Burning fossil fuels adds another 100 million tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere every day*. If this were a single layer of the pure gas at sea level it would cover the entire Earth with a blanket 100 microns deep - the thickness of a piece of paper. And one Gigatonnne of CO2 would be almost exactly 1mm thick. Welcome to the Carbon Quilt, a new way to understand how we are changing the atmosphere - an intimate and human-scale visual tool for understanding global-scale carbon stories.
“Every day we wrap the planet in a paper thick layer of CO2”
Why is this useful? Metrics of climate change usually focus on the effects, rather than the cause. Temperature and sea level rise, increasing intensity of heat waves, rainfall depth, areas of flooding, and numbers of wildfires to name but a few. And the warming effects of CO2 emissions are estimated to have a time lag of at least ten years**.
But there are major barriers to the public’s engagement with what causes all this. The gases are invisible - we don't see the problem. And it is hard to relate to the measurements commonly used. Parts per million (PPM) and Gigatonnes of CO2 mean nothing to most people. Often used comparisons - a gigatonne is the mass of all land mammals apart from humans, or 200 million elephants, or three million 747s - are little help.
In our early days Carbon Visuals, Real World Visuals’ forerunner, came up with a different way of looking at atmospheric CO2 – the Carbon Quilt. We proposed showing patches of a ‘Carbon Quilt’, but the idea did not catch on then and we concentrated instead on images and animations that show CO2 as piles and stacks of bubbles/spheres. These have proved useful in conveying the reality of emissions. And they have helped tell countless stories of carbon reduction and challenges at every scale - from the individual to the corporate.
Now, as the the climate crisis gathers pace, we are re-launching the Carbon Quilt so that scientists, policymakers, businesses and NGOs have a dynamic image that can be easily communicated. In particular it ought to help members of the public who care about climate and the environment but need help in understanding the numbers.
We can throw the quilt over the planet in one piece, or use it to visualise the main sources of anthropogenic CO2, historic emissions associated with particular fossil-fuel companies or countries, end uses, reduction scenarios, carbon sequestration potential and much more. In principle, it can be used to visualise any breakdown of past, present and possible future emissions.
Do get in touch if you have a suitable application for the Carbon Quilt.
*Global energy-related CO2 emissions were 36.8 Gt in 2022 https://www.iea.org/reports/co2-emissions-in-2022
** https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/3/031001