Proceedings of the 1994 International System Dynamics Conference, Stirling, Scotland, July 11-15. The global climate system is a large complicated system with many feedback loops connecting the different sub-systems. In recent years there has been an increase in the public's awareness of global warming and the greenhouse effect. The public understands that there is some connection between the human emission of greenhouse gases and global climate change. Experts in this field have been analyzing these connections for years and are Still unable to give definitive answers to questions concerning the direct link between emissions and temperature change.
Policy makers have a desire to intervene in order to limit the amount of emissions.
At this point in time available answers are under debate and are unclear, or the models used by the scientific community are too complicated for policy makers to understand. The purpose of this global warming model is to be small, conceptually clear, and accessible to nonscientists. This model contains all of the feedback loops hypothesized in the scientific literature. However due to its small size it is aggregated to a global level. This level of aggregation will help to make the model more understandable for policy makers.