Gail,

I agree completely that part of our job is to make it easier for others (media, policy makers, general public) to access the raw data, generate graphics and come to their own conclusions about what has happened in the past, what is happening today and what is likely to happen in the future.

Removing the hurdles to working with the raw data is the entire premise behind the Energy Export Databrowser. The goal is to make generation of high quality data graphics as easy as possible. Chris Nelder recently used several of these graphics in his The Impending Oil Export Crisis article. If you haven't looked at the databrowser since Robert Rapier's article last month you should have another view. The user interface has been updated and it now includes the coal, oil and gas worksheets from the 2008 version of BP's Statistical Review.

And I've tried to make access to the raw data as easy as possible. The Statistical Review comes as an Excel workbook with various inconsistencies that have been cleaned up and converted to ASCII CSV that anyone can use. These files are available from the data page linked from the databrowser.

I have focussed on the historical data from the Statistical Review rather than projected output but I think the same approach would be useful for any of the datasets that we want the media to make use of. The basic principles are:

• clean up the source data and make it available in an easy-to-use format
• create good datagraphics and make them easily accessible
• encourage exploration of the data

If we are going to move away from preaching to the choir we need to empower those disinclined to hear our message with tools that will allow them to educate themselves. The data really do tell a pretty interesting story all on their own.

Happy Exploring!

-- Jon