Benjamin Disraeli once wrote:
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
As an actuary, I’m all too well aware of how statistics can be abused. Consider, for example this bar graph I saw at Willisisms (via QandO):
“Look at this,” some conservative bloggers are crowing. “We were right to not join Kyoto; we’re doing better with our greenhouse gas emissions than Kyoto signatories!”
Well, it’s true…but it’s not the whole story. When you figure that the Kyoto states includes the booming industrial economies in India and China…that 21% figure for Kyoto is rather explainable.
Now, if a chart like this had been prepared and circulated at the time Bush-43 opted out of Kyoto, it would have helped his official reasoning — that the burden was to be shouldered by developed nations, while up-and-coming competitors like India and China got essentially a free pass.
Had that communication also been accompanied by a better, achievable alternative…perhaps some good could have been done, rather than the placing of a fancily-worded document onto a pedestal.
1 response so far ↓
1 An Observer // 4 May 2008 at 12:17 pm
OK, you’re hot about the manipulation of statistics. So how the same consideration for facts?
” at the time Bush-43 opted out of Kyoto”
President Bush didn’t opt out of Kyoto. The United States is a signatory to the protocol and has neither ratified or withdrawn from it. The Senate passed an unanimous sense of the Senate resolution against it more than 3 months before Al Gore even signed it for the United States. President Clinton never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification during his remaining 3 years in office. President Bush stated early on in his first term he also wouldn’t submit the protocol to the Senate for ratification. His reasons were probably not much different than President Clinton’s, just more detailed and specific.
“Had that communication also been accompanied by a better, achievable alternative…perhaps some good could have been done, rather than the placing of a fancily-worded document onto a pedestal.”
A “better, achievable alternative”? By whose definition? Was it really about climate change? Or was it really a game of King-of-the- Hill and the gang was trying to push the U.S. off the top?