Displays of space junk

I am curious to know the Lie Factor for the drawings on pages 48-49 in Envisioning Information ie some of the space junk is about 50 times as big as the smallest islands in the West Indies! And I know there is a disclaimer about the scale of the drawings at the bottom right of page 49.

My question is whether in this instance it was a good idea to include these drawings to support what I consider are obviously strong personal views – the accompanying text contains many emotive words eg “the trashing of space”, “phenomenal”, “disheartening…images” – when the factual text description of how much space junk there is actually speaks for itself. Because if I can see the Lie Factor is huge then a proponent of future testing of space weapons, or someone who wants to put more junk up into space, surely will and then they could use it to discredit opposing arguments. (BTW I wholeheartedly believe that we should pick up all our trash when we leave a place.)

Have you underestimated the intelligence of the readers? Or was it considered worth doing so in order to get this issue in front of as many (educated and perhaps influential) people as possible?

Yours sincerely,

Jim Moore

PS I love these books!