What the Collaboratorium is
The Climate Collaboratorium is an on-line forum that allows large numbers of people to work together in developing plans to address climate change.
The Collaboratorium combines:
- Open simulation modeling
- Large scale argumentation
- Group decision making
Simulation models
the Collaboratorium uses three primary kinds of models.
- Climate models
These are models of the world's physical systems and are used to project the impact of future greenhouse gas emissions on the world's climate. The most sophisticated of these are known as general circulation models (GCMs), which are used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The Preview version of the Collaboratorium uses a single climate model, C-LEARN, which is a Web-based version of C-ROADS, a simulation of Sustainability Institute and Ventana Systems that is part of the Climate Interactive effort.
- Integrated assessment models
These models assess the impact of various actions, in particular, carbon pricing mechanisms, designed to address climate change. IAMs typically include policy modules, which incorporates economic and technological variables, as well as a physical science model that is a less complex than a GCM. The Integrated Assessment Society (TIAS) provides a good overview of this field. The Preview version of the Collaboratorium does not include any IAMS, though we plan to incorporate them in the next releases.
- Bottoms up technology models
These models assess the impact on emissions of adoption of new technologies. The Preview version of the Collaboratorium does not include any technology moodesl , though we plan to incorporate them in the next releases.
In future versions of the Collaboratorium, we plan to link to other climate models and eventually move toward radically open modeling, where users will be able to modify the models used in the system.