New York City's greenhouse gas emissions as one-ton spheres of carbon dioxide gas

In 2010 New York City added 54 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (equivalent) to the atmosphere, but that number means little to most people because few of us have a sense of scale for atmospheric pollution.

Carbon Visuals (http://www.carbonvisuals.com) and Environmental Defense Fund (http://www.edf.org/climate/remaking-e...) wanted to make those emissions feel a bit more real - the total emissions and the rate of emission. Designed to engage the 'person on the street', this version is exploratory and still work in progress. Mayor Bloomberg's office has not been involved in the creation or dissemination of this video.

NYC carbon footprint:

54,349,650 tons a year = 148,903 tons a day = 6,204 tons an hour = 1.72 tons a second

At standard pressure and 59 °F a metric ton of carbon dioxide gas would fill a sphere 33 feet across (density of CO₂ = 1.87 kg/m³: http://bit.ly/CO2_datasheet). If this is how New York's emissions actually emerged we would see one of these spheres emerge every 0.58 seconds.

Emissions in 2010 were 12% less than 2005 emissions. The City of New York is on track to reduce emissions by 30% by 2017 - an ambitious target.

For a set of stills from this movie, see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/carbonqu...

For more information see:
http://www.carbonvisuals.com/work/new...

Co-director: Chris Rabét (http://www.chrisrabet.com/)

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  Nonprofits & Activism

[quebec4]

My rough calculations:

- 33 feet across is 10 meters,

- to simplify, we build a pyramid of 10 meters cubic boxes with round basis

- let's use this formula: V = 1/3 * pi * r^2 * H with the assumption r = H

- then, with a simple goal seek (for 54m t of co2 emissions), you get H = r = 372 units (cubic), which then gives a pyramid about 7 km across at the basis.

But your visualisation goes from Brooklyn to North Bergen, which is more than 15 km across. Could you dbl check your math?

[CarbonVisuals]

Your calculations are pretty good, but your geography is a bit off. The basis of our calculation is discussed on the Carbon Visuals web page. The total volume of the pile (including the spaces between the spheres) is 45,412,474,933 m3. The pile is somewhere between a cone (h=r= 3,513m) & a hemisphere (r=2,789m). It stretches from the edge of Brooklyn to somewhere around 52nd St. It doesn't get close to North Bergen.

[Hayzon]

I think the visualisation is a little misleading, because the artist chose spheres. Especially if you look at the gigantic mountain after a year of emission: nealy 50% of the volume of the mountail is the space inbetween the spheres. Just a mathematical thing, you know. Nothing against the idea to visualize the problem ---

[CarbonVisuals]

One of the reasons we chose to show the volume as a pile of individual spheres rather than as one big volume is that the human eye is not very good at judging volume, but is good at judging numbers of things. We accounted for the space in-between the spheres in the calculation. When you pack spheres randomly it turns out that the spheres themselves take up 64% of the space - this is the 'packing density' - so 36% is space between. As one giant sphere, NYC's footprint would be 2.37 miles across.

[Richard Reiss]

great imagery, but misconceived -- NYC has the smallest carbon footprint per capita in the US, less than half the national average (because of mass transit and walkability). Check out David Owen's book "Green Metropolis" for the data.

On the other hand, showing 20 lbs of CO2 tumbling out of a car in the suburbs, for each gallon of gas (you get about 20 lbs of CO2 from 6 lbs of gasoline, as the O2 binds with the carbon) -- that would be great, if you could make that video.

[CarbonVisuals]

The idea is that the video will support the great work NYC is doing to reduce its already small (by US standards) footprint. We would like to do something similar for other cities, e.g. LA (more cars but stronger regulations).

We do have plans for a video showing the actual volume of carbon dioxide emerging from moving vehicles. In the mean-time, have you seen what the CO2 from a gallon of gas looks like? There's a picture on the CarbonVisuals website: Our Work / USA specific image set

[CarbonVisuals]

If it were up to me we would use only SI units, but the target audience for this film thinks and feels in imperial units. The idea is to use people's actual experience of the world to help make sense of otherwise abstract data, so we use anything that helps our audience relate to the numbers physically. In the US CO2 is (mostly) accounted for in tonnes (known in the US as metric tons) so that is why we mix imperial and metric.

1.87 kg/m3 is the *density* not pressure!

[Mark Fox]

One word - AWESOME!

I have been working on visualisations of CO2 myself, but am blown away by the representation you/your team have come up with here.

Concerning, is that if NYC is a leader in GHG reduction, it still looks bad, no offence to the NYC guys/gals or their efforts, just that GHGs need substantial addressing.

[Helgi Rudd]

This is great work... I think visualization has a much bigger impact than big numbers.

Would really love to see a Worldwide visualization... with the 'thin blue line' represented as well... I don't think people understand how thin the atmosphere really is, when I tell people if they imagine the Earth was a basketball and the atmosphere is about the thickness of a layer of paint on the basketball they don't believe me.

[skioet]

I liked it.. do more, keep up the good work.

[maliiisima]

Nice job guys

[cocalo]

Congrats! Amazing data visualization!!

[habibay15]

this helped me a lot in ma geography exam

[Chris Rabet]

@Steve Hoge, I co directed this video and created the vfx. The model of the city is accurate including the buildings, to a reasonable accuracy based on the scales needed.

[agoosha]

Sim city's new pollution data graph? Lol

[Steve Hoge]

How was the cityscape modeled? Are only the landmarks accurate or all the buildings?

[ROOKTABULA]

Dec.4, 2012:

11 viewers of Fixed Noise don't believe what they saw here.

Despite all them librul biased facts 'n figures 'n stuff.