Open Climate

Vision

This website organizes and develops material on problem solving. This follows from more than a decade of developing methods and teaching skills of complex problem solving.

We are at the beginning of a time or rapid climate change.

The climate in 30 years will be different from now. In 100 years, it will be different than in 30, 60, or 90 years. We can intervene and make a difference in 100 years. We have little practical influence over what will happen in 30 years. The fact that decisions we make today will have more influence in 100 years than in 30 years is one of the many attributes of climate change that causes discord in our thinking. Our climate will change in a way that is directional (warming), unlike what we have experienced, and likely, worse than we expect. It will be disruptive and dangerous.

We have to adapt to the changing climate. Over the generations of ourselves, our children, and grandchildren, the climate will be changing. It will not reach a new normal and then become stable. In the current public discussion there is a sense of emergency and, with some, panic. Indeed, there is urgency to act, now, to keep things manageable. However, this is not an emergency in the sense that we can take some immediate drastic action and the problem is solved. We are not going back to the climate of my father, or even, my youth.

We need the skills to gain some control over how to address climate change. We start by recognizing that we humans have always lived with a changing climate. Therefore, we have a knowledge base. We need to overcome the anxiety that leads to inaction. We need the problem solving skills to recognize and overcome the barriers, more social and political than scientific or technological – the barriers that inhibit the application of our knowledge of climate change.

The website organizes and develops material on problem solving. This follows from more than a decade of developing methods and teaching multi-jurisdictional, multi-disciplinary, complex problem solving. Some of my students call it inter-sectional problem solving.

Recorded Lectures on Problem Solving

Framing climate change problem solving: May 14, 2020 (University of Michigan Biological Station). View the video by clicking the thumbnail.

Usability of climate science: September 29, 2019 (Colorado State University)

Living on the Climate Change Precipice

We live at a time of rapid climate change, characterized by accumulation of heat at the Earth’s surface. We observe that each of the last four decades is warmer than any in the previous century. For the lifespan of those now alive, it is likely that from one decade to the next, each will be warmer. This is a daunting change, which we have not fully internalized into our behavior and our thinking. Daunting, but one which we know is coming and, hence, one for which we can prepare. Such science-based knowledge of the future on the span of lifetimes is unprecedented in history.

Read the article, Pulling Back from the Climate Change Precipice

About

Vision

We are at the beginning of a time or rapid climate change.

Recorded Lectures on Problem Solving

Living on the Climate Change Precipice