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AbstractSurveys show that most Americans believe global warming is real. But many advocate delaying action until there is more evidence that warming is harmful. The stock and flow structure of the climate, however, means "wait and see" policies guarantee further warming. Atmospheric CO2 concentration is now higher than any time in the last 420,000 years, and growing faster than any time in the past 20,000 years. The high concentration of CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) generates significant radiative forcing that contributes to warming. To reduce radiative forcing and the human contribution to warming, GHG concentrations must fall. To reduce GHG concentrations, emissions must fall below the rate at which GHGs are removed from the atmosphere. Anthropogenic CO2 emissions are now roughly double the removal rate, and the removal rate is projected to fall as natural carbon sinks saturate. Emissions must therefore fall by more than half even to stabilize CO2 at present record levels. Such reductions greatly exceed the Kyoto targets, while the Bush administration's Clear Skies Initiative calls for continued emissions growth. Does the public understand these physical facts? We report experiments assessing people's intuitive understanding of climate change. We presented highly educated graduate students with descriptions of greenhouse warming drawn from the IPCC's nontechnical reports. Subjects were then asked to identify the likely response to various scenarios for CO2 emissions or concentrations. The tasks require no mathematics, only an understanding of stocks and flows and basic facts about climate change. Overall performance was poor. Subjects often select trajectories that violate conservation of matter. Many believe temperature responds immediately to changes in CO2 emissions or concentrations. Still more believe that stabilizing emissions near current rates would stabilize the climate, when in fact emissions would continue to exceed removal, increasing GHG concentrations and radiative forcing. Such beliefs support "wait and see" policies, but violate basic laws of physics. We discuss implications for education and public policy. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

AbstractIn a world of accelerating change, educators, business leaders, environmentalists and scholars are calling for the development of systems thinking to improve our ability to take effective actions. Through courses in the K‐12 grades, universities, business schools, and corporations, advocates seek to teach people to think systemically. These courses range from one‐day workshops with no mathematics to graduate level courses stressing formal modeling. But how do people learn to think systemically? What skills are required? Does a particular type of academic background improve one's ability to think systemically? What systems concepts are most readily understood? Which tend to be most difficult to grasp? We describe initial results from an assessment tool or systems thinking inventory. The inventory consists of brief tasks designed to assess particular systems thinking concepts such as feedback, delays, and stocks and flows. Initial findings indicate that subjects from an elite business school with essentially no prior exposure to system dynamics concepts have a poor level of understanding of stock and flow relationships and time delays. Performance did not vary systematically with prior education, age, national origin, or other demographic variables. We hope the inventory will eventually provide a means for testing the effectiveness of training and decision aids used to improve systems thinking skills. We discuss the implications of these initial results and explore steps for future research. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Intro -- Contents -- Preface -- How to Use This Book -- Guiding Ideas -- 22 Games -- 1. Arms Crossed: When conditions change, habits must change. -- 2. Avalanche: Understand the implicit rules. They can produce different results than desired or expected. -- 3. Balancing Tubes: You can't achieve long-term goals with short-term perspective. -- 4. The Bathtub Game: A level will decline only if outflows are greater than inflows. -- 5. Biodiversity Game: You can't change only one thing. -- 6. Circles in the Air: Our perspective affects the actions we take in complex systems. -- 7. Frames: To obtain consensus be clear about the mental framework you are using. -- 8. Group Juggle: Adding one more apparently minor problem can sometimes collapse the whole system. -- 9. Hands Down: When trying to understand a complex situation, don't limit your focus to where the action is. -- 10. Harvest: Over the long term, individuals often get more from cooperation than from competition. -- 11. Hit the Target: Delays between perception and response can lead to overshooting the goal. -- 12. Living Loops: It's easier to reach your goals by building a system that achieves them for you. -- 13. Paper Fold: With exponential growth, small growth rates can quickly lead to extremely large numbers. -- 14. Paper Tear: One-way communication is much less effective than interaction. -- 15. Pens: Sustainability depends more on culture than on technology. -- 16. Space for Living: Thinking outside the box can produce win-win solutions. -- 17. Squaring the Circle: Without a shared goal, cooperation is ineffective. -- 18. Thumb Wrestling: Life is not a zero-sum game. -- 19. Triangles: If you want big changes, look for the high-leverage points. -- 20. Warped Juggle: Incremental changes produce improvements -- structural changes produce transformation.