Wednesday 7 February 2007

Hu Jin, we have a problem




I read somewhere that China blames the West for global warming. Fair enough. The problem is that their defence was backed up with some 'per capita' data - highly dubious to say the least, given that there are 1,313,973,713, um, capita lurking there (according to the CIA, anyway). Imagine two towns, one with a population of 10, one with a population of 100. The first town has 1 murder in a year, the second has 8 murders. The second is safer on a per capita basis, despite having 8 times the number of murders. I digress. To its shame, the West (whoever that is) responded with even more slippery data, referring to the 'average increase' in something or other. Mark my words, the Chinese will be bringing in 'normalisation' before long...

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