I want to give you an update on Carbon Doomsday that started in 2017. It's a graphic tracking the rise of carbon dioxide from the Keeling curve. (video of this update on YouTube and LinkedIn)

Back in 2017, the best place to track global CO2 levels was a .csv file here, and once a day the NOAA science lab would post an updated Excel-style JPEG here. Back then, I had seen stock charts, and stock charts are very colorful, they go up and down, they're updated all the time, and all the data is accessible through APIs. I wanted that for CO2, a real-time visualization and an API that made it easy to access the data. That was Carbon Doomsday, and we launched it on HackerNews.

Earlier this year, the US federal government cut funding to the Mauna Loa Observatory. If nothing changes, the observatory will be shut down. And while there are other observatories, Mauna Loa Observatory is where Charles David Keeling started the dataset in 1958, now called the Keeling Curve.

This got me thinking about the inception of Carbon Doomsday, about sharing and preserving carbon dioxide data. What if Mauna Loa Observatory actually gets shut down? What if this data point, what if this data set gets deleted from the NOAA website? What can I do? I could post it on my website, but I'm just a guy on the internet. I could post it to GitHub, but maybe GitHub shuts down or the data gets removed.

I got me thinking about what's it what's another way that I could post the data where it would never be removed. This got me thinking about blockchains. Bitcoin for example started back in 2009 and you can track every single transaction since, and copies are distributed on thousands of computers around the world. Why not have the same for carbon dioxide data?

So I called up my friend Purin Phanichphant. He makes art, he makes great designs, and and we worked together on Carbon Doomsday and on AirMiners. We posted the MLO CO2 data to the Ethereum blockchain and visualized it using an algorithm. Here's the piece.

It shows urgency. The data glitches, the data jiggles and wiggles the more and more as the Earth system starts to shake.

We submitted this art piece to a digital art competition called 6529. Three times a week, this community of voters picks one piece they feel embodies the kind of cultural moment of that day. Our piece, called Gas Wars, is up for voting and is climbing up the ranking. Now it's time to get to #1.

Here's how you can help:

• I've started the #AirMiners channel on the 6529 network. Come join for updates about the piece and advocate for others in the community to vote. When it finally gets voted up to number one, you'll be able to buy one of the copies of the piece.

• Already into digital art or data visualizations? I'd love to hear from you about your favorite artists.

• If you're collecting NFTs or digital art, I would love to hear from you about what you're into!

• Now, some of this might be a weird concept, or even an offensive concept to you. If it's all those things, but it's still interesting, hit reply. I'd love to hear from you about what's interesting to you and what parts you don't like.

Now that it's 2026, the average datapoint for 2025 will be posted soon. My plan is to go back up the mountain and post the 2025 data point to the Ethereum blockchain from up on the mountain and update the visualization. The data may be posted early this year, or it might be later toward spring so stay on the lookout for that.

Tito