How is that misleading Y-axes? The intervals are same, only thing that will be different is the resolution, and going into that fine resolution amplifies the difference. I will not say it as misleading in a slightest bit.
The Y-axis should've started at 0 watts, not at (a rather arbitrary) 18 watts.
Look at the "Flash Video" and "HTML5 Video" bars in the original chart. The blue IE bars are roughly half the size of the green Chrome bars, which might lead you to believe that IE only consumes roughly half of the energy that Chrome consumes in those tests. But as the numbers show, the difference isn't nearly that great.
Starting the Y-axis at 18 watts only serves to make IE's advantage over the other browsers look greater than it actually is.
The y-axis should have kept the baselines that the study authors used in their graphs (14.7W for laptops, 37.8W for desktops), since those starting points are what gives you the power draw due to the browser. What the Microsoft blog did by moving the baselines up from there was unethical, but having the chart show power consumption relative to idle instead of powered down is perfectly reasonable.
