At reCampaign 14 today in Berlin I was lucky enough to moderate the discussion and presentation from UK company Carbon Visuals about their data visualisations of matters relating to carbon dioxide emissions, and other environmental issues. Anthony Turner and Adam Nieman were here in Berlin.

These guys take on one of the most complicated political questions: how to make environmental problems real for people. What does a tonne of CO2 look like, by size? What would all of New York’s emissions look like, visualised? What about air pollution – how much air is polluted to the maximum allowed level by old, polluting boilers? What is the total environmental impact of all the cars in the world?

Here are a couple of videos that Carbon Visuals has produced:

New York city emissions as 1-tonne spheres

The environmental impact of cars in the world

I’m struck here by how far all of this goes beyond graphs and infographics – this, as Anthony and Adam said – gets close to body experience. What would this all be like if it were here, next to me, now.

Anyway, I am not sure this blog entry does justice to the extraordinary work these guys do – a combination of creativity, and scientific evidence. You can follow Adam on Twitter, Carbon Visuals on Twitter, and find their website here.