A fantastic example of how to strip meaning from a graph this week, in this little beauty from Christopher Booker in the Telegraph. “Look at the graph” he says “to see the evidence of global warming”. Just look at it. Pretty unimpressive, eh? Regular readers won’t really need me to point out just how silly […]
Every so often, a graphic comes along that does something so nicely, that it would seem churlish to criticise it. This is one of those times. So, we take our hats off to the people at the Earth System Research Laboratory, for creating this rather wonderful video showing the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide over […]
Do GCM’s (sic) predict the climate… or macroweather? Ask Lovejoy et. al, in a paper submitted to Earth System Science Dynamics Discussions, and pointed out to Better Figures by the unholy trio of Richard Betts, Ed Hawkins and John Kennedy. I don’t really want to comment too much on the science here, as that might […]
Oh FAO. I admire your work immensely, and respect your mission and commitment. I applaud your lovely FAOSTAT service, and you can clearly do nice, informative graphs. So, how did you let this infographic slip through the net? (original here) It starts OK, but gets bad pretty quickly. Since when does 870 million people get […]
Earlier this week, we were treated to some lovely unadulterated* sciency data, in the shape of a map of sea level rise in the last 18 years. The story got good coverage in the mainstream media, and an old friend of mine even got quoted on the BBC. Great. The reaction on twitter however, often […]
A playful look at a serious subject from Mike Bostock. He uses a small multiple, animated over each year, to show the impact and context of this year’s drought in the US. Click the image to see the animation (it might take a little while to load). The colour scheme and layout are great here. Being […]
My colleague John Kennedy has asked for some feedback on this figure, showing the evolution of global average temperatures, since the 1850s. The data is from HadCRUT3, and is averaged into decades. I like this figure a lot. I think it is clear and crisp; the colours have appropriate cultural meanings; the rise in global temperatures is captured […]
