MCT Network

Thanks for clicking through to this page. You may or may not be tracking how rapidly business and climate change conversations have changed in recent years. For a long time climate risks were pretty much discussed as synonymous with “policy risk” - you may be familiar with the 2011 Mercer Consulting report characterizing climate policy as potentially material, while potentially material physical impacts were characterized as still being decades away (Mercer’s 2015 report reversed course on that point!).

Today, really just a few years later, climate risk is widely discussed as a function of physical risk, systemic risk, brand risk, investor expectations, transition risk, liability risk . . . . the list could go on. And that’s not all. Decision-makers are expected to be tracking the grey rhinos and black swans of climate change, climate uncertainties and tipping points, alternative low-carbon transition pathways, the likelihood and timing of technology disruptions, and the role of natural climate solutions and net zero targets. And hanging over it all, with huge implications, is whether average global temperature change will remain below 2^o C, as everyone agrees it should, or exceed 3.5^o C, as many observers think it will.

But while it’s easy to describe the “perfect storm” climate change has become for business and societal risk assessment and management, it’s abundantly obvious that we haven’t been able to manage that perfect storm. Even getting our heads around all the variables and trends is difficult, not to mention trying to keep up with their pace of change.

Therefore, as suggested by E.O. Wilson in the quote below, decision-makers need new decision-support capabilities and tools. That’s what I have been focused on for the last decade, and that’s what I would like to explore with you through my thoughts below.

Here’s the big question. What if we could individually know what we collectively know about all the different aspects of understanding and responding to climate change. How could we leverage that capability to accelerate climate progress?

I have long been interested in the discipline of knowledge management (KM) and the role it could play in helping to tackle a wicked problem like climate change (**I discuss my interest in KM, and why KM should be more widely taught and used, here if you’re interested - right click on the link to keep this page open too**). The two quotes shown here tell a big part of the story.

A short bulleted personal background:

• I’ve worked on climate change since joining the World Resources Institute in Washington, DC, in 1988

• I launched the first dedicated climate risk consulting firm in 1991

• I’ve worked extensively on natural climate solutions, including with the IPCC

• I teach “business and climate change” at George Washington University

• When Simon Dietz of the London School of Economics could not find a textbook for a climate change risk management course aimed at business executives in 2011, I co-authored it.

I was Director of Climate Risk for the global risk firm DNV (based in Oslo) at that time, and already realized that the topic of climate risk and risk management was going to be far too big and too dynamic a topic to cover in future textbooks. I started building the Climate Web with the goal of using knowledge management tools to improve individual, organizational, and societal climate change decision-making.

The Climate Web today allows almost instant access to an enormous amount of curated information, and since we’ve integrated the work of thousands of experts, it is arguably the closest thing to a collective climate change intelligence out there. Using a powerful but easy to use knowledge management software called **TheBrain**, we’ve organized thousands of books, reports, journal papers, PPTs, news and opinion pieces, websites, videos, and (much) more.

But that’s just for starters. The image below, for example, shows how we’ve gone through Mark Lynas’ recently updated book “Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency,” extracting dates, facts, arguments, graphics, and more (it’s just one of hundreds of such examples).

Why do that? Try thinking of all the individual “thoughts” as climate LEGO blocks that can be organized into all kinds of curated knowledge collections to promote access to actionable knowledge, and better climate change decision-making. The Climate Web today has more than 120,000 such thoughts and 500,000 links between thoughts, which gives you a sense of its scope and depth.

Here’s a quick look at what’s possible with the Climate Web, and you can learn more through our **Climate Web Overview Climate Site** (right click on links to keep this page open).

• Instantly access topical materials organized by more than 3,500 Index Entries.

• Quickly use more than 2,500 Topical Headings to explore topical collections of books, reports and journal papers, news and opinion pieces, videos, websites, and more. You can access 20,000 PDFs representing reports and open-access journal articles, and instantly open up most other things just by hovering your mouse over individual thoughts.

• Understand how the thinking on hundreds of important topics has evolved by scanning the chronological and topical organization of 30,000 news and opinion stories.

• Instantly access more than 1,000 Topical Dashboards, each of which represent many hours of knowledge curation, covering everything from carbon pricing for a 2^o C target, to individual action, to air capture technologies, to the psychology of climate change. Topical Dashboards are where you’ll find a lot of the graphics and ideas extracted from original source materials like Mark Lynas’ book.

• Create your own Dashboards and knowledge collections to share with others.

While the Climate Web can be used as an **open access resource**, it’s not time- or cost-effective compared to the alternatives. For example:

• Your Climate Brain is the ultra low-cost way to get instant access to 15,000 hours of climate knowledge curation, and you can build on it for your own knowledge management system (climate and otherwise), even with the FREE version of **TheBrain software**. We’ve priced Your Climate Brain for easy access, but if you’re serious about climate change and **Your Climate Brain** is financially out of reach, please contact us.

• Premium Access is the most cost-effective way to gain fast and powerful access to the entire 25,000 hours of knowledge curation in the Climate Web, including Topical Dashboards and Insights Pages, with ongoing access to all updates and improvements. It’s like having your own climate change research assistant, and it too works with the FREE version of TheBrain software.

• **Climate Roadmaps** help users navigate complicated topics, saving dozens to hundreds of hours, and Your Climate PhD does the same across the universe of topics you might want to rapidly access.

• It’s even possible to access Climate Web content without having to enter the Climate Web. We can turn such content into external websites for easy use and reference **through Climate Sites**.

Our goal is to help deploy climate change knowledge management with the goal of accelerating climate change mitigation progress, and I’d really appreciate your help in getting the word out about the Climate Web.

I’d also welcome your feedback and suggestions as to how you think the Climate Web’s almost infinite information resources can be deployed to best effect across the communities you’re part of. Contact me, whether by email, or 503-913-0025, or **scheduling a Zoom call** .

Thanks!

Mark

The Climatographers

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