Visualizations Don't Always Work, Especially If You Forget To Tell A Story

A nonprofit called Climate Central released a visualization tool that allows you to move your cursor across a rendering of a famous global destination and see what will happen to that place as a result of climate change. Each site ends up under water after a “multi-century sea level rise after 3.0°C.” The problem with this nicely designed illustration is that it fails to have an impact for multiple reasons.

First, and most importantly, there is no time scale offered. The average person has no idea how long it would take for sea levels to rise by 3.0°C ... but the term “multi-century” makes it seem like this is only something we’ll have to worry about 300 years from now. Secondly, the destinations they have chosen to depict are not widely known. Instead of the Lalbagh Fort in Dhaka, why not show the Taj Mahal in Agra? Their list of destinations has many other obscure locations, such as a church in New Haven, CT. Finally, each of the depictions solely focuses on rising water levels. What about extreme weather? Uncontrollable fires? Desertification? Those climate related issues are not depicted.

I don’t mean to poke holes in what is clearly a noble and well intentioned effort ... but it is a good learning opportunity for all of us as well. Simply visualizing data without thinking about the story that is being told is unlikely to resonate or create real understanding or behavior change. The story is everything.