[otacust]

I agree. Trust has a very limited place when dealing with data, and I don't think you can extend the benefit of the doubt to sources that are not consistently reliable.

Though in this case, it looks like the U.N. is aggregating self-reported country-level emissions data, so I guess the situation is a little different.

[rurban]

Looking at the data I would also be very sceptical on the other given source, could be politically influenced. The outlier is huge.

But the self-given data looks also suspicious, given the history.

[data_dan_]

The Washington Post did some really great work on generating a variety of comparison datasets: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interacti.... You're right, though -- it's really hard to avoid the issue of political influence in climate data. None of the data can exist in a vacuum; it all has (geo)political implications.

[rurban]

Well, the Wapo is really one of the most untrusted sources ever. It's merely a CIA propaganda outlet.

Scientific research would be a try, but propaganda outlets for sure not.