The fact that fossil fuels were included in the text from COP28 is cause for celebration. But scientists are warning that time is running out if we want to avoid widespread climate chaos. That means that communication of the size of the challenge is critical and should not be restricted to stories of climate breakdown. We all need to get better at communicating ‘big carbon’.
We can help do this by creating stunning images, animations and tools. Some make the world itself as part of its own explanation – using geography to make sense of large numbers. But we have also developed some novel approaches using more traditional (and abstract) visualisation techniques.
This animation was made to show the remaining global CO₂ budget - if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C. According to the 2021 IPCC Report the most we could afford to release from all human activity was 400 billion tonnes CO₂. For an average country, its share of this global CO₂ budget will run out in 7 years. For a high emission country such as the UK, our share of the carbon budget will run out in 2 years.
But how can we make these figures easier to grasp? Our view is that conventional graphics must be augmented by other approaches. This animation is only a first draft. We have ideas about how to make it more intuitive and compelling.
Another way to help people understand ‘big carbon’ is to create simple interactive tools like this one we created, along with a variety of other visual imagery, for the launch of the Carbon Majors Report in 2013. The report showed the extent to which corporations are responsible for the cumulative emissions causing climate change. The tool allows users to explore the Carbon Majors data, but also shows the remaining atmospheric carbon budget available if we are to keep average global warming below 2 °C. Move the slider to see the rapidly diminishing global carbon budget.
Note that this only shows the budget available to 2010. We would love to create a contemporary version of this tool to show a variety of carbon budget scenarios.
These are some other projects where we have shown ‘big carbon’ data in different ways.
Top left is Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org in 2012 on his global Do the Math tour where he successfully used our (then very basic) visuals to get across the size of the carbon budget. To the right is a recently created GIF that shows 2019 ‘big carbon’ data as one tonne bubbles of carbon dioxide in real time. Below is an image showing global emissions with 1000 metric tonne bubbles of carbon dioxide appearing in real-time. This was created for a G7 summit in 2018. Finally we wanted to show the carbon footprint of the Qatar FIFA World Cup 2022, and the ‘carbon bombs’ in Qatar.
“This is such amazing stuff - this series of slides tell the story more eloquently than anything else...”
We think that showing ‘big carbon’ flows between natural and human-created sources and sinks could be particularly useful for policymakers. The animation above is a ‘work-in-progress’ using abstract data-visualisation. It shows the flows of ten-billion tonne carbon blocks between sinks and sources since the Industrial Revolution.
This short animation - very much a ‘work in progress’ - explains the carbon cycle and provides a physical sense of scale for the impact of the injection of carbon from fossil fuels. We have developed a visual language of ‘stores’ and ‘transfers’ (sinks and fluxes). It shows the flow of carbon since the Industrial Revolution not just between fossil fuels and the atmosphere, but also to and from land-based stores and shallow and deep ocean. The blocks each represent a billion tonnes of carbon – not carbon dioxide. (Data is from MacKey, et al 2013 | DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE1804 ) We would like to make a version of this by putting the rate of change into context in a relatable way, comparing changes brought about by long term cycles with recent and projected changes.
Please get in touch if you would like in helping communicating your ‘big carbon’ stories. If you don’t immediately have funding available we would be happy to collaborate with applications for funding our work.