THE DAMAGE
scroll to begin ↓
Weird
Little
Games.
1950
Chapter 01
The world begins to change
1950s – 1960s
Coal smoke over cities. A population under 2.5 billion. No satellites watching from above, no continuous instrument record of the air itself. What follows is 76 years of what changed, told through the measurements that exist and the events that are actually documented, not guessed at.
1950
Global CO2 emissions: 5.93 billion tons that year. The postwar industrial boom is just getting started. Coal alone accounts for 3.88 of those billion tons.
Mauna Loa's CO2 record doesn't begin until 1958, so there's no direct instrument reading for 1950's atmospheric concentration, only reconstructions from ice cores.
1952
The Great Smog of London (Dec 5-9) kills an estimated 4,000 people in its immediate aftermath. Later revised estimates put the toll at 10,000 to 12,000.
High-sulphur coal smoke trapped under a stagnant cold fog. It led directly to the UK's Clean Air Act of 1956.
1958, Mauna Loa Observatory
~315 ppm
Charles David Keeling begins the first continuous CO2 measurement in history. It's still running today, known as the "Keeling Curve," the longest direct atmospheric record that exists. The chart below starts at 1959, the first full calendar year with a complete annual mean; 1958's own reading is a partial year, not a gap in the record.
1962
Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring, documenting the ecological damage of pesticides like DDT.
Widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement, a full decade before the US banned DDT in 1972.
Chapter 02
The damage becomes visible
1969 - 1986
1969
The Santa Barbara oil spill (Jan 28) releases an estimated 3.5 to 4.2 million gallons of crude. The Cuyahoga River catches fire (Jun 22), not its first fire, but the one that stuck.
No authentic photo of the 1969 Cuyahoga fire exists. Period coverage used a photo from an earlier 1952 fire. Both events are widely credited with helping inspire the first Earth Day and the 1972 Clean Water Act.
1970
The first Earth Day. 20 million people turn out. Emissions: 14.9 billion tons that year.
Nixon signs the Clean Air Act amendments (Dec 31), giving the newly created EPA its first major enforcement tool. Temperature anomaly: roughly +0.03°C against the 1951–1980 baseline.
1973–74
Molina & Rowland publish the mechanism by which CFCs destroy stratospheric ozone, work that would win the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
This is the theory. The observed proof wouldn't come until 1985, and the policy response not until 1987: three distinct milestones, eleven years apart.
Industrial disaster
Bhopal, 1984
Roughly 40 tons of methyl isocyanate escapes a Union Carbide subsidiary plant overnight, Dec 2-3.
Death toll, by period and method of counting
3,787 (early count)20,000+ (survivor groups)
In between: 5,295 (compensated deaths), 5,800 (the 2002 BMJ "official" figure), 15,000+ (later government/ICMR-linked estimates). We're showing the range rather than picking one.
1985
Farman, Gardiner & Shanklin publish direct evidence of an Antarctic ozone hole: a ~40% springtime ozone decline over Halley Bay.
This is the observed confirmation of the mechanism Molina & Rowland proposed in 1973–74.
Nuclear accident
Chernobyl, 1986
Reactor 4 explodes at the Chernobyl plant, Ukrainian SSR, Apr 25-26. Immediate deaths: ~30 among plant staff and emergency workers.
Longer-term death toll, by estimate (methodology and scope vary enormously)
~4,000 (UN Forum, 2005)~1 million (NY Acad. Sci., 2009)
In between: 30,000-60,000 (2006 TORCH Report), ~200,000 (Greenpeace). These are genuinely disputed, not a single settled number. 350,000+ people were evacuated or resettled.
Chapter 03
We learn, but don't stop
1987 – 2009
1987
For once, the world moved fast.
The Montreal Protocol is adopted on September 16, 1987, committing nations to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals. It enters into force January 1, 1989, and is the only UN treaty ever ratified by every country on Earth. From discovery (1985) to treaty took just two years, one of the fastest "science led to action" examples in this entire timeline.
Oil spill
Prince William Sound, 1989
The Exxon Valdez runs aground Mar 24, spilling ~11 million gallons of crude across ~1,300 miles of Alaskan shoreline.
Estimated seabird deaths (one USGS study, disclosed uncertainty)
100,000 (low bound)690,000 (high bound)
~250,000 is that same study's own central estimate, built from carcass-recovery-rate extrapolation, not a lowball competing with a higher outside claim.
↳ Led to: US Oil Pollution Act of 1990, requiring double-hull tankers
1990
The IPCC's first assessment report confirms what scientists already knew. Emissions: 22.7 billion tons that year.
Atmospheric CO2: 354 ppm. Temperature anomaly: +0.45°C. The same year, the US Clean Air Act's Acid Rain Program creates the first large-scale cap-and-trade system. SO2 emissions would fall roughly 50% by 2010.
1992
The Rio Earth Summit (Jun 3–14): 178 nations attend. Produces the Rio Declaration, Agenda 21, and opens the UNFCCC for signature.
The convention itself set no binding emissions targets. Those came five years later, with Kyoto.
1997–2005
The Kyoto Protocol is adopted in Kyoto (Dec 1997), committing industrialized nations to a collective 5.2% emissions cut vs. 1990 levels.
It doesn't enter into force until Feb 2005, an 8-year gap between agreement and legal effect. The US never ratified it.
2000
Global CO2 emissions: 25.5 billion tons that year. Atmospheric CO2: 369.7 ppm.
Temperature anomaly: +0.39°C against the 1951–1980 baseline.
Hurricane
Katrina, 2005
Hurricane Katrina makes landfall in August, breaching New Orleans' levee system.
Confirmed death toll (NOAA's 2023 methodology revision)
1,392 (NOAA, 2023 revised)~1,833 (original IPCC AR4 figure)
Louisiana's coastal wetland loss since the 1930s (over 1,900 square miles, mostly from levee and canal construction) plausibly worsened the flooding, but did not cause the storm itself.
2008–09
The global financial crisis produces a real but small emissions dip: global CO2 fell only ~1.4% in 2009, less than half of what forecasters expected.
By 2010, emissions rebounded ~5.9% to a then-record high. A shock produces a dip; the dip doesn't last. (Watch this pattern repeat with COVID, below.)
Chapter 04
The consequences accelerate
2010 – 2020
2010
Global CO2 emissions: 33.3 billion tons that year. Atmospheric CO2: 390.1 ppm.
Temperature anomaly: +0.72°C against the 1951-1980 baseline.
Oil spill
Deepwater Horizon, 2010
The Deepwater Horizon rig blows out Apr 20, spilling into the Gulf of Mexico until the well is capped Jul 15, the largest marine oil spill in US history.
Long-term ecological recovery remains genuinely disputed: BP's own reporting says wildlife is returning to pre-spill levels, while independent researchers (NWF 2015, a 2025 NOAA-linked study) found dolphins, turtles, and deep-sea corals still struggling years later. We're showing both positions rather than picking one.
September 2012
3.41M km²
The lowest Arctic sea ice extent in the satellite record at the time, 18% below the previous 2007 record, confirmed by NSIDC's own 5-day trailing-average minimum (Sep 16, reached using NSIDC's standard methodology; NASA's independent recalculation puts it at 3.44M km², a small, disclosed difference in method, not a contradiction).
2015
The Paris Agreement is adopted (COP21, Dec 12), with 196 parties committing to hold warming "well below 2°C."
2015 was also confirmed as the hottest year on record at the time. Real GISTEMP anomaly: +0.898°C, boosted by a strong El Niño layered on top of the long-term warming trend.
2019
Global CO2 emissions: 37.1 billion tons. Atmospheric CO2: 411.65 ppm. Temperature anomaly: +0.98°C.
Amazon fires draw international attention from August. Brazil's INPE counted 40,000+ fires by late August, though satellite analysis (MAAP) found much of the burned area had already been deforested since 2017. The IPBES Global Assessment finds ~1 million of 8 million species at risk of extinction: a threat, not yet a fact.
2020
Then everyone stayed home.
Global CO2 emissions fell to 35.2 billion tons, a drop of about 5.2% from 2019, the largest annual drop on record.
Nitrogen dioxide levels over major cities dropped sharply within weeks, visible from satellites.
The Himalayas became visible from parts of Punjab for the first time in decades, widely reported at the time.
It took the entire world stopping. Temperature anomaly that year: +1.01°C, effectively tied with 2016 as the warmest year measured to that point.
Chapter 05
The world we're leaving
2021 – 2026
2021
Emissions rebounded to 36.9 billion tons (+4.9%), nearly erasing the 2020 drop in under twelve months, the same shape as 2008 to 2010's shock-dip-rebound.
Atmospheric CO2: 416.4 ppm. The Glasgow Climate Pact (COP26) becomes the first UN document to directly mention fossil fuels. Its "phase-down" language, weakened from an earlier draft's "phase-out," does not name oil or gas specifically.
2022
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (COP15) sets a "30x30" target: protect 30% of land and sea by 2030.
At adoption, roughly 17% of terrestrial and 10% of marine areas were protected. Real growth, but a long way from the goal, and marine-protection growth didn't accelerate until the 2010s.
2023
Global CO2 emissions: 38.1 billion tons. A new record. Atmospheric CO2: 421.1 ppm. Temperature anomaly (GISTEMP): +1.17°C.
Copernicus separately reported 2023 at ~1.48°C above its own 1850-1900 baseline, a different, not directly comparable, measurement. COP28 (Dubai) agreed to "transition away from fossil fuels," a forward-looking pledge, not evidence emissions had already fallen. 2024 broke the record again.
2024
Global CO2 emissions: 38.6 billion tons, the latest complete year on record. Atmospheric CO2: 424.6 ppm.
Temperature anomaly: +1.29°C above the 1951-1980 baseline, the warmest year ever measured on this series. Copernicus separately confirmed 2024 as the first calendar year above +1.5°C versus its 1850-1900 baseline, a single-year milestone, not the same thing as breaching the Paris Agreement's long-term multi-decade goal.
2025
Temperature anomaly: +1.19°C, a complete, confirmed year. Arctic sea ice posts its 7th-lowest minimum on record; 2012 still holds the all-time low.
NSIDC: the 18 lowest sea-ice extents on record have all occurred in the last 18 years. 2025's CO2 emissions total isn't published yet, so we're not estimating it.
2026
No completed annual data exists for 2026 yet.
Any 2026 figure found in a raw data feed this year is provisional, not a finished observation, and we're not presenting it as one.
Fossil CO₂ emissions, 1950 to 2024
2020 dip 1950: 5.9 Bt 2024: 38.6 Bt
Global fossil CO₂ emissions, billions of tons/year, every measured year from 1950 to 2024. The 2020 dip (pandemic restrictions, -5.2%) had mostly reversed by 2021. Source: Global Carbon Project / OWID. 2025 total not yet published.
Atmospheric CO₂, 1959 to 2025
1959: 316 ppm 2025: 427 ppm
Annual mean atmospheric CO₂, parts per million, NOAA/Scripps Mauna Loa Observatory. This is a direct instrument record that only exists from 1958 onward; nothing before that date is shown here. Source: NOAA Mauna Loa.
Temperature anomaly, 1950 to 2025
0°C 1950: −0.18°C 2024 peak: +1.29°C
Anomaly vs. NASA GISTEMP's 1951-1980 baseline, °C, one consistent baseline across the whole series. The 0°C line marks that baseline average, not "no warming." 2025 (+1.19°C) is a complete year but below 2024's peak. Source: NASA GISTEMP.
1950 vs 2024
1950 2024
Atmospheric CO2 (annual mean) no instrument record† 424.6 ppm
Global CO2 emissions / year 5.93 billion tons 38.6 billion tons
Temp. anomaly (1951–80 baseline) −0.18°C +1.29°C
† Mauna Loa's direct CO2 measurements begin in 1958. There's no instrument reading for 1950, only ice-core reconstructions, which use a different method and aren't shown here to avoid mixing the two.
A separate index, not directly comparable
Wildlife populations, WWF Living Planet Index, 2022 edition (1970 to 2018) baseline down 69%
This is one figure from one edition (the 2022 Living Planet Report, covering 1970 to 2018), a modeled composite across roughly 5,000 monitored vertebrate populations, not a census. Later editions report different figures over different periods; we're not combining them into a single number. Its baseline year (1970) also differs from the climate rows above, so it can't be read on the same axis as CO₂ or temperature.
sources
1950Global Carbon Project / OWID (fossil CO₂, 1950)
1952UK government report; Britannica; History.co.uk
1958NOAA/Scripps Mauna Loa record
1969NBC News; Ohio History Connection; History.com
1970EarthDay.org; Global Carbon Project; NASA GISTEMP
1973–74Nature (Molina & Rowland, 1974); UCI retrospective
1990Global Carbon Project; NOAA Mauna Loa; NASA GISTEMP; EPA
1984Lung India (1996); Government of Madhya Pradesh figures; Tribune India
1985Nature (Farman et al., 1985)
1986JAEA; UN Chernobyl Forum (2005); RFE/RL
1989USGS (Piatt & Ford, 1996); NOAA DARRP
1987UN Treaty Collection; UNEP Ozone Secretariat
1992Britannica; Cairo Review climate-diplomacy timeline
2000Global Carbon Project; NOAA Mauna Loa; NASA GISTEMP
1997–2005Clinton White House archive; UN treaty record
2005NOAA National Hurricane Center (2023 revision); IPCC AR4
2008–09Global Carbon Project; ORNL/EarthSky
2010Global Carbon Project; NOAA Mauna Loa; NASA GISTEMP; US Marine Mammal Commission
2012NSIDC Sea Ice Today; NASA Earth Observatory
2015Britannica; WMO; NASA GISTEMP (real figure)
2019Global Carbon Project; NOAA Mauna Loa; NASA GISTEMP; MAAP; IPBES (2019)
2021Global Carbon Project; NOAA Mauna Loa; The Chemical Engineer (COP26 coverage)
2022WWF Target 3 guide; Global Policy Journal
2023Global Carbon Project; NOAA Mauna Loa; NASA GISTEMP; Copernicus (separate baseline)
2024Global Carbon Project; NOAA Mauna Loa; NASA GISTEMP; Copernicus
2025NASA GISTEMP; NOAA Climate.gov (citing NSIDC)
Wildlife indexWWF Living Planet Report, 2022 edition (1970 to 2018)
ClosingEPA Acid Rain Program Results; NPR, "The Cuyahoga River was so polluted, it used to catch fire. Now it's making a comeback" (2024)
What we damaged: a stable climate, intact ecosystems, clean air over most cities.
What we've managed to fix: the ozone layer is healing after Montreal. US power-plant SO2 emissions, the main driver of acid rain, are down about 95% from 1990 under the EPA's own Acid Rain Program. Ohio's Cuyahoga River, which caught fire in 1969, now supports 60 or more fish species including lake sturgeon, though it's still not fully cleared for swimming and remains an EPA "area of concern."
What happens next isn't written yet. It's still being measured, one year at a time.
Every figure here comes from a cited scientific dataset, historical record, or published estimate. We distinguish direct measurements from modeled estimates and reconstructions, and say where the evidence is disputed or incomplete instead of picking a number.
back to the games