Telling the Story With a Chart

I encourage you to read Gail Tverberg’s ingenious analysis of Chinese economic growth at The Energy Collective, told through the prism of energy consumption and the development of energy resources. In it she speculates that the slowdown in China’s economy is a consequence of incipient “peak coal”.

But that’s not the subject of this post. The graph at the top of the page is. Looking at that chart you might come away with the idea that in the last couple of years China has seen bumps in the Chinese consumption of renewables, hydroelectric power, nuclear power, and natural gas.

But it hasn’t. There have been increases in all of those, yes, but no bumps. What there has been is an absolutely enormous bump in Chinese coal production and the consumption of energy derived from burning coal.

What gives that impression is the arrangement of the various energy sources in the chart. If coal had been placed at the top and all of the other sources placed below coal, it would have told a much truer story—a story of increasing energy production of all sources and, until quite recently, gigantic increases in Chinese production of coal.

I’m filing this under “Visualcy” but you could have an entire blog devoted to how to tell stories with your visuals. People believe an enormous number of untrue things because the untruths have been shown to them in a clever way. I’m not suggesting that Ms. Tverberg manipulated that chart deliberately. Not at all. But she couldn’t have told that particular story better if she had.