Step 1

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Step 1

Instructions

Open the model(link is external). Create a carbon emissions history that keeps the temperature below 2.0°C. If you just run the model as is, you'll see that global T change rises to about 4.5°C, so you need to reduce the carbon emissions by clicking on the graphical icon to the right and changing the curve. You'll probably have to try several versions of this until you get the temperature change to stay below 2°C. The video below, Capstone Project Step 1 Instructions, will show you how to do this. Please watch the video before doing anything with the model or answering the questions below.

Video: Capstone Project Step 1 Instructions (4:06)

Click here for a video transcript of "Capstone Project Step 1 Instructions".

NARRATOR: The first thing to do in this capstone project is to find a carbon emissions scenario history that keeps the global temperature down below three degrees. So this model comes loaded with this carbon emissions history here, which is the red line here. And you can see that if you look at the plot here the temperature actually rises too high in the center area, 4.5 degrees. So you go in and you change this. Let's lower this emissions history. We'll do something like this. Doesn't matter how, we're just fiddling around here.

OK, and then you run the model like that and see what happens. And so it looks like here we've kept the temperature-- we're getting a little bit closer here, so 3.22. Still too high in the emissions. So you have to adjust the emissions history until you get the global temperature down below three degrees warming. And then once you've done that, you want to make sure that this emissions history has left us with enough fossil fuels that we could continue this level of emissions for a specified period of time.

So all you have to do there is to take the total amount of fossil fuels left over, and that would be this pink curve here. It's the second time I ran the model. We were left with 2,400 gigatons of carbon, which is quite a lot. And if we were to look at the final emissions right here at about two, so with this rate of burning, two gigatons of carbon per year, we've got 2,400, we've got about 1,200 years of time. So we definitely have left ourselves plenty of fossil fuels, so we can rely on them to a limited extent for a very, very long time indeed. So this is an OK and acceptable scenario from that standpoint.

So this is step one of this process. Once you've done this, you go on to step two and there will be another video that will explain how to do that.

Credit: Dutton Institute. "Capstone Project Step 1 Instructions(link is external)." YouTube. April 10, 2015.

Step 1 Deliverables

NOTE: Skip these deliverables until you've cycled through Steps 1-6 and found your ideal scenario. Then produce the following:

A copy (screen shot) of the graph showing the carbon emissions and the global temperature change (page 1 of the graph pad). This will get pasted into your summary poster.

A brief statement demonstrating that this emissions history leaves us with enough fossil fuels left to last another 100 years. This too will be included in your summary poster, positioned next to the graph described above.

How do you do this?

Take the ending amount of carbon in the Fossil Fuel reservoir (page 11) and divide it by the ending emissions rate (this will be in Gt C per year) — the result will be in years and is the time past 2200 when we would run out of fossil fuels.