Empower Youth Voices in Climate Science

UPDATE: We have a new fundraiser here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-basedmip-climate-research-efforts

^ Please visit our new fundraiser at the link above to learn how this project has evolved. We want to keep this important work going!

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Hello! We are a group of eight youth researchers and one graduate student researcher doing work with leading climate models.

We are living in an era in which world leaders use models of the climate and ecology to help them make decisions that impact everyone’s future. Many of these models incorporate social and economic data that explore how some types of decisions are statically more likely to increase emissions. These data-driven tools are used to set agendas in decision-making spaces by leaders and policymakers around the world.

Currently, the leading socio-economic climate models fail to account for the following:

We aim to change all that.

Who are we?

We are a team of student researchers at UC Davis affiliated with Data Driven Change (D3C), a student-led social justice organization. Over the last year, we have been working with the cooperative guidance of feminist STS researchers at UC Davis to conduct research into socio-economic climate data and models. We’ve identified a number of gaps in leading models used by the UN, including the gaps listed above.

In mid-July, thanks to the generosity of donations, we were able to present our research at Scenarios Forum, a leading gathering for climate data scientists. This allowed us to make suggestions to leading climate data models used by the UN and world leaders to set agendas at climate policy meetings before they got "locked in" until the early 2030s. This gathering happened in Leeds, UK, and we were able to send one student researcher, Miguel Rezapour, who presented the team's research as part of the gathering. The rest of the team was able to join as online delegates and participate in the gathering via Zoom. The graduate student Harlin/Hayley also joined as a chaperone and presented a poster. This work could not have happened without the generosity of donors to this campaign! These students' work is no "in process" and will be considered for inclusion in the next generation of leading climate projection tools used by world leaders.

We are also hoping for the team to be able to participate in another gathering that will take place in early September, the gathering of The Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S). This is a leading gathering for social scientists who study and analyze scientific practices and protocols. Being part of this gathering will allow these student researchers to draw attention to the process itself of contributing to leading climate models, with an eye to the question: Is the current way of configuring these climate assessment tools (which ultimately inform policy) accessible? This gathering will be taking place in Seattle in early September, and we hope to send as many of our team members as possible to share their research as part of this gathering.

Unfortunately, we have run into a major snag:

Amidst the chaos wrought by the present administration upon university funding (aka the "DOGE cuts"), we have not been able to obtain enough institutional funding to attend these gatherings. This is why we are having to turn to crowd funding for this important and timely research.

As the impacts of anthropogenic climate change become ever more eminent, we believe it is vital for youth voices to be heard as part of the process of making climate models and climate assessment tools. Youths and young adults have the most at stake: It is our futures on the line. Shouldn't we have a seat at the table? These models will shape policy agendas around the world during these next few years that shape our future, and it is critical that our voices be heard.

Here is a bit more about us and what we are researching:

Our work has been occurring under the cooperative oversight of Dr. Sarah McCullough, Associate Director of the Feminist Research Institute (FRI) at UC Davis, and with the co-sponsorship of ModLab: the Digital Humanities Laboratory at UC Davis. While our efforts are self-guided, our work has been organized using principals that can be found in the Asking Different Questions (ADQ) curricula, which was developed by FRI thanks to an NSF grant (#1807056). (Take note when you combine the terms "feminism" and "NSF," what you get is a target for DOGE cuts, which is part of why the funding that would normally support these efforts is currently non-existent... )

Our team of student researchers is ready to contribute to leading climate models by offering research into overlooked metrics that can and should be part of the next generation of climate assessment tools that guide the agendas of major policy gatherings. This project, we hope, will open doors for improved inclusion of youth researchers in future spaces of climate data deliberation.

The cost breakdown for these conferences is below:

Every little bit helps. Thank you so much for your support!

Milestone goals:

Airline mile donations could also help! Donations of airline miles could also go a long way in helping us - especially for the 4S gathering in Seattle! If you have airline miles you might like to donate, please reach out to us at shsteele [at] ucdavis [dot] edu. Thank you!!!

Also, in case you want to read it, here is the abstract the undergraduate research team had accepted to the Scenarios Forum gathering:

"A growing body of research shows that including young people in decision-making spaces improves the quality of decisions made. In this regard, how might scenarios and related modeling efforts benefit from the inclusion of more young adults, interns, and undergraduate researchers? In this presentation, two teams of interns from Data Driven Change (D3C), a student-led data justice organization at UC Davis, will share their research into novel indicators, scenarios analysis, and frameworks for emerging IAMs. This work has emerged through collaborative efforts with multiple laboratories and research institutions on the UC Davis campus, including the Feminist Research Institute (FRI), ModLab: An Emerging Media Laboratory at UC Davis, and Galt Lab: Food Systems and Sustainability Lab. In this presentation, we will showcase our work, which includes research into case studies that may inform future indicators. This includes our work exploring the relationship between regimes of forced sterilization of Indigenous people in the Brazilian and Peruvian Amazon and the uptick of wildfires in the region a generation later. We will also share our work exploring factors that may contribute to emissions accelerations during mass casualty events, using COVID-19 emissions patterns as a case study. We ask if this research may underpin new metrics, similar to those found in the SSP Extensions Explorer, that better incorporate issues that pertain to social justice and public health into Scenarios. We will also share our analytical work of legacy indicators and extensions of the SSPs, alongside frameworks for alternative indicators, scenarios, and IAMs. We will also discuss our provisional scenarios planning work with BasedMIP, a novel approach to bringing social factors into climate projects that is in development by researchers with the UC Davis ModLab. In this approach, users are encouraged to create their own scenarios, allowing users to engage with scenarios data through a “learning through making” approach. We offer our analysis of the pros and cons of this approach. Additionally, this presentation both explores and demonstrates the importance of age diversity in our efforts to develop scenarios and climate projections. As global temperatures continue to rise, it is the youngest people who will suffer the worst impacts of climate change. Don’t we deserve a seat at the table in the spaces of climate assessment and deliberation since it is our futures at stake? With this presentation, we will very much demonstrate how the impact of young adult researchers may make all the difference as we face the existential challenge of climate change."

Thank you so much for any and all attention to these efforts!

Together, we can steer towards the best climate outcome that is still possible!