Originally Posted by Si modo

This is your explanation why they are dishonest numbers?

Originally Posted by TSGracchus

I can't remember where I saw this, but somebody had a good article on this very subject, and she drew an analogy with someone who had a weight problem. He goes to his doctor one day and he weighs 225 pounds. He goes back six months later and he weighs 250 pounds; that's an 11% increase. He goes back six months after that, and he weighs 275 pounds. That's only a 10% increase! We've slowed the rate of gaining weight!

But the guy's still a fattie, isn't he? And there's another little tidbit buried in that math. Note that both the first 11% increase and the second 10% increase represent the same actual amount of weight: 25 pounds in each case. Add a certain amount to a big number and it represents a smaller percent increase than adding the same amount to a smaller number. Which is one reason why using "percent of increase" in greenhouse gases is inherently deceptive.

And I would also say that this explains why the U.S. emissions have increased less, measured in this deceptive way, than other countries'. We were emitting much more to start with, and therefore the increase we had represents a smaller percentage of this larger whole than that of another country that started with less.