The climate crisis is now unfolding. Images of flooding, droughts, wildfires and desperate people are hard to avoid. But in order to genuinely engage we need to see the causes as well. We need to see the carbon emissions coming from human activities.
New York City's daily carbon dioxide emissions as one-tonne spheres - nearly burying the Empire State building. This is an image from our award-winning video made in 2012 and seen on Youtube over 400,000 times. More…
The world’s fossil fuel use
In 2014 we made a film for the World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD) whose purpose was to engage world leaders, industry experts, campaigners and scientists at the UN Climate Summit, New York, September 2014. The film’s purpose was to show the part that carbon capture and storage (CCS) can play in limiting global climate change. But we thought it would be useful to first show the global fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions to give context. These three short films show the world’s coal, oil and gas use in 2013. This is our webpage with the complete film. And this is a blog that disusses the challenges of making the film.
The world’s emissions
For many people the climate crisis is not really relevant to them. Something in the future. Something for other people to sort. We believe that ‘seeing’ the world’s emissions as real volumes of gas can change that. Which is why we have made a number of animations over the years showing human society’s ongoing contribution to atmospheric change.
We can easily create animations like this first one to represent any carbon emissions. And we can put company logos on the CO2 bubbles too. The full WBCSD film can be seen here. The 2018 G7 Summit film can be seen here.
Countries & Cities
The ‘New York’ film is our most well known - details are here But we have also made animations to show the carbon footprint of various countries and cities, as well as carbon reduction strategies and targets.
The ‘New York’ film details are here. Global Cities was made for a COP21 event (here). And we have used cities as landscapes to tell bigger stories - like the film made in 2015 set in Piccadilly Circus showing the carbon reduction target for UK emissions.
Oil Companies
Fossil fuel companies are now keen to show that their carbon emissions are falling. Some provide targets for aligning with the Paris climate goals. But these targets are for their direct (Scope 1&2) emissions for extraction, refining and transport operations. We show the emissions resulting from combustion of the products that they produce and sell.
These short animations are quick and easy for us to create for any CO2 amount - and we can customise the ‘bubbles’ with any logo. Get in touch if you would like one for your own use or campaign.
Household
We created a set of simple images showing the carbon emissions associated with an average UK home. They show the carbon emissions associated with energy, transport e.g. car use, food, goods and services. Because they were created for posters they are portrait format. More.
Air Travel
Here are images to show the total emissions of a 747 flight London to New York, per passenger emissions for different classes and comparison with a Falcon 8X private jet. More information here.
Nature
The biggest stores of carbon in the natural world are in forests, soils and oceans. Slowing the climate crisis will require a better understanding of natural carbon emissions and sequestration.
This is a set of animations we made for Wood for Good, the UK timber industry's wood promotion campaign, explaining the role of carbon dioxide in plant growth as well as showing how much is stored in trees and forests. More information here.
We made two videos about primary ‘old growth’ forests which store vast amounts of carbon from the atmosphere, half of which is locked up in the massive old trees which tower over the forest canopy. They show how much forest remains - we are currently losing a hectare of these forests every two seconds - and how much has been lost to degraded, regrowth and plantation forest. More here.
Why we made this page
Real World Visuals (previously Carbon Visuals) have specialised in making greenhouse gases visible and real by converting mass to volume (using standard density of 15 deg C, sea level pressure). Over the years we have created a number of animations and images for a variety of clients - governments, corporations, NGOs and sometimes just for ourselves to illustrate something important . So we thought it would be a good idea to put the most useful ones all in one place. They are all available to use in presentations, seminars or workshops under Creative Commons Licence (provided Real World Visuals is shown as the creator).
Please get in touch if you would like a link to a high-resolution image, video or if you would like us to create something bespoke - new tools and methods mean we can create short and effective animations for social media sharing.