Climate Roulette

A Monte Carlo simulation of climate tipping points

Every 5 years of warming rolls the dice on 16 climate tipping points identified by Armstrong McKay et al. (2022). Choose an emissions pathway, then roll forward through time. Sometimes you reach 2100 and nothing tips. Sometimes permafrost collapses by 2040 and cascades everything. Click Roll to find out which Earth you're on.

Year & Dice Roll

2025
1.45°C above pre-industrial
Auto-run to 2070

Global Tipping Point Map

Safe
At Risk
High Risk
Tipped

Tipping Points — Armstrong McKay et al. 2022

Economic Damage at Current Temperature

Monte Carlo: 100 Parallel Earths

What happens if we rerun Earth's climate 100 times with the same emissions pathway? Each simulation rolls the dice independently on every tipping point. Some Earths get lucky. Most don't.

How many Earths avoid all tipping points?

The Mean Is a Lie

The ensemble average hides catastrophic tail risk. What matters is not the average across 100 Earths — it's what happens on the one Earth you actually live on.

Ensemble Mean

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Average across 100 Earths

Your Trajectory

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This Earth's outcome

Worst 5% (CVaR)

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Expected Shortfall — avg of worst 5%

Damage Distribution

Where does your Earth sit in the distribution? The line marks your trajectory.

Why does the mean mislead? Standard cost-benefit analysis averages across many hypothetical Earths — but we only live on one. Climate damages are multiplicative: once a tipping point fires, it compounds. The ensemble mean smooths over catastrophic trajectories, but if your Earth hits the tail, the damage is permanent. This is the ergodicity problem: the average across parallel worlds is not the average over time for a single world.