Credits
Science Notes (Page 1)
Here are some notes on how the data in the game were collected, and the assumptions that were made.
Baseline Data
The baseline data determines how things change over time, underneath what the player does. This is particularly important for carbon dioxide, since it is used to calculate what possible temperature change might occur because of what the player did or did not do. This is discussed below.
The baselines also determine, to a large extent, the targets in the game. It is anticipated that energy demand, for example, will continue to increase into the future, and so it become ever more vital to de-couple energy supply from carbon dioxide emissions, which is essentially the task in the National Energy scenario.
The baseline data was taken from IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES), which was a report that came out in 2000 containing a number of plausible scenarios over the coming century. These scenarios started with simple predictions for economic growth, then linked this to carbon dioxide emissions.
The SRES picked out 7 key scenarios, and chose to use A1B, which is a middling scenario, in terms of possible climate change by 2100. There are 3 A1 scenarios, and they all describe a future world of very rapid economic growth, global population that peaks in mid-century and declines thereafter, and the rapid introduction of new and more efficient technologies. Major underlying themes are convergence among regions, capacity building, and increased cultural and social interactions, with a substantial reduction in regional differences in per capita income. The A1 scenario family develops into three groups that describe alternative directions of technological change in the energy system. The three A1 groups are distinguished by their technological emphasis: fossil intensive (A1FI), non-fossil energy sources (A1T), or a balance across all sources (A1B), where balanced is defined as not relying too heavily on one particular energy source, on the assumption that similar improvement rates apply to all energy supply and end use technologies.
The scenario data was accessed through the Java Climate Model, which allows the user to play around with the SRES data, drawing up a wide variety of graphs for comparison.
The only baseline data which weren't taken from the Java Climate Model were the predictions for passenger-km in the Transport Scenario. These were extrapolated from the scenario suggested in the Tyndall Centre's World transport scenarios project.
Scenario Data
Scenario data, which determine how much carbon dioxide, money, energy, passenger-km etc. is associated with each policy in the game, were found from a wide range of sources, depending on what specifically was needed.
A few of the key reports that were particularly useful in finding the data, and which may be useful for further research by the player were:
- The Mayor of London's Climate Action Plan
- The UK Government's Climate Change Programme 2006
- The Stern Review Report
National Energy Scenario
The current state of national energy production in the UK can be found on the DTI Energy website. This particular page gives the current fuel mix, ie. the percentage of our electricity that comes from coal, gas, nuclear etc. Further energy statistics were taken from the IEA page on EU-25.