Why are we doing this? Complex socio-technical problems such as global warming require deep, broad, collective intelligence on the analytical side, and wisdom, trust and commitment to negotiate and implement effective policy.

While computing plays a critical role in generating information about the state of our planet, what contributions can it make to improve the very human processes (cognitive, social, political, cultural) of deciding what the information ocean means, and what to do about it?

ESSENCE focuses on a particular aspect of this challenge, namely how can software help us express — and contest — the issues, options and tradeoffs? Since often we will disagree, how can software help surface, and possibly help resolve, these viewpoints? Tools for deliberation and argumentation, and for visualizing the status of a debate, provide a layer of structured knowledge analogous to a terrain map: a filtered view designed to draw attention to important features, from a particular perspective.

Tools for contributing to a dialogue are, however, only part of the story. There are many tools for communicating the trends/key points in the complex datasets that often underpin climate change discussions, and we welcome technology groups who have such tools, particularly if they enable participants to easily link/embed data analyses in their contributions to a discussion.