Name: How Much Coal Do People Burn Each Year?
Uploaded: undefined
Duration: undefined

Nova

This visualization uses Washington D.C.'s National Mall to show the scale of human coal consumption—and how much CO2 it adds to our atmosphere.

See how much CO2 we add to the atmosphere each year.

How Much Coal Do People Burn Each Year?

Koch Foundation

NOVA Science Trust Logo

This visualization uses Washington D.C.'s National Mall to show the scale of the human coal consumption—and how much CO2 it adds to our atmosphere.

See how much CO2 we add to the atmosphere each year.

Planet Earth

How Much Coal do People Burn Each Year?Published: November 20, 2020Narrator: Cooling the planet means, first, stopping more CO2 from entering the atmosphere and then finding ways to remove it.But just how much CO2 are we talking about?Scott Denning: Imagine you filled the National Mall, all the way from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol steps, with coal, and you piled it up, all the way to the top of the Washington Monument, 10 times. That would be a gigaton of coal. A “giga” means “billion.” So, that’s a billion tons.Now, we actually burn 10 times that much carbon every year. People actually go dig that stuff up out of the ground, 10-billion tons of it, and set it on fire in power plants, in engines, in factories, all over the world.And then, because that carbon has reacted with oxygen, 10-gigatons of carbon is burned, but it creates 37-gigatons of CO2.Narrator: At our current rate, that’s just one year of CO2 emissions. To blunt the impacts of heating the planet, we need to shrink that number to zero.But there’s another problem: the gigatons that came before.Jane Long: The single most important fact about climate change is that the carbon dioxide that we emit into the atmosphere stays there for thousands of years.Narrator: Year after year, we live with the carbon dioxide we’ve added over time, nearly 1,000-metric-gigatons since the industrial revolution began.Long: Almost everything we emit stays there, and it’s staying there until you do something about taking it out.

United States

Northern Mariana Islands

Puerto Rico

American Samoa

Guam

U.S. Virgin Islands

U.S. Minor Outlying Islands

US & Territories

NOVA investigates the story of cannabis from the criminalization that has disproportionately harmed communities of color to the latest medical understanding of the plant. What risks does cannabis pose to the developing brain? How much do we know about its potential medical benefits? As cannabis becomes socially accepted, scientists are exploring its long-term health consequences. (Premiered September 29, 2021)Check out a previously recorded panel discussion and audience Q&amp;A featuring experts and producers from "The Cannabis Question" <a href="https://youtu.be/nSTT5RZ_hxA">here</a>.

As state-legalized cannabis spreads, NOVA explores its little-known risks and benefits.

The Cannabis Question

A 2006 composite image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Telescope shows the chaos of baby stars in the Orion nebula some 1,500 light-years away. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI

With the upcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, the Hubble era is gradually drawing to a close. Here are some highlights from the countless wonders Hubble has shown us during its 31 years in space.

10 spectacular Hubble Space Telescope images

A statue of Zheng He at the Sam Poo Kong Temple in Java, Indonesia. Image Credit: Budianto Santosa, Shutterstock

In the 1400s, Zheng He sailed thousands of miles around Asia and Africa in ships the size of soccer fields, spreading Chinese innovations like compasses and gunpowder in the process.

How Much Coal Do People Burn Each Year?

Support Provided By

Explore More

Can We Cool the Planet?

What if Carbon Left Your Tailpipe as Solid Chunks?

How Earth’s Climate Changed Over the Past 500 Million Years

Transcript

Credits

Support Provided By

Explore More

Can We Cool the Planet?

What if Carbon Left Your Tailpipe as Solid Chunks?

How Earth’s Climate Changed Over the Past 500 Million Years