Climate models assume that the goal is to inform policy direction, in order to mitigate climate change, and policy and social factors are treated as external factors. However, in a landmark study by Frances Moore and colleagues, human behaviour and social feedback loops are treated as key variables in climate outcomes and so provide new climate model insights. Frances Moore is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at UC Davis. In her paper, “Determinants of emissions pathways in the coupled climate–social system”, sociopolitical processes are incorporated into a novel climate model. Moore and her colleagues use their stylized climate–social system model to stimulate 100,000 possible emission trajectories and future policy. In their model, social factors, such as public perceptions of climate change, the cost and efficacy of mitigation technologies, and the policy of political institutions emerge as critical variables in explaining variation in emissions pathways. Traditionally, in climate models, sociopolitical variables are treated as exogenous, appearing as constraints on the model. Whereas within Moore’s model, these variables are endogenous, which can be affected and affect in return, inside the model. This creates a feedback loop, which guides emissions trajectories. The paper integrates social science into climate analysis, drawing on qualitative disciplines such as legal literature, political sciences, and rich case studies. Turning qualitative data that explores the nuanced social dynamics in social networks, political institutions, power, and information sharing, into mathematical equations is pretty tricky. Sometimes we don’t have the data, and sometimes we do, but only for the last ten years, which is a relatively short time. The researchers used backcasting, in which the climate model is applied to the past, to determine which set of parameter constraints are likely to generate long-term matches which reflect reality.