Subject: Understanding public complacency on climate change

Posted by John Sterman on 10/26/2008

Message:

Attached File: http://clexchange.org/ftp/K12Listserve/791_StermanPolicyForum081024.pdf

Friends,

As many of you know, I (with others, especially Linda Booth Sweeney) have been studying the people's intuitive understanding of key principles of complex dynamic systems for some time.

The attached article (attached as pdf) discusses some of these results in the context of climate change, with a focus on stocks and flows

John D. Sterman
Risk Communication of Climate: Mental Models and Mass Balance
Science, 322 (24 October) 532-533
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/322/5901/532

It would be interesting to see how well K-12 students do on the experiment described. You can find two online versions on my website:

http://systemdynamics.mit.edu/ghg-exercise/ex-intro-applet.htm

http://scripts.mit.edu/~jfmartin/sip/master/

I'd be interested in people's experiences with these.