I struggle to understand what I'm supposed to get out of this tool. If "new technology" has a "huge breakthrough", global warming will be reduced .3 degrees - but we'd better hope that the breakthrough doesn't cause "economic growth" to become "high growth", since that will increase it by .7 degrees. Doesn't matter what the technology does or how the economic growth happens, we can predict their effects... somehow.

I don't think there's much understanding to be gained by attaching sliders with vague, underspecified labels to a graph.

There is a small explaination for each parameter when you click the ⋮ on the top right of each parameter.

And on the breakthrough technology question: of course we could discover a unknown technology that will instantly solve everything without even having to honor the inertia of the slow but hard to steer forces that make up climate change. And while I really hope this would happen, I'd rather have more realistic scenarios in the meantime.

Suppose we invent free energy. How long will it take for that technology to replace everything on the planet? How much emissions will this distribution of technology produce? Even with fairytale-style-technology overcoming the inertia of the ongoing processes will be anything but easy.

That's why they provide a full-blown training course to make sense of the simulator and associated negotiation roleplaying game:

https://www.climateinteractive.org/tools/en-roads/the-en-roa...

https://www.climateinteractive.org/tools/climate-action-simu...