Colour gradient maps are still arbitrary. Colouring 24 degrees red isn’t science, it’s visual rhetoric. There’s nothing red about 24 degrees. You can’t deny that we’ve moved from “record breaking” to “record obliterating” and “scientists are staggered” when a temperature record is broken by less than 1 degree Celsius. Weather reporting of late, just like the news, has been more focused on entertaining viewers than merely conveying information. Pointing this out could make you a climate-change denier, or maybe, notwithstanding the reality of climate change, Its just acknowledging that someone’s trying to sell you something.

Now I’ll sit back and count the seconds before some zealot accuses me of being “unhinged” or a “conspiracy theorist” or “dangerous” or a “denier” of some sort for holding this very reasonable opinion about a map.