Play the game before you face the reality.

On April 30, 2007, with funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (as in PBS), a new alternate-reality game will be launched. Apparently, this is the first game meant to do good for society and backed by a nonprofit. There will be interactive storylines, which sounds like Second Life. Will it be like Second Life?

The game:

“. . . will ask players to imagine the U.S. without oil and envision how Americans would respond to such a crisis.”

It’s all part of the happiness hacking movement, according to the game developer. Technology that no only makes you feel good but urges you to do good.

Games for social good. Yay. When I need to face up to the future, I like to do so by plugging into virtual reality. Every day I’m already playing the game where I imagine what the world will be like without oil. I guess the fun of this will be to join the anticipated 100,000 others in my projected responses.

Meet you there?

In Australia, the Permaforest Trust’s Centre for Sustainability Education teaches not just the ideas but the practice of sustainability on their 100+-acre property.

Too many people I know, particularly academics, are willing to learn and hear more about sustainability, toss out sarcastic comments, and then feign self-rebuke as they admit that the practice is too difficult for them. That is how my local sustainability group has been going lately.

Where is the action? How do I learn from those who are doing what we all seem to agree must be done to come down gently from our carbon high? I look to models like that at the Centre for Sustainability Education.

Permaforest Trust’s founder, Tim Winton, outlined seven steps to take in preparation for the changes to come. Because we can’t entirely prevent the changes we will see in our warmer, post-carbon world, “your approach to sustainability must now include preparations for life in a fundamentally different world.”

1. Integrate systems thinking
2. Increase self reliance
3. Economic disruption
4. Don’t despair
5. No fighting
6. Planetary emergence
7. Tell this story

His suggestions for action are short and clear. Just be sure you ACT rather than simply taking in more information. (And, yes, I’m telling myself as much as anyone.)

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report from January predicted a conservative 28 – 43cm rise in sea level within the next 100 years.

This week, a scientist points out that the UN report doesn’t consider rapid advances in science. The assumption was that polar ice would stay frozen, keeping the sea level rise minimal. The UN consensus report may be too conservative. Even the conservative projections create a picture of faster change, “more devastating than previously thought.” Experience of the past two months doesn’t bear out the assumption of minimal sea level rise.

“All indications are that it’s going to get faster,” said Eric Lindstrom, head of oceanography at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Will you be a climate refugee? If sea level rise is inevitable, you probably want to know how high the water will go. I do. Several of my family live only a few feet above sea level, so I searched far and wide (from my screen) for the best sea level rise map available.

Firetree’s Mr Strange looked for a map, didn’t find one, then created an overlay of sea level rise over Google Maps. Because, it is estimated, the melting of the Greenland ice shelf would result in a 7m rise, the map is parked at that level, but there are controls to change the level from 0 – 14 meters. It’s a pretty cool hack.

But. . .

What if our conservative estimates are too comforting? If the polar ice caps melt, we could see a 20-meter rise. Well, WE wouldn’t see it, but our 13th-Great-Grandchildren might in 500 years. The flood map only goes to 14 meters maximum, but maybe Flood Map 2.0 will include the worst case scenario.

• Gorilla of Sea Level Rise, Living on Earth. Listen to the public radio program.
• Sea Level Rise, Greenpeace.  Includes likelihood of 13m rise.
• Flooding Oahu, University of Hawaii.  Includes 70m maps.  Bye, bye Honolulu.
• The Canary Project is collection “persuasive visual evidence of climate change.”

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The old symbol alerting us to the presence of radiation was too tame. It doesn’t tell you what to do. It doesn’t tell you how to act. At the very least, considering the era, you might expect to see a desk to hide under.

The old, gold trefoil is not being phased out. It is just being supplemented by a new symbol that the International Atomic Energy Agency — and their 1650 people polled in eleven countries over a five-year project — find the new symbol intuitive. All of the people polled understood the meaning, “Danger — Stay Away.” Technically, it probably says:

1. See the radiation.
2. It is killing you.
3. Run like a girl.
4. In the time it took you to read this storyboard, you have died.

It looks more to me like it says, “Run, Run, Run like hell.”

The new symbol “will not be visible under normal use, only if someone attempts to disassemble” devices housing large sources of ionizing radiation. You are not likely to see this symbol in use.  If you see this symbol, freak out immediately.