Featuring Carbon Alamanac Contributors Jasper Croome, Barbara Orsi and Steve Wexler

From Portland, the New York State and Bologna, Italy these collaborators are passionate about data visualization, D3, data science & analytics - and cricket burgers with hot sauce.

The three came together on the Carbon Almanac charts team. Taking complex data and using design thinking and design to present the information clearly, and making it easy to understand for the readers of the almanac.

In this episode, we talk about data, charts, how data can be manipulated to present certain ideas, why clarity is key, and we learn how contributors from around the globe came together to create charts that are beautiful in their simplicity.

For more information on the project, and to pre-order your copy visit thecarbonalmanac.org

This podcast is a part of the Carbon Almanac Podcast Network.

Production Team: Jennifer Myers Chua, Sam Schuffenecker, Leekei Tang, Tania Marien, Barbara Orsi

Cover Art: Ray Ong

Copyright © 2022 The Carbon Almanac Network

About the Carbon Almanac Collective: What happens when regular people work together to create massive, meaningful change on a global scale? Welcome to the carbon Almanac collective. A podcast where the volunteers who created the Carbon Almanac share the insights and aha moments they had while collaborating on this landmark project to help fight the climate crisis.

Hosted by Jennifer Myers Chua, and featuring the voices of Carbon Almanac Contributors. Reminding you that it's not too late to join in on the conversation.

[00:00:53] Barbara: Hi all I'm Barbara Orsi and I'm from Bologna, Italy. I've had a chance to work with Jasper on a charts and data and contribute to on other project like factoid or inspiring quotes and also starting the project leading of the daily difference.

[00:01:31] Jennifer: So Steve, let's start with you. Why did you join the carbon alamanac?

And I wanted to figure out how do you do that? And I was kind of on the periphery. And I still couldn't tell you how this was done. I'm still dazzled by it. And this many people volunteering, giving their time and, and some people doing just absolutely extraordinary work. So I feel privileged to have been part of this thing to be very small part of it.

[00:02:39] Barbara: I, hadn't a clear idea of what it would be in actually, but, I was so impressed about the fact that. everybody could be in a, a contributor and make a difference. And I wanted to do something to have a positive impact because I am a mom of seven years old daughter. And, uh, I wish of course, for a bright future. And I think that'd be a whole half of the duty to, we need to leave this world a little better than we found it. So we have to do something for. For the future generation. So this is the reason why I'm working also on the kids' projects actually.

[00:03:19] Jasper: So I get Seth's blog every day, like a lot of the people who will be listening to this podcast, and I think it was October 9th of last year. He sent out a posting like, Hey, I'm working on this thing. It's the carbon Almanac. If you're interested, fill out this Google form. Um, I read his blog first thing in the morning, it's one of the first things I do, uh, just to kind of clear my head, get the right mindset. And so I feel fill it out, hit, submit, and then went on with my day and went on with my life for 13 unsuspecting days, I was just kind of living life. And then on October 22nd, I remembered that day. Very clearly. I got an email from Seth saying, I'd like to have you join us. And of course not knowing the scope of this, I assumed it was saying, Hey, Jasper, you, I need your help. I told my wife, I ran a couple labs around the house and I was like a puppy. Right. So excited, um, that I joined in. And then I saw all the things that were already happening, all the work that the design team was doing. These like deep, deep conversations that were already happening around the charts.

I saw Steven there and also Corey. All these deep conversations we were having. So I just sort of meekly raised my hand and said like, Hey, I can help with, with dataviz, like I know D3 uh, and, and then. I think that was the that really you see over and over with the people who stepped in to help is they stepped in, they raised their hands. Like all four of us did that in different ways that like, Hey, I want to help. This is what I know how to do. This is what I don't know how to do, but how can I help? What can I do? Uh, and it was that it was that stepping forward and raising your hand. That's what really kinda like kicked things off for my, uh, contribution.

[00:05:22] Barbara: I'm passionate about figure charts and data because I have a statistical background and I was fresh of a data science master's. So it was one of the lucky ones. .Actually it was a little bit pedantic and I think that they would challenge a little bit also Jasper on some charts because I was not so well convinced on, but it was all fun because I really love working on data. So I really enjoyed it and Jasper was so, so, so amazing leading um, giving feedback and I'm making the chart better. And so it was beautiful working on that.

[00:06:10] Jasper: Think Seth described it well as rigor without rigidity, right? So we all wanted to do things well, but we were all flexible in how we did it. And that's one of the things that helps the charts, group shine, everyone felt comfortable pushing back because I'm just one person. And I have like my experience in life of how things, how I think things should be done, but everyone else knows other things. Everyone knows more than anything. Right. So like, if you bring the collective knowledge of the group together that's where the real magic came in the group. Some of the charts that Barbara built out were completely different from what I had originally thought, but they worked so much better.

And then having Steve come in he had these, like these really like laser-focused comments on like, Hey, I know you're talking about doing it this way, but we should actually take a hard right turn and let's add a pie chart right.

[00:07:22] Jasper: I should point out that, Steve has shifted my perspective on pie charts. This is probably one of my biggest learnings from the carbon Almanac, uh, before TCA, I was of the class that, oh pie charts are dumb. Like no one needs pie charts. That's such a reductionist viewpoint on data visualization. That actually ties it into something that I really wanted to get across to the, the chart's team we're the rhythm section for the Almanac.

Right? We're the drummers? And. What that means is that we give the readers something that they know and something they're comfortable with and something that gets a point across cleanly. People don't really like drum solos, unless if they're drummers as well. We didn't write this book for drummers, right? We wrote this book for people who wanted to learn more. And one of the ways that you can really get across, uh, The parts to whole, if, especially if you have like a small group and a large group is a pie chart, it's something that's in the human lexicon for comparing percentages. So like Steve completely reopened my eyes to pie charts, and again, for anyone listening, think about a circle that has a small sliver. That's the kind of pie charts that really sang to us, we're not talking about like the 10 slices, the 3d exploding pie charts. Those still don't don't work great. But there, there is a time and a place for a pie chart. I think that's the, if there's one important takeaway from this podcast, there's a time and a place for a pie chart.

Thank you. The, how to three people work on this thing, didn't you get into fights and disagreements? And I wouldn't call them fights and disagreements. They were debates and discussions, and we all had the same goal, which was clarity. It wasn't like a band that was going to break up because we were having artistic differences. Man, I don't want to play this pop music anymore. I want to play jazz and, and stuff like that. So. Those discussions were great. And, and I thought, you know, I create something and think, well, isn't this great. And they go, well, maybe this isn't as clear as you think. And the same thing was happening with the carbon Almanac that are, there's an example. Don't know if it made it into the book or not, but it was, how do you show that of all methane emissions? 44%, almost half come from agriculture and within agriculture, almost two thirds, if it come from this wonderful word, enteric, fermentation, which it's just a lovely way of saying bovine flatulence, or actually any ruminant flatulence.

And how do you show something like that? And, and the original graphic that was sourced someplace, it was pretty bad. And then I thought I came up with a pretty good way to show it. And then Seth and others went, this is not so clear. And I went, you know, you're right. It's not so clear. And it needed a whole bunch of iterations of people going, no, this thing that you understand, because you're living with the data you understand that is all right, how can we make this thing work? And eventually came up with something way better than what I would've come up with on my own. And I think we lather rinsed and repeated that a whole bunch of times where someone would come up with something and, I would hate to think that anyone bristled at any of the feedback, as you know, I didn't, when people said, Hey, you can make this better.

I always thought these were intelligent and very respectful discussions amongst us, but it would be no, I'm not sure if this works and then here's why, and sometimes the whomever was pushing, won the argument but the discussions were great and I think it led to better than what we started with in, in pretty much every instance. And, and normally you think, oh my gosh, work by committee is going to be disastrous. And that isn't the case when you have people who have the same goal of.. Is this as clear. And if there's such a word as impactful, impactful as we want it to be?

[00:13:04] Barbara: The power of the carbon almanac is, the feeling that you can disagree in a polite way, and you can see what you're saying in order to make things better. Well, it was a little bit challenging, saying, oh, I don't agree on that, but if you want, I can do that. What you realize that, you know, Everybody has something to say. But an important thing that you say in the proper way, and of course that you have to add to the conversation. I still remember it. I think the best chart I've ever seen it was about the white car, that, the one that, uh, Alberto end up with the, the sort of scatter plot, because we didn't know how to figure out how to represent what it will be in ten years.. So it was very, very difficult. I think that there were a bunch of people working on that almost four or five people suggesting different kinds of graphs and find out a way. It was about, uh, hotter weather and dryer predicting 20 years events. And it was a little bit difficult to find out the best chart to represent this kind, because what the pints means is it clear that it's just a part or it was verbally difficult, but we end up with a beautiful, beautiful chart and it was really, really fulfilling having say what you did because you know, we look at the spreads and we see the child and say, oh, I made it! And the fact that the book is born on data, on facts, on chart. This is what is fundamental. And it, that makes different from our broken climate. There are facts, so it's, it's very, very, you know, different and I'm really happy to have the chance to contribute.

[00:15:10] Barbara: So many different way. I think that's it's just, I always have this kind of, uh, unresolved when I work with other people and it was so happy to collaborate with different people from all over the world because I think that everybody can contribute and give a worldview. And so I can change and become a better person because of the fact that I am learning from people from all over the world with a different perspective. So this is just one first thing. And then of course I've learned a lot about climate change because I haven't realized. That it was my first chart about greenwashing and recycling. And I haven't realized that recycling plastic was actually just clearing my conscious because actually it's not useful at all for climate change. So I've known a ton of information related climate change that I was ignoring. And then, I've learned to be a better team, working in team and also I found a way to contribute and say, okay, this is my idea. We can do that. Or we can do that.

[00:16:14] Jasper: There's really three main ways. the first is just more awareness of the impact we have on climate. When you're not actively engaged in the reading and seeing the different articles and just all these different numbers, you think like climate change is this big thing, but I, as one person can't really do much to change it because it's this giant Boulder, right. Like me pushing this Boulder won't change it. But in reality, it's a multi-variate equation, right? There are all these different things happening, all these different things that are sort of going up into the right. But you can take hold of these smaller things and start to steer it in a better direction.

So that was the first thing. Just being aware that there are a lot of problems that, and that means that it's not just one big thing, one big insurmountable feat, right? There's a lot of smaller things that you can actually, take hold of. On the climate change side. On the personal work side. This project really changed my brain chemistry. I went from thinking. Okay. Like I'm doing what I'm doing. It's not really contributing to the world at large, but it's enough. To realizing like you can actually step in and make a difference, right? There's opportunities out there in the world for you to, again, you, you step in and you raise your hand and, and having that, that positive cycle over and over again, over the months of working on the almanac, that's really helped me like look more, uh, What other opportunities there are out there and how you can really contribute with, with this skillset you have.

And third, and this is probably the most, uh, the most, I'm talking to three of my therapists here. I've gotten to where I am in my career, a lot through, like individual work. Right. I was what they call in the tech space in IC and individual contributor. So doing lots of stuff on my own, trying really hard to do it as well as I can and like letting the results speak for themselves. What happened at the carbon Almanac is. Letting go a bit and trusting the people around you, knowing that you're in a good place, people who are working are also going to do their best. Right. So trusting the chart's group as a whole to produce the beautiful work that they did meant that I could step back and I actually was able to contribute more by physically doing less, still, uh, giving suggestions and giving feedback and helping to shape things, through communication, but not creating things directly myself. And I think that was probably the biggest takeaway for me is to increase your impact. Sometimes you have to like actually do less.

[00:18:55] Steve: Well, I plan to open cricket burger franchises. So, uh, that's the, uh, and sell the world's greatest cricket burger. I'm looking forward to reading this thing, because even just because I know the small part that I contributed to, and maybe 10 or 12 facets of this, of which there are probably hundreds, but certain small things. The things that may change my diet and that the degree to which, uh, the production of meat is harmful to the environment. Soy milk versus regular milk. What is called the wall warrant? You know, those little plugs that are, uh, into your power strips and the amount of stuff that I'm leaving on all the time. And this notion of, oh my gosh, this thing is so massive. What can I do? Well, if enough people stop ordering burgers the restaurant isn't going to order as much your grocery isn't going to stock as much. And eventually this is how an individual can contribute to these things and letting other people know about it. There's a bunch of smaller things I've discovered I'm looking forward to seeing all the other work that's been produced and how it's going to inform and change my individual behaviour.

[00:20:43] Steve: now I am Jennifer Jasper, Barbara. I'm offering you in on the ground floor of being part of, world's best cricket burgers.

[00:20:55] Jasper: Yeah

[00:20:56] Jasper: Great charts. Yeah. As long as there's a spicy version, count me in.

[00:21:37] Jennifer: You sound hopeful, Barbara, on a scale of helpless to hopeful where

[00:22:07] Jennifer: are you hopeful?

[00:22:44] Jasper: I'm optimistic too. And I think a big thing is like, you can look to, uh, what has happened so far and that that's scary. Right. And looking at all of the charts, the charts of the bad things were always up and to the right. So everything seemed hockey stick up into the right. What we're starting to see is more and more awareness and more and more like sense of individual empowerment around this problem. I think that's one of the things that the Almanac helped to distill down into this smaller group.

People are realizing like I can step forward as one person and make a change. I can make a difference. And as soon as we help people realize that this is a human challenge. Meaning, this is something that you, as one human can help to affect and can help to drive change towards as there's over 6 billion of us, right. If half of us. Take hold and say like, okay, let's steer this thing back in the right way, we can make change. So if you incorporate that in with all of the technological advances that are coming down, the pipeline, this is a slow moving ship. If we all decided to do the right thing tomorrow, things wouldn't change immediately. But if the culture becomes we're working together to save the planet, not just like left v.s right. Or green versus not green, if we make it like we are humans and we're saving this place we live, then good things will happen and bad things will happen less often.

I'm like Barbara, I'm very, very optimistic. I'm naturally an optimist. Everything will be fine every time. Uh, but even like putting on my data hat and really looking at the numbers and looking at kind of the way the systems are unfolding. There seems to be a sea change in process. Right. And this book is part of that. So it's been such an honor to be part of this movement. It's helping to shift things back in the right direction.

[00:24:50] Jasper: I'd love. I'd love to hear what Steve's doing next.

[00:26:11] Barbara: You have a great mission actually, because, uh, you know, everytime I talk about figures and trials and say, I see scared face.

[00:27:08] Barbara: And what about you Jasper? I'm so impressed by the fact that you started the YouTube channel and trying to teach people about, making better charts or learning something they don't know. So I was so fascinated by this.

So what I realized is that as soon as people can get over that first steep learning curve, there's a lot that you can do in the world. So I actually started a YouTube channel this year because it was so much fun to help teach people all about building things with D3. So, what I've been trying to do is build out these D3 in 10 minute or less videos that make it clear that it's easy to learn.

And once you learn that, like these basic parts, these basic sort of modules of D3, these basic parts of it, you can slap things together and build some really cool charts. And it's, again, it's, it's making it approachable and making people aware that it is. It is doable. Anyone can learn it. You just have to like put in the practice up front.

That's an important thing because there's a lot of, there's a lot of wrong data out there, right? There's a lot of fake data. but being able to make the good things easier to consume you elevate them. And that's one thing that the Almanac did so well. there's all these charts, and all of these numbers, they could have all been tabled. Sorry. We could have had an Almanac full of tables, which would have been terrible. The fact that we were able to get such a clean, uh, design approach to these charts and get getting that in there means that they're easier to consume. So just getting that message, teaching people how to do that and making these data points easier to consume, that's what I shot off, with this Almanac.

So, uh, Back in the 1950s. Yeah. How charts lie by Alberto Cairo and, and, the simple things people will do with where you'll have a bar chart and this bar, it looks to be three times as big as the other bar. Well, that's because it's not starting at zero and things like that. And also teaching people to recognize when they're being manipulated by these things. and I believe we were always okay, we can't mislead. We can't exaggerate this, the data needs to be very carefully vetted. And the representation of the data needs to be accurate, truthful, and transparent. At least everything that I saw at that for certain also Jasper, I love this idea of hey any anyone can do.

The, the don't take for granted. Some of, you know, the, the hard work, the abilities, what you've studied and things like that. I think anyone can learn to read and appreciate charts and dashboards that a little more work to create, you know, to create the right chart at the right time expressing the right way. I think you take some of your own, uh, expertise for granted, and your passion for it. And, how much you've nurtured your talent over the years. Also, some of the stuff that other people were making, some of the infographics, even the simpler ones. This is only something that a licensed graphic designers should be, uh, handling at this point.

[00:30:49] Barbara: No, definitely Boon was so incredible.

[00:31:34] Steve: I've only seen a little bit of it and I can't wait. But some of the stuff that's come out, but also the work that Daniella had done with taking some of the sort of simpler things and adding a real designers eye to these things to really make them sing so, um, can't wait to see those facets.

[00:33:08] Jennifer: Jasper. How about you? How are you using your experience here to help you mobilize and lead climate action?

[00:33:50] Steve: Any time we get data that we're supposed to visualize, I'm wondering, can we trust this data? Is it reliable? And, and I'm trying to look at lots of different sources on this step and to be as informed as possible. So I can't wait to read the carbon Almanac with a friend who is somewhat skeptical. Also recommended this book un settled by S Steven Koonin, what climate science tells us what it doesn't and why it matters. I don't think you can possibly be too informed. I'm looking forward to reading this thing, because remember I've only seen this small facet of it the parts that I had the privilege of participating with and, learning more and then figuring out where can I best apply my abilities to help.

[00:34:42] Jasper: Looking at you, Steve.

[00:35:11] Jennifer: worries. I'll drop it in the show notes. You can, you can think about that for a bit. Does anyone have any final parting words?

[00:35:19] Steve: And Jasper, I'm happy to hear you're moving beyond being an individual contributor. You were an incredible team leader, so hopefully you will have a team to work with in whatever roles are coming up.