I'm no expert on climate. I do not have the earth's entire eco-system in mind, with all its interactions, and how they evolved over the past millions of years. But probably not too many people have.

And the media or blogosphere, where every weather event, glacier retreat or decline of a polar bear population is interpreted as a sign of pending doom, do not really help.

We could read the IPCC reports for clarity, but a consensus of 1,500 scientists doesn't provide light reading. So here's 3 lean resources, 2 with a bird's view, 1 with a worm's view, that summarise the issue in less than an hour of your time:

In their book Made to Stick, the Heath brothers introduce a practical tool to evaluate the power of 'sticky' communication messages along 6 criteria:

• Simple
• Unexpected
• Concrete
• Credible
• Emotional
• Stories

A textbook case of a sticky message is J.F. Kennedy's 'man on the moon within a decade' message, which meets at least 4 if not 5 of above criteria.

With last spring's auction of promises on energy by the European institutions, how sticky is a 20% by 2020 target?

Energyville is another simulation game allowing players to qualitatively explore tradeoffs in the choices we make for our energy system.

In the game, you need to ensure the energy needs (not just electricity, but also transport and heating) for a city of 3.9 million people, with a 2030 time horizon. And of course, you need to keep citizens prosperous and minimise impact to the environment.

This game is a bit mroe crude than Electrocity, which should not matter, since anyway the simulation is at best a rough approximation. The learning cycle is much faster, and play much easier, but at the expense of the higher resolution offered by Electrocity.

If you have 5 minutes, try Energyville. If you can spare half an hour, go for Electrocity.

A small eBook with overview of the most relevant articles this summer on Leonardo ENERGY.

More information  

Via WattWatt we learn about a new game with the name Electrocity offered by genesis energy in New Zealand.

You can become the mayor of a city of 10,000 people with 30 plots of land, on which you can build power plants, factories, amusement parks and so on. You start with a capital of 400, and play 150 turns to develop your city.

Looking at the completed cities players have built, some have ended up with huge wealth, and a large and happy population, while preserving the environment. But beware, it's not trivial the first times to play and not go bankrupt.

While the underlying assumptions of such game will always remain open for debate, Electrocity does a good job teaching its players that development is a balancing exercise between capital resources, # citizens, happiness of citizens, taxation rate, economic development, electricity supply and environmental performance. It's an education tool, not a simulation. Put in the words of its makers:

ElectroCity was developed to increase public awareness – particularly among students – of the basic "common knowledge" of these topics. That is, the general terms and concepts of the industry and the dilemmas that go along with them. Our goal is not to provide students with a sophisticated understanding of the controversies in the various energy debates. Rather, our goal is to spark an interest and lay an unbiased foundation for later learning.

Related

• WattWatt article
• Electrocity Game

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In their book 'Made to Stick', the Heath brothers introduce an example in which an American health institute finds that 'one bag of popcorn contains 37 grams of saturated fat'. To communicate this story, they develop a message 'one bag of popcorn is equivalent to a full day of unhealthy eating'. Another message that the institute might have said is 'a bag of popcorn contains as much Vitamin J as 71 pounds of broccoli', a declaration which is as meaningful as it is correct.

Viewing these statements from a distance, now let's now reconsider popular messages in the energy industry, for example about renewable energy, zero-energy houses or carbon neutrality:

• A 1.5MW wind turbine generates electricity for a 1000 families (meaning the electricity produced over a year equals the electricity consumption of 1000 average homes)
• A 'carbon-neutral' conference handed out compact fluorescent lamps to its participants. The 250 kg of CO2 that the lamp will save over its lifetime offsets the emissions for travelling to the conference
• A zero-energy home generates as much electricity over a year as it consumes

We can easily see that we'll have to live with these kinds of messages for a while, and that lots of creative communications can be developed.

"The energy crisis is certainly one of the most complex subjects ever put before the media, and through them, to the American public. It encompasses international relations, economics, science, and that most unpredictable of groups, the consuming public.”

Walker, 1974

Most citizens have strong opinions on energy matters, but a recent survey in the USA of 1,333 adults demonstrates that the factual basis for such opinions is often missing in the respondent's mind. Asking 20 questions, typically less than a quarter of respondents answer correctly, and not a single question has more than 46% correct answers.

Of course, one does not need to know the exact numbers to form an opinion, and for some questions, the 'correct' answer is more a matter of opinion or expectation than actual fact.

Still, some misunderstandings may cause future surprises:

• a typical overestimate of the current impact of renewables, probably related to high media attention
• an overestimate of the US dependency on Middle East oil
• an overestimate of US energy dependency in general
• and an underestimate of the efforts made by companies to find alternatives (though the inclusion of gas-to-liquids and oil shale in this list adds apples to oranges)

It shows that 30 years after the first energy crisis , energy remains an education challenge. With energy currently at its peak of attention, low awareness of the facts now is unlikely to improve in the future.

Interested in eating less oil? In this VideoNation/Hidden Driver report, animator Molly Schwartz keeps track of how many miles your food travels from field to fork.

A short video (3 minutes) showing with some clear messages how much energy is used for growing, harvesting, transporting, preserving and cooking food.

A popular post this month on the Sierra Club's vision on fighting climate change. And much speculation about the best battery for electric vehicles. A critical note on scientific studies which sollicits surprisingly little comment - maybe because we all agree? Eurima presents its roadmap for buildings. And Toyota's ambitions for hybrid vehicles. Continuing on corporate action, IBM aims to makes IT equipment more efficient. The IEA reviewed German energy policy, giving an intermediate score to one of Europe's frontrunners on sustainable energy. Finally, off-grid homes as an emerging trend in the USA.