Out of scale
I heard a sound bite yesterday in which President Bush announced his administration’s new air quality standards. In justifying the need for change, he stated that U.S. power plants are putting “tons” of pollution into the air every year.
This is one of the situations in which a politician’s statement is technically correct but completely out of scale with
reality. According to 1999 EPA figures cited in the Public Interest Research Group’s
paper “Lethal Legacy: The Dirty Truth About the
Nation’s Most Polluting Power Plants“, the figures for U.S. power plant annual emissions are as follows:
- SO2: 20.4 million tons
- NOx: 23.3 million tons
- CO2: 6 billion tons
So yes, technically, if you are putting six billion tons of pollution into the air, you are putting tons of pollution into the air. In that spirit, here are some comparable statements in terms of scale distortion:
“Bill Gates has tens of dollars.”
“The Earth is centimeters in circumference at the equator.”
“The human body contains tens of thousands of cells.”
“Light travels hundreds of miles per month.”
“There’s a person on the Earth.”
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