
Show HN: Carbon Doomsday – Graph and API of Earth's Carbon Dioxide - titojankowski
http://carbondoomsday.com
======
mturmon
You might want to clarify that the data you're plotting are from a ground-
based station on Mauna Loa. One symptom of this is that your plot does not
have a title or y-axis label.

Similarly, the "global" CO2 number you display as text may be (?) an average
of selected ground-based stations.

CO2 varies with altitude, and with time and spatially, of course. The ground-
based stations give part of the picture, but there are also various total-
column CO2 measurements, prominently from TCCON
([http://tccon.ornl.gov/](http://tccon.ornl.gov/)), and remote-sensing
measurements ([https://co2.jpl.nasa.gov/](https://co2.jpl.nasa.gov/)).

This is why clarifying what you mean by "global CO2" is important. In the
light of the sophistication of what's out there, it might be good to think
about where you're trying to add value.

~~~
yakitori
The domain is "carbondoomsday". Expecting reliable objective anything from
such a site is naive.

~~~
titojankowski
We chose "carbondoomsday" to be provocative, and to push into a silly level of
seriousness about climate change. Similar to [http://blog.ycombinator.com/why-
toys/](http://blog.ycombinator.com/why-toys/)

~~~
mirimir
Sometimes, faced with a fate such as this, all one can do is laugh.

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llccbb
Nice enough design work. But as someone who works in the climate data space I
think there isn't much value add here. CO2 data is already free and open and
not challenging to use. It seems like a half-wasted use of electricity and
contributors time to just show data and not have any call to action or
resources for how to do something about the problem. From the branding and
social media integration I am guessing there isn't any deep interest in
actually _doing something_ about carbon emissions. It feels like the villager
who is screaming about a house on fire instead of joining in the bucket line.

Something like ClimateWatch[0] is actually building a strong platform for
aggregating disparate data sources around climate change, GHG emissions,
climate resilience practices, and multinational legislation. Granted
ClimateWatch isn't built by an online community of volunteers, but maybe it is
something to look at for further inspiration.

[0][https://www.climatewatchdata.org/](https://www.climatewatchdata.org/)

~~~
andy_ppp
What are the things people can actually do - realistically the only way to fix
this is a carbon tax that includes the environmental costs of burning carbon.
Becoming vegetarian on an individual level will basically be a drop in the
ocean, there are not enough people going to change.

See:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKCuDxpccYM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKCuDxpccYM)

~~~
Accipitriform
Actually one of the only realistic things you can do is advocate a large scale
rollout of nuclear power to replace coal, primarily in the US, China and
India.

I'm not advocating dinosaur approaches like the AP-1000, but instead new,
innovative designs like that championed by ThorCon Power.

[http://thorconpower.com/thorcons-green-nuclear-power-
gains-m...](http://thorconpower.com/thorcons-green-nuclear-power-gains-
momentum)

"A comparison of all offered sources of nuclear found ThorCon’s power to be 4
to 5 cents per kWh lower than the competition and the only clean source of
non-intermittent power that was competitive with coal."

~~~
greglindahl
What's realistic about calling for a large-scale rollout of something which
has never been built, in an industry where cost-overruns are typical?
Shouldn't you build at least one before betting the farm on it?

Meanwhile, coal is already on the way out in the US, replaced by...
unrealistic? ... power sources.

~~~
Accipitriform
"What's realistic about calling for a large-scale rollout of something which
has never been built, in an industry where cost-overruns are typical?
Shouldn't you build at least one before betting the farm on it?"

(Sorry for the delay in responding, busy times...)

If you read the ThorCon material, you'll find that there's nothing
controversial about its design. It's all based on the solid ORNL molten salt
work. ThorCon is in the process of building a first reactor, which will likely
be in Indonesia due to the broken nuclear approach in the US.

"Meanwhile, coal is already on the way out in the US, replaced by...
unrealistic? ... power sources."

Most of the true replacement (reliable) power is natural gas, which still
produces very significant CO2. Wind and solar will never really be effective
replacements without reliable backup power, even with grid storage. The
problem is there will eventually be an outlier event where there is too much
calm air, and too much overcast, to supply enough electricity. At that point
lots of people will die, if it's very hot or very cold. Reliable power is very
important.

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ghostbrainalpha
Sorry for the dumb question but I don't understand when the Doomsday is....

Looks like we have gone from 300 to 400 in 50 years. What number is Doomsday
and when are we projected to hit it?

That's what I was expecting to see here, and if that isn't information we have
or you want to project, maybe the title shouldn't be so provoking.

~~~
shoo
[https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2248](https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2248)

~~~
lozenge
Also
[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0081648)

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cephaslr
On the topic of CO2 and doing something about it, I am interested in a good
counter point to iron fertilizations and algae blooms. It seems like a
relatively low cost solution to implement and would be easier than getting
uncooperative state actors on board with carbon policies against their
interest.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization#Debate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization#Debate)
[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fertilizing-
ocean...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fertilizing-ocean-with-
iron-sequesters-co2/)

~~~
titojankowski
Iron fertilization a great example to spark thinking about low cost / high
benefit solutions. That's why we created AirMiners
([http://airminers.org](http://airminers.org)) to track all the people mining
carbon from the air. There's a lot going on!

------
titojankowski
Project inspired by a post on HN in June. Within a week 4 people responded to
the post and started development! This:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14492180](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14492180)

Congrats to Luke, Steph, Marty, Purin, Dan, and Phillip on this latest
redesign!

~~~
rtfm666
Yep! Django back-end dev here who built the API here. It's been a really cool
experience with people coming from all over the place to join in and hack on
the project. We're mostly hanging out at [https://gitter.im/giving-a-fuck-
about-climate-change/Lobby](https://gitter.im/giving-a-fuck-about-climate-
change/Lobby) with a stable team of ~4. We're recently thinking a lot about
datahub.io and how we can take it further. Big shout-out to our front-end devs
who made the new re-design! Any questions, just shoot. Want to contribute,
please do! Shape the project any way you want, it's free software!

------
mkempe
Maybe you could include a full graph for the last 500 million years. It would
show a steady decline of CO2 levels in the last 50-60my, whereas levels were
previously ranging 2-5 times higher than in the recent holocene. [1]

The real doomsday would have been a further decline of CO2 levels to the point
of global plant starvation. Many plants already died off due to the previously
shrinking supply of CO2. [2]

[1] Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels for the last 500 million years (2002).
[https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.022055499](https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.022055499)

[2] Carbon dioxide starvation, the development of C4 ecosystems, and mammalian
evolution (1998).
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1692178/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1692178/)

~~~
sintaxi
This is a very good point and I agree. We are actually in a 300M year low as
far as CO2 goes. The rise in CO2 is arguably not even a negative thing.

------
Ancalagon
Id also like to add that the majority of your first time visitors are gonna
have no reference point for what a good or bad PPM is. It would be helpful to
have projection scenarios for the future and introduce labels for specific
points in the time line with significant theoretical effects at that carbon
level.

~~~
titojankowski
Woa, that would be cool! Any suggestions for theoretical points you’d like to
see?

GitHub repo: [https://github.com/giving-a-fuck-about-climate-
change](https://github.com/giving-a-fuck-about-climate-change)

~~~
Ancalagon
Theoretical rises in sea level, irreversible runaway effects, some actual
'doomsday' scenarios (e.g. the clathrate gun, algae blooms, jellyfish blooms,
etc.)

Really this would require some research. There are a lot of models, and I
frankly am not sure which are more accurate.

~~~
titojankowski
Yeah that sounds like a cool tool. More like Clathrate _Fun_! Maybe turn it
into a game haha.

Anything else you’re curious about regarding climate change?

~~~
Ancalagon
I also would like to see some in-your-face actionable advice for the average
user. I give a fuck now about climate change, what can I do, really, to
influence a change in this and prevent doomsday? You could do something
similar to what FFTF did for net neutrality.

------
notabee
If possible, you may want to add in alternative views with the carbon budget.
There's a lot of chicanery with the IPCC scenarios and negative emissions
technologies that don't exist yet. It gives context to what the ppm means in
terms of the point-of-no-return that we're facing alarmingly soon. The site
looks really promising, though!

Some good info in this video.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2b68JFsnkA&t=10m58s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2b68JFsnkA&t=10m58s)

~~~
titojankowski
or maybe a tool to model the data? We want to make it more interactive.

Pac Man for carbon would be a cool game using the data :D

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kikoreis
In case you are clueless and curious about the May peak like me:
[https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/2013/06/04/wh...](https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/2013/06/04/why-
does-atmospheric-co2-peak-in-may/)

~~~
titojankowski
Yes!! What do you think of that answer? Does it spark any new questions?

------
flashman
Your font is hard to read because of the similarity between uppercase I and
lowercase i & l. "Il" is identical and "il" only has one pixel difference.

You haven't used any j characters but they'd be similar to J.

------
FiatLuxDave
Some comments:

1) The tagline at the top "since 1958" makes it seem like the website is since
1958, instead of the data. Obviously false, but may reduce trust.

2) The graph is good, I like it!

3) In the Data Sources section, it would be very helpful to have a link to the
original data. Don't make me hunt for it. I was wondering if this was an
average of multiple locations or from a single location.

4) It may be helpful to have a link or explanation about the yearly period of
the CO2 level. Something like [https://www.co2.earth/seasonal-
co2-cycle](https://www.co2.earth/seasonal-co2-cycle).

~~~
titojankowski
1) good point! Suggestions for a better tagline?

3) We’ll get that added!

4) The yearly up-down is the most common question I get! Cool guesses on why
even though they’re wrong — like maybe air conditioning usage? I’m split - is
there a way nurture this curiosity/question rather than just giving the answer
straightaway?

------
stereo
You might want to start the axis at 0 ppm. This makes the rise look even
larger.

~~~
webXL
Not necessarily and probably not given the amount of historical data we have.
This is why you should start from 0: [https://flowingdata.com/2017/02/09/how-
to-spot-visualization...](https://flowingdata.com/2017/02/09/how-to-spot-
visualization-lies/)

~~~
lozenge
The graph can start from 0 if 0 is meaningful. But it isn't - we don't want a
0ppm atmosphere, we want one similar to that of 150-200 years ago.

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gibsonf1
Maybe take a more scientific approach at showing carbon counts? For example,
what were the carbon counts 1000s/1000000s of years ago as compared to now?
Was carbon ever higher in the distant past than now, for example before
humans? The "Carbon Doomsday" idea seems more a political idea than a
scientific one, but maybe that is the point too. The correlation between
carbon and temperature is just not scientifically working out, hence all the
bad climate predictions based on carbon counts.

~~~
goatlover
The arctic has fossils of crocodiles and palm trees, and that's not because of
continental drift, so the earth has been much warmer in the past, and life
adapted. It's a problem for civilization because we would have to adapt
quickly, causing a lot of disruption. But we're not headed for Venus-like
conditions.

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cos2pi
I don't get anything out of this, frankly. There's no scientific context,
exposition of the data/data collection methods or even what ppm means.

For the interested, the ESRL Global Monitoring Division
([https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/index.html](https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/index.html))
is a more complete treatment of work being done in global greenhouse gas
monitoring -- charts, maps and data included.

~~~
rtfm666
Thanks for weighing in! It's true it may be a bit science-lite on actually
communicating details but we're definitely working on that. We have found a
lot of inspiration from esrl.noaa.gov but we want it to look nicer (beyond
this shallow need, we believe there are other benefits). I'm created
[https://github.com/giving-a-fuck-about-climate-
change/carbon...](https://github.com/giving-a-fuck-about-climate-
change/carbon-inferno/issues/172) to track :)

------
sologoub
Why does ppm seem to peak in April/May each year?

~~~
titojankowski
Trees and plants die off in the fall/winter, and grow back in the
spring/summer.

Longer answer here from Scripps/UCSD:
[https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/2013/06/04/wh...](https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/2013/06/04/why-
does-atmospheric-co2-peak-in-may/)

~~~
sologoub
Thanks, fascinating read!

------
wbracken
Seems like population has grown significantly more than carbon since 1960?
[https://ourworldindata.org/wp-
content/uploads/2013/05/update...](https://ourworldindata.org/wp-
content/uploads/2013/05/updated-World-Population-Growth-1750-2100.png)

------
titojankowski
Thanks for all the feedback everybody! Luke plugged in all your thoughts into
issues on GitHub so we can keep track: [https://github.com/giving-a-fuck-
about-climate-change/carbon...](https://github.com/giving-a-fuck-about-
climate-change/carbondoomsday/issues)

------
GraffitiTim
Did this year’s peak decrease vs last year? That looks like an extremely rare
event if so.

~~~
titojankowski
I had the same thought this morning — but I think it’s just a little flat
period in the data, and will continue to climb through the spring. No power in
the ‘verse can stop it!

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jgh
"Since last five years" should be more like "In the past five years"

~~~
titojankowski
ooo good point! Will fix. Thanks!

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Pxtl
wk/month/year scaling of stock markets doesn't seem to fit here. Even monthly
it just looks like a jaggy mess with no coherent trends. It doesn't start
taking shape until the year mark.

~~~
titojankowski
The jaggy chart sparks my curiousity. _Why_ is it a jaggy mess on the month
scale?

The world already has enough super-processed, tell-me-what-to-think climate
data.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
Because there's noise inherent to any physical measurement. On the monthly
chart, the range on the y-axis is 0.7 ppm. There's absolutely no sensor in the
world capable of giving a reliable and valid measurement of CO2 in the
atmosphere with sub-ppm accuracy. Just consider e.g. changing wind speed and
directions which influence both the degree of atmospheric mixing and what the
mix is of CO2 sources/sinks in the upstream direction.

Really, the smallest range on the y-axis should be 10 ppm, no matter how small
the time interval. No need to spark general curiosity about noise.

~~~
titojankowski
Well said!

~~~
safiume
Thanks. Also, try adding a overlay line that shows the larger trend like the
Keeling curve, to keep some of the variance.

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heydonovan
Was the UI borrowed from the Coinbase Dashboard?

~~~
titojankowski
“No One Gives a Fuck About Climate Change” was inspired by the awesome
Coinbase charts: [http://titojankowski.com/no-one-gives-a-fck-about-climate-
ch...](http://titojankowski.com/no-one-gives-a-fck-about-climate-change/)

Coinbase is great!!

------
mapster
y-axis please and some bullet points on what the data says re: long term/ mid
term

~~~
titojankowski
noted, thanks!

