Craftivism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craftivism 

A woman wearing a craftivist facemask.

Craftivism is a form of activism, typically incorporating elements of anti-capitalism, environmentalism, solidarity, or third-wave feminism, that is centered on practices of craft - or what has traditionally been referred to as "domestic arts". Craftivism includes, but is not limited to, various forms of needlework including yarn-bombing or cross-stitch. Craftivism is a social process of collective empowerment, action, expression and negotiation. In craftivism, engaging in the social and critical discourse around the work is central to its production and dissemination. Practitioners are known as craftivists. The word 'craftivism' is a portmanteau of the words craft and activism.

Background

Domestic arts (crafts) have been a feminized form of art throughout history. Because of its perceived femininity, it was often rendered invisible from larger conversations about art. Feminist crafters used this to their advantage in attempts to spread occulted messages spreading concepts of second-wave feminism in the 1960s to 1980s. The term craftivism was coined in 2003 by writer Betsy Greer in order to join the separate spheres of craft and activism. Her favorite self-created definition of the term states, "craftivism is a way of looking at life where voicing opinions through creativity makes your voice stronger, your compassion deeper & your quest for justice more infinite"

Although the term craftivism is a recent addition to crafting lexicon, the use of craft as a subversive tactic can be found throughout history. First, the word craft is often associated with trickery. To call someone crafty is to identify them as clever and cunning. In Greek, one would say to "spin" a plot. Similarly, the French word for trick is tricoter, which means to tie or knot together. In the novel A Tale of Two Cities, the character Madame Defarge, a worker for the French Revolution, secretly encodes the names of those soon to be executed in her knitting.

Feminism

Craftivism identifies strongly with feminist movements. Craftivism is often interpreted as having emerged from third-wave feminism but feminist activism and craft were unified beforehand.

Practices of craft or "domestic arts" have traditionally existed and been organized spatially within the private sphere. Therefore, the labor and production of craft was generally interpreted as unproductive female labor in the home, as it was never integrated into profit-making systems. Rather, it was marginalized and undervalued. As a result, women's significant and creative work in the private sphere—clothing the family, knitting blankets, weaving the loom—did not receive the same respect as male-dominated activity in the public realm. Furthermore, the patriarchy has been successful in claiming these domestic values for women and using it as a way to keep women in subservient roles. The rise of consumer-friendly crafts, including kits, transfers and readymade designs, has further diminished the status of craft and women's amateur practices. Women and craft have been excluded from the fine art world and as a result many women put their creativity towards craft practices. Craft was "a universal female art from transcending race, class, and national borders. Needlework is the one art in which women controlled the education of their daughters and the production of art, and were also the critics and audience." Although practices of craft were spatially organized within the private sphere, women occasionally would organize groups to engage in these practices collectively. In these craft circles or meet ups women would not only share patterns and skills but also engage in conversation about their lives in the private sphere. These groups of women would discuss their lives and personal struggles encountered as women. This type of group discussion is a form of activism rooted in Consciousness raising that was key to Second-wave feminism as it helped to raise awareness about the types of oppression women were experiencing in their everyday lives.

The Anti Capitalist, Anti Sweatshop and DIY movements popularized practices of craft for activism. These movements influenced third-wave feminists to adopt a craftivism ethos. Most forms of craftivism identify strongly with third-wave feminism. Third-wave feminist crafters are attempting to subvert the association of craft with domesticity by embracing domestic arts while identifying as feminists who are making the choice to embrace this new domesticity. Third-wave feminists are reclaiming knitting, sewing, and other crafting activities traditionally feminized and associated with the private sphere. Through this reclamation, contemporary women aim to reconnect with the female-dominated art forms, to legitimatize the importance of undervalued craft, and to show that 21st century women have the privilege to express themselves through craft, with fewer constraints exercised by the patriarchy. This act of resistance and shattering of the public/private binary is expressed physically through public knitting and craft circles who take a private-sphere activity and insert themselves in the male-dominated spaces of the city One example would be the Anarchist Knitting Mob who held a "Massive Knit" event in Washington Square Park to honor the death of activist and urbanist Jane Jacobs. Knitters decorated the trees, benches, and light posts with colorful yarn and unique patterns. Craftivism can also focus on doing activism in a slow, quiet, compassionate way. Sarah Corbett, founder of Craftivist Collective, encourages craftivists to set up private and public what she coined 'stitch-in' workshops.

Criticism

Women's expression has often been undervalued or ignored in the art world. It is considered as belonging to a lesser cultural sphere and categorized under such terms as ‘applied’, ‘decorative’ or ‘lesser’ than other art forms such as painting or sculpture. This critique of women's expression and craftivism as a ‘lesser’ art form has been contested within the discourse of feminism. Some Feminist Art discourse excludes craftivism. This feminist intervention into the art world perpetuates a hierarchy of art where 'craft' is a lower art form. Some feminists deem craftivism as reinforcing domesticity and consider it a retrogression of the feminist cause rather than a subversive tactic.

Environmentalism

Craftivism is also centered on ideas of environmentalism and sustainability. When buying new materials, many craftivists choose organic fabrics and fairly traded products such as home-spun yarns. Yet, even more popular within the movement is the utilization of vintage, thrifted and repurposed goods in order to minimize waste and promote reuse. This display of resourcefulness acknowledges the finite resources on Earth, and the valorization of quality over quantity. Craftivist, Betsy Greer, is quoted saying, "While I think that crafting has become something fairly elite and cliquish in some areas, at its heart, it is very much made for individuals who value both their time and their money".

Environmental craftivism has been used alongside 'traditional' forms of activism, such as by the Knitting Nanna's Against Gas (KNAG) who formed on the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales in June 2012 to protest the destruction of land for mining of non-sustainable energy sources in the region. The group describes themselves "as an international disorganization where people come together to ensure that our land, air and water are preserved for our children and grandchildren". Often their activism centers around knit -ins on mining or potential mining sites, in front of politicians and offending companies offices as well as in support of rallies and other community events. At their core is the idea of bringing people together in a non-violent, "mild mannered yet stubborn front" through their craft activities, no matter on the participant's skill levels.

The Tempestry Project is an example of an artwork that uses craft and craftivist techniques to highlight the impacts of climate change on the planet. The collaborative and ongoing project presents climate change data in visual form through knitted and crochet forms. Initiated in 2016, Tempestries are made so that each row is knitted in a specific color to represent the temperature of that location on that specific day. Anyone is able to participate in the project and create their own Tempestry. The Tempestry Project's goal is "to scale this down into something that is accurate, tangible, relatable, and beautiful".

Another form of environmental craftivism could be the act of making pouches or blankets for wildlife affected by environmental disaster, as was the case for many crafters globally who helped hurt wildlife affected by the devastation 2019-2020 Australian Bushfire season. As Greer explains, craftivism can mean "fighting against useless materialism or making items for charity or something betwixt and between".  

Anti-capitalism

See also: Anti-capitalism

Historically, craft was the pre-capitalist form of production, where each created item possessed a "use-value," a term comparing the usefulness of an item to the exchange equivalent. Now within a capitalist system of mass production, craft has become a commodity to be bought and sold for money, where it is now referred to as having an "exchange-value". Due to this movement from use-value to exchange-value, there is less emphasis on the time and skill expended to create an object, and more importance on making it available to the masses as inexpensively as possible. Traditionally associated with a strong community so vital to the creation and distribution of craft, crafting has since lost its use-value and has been "captured by capital".

A popular way to resist the commoditization of craft is through the Do-It-Yourself or DIY movement. Popularized through "zines" of the 1990s, DIY inspires people to be self-sufficient and to rely less on the market for basic necessities that can easily be created on one's own. DIY is a resistance to both the capitalist nature of the fashion industry and pressures to conform and buy a style. Crafters have also subverted the market through the use of open source patterns and information sharing on the internet. Sites like Burdastyle allow crafters to upload and download sewing projects at no charge. Similarly, Cat Mazza's online software KnitPro allows users to download images into detailed knitting patterns at no charge.

Anti-sweatshop

See also: Anti-sweatshop movement

Efforts within the craftivist movement against capitalism focus primarily on the international issue of sweatshops. Some craftivists believe that either sewing one's own clothing or buying only hand-made is the best way to protest unfair labor practices around the globe. Other craftivists take the issue even further, using the act of crafting as a protest against sweatshops. Artist and activist Cat Mazza created a campaign against the inhumane labor practices of Nike through the creation of a giant blanket depicting Nike's trademark swoosh. From 2003 to 2008, international crafters were asked to mail in 4x4 inch stitched squares to border the blanket and to sign a petition against Nike. Mazza also created a second web-based software called Knitoscope that transforms video into animated knitted stitches. In the MicroRevolt website, Cat Mazza introduced a web application that translates digital images into needlecrafts, such as crochet, knitting, and embroidery. Through implementing the KnitPro program, the organization knitted logos in the Tactical media lab in Troy, New York.

Each video has a corresponding testimony featuring various professionals who work against sweatshop labor.

Artist and Activist Kirsty Robertson feels that the subversive efforts of craftivists against capitalism are limited by their dependency on the internet and new communication. She points out that for this reason, global justice knitters are not completely removed from the economy themselves.

Anti-war

See also: Anti-war movement

An embroidered gun created for the End Gun Violence Project.

Some craftivists see their art form as a protest against war and violence. Anti-war craftivists choose to make their statement by juxtaposing a colorful, soft, and fuzzy yarn with cold and dangerous weapons. In 2006, Danish artist Marianne Jorgensen stitched a giant pink "tank blanket" and placed it over a M24 Chafee combat tank to protest the Iraq war. She has been making these blankets since Denmark entered the Iraq War, and doesn't plan to stop until it is over. She writes on her website that, "Unsimilar to a war, knitting signals home, care, closeness and time for reflection...When [the tank] is covered in pink, it becomes completely unarmed and it loses its authority". Much like Jorgensen, Canadian artist Barb Hunt works to question the acceptance of military logic in society by creating knitted antipersonnel land mines out of wool.

Similar to her campaign against Nike, Cat Mazza started an anti-war effort entitled "Stitch for Senate" on the fourth anniversary of the Iraq War. She enlisted two people from each state to knit a soldier's helmet liner which would be sent on to every senator. Unlike the apolitical Operation Home Front efforts that knitted gear for soldiers, Mazza wanted "to start a dialogue about the war and to get politicians to keep the promises they made during the midterm elections".

The Viral Knitting Project is an anti-war effort that translates the 0/1 binary code of the dangerous Code Red computer virus into a knitting pattern of knit/purl. The color and code relate to the anti-terrorism alerts of post 9/11 United States. The project is attempting to "draw together links between technology, culture, capitalism and war".

Anti-Racism

Black Lives Matter

Sisters In Stitches, a group primarily composed of women of color, was established in the late 1990s to raise awareness for a number of causes using quilting.

In response to the killing of Trayvon Martin and the subsequent rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, Taylor Payne and CheyOnna Sewell founded Yarn Mission, a "knitting collective that is purposefully Pro-Black, Pro-Rebellion, and Pro-Community for the achievement of Black Liberation."

Social justice issues

The Craftivist Collective, founded by Sarah Corbett, is an inclusive group of people committed to using thoughtful crafted works to help themselves and encourage others be the positive change they wish to see in the world. There is a manifesto and a checklist of goals for the work of the group which includes being welcoming, encouraging and positive, creative and non-threatening, and focusing on global poverty and human rights injustices.

One of the Craftivist Collective's key achievements was to convince the M&S board to pay their 50,000 employees the living wage in 2015.^[42] This campaign was awarded with the Economic Justice Campaigner of the year 2017 by Sheila McKechnie Foundation, and was nominated for the 2017 Care2 UK Impact Award.

On the back of this award, Sarah Corbett continues to work with large charities to deliver strategic craftivism projects and teach them in the art of gentle protest.

Guerrilla kindness

Australian artist Sayraphim Lothian has used craftivism to "make people's day brighter". She left small handcrafted works of art on the streets for people to find and take home.

Protest models

When craftivists take to the street, they utilize various protest models.

A popular form of protest is the "knit-in," where knitters infiltrate a public space and knit. They might ride a subway, occupy a civic building, or sit in a park. They use the knit-in to draw attention to their issue of concern. The Revolutionary Knitting Circle of Calgary, Canada stage a knit-in in front of Calgary's financial office buildings during the summit of the G-8 nations in 2002. The Knit-in not only provides an opportunity to protest against injustice, but also allows for a running discussion about social issues between the stationary knitters. Jack Bratich of Rutgers University argues that, "Knitting in public also creates a gendered question of space. It rips open the enclosure of the domestic space to public consumption, exposing productive work that has contributed to women's invisible and unpaid labor". Women are, thereby, able to gain power from an activity that previously symbolized their repression.

Craftivist Carrie Reichardt has covered her home, car and studio with mosaics which utilizes ceramics, screen-printing and transfers to highlight "plight of inmates on death row, the Black Panthers, and the spirituality of the planet."

Another form of craft-themed activism is guerilla art. The Texas-based group Knitta places street art such as street pole cozies and antenna warmers in cities throughout the country. Similarly, Sarah Corbett created handicrafts - textile art with provoking messages in public spaces.

Volunteers for Postcards To Voters often create their own hand-decorated postcards to send to potential voters ahead of elections in hopes of increasing turnout. The work can be done solo, but is often done at "postcarding parties" at a volunteer's home or a cafe.

In transition

In the spring of 2009, an online debate began over the definition of craftivism. The debate spread after the self-titled Craftivism team on Etsy had an inner-group argument about the political affiliation of its members, causing some members to leave the group. The original description of the group states, "The Etsy Craftivism Team is a team of progressive Etsyans who believe that craft and art can change the world. Some of us use our work to carry messages of protest and political activism. Others believe that the act of making craft can be an act of resistance. Still others see that by buying and selling directly from the maker we are challenging the all pervasive corporate culture that promotes profit over people." Conservative members accused the group of assuming a liberal agenda, and argued that politics should not be involved. Some members of the group felt that the mere act of crafting itself was political, while others felt that the act must also be attached to a political message. Rayna Fahey from Radical Cross Stitch replied to a thread stating "Personally if a John McCain supporter joined this group and told me that my latest piece in support of indigenous sovereignty was a well-made piece that serves the purpose for which it was designed well, I'd think that was awesome and I'd have hope for the future of this world." In contrast, craftivist Betsy Greer believes that "the personal is political," and that you cannot separate the two. Sarah Corbett from Craftivist Collective adds that craftivism is "to think critically and discuss compassionately how we can all be part of positive social change."

Contemporary American politics

Since the 2016 election, the massive increase in public activism has given rise to more methods of art activism and craftivism as well. The Pink Pussyhat Project was popularized with the Women's March from 2017 and 2018. There was also a movement called the Welcome Blanket project, which aims to show solidarity to immigrants and refugees with blankets. Additionally, there has been The Kudzu Project, a guerilla knitting art installation started in Charlottesville, VA where flash installations of knitted kudzu vines were draped on Confederate monuments to "call attention to the role of these statues in perpetuating false narratives about the Civil War and white supremacy."

Criticisms

Craft activism has also been affected by intersectional identity-based discrimination within the practice. "The issue of inclusion/exclusion has long troubled the feminist movement, and it can be traced back to the suffragists, where Black women were excluded from conversations about voting rights". Similarly, the Pussyhat Project from the Women's March in 2017 and 2018 has been criticized for being exclusionary and primarily attended by cisgender white women. Craftivism, and the Pussyhat Project in particular, has come to embody white, liberal feminism, which is historically not intersectional. This mirrors larger concerns with participatory politics in general, but should not be discarded as inconsequential.

Virtual Craftivism

From even before the pandemic, the emergence of online crafting communities has facilitated new forms of participation and community. Even though it's been moved online, the social aspects of craft "were considered highly salient" because of the "profoundly collective phenomenon" of practices like knitting.

During COVID

Isolation

With stay-at-home orders issued in Mid-March 2020, there was an influx of people using crafts to cope with isolation. Craftivism has always been something that could be done from home, and many crafters have come together through virtual communities and gatherings.

Face mask distribution

Since the start of the pandemic, sewers and crafters have come together to create and distribute reusable fabric face masks. The demand for face masks, particularly reusable ones, came about with the supply shortage of personal protective equipment such as N-95 face masks throughout the pandemic. The Million Mask Challenge, a virtual challenge that started on Facebook, rapidly evolved to an international challenge to sew and distribute face masks to healthcare workers, then other frontline workers.

Black Lives Matter

Following the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and subsequent global Black Lives Matter protests, independent artists donated proceeds towards anti-racism projects, mutual aid funds, and national bailout funds to help protesters detained by law enforcement. Artists used sites like Etsy to promote BLM donations. Some crafters donated either a percentage of proceeds or in full, and others made crafts to spread the message of the movement, making t-shirts, face masks, and stickers. There have been criticisms, however, concerning non-Black sellers profiting off the movement. "Both independent creatives and companies should be donating profits to demonstrate solidarity," said Fresco Steez, an activist with Movement for Black Lives and co-founder of Black Youth Project 100. "And it can't just be a percentage. Otherwise, businesses [and creative independents] are essentially benefitting from the social struggles at the heart of the protests," she said.

Warming stripes

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warming_stripes

An early (2018) warming stripes graphic published by their originator, climatologist Ed Hawkins. The progression from blue (cooler) to red (warmer) stripes portrays annual increases of global average temperature since 1850 (left side of graphic) until the date of the graphic (right side).

Warming stripes (sometimes referred to as climate stripes, climate timelines or stripe graphics) are data visualization graphics that use a series of coloured stripes chronologically ordered to visually portray long-term temperature trends. Warming stripes reflect a "minimalist" style, conceived to use colour alone to avoid technical distractions to intuitively convey global warming trends to non-scientists.

The initial concept of visualizing historical temperature data has been extended to involve animation, to visualize sea level rise and predictive climate data, and to visually juxtapose temperature trends with other data such as atmospheric CO₂ concentration, global glacier retreat, precipitation, progression of ocean depths, aviation emission's percentage contribution to global warming, biodiversity loss, soil moisture deviations, and fine particulate matter concentrations. In less technical contexts, the graphics have been embraced by climate activists, used as cover images of books and magazines, used in fashion design, projected onto natural landmarks, and used on athletic team uniforms, music festival stages, and public infrastructure.

Background, publication and content

Conventional graphic versus warming stripes graphic

This conventional graphic includes date ranges, explanatory legends, and technical terminology that warming stripes avoid.

 

This composite of a conventional line chart superimposed on a warming stripe graphic illustrates year-by-year correlation of data points and coloured stripes.

"I wanted to communicate temperature changes in a way that was simple and intuitive, removing all the distractions of standard climate graphics so that the long-term trends and variations in temperature are crystal clear. Our visual system will do the interpretation of the stripes without us even thinking about it."

— Ed Hawkins, May 2018

 

Hawkins chose colours from a broader palette originally designed for distinguishing areas in maps.

 

A colour field abstract artwork

In May 2016, to make visualizing climate change easier for the general public, University of Reading climate scientist Ed Hawkins created an animated spiral graphic of global temperature change as a function of time, a representation said to have gone viral. Jason Samenow wrote in The Washington Post that the spiral graph was "the most compelling global warming visualization ever made",^[27] before it was featured in the opening ceremony of the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Separately, by 10 June 2017, Ellie Highwood, also a climate scientist at the University of Reading, had completed a crocheted "global warming blanket" that was inspired by "temperature blankets" representing temperature trends in respective localities. Hawkins provided Highwood with a more user friendly colour scale to avoid the muted colour differences present in Highwood's blanket. Independently, in November 2015, University of Georgia estuarine scientist Joan Sheldon made a "globally warm scarf" having 400 blue, red and purple rows, but could not contact Hawkins until 2022. Both Highwood and Sheldon credit as their original inspirations, "sky blankets" and "sky scarves" which are based on daily sky colours.

On 22 May 2018, Hawkins published graphics constituting a chronologically ordered series of blue and red vertical stripes that he called warming stripes. Hawkins, a lead author for the IPCC 6th Assessment Report, received the Royal Society's 2018 Kavli Medal, in part "for actively communicating climate science and its various implications with broad audiences".

As described in a BBC article, in the month the big meteorological agencies release their annual climate assessments, Hawkins experimented with different ways of rendering the global data and "chanced upon the coloured stripes idea". When he tried out a banner at the Hay Festival, according to the article, Hawkins "knew he'd struck a chord". The National Centre for Atmospheric Science (UK), with which Hawkins is affiliated, states that the stripes "paint a picture of our changing climate in a compelling way. Hawkins swapped out numerical data points for colours which we intuitively react to".

Others have called Hawkins' warming stripes "climate stripes" or "climate timelines".

Warming stripe graphics are reminiscent of colour field painting, a style prominent in the mid 20th century, which strips out all distractions and uses only colour to convey meaning. Colour field pioneer artist Barnett Newman said he was "creating images whose reality is self-evident", an ethos that Hawkins is said to have applied to the problem of climate change.

Collaborating with Berkeley Earth scientist Robert Rohde, on 17 June 2019 Hawkins published for public use, a large set of warming stripes on ShowYourStripes.info. Individualized warming stripe graphics were published for the globe, for most countries, as well as for certain smaller regions such as states in the US or parts of the UK, since different parts of the world are warming more quickly than others.

Hawkins et al. updated the graphs of warming stripes on 2 April 2025. These stripes show temperature trends for both oceans and atmosphere, as ocean trends show that 90% of the extra heat is stored in global oceans. This report explains that "Delayed action in reducing carbon emissions leads to temperature records being significantly exceeded over the next century (with warming stripes moving into much darker shades of red), so that 2024 – the warmest year to date – would eventually be viewed as a cold year."

Data sources and data visualization

Effect of geographic selection: Warming stripes for the Northern and Southern Hemispheres show how different, but same-size, regions compare. Greater recent temperature anomalies in the North display as stripes that are off the red scale.

 

Effect of geographic size: Warming stripes for the Globe and for the Caribbean Islands region show that larger year-to-year variations, for geographical and statistical reasons, are to be expected for smaller regions (bottom graphic).

 

Effect of each colour's temperature range: one dataset, but with different temperature range per colour (colour scales shown on left side). In the top graphic (with 0.10 °C per colour), recent temperatures exceed the red scale; the bottom graphic (0.15 °C per colour) avoids this clipping.

 

Effect of reference period (baseline): One dataset, with averages over three "reference periods" (horizontal purple bars) determining blue/red boundaries. The earliest, lowest-temp baseline (top) causes recent temperatures to exceed the red scale; later baselines avoid this clipping.

 

Effect of choosing a baseline independent of any time period's average value: This stripe graphic of global average sea level change has a baseline that is less than all data values, producing a graphic having shades of only a single colour.

Warming stripe graphics are defined with various parameters, including:

• source of dataset (meteorological organization)
• geographical scope of measurement (global, country, state, etc.)
• time period (year range, for horizontal "axis")
• temperature range (range of anomaly (deviation) about a reference or baseline temperature)
• colour palette (usually, shades of blue and red),
• colour scale (assignment of colours to represent respective ranges of temperature anomaly),
• temperature boundaries (temperature above which a stripe is red and below which is blue, usually determined by an average annual temperature over a "reference period" or "baseline" of usually 30 years).

Hawkins' original graphics use the eight most saturated blues and reds from the ColorBrewer 9-class single hue palettes, which optimize colour palettes for maps and are noted for their colourblind-friendliness. Hawkins said the specific colour choice was an aesthetic decision ("I think they look just right"), also selecting baseline periods to ensure equally dark shades of blue and red for aesthetic balance. Hawkins chose the 1971-2000 average as a boundary between reds and blues because the average global temperature in that reference period represented the mid-point in the warming to date.

A Republik analysis said that "this graphic explains everything in the blink of an eye", attributing its effect mainly to the chosen colors, which "have a magical effect on our brain, (letting) us recognize connections before we have even actively thought about them". The analysis concluded that colors other than blue and red "don't convey the same urgency as (Hawkins') original graphic, in which the colors were used in the classic way: blue=cold, red=warm."

ShowYourStripes.info cites dataset sources Berkeley Earth, NOAA, UK Met Office, MeteoSwiss, DWD (Germany), specifically explaining that the data for most countries comes from the Berkeley Earth temperature dataset, except that for the US, UK, Switzerland & Germany the data comes from respective national meteorological agencies.

For each country-level #ShowYourStripes graphic (Hawkins, June 2019), the average temperature in the 1971–2000 reference period is set as the boundary between blue (cooler) and red (warmer) colours, the colour scale varying +/- 2.6 standard deviations of the annual average temperatures between 1901 and 2000. Hawkins noted in 2019 that the graphic for the Arctic "broke the colour scale" since it is warming more than twice as fast as the global average, and reported that the 2023 global average was so extreme that a new, darker shade of red was required.

For statistical and geographic reasons, it is expected that graphics for small areas will show more year-to-year variation than those for large regions. Year-to-year changes reflected in graphics for localities result from weather variability, whereas global warming over centuries reflects climate change.

The NOAA website warns that the graphics "shouldn't be used to compare the rate of change at one location to another", explaining that "the highest and lowest values on the colour scale may be different at different locations". Further, a certain colour in one graphic will not necessarily correspond to the same temperature in other graphics. A climate change denier generated a warming stripes graphic that misleadingly affixed Northern Hemisphere readings over one period to global readings over another period, and omitted readings for the most recent thirteen years, with some of the data being 29-year-smoothed—to give the false impression that recent warming is routine. Calling the graphic "imposter warming stripes", meteorologist Jeff Berardelli described it in January 2020 as "a mishmash of data riddled with gaps and inconsistencies" with an apparent objective to confuse the public.

Applications and influence

Comparing multiple datasets

 

A conventional line graph comparing several highly correlated temperature datasets

 

A "stacked" warming stripes graphic comparing essentially the same highly correlated temperature datasets as the line graph

 

A "stacked" warming stripe graphic compares temperature datasets for various layers of Earth's atmosphere and oceans

 

Logo, US House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis (formed 2019)

 

Warming stripes at the 2019 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP25).

 

Demonstrators dressed as warming stripes during an Extinction Rebellion protest in Berlin, Germany (2019).

 

Warming stripes on a bus in Reading, Berkshire, U.K.

 

Warming stripes on the Saxons' Bridge in Leipzig, Germany

After Hawkins' first publication of warming stripe graphics in May 2018, broadcast meteorologists in multiple countries began to show stripe-decorated neckties, necklaces, pins and coffee mugs on-air, reflecting a growing acceptance of climate science among meteorologists and a willingness to communicate it to audiences. In 2019, the United States House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis used warming stripes in its committee logo, showing horizontally oriented stripes behind a silhouette of the United States Capitol, and three US Senators wore warming stripe lapel pins at the 2020 State of the Union Address.

On 17 June 2019, Hawkins initiated a social media campaign with hashtag #ShowYourStripes that encourages people to download their regions' graphics from ShowYourStripes.info, and to post them. The campaign was backed by U.N. Climate Change, the World Meteorological Organization and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Called "a new symbol for the climate emergency" by French magazine L'EDN, the graphics have been embraced by climate activists, used as cover images of books and magazines, used in fashion design, projected onto natural landmarks, and used on athletic team uniforms, music festival stages, and public infrastructure. More specifically, warming stripes have been applied to knit-it-yourself scarves, a vase, neckties, cufflinks, bath towels, vehicles, and a music festival stage, as well as on the side of Freiburg, Germany, streetcars, as municipal murals in Córdoba, Spain, Anchorage, Alaska, and Jersey, on face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, in an action logo of the German soccer club 1. FSV Mainz 05, on the side of the Climate Change Observatory in Valencia, on the side of a power station turbine house in Reading, Berkshire, on tech-themed shirts, on designer dresses, on the uniforms of Reading Football Club, on Leipzig's Sachsen Bridge, on a biomethane-powered bus, as a stage backdrop at the 2022 Glastonbury Festival, on the racer uniforms and socks and webpage banner of the Climate Classic bicycle race, on the World Bank's Climate Explainer Series, projected onto the White Cliffs of Dover, on an Envision Racing electric race car, and on numerous bridges and towers noted by Climate Central. Remarking that "infiltrating popular culture is a means of triggering a change of attitude that will lead to mass action", Hawkins surmised that making the graphics available for free has made them used more widely. Hawkins further said that any merchandise-related profits are donated to charity.

Through a campaign led by nonprofit Climate Central using hashtag #MetsUnite, more than 100 TV meteorologists—the scientists most laymen interact with more than any other—featured warming stripes and used the graphics to focus audience attention during broadcasts on summer solstices beginning in 2018 with the "Stripes for the Solstice" effort.

On 24 June 2019, Hawkins tweeted that nearly a million stripe graphics had been downloaded by visitors from more than 180 countries in the course of their first week.

In 2018, the German Weather Service's meteorological training journal Promet showed a warming stripes graphic on the cover of the issue titled "Climate Communication". By September 2019, the Met Office, the UK's national weather service, was using both a climate spiral and a warming stripe graphic on its "What is climate change?" webpage. Concurrently, the cover of the 21–27 September 2019 issue of The Economist, dedicated to "The climate issue," showed a warming stripe graphic, as did the cover of The Guardian on the morning of the 20 September 2019 climate strikes. The environmental initiative Scientists for Future (2019) included warming stripes in its logo. The Science Information Service (Germany) noted in December 2019 that warming stripes were a "frequently used motif" in demonstrations by the School strike for the climate and Scientists for Future, and were also on the roof of the German Maritime Museum in Bremerhaven. Also in December 2019, Voilà Information Design said that warming stripes "have replaced the polar bear on a melting iceberg as the icon of the climate crisis".

On 18 January 2020, a 20-metre-wide artistic light-show installation of warming stripes was opened at the Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin, with the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences building being illuminated in the same way. The cover of the "Climate Issue" (fall 2020) of the Space Science and Engineering Center's Through the Atmosphere journal was a warming stripes graphic, and in June 2021 the WMO used warming stripes to "show climate change is here and now" in its statement that "2021 is a make-or-break year for climate action". The November 2021 UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) exhibited an immersive "climate canopy" sculpture consisting of hanging, blue and red color-coded, vertical lighted bars with fabric fringes.

On 27 September 2019, the Fachhochschule (University of Applied Science) Potsdam announced that warming stripes graphics had won in the science category of an international competition recognising innovative and understandable visualisations of climate change, the jury stating that the graphics make an "impact through their innovative, minimalist design".

Hawkins was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2020 New Year Honours "For services to Climate Science and to Science Communication".

In April 2022, textiles from haute couture fashion designer Lucy Tammam with warming stripes won the Best Customer Engagement Campaign title in the Sustainable Fashion 2022 awards by Drapers fashion magazine.

In October 2022, the front cover of Greta Thunberg's The Climate Book features warming stripes.

In June 2023, Pope Francis was presented with a warming stripes stole.

In May 2024, Hawkins received the Royal Geographical Society's Geographical Engagement Award for his work in developing warming stripes.

In 2025, warming stripes were included in the "Pirouette: Turning Points in Design" exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art, the exhibition highlighting design as an agent of change.

Extensions of warming stripes

A warming stripes colour scheme is applied to a conventional bar chart to visually emphasize changes in temperature. Taller bars are more intensely coloured.

 

Average global temperature are depicted with chronologically ordered, concentric coloured rings.

In 2018, University of Reading post-doctoral research assistant Emanuele Bevacqua juxtaposed vertical-stripe graphics for CO₂ concentration and for average global temperature (August), and "circular warming stripes" depicting average global temperature with concentric coloured rings (November).

Bifurcated graphic of two futures.

In March 2019, German engineer Alexander Radtke extended Hawkins' historical graphics to show predictions of future warming through the year 2200, a graphic that one commentator described as making the future "a lot more visceral". Radtke bifurcated the graphic to show diverging predictions for different degrees of human action in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

On or before 30 May 2019, UK-based software engineer Kevin Pluck designed animated warming stripes that portray the unfolding of the temperature increase, allowing viewers to experience the change from an earlier stable climate to recent rapid warming.

Comprehensive "stack" of 196 warming stripes for respective countries grouped by continent.

This "stack", technically a heat map, organizes temperatures by month (horizontally) and year (vertically).

By June 2019, Hawkins vertically stacked hundreds of warming stripe graphics from corresponding world locations and grouped them by continent to form a comprehensive, composite graphic, "Temperature Changes Around the World (1901–2018)".

On 1 July 2019, Durham University geography research fellow Richard Selwyn Jones published a Global Glacier Change graphic, modeled after and credited as being inspired by Hawkins' #ShowYourStripes graphics, allowing global warming and global glacier retreat to be visually juxtaposed. Jones followed on 8 July 2019 with a stripe graphic portraying global sea level change using only shades of blue. Separately, NOAA displayed a graphic juxtaposing annual temperatures and precipitation, researchers from the Netherlands used stripe graphics to represent progression of ocean depths, and the Institute of Physics used applied the graphic to represent aviation emission's percentage contribution to global warming.

In 2023, University of Derby professor Miles Richardson created sequenced stripes to illustrate biodiversity loss, and the German Meteorological Service represented soil moisture deviations using sequenced green and brown stripes. In August 2024, the website airqualitystripes.info published shareable "air quality stripes" graphics for world cities, using blue, yellow, orange, red and black stripes to represent fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations over time.

Critical response

Some warned that warming stripes of individual countries or states, taken out of context, could advance the idea that global temperatures are not rising, though research meteorologist J. Marshall Shepherd said that "geographic variations in the graphics offer an outstanding science communication opportunity". Meteorologist and #MetsUnite coordinator Jeff Berardelli said that "local stripe visuals help us tell a nuanced story—the climate is not changing uniformly everywhere".

Others say the charts should include axes or legends, though the website FAQ page explains the graphics were "specifically designed to be as simple as possible, and to start conversations... (to) fill a gap and enable communication with minimal scientific knowledge required to understand their meaning". J. Marshall Shepherd, former president of the American Meteorological Society, lauded Hawkins' approach, writing that "it is important not to miss the bigger picture. Science communication to the public has to be different" and commending Hawkins for his "innovative" approach and "outstanding science communication" effort.

In The Washington Post, Matthew Cappucci wrote that the "simple graphics ... leave a striking visual impression" and are "an easily accessible way to convey an alarming trend", adding that "warming tendencies are plain as day". Greenpeace spokesman Graham Thompson remarked that the graphics are "like a really well-designed logo while still being an accurate representation of very important data".

CBS News contributor Jeff Berardelli noted that the graphics "aren't based on future projections or model assumptions" in the context of stating that "science is not left or right. It's simply factual."

A September 2019 editorial in The Economist hypothesized that "to represent this span of human history (1850–2018) as a set of simple stripes may seem reductive"—noting those years "saw world wars, technological innovation, trade on an unprecedented scale and a staggering creation of wealth"—but concluded that "those complex histories and the simplifying stripes share a common cause," namely, fossil fuel combustion.

Informally, warming stripes have been said to resemble "tie-dyed bar codes" and a "work of art in a gallery". Warming stripes were included in the "Pirouette: Turning Points in Design" exhibition (2025) at New York's Museum of Modern Art, the exhibition highlighting design as an agent of change.

Zeroth law of thermodynamics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeroth_law_of_thermodynamics

 

Thermodynamics
The classical Carnot heat engine

The zeroth law of thermodynamics is one of the four principal laws of thermodynamics. It provides an independent definition of temperature without reference to entropy, which is defined in the second law. The law was established by Ralph H. Fowler in the 1930s, long after the first, second, and third laws had been widely recognized.

The zeroth law states that if two thermodynamic systems are both in thermal equilibrium with a third system, then the two systems are in thermal equilibrium with each other.

Two systems are said to be in thermal equilibrium if they are linked by a wall permeable only to heat, and they do not change over time.

Another formulation by James Clerk Maxwell is "All heat is of the same kind". Another statement of the law is "All diathermal walls are equivalent".

The zeroth law is important for the mathematical formulation of thermodynamics. It makes the relation of thermal equilibrium between systems an equivalence relation, which can represent equality of some quantity associated with each system. A quantity that is the same for two systems, if they can be placed in thermal equilibrium with each other, is a scale of temperature. The zeroth law is needed for the definition of such scales, and justifies the use of practical thermometers.

Equivalence relation

A thermodynamic system is by definition in its own state of internal thermodynamic equilibrium, that is to say, there is no change in its observable state (i.e. macrostate) over time and no flows occur in it. One precise statement of the zeroth law is that the relation of thermal equilibrium is an equivalence relation on pairs of thermodynamic systems. In other words, the set of all systems each in its own state of internal thermodynamic equilibrium may be divided into subsets in which every system belongs to one and only one subset, and is in thermal equilibrium with every other member of that subset, and is not in thermal equilibrium with a member of any other subset. This means that a unique "tag" can be assigned to every system, and if the "tags" of two systems are the same, they are in thermal equilibrium with each other, and if different, they are not. This property is used to justify the use of empirical temperature as a tagging system. Empirical temperature provides further relations of thermally equilibrated systems, such as order and continuity with regard to "hotness" or "coldness", but these are not implied by the standard statement of the zeroth law.

If it is defined that a thermodynamic system is in thermal equilibrium with itself (i.e., thermal equilibrium is reflexive), then the zeroth law may be stated as follows:

If a body C, be in thermal equilibrium with two other bodies, A and B, then A and B are in thermal equilibrium with one another.

This statement asserts that thermal equilibrium is a left-Euclidean relation between thermodynamic systems. If we also define that every thermodynamic system is in thermal equilibrium with itself, then thermal equilibrium is also a reflexive relation. Binary relations that are both reflexive and Euclidean are equivalence relations. Thus, again implicitly assuming reflexivity, the zeroth law is therefore often expressed as a right-Euclidean statement:

If two systems are in thermal equilibrium with a third system, then they are in thermal equilibrium with each other.

One consequence of an equivalence relationship is that the equilibrium relationship is symmetric: If A is in thermal equilibrium with B, then B is in thermal equilibrium with A. Thus, the two systems are in thermal equilibrium with each other, or they are in mutual equilibrium. Another consequence of equivalence is that thermal equilibrium is described as a transitive relation:

If A is in thermal equilibrium with B and if B is in thermal equilibrium with C, then A is in thermal equilibrium with C.

A reflexive, transitive relation does not guarantee an equivalence relationship. For the above statement to be true, both reflexivity and symmetry must be implicitly assumed.

It is the Euclidean relationships which apply directly to thermometry. An ideal thermometer is a thermometer which does not measurably change the state of the system it is measuring. Assuming that the unchanging reading of an ideal thermometer is a valid tagging system for the equivalence classes of a set of equilibrated thermodynamic systems, then the systems are in thermal equilibrium, if a thermometer gives the same reading for each system. If the system are thermally connected, no subsequent change in the state of either one can occur. If the readings are different, then thermally connecting the two systems causes a change in the states of both systems. The zeroth law provides no information regarding this final reading.

Foundation of temperature

Nowadays, there are two nearly separate concepts of temperature, the thermodynamic concept, and that of the kinetic theory of gases and other materials.

The zeroth law belongs to the thermodynamic concept, but this is no longer the primary international definition of temperature. The current primary international definition of temperature is in terms of the kinetic energy of freely moving microscopic particles such as molecules, related to temperature through the Boltzmann constant ${\displaystyle k_{\mathrm{B}}}$. The present article is about the thermodynamic concept, not about the kinetic theory concept.

The zeroth law establishes thermal equilibrium as an equivalence relationship. An equivalence relationship on a set (such as the set of all systems each in its own state of internal thermodynamic equilibrium) divides that set into a collection of distinct subsets ("disjoint subsets") where any member of the set is a member of one and only one such subset. In the case of the zeroth law, these subsets consist of systems which are in mutual equilibrium. This partitioning allows any member of the subset to be uniquely "tagged" with a label identifying the subset to which it belongs. Although the labeling may be quite arbitrary, temperature is just such a labeling process which uses the real number system for tagging. The zeroth law justifies the use of suitable thermodynamic systems as thermometers to provide such a labeling, which yield any number of possible empirical temperature scales, and justifies the use of the second law of thermodynamics to provide an absolute, or thermodynamic temperature scale. Such temperature scales bring additional continuity and ordering (i.e., "hot" and "cold") properties to the concept of temperature.

In the space of thermodynamic parameters, zones of constant temperature form a surface, that provides a natural order of nearby surfaces. One may therefore construct a global temperature function that provides a continuous ordering of states. The dimensionality of a surface of constant temperature is one less than the number of thermodynamic parameters, thus, for an ideal gas described with three thermodynamic parameters P, V and N, it is a two-dimensional surface.

For example, if two systems of ideal gases are in joint thermodynamic equilibrium across an immovable diathermal wall, then ⁠P₁V₁/N₁⁠ = ⁠P₂V₂/N₂⁠ where P_i is the pressure in the ith system, V_i is the volume, and N_i is the amount (in moles, or simply the number of atoms) of gas.

The surface ⁠PV/N⁠ = constant defines surfaces of equal thermodynamic temperature, and one may label defining T so that ⁠PV/N⁠ = RT, where R is some constant. These systems can now be used as a thermometer to calibrate other systems. Such systems are known as "ideal gas thermometers".

In a sense, focused on the zeroth law, there is only one kind of diathermal wall or one kind of heat, as expressed by Maxwell's dictum that "All heat is of the same kind". But in another sense, heat is transferred in different ranks, as expressed by Arnold Sommerfeld's dictum "Thermodynamics investigates the conditions that govern the transformation of heat into work. It teaches us to recognize temperature as the measure of the work-value of heat. Heat of higher temperature is richer, is capable of doing more work. Work may be regarded as heat of an infinitely high temperature, as unconditionally available heat." This is why temperature is the particular variable indicated by the zeroth law's statement of equivalence.

Dependence on the existence of walls permeable only to heat

In Constantin Carathéodory's (1909) theory, it is postulated that there exist walls "permeable only to heat", though heat is not explicitly defined in that paper. This postulate is a physical postulate of existence. It does not say that there is only one kind of heat. This paper of Carathéodory states as proviso 4 of its account of such walls: "Whenever each of the systems S₁ and S₂ is made to reach equilibrium with a third system S₃ under identical conditions, systems S₁ and S₂ are in mutual equilibrium".

It is the function of this statement in the paper, not there labeled as the zeroth law, to provide not only for the existence of transfer of energy other than by work or transfer of matter, but further to provide that such transfer is unique in the sense that there is only one kind of such wall, and one kind of such transfer. This is signaled in the postulate of this paper of Carathéodory that precisely one non-deformation variable is needed to complete the specification of a thermodynamic state, beyond the necessary deformation variables, which are not restricted in number. It is therefore not exactly clear what Carathéodory means when in the introduction of this paper he writes

It is possible to develop the whole theory without assuming the existence of heat, that is of a quantity that is of a different nature from the normal mechanical quantities.

It is the opinion of Elliott H. Lieb and Jakob Yngvason (1999) that the derivation from statistical mechanics of the law of entropy increase is a goal that has so far eluded the deepest thinkers. Thus the idea remains open to consideration that the existence of heat and temperature are needed as coherent primitive concepts for thermodynamics, as expressed, for example, by Maxwell and Max Planck. On the other hand, Planck (1926) clarified how the second law can be stated without reference to heat or temperature, by referring to the irreversible and universal nature of friction in natural thermodynamic processes.

History

Writing long before the term "zeroth law" was coined, in 1871 Maxwell discussed at some length ideas which he summarized by the words "All heat is of the same kind". Modern theorists sometimes express this idea by postulating the existence of a unique one-dimensional hotness manifold, into which every proper temperature scale has a monotonic mapping. This may be expressed by the statement that there is only one kind of temperature, regardless of the variety of scales in which it is expressed. Another modern expression of this idea is that "All diathermal walls are equivalent". This might also be expressed by saying that there is precisely one kind of non-mechanical, non-matter-transferring contact equilibrium between thermodynamic systems.

According to Sommerfeld, Ralph H. Fowler coined the term zeroth law of thermodynamics while discussing the 1935 text by Meghnad Saha and B.N. Srivastava.

They write on page 1 that "every physical quantity must be measurable in numerical terms". They presume that temperature is a physical quantity and then deduce the statement "If a body A is in temperature equilibrium with two bodies B and C, then B and C themselves are in temperature equilibrium with each other". Then they italicize a self-standing paragraph, as if to state their basic postulate:

Any of the physical properties of A which change with the application of heat may be observed and utilised for the measurement of temperature.

They do not themselves here use the phrase "zeroth law of thermodynamics". There are very many statements of these same physical ideas in the physics literature long before this text, in very similar language. What was new here was just the label zeroth law of thermodynamics.

Fowler & Guggenheim (1936/1965) wrote of the zeroth law as follows:

... we introduce the postulate: If two assemblies are each in thermal equilibrium with a third assembly, they are in thermal equilibrium with each other.

They then proposed that

... it may be shown to follow that the condition for thermal equilibrium between several assemblies is the equality of a certain single-valued function of the thermodynamic states of the assemblies, which may be called the temperature t, any one of the assemblies being used as a "thermometer" reading the temperature t on a suitable scale. This postulate of the "Existence of temperature" could with advantage be known as the zeroth law of thermodynamics.

The first sentence of this present article is a version of this statement. It is not explicitly evident in the existence statement of Fowler and Edward A. Guggenheim that temperature refers to a unique attribute of a state of a system, such as is expressed in the idea of the hotness manifold. Also their statement refers explicitly to statistical mechanical assemblies, not explicitly to macroscopic thermodynamically defined systems.