It’s pretty hard to visualize air pollution. Smog at least was smoggy, but carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are invisible to the naked eye. Carbon Visuals took a crack at showing people exactly how much carbon dioxide New York City dumped in the atmosphere in 2010, and their concept — in which a blue ball 33 feet across represents the metric ton of carbon dioxide gas released by the city every 0.58 seconds — actually does a great job of bringing home the gigantic amounts of waste we’re creating.
Here’s what NYC’s emissions look like after an hour:
A day:
A year:
You can watch the whole video, too, and see the carbon bubbles popping out at an alarming rate. The bit at the end, where you look out from the mountain of pollution NYC’s created, is pretty scary as well.
