Why XKCD’s Earth Temperature Timeline is Such a Good Online Graphic

Randall Munroe of XKCD has produced another creative visual representation of climate data. I made a quick video walkthrough of what it does well, including:

• Flipping the axis and taking advantage of a purely online data representation.
• Defying the audience’s expectations by scrolling down to go forward in time instead of going from left to right.
• Emphasizing just how stable our climate has been over the millennia before modern, industrially-driven climate change started dominating the system.
• Nice integration of an important footnote.
• Representing climate choices at the end by focusing on varying emissions pathways and how far they take us off this relatively stable path we’ve been on for so long as a species.

Update (9/13/16): This is interesting. Over at Scienceblogs.com, Greg Laden points out that many of the historic markers in the graphic fall into the trap of highlighting a story we tell ourselves about the inevitable progress of Western civilization that can be misleading. For instance, advances in agriculture and metalworking took place across multiple cultures. It’s also worth noting that some of our ancestors probably tried out agriculture and didn’t like it that much. As Laden notes, it’s still a darn good graphic, especially on the science; it’s just worth considering some of the biases we carry into these conversations, especially since the “inevitability” of burning tons of fossil fuels hangs over the climate debate quite a bit, too.

Originally published at Science Communication Media.