Today is #ShowYourStripesDay, aiming to sustain the push initiated years ago by UK climate scientist Ed Hawkins to use cool and warm colors to depict long-term climate change in ways that might grab attention and ultimately change choices and behavior.

I’ve explored this innovation and related ones for a long time, most notably in a Sustain What webcast on Show Your Stripes Day in 2021. I’ve reposted that episode in Substack’s player above.

As you will learn (or already know if you watched it way back when), there’s still scant behavioral science showing that this data visualization “movement” has mattered. But I see it as part of a vital wider effort to use visualizations or other forms of creative output (music, below) to bring deeper meaning to data.

I’ve done quite a few shows on this theme including these:

Visualizing Energy for Social and Climate Impact

Here’s some of the musical experimentation, in this case from Julio Friedmann, who’s been a frequent source of mine for carbon science and policy questions and is also into musical experimentation using climate data:

Sustain What is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit revkin.substack.com/subscribe