TRASHED.EARTH

Every second, Earth gets trashed.

How we count CO₂ emissions

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The CO₂ tile does not read atmospheric sensors in real time. It applies the latest global estimate of fossil fuel CO₂ emissions — about 36.8 billion metric tons per year — and spreads that total evenly across the calendar year.

How the counter works

  1. Start with 36,800,000,000 metric tons CO₂ per year.
  2. Measure how much of the current calendar year has elapsed.
  3. Display that fraction of the annual total, updating continuously.

Emissions in the real world fluctuate by season, economy, and weather. Our counter assumes a smooth average pace to make the scale legible at a glance.

Where 36.8 billion tons comes from

The figure is anchored to the Global Carbon Project, which publishes the Global Carbon Budget each year. Their scientists synthesise energy statistics, cement production data, and atmospheric measurements to estimate how much CO₂ human activity adds to the atmosphere.

Recent budgets put fossil CO₂ emissions at roughly 36–37 billion tonnes per year. We use 36.8 billion as a representative annual total from that body of work. It covers CO₂ from burning coal, oil, and gas, plus emissions from cement manufacture.

This is one of the most tightly constrained global environmental statistics — but it is still an estimate assembled from national reports, with revisions as better data arrives.

What this number does not capture

  • All greenhouse gases — the counter shows CO₂ only, not methane, nitrous oxide, or fluorinated gases (which are often expressed as CO₂-equivalent separately).
  • Land-use change — deforestation and other land-use emissions are tracked separately in the full carbon budget.
  • Daily or monthly variation — winter heating, industrial cycles, and economic shocks create real unevenness that a linear counter smooths out.

Why we show it anyway

CO₂ from fossil fuels is the dominant driver of climate change. Even a rounded annual total is hard to picture — billions of tons are abstract until you see them accumulate. Read this counter as a proportional share of a published annual budget, updated each year as the Global Carbon Project refines its estimates.

Further reading