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Global Warming Interactive
Game URL: www.globalwarminginteractive.com/
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Project Lead: Mark Lorah
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Brief Description
CO2FX is a web based multi-user educational game which explores the relationship of global warming to economic, political and science policy decisions. The game is driven by a systems dynamics model and is presented in a user friendly interface intended for the high school user.
Full Description
The Problem Climate change, the gradual warming of the earth’s climate due to increases in green house gases, is a complex process. The ultimate solution goes beyond curbing the emissions of gases and entails the social, political, and economic factors that underlie our modern industrialized societies. Our goal is to help students grasp the many dimensions of global warming. With funding from the National Science Foundation, we have created a prototype lesson that employs a novel approach to capture the complexity of the subject. Our Approach Our vehicle is a sophisticated web-based program with two interconnected components. The first is a dynamic model of global climate change that captures current thinking on the carbon cycle and fossil fuels. It produces estimates of the CO2 emissions in one or more countries over a period of 100 years. The model also takes into account social and economic variables such as development of alternative energy sources, taxes on carbon production, unemployment levels, and even public opinion. Understanding even this relatively simple model can be daunting so the model links to the second component, a web-based interactive game that serves as the intermediary. In this game students assume the role of scientific, policy, or economic advisor in a selected country. Their choices in these roles, how they allocate budgets, determine taxes, and protect land, is interpreted by the game and sent to the model. The model uses these values to recalculate the state of the county and globe. When it returns new values the game uses them to trigger the kinds of events you would expect in the real world. Did your fossil fuel use drop? You may get a complimentary email from the country’s president. Did your carbon tax cause a sharp increase in unemployment? You may see a video clip from the “Action Newsroom” showing popular discontent with your actions. Each role requires that students balance the needs of the job and the overall health of the country. The economic advisor wants to grow the GDP while the scientific advisor is trying to reduce dependence on fossil fuel and the policy advisor hopes to keep voters happy. Because the game allows for other countries, each with its own set of advisors, negotiations both domestic and global becomes an important path to eventual success. Where are we now? We have completed six months of development and have a prototype available for viewing. The prototype has one country (Brazil) linked to game. The prototype has undergone preliminary user testing in both Vermont and New York. Where are we going? We hope to win additional funding from NSF and other private sources to build out the game into a multi-country game that can be accessed by students in multiple classrooms and locations.
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Social Issues Addressed: environment,
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