Note: To use the visual interactions, you can download the Tableau file. The graphics below are still images of the visualizations created.
In this project we attempt to raise people's awareness on the issue of climate change by creating interactive visualizations of the world's use of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and how that has lead to the increa in climate change we are seeing today.
The three main factors of climate change relating to Carbon Dioxide are the following:
- Economic Development
- Human Influence Factors
- Energy Consumption
This data ranges from 1990 to 2016. These visualization will show an overall look on how the world contributes to climate change via CO2.
Climate change includes both global warming driven by human emission of greenhouse gases and the resulting large-scale shifts in the weather patterns. Though there have been previous periods of climatic change, since the mid-20th century humans have had unprecedented impact on Earth's climate system and caused change on a global scale. It wasn't until the 1990s that the world really started to pay attention.
The first majoe factor to climate change is economic development versus CO2 emissions. In this scatter plot, we show the correlation between the countries' different kinds of economic development requiring different amounts of energy. It is the production of energy where we can see that the richest countries have the very highest CO2 emissions. To bring climate change to an end the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere needs to be stabilized and to achieve this the world's greenhouse has emission have to decline towards net-zero.
The second factor that contributes to climate change are influenced by human activity. One major human activity is contributing to the greenhouse gases. Human activities are changing the natural greenhouse. The consequences of changing the natural atmospheric greenhouse are difficult to predict but some effects we would see are:
- Higher atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2).
- The Earth will become warmer.
- THe ocean will warm and melt glaciers and ice sheets increasing sea level.
Certain gases in the atmosphere block heat from escaping Earth. Long-lived gases that remain semi-permanently in the atmosphere and do not respond physically or chemically to changes in temperature are described as "forcing" climate change. Gases that contribute to the greenhouse effect include: CO2, Methane, and Nitrous Oxide.
The last factor that we can consider for climate change is energy consumption. Increase in temperature will likely increase the energy demand as well as change our ability to produce electricity and deliver it reliably. Changes in energy demand will affect greenhouse gas emissions, but the net effect depends on which energy sources, including alternative energy, are used for electricity and heating.
Primary energy consumption measure terra-watt per year. Here we can see the correlation of primary energy consumption versus the country. Most developing countries will lead as the largest consumer of primary energy.
The three largest sources that contribute to energy consumption are coal production, oil production, and gas production. These main resources create an environmental problem especially climate change. As CO2 is the primary gas that contributes to climate change, here we measure CO2 per unit energy to coal, oil and gas production.
