S2E08 - Daybreak (Climate Change) - Gaming with Science

Episode Transcript
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Jason (00:06):
Hello and welcome to the gaming with Science Podcast,
where we talk about the sciencebehind some of your favorite
games.

Brian (00:11):
Today, we're going to discuss Daybreak by CMYK.
Welcome back to gaming withscience. This is Brian.

Jason (00:20):
This is Jason

Brian (00:21):
and we're joined today by a special guest, Jacquelyn Gill.
Jacquelyn, can you pleaseintroduce yourself?

Jacquelyn (00:26):
Hi, I'm Jacquelyn. I'm a paleoecologist from the
University of Maine, and I amalso a science communicator, and
I focus on climate change.

Brian (00:34):
That's cool. And then you also said that you are, in fact,
a board gamer yourself. Whatgames do you enjoy playing?

Jacquelyn (00:41):
Oh gosh, I have been a gamer of many stripes for a
long time, everything from videogames to tabletop RPGs to board
games. And these days, I've beengetting really into two player
games because we haven't reallyfound our gaming community. So I
get really excited when I have anew two player game, and I think
my husband's just going to bereally excited to play daybreak,

(01:03):
because we've been playing a lotof twilight struggle, which is a
cold war game where one of youplays the Soviet Union and the
other plays the United States.

Brian (01:14):
Oh, man.

Jacquelyn (01:14):
And you know, that's starting to feel a little too
close to home these days. Soyeah, and it also takes a
million years to get through.

Brian (01:21):
Well, I don't think this game takes a million years to
get through, but I would saythat this is not a light game
either from that perspective.But you know, you can when you
win. Man, does it feel good,though. Before we get into the
game, we'll do our sciencebanter, some kind of story or
topic or something from theworld of science that we want to
discuss. We usually let theguest host go first. Jacquelyn,
do you have something you liketo share?

Jacquelyn (01:42):
I do. And, you know, the folks might have seen those
T shirts or mugs that have adinosaur on them that say all my
friends are dead. As apaleoecologist, I feel this, you
know, this is my life. So thisis not a this is not a happy
story. You know, when we talkabout a highly productive fossil
site, we're talking about adeath trap. So, I mean, on

(02:03):
September 5, there was thisreally cool study that came out
in the journal Current Biology,and it's all about baby
pterosaurs. So these were these,yeah, these

Brian (02:13):
dead baby pterosaurs.

Jacquelyn (02:14):
Dead baby pterosaurs. I know, and we know. So the
fossils themselves are, I wouldclassify them as cute. They're
pretty small and but it turnsout that this, this particular
location, does have a tendencyto have a lot of young
pterosaurs in it. The fossilsthat are kind of coming out of
this location tend to be on theyoung side, and these particular

(02:37):
baby pterosaurs had evidence intheir bones of there's like
twisting and breakages, and it'sthought that they were basically
killed in a severe windstorm.And and pterosaur fossils in
general are very rare becausethey have really fragile bones,
and so the fact that we havejuveniles with direct evidence
of trauma is pretty unique andexciting. These kinds of fossils

(03:01):
for from animals from a youngage help us to understand more
about the biomechanics or theability of these animals to fly.
But also, there are of thehundreds of pterosaur fossils
that have been found, A lot ofthem are very small and very
young, and it just suggeststhat, you know, this was a
really rough life for theseanimals to be flyers when the

(03:22):
when the storms were, you know,maybe even more intense than
some of the ones that we mightsee now because of the climate
conditions at the time.

Brian (03:30):
Yeah, I know we've had will and David on from common
descent. And they always say thebest paleontology starts with
tragedy.

Jacquelyn (03:35):
It really does. It's true.

Jason (03:38):
Well, I have something a little bit more upbeat for my
science fact. So this was one Iran across a month or two ago,
and it talks about frog saunas.This is one of those things that
sounds silly until you actuallydig into it, because here's the
thing. So some people listeningmay know that a lot of
amphibians worldwide aresuffering. They're having
problems, and that frogsespecially are having issues

(03:59):
with various fungal infections.And there was a group in
Australia that took this onefact people knows, like, oh, the
fungus does better at lowertemperatures, and that in like
this, one particular part oftheir study area that had a
bunch of rocks, the frogs weredoing better around the rocks.
And they hypothesized that,okay, these rocks could be

(04:20):
storing heat during the day andhelping the frogs keep their
body temperature up in order tofight off this fungus better.
And so they built these littlefrog saunas, which are
essentially just bricks withwith holes that are the right
size for frogs to go in them.And they just stuck them out
where they get plenty of sun. Ithink they may have put some
little greenhouses over them,and they actually found that,
yes, like when they put theseout, they would then go and
they'd capture frogs and putthem near the saunas. And this

(04:42):
frogs apparently did a good job,like getting inside on their
own. It actually helped themfight off the fungus better. And
this is actually a really nicething, because it's a very low
cost, easy thing to do. You putsome bricks around that have the
right size holes in them, andyou can help these frogs fight
off this infection. And so thisis one of those. I love it. When
science can take something cheapand easy and make a meaningful

(05:03):
impact. And so I loved when Iran across as like, Oh, this is
great. And it has the niceheadlining thing of building
frog saunas to try to save theto save the species.

Brian (05:14):
So Jason's encouraging everybody to throw bricks at
frogs, yes?

Jason (05:18):
Not at frogs. Just deposit them near frogs. It's
like, you don't throw a sauna ata person. Just build a sauna
near a person.

Brian (05:26):
Yeah, that's true. You can throw a person into a sauna,
I suppose. But this is going tohave the cutest little things in
the show notes. It's going to belittle frogs sitting inside of
bricks and Little Babypterosaurs, right?

Jacquelyn (05:38):
With with little like broken arms,

Brian (05:40):
like little pterosaurs with their arms in slings. This,
when you first said frog sauna,I was thinking, I don't even
know, do we call this an idiomabout the frog sitting in the
pot of water that is slowlyheating up? Is that also a good
transition?

Jacquelyn (05:51):
Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. It's like, well, we talk about
the frog in a in a pot, metaphorfor climate change, and you just
crank the heat up a little bit,a little bit. And the idea is,
you don't know you're beingboiled until it's, you know, too
warm to do anything about it.

Brian (06:03):
Okay? Thank you very much. Both really good things.
Should we hop into discussingthis game?

Jason (06:09):
Oh, that was a bad one.

Brian (06:11):
Oh, what do you mean? Oh, oh, hop into it. Man, I didn't
even catch that. So Daybreak wasdesigned by Matt Leacock and
Matteo manapace and published byCMYK in 2023 it's for one to
four players. Plays in about 60to 90 minutes, and it's
suggested for ages 10 and up inthe game, you're going to play

(06:31):
one of four global powers, andyou're working collaboratively
to transition to green energyand build social resilience,
ecological resilience andinfrastructure resilience, all
while dealing with crises andplanetary effects of all of this
carbon being pumped into theatmosphere and raising the
global temperature. And you winthe game by getting to the point

(06:53):
where you are producing lesscarbon than the planet can
absorb, and getting through around of the crisis phase
without failing. Everything inthe game has a very distinct
color block art style. Thecenter of the board is a world
map with a giant thermometerrunning down one side a couple
little tracks that are scatteredon the world that are tracking
different things like loss ofglobal sea ice, desertification,

(07:17):
ocean acidification, things likethat. I believe, if our memory
serves. There are six tracks.We'll get into them in more
detail later.

Jason (07:23):
Basically all the bad things that happen due to
climate change.

Brian (07:26):
Yeah, at a at a global, planetary level, there are also,
you'll have a place where youcan put these little wooden tree
tokens representing the forestsand their ability to absorb
carbon, as well as some spots onthe ocean that can absorb carbon
as well. That's pretty mucheverything that's going to
happen on that main board. Theactual the board is really could

(07:46):
be smaller and sort of fiteverything, but it's not. It's
this big, chunky, you know, acompletely global map. Now, most
of the working part of the gameis actually happening in front
of the individual players. Soyou're going to have sort of
just a regular set of playingcard sized cards. You have to
have five of them in front ofyou, and then you also have a
player board in front of youthat helps to track sort of

(08:07):
other things. It's cardboardwith a little inset, and it will
track how much energy demanddoes your community have. There
are four different places thatyou can play in the game, United
States, China, Europe andmajority world, which is just
everybody else, really. This ismeant to represent the
developing world. They went withmajority world instead. I'm sure
there was a lot of conversationabout the best thing to call

(08:29):
this. On that little board infront of you, you'll be tracking
with a little token. What isyour energy demand for your
region? How much dirty energyare you using? Basically how
much energy you're using that isputting carbon into the
atmosphere. How much cleanenergy are you using, and then
all of these other sources ofemissions. And there's, it
actually looks quiteintimidating, because there's a

(08:50):
huge diversity of these. But youknow, it's your vehicles, your
industry, buildings,agriculture, energy extraction,
waste, every one of those issomething that's going to be
generating carbon, putting itinto the atmosphere. The last
things that you track are yourresilience that comes in three
flavors, social resilience,ecological resilience and

(09:11):
infrastructure resilience. Sothose will your little tokens.
Think that they each have littleicons. So it'll look like a the
infrastructure of, I think it'sa series of cross railroads, for
instance, whereas the social oneis sort of a, you know, a raised
fist in solidarity. Andecological, ecology, of course,
is a leaf. Ecology is always aleaf. And then the other thing

(09:34):
you'll be tracking is yourcommunities in crisis. That is
actually a very pretty littleicon for what it represents.
It's little figures in rainbowcolors holding hands that is
representing a community that isin trouble from something that
is happening in your regionglobally, related to climate
change, you can accumulate up to12 of those, and that's it. If

(09:55):
you get more than 12, that's oneof the loss states that we're
going to talk about in the game.The only other thing to discuss
is the in terms of cards, youhave oversized cards that will
sit to the left and right of themain Global Map board. One
represents global projects. Thisis things that everybody gets to
work on together and that canbenefit everybody. And on the

(10:16):
other side are crises, thingsthat are very bad that everybody
has to work together to try toavoid. under normal states, you
get to see what one of thosewill be. It's called the
forecasted crisis, and thenyou'll have more that you don't
get to see. So there's alwayssome surprises that are coming
up. when you're playing thegame. It happens in multiple
rounds. The first round is youget to choose one of these

(10:38):
global projects, right? Oh,well, which one of these do we
want to focus on? Right? So thisis that first opportunity to as
a group. Let's decide what wewant to work on together. This
game very, very, very muchencourages communication, being
open, planning together. Whatyou're going to do, really, with
that idea of like, this is howthis problem must be solved, is
with communication andcooperation. So you're literally

(11:01):
are starting with a globalsummit of some kind. What should
we focus on as a planet to tryto fix these problems? After
that, you'll move to the localphase. You'll draw five cards
from your hands, and you'll getto lay them down. And those can
do different things for you. Sofor instance, you may have a
card that says, discard one cardto remove a dirty energy token,
right? Just take it off theboard. Or, you know, oh, you

(11:22):
could stack this one up on topof another stack. It can allow
you to gain more ecologicalresilience. Now, you only have
five places to put these localproject cards down. Whichever
card is on top is deciding whatthe power is. But you could also
tuck cards underneath. There's12 different tags, but like, for
instance, a card may say you canadd one clean energy for every

(11:44):
solar energy tag that you havetucked into this stack, right?
So this is how you can use yourcards. You can play them on top
to gain a new power. You canplay them underneath to power up
what that other ability is. Youcan discard them to use
abilities. Or you can use themto help with those global
projects or those crises cards.You want to hold on to a few
just in case, because usuallyyou need to protect yourselves.

Jason (12:06):
Yeah, these cards are basically the core resource of
the game. They're really whatmakes it go around. They're what
gives you power. And notsurprisingly, there are effects
in the game that reduce how manycards you draw or that you have,
which is a pretty severe cost,because that's what you use to
literally do everything in thegame,

Brian (12:21):
yet, that's one of the things that happens, is I
mentioned those communities incrisis. As those build up,
basically, as you have morecommunities in crisis on hand,
you get to do less. You can't doas much because more of your
people are unable to contribute.So instead of being able to
choose five cards, you can onlychoose four, and then only
three, and then you just lose.

Jason (12:41):
Yes, being a co op game, there are many, many ways to
lose, and only one way to win.

Brian (12:45):
There is only one way to win, and it is complicated and
difficult to achieve. The otherthing that's nice about this is
it really encourages it's like,everybody look at everything
together, discuss what you wantto do. What is the best strategy
to use these cards? It's like,oh, well, I have this, well, I
have this ability over here thatlets me give you a card. Do you
need that card? Oh, well, shouldI do this? Like, what should we
consider? How can we worktowards all of these global

(13:06):
objectives together? There areno rounds when you're in this
phase, everybody can do thingsat the same time. Everybody can
play as many cards as they want,use as many abilities as they
want, until everyone decidesthey're done or can't do
anything else,

Jason (13:19):
which is really good for gameplay speed, because
otherwise this game wouldliterally take like, three to
four times as long to getthrough. So it is nice that
everyone can resolve stuffsimultaneously, or kind of do
independently, if you want. So Ithink it helps avoid the Alpha
gamer situation where one personis telling everyone else what
they should do.

Brian (13:34):
That's one of the things I really do enjoy about
cooperative games, is it givesthis opportunity. It's like,
well, what's your opinion? Weget to sort of work as a team.
What is a good strategy? If wedo this, then what about that?
Have we considered this routethat that thing that you really
only get, you really only getmost effectively in a
cooperative game, is that jointstrategy, that feeling like

(13:55):
you're working together to tryto achieve goal. After
everybody's done all of theiractions. The next thing is your
emission stage. Now, everybody'sgoing to produce all of that
carbon from their dirty energyplants and all of their waste
and buildings and agricultureand everything else. So on the
little track, it's got, it'sthey try to make it as easy as
possible. There's a number thatruns across the top, all of your

(14:18):
your black tokens, your darkgray tokens, you just add up the
total amount of carbon, and thatgoes onto that central board as
emissions, as the new globalcarbon. Everybody has to do it
together and oh, man, it feelsbad when you first start. You're
putting just tons of carbon intothe atmosphere. There's actually
really clever design on thecarbon tokens. They've got the

(14:40):
little cubes like Jason likes,although these are wooden
instead of acrylic, they madespecific choices about using
sustainable materials in thepackaging. So sorry, Jason, no
acrylic cubes this time onlywooden.

Jason (14:51):
Oh, well, they're representing carbon. So I think
it's appropriate.

Brian (14:55):
They have a tile that represents five which actually,
if you look at it. Looks likeyou'd had a stack of five of
these little cubes, and you mushthem down into a square. So
like, in terms of graphics, itrepresents it quite well. You
take the carbon from theemissions, and you're able to
sequester as much of that as youcan, right? Like every tree can
hold one carbon, every wave inthe ocean can hold one carbon.

(15:18):
Anything that doesn't getsequestered goes onto the
thermometer, and based on thenumber of players you have,
there are spots where every fivecarbon fills up a little spot.
When you've filled up across thethermometer, you take that
carbon, you replace it with thetemperature band. The global
temperature just went up 0.2degrees. And that's when things

(15:39):
potentially start getting bad.You start having to add more
crisis cards. You thoseplanetary effects, those start
amplifying and magnifying afterthe emissions have been dealt
with, you adjust thethermometer. The next thing is,
you have to roll the planetarydie to see okay. What went bad?
Did we lose sea ice this year?Did we have desertification this

(16:01):
year? Did we have oceanacidification or whatever? So
you roll a six sided die,whatever symbol it is, you move
the little token up one and eachof those tracks has tipping
points on it, and they'redifferentially spaced across
different ones. If you hit oneof those tipping points,
something bad happens. You addmore carbon, or you take away
trees, or something like that. Iknow this probably sounds super

(16:23):
complicated. It's actually allexplained very well on the card.
Then you have to go through allyour crises cards. It's like,
hey, one, actually one of thebest crisis cards in this game
is pandemic.

Jason (16:33):
Appropriate, given that it was Matt Leacock who made it.
Yeah, for sure. Crises arebasically more things that go
wrong which cause furtherproblems on your board, or the
global board, or just muckingthings up, making the game
harder. Basically,

Brian (16:47):
yeah, things that can screw up your resilience, things
that can add carbon, things thatcan make you discard cards. So
hey, you had a great turn. Youused all your cards. Well, now a
crisis came up, and oh, man, Iwish I'd held on to one card so
that I could help deal with thiscrisis. After all, that's done,
the interesting thing is, thenext step is, did you win? There
is a did you win step where youcheck to see so to win the game

(17:10):
we already mentioned, there'sonly one way to win. You have to
reach draw down. You have to beat a point where the planet can
absorb more carbon than you arecollectively producing. If that
happens, and you can get throughall those crises, then you have
won the game. The next thing youdo is you move your energy
demand up one and you start thewhole process over. I think I've

(17:31):
covered all the mechanics. Iknow that was a lot of time
talking about little moving bitsand pieces. It's a complicated
game in terms of its movingparts, but honestly, if you just
follow the steps from beginningto end, it's well designed. You
shouldn't have a problem gettingthrough it. Is there anything
you feel like I missed?

Jason (17:48):
There's a few little things like the the resilience
bits are important for crises,because basically the more
resilience you have, the moreyou're able to ignore the
crises. And that worked out wellfor me, because when Brian and I
were playing this, I basicallygot a resilience engine going
for two out of my threeresiliences, and so I was just
able to ignore a lot of things,and then a hurricane hit, and I
didn't have much ecologicalresilience, and my entire

(18:10):
country got destroyed.

Brian (18:12):
Jason and I won when we played, but it was definitely a
but at what cost? Because it'sit felt like if we had a round
seven things would haveimmediately gone over the
tipping point and there wouldn'thave been any recovery. On the
other hand, I played last nightwith my wife and our friend and
we we did great. We got reallygood, powerful abilities set up
early. You know, we actuallyplayed by the rules this time.

(18:34):
Because the first time my wifeand I played, we used the entire
thermometer. It's set by thenumber of players. If you've got
four players, you can fill upall four slots. You got two
players. You only get to fill uptwo slots. It's like a balancing
mechanic. But no, we playedlegit. We won in round three.

Jason (18:48):
Holy cow

Brian (18:49):
yeah, it was great. It felt really good. Of course, we
did play on the easiestsuggested setup for three
players. But I feel like I'mgetting a handle on it. I'm
enjoying learning how to playdaybreak. So Jacquelyn, you said
you didn't get a chance to play,but you looked at people playing
the game, is that right?

Jacquelyn (19:02):
I did and I bought the game, I did the unboxing,
and read through theinstructions, watched a couple
of videos, and I'm actuallyreally excited not just to play
this for myself, but also tobring it into the classroom,
because I think it does a reallynice job of conveying in a short
time the same urgency and tradeoffs that humanity is currently

(19:23):
facing and will face over yearsto decades. And it's nice to be
able to really experience andinternalize that and in within
the time span of a game. And Iknow I read it, actually read an
article The Associated Pressfollowed an event at the COP 29
meetings in last year, lastNovember, where they actually
had world leaders play thisgame, and some of them just lost

(19:48):
within 20 minutes. So, I mean,it is, you know, compared to
some games, it's a little bit ofa less of a steep learning curve
to jump in you're not committingto, you know, the next four
hours of your life.

Brian (19:59):
Yeah. Yeah, that's true. You could definitely lose this
game fast if you were doing itwrong.

Jason (20:03):
Oh, I did think of one thing more, Brian, the QR codes.
So like, every, almost everylittle card has this tiny,
little QR code you can scan, andit takes you to a website that
gives you a lot more informationabout what that card is talking
about. And by a lot more. Idon't mean to just mean, like,
Oh, here's a few lines of flavortext. I mean, the what the few I
checked out, there's like a fullpage, like, someone's

(20:24):
essentially essay with researchand background about here's what
this means, here's how it's inplay. Here's how this affects,
like, the game and everything,but also here's how it is in
real life. Like, there's a lotof information that you don't
see about the game that's hiddenbehind those QR codes. But for
an educational setting, like, Icould definitely see using this
in a classroom, just like, Hey,everyone, take a card scan the

(20:45):
QR code. Your job is to reporton this thing to the rest of the
class.

Jacquelyn (20:49):
Oh, yeah

Brian (20:50):
Easily. And that's a huge deck, and, and you're right.
Most cards just have that oneline of flavor text right in
holotype, it's the name, whodiscovered it and when. But in
these ones, it's, your it's,it's, it's an article. It's also
answers questions about how youuse that card, connects to other
cards and to external resources.It also has a picture of the
illustration. It's, it'sactually quite clever. The one

(21:12):
thing that I worry a little bitabout stuff like this, because
there's been a lot more internetand web integration. We've
played a couple games with apps.There's these websites and stuff
like that, is the what happenswhen that website isn't
maintained anymore for somethinglike this, it's probably fine,
because the Internet Archive isstill a thing, right?

Jason (21:30):
Yeah, I haven't checked. Hopefully they have, like, a PDF
you can just download that hasall of those things on it for
later look up. But if theydon't, they should

Brian (21:38):
I. don't think they do. And you're right, that is a good
idea. Would just be to have afull downloadable, I mean,
booklet, basically a booklet,book. It would be about it would
be about two inches thick ifthey had everything in there for
every single card. And everycard has a QR code on it, every
crisis, every global program,every local project card, every

(21:59):
single one of them, ton of workto write and put together all
the stuff for this game.

Jason (22:03):
Oh yeah, lots of work went in there, and a lot of it,
that part's not going to be seenby most people, but it's
definitely they did theirhomework really well.

Jacquelyn (22:10):
I was just going to add, I like, I do like that.
It's sort of, it's not buried,but it's not required, so it
doesn't have this preachy,textbooky feel to it when you
play it, but it's there. If youwant it, you can go and find
more information. It's wellreferenced and resourced, but
it's not sort of in your face.It doesn't when you sit down to
play it, you don't feel likeyou're doing homework.

Brian (22:31):
And actually, I made use of that. There were plenty of
times where, like, some cardsare like, well, I don't even
know what this is. What is this?And I could just scan the QR
code and it take me right to itand explain, you know, what kind
of social or economic policythis was because, I gotta be
honest, economics is not Jason,and I's strong suit. But it was
great to be able to have thatresource there to look at. The

(22:52):
materials also were specificallyand implicitly designed to be
used with all sustainablematerials.

Jason (22:59):
Well, I know, when I first picked this up from the
game store, I noticed, oh,there's no shrink wrap on this.
Instead, it has four littlestickers covering the edge that
says, Hey, these are an ecofriendly shrink wrap
alternative, yeah.

Jacquelyn (23:09):
And mine came in the mail, and it was not in any
external packaging. It was notshrink wrapped. It just had the
four stickers I needed a littleyou know, goo be gone to get
those off. If, you know, ifthose of you who are fastidious
about your game packaging, butthe mailing label was just
slapped right on top of the boxthat peeled right off. And so it

(23:29):
definitely gave me a moment ofpause to think about all of the
packaging that normally comeswith the things that we get in
the mail. I live in a really, areally rural place, and so we
can't always get things from ourlocal game stores, and so I did
appreciate them kind of walkingthe walk, because I know that
for a lot of people, those thedelivery mechanism matters,

(23:52):
because it lends credibility toall of the messaging that comes
afterwards. And I could seepeople really thinking if they
had to unpack every single thingfrom a little plastic baggie and
generated a whole bunch of trashjust just to play the game. I
think that that would set peopleoff on the wrong foot to start

Brian (24:08):
with, in the designer diary, they actually had a
sustainability consultant. Soone of the things, for instance,
was the choice not to use adrawstring bag when they package
things. Instead of using Ziplocbags, they use fiberboard boxes,
and still, it's a very highquality product.

Jason (24:26):
Yeah, maybe we should now transition with that whole
walking the walk. Let'stransition from the game itself
to the science it's showing.Because there's a lot of science
in here. They definitely did alot of research,

Brian (24:37):
actually, if it's okay, before we get into that, I would
actually like to talk about thedesigners a little bit, because
I actually read their designerdiary. One of the things that's
great there is, how is thescience being represented? Where
did they have to make choices ofwhat to put in and what to leave
out? Usually we would talk aboutthe designers a little bit, and
I think these designers areworth talking about. So one of

(24:57):
these designers is Matt Leacock,who is the. Lead designer of
pandemic, which we have alreadydone an episode on, arguably one
of the most popularcollaborative games that have
ever been released, and the hisco designer is Matteo Menapace,
who seems to specialize inco-designing cooperative games.

(25:18):
He's only done a few games, oneof his on memory loss. He's got
one on food politics. And thenhe did this, this game in
particular. And he basicallyspecializes in co-designing
socially aware games,cooperative games to help deal
with societal problems, kind ofa very unique niche that he has
decided to make for himself.when they were choosing to make

(25:40):
this game, and that actuallystarted with a conversation on
Twitter. By the way, funnyenough. They started talking
about this because, actually,Matt Leacock said that during
the pandemic was when he startedthinking about all of the things
that Pandemic didn't quite getright, and wanting to do a game
that actually put more effortinto because I think we've
already talked about Pandemic.The board game is a pandemic on

(26:02):
easy mode, right? Yes, yeah. Solet's deal with this other
problem of climate change. Andthey had four goals in how they
wanted to design this game. Onewas they wanted to create a game
about systemic solutions, thisidea that you can't solve
climate change throughindividual action, that it
actually takes collaborative,collective action. Yes, they

(26:23):
wanted a game that wascooperative, but where people
still got to make their ownchoices, individual autonomy.
They wanted the game to feelempowering. I have had that
experience. I have also had thescary experience of all that
carbon filling up on thethermometer right away, but when
you start getting under control.It does feel empowering. And
then there's the last thing,which I actually do want to talk

(26:45):
about. They wanted a game thatwas realistic, but not quote,
unquote, and that's actually bythem educational they were, is
as explicit goal. Right at thebeginning, they don't want to
make an educational game.Actually, there was the thing
of, they don't wantchocolate-dipped broccoli?

Jacquelyn (27:00):
Nice. Yeah.

Brian (27:01):
And that makes me kind of sad, if I'm honest.

Jason (27:05):
Well, we've talked about how educational is a dirty word
in the game industry,

Brian (27:09):
and I think that's why it's in quotation marks, right?
They like, they don't, theydon't. They want to make a game
where the science is accurate.It's realistic to what's
actually happening. It'scommunicating the feel it's
showing people how to worktogether to solve problems. But
oh no, no, no, no, it's noteducational. Of course, it's not
educational.

Jason (27:28):
I wonder if that's just the perception that an
educational game must haveeducation as its primary goal

Jacquelyn (27:33):
rather than entertainment. Yeah,

Jason (27:35):
yeah. Maybe this is a secondary or tertiary goal.

Brian (27:38):
Jason, you said you want to talk about some of the
science in here. Did you havesomething specifically you
wanted to bring up? OrJacquelyn? Did you have
something that you wanted tobring up? I have a bulleted
list, of course, but if one ofyou would like to lead a topic
that is totally fine.

Jacquelyn (27:50):
I was just impressed, in general, with the
thoughtfulness that went intothe way that the game mechanics
leveraged the science to createa sense of urgency, rather than
trying to gloss over the sciencefor the sake of game mechanics,
I think, I think oftentimes, youknow, I'm a big science fiction
fan, for example, and oftentimespeople think that if we are true

(28:12):
to the science, that's going tocome at some sort of sacrifice
to the storytelling or thecharacters. But I often find
that if you approach the problemwith the idea that the science
can actually enhance the storyor the entertainment value of
the game, or whatever it isyou're looking at, these two
ideas don't have to be inopposition to each other. And so
Daybreak starts reallydifficult. There's not a slow

(28:34):
ramp up. It doesn't the gamedoesn't start in 1900 right? It
starts right now where we'vealready experienced at least 1.2
degrees Celsius of warming. Andso, which was the case when the
game came out in 2023, and soit's it very much drops you in
the middle of the problem, whichthen creates the sense of
urgency. It's not somethinglike, oh, I have, I have five or

(28:54):
six rounds before thetemperature gage starts to crank
up. And we can, you know, putour resources on the board, we
have some time to really thinkabout how we're going to do
this, which would be nice. Itwould be nice, from a gameplay
perspective, to have a fewfreebies where we can just set
things up the way that we want,with the with this eye towards

(29:15):
towards creating a better world.Our world leaders had that
opportunity, and they chose notto make those choices. And so
now the game that we are playingin real life is one where we
have to make decisions based onthe conditions as they are and
and so one thing that I reallyappreciate about daybreak is
that it drops you right into theaction, not into some
hypothetical future, but intothe current reality. And so I

(29:37):
really appreciated that. Theother thing I really appreciate
is just from the get go, it is acooperative game. The reason
that I that I like that verymuch, is that climate change is
kind of the ultimate cooperativegame. You know, we are going to
ultimately win or lose together.We talk about winners and losers
in the near term, and certainly,the effects of climate change

(29:57):
are not shared equally, at leastinitially, but now. Now, as
we've been progressing along ourlittle turn tracker in the real
world, we're starting to seethose impacts happening
everywhere. You know, when theythose crisis cards that you
mentioned, I really appreciatethat they reflect real world,
recognizable processes, right?Well, the kinds of events you

(30:18):
know, things like storm surges,wildfires, drought, sea level
rise, that get triggered eachround and intensify with the
temperature, which is exactlywhat we see in the science, that
those kinds of events become,you know, more frequent, more
intense as warming goes on. Andalso that there's a there's a
planetary effects die that'srolled based on the temperature

(30:39):
bands, as you warm, you know,increase your warming. And the
fact that you can trigger a setof environmental tipping points
like desertification, which willcause you to remove tree tokens,
or Amazon die back, which is aneven bigger event where you add
carbon remove trees, you cantrigger Arctic sea ice loss. You

(31:01):
can trigger permafrost thaw orocean acidification. And so we
have both these sort of shortterm events, these individual
climate induced disasters, aswell as these larger scale
planetary effects that happen.You know, there's also these
linkages back to human society,right? You decrease your
infrastructure, you decreaseyour resilience, you increase

(31:22):
the number of communities incrisis, right? And it shows the
interconnectedness of how theseindividual events, when they
start to happen more frequently,can then start to undermine our
ability to deal with them on aplanetary scale. And so they're
considering how complicatedclimate change is in terms of,

(31:43):
you know, we say it's aneverything problem. I feel like
the game manages to capture thatin a way that's, as you said,
really easy to convey. Itdoesn't take a lot to learn. You
can play around and lose in 20minutes. But also, you know,
from everything that I'm seeingand the way that people are
describing the game, thedesigners really want you to

(32:06):
understand the sense of urgency,and it is intentionally
challenging in the beginning, asopposed to having this sort of
gradual ramp up that then, youknow, increases in difficulty
over time.

Brian (32:17):
So it starts, you're right, it starts hard, and if
you're not careful, it canaccelerate and get even worse at
a cracker level, actually, let'stalk about from a scientific
perspective, this idea of thetipping point. Yeah. So funny
enough, this reminds me veryspecifically about something
similar that we had inTerraforming Mars, which Funny

(32:37):
enough, these are bothterraforming games.

Jacquelyn (32:41):
I mean, we are literally terraforming Earth
right now. Yeah.

Jason (32:43):
I was just gonna say we talked even back then about how
if we had the technology toterraform Mars, then we also
have the technology to terraformEarth, which is exactly what
this game is showing, for betteror worse.

Brian (32:54):
But let's talk about so what is this idea of a tipping
point? The melting permafrostmight be one of the best and
easiest ways to kind of look atfirst. So actually, Jacquelyn,
can you tell us about meltingpermafrost and sort of how that
affects the climate?

Jacquelyn (33:06):
Yeah. So a large amount of the carbon that is in
our sort of global carbon budgetis stored frozen in the ground
in the in the Arctic, where youhave the cold temperatures that
keep most of the ground frozenfor most of the year, there's an
active layer at the top thatwarms up. And when that active
layer warms up, you getincreases in microbial activity,

(33:29):
and those microbes will release,will it start to decompose the
organic matter that's in theupper layers of that soil, and
they'll release carbon,including via methane. And so
Methane is a very powerfulgreenhouse gas that that warms
the planet on a per unit basis,more than CO2. And so, you know,

(33:52):
another form of carbon. And so,you know, this is one of the
greenhouse gasses that we reallykeep an eye on. And because so
much of the Arctic has a lot ofold organic material that's been
frozen in this soil for 1000s ofyears or hundreds of 1000s of
years. In some cases, it'sbasically just like a bank, a

(34:12):
bank of carbon that's just beenstored. And if the soil starts
to warm up, then you get more ofthat decomposition and microbial
activity, and you start to getmore carbon released into the
atmosphere, which then warms theplanet, which then thaws more
soil, which then releases morecarbon. And you can see how this
could start to spin up like alike just a big runaway snowball

(34:34):
effect,

Brian (34:34):
and get, like, a positive feedback loop. Yes, tipping
points,

Jacquelyn (34:38):
exactly. And so a tipping point or a critical
transition. You know the we talkabout these as what we call non
linear effects, meaning theydon't. You just don't. If you,
if you crank up the temperaturea little bit and the or you
crank up the CO2 a little bit,and the temperature increases by
a predictable amount, and youcrank up the temperature, or

(34:59):
the. The CO2 a little bit, thetemperature increases by a
predictable amount, right? Andthat creates a straight line
going upwards in your sort ofmental graph. That's what we
would call linear, right? It's astraight line where, as a
tipping point, you can suddenlysee a very fast change in the
rate of the response that is notnecessarily predictable. And the
tricky part about a tippingpoint. When we think about these

(35:23):
kinds of events, we use theterm, what's called hysteresis,
which, if you imagine yourself,and if any of you have ever been
in a canoe before, you know thatcanoes are a little wiggly. They
are a little tippy, but you alsoknow that you have a little bit
of wiggle room on either side.You can kind of shift to the
right or to the left, and thenat a certain point, if you push

(35:46):
the boundaries of what thatcanoe can tolerate, it will flip
over. And if you've ever flippeda canoe before, which I hope you
haven't, but if you ever have,you know it's a lot harder to
flip it back than it was to tipit over the first time. And so
in these sort of, you know,hysteresis responses, these two
states, upright canoe andflipped over canoe are both

(36:09):
possible, but once you flip fromone to the other, it's a lot
harder to go back. And so inthese tipping point scenarios,
when we talk about things likethe collapse of of, of, you
know, certain ice shelves in theAntarctic, or the you know,
permafrost thaw, what happens isthat it's easier. It can be

(36:32):
easier to release that carbonfrom the permafrost than it is
to to return it to its originalstate. And in some cases, it
might be impossible, at least onthe time scales that are
relevant to us as humans, right?You know, it might take 1000s or
millions of years to reversethose effects, and we want to
avoid them, because they oftencome with big jumps in the

(36:55):
conditions that we'reexperiencing. Right? If we were
to release all, if we were towarm all of that permafrost to
the extent that all of thatcarbon that's been trapped for
1000s and 1000s of years wassuddenly released, then we're
going to see a big jump in theamount of carbon that's in our
atmosphere, and that's going todrive a big jump in our
temperature. So again, a nonlinear response can be really

(37:15):
hard to predict, and this iswhere tipping points become
really challenging. You'll oftenhear about them in the media, or
we're about to reach a tippingpoint when it comes to this
Antarctic ice shelf, or about toreach a tipping point when it
comes to ocean currents. But theproblem is that there's been a
lot of different attempts to tryto predict a tipping point

(37:39):
that's coming based on theseearly warning detection systems,
which, in our case, we don'thave little red lights that go
off. We have statisticalprocesses that we can use to try
to identify a tipping pointbefore it comes. But I often
say, you know, based on what weknow from the from the Paleo
record, we've The Earth hasexperienced things like climate

(38:00):
change & extinction before weknow a lot about how the Earth
system responds to those kindsof processes. We're not walking
into the future with a blindfoldon, but with tipping points. We
kind of are, to an extent,because we don't necessarily
know exactly when they willhappen. And you might say, oh,
plus or minus 10 years thatthat's a big deal for human

(38:21):
societies that rely on a certainset of conditions in order to
operate, like our agriculturalsystems or our transportation
systems, or, you know, ourability to make sure that all of
the people who live along thecoasts still have places to live
and aren't going to be impactedby, you know, major sea level

(38:41):
rises.

Brian (38:43):
I think a lot of our when we talk about infrastructural
resilience, or all these typesof resilience, we were talking
about this recently, it's reallybased on flexibility, like, if
your assumption is that tomorrowand the day after that, and the
day after that are going to beexactly like this, and your
system only functions. If that'strue, you have no flexibility,
right?

Jason (39:01):
That? Yeah, that's what resilience means, the ability to
take a hit and keep on going,yeah.

Jacquelyn (39:06):
And so if those hits push you out of the range that
you're prepared for, and that's,you know, tipping points often,
like I said, involve these bigjumps in your conditions, if an
ice shelf collapses and meltsreally quickly, that is going to
rise sea level much more quicklythan the sort of slower, more
gradual process of a little bitof melt every year. And so when

(39:29):
you can see, okay, we're seeingsea levels rising by this many
millimeters per year. We havethese coastal communities where
we need to start to prepare forthat sea level rise, as we're
also working on the problem ofdrawdown, right? We want to
reduce our emissions throughmitigation, but we also need
adaptation, because the impactsof climate change are already

(39:50):
with us. But when you start totalk about these non linear
responses, these large jumps inour conditions to a new state,
or we sort of crank up the dialreally quickly. That becomes
really difficult if you say,live in a coastal community
where you have to get to andfrom work every day by crossing
over a low lying bridge, or yourhome is near the ocean, or your

(40:11):
clean water is being infiltratedby sea water, or all of the
other impacts that sea levelrise is having.

Brian (40:16):
So you've mentioned another one, this loss of Arctic
sea ice, a couple of thesetracks, actually, I think, will
be familiar to most people. Moresevere weather. Loss of sea ice
is a thing that we hear aboutroutinely when it comes to
climate change, desertification.I think this idea of the change
of rainfall makes sense thatwe've been hearing about the die
back of the Amazon for a verylong time as well. Well, die

(40:39):
back and also actively removalof the Amazon ocean
acidification. Can we talk aboutocean acidification a little
bit?

Jacquelyn (40:46):
Yeah, absolutely. So, as CO2 is emitted into the
atmosphere, the oceans have acapacity to absorb some of that,
but that is that actuallychanges the pH of the oceans,
right? Because the CO2 isslightly more acidic. And so now
you might think, Well, we knowwe're not talking about, you

(41:06):
know, walking into a literalbath of acid here. If you, if
you put your hand in anacidified ocean, you're not
going to come out with a bunchof burns and pustules all over
your hand, right? This isn'tsomething that necessarily we
would notice. These are verysmall changes in the pH of the
oceans. But now imagine that youare an ocean dwelling creature
that makes a shell. What areshells made out of calcium

(41:28):
carbonate? What do you take whenyou have an acidic stomach,
Tums? What are Tums made out ofcalcium carbonate? You can start
to see now where this becomes aproblem, where by just small
changes in the chemistry of theoceans, making shells as a
small, you know, plankton orother creature becomes really
difficult. And you might think,Okay, well, so what? So some

(41:49):
small shell creating creaturesin the ocean have a harder time
making their their physicalstructures. Well, what eats
those creatures? Right? What youstart to think about this from a
whole food web perspective, andthere are, if we look at the
fossil record, for example, whenwe look at mass extinctions in
the past, they typically are notnecessarily, at least in the

(42:12):
oceans, driven so much bywarming temperatures as they are
driven by ocean acidification.Now, those were on much larger
scales of warming than whatwe're expected to see by the end
of the century. But we're also,you know, we don't need to lose
97% of all genera in the oceansbefore we do something about
climate change, right? Evensmall amounts of ocean

(42:34):
acidification can start tocause, and are already starting
to cause disruptions to ourocean based food webs, the
oceans feed us, right? They alsoproduce a lot of our oxygen. And
so you can see how, as theseconnections among all living
things, you know, mean that whenyou pull on one thread, the
whole tapestry can start tounravel. And you know, Jason,
you mentioned resilience, I liketo think about ecosystems, if I

(42:57):
can mix metaphors for like, thefourth time here as a Jenga
tower, right? You can pull someblocks out and your Jenga tower
will be okay, but at a certainpoint, you just reach that
tipping point where pulling oneone more piece out causes the
whole tower to collapse. And wedon't want to get anywhere near
that.

Brian (43:14):
Jason likes to say that ecosystems are held together
with duct tape and spit. So, ohyeah, whether you're
paraphrasing someone, right?

Jason (43:21):
I'd say that they're basically, they're they're not
in harmony. They're everythingpulling against everything else
as hard as they can. And so ifyou start losing members, then
suddenly the balance gets lost,

Brian (43:32):
not enough people on one side. Then everything gets
pulled in the wrong direction,and everybody falls Yeah.

Jacquelyn (43:37):
And there is, you know, I people often think of
these ecosystems as having asbeing extremely sensitive that
just like a sneeze, will causeeverything to collapse. And no,
I mean, we we've seen a largeamount of climate swings, and,
you know, species changes andextinctions over the last, you
know, millennia to millions ofyears, there is some resilience

(43:58):
built into the system, and wesee that in Paleo records, but
we also see that extinction doeshappen, and extinction is
forever, and a lot of thatextinction is has been driven by
climate change and and so, youknow, to me, this just reminds
us that we do have a little bitof wiggle room. We have some

(44:18):
buffer space, you know, but thatdoesn't mean that we that we
don't have to act urgently,because, again, these tipping
points can surprise us, and Iwould rather not figure out
where they are by crossing overthem.

Brian (44:33):
I guess in the case of the ocean, we literally have
buffer space, right?

Jacquelyn (44:36):
Yeah, yeah, right. From an ocean acidification
perspective, yeah, yeah.

Jason (44:40):
And I was like, I'm glad we talked about it, because I
was going to mention the twoways that carbon gets drawn down
to the system, the trees and theocean waves. The trees I think
most people would get becausepeople understand trees suck in
carbon dioxide. The ocean waves,I think, are less obvious, and
so it's basically this processof the ocean sucking it down.
But there's a cost, that there'sa limit to. Its capacity to do

(45:00):
so without causing otherproblems, is that, basically the
summary,

Jacquelyn (45:04):
yeah, at least on shorter timescales. I mean, the
other way you can there'sanother way that nature draws
down carbon from the atmosphere,which is just through, you know,
CO2 dissolved in rain, which canthen dissolve rock as the rain
hits that rock, and then itbasically gets washed out to sea
and buried at the bottom of theocean. That's how, that's sort

(45:25):
of Earth's carbon removalprocess that plays out over
millions of years. It's how, youknow, it's one of the reasons
why we don't have the samelevels of CO2 naturally that we
did during the Cretaceous, rightthe time of the dinosaurs. So
these natural processes ofcarbon burial, but they happen
over really long timescales. Butsome people are talking about

(45:45):
leveraging that process to toactually, you know, capture
carbon, bury it in these massiveblocks, and just, you know, sink
them down into the bottom of theocean, and just do, do it in an
artificial way.

Brian (45:59):
I have actually not managed to play a game of
Daybreak. Yet where it's I'vegotten into effect direct air
capture.

Jacquelyn (46:04):
Yeah, yeah. That's what? Yeah. That's the sort of
thing I was just mentioning. Isthis idea of right now, this is
still science fiction. So wedon't have technological
solutions to the climate crisis,other than green the green
energy transition. We don't havethis. There is no real ability
to remove CO2 from theatmosphere using technology,

(46:28):
unless you want to call a planttechnology, yeah. So people
often say, oh, yeah, well, we'lljust sort of techno solve our
way out of this problem thatcurrently remains science
fiction at this point. It doesnot that technology does not
exist. There have been attemptsto try it, but so far, the
plants that have been attemptingto do this have taken more

(46:50):
energy than they have pulled outof the atmosphere in terms of
their carbon budgets. So theyactually create more emissions
than they've reduced.

Brian (46:57):
That's kind of what I would assume like. If you're not
using clean energy to do that,then how are you making the
problem any better?

Jacquelyn (47:03):
Yeah

Jason (47:05):
which actually is another question I had so Brian and I
noticed that in the game,there's like seven or eight
different sources of carbon thatgo into the atmosphere. He
mentioned, like industry,agriculture, waste,
transportation and then justplain energy. And we noticed
that the game very much skews infavor of switching energy

(47:26):
generation from dirty to clean,and it's actually very hard to
switch any of these other thingsover. There's a few cards that
hit a few of them. There's oneor two, though, I don't think we
found any cards that targetedthem specifically. You just got,
like, one or two cards thatwould let you hit any type. But
some of them are very hard.

Brian (47:42):
Having gone through the whole deck, there is nothing
specifically that lets you getrid of energy extraction or
waste.

Jacquelyn (47:48):
Interesting.

Jason (47:48):
My question is, the game has it so that the easiest way
of going from emitting carbon tonot emitting carbon, to
basically reduce your carboninput, is to

Brian (47:56):
is changing the energy economy?

Jason (47:58):
Yes, yeah, going from dirty energy to clean energy,
and it's very hard to changeother our other sources of
carbon emissions. Does that isthat the case in reality is that
our best bet of changing howmuch carbon dioxide we produce,

Brian (48:11):
because this might be a nitpick, if it's not, because
this is definitely how Daybreaksays this is the only way you're
going to win, is by doing this.

Jacquelyn (48:18):
So at scale, maybe it's there's a lot of focus on
energy consumption there. Iguess you could, they could have
gotten into other approaches,like changing diets, right?
Because if you think about oneof the biggest sources of
emissions is actually the foodthat we eat. People often spend
a lot of time on transportation,but globally, I believe flying

(48:42):
is something like 2.5% of globalemissions, whereas beef
consumption is actually muchhigher than flying. And so the
biggest thing that you can do,if you if we want to focus at
individual actions that scale upas collective actions, one of
the biggest things that you cando is just eat less meat. Not
not eat no meat, even, you know,I know people will freak out,

(49:02):
but you can eat less meat, andthat makes a huge difference. My
guess is they didn't want to getinto the mechanics of emissions
in that sense, because then youstart to have to deal with all
kinds of, you know, it's like,well, what are they going to eat

(49:22):
instead? Right? And thenthere's, there's an energy
budget that's associated withwith each of those things.
Because, in the case of beef,it's, you know, the methane the
cows themselves physicallyrelease. But it's also the
deforestation that goes into,you know, creating land for
pasture to meet global demand.It's also the, you know, the

(49:44):
transportation budget of drivingor flying cows and beef around,
right? And so there's all thesesort of add ons, you know, it's
not, it's not just the themethane associated with them,
with the animals themselves. SoI think. Like, the simplest and
most clean way is to think aboutenergy transition, and that is

(50:05):
honestly the way that makes themost sense. I think, as long as
we're also factoring intransportation, which is
globally really important. Butthen there's also things like
cement. Like global cementproduction is actually a huge
source of emissions. You know,where does that fall like there?
There are direct emissions thatare not coming from the burning

(50:26):
of fossil fuels for electricityor combust internal combustion
engines for for propulsion. Youknow that that do matter. But I
think once you start to openthat can of worms, the game
becomes like Terraforming Marsand and then it becomes like its
own hobby is just that is thegame itself. And so I do think
maybe they wanted to avoid someof the those basics and really

(50:50):
focus on green energy, and notto knock the green energy
transition. It's been when Istarted grad school, the
likeliest climate scenario forour future was warmer than what
is turning out to be thelikeliest scenario now, and we
have bent the arc of our climatefuture downwards, and a large

(51:13):
part of that is a faster thanpredicted increase in green
Energy, especially in placeslike China, and a faster than
predicted collapse of the coalindustry, and so that has
actually made a like a multidegree difference in terms of
the climate future. The worstcase scenarios of you know, even
15-20, years ago are no longeron the table. Neither are the

(51:36):
best case scenarios, but we'resort of in the middle right,
which I'll take it compared tothe worst case scenarios, right?
RCP-8.5 which is an emissionsscenario that people have talked
about and often was sort of seenas the likeliest scenario, is
now considered a highly unlikelyscenario because, again, of this

(51:57):
clean energy transition. And soI think the game is right in a
way to focus on that, because atthese global scales, with policy
initiatives, that's a reallynice lever, right that you can
focus on from for the purposesof a game. In reality, it's a
little more complicated, whichis why we say, you know, climate
change is an everything problem,because there's really no aspect

(52:21):
of our lives that that is thatdoesn't touch on climate change
in some way. But, you know, itbecomes, I think, more
complicated if you're going tostart talking about diets and
and manufacturing materials thatyou know, like concrete emits
carbon just by existing, right?And so then you start to think

(52:42):
about, well, what is that? Howdo we even start to tap into
that as from a, from a gamemechanics question? And I can, I
can understand that, that thereluctance to go down
thatathway,

Brian (52:53):
p can I ask you to follow up on one thing you mentioned,
you said, RCP, could you tell mewhat that means when

Jacquelyn (52:58):
I said RCP-8.5 that's referring to what we call a
representative concentrationpathway. So that is a human
scenario that climate scientiststhen use to model potential
futures. And the number 8.5actually refers to how much what
we call radiative forcing in theyear 2100 so that's how much

(53:21):
extra energy in watts per squaremeter that are trapped in
Earth's atmosphere compared toour pre industrial baseline. So
people have probably heard ofthe IPCC, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change. Andevery seven or so years, the
world scientists and policymakers get together, and they

(53:42):
basically take a snapshot of thecurrent best science on climate
change, both in terms ofemission sources as well as
emissions impacts. And as partof those reports that come out,
the IPCC, reports that come outevery seven ish years or so,
there are projections of whatwe're looking at in terms of our
future climate scenarios. Whatis, what is our climate future

(54:03):
going to be? Well, it'suncertain, and it's well, I
talked about some uncertaintiesin terms of things like tipping
points or how the Earth systemis going to respond to a certain
amount of warming or a certainamount of emissions. It turns
out that the biggest source ofuncertainty when it comes to
climate change, is actually nothow the Earth system itself will

(54:24):
respond. It's what people aregoing to do. Are we going to
share technology? Are we goingto treat this as a cooperative
board game and not a competitiveone? Are we going to invest in
certain types of infrastructureor or technologies are what's
the pop human population goingto do? How are we going to eat?

(54:44):
What is our fingerprint likeglobally going to look like at
different in different parts ofthe world? Those that human
question means that predictingor projecting into the future
any one particular climatefuture becomes really
challenging. So if you were.Say, what is it going to look
like in 100 years? I can say,well, if we have a lot of war

(55:06):
and people don't get along verywell, and, you know, we have a
bunch of countries who startthese initiatives to increase
our fossil fuel use, and wedecide that green energy is, you
know, not politically expedient,etc, then and human population
trajectories in different partsof the world look like this,

(55:29):
then we're going to follow thisemissions pathway. And if, and
if we have a collaborative worldcommunity where we share new
emerging technologies, we have avery involved public that starts
protesting or demanding actionfrom world leaders and votes in

(55:51):
certain ways. And we see thiskind of leadership. We see this
kind of growth in technology. Imean, these are the social
scientists map all of theselikely trajectories out. Then
we're going to follow this slopein terms of our emissions
pathways.

Brian (56:03):
That's fascinating. So basically, the best models of
climate change are not byclimate scientists. They're by
social scientists.

Jacquelyn (56:11):
Well, it starts with the social scientists. So the
social scientists say this iswhat we think will happen. And
then the climate modelers allget together and they run what
we call ensemble models. Sothere's maybe 10-14, different
models that get used. Andbecause some models are better
at some things, some models arereally good at clouds, some
models are really good at theoceans, right? And so they all

(56:33):
have different strengths. We runthem all together, we look at
sort of what the error is, andwe take those different
emissions scenarios, and we runthem through the model, and we
allow the model to tell us howwarm things will get based on
those emission scenarios. Andthen we say, Okay, with this
particular scenario, we aregoing to predict 4.5 degrees

(56:54):
Celsius. With this particularscenario, we're going to predict
two to four degrees Celsius. Andso for a while, RCP 8.5 was
called business as usual. Thatwas the pathway that we thought
we were on, or that was maybemost likely, and that was
associated with about four tofive degrees Celsius. Global

(57:15):
average temperature increases by2100 higher in the Arctic, which
again starts to raise thespecter of tipping points. If
the Arctic is warming faster,you get more CO2 and then maybe
we get even warmer.

Brian (57:26):
Yeah, you get your feedback loops.

Jacquelyn (57:28):
Yeah. So it was once nicknamed the business as usual
scenario, but now most expertssee it as an unlikely worst
case. Coal has not grown as fastas once assumed, and it's often
still used as a benchmark.People might have heard of,
heard of this term, but we don'tthink it's a likely future
anymore. It is a useful warningin terms of what happens if we

(57:48):
slam our foot on the gas andnever hit the brakes. But you
know what I like to remindpeople of, because this is
daybreak. This is a game wherewe're trying to solve this
crisis. The reason that RCP 8.5ended up being an unlikely
scenario. Is not because we gotthe science wrong. It's just
because humans, our humansociety, followed a different

(58:10):
trajectory, one where we saw anunprecedented rise in a Global
Youth Climate movement, onewhere we saw a faster than
predicted growth in green energyand a faster than predicted
collapse in coal.

Brian (58:24):
Thay's hope. That's hopeful. That sounds

Jacquelyn (58:26):
it is hopeful. Yeah, it's not just that. Oh, we kind
of guessed, and we guessedwrong. The models were wrong.
It's no we are literally bendingthe arc of our climate future
downwards. We're not warming aswe're not on that ski slope up.

Brian (58:39):
There's, there's a bunch of other things that I wish we
could talk about. We are runningout of time just a little bit.
But I did want to ask you onemore very dumb question, if
that's okay,

Jacquelyn (58:49):
please. Yeah.

Brian (58:50):
Okay. So what is a fossil fuel and where do they come
from?

Jacquelyn (58:54):
Oh, such a great question,

Brian (58:56):
because, because the number of coffee mugs that have
a dinosaur turning intogasoline. And I know it's it. So
we're going to take thisopportunity, because, as Jason
says, it's times like this thatwe get to talk about things I
don't know another game that'sgoing to let us talk about this
topic. So, what is a fossilfuel? Where did they come from?

Jacquelyn (59:14):
It's great. It I mean, and they are fossils.
They're just not the animal, thevertebrate, the dinosaur fossils
that that we often like tothink. People think, Oh, I'm
burning dinosaurs in my gastank. Actually, in some ways, I
think it's even cooler if I cansay that they're even older. And
so these are basically typicallyancient plants, algae or even

(59:36):
other microorganisms that livedhundreds of millions of years
ago. So most of our oil and coaland gas deposits formed during
the Carboniferous. So like itsays on the tin right,
carboniferous is very carbonyperiod, and that was about 360
to 300 million years ago. Andthere was just a really, there

(59:57):
were these large scale swampswhich were really. Really
perfect for preserving organicmatter. There were, like,
massive wetlands all over thelarge part, parts of the planet.
And so you're really burninglike ancient ferns, ancient
early plants and algae. And sothat's where those deposits are

(01:00:17):
coming from, long before, youknow, hundreds, hundreds of
millions of years before thetime of the dinosaurs, you know.
So you are burning fossils, butthey're mostly fossil plants and
algae. But really, if you thinkabout it, you're burning ancient
light, right, ancient sunlight.So, the sun, you know, these
plants are photosynthesizing,these algae are
photosynthesizing, and they're,using that sunlight to create

(01:00:42):
sugars and build their bodies.And so really, what we're doing
is we're taking sunlight thattook so that solar energy that
took hundreds of millions ofyears to accumulate, and we're
releasing it in decades orcenturies. So that's an
incredible amount of carbon thattook a very long time to build
up, and then we're just lettingit all out in a very short

(01:01:04):
period of time. And sometimes,you know, in the past, volcanoes
have done things like this, andthey've had disastrous
consequences, you know, for massextinctions. And now we are the
force, the geologic force, thatis sort of burping all of this
carbon into the atmosphere.

Brian (01:01:22):
So listeners, listen to season one, episode one, our
very first episode onphotosynthesis, all that
sunlight you're using to growtrees, and then it gets buried
and just stays as a tree. So thenext time you see somebody
saying you're putting olddinosaurs into your gas tank,
just you're not, Nope, okay. Andyou could tell them that they're
wrong, and Jacquelyn andexplained it for you, well,

Jacquelyn (01:01:43):
actually, they're old tree ferns. Yeah,

Jason (01:01:47):
all those Sinclair gas stations are just wrong.

Brian (01:01:50):
Yeah, I actually think it's their fault. I really do.

Jason (01:01:54):
They just need to replace their mascot from a was a
sauropod to be a tree fern.

Yep, yep. I'm on board

Brian (01:02:00):
nitpick corner. I'm happy to go first in terms of the
nitpick with the science. Ithink that this game really
tries to represent a lot a lotof those things, plant based
diets, alternate concrete,they're all there. They're
little bonus activities that youcan do that help but but really
the thing that this is not evena game nitpick. This is just the

(01:02:20):
thing that bothers me. If you goto the daybreak website, if you
scroll down to the bottom, theyhave resources for educators,
right? And if you click on thattab, all it says is website
under development, and itdoesn't have anything. And to be
honest, this is not the firsttime I've seen this. These
things just never seem to quitematerialize. That you know,

(01:02:41):
there's always the bestintentions, and then they just
never seem to get over that laststep. So that's because kind of
sad. The game is great, butlike, the fact that they had to
put educational in quotationmarks just really troubles me.

Missed opportunity. Yeah,

Jason (01:02:56):
yeah, I'd say mine is something we already alluded to.
Is the like, the fact that Brianand I won, but we were pretty
sure that global civilizationwas going to collapse next turn.

Brian (01:03:06):
When you were rolling the planet dice, the planetary
effects dice four times orsomething every round.

Jason (01:03:12):
Yeah, it's just this case like, well, if I won, I'd like
to feel like I not only won, butthe human society would be okay,
not that I have 11 communitiesin crisis, and all the tipping
points have been hit, and like,as soon as next society, next
turn happens, like just thingsare going to completely fall
apart. So I guess I'd like that,but I also understand that could
make it a much, much longer gameor a much, much harder game. I

(01:03:36):
mean, they have to balance theco op. And I will say my take
home from this is that realsolving climate change is going
to be very hard because the gameis purely Co Op. We were working
together. When I look around theglobal political scheme, I don't
see international cooperation onthe scale I would like to see in
which I'm actually gladJacquelyn, that you mentioned

(01:03:57):
that bending the curve down,because that actually gives me
some hope that, yes, things canhappen. It's not just doom and
gloom, as is reported so oftenin newspapers. So

Brian (01:04:06):
I still like to think that there's an opportunity for
a better future. Here. We'reseeing populations sort of
reaching stabilizing. People aretrying. Things are at least
moving in the direction we'dhoped they would. Just needs to
be more and faster. Jacquelyn,what do you think?

Yeah, I would say, for me, I think the biggest
nitpick, if I, if I can, if Ihave to say something critical,

Brian (01:04:26):
you don't have to,

oh no, no, no, I, I've got it is, is that, you
know, it does a beautiful job ofshowing that climate, climate
change is a global cooperationproblem, but you know, it does
have to simplify. And I thinkone of the ways in which one of
the important aspects of theclimate crisis that don't come
through the game because of somechoices to simplify, which I
understand it would be a totallydifferent game, is that, you

(01:04:50):
know, the like the global South,the, you know, the, what was the
phrase that they used in thegame, the majority world? Yeah,
it's far more. More, you know,diverse than one player card can
capture. And also, you know, itin a lot of ways, it's not, it's
not equal in terms of power orin terms of its contribution to

(01:05:12):
the climate crisis that otherother, these other components,
you know, North America, Europe,etc, have and and so one thing
that I feel is sort of missingfrom this, this vision of this
game, which is understandablebecause it's focused on
solutions, is that this ideathat the communities that have
contributed the least to climatechange will suffer, or are

(01:05:34):
suffering the first and themost, and so the countries that
have emitted the least areexperiencing the impacts first
and and I think that getsglossed over a little bit in
this kind of cooperative model,and also just the fact that, you
know, there's almost a part ofme, as I was kind of reading
through this that wanted to,yes, the fossil fuel industry is

(01:05:55):
portrayed negatively throughoutthe game, but it almost feels
like it's this, like Silentantagonist, like it's, it's, I
almost wanted someone, no onewould want to play the fossil
fuel industry right, like youwould, but they don't play fair

Jason (01:06:09):
Traitor mechanic!

They don't play by the rules, right? And so I
almost thought to myself, like,what would it be like if
somebody played as a fossil fuelindustry deliberately trying to
undermine every single thingthat all these interesting doing
throughout the whole process,because that's what's happening.
They are paying lobbyists, youknow? They are undermining
climate science, and they areresponsive, right? They are.

(01:06:30):
They are responsive to whateveryone else is doing to sort
of as we each try to respond towhat the fossil fuel industry
has enabled. The fossil fuelindustry also adapts and
changes, and so that is kind ofmissing. They're, they're,
they're ever present, butsomewhat almost passive in a

(01:06:50):
way, and I but again, like you'dbe, you'd spend like half an
hour fighting over who had toplay the fossil fuel industry.
That would be like the game,like you have to just draw a
random card. Or maybe it couldbe one of those, like, silent,
you know, the games where youhave, like, a secret identity,

Brian (01:07:05):
I can imagine people who would be anxious to play the
antagonist.

Yeah, that's fair. I think I've got one of those in
my gaming group too.

Brian (01:07:12):
Okay, well, let's do grades. I'm happy to start. And
actually, I think I know weusually do these separately, but
let's just do the science andthe fun grades together. If
that's okay, if you want to kindof justify, I'm actually
comfortable with both an A onscience for intentionality. Yes,
there's always simplifications,and yet they've tried to really
robustly represent the system.Again, it's they, I think that

(01:07:35):
they met their goal of beingwhere realism was the target. I
know that they really shot forthat. In terms of fun, Jason and
I are going to be going to agaming con, running some games.
I switched my game that I wasgoing to play to this game. I
wanted to play Daybreak withpeople. I wanted to teach people
how to play daybreak. I I'veenjoyed it, and I am excited to

(01:07:55):
play it more. So I'm going to bedouble A,

Jason (01:07:59):
I'd say, probably A to A minus range for fun, and I just
have to play another time or twoto figure out which one of those
two it is, because first time isalways fairly challenging. But
overall it seemed, it seemedentertaining and good. There was
lots of moving parts that Icould try to figure out how to
make work for science A plus.This is, this is possibly one of
the few games I've seen that hasmore science in it than

(01:08:20):
wingspan, and a lot of that ishidden behind the QR codes, but
it's there, and I want toacknowledge that they did the
work to get the science down andto get it right and to put a lot
of it there and accessible inthe game, for those who want to
look for it,

Brian (01:08:36):
pretty good for a game that was explicit about not
wanting it to be educational.

Yeah, I would, I mean, I still, I would say A in
terms of want to play, because Ihaven't had a chance to
actually, I've watched otherpeople play it, but it's a game
where, when I when you have toconfess, when you first invited
me to talk about it, I wasinitially like, oh my gosh, this
sounds so cool. I love pandemic.This sounds like right up my
alley. And then immediatelythought, oh my God, no one's

(01:09:02):
ever going to want to play thiswith me. It's going to feel,
well, just thinking like it'sgoing to feel

Jason (01:09:07):
Preachy?

like, like the, I mean, just like a downer, or
it's going to be difficult, orit's going to be too sciencey,
or too too nerdy, like, I can'tget anyone to play Terraforming
Mars with me, right? And andthen when I actually got a
chance to unbox it and watchsome videos, I realized, oh no,
no, this, this will not be ahard game to sell to other
people, to in terms of come andhang out with me and play

(01:09:28):
daybreak, or bringing it in theclassroom and actually being
able to get through it in asession. And so I would say A in
terms of, you know, just ease ofan excitement about playing, and
everything that I've seen andread about and just explored on
my own. I would definitely say Aplus for science.

Brian (01:09:46):
Do you think this will be a good match for the classroom?

I do. I bring board games into my field, Natural
History class towards the end ofthe semester, when everything's
kind of cold and dark and deadand there's not a whole. A lot
of field to do and and a lot oftimes, some of those games have
not translated very well intothe classroom. We've needed,

(01:10:09):
like game ambassadors who needto learn the rules and then
teach them in the class, andthey get so bogged down in the
details and in the gameplaymechanics that it becomes
difficult, unless you havesomeone who's like, oh yeah, I
know wingspan. Let me have letmy table have that one. You
really do kind of need someoneto sort of convince everybody

(01:10:29):
else how to play. Or we getthrough, we get through the end
of the hour. And I think this isgoing to be a I think this is
worth trying.

Brian (01:10:37):
Are you going to have to buy multiple copies? How do you
do that?

usually What I've done is I've had a collection of
games that students have themkind of pulled from. I just did
this for the first time lastyear, because it turns out, I
have so many natural historyrelated games that became
finally doable, but now I'm sortof scheming about potentially
doing something like that, whereI get a whole bunch of copies
and then disperse themthroughout the room and have

(01:11:02):
this be its own exercise.

Brian (01:11:04):
This sounds occasionally they're those little pockets of
money that can come up at auniversity. And this seems like
one of those things you might beable to convince somebody that
this is worthwhile, yeah.

Or maybe if Matt hears this podcast and the fact
that I was reluctant to sayanything too negative about it,
he'll be like, hey,

Jason (01:11:23):
well, I will say I clicked on the link that Brian
mentioned for educators. Itstill says it's under
construction, but it says thatif you're an educator and you
want discounted copies for usein the classroom, it tells you
how to contact them.

Brian (01:11:35):
Oh, Jason canceled out my nitpick. Never mind. I mean,

Jason (01:11:38):
well, that's all it has. It says, Oh, we also want to put
up here, like lesson plans andletters for requesting budget
stuff. Those aren't there yet,but at least there's the way to
contact the company.

Brian (01:11:46):
I mean, the game released in 2023 so it's, I think it's
probably not comeing at thispoint. But anyway, you know the
hope springs eternal. Okay,fantastic. Well, I think,
unfortunately, we were gonnahave to cut it there. I really
appreciate you, Jacquelyn,coming on. I We don't move in
the same scientific circles, butknowing that you're a board
gamer, maybe, maybe somedaywe'll be in the same space and

(01:12:09):
we can play a game together withthat would be really fun.

That would be great. I would love that. Yeah.

Jason (01:12:13):
So where can people find you?

Well, you can find me on blue sky, just with my name.
Jacquelyn Gill, j, A, C, Q, U,E, L, y n, I'm one of the L, y
n, Jacquelyns and I also have aclimate podcast. It wrapped up a
couple of years ago, but it wascalled warmer guards. It was one
of the earliest climatepodcasts. All of our episodes
are still out there. Our lastseason focused around data, and

(01:12:37):
it's my favorite season. Wedidn't talk about games. We
should have and but we also havea new podcast that I'm working
on right now with Phoebe Cohenfrom Williams, called Jacs and
Phoebe make a planet where we'regoing to take you through the
entire process of how the Earthbecame habitable, everything

(01:12:58):
from its formation all the wayto the first land plants, the
sort of evolution of modern dayanimals. And the sort of frame
for the podcast is that twoscience friends are going to
make an apple pie. And as CarlSagan says, if you wish to make
an apple pie from scratch, youmust first create the universe.
So we're going to build thewhole planet so we can make our

(01:13:21):
apple pie.

Brian (01:13:22):
That's fantastic. Please let us know when the podcast
goes live. We'll make sure thatwe give you a shout out. Thank
you, dear listeners. Please golive. Give a listen to
Jacquelyn's podcast. When thetime comes, we're going to call
it there. Thanks for tuning in.I hope you have a great month
and great games.

Jason (01:13:39):
And as always, have fun playing dice with the universe,
see ya,

Brian (01:13:44):
this has been the gaming with Science Podcast copyright
2025 listeners are free to reusethis recording for any non
commercial purpose, as long ascredit is given to gaming with
science. This podcast isproduced with support from the
University of Georgia. Allopinions are those of the hosts,
and do not imply endorsement bythe sponsors. If you wish to
purchase any of the games thatwe talked about, we encourage
you to do so through yourfriendly local game store. Thank
you and have fun playing dicewith the universe.

Sorry, my speaking of Energy Transition, lights just
went off in my office.

Brian (01:14:15):
Yeah, I've seen people do this dance before.

Jason (01:14:19):
Anyone remember the old movie. Gremlins 2, where they
talked about they were in thissuper futuristic building, and
the lights got turned offbecause the guy didn't move. And
then I realized in my postdoc,that was the reality I was
living in.

Yeah, that's the future. We didn't get flying
cars. We just had our lightsrandomly shut off. I'm so sorry,
Jason, can you ask me yourquestion again?

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S2E08 - Daybreak (Climate Change)

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