This report describes the findings of the 'COOL interim phase'. COOL (Climate OptiOns for the Long term) is an integrated assessment project to explore long-term options for climate change policy in the Netherlands in a European and global context. COOL aims at providing information to decision makers by synthesising and utilising available scientific knowledge from different disciplines, methodologies and data. It also intends to test the social dialogue with various stakeholders as a component of integrated assessment activities. Within NOP, this project is intended to represent a major integration effort and to stimulate the dialogue on the outcome of ten years of climate change research. Since in-depth preparation is needed for such a project, an Interim phase was set up, in which particular attention has been paid to the design aspects of a dialogue between science, policy and society. Utilising knowledge and managing information (how to present and provide scientific and other knowledge in the dialogues) also received focus. Furthermore, a scheme to be followed in evaluating the COOL project for its contribution to methodology development in integrated assessment is described.