponents and people who knew and cared little about climate change before participating. In fact, these people experienced greater gains in knowledge, urgency, and motivation to act. This finding is particularly exciting given the failure of many prior climate change communication efforts to reach across the political spectrum and to engage people who are not concerned about the issue. The study relied on statistical analysis of surveys that participants completed before and after experiencing World Climate.
The World Climate game is “an engaging, social experience grounded in the best available climate science,” comments Rooney-Varga. Participants take on the roles of national delegates to the UN climate change negotiations and are charged with creating a global agreement that successfully mitigates climate change. As in the real negotiations, each delegation offers policies for their greenhouse gas emissions. The developed nations pledge contributions to the Green Climate Fund to help developing nations cut their emissions and adapt to change; the developing nations specify how much they need to do so. Their decisions are then entered into the climate policy computer model, C-ROADS, which has been used to support the real negotiations, giving participants immediate feedback on the expected climate impacts of their decisions. First round results usually fall short, showing everyone the likely harm to their prosperity, health and welfare. Participants then negotiate again, using C-ROADS to explore the consequences of more ambitious emission cuts.
World Climate is designed for ease of use. As of July 2018, more than 43,000 people in 78 countries around the world have participated in it. The simulation has been reviewed by independent educators and scientists, found to support national science education standards in the US, and designated as an official resource for schools in France, Germany, and South Korea.
Co-author, Prof. John Sterman of MIT Sloan School of Management, notes that “research shows that showing people research doesn’t work. World Climate works because it enables people to express their own views, explore their own proposals and thus learn for themselves what the likely impacts will be.”
Dr. Rooney-Varga of UMass Lowell adds, “For most of human history experience has been our best teacher, enabling us to understand the world around us while stimulating emotions–fear, anger, worry, hope–that drive us to act. The big question for climate change communication is: how can we build the knowledge and emotions that drive informed action without real-life experience which, in the case of climate change, will only come too late? The answer appears to be simulated experience.”
Co-authors Eduardo Fracassi and Florian Kapmeier have used World Climate extensively across South America and Europe. Fracassi has seen World Climate inspire “life-changing insights,” with many participants “embracing projects that reduced greenhouse gas emissions in the real world and taking steps to protect people from future climate risks.” Kapmeier shared the simulation with the Germany Ministry of Education, which designated World Climate as an official resource for German high schools. As Kapmeier explains, the German government “realized that education is a key means to move climate policy forward” and “appreciates that the C-ROADS climate model in World Climate is used by actual policymakers.”
Co-author Andrew Jones of Climate Interactive sees relevance for climate communication more generally: “Our findings may be useful to anyone who is engaging others on climate action. It suggests three key ingredients: information grounded in solid science, an experience that helps people feel for themselves, on their own terms, and social interaction arising from conversation with their peers.”
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The paper: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0202877
Combining role-play with interactive simulation to motivate informed climate action: Evidence from the World Climate simulation
Abstract
Climate change communication efforts grounded in the information deficit model have largely failed to close the gap between scientific and public understanding of the risks posed by climate change. In response, simulations have been proposed to enable people to learn for themselves about this complex and politically charged topic. Here we assess the impact of a widely-used simulation, World Climate, which combines a socially and emotionally engaging role-play with interactive exploration of climate change science through the C-ROADS climate simulation model. Participants take on the roles of delegates to the UN climate negotiations and are challenged to create an agreement that meets international climate goals. Their decisions are entered into C-ROADS, which provides immediate feedback about expected global climate impacts, enabling them to learn about climate change while experiencing the social dynamics of negotiations. We assess the impact of World Climate by analyzing pre- and post-survey results from >2,000 participants in 39 sessions in eight nations. We find statistically significant gains in three areas: (i) knowledge of climate change causes, dynamics and impacts; (ii) affective engagement including greater feelings of urgency and hope; and (iii) a desire to learn and do more about climate change. Contrary to the deficit model, gains in urgency were associated with gains in participants’ desire to learn more and intent to act, while gains in climate knowledge were not. Gains were just as strong among American participants who oppose government regulation of free markets–a political ideology that has been linked to climate change denial in the US–suggesting the simulation’s potential to reach across political divides. The results indicate that World Climate offers a climate change communication tool that enables people to learn and feel for themselves, which together have the potential to motivate action informed by science.
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It springs to mind another ‘role play’ set in a Northern/Central European country in the 1930’s…….
Dr. Rooney-Varga of UMass Lowell adds, “For most of human history experience has been our best teacher, enabling us to understand the world around us while stimulating emotions–fear, anger, worry, hope–that drive us to act.
Oh, the (tragic) irony!
That is a particularly loony statement….”For most of human history experience has been our best teacher,…” so what is our best teacher now? Computer models… (of the climate)? and “emotions drive us to act”, do they? What about logic, intelligence, the philosophy of science Docter flaming Roony-Varga?
….
Experience isn’t always the best teacher. Our minds are set to look for patterns, and in a primitive world this works moderately well. Pattern: you see a lion, it will chase you and try to eat you – see your friends eaten a few times and you stay away from lions.
However this pattern recognition can be fooled by random probability clustering events, and seeing patterns in random data. This is epitomized by “celebrities die in threes” and also being able to pick out “head and shoulders” in a stock trend line. It is random data, but our minds seek to place a pattern on them.
Experience and Pattern Recognition, are not the same thing.
Perceiving a pattern in random data, which doesn’t have a real impact on your life, can produce some strange beliefs, but is largely meaningless.
Experience is the result of discovering what happens, after you take action on the basis of that perceived pattern.
You might think that you see a pattern in the spinning of a Roulette Wheel, but after you lose your life savings, you won’t be so inclined to believe that the next apparent pattern you see in it, is actually real.
Pattern recognition from random data has led in the past to witch trials, virgin sacrifices, and cargo cults. It isn’t largely meaningless – it can hurt. There are more minor ways you could “hurt” yourself. You get sick three times eating a certain something. You start avoiding it, even though the illness was a coincidence.
The sacrifice thing goes like this – lets sacrifice a virgin to appease the crop god. Hey it worked, good harvest this year. They do it 3 years in a row and it still works. 4th year doesn’t work, so they assume the “gods” want more – so they double down and do two virgins, then wow crops are good again. That is finding a pattern in random data as well. We all get fooled all the time. You are right 99% of the time it is relatively harmless, but as I said, sometimes it can hurt.
It would seem that you missed that I was qualifying, that its meaningless when the random data has no real impact on your life.
However the example you just cited, was a function of the lack of an alternative explanation, rather than pattern recognition.
It was a common belief throughout the ancient world, that all adverse environmental conditions were a manifestation of divine retribution; not simply misfortune timed by providence as a lesson, but the direct anger of the gods.
Now that it is understood that lightening storms and droughts are necessary functions of the atmospheric regulatory system, religiously minded individuals might beseech their god’s blessings for favorable weather, but they no longer believe that every thunderclap means that they must have sinned in some unknown manner.
No assumption of guilt, no human sacrifices needed, whether they seem to work for a time or not.
Marque: we’re smarter than to fear the lion because of ‘pattern recognition’. Even the antelope doesnt learn by being eaten. He responds to aggressive menacing looks, sounds and behavior and takes flight if he hears a tree branch fall. Even defenceless creatures use these universal things for protection, too. A butterfly has big “eyes” on his wings and opens his wings wide to give a predator second thoughts. Human brains supersede all this. The lion, the mammoth had good reason to fear us!
Always missing from discussions of pattern recognition and “correlation doesn’t mean causation” is the uber-important fact that if there is no correlation, there is NO causation! That is to say, pattern recognition is all important. Random spurious patterns can fool us and we shouldnt jump to conclusions, but we should certainly investigate and test it.
Yes, it is depressing to watch.
By our natures we are social beings with a coalitional instinct. When you put a group into a situation where the “right answer” is unambiguous, and the implication of dissent is that you are a threat to the tribe, people radically conform and adopt almost any irrational belief system. Your example of National Socialism is one example.
I see this at least once a week, people who I respect and know to be intelligent and successful, nevertheless spouting Climate Change propaganda that they have not bothered to analyze on their own. This whole game is based on the insight that the vast majority is ignorant of the science and can be manipulated through peer pressure to accept climate myths.
I raise the subject gently when it seems apropos. I say with earlier severe temperature projections, frequency of storms, floods, droughts, etc. turning out to have been greatly overestimated, many scientists are coming to believe that it may not be so serious after all. I mention the miraculous greening of the planet and the doubling of harvests on lesser acreages that are causing changes in thinking on the value of increased”Carbon” (CO2) in the atmosphere. Some show positive interest, the Birkenstocked ladies and gentlemen, not so much!
+1, very insightful.
A little off topic however, with all the political brow bashing going here in Australia over energy prices, the UK has just announced price caps on energy prices. Crazy stuff going on.
Wage and price controls only work in the short run. After that you enter Zimbabwe or Venezuela territory. Is the UK ready to elect Jeremy Corbin now and hasten the road to communism? This action of price controls I guess is a test run for communism. If the UK doesnt want communism Hint: get rid of all laws regulating CO2.
I am not sure there are wage/price controls in Aus and the UK. What I do know is wage increases are stalled, interest rates are on the rise, property prices are out of reach of most locals and energy prices are on the up (Which is passed down the chain, food, transport etc etc) in both countries.
I sure hope Australia doesn’t go down the tubes, I’d love to visit some day soon.
I bemoan the apparent change in the happy-go-lucky, iconoclastic character of the Ozzies such as I met in the early 1960s wandering around Europe giving Europeans heartburn. They were a fun, incorrigible bunch. I never thought these people could ever be fleeced and fenced. Whatever happened? There must be a few 75-80 yearolds left, sidelined by ineligibility and disinclination for membership in the “Diversity” klatch.
These are all problems caused by government, and the solution is to get government out of the way of the economy.
More government is never the solution to problems caused by government.
Yet people quite consistently vote for more government. Trump may be the exception, but even many senators and representatives are all for more and more government. They are sent back all the time. It’s hard to argue that people don’t want the nanny state when they keep asking for it.
Most voters can’t think beyond the next free lunch.
Asian woman in group ‘negotiating’ “You Americans get a grip you need to talk to us”.
I wonder what she’d like to talk to Americans about; any guesses?
One of the characters is using a laptop! How was that made?
How is it powered?
It is obviously powered by good intentions
The German Nazis had their Hitler Youth. They were the Deutsches Jungvolk in der Hitler Jugend or “DJ”, also “DJV” for for male youths aged 14 to 18, and their Bund Deutsche Mädel or “BDM” for girls 14 to 18.
That concept has long been appreciated by societies since ancient Mesopotamia; indoctrinate them young in their teens before they have a chance to become aware of the manipulation. Their higher brain functions of executive control over cognitive functions will not fully mature until the early 20’s. As such they have few of the ethical bounds or moral maturity to understand the consequences of their actions. Sadly, It is also why Armies are historically made up of 18-22 year old males, amped-up, ready to charge an enemy machine gun line with bayonets.
Today’s climate crusader youth are essentially doing the same. They are being taught to charge head-long into the reality of actual climate armed with a rubber climate change knife, handed to them by manipulators. Nature loves to eat fools.
https://twitter.com/Thongch34759935/status/1037967275100332032?s=20
There has been a couple of cases recently where young, computer gamer’s, have taken lethal action on themselves and others for losing a game. Is this a goal?
One would think the lethal action would be better directed against the capitalists that the warmists hate.
“including free-market proponents” Sure, once they find out about all the subsidies and tax breaks.
Never before in the history of mankind has so much been misconstrued by so few to so many
Misrepresented?
Both.
Won’t there be chidren who try to cause the “negotiations” to implode , and the climate model to produce runaway warming?
Perhaps the best answer is another version that focuses on consequent power cuts, reduced standards of living and riot and revolution that results from trying to take us back to the Stone Age. It could offer ways out through permitting fracking and developing nuclear.
Shouldn’t there be a Bjorn Lomborg button on the computer that you have to push once you input your action? That button should cause a large panel to light up that flashes the following message: CONGRSTULATIONS! Your actions will reduce global temperature by 0.00013 degrees!
Probably need to add several more zeroes between the decimal and the 1.
These Greenalists are stupid, or at least the Useful Idiots are! They want Earth to return to being out of influence of Human activity, so they come up with all sorts wacky schemes to put various “pollutants” into the atmosphere, to prevent Global Warming, which is still not off the perfectly natural occurrance agenda! Their logic is irrational!
I was an official Country Representative to a United Nations/IAEA meeting in Vienna, Austria. What I saw by the UN/IAEA staff on a daily basis definitely was not a childrens game. It was Weinstein writ large. It was corruption and greed on an immense scale. Childrens Game? Maybe for future Swamp Creatures.
Garbage in, garbage out. “Dr. Rooney-Varga of UMass Lowell adds … how can we build the knowledge and emotions that drive informed action without real-life experience which, in the case of climate change, will only come too late? The answer appears to be simulated experience.” Rubbish. Go outside. Watch a thunderstorm to see what the atmosphere does naturally with heat from the surface.
According to the alarmists, we will have passed the point of no return long before any of these kids are old enough to do anything about CO2 emissions.
So what’s the point?
“Go outside. Watch a thunderstorm to see what the atmosphere does naturally with heat from the surface.”
In their case, preferably holding a long steel rod in each hand, around 4-6ft should do it!
Copper is recommended…
We had thunderstorms here in Sydney, Australia yesterday evening…and there were people flying kites on the beach too!
but inbuilt co2 fear/loathing as the start point
pretty much negates its worth
if fear works then thats what they use
Ive reached indifference to most of what theyre pushing
the odd item gets me angry, usually the really grandiose threat claims
The proof that Gorebal Warming is a scientific blunder, if not outright fraud… “Climate change communication” has become an actual field of academia.
Academia is and has been, for the past 65 years or longer, undergoing a decline into money grubbing/politics. I am certain that this is not a new phenomenon but merely different in its causes and direction. Historically and even now, in certain cultures and geographic areas,
religion has been a driver of the direction of academia though money and politics and religion are/were intertwined in those places and cultures I am sure. I use 65 years as that is the period of my experience with the educational system one way or another.
I’d like to see a version of the game where no matter what actions mankind takes, nothing significant happens to the climate. It just continues to plod along as before. But if those playing the game open the door to socialism, they get mass starvation.
Reality, then…
I wouldn’t be a best seller.
I hope the buffet offers organic, sustainable, vegetarian, vegan food only. If not: back to the drawing board (and from there straightaway to midden heap).
A buffet that shrinks rapidly with every anti-CO2 action selected.
I like the graphic. Viewed from a distance it seems to illustrate the basic problem of the AGW theory: the large gap between models and observations …..
It sure is great how the first step in “controlling the climate” is controlling your neighbor and taking his money.
Following Lord Bertrand Russell’s recipe :
In his 1931 book, The Scientific Outlook, Bertrand Russell says, ‘Ordinary men and women will be expected to be docile, industrious, punctual, thoughtless, and contented. Of these qualities probably contentment will be considered the most important. In order to produce it, all the researches of psycho-analysis, behaviourism, and biochemistry will be brought into play . . . . All the boys and girls will learn from an early age to be what is called ‘co-operative,’ i.e., to do exactly what everybody is doing.
Initiative will be discouraged in these children, and insubordination, without being punished, will be scientifically trained out of them.’ For the children chosen to be among the scientific ruling class, education was to be quite different. ‘Except for the one matter of loyalty to the world State and to their own order,’ Russell explained, ‘members of the governing class will be encouraged to be adventurous and full of initiative. It will be recognized that it is their business to improve scientific technique, and to keep the manual workers contented by means of continual new amusements’.”
And yet you always advocate against the individual and for bigger government.
The entire “Science is Settled” narrative if straight from Bertrand Russell’s “Systems Analysis” applied to climate modelling, logic parading as reality instead of instead of physical principles. This together with the “cooperative” agenda of Russell , see below, is quite revealing.
Am I the only one that sees a person in a green jacket flashing the KKK sign?!
No. As described by MSNBC, you are absolutely correct, though Zina Bash’s use was inadvertent or at least discrete. MIT’s use is “in your face.”
That was an Okay sign until people went nuts and started seeing conspiracies and racism in everything.
Yes, go after the ones who don’t pay the bills and the taxes. Strategically and mathematically that is a Pareto optimal move.
Are they the politicians? We’ve had the expenses scandal here in the UK for MPs, then we had the expenses scandall of the Euro MEPs, I can’t believe that your Senators & Representatives (if you’re from US) aren’t above a little fiddling!
“Climate change communication efforts grounded in the information deficit model have largely failed to close the gap between scientific and public understanding of the risks posed by climate change.”
If the risks were real, not imagined, maybe more people would take notice.
The science is garbage, so hire a marketer to lie to kids. No wonder science is dying rapidly.
Ah, nothing says fun more than a “game” which uses pseudoscience, propaganda, and Appeals to Emotion to trick the young and the intellectually lazy and dull into Believing what you want them to.