frozenwind

In light of the recent post with the student EV project that scrubs CO2, I thought of an interesting gamified visualization for such CO2 removal technologies. A visualization that would actually have an impact in society somehow. That is because we need to filter through with some skepticism all these proposals which in the end have no effect and are ridiculous in comparison to the benefits of trees and plants.

And that is drumroll a clicker game in the style of Cookie Clicker. Instead of clicks producing cookies, or grandmas baking, or factories and whatnot, you'd have increasingly sophisticated/more efficient technologies which remove up to x grams/day of CO2.

The game would work a bit differently than the cookie clicker game though: - you would start with a predefined CO2 quantity in the air, and the current estimated rate of CO2 production globally

- you would also start with the current estimated CO2 removal capacity of everything that does that on Earth (humans, plants etc.)

- this is because we're trying to model this as a system where the stock is total CO2, the inflow is everything that produces CO2 and the outflow is everything that consumes/captures CO2

- there is your personal CO2 removal effect (which will add to the total CO2 removal capacity). This is 0 initially, and just like in the cookie clicker game, you start with some very basic tech - clicking would be the equivalent of, let's say, planting a small garden plant.

- buying anything releases CO2 (probably even seeds due to them being transported etc. - this would the fun part in developing this game, researching accurate values for such events)

- the goal would be to maintain a healthy balance of CO2 in the atmosphere. What this is, I'm not sure anybody knows. The CO2 and global temperatures have vastly oscillated through the eons, with periods warmer than ours. It seems Earth's climate has a seasonality of its own, and if we are to think in systems, our humanity's high CO2 output might trigger some feedback mechanisms we're not aware of. I've not read much on the subject, but now and then I like to read the Earth's geological epochs and the different living conditions of them.

- the game would actually include some kind of wiki/references so that it is educational in its entirety - technologies/stats/quantities would be updated every once in a while following the latest studies

This is just a brainstorming. I had to unload this idea somewhere! :)