ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Visualizing Climate Change: The Hockey Stick Graph and the Politics of Climate Change

• In Event: Data Visualization and the History of Statistics 2

English Abstract

Our interpretation of climate rests on a sea of data. Scientists have brought together thousands of tree rings, millions of air bubbles from ice cores, and numerous instrumental readings to reconstruct the global surface temperature over thousands of years. However, the statistical techniques that underpin work combining dissimilar datasets into visual outputs, such as the hockey stick graph, have been met with suspicion. This paper interrogates the relationship between the widely circulated hockey stick graph and issues of uncertainty and trust that its statistical underpinnings engendered for some, at the same time as others celebrated the easily understood visual that pointed to anthropogenic climate change. In so doing, this paper seeks to answer: What was the interplay between data, statistical techniques, and visual outputs for understandings of climate change among scientists and the wider public?

Author

• Melissa Charenko, University of Pennsylvania