Side Note
Annual temperatures for the continental U.S. from 1895 (left) to present (right), with blue showing cool temperatures and red showing warmer temperatures.

Annual temperatures for the continental U.S. from 1895 (left) to present (right), with blue showing cool temperatures and red showing warmer temperatures.

Our entirely avoidable plunge into oblivion, as a nice poster

Unless there’s an extreme event, such as a devastating hurricane or crop-ruining drought, it’s very difficult to visualize climate change. We can’t see the greenhouse gases that are collecting and containing heat in the atmosphere. Fortunately, Ed Hawkins —a climate scientist at the University of Reading’s National Centre for Atmospheric Science — came up with a stylish and minimal way to convey the ruin being laid to our planet. He made a set of stripes to depict global warming, using blues for the years the planet cooled and red for when the planet got hotter.

By playing up the colors rather than numerical temperatures value, the viewer gets a sense of just how quickly the earth is warming. Understanding just how quickly the problem is getting worse gives a sense of immediacy to the threats that global warming presents to human life—including heat waves, hurricanes, extreme rain events, floods, droughts, wildfires, winter storms, world hunger, depleted water resources, and over $36 trillion in damage around the globe.

It would make a lovely poster.