You're the one giving it an agenda, they're a comparison of two years (with one exception which is a comparison of that decade vs several prior).
As for the endangered species; none of your points actually matter? x_X
On the whole, none of your points actually matter.
To be honest I would've liked Steph to have made her list a bit longer, but there's no agenda behind it, it's just a graphical comparison between the turn of the decade years, mostly on things that people will 'have remembered' (from this year).
Choice of measurements wise, it's mostly just the way the data was presented, no 'bar' is meant to be compared to a different one anyway.
Edit;
Btw, the haiti earthquake was more deadly than the indian ocean tsunami.
