Surface Area Required to Power the World with Solar Power

From LandArtGenerator.org, a world map visualizing the surface area required to power the world's electricity requirements using solar power alone in 2030, using current solar panel technology.  It's getting a lot of traffic on digg, reddit and Twitter too.

Also, check out the same idea, but for off shore wind power.

50 Cars or 1 Bus? Infographic Advertising!

Great visual ad by Flygbussarna in Sweden!  Combining a physical construction of a bus made out of cars on the side of the road, a live webcam, and live infographic information on the website!

Every day thousands of cars are driven to and from Swedish airports. Every car holds only 1,2 persons on average which is to be compared with the Airport Coach that takes over 50. Needless to say, this makes no sense whatsoever from an environmental standpoint. To highlight this, an enormous bus was built out of 50 cars on the side of the highway to the airport. On the website, a live camera not only shows the installation 24/7 but also analyses the image and tracks each and every car going by. This data is then being used to highlight just how much emission we could save just by going by bus instead.

 Thanks to @yplim on Twitter!

GE: Plug into the Smart Grid

Great interactive infographic website from GE for their Plug Into The Smart Grid ad campaign.  Beautiful graphics, fast, clean interface and all-around good job.  The viewer can change the setting, and see the infographic results change in response.

My son loves the Augmented Reality part!  Not really infographic, but fun.

Ford's New Green HUD Designs

Ford is working with design firms to develop concepts for a new HUD for its hybrid and future all-electric cars.  Here's the article from BusinessWeek.

Found on Twitter from Mitul69

Watercube, The Book

Watercube, is a new book by Ethel Baraona Pohl.  The book is about the National Aquatics Centre built in Beijing for the 2008 Olympics, and has some cool infographics inside.  Some of the graphics were contributed by architect César Reyes Nájera.  A review of the book can be found here on www.v2com.biz

WATERCUBE: The Book is a complete monographic publication about the National Swimming Center for the Beijing Olympics 2008. With an exhaustive description about the Watercube we present a detailed study of the project. The book makes an holistic approach to the project that starts with a brief description of urban and social changes that China has been experienced in the last decade. These facts have encouraged the construction boom that made possible these kind of projects occur in cities like Beijing.

 

This page compared the amount of steel used to built the Watercube to some of the most well known buildings around the world.

This page shows a comparison to the same set of buildings around the world, but shows the tons of CO2 produced due to the steel used in their construction.

This page is one of the years of the timeline leading up to the construction of the Watercube.

Here you can buy Watercube, by Ethel Baraona Pohl, on Amazon.com.

Special thanks to Ethel for sharing the images from her book, and allowing me to post them on Cool Infographics!

The Rush to Wind Farms!

The rush to wind farming is an interesting article in The Atlantic.  With Federal subsidies, its almost like a land rush.  The planned expansion of wind farm sites is impressive.

Thanks for sending in the link Garrett (also posted on Capturing Ephemera)!

Beijing Air Quality Index

NYTimes.com is also tracking the Air Quality Index by day during the Olympics using a heatmap style graphic.  There's definitely more pollution and particles in the air than most of the participants are used to.  So far, there have been a couple of days in the 90's, but didn't cross over 100 into the "unhealthy" range.

Visualizing Carbon Dioxide Emissions

This is a great way to visualize gas emissions which are normally invisible. That's why most people don't have any real sense how much is produced by the things you do in everyday life like running your washing machine or refrigerator.

The black balloons really work, with the black color implying "bad" and they're actually filled with a lighter than air gas that rises into the atmosphere. I'm assuming that the size of the balloons actually represents the 50 grams of greenhouse gas discussed in the ad.

Found on infosthetics.com and radar.oreilly.com and the original is at www.saveenergy.vic.gov.au from the Australian government.

GE Ecomagination Blueprint Ads

GE is running The Blueprint Series of five print ads combining photos with an overlay of infographics. This works really nicely because they kept the infographics relatively simple.


Found on notcot.com.

Harnessing the Wind

From the Telegraph in the UK, the idea is to use a kite to help pull a ship across the ocean. by using the wind power at high altitudes the ship would save on energy consumption.

Its inventor, Stephan Wrage, a 34-year-old German engineer, claims the kite will significantly reduce carbon emissions, cutting diesel consumption by up to 20 per cent and saving £800 a day in fuel costs.

Found on digg.com

TheGlobalWarming Infographic

TheGlobalWarming Infographic, originally uploaded by Seungho.

Found on Flickr by Seungho.

Breathing Earth

Breathing Earth is a cool website that displays international statistics in real-time, similar in concept to Poodwaddle.com's World Counter. Breathing Earth focuses on carbon dioxide emissions by country and adds population, births and deaths.

Welcome to Breathing Earth. This presentation displays the carbon dioxide emission levels of every country in the world, as well as their birth and death rates - all in real-time. Though considerable effort has been taken to ensure that the presentation uses the most accurate and up-to-date data available, please remember that this is just a simulation.

Breathing Earth was created by David Bleja (aka Stillwater), whose home website is stillwater-microcosm.net

Found on SimpleComplexity.net