00:00 It's hard to miss something that weighs 37 billion tons.
00:05 That's the amount of fossil fuel related carbon dioxide humans release into the atmosphere
00:11 every year.
00:13 The gas is entirely invisible.
00:15 Until now.
00:18 In a striking new video, NASA has revealed the release and circulation of human produced
00:23 carbon dioxide for the entirety of the year 2021.
00:29 This agency's scientists drew their data partly from observations made by weather satellites
00:35 and partly by earth-based monitoring of known greenhouse gas emitters, industrial areas
00:41 in the developed world in particular.
00:44 The most dramatic takeaway from the video is the outsized role the northern hemisphere
00:49 plays in the global spread of greenhouse gases compared to the far less blameworthy south.
00:57 The video unspools over the course of the year and it's not until June that the south
01:02 is truly shrouded in the north's emissions.
01:07 It takes that long partly because the equator operates as an atmospheric berm with hot air
01:13 rising from the earth's midline, slowing north-south circulation.
01:18 Ultimately, however, those billions of tons of carbon dioxide blow past this natural stop
01:24 sign and cover the south as badly as the north.
01:29 For the first half of the year before they're obscured by CO2, Australia, Africa, and South
01:35 America appear to flicker on and off from green to a neutral gray.
01:41 That represents plant life absorbing carbon dioxide during the day and releasing it in
01:47 a sort of vegetable respiration at night.
01:53 If there's any good news in both the data and the video, it's that not all of the CO2
01:59 tonnage humans pour into the sky stays there.
02:02 About half of the emissions are taken up by the land and the oceans, which act as carbon
02:07 sinks, entraining greenhouse gas and preventing it from accelerating climate change even further.
02:15 The bad news is that there's at least another 37 billion tons coming this year and next
02:21 year and the year after that.
02:24 Until humans break their fossil fuel habit, the planet will continue to choke on the results.
02:30 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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