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Global warming isn't a campfire ghost story.
Dave Weigel heard Rick Santorum speak in Davison, Michigan, over the weekend, and apparently this was one of the Republican's "blockbuster" lines:
"CO2 is a pollutant? Tell that to the plants."
Santorum liked this phrasing so much, he apparently used it three times. (Either that, or Dave accidentally hit "paste" a little too often.)
In either case, the line comes up relatively frequently on the right. In 2010, a Republican senator argued, in all seriousness, "Without carbon, my trees would die."
In 2009, Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) explained during a House committee hearing that it would be wrong to reduce carbon emissions because the pollution is "plant food." Shimkus rhetorically asked his colleagues, "[I]f we decrease the use of carbon dioxide, are we not taking away plant food from the atmosphere?"
Last year, the House Republican conference made Shimkus the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Environment and Economy. They are not without a sense of humor.
It's probably worth pausing from time to time to consider this on the merits, in case anyone is inclined to take the right's rhetoric seriously.
We're currently pumping about 90 million tons of carbon emissions into the air every day. This creates the conditions that lead to global warming, and the seriousness of the crisis continues to get worse.
The plants Rick Santorum is encouraging us to talk to do not need 90 million tons of carbon to survive. Or put another way, the fact that plants use carbon does not make it okay when we have too much carbon pollution.
The crisis is real, and the need for a grown-up debate is overwhelming. We need policymakers who are up for the task, not policymakers who think "Tell that to the plants" is a clever policy observation.
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"The crisis is real, and the need for a grown-up debate is overwhelming."
What we really need are intelligent adults, that understand "science" isn't a theory. learning shouldn't be reduced to "a joke" and that everything worth knowing about a subject cannot and should not be reduced to a bumper sticker quote!!
I completely agree!
Nicely said!
Well Said! Thank you!!!
Perhaps Frothy needs to take a real science class before speaking on matters of science. Actually, sitting in with a second grade class for a day of teaching, including the science unit, should do the trick here.
Maybe Santorum should be introduced to a krynoid or vervoid if he values the opinions of plants so much.
If we were not denuding the planet of trees, and encouraging overpopulation, the extra CO2 would be less problematic, but of course Santorum calls caring for earth a false theology.
"Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do." --
Ronald Reagan, 1981
Whoops! Sorry, Don; my comment using the same Reagan quote went up before I had a chance to see yours.
S'alright Charlie. It cannot be overstated. Great minds..., etc.
If Christ had as much success with "Love your neighbor...; Let he who is without sin...; and Easier for a camel..." the world would be such a different place.
But let absolute drivel fall from the lips of a third rate actor and it will live forever.
Look who signed it. Another Republican
Reagan died from Alzheimers. After closing all the public health care facilities in California that care for people with Alzheimer's. And after firing air traffic controllers complaining about obsolete/unsafe WW II radar equipment being used in the 1980s.
Reagan most definitely had Alzheimers while in office.
Trees make air pollution like republicans make sense.
Crackhead Awards; Trees make air pollution like republicans make sense.
Well said.
Santorum's line is right in keeping with Ronald Reagan who once claimed that "trees pollute more than cars" in arguing for less climate regulation.
I've decided that Republican campaigns are a new circle of living hell for Dante to add to his list. How stupid does one have to be to run for office as part of the GOP?
Right now, take your pick Santorum, Romney, Newster (aka Chucky), Paul - Sister Sarah could always try throwing her hat back into the ring.....Be careful what you ask for......Hahahahahaha
The one and only way to fix this is with a Pollution Added Tax that zaps all imports that haven't already paid it in the country of origin.
The price for that will be a shift from taxing all business income to a tax that basically hits companies that will pass the costs to the poor.
Are you prepared to live with shifting the tax burden from Bain to pain on the poor?
Proportionately fewer poor and working poor own cars than those people with higher incomes who usually own at least one and often multiple cars - especially the very rich like Romney's wife and her two Cadillacs which is part of the family's fleet. Likewise, the poor take fewer airplane trips so an emissions tax in the US (such as exists in Europe) won't hit them, either.
Rather than trading carbon credits, we'd all be better off if the money collected from pollutors would be used to fund mass transit in towns and cities so people did not need to rely on cars as much.
Don't forget Rep. Alla West who owns a HUMMER.
I will agree that carbon credits are not that great of an idea. People shouldn't be able to 'pay off' the emissions they're putting into the environment. Either you're polluting or you're not. There isn't really a grey area here. Either it does damage in the amounts that you're putting it out or it doesn't. If it does no amount of offsetting will make up for the damage done.
Somebody needs to explain to him there is supposed to be a balance. Oxygen and CO2 in balance, until people start emitting all these carbon emissions, killing off miles and miles of rainforest (that actually use CO2) by BURNING them down to plant crops. The balance that the earth has had for billions of years is getting out of balance. Of course, ricky doesn't believe that the earth has had that balance for billions of years, he believes that God put the CO2 and oxygen here for OUR use, to use up as we wish.
The standard response to carbon taxes is to rebate them to everyone in the country on a per-capita basis. The less bloodthirsty advice it being tax-exempt, the more redistributive want it taxed as regular income.
Why is Santorum always illuminated from below like Satan?
Ohhh ... now I get it.
Carbon emissions ,)
From Brimstone and He11fire.
Gotta put an end to that to clean up the environment.
Who in the h double hockey sticks does he think he is talking to?
He knows exactly who he's talking to - idiots who deny all science in favor of Stone Age superstitions.
He's appealing to the anti-intellectuals. Unfortunately, that's a very large group.
Plants need carbon to survive. Therefore, CO2 emissions are not pollutant.
People need water and air to survive. Therefore, Hurricane Katrina wasn't deadly.
Logic rules.
ROTFL.....Thank you.....
Bazinga!
This made my afternoon -- thank you.
I wonder if Santorum would be willing to spend an hour in a chamber full of CO2 to prove that it's not a pollutant. If he really believed, he would!
Hey Redshift, I'd be willing to let him have one plant too. <smile>
When there are no people he will be president of the plant kingdom. He has made a pretty good start already. He has the brain of a vegetable.
C'mon why are you mad at vegetables?!?
Ahhh! King of the plant kingdom.
I see Santorum more as the queen of the planet kingdom.
Health effects from CO2 poisoning begin at 1,000ppm. City air now has about half the toxic level due to increased carbon emission.
CO2 concentrations is causing premature deaths due to inversion layers that concentrate pollutants.
Human beings are not plants? We die when that happens?
Captain Dangerous For President!!!
Go Santorum!!! Kill em all and let got sort em out.
That's a good point. The current concentration of 390 ppm is taken from locations isolated from human activity, such as Mauna Kea and Antarctica. I wouldn't be surprised if the concentration is closer to 500 ppm in at least the larger urban areas.
Urban air often reaches 600ppm by 5PM depending upon wind speed. Building air often has twice the outside concentration of CO2 due to human respiration.
CO2 poisoning begins at about 2,000ppm for healthy individuals.
Building air can go above 2,000ppm when wind stops because of an inversion layer.
That can kill people with illnesses, like asthma or anemia.
There is nothing in place to put out emergency broadcast messages when CO2 rises above 1,000ppm.
Of course not. Wouldn't want to alarm anyone and disrupt valuable work when people start gasping, turning blue, and dying suddenly while wealthy "eccentrics" go around with oxygen tanks.
He should get together with Romney. Make sure he is trimming trees so they are the right height. GOP carbon management program...
Based on the CO2 pollution figures, I would advise not hacking off any tree limbs!
scarier still is that he has a room full of people who will believe and then vote for him..again and again..
Too bad we're also deforesting the planet. You know, cutting down the trees and destroying very vegetation that converts CO2 into glucose and O2 during photosynthesis.
Wow, these people are just stupid! I think they may be poster children for what is wrong with private education!!!! As a retired teacher (public school), I just couldn't resist.
Be afraid, people. Be very afraid!
Acid rain anyone? I find this line of theirs almost too childish for any child. Too simply break it down to the carbon cycle without considering all other factors is crazy.
My own small concern is just as simple minded though. With that much oxygen fixed to carbon are we actually reducing free oxygen in the air and heading into more and more resiratory problems that are in fact due to suffocation?(I have papers saying I'm nuts)
Scribble my name in next to yours. Remember ozone? Smog? During the summer here in Tulsa we get ozone alerts. Let me take a wild guess...CO2 sits on top of ozone. Worse if ozone sits on top of CO2. Hypoxia hurts. <Geek Tourrettes ALERT> That is why naked mole rats don't feel pain. Its an adaptation to a CO2 rich envirenment.
I have figure it all out! It is clear now. Republicans/ Conservatives are people who have been taken over by the pod people from invasion of the body snatchers and would, as plants, thrive in a warm, carbon rich environment. It makes sense now. And here I thought they were just morons.
You know the thing you see in cartoons, where someone says something so stupid it actually hurts you when you hear it, and it gives you a bloody nose.
That's it, that's this whole election.
I need a tissue.
A box of them please!
This entire Rep. fiasco is worse than a freeway pile up. More and more stupid comments just keep crashing on each other with no end in sight!
Yeah Republicans, you continue to be stupid
This is all in keeping with the GOP agenda of keeping Americans dumb and stupid. Remember in history how the Catholic church was against educating the masses, because knowledge is power. And if one is educated, he/she is able to question authority and thus the powerful have less power and influence. That's why Santorum is against everyone getting a college education. Stupid people are not a threat to the GOP. This man and the GOP are a danger to the middle class.
"If we decrease the use of Rhetoric and Junk Science, are we not taking away Conservative food from the atmosphere?"
check out "Superfreakonomics" by Leavitt and Dubner for a great explanation of greenhouse gasses: the following trace gases contribute to the greenhouse effect:
60% water vapor
20% (CO2)
Santorum needs to go back for a refresher course. his MBA is waaaaaayyyy outdated."
Don Quixokie Reagan had Alzheimer's don`t get your science from what he said 30 years ago I will not go into much about this topic really because with the kind of star the sun is one day the human race will be forced off this world or it life will no longer even be a possibility. Now the concept the sun will expand to over 500 times its size before it burns out is a very long time away but this one day will happen and then what for humanity, I guess life beyond this solar system if not no more mankind. ponder this a bit will you it is from Stephen hawkin
Hey! I like warm weather myself, so listen to these right wingers. Wait a minute I live near the coast(as does most of the country)
A couple of decades and it will be UNDER the coast.
Right.....in a couple of decades we'll all be underwater. That's why we have a multitude of learned liberals placing their coastal mansions on the property market.
That's why Al Gore purchased his super yacht, sorry, his eco-friendly super yacht. Is Al Gore a 1%er?
I love the argument - if Winter is too mild - Global Warming, If Winter is too cold - Global warming - Classic!
And in response to the first post by "Zora Renee", actually, a heavy percentage of science is still only theory.
Higher Global temperatures means more water saturates the atmosphere, super charging weather events, kicking up the tempo of el Nino and La Nina, and more moisture in the atmosphere means heavier snow falls and blizzards - "Snowmageddon" last year; eventually shutting down weather moderating jet streams. Causing unseasonable cooling in some areas.
Snowmageddon, the truly hellish summer we just had, Katrina wasn't that long ago either. This is the new normal. Insurance companies are adjusting themselve to the new climate paradigm. That means it is real.
Here's how to know when you're argument is stupid:
If we cut back on carbon my plant will starve
Replace carbon w/ cookies and my plant w/ I
If we cut back on cookies I will starve