Emissions → Climate → Weather
The atlas shows who emits what, and where. This page explains what those emissions do to the climate — and clears up the common confusion that “climate” is the same as “weather”.
The causal chain
Greenhouse gases such as CO₂ and methane build up in the atmosphere and trap more heat. That shifts the climate — the statistical distribution of temperature, precipitation and extremes over decades. A single day's weather stays variable; but the distribution it is drawn from shifts.
Climate ≠ weather
A cold day doesn't refute warming; a single storm doesn't prove it. Weather is what's happening outside right now; climate is the long-term pattern behind it. Warming is decided by the decades-long trend, not yesterday's headline.
Loaded dice
Emissions don't cause a specific weather event — they change the odds. Like loading dice: any single roll stays random, but rare extremes — heatwaves, downpours, droughts — become more frequent and more severe. So one can never say “this source = that storm” — only that more emissions load the dice further.
What the atlas contributes
The emitter atlas makes the cumulative contribution visible: individual facilities, their annual amount, their trend. None of these sources is responsible for a specific weather event — but taken together and over time they shift the climate, and with it the odds.
Further context — such as the air-quality co-benefit and “what can we do” — will follow.