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A possible way to incorporate global warming/climate change considerations overtly in Georgia Basin quest output

University of British Columbia

Georgia Basin QUEST is a computer-based scenario generation and evaluation system designed to encourage thinking about sustainability in a regional context. Global warming/ climate change is an important public policy issue for every world citizen especially for those who contribute much more to the causes, like the residents of the Canadian side of the Georgia Basin in British Columbia. Through QUEST users explore different possible scenarios of the region's future by selecting a Worldview to characterize the global future as well as particulars in many categories that are pivotal in forging sustainable lifestyles locally. Strategic choices in these categories, which include land use, transportation, energy, waste, agriculture, forestry and fisheries, also affect the average regional citizen's greenhouse gas emissions both directly and indirectly. Could there be a way to interweave informative material about global warming/ climate change in with the piecewise linear graph QUEST produces showing greenhouse gas emissions decade by decade in a user's scenario? Since there is a time lag between emissions and impacts in climate change processes that is longer than the 40-year time frame QUEST offers users to build their future scenario, it is impossible to offer the opportunity to express preferences about global warming/ climate change considerations and link output directly with those choices as is done in the other QUEST categories. However, this thesis proposes to use the remaining 'real estate,' three-quarters of a single output computer screen for global warming-related material by accompanying the graph showing greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the user's choices with graphs or text dealing with climate change impacts, adaptation or mitigation. Categories the user has emphasized in scenario construction would be highlighted and the slant could be keyed to the chosen Worldview. It argues that the issue is too important to sustainability efforts to overlook.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2009-12-03

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/16316

Geography

University of British Columbia

UBCV

DSpace