Global Warming: Seeing is Believing
The Invisible Threat Causing Global Warming
Every day in nearly everything we do, we are producing the carbon dioxide that causes global warming.
Unfortunately, carbon pollution–the actual cause of global warming–is invisible to us. This is the bigger enemy we need to expose. When people know what they are fighting, we have the inspiring ability to rally together and attack the problem.
But we can’t fight something we can’t see.
Cool Effect is changing that.
Emissions throughout history
“But the Earth has always been heating up.” This is a popular argument. To an extent, it’s true. The climate has always been changing. But never in history have Earth-warming emissions been so radically high. Even the industrial revolution doesn’t begin to compare to present day emissions. The USA is the 2nd largest contributor to CO₂ emissions. Per person, we’re #1. So instead of blaming developing countries, we need to own up to our carbon pollution and the global warming it causes.
This is the most recent, certifiable data available from the EPA.
Carbon emissions by individual
Lifestyle and economic status have a major influence on how many tonnes of carbon someone emits. To give you an idea, one tonne of carbon is about the size of a two-story house. Those who commute to work and travel more, especially by plane, create more carbon pollution. Similarly, those with larger houses require more gas and fossil fuel-generated electricity.
How we create carbon pollution
Transportation
Personal automotive and boat travel. Also private jet use (CEO).
Land & Sea Travel
Personal and business travel on commercial airlines.
Electricity
Lights, appliances, and other household usage.
Heating & Cooking
Household gas including heaters, water heaters, and stoves.
These estimates do not include the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of food, water, consumer products, or other goods and services because these are highly variable and difficult to attribute to individual behaviors.
The FLIR camera shows both heat and CO₂. In order to see CO₂, we have to blind the FLIR camera to all that it can see, except for a very small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Think of it as a glass that only lets one shade of green through. This is known as a band pass filter. Since we know that CO₂ has a “shade of color” in the 4 micron range, we can use a band pass filter in that range, and this will result in images that appear brighter and darker in otherwise homogeneous areas when CO₂ is present in various concentrations. We still see heat, but the heat we see is dimmed and brightened by the presence of the CO₂. This is known as signal attenuation.