[Open-climate-science] Two projects

Thu Jun 24 09:53:39 UTC 2010

At 2010-06-24 08:08:10+0000, Lisa Evans writes:

> http://objectgroup.org/uk-energy-use-1970-2007.jpg
> 
> It shows energy usage in the UK. Let me know what you think.

Good.

I thought the caption, or maybe the legend, could be clearer.  It took
me a while to figure out the the presence of "Electricity" as a
category meant that this "energy use" was some sort of end-use metric
(which I guess could be called "consumption") and so wouldn't, for
instance, show trends in nuclear power, or the 1990s dash-to-gas.
Maybe I'm just slow.  Also I imagine, but can't be sure, that this is
some sort of net metric, so (for instance) a million tons of coal used
to generate electricity will be shown at about a third of the size of
a million tons of coal burned in domestic fireplaces.

I think "Gas from solid fuels" should be between "solid fuels" and
"natural gas".  That would make the transition from solid to gas
clearer.

I find cumulative bar charts hard to read (it's difficult for me to
tell, for instance, how the "solid fuel" number changes in the
1990-1994 period).  This problem is exacerbated (for me) by the
circular layout.

It would be better if the image explicitly cited your data source.

But, good.

Nick B