One hopes images like this, when paired with the knowledge that everything we burn ends up in that tiny slice of gasses, would help contextualize why we need to move away from energy sources we set on fire.

One hopes. Climate communicators should make some hay of this.

April 08, 2026 - 13:02 UTC

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It's like a ball of clay inside a soap bubble. That's how thin that slice of gasses is
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There was a video, I forgot the title, that talked about Renaissance art and how industrialization gave the paintings this hazy like appearance because of the smog in the air, it's really interesting.
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Here's an article I found that talks about it:
allthatsinteresting.com/air-pollution-impressionism
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Climate communicators have been screaming about this for so long and nobody of importance cares
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I'm making a 1.000Km car trip with friends and it took a lot of effort to convince them to do it in my electric car. They wanted to burn 80L of gasoline instead of stopping 30m (twice) to recharge. My car doesn't have the fastest charging speed, but come on!
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One fact I rarely see brought up in climate messaging is that a single gallon of gasoline becomes 1100 gallons of CO2 when burned. Which seems like a lot, but that's because it is
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You know what I find somewhat amusing?

That pretty much every energy source can be summarized as "1000 ways to boil water".

Everything is steampunk.
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there's also "weather transported water uphill for us and gravity makes it go back down"
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The latest Earth pics look dirty. The original shots in 1968 were so very blue and clear. A healthier planet then, but we've had 60 yeas of Big Oil and Gas to increase their filth in the atmosphere.
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The change is too gradual and the media too captured for ordinary folks to care enough - and when folks don't care, politicians get captured too.

But I like your angle. It really is silly to use an energy source which gets burned up when the alternative is basically free.
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We've seen this story before.
Soon, we won't have air to breathe.
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*waits for the deluge of pro-fossil-fuels folks to cry political expletives*

Fully agreed. I wish the cost would come down even further. My entire house could be powered off one or two battery banks in basement and some solar on the roof but at the moment thatโ€™s nearly half the value of house. :(
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Again, we already have this amazing machine called the power grid which can distribute electrical energy from one place to another. I do not think you should consider it necessary to replace the use of that amazing machine with your own personal energy infrastructure.

Just start electrifying!
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Iโ€™m reading that Bill Bryson pop science book right now and he described the scale of its thickness as like a layer of lacquer on a schoolroom globe.
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I hope they convince people that the earth is round. Baby steps.
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I have an uncharacteristic urge to just stop and thank you.

You're a pretty awesome person
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100%, but we didn't even need to go to outer space for that.

i mean, the altitude at which the sky appears black rather than blue is... what, 13 miles up? Or something in that ballpark?

compared to the diameter of the earth, that distance is nearly nothing, and everyone can easily visualize it.
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and we don't even need to rely exclusively on photos from aircraft to make this point: if we just visit a mountain range, we can _walk_ to a place where we can _feel_ that there is less air.

without any modern technology, we can make this observation!
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How can trump personally make money from that? This is the most important question in the US.
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Carbon dioxide generated from combustion (fire) can be captured and converted into cement or concrete, a process that acts as a form of carbon utilization and storage (CCU/CCS). Please leave my fire alone, there's nothing wrong with it.
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this would be valid if we were actually doing these things at such a scale as to offset the carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels but, ya see, we aren't doing that which is kind of a problem.

and it turns out there's not actually a need to use fire at all to live our lives these days.
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If you could drive a car straight up, it would only take you five minutes to reach a point where the air would be too thin to breathe. Less than an hour to reach space.

Our atmosphere is nothing but the thinnest veneer of air coating this rock. We really ought to be careful with it.
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And the next bit of survivable atmosphere is light years away. We really take it for granted
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I think a lot of people are on board. We need to depose the Epstein billionaire class and their collaborators who will burn whatever they please for the almighty dollar while ignoring the wishes of the people of whom they share a planet with.
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That "edge" is the sourthern aurora by the way, which sits pretty far up in the atmospheric layers at about double the height planes fly at. 1/3rd of the way up.

The atmosphere actually continues another 2/3rds beyond that point, most low-earth satalites are still inside the atmosphere.
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A little atmosphere goes a long way!
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I've shown the older version of that pic arguing with climate deniers and it makes no difference. They're just too stupid.
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In my working life, before retirement, I flew a lot. I mean every week for decades.

Looking down at the world from 38000 feet regularly, I gained a perspective.

Nothing is ugly from that altitude. You see the land in all its glory, majesty.

We are unutterably stupid as an organism.
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I can only imagine the level of vision that is given to astronauts.

William Shatner was moved beyond belief.

I despair at the shortsightedness of so many earthlings.

Weโ€™re just an organism, but we are suicidal in our practices.

We have a beautiful planet that somehow we seek to destroy.
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Unfortunately, beautiful things like this don't matter to the executives and shareholders. There's no/less profit in clean alternatives and emissions reduction.
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My hope is, that those flights (even if they are dirty as hell), produce more new pictures showing the size, and beauty of earth as a whole.
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Nothing says 'we have a handle on the Second Law' quite like pumping the waste products of an entire civilization into a layer that is, quite literally, thinner than the crust on a decent piece of sourdough...
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> hope

I wonder what that feels like.
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To quote the Radio Advertising Bureau from 44 years ago, โ€œYou just did!โ€
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Please that's a broken alpha texture

(/S!)
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I think it cuts both ways. Those tiny yellow dots are large cities, some with millions of cars. Itโ€™s not really obvious that driving one would have much impact across all that area.
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Wasnโ€™t the original Earthrise a big catalyst for the environmental movement back in the day?
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Idk how to describe it too, but the colouring of the earth itself, it looks tired.
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Theres every chance that this is just because cameras have improved tho so Iโ€™m not too sure
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This section is largely desert. But pictures from the 60s in say, Brazil compared to now are incredibly depressing.
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Happily using a fan and some computer equipment and listening to music, all with electricity made by that thin slice of gasses making pretty pinwheels turn, those gasses moving because theyโ€™re lit up by a huge energy source thatโ€™s going to not burn out for a very long time.
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The Blue Marble has been credited with starting the environmentalist movement, maybe this photo will have a similar effect for climate activism
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Imagine if you could SEE CO2
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It really is insane what we keep doing, especially when there are perfectly safe, effective, and economically viable alternatives.
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"change is scary" is such a strong emotion that is makes people incurious about those alternatives.

My strongest evidence for this is the fact I keep having to explain you can charge electric cars at home.
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Why are we in space when we canโ€™t care for our planet. ๐Ÿคฌ
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In America right now? With this President? He wants to destroy the world. The climate won't matter when he is done
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If you were to shrink the Earth down to a 6 foot ball, the atmosphere would be one dime thick.
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Even many progressives believe that itโ€™s
Not My Problem, because BP said โ€œcarbon footprintโ€ that time, and argle bargle Taylor Swift robble robble.
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I want to believe this fight is a rational one that can be won with such insights, but it can be hard when the opposition strategy seems to be criticizing how a wind turbine looks and how a woman laughs

It feels like you either get it already or you have brain damage, hope I'm wrong
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The bottom of that line marks the top of the homosphere, which is where we're doing most of the damage. That band of gasses is about 55 miles thick. That's the straight line distance from Manhattan to Trenton, NJ.

It's so much harder to believe that emissions /couldn't/affect the atmosphere
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Unfortunately, thereโ€™s a non-0 number of people who donโ€™t believe in climate change who also donโ€™t believe space is realโ€ฆ
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