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Players at the Carbon Brief Quiz 2021
Players at the Carbon Brief Quiz 2021.
FEATURES
19 November 2021 12:32

The Carbon Brief Quiz 2021

Carbon Brief Staff

19.11.2021 | 12:32pm
FeaturesThe Carbon Brief Quiz 2021

On Monday 8 November, Carbon Brief hosted its seventh annual quiz. The event was held at a brewery in Glasgow to coincide with COP26 – welcoming around 150 journalists, scientists and climate experts in person, with hundreds more playing online.

The Carbon Brief quiz usually takes place in a bar in London, but moved to Zoom last year due to Covid-19 restrictions. This year saw the Carbon Brief’s first fully hybrid event, in which both online and in-person teams were welcome – a format that Carbon Brief plans to repeat in the future.

Around 60 teams took part in the climate and energy-themed quiz, all hoping to win the coveted trophy claimed last year by “Twelve Spandrels”, which was formed of climate scientists and policy experts based at the University of East Anglia.

The teams competing this year, as in previous years, were made up of a wide range of people who, in one way or another, work on climate change or energy. The list included journalists, civil servants, climate campaigners, policy advisers, energy experts and scientists.

Organisations represented included: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); Met Office; Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra); New Scientist; Committee on Climate Change; WWF-UK; Royal Meteorological Society; and teams from the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

Teams were tested with five rounds of questions – general knowledge, policy, science and two picture rounds. After two hours of competitive quizzing, this year’s winners were announced.

For the second time in a row, the University of East Anglia (UEA) team – this year renamed as “Tipping Tables” – won the trophy.

Last year, the same team won by a slim margin, after facing a team made up of Christian Aid, ECIU and Climate Analytics in a tense tie-breaker round.

However, the final table of results shows that there was no such rivalry this year, as the UEA team, captained by Prof Jan Kaiser, earned 98 out of 100 points. This allowed them to beat the second-place team, the “Grantham Geniuses” from Grantham Institute, by a whopping 11 points.

Third place, with 83 points, was tied between three teams – “Greta Tomburke” from E3G, “Crazy Little Thing Called Net Zero” from Climate Analytics and “Spread the MESSAGE” by IIASA Energy, Climate and Environment.

The quiz result was later referenced on BBC News’ COP26 live blog.

You can read through all the questions and answers in this PDF document. (We also tweeted throughout the event using the #CBQuiz hashtag.)

The picture round can be viewed in more detail here.

Carbon Brief would like to thank all the teams who took part and we look forward to hosting the quiz again in the autumn of 2022. If you would like to participate in next year’s quiz, please contact us in advance.

Below is a gallery of photographs taken by Carbon Brief staff during the event held at West on the Green in Glasgow on Monday 8 November.

Picture gallery by Tom Prater for Carbon Brief.
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