re: #993 Pythagoras

Wow. The US is number 9 on that list (and Qatar has over double our per capita CO2 emissions). Yes, the graphic is misleading.

On top of that they do the classic “how to lie with statistics” trick of using of growing solid figures by the linear dimension in proportion to the stat. In this case a country with twice the emissions gets a balloon that’s twice as big in radius and 4 (or 8) times as big in perception. That’s way over the top.

I’ll agree that’s a particularly misleading graphic. And unnecessarily so.

Some additional tidbits. Qatar is clearly far and a way the worst per capita producer. On the other hand it doesn’t have that big a population, and is 60th over all in CO2 total production - with 0.8% of the US’s production. It also doesn’t surprise me that the Oil states - lousy with the petroleum resource - are the most profligate per-capita producers, followed by a couple islands and Luxembourg. US’s 9th place on that list really doesn’t do us much credit.