A tale of two maps
Speaking truth to power: 1
The undeniable truth of carbon emissions illustrated
This is a new series extending work on my blog, to counter prevailing news that downplay the climate emergency, to inform you of free & open data that be used on free or affordable mapping tools, & to help you better read climate news (see updates at the bottom).
This series was inspired by posts on my pro channel that are more technical in nature. The next post will contrasted CO2 emission by country and over time
Update: all the animations for the same data now up to 2020 (mid-2021 publication) are added here and blogged as Carbon emissions reloaded.
[2019 original post] I wrote five years ago in Anthropocene Review:
Provision of broadly accessible and spatially referenced visualizations of the nature and rate of change in the Anthropocene is an essential tool in communicating to policy makers and to the wider public, who generally have little or no contact with academic publications and often rely on media-based information, to form and guide opinion.
LSE’s Leslie Sklair asked me recently to produce carbon emission snapshots for an upcoming book*. I had already mapped CDIAC’s CO2 emissions since 1751, I updated with BP Stat. Review current data, and I created in Esri web mapping platform some dynamic counterparts to Carbon Atlas’ static maps**.
*: here is an excerpt
**: since 2019 they have added animation, and they always had excellent info on terminology and methods used.
I wrote up on my pro channel here techniques how to style then to project Total and perCapita CO2 emissions by country and over time. I simply want to show now the stunning evidence of increased CO2 emissions through simple dynamic maps that you can play at your leisure.
CO2 emissions by country
Let’s show the growth of per Capita (cyan) and Total CO2 (magenta) by country, from smallest to largest emission, not geographic footprint. Note that it may look as increasing emissions over time, since our brain is trained to see time sequences. But for that, the historic animation is shown below.
You can easily see where the largest CO2 emitters are. TotalCO2 is the total output by country, that is thus skewed by its geographic and population size. perCapita mitigates that by factoring population. And point symbols per country mitigates the enormous variations in geographic extent.
CO2 emissions over time
This shows the growth of perCapita (cyan) and Total CO2 (magenta) by country over time since 1750 — roughly the onset of the Industrial Revolution — with same distinction as above for Total & perCapita CO2 on country spots.
Other fuels emissions
Other fuels emissions augment the stats shown before, and have been added to complete the picture: these maps can be seen over time & by country.
And in case the bubble maps don’t convince, here are the raw numbers: The exponential rise in Total Carbon is clear, as is the jump in Per Capita.
Note on stats: world population calculated after 1965 from Total / per Capita CO2, and multiply by 3.667 to convert carbon shown here to units of carbon dioxide (CO2) shown above .
The 80's and 2000’s recessions are visible (dips in right graphs). Gas flaring while reduced after oil embargo has steadily increased since... And look at cement and solid fuels (coal) steep increases!
Don’t these bubble maps and these tables say it all? The link between CO2 emissions, global warming and climate change has been abundantly discussed elsewhere — viz. A timeline of climate change warnings posted recently — but these maps and data illustrate it well in addition.
This is in memory of Hans Rosling (1948–2017) who popularised bubble graphs in social issues. His legacy lives in Gapminder as well as bubble maps.
Note 1: my next post illustrates some complexities of climate change science
Note 2: @gregcocks posted this on LinkedIn: Satellites are key to monitoring ocean carbon
Note 3: this just in… New report quantifies Earth’s immense carbon reserves
" Annual carbon emissions from human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels, were found to be 40 to 100 times greater than overall volcanic emissions."
Note 4: 2024 update on the possibility to significantly reduce cement’s carbon footprint, by recycling it into ‘electric cement’ (BBC News).
