What's the deal with effort levels and associated calorie expenditures?

This is two issues in one and perhaps also a feature request:

On some exercises (like "gardening" I believe) there are guidelines as to what constitutes "easy" vs "medium" vs "hard." They say something like "quickened breath but can still talk." Great, that makes sense, but there are not similar guidelines for things like "Circuit Training." Are they the same guidelines?

This leads into why this is a pressing issue. This again varies between exercises but using "Circuit Training" as an example again, the difference between "hard" and "very hard" is nearly double the calories. Is there a rationale for this?