Climate LEGOs

One way to think about the Climate Web is as a massive collection of climate information bricks, including the sources, the news and opinion pieces, the videos, and more that are part of the Climate Change Filing Cabinet already profiled. But Climate LEGOs also include the tens of thousands of graphics, arguments, dates, and more that the Climatographers have extracted from relevant source materials.

For example, the screenshot just below shows you one set of extracted materials relating to carbon pricing impacts. You can see that hovering a mouse over a specific thought causes it to pop up in the Notes Field at right, allowing you to scan literally hundreds of graphics and ideas in a couple of minutes.


For a hands-on experience, we’ve listed a few Extracted Materials Headings below relating to carbon pricing. These collections contain information building blocks from many different sources, but each block remains physically linked to its original source for easy reference.

Accessing the Climate Web through the links on this or any other Climate Site page can give the impression that everything takes a while. Opening a new copy of the Climate Web in your browser, which is what you’re doing every time you click on a link, is indeed slow and inefficient. The GIF just below demonstrates how quickly you can actually navigate the Climate Web after downloading it. As you can see, it’s basically instantaneous.

Desktop dashboard demo


Here’s a practical example of what’s happening with advanced knowledge curation: Mark Lynas’ recently updated book about Six Degrees of climate warming. The screenshot illustrates that we’ve extracted hundreds of factoids, arguments, dates, degree-by-degree climate impacts etc. from the book. Note that different categories of extracted materials are color- and icon-coded so you always know what you’re looking at - but we won’t get into the details of that here. If you want to take a look at what the screenshot is showing, right click on the link below and it will jump you to the book’s thought in the on-line Climate Web.


Don’t be put off the scope and depth of the extracted materials shown here. The real point of the Climate Web, and the real power of TheBrain software we use, is not to organize massive lists of materials, it’s to be able to slice and dice all that information in all kinds of ways to help deliver fit-for-purpose actionable climate knowledge. In effect, the Climate Web’s more than 150,000 climate information building blocks are analogous to Climate LEGOs. They can be combined into actionable knowledge structures called Dashboards in the Climate Web, from the very simple to the very complex (just like LEGOs in the image below). And the Climatographers have spent thousands of hours doing just that.

legos

For example, here’s a simple Dashboard pulling together forecasted climate change impacts if average global temperature increases by 3o C. All the impacts link back to their original sources for easy reference, and graphics display instantly in the Notes Field. But Dashboards can also be far more complex pulling together all kinds of materials. You’ll see that if you explore some of the Dashboard links below.


The Dashboards listed below are just a small fraction of the 1,000+ Dashboards you can take advantage of in the Climate Web, with more being added all the time. We don’t recommend trying to really dig into the Dashboards via the on-line Climate Web. The web-based software is relatively slow for that, and the “Tags” used to build Dashboards are a bit confusing to use on-line. But you can certainly get a quick sense of the potential of the many kinds of Dashboards we’ve created (and can create).

Topical Dashboards

Topical Dashboards give you the ability to rapidly scan a particular climate topic. As you can see in the screenshot, this Dashboard pulls together lots of key materials and also points users to the many places in the Climate Web that are specifically relevant to digging deeper into the question. Of course such a Dashboard could zero in on a specific question.


As you can see from the list below, Topical Dashboards range from basic overviews of broad topics, to much more granular topics and questions.

Topical Analysis

Topical Analysis Dashboards tend to pull together collections of dates, or graphics, or other materials. Several of these draw heavily on Mark Lynas’ book introduced just above.

Audience-Specific Entrypoints

Audience Dashboards pull together resources specific to the needs of individual audiences, and can distinguish between the actionable knowledge needs of different audience groups. With respect to business decision-making, for example, the Dashboards below differentiate between CEOs, Chief Risk Officers, and Climate Change Officers.

Core Libraries

Core Library Dashboards pull together key books, reports, PPTs, and open-access journal articles specific to a topic. It’s a way to identify the sources you might find most useful from the much larger number of sources available under related Topical Headings.

Topic-Specific Entrypoints

Topic EntryPoint Dashboards pull together topic-specific headings and/or Index Entries, allowing you to rapidly zero in on what might be most relevant to you.

Trillion $$ Questions

Trillion Dollar Question Dashboards help you explore the truly big picture questions relating to climate futures. As you can see in the screenshot, this Dashboard pulls together lots of key materials, and also points users to the many places in the Climate Web that are specifically relevant to digging deeper into the question.


The point of Dashboards like these is not to literally answer a specific question you might have, although we can certainly create new Dashboards to that end. The Dashboards already populating the Climate Web are instead intended to give you a huge head start in tackling any topic or question you might have.

Insights Pages

Insights Pages in the Climate Web are authored by the Climatographers, and synthesize topical information, or help guide you to topical resources in the Climate Web, e.g. for specific audiences and sectors. In some cases Insights Pages will suggst answers to specific questions, but will always point you to resources where you can dig deeper on your own. Here’s an example (partial) screenshot.


The hundreds of Insights Pages in the Climate Web help you leverage the 30+ years of the Climatographers’ work on climate change.