Well the problem is more that `:markdown` auto escapes html chars in code blocks (which it should do) so `&deg;` would become `&amp;deg;`.
When I use pure `haml` I also have to somehow escape the chars. If I use  `:escaped` the result would end up the same as with `:markdown`. I could escape the characters by hand but that would make the code less readable.

I should be able to just use the `°` character but that gets converted to `Â°` by something. :\