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Think Tank

Seeing is believing: Information visualization and the debate over global warming

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Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. New perspectives on climate change
  3. Visualizing consensus
  4. Pictures and stories
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    • Pictures and stories

    Information visualization is able to communicate the intricacies of global warming in a way no other discipline can. Its messages can be immediate and powerful, without sacrificing the level of detail necessary to represent the complex subject accurately. Not only is information visualization helping scientists and politicians communicate with the public, it is a primary tool for scientific study, and for the study of science itself. It is particularly telling that even the medium of film could not compete with the power of these visualizations. According to “An Inconvenient Truth” director Davis Guggenheim, “I thought, a film about a slide show? A filmed lecture? I don’t get it. And then I saw his slide show. The information in it is so powerful, and we all just felt like, what if we could give people a front-row seat to this.”

    “An Inconvenient Truth” is the first popular film to make such prominent use of a live presentation to communicate about a complex issue, but it may not be the last. Presentations that combine information visualizations and live narrative are quickly becoming the most common way of presenting information for businesses, academics, and the military. After all, there are no tedious reports to read and the audience can provide immediate feedback. As technologies that allow simultaneous transmissions and real-time interactions become more sophisticated, the popularity of live presentations will only increase.

    So, for designers interested in information visualization, it is important to keep in mind the context in which these images will be displayed. Al Gore does not just slap the hockey stick up on the screen; the slide is carefully introduced and then deftly romanced. “The best way to tell a story is to show progress over time. There has to be a transformation,” says Nancy Duarte. The most memorable moment in “An Inconvenient Truth” is when Gore goes off the edge of the graph, rising up in a cherrypicker high above the stage to show what will happen if the present trends continue unabated. It’s a nice bit of theater—the message is dramatized as well as shown through the graph and described verbally. It’s also a crucial moment in the story Gore is telling. After all, it’s difficult to know with absolute certainty if CO2 levels will continue to rise at the rate that is indicated on (or, in this case, off) the chart and, if they do, whether temperatures will rise accordingly. But, because of the detailed graph that accompanies the predictions and the dramatic effect of Gore’s performance, the audience is carried effortlessly along from the past into the future. The transformation is complete: lifeless data becomes a wake up call to a crisis.

    Where to go from here

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