JISHOU, HUNAN — Capping and taxing rising carbon dioxide levels is a waste of time and money, says Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN). After all, carbon dioxide is a natural component of the air we breath, so why worry?
Bachmann, one of the GOP’s crazier and louder loudmouths, delivered this load of non-scientific blathering on the floor of the House this week:
TRANSCRIPT:
BACHMANN: But people talk about cap and tax and they aren’t sure exactly what we’re talking about. Let’s get back to step one. What is the problem? Why do we have to have this tax in the first place?
It’s about carbon dioxide.
Well, what is carbon dioxide? Let’s just go to a fundamental question.
Carbon dioxide, Mister Speaker, is a natural byproduct of nature. Carbon dioxide is natural. It occurs in Earth. It is a part of the regular lifecycle of Earth. In fact, life on planet Earth can’t even exist without carbon dioxide. So necessary is it to human life, to animal life, to plant life, to the oceans, to the vegetation that’s on the Earth, to the, to the fowl that — that flies in the air, we need to have carbon dioxide as part of the fundamental lifecycle of Earth.
As a matter of fact, carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful!
But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows carbon dioxide is a harmful gas. There isn’t one such study because carbon dioxide is not a harmful gas, it is a harmless gas. Carbon dioxide is natural. It is not harmful. It is part of Earth’s life cycle.
And yet we’re being told that we have to reduce this natural substance and reduce the American standard of living to create an arbitrary reduction in something that is naturally occuring in the earth. Well we’re told the crux of this problem is human activity. It’s humans that are creating more carbon dioxide!
Is that true, or is that false?
Well, carbon dioxide is a natural part of Earth’s atmosphere. The carbon dioxide is perhaps three percent of the total atmosphere that’s in the Earth. So if you take a pie chart, and you have all of Earth’s atmosphere, carbon dioxide is perhaps three percent of that total.
What part of human activity creates carbon dioxide? If carbon dioxide is a negligible gas and it’s only three percent of Earth’s atmosphere, what part is human activity?
Human activity contributes perhaps three percent of the three percent. In other words, human activity is maybe 3 percent contributing to the 3 percent of carbon dioxide that’s in Earth’s atmosphere. It’s so negligible — it’s a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent — that it can hardly be — be quantified.
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Like most pseudo-scientific bullshit, these remarks have a little information that is correct, but the rest is so wrong that I wonder who (if anyone) on her staff did the research. That person apparently failed Bio 101.
Sure, carbon dioxide is a natural part of the atmosphere, but it constitutes 0.04% of the air, not 3%. Sure, it is part of the “lifecycle” of living organisms, but there is a good reason animals (including humans, in case that is not clear) EXHALE CO2 — it can kill us. Even with oxygen present, too high a level of CO2 makes respiration impossible.
Fortunately, plants love CO2 and are happy to scrub it out of the air for us during the day. But even plants would die if CO2 levels get too high.
But lifecycle CO2 is not really what “cap and tax” is all about. If Bachmann knows this, and I cannot be sure she does, her statement that humans “create” carbon dioxide is disingenuous. Bachmann, in her narrow little mind, is confusing exhaling CO2 and releasing CO2. The big problem is not respiratory CO2, but the CO2 that comes from profligately burning fossil fuels for the last century or so. Scientific data (not Bachmann’s strong suit apparently) show that CO2 was 0.03% of the atmosphere a century ago. Now it is 0.04%.
Carbon dioxide is a “greenhouse gas,” meaning that it traps heat from the sun. Rising levels of CO2 correlate with rising overall global temperatures, so sensible people wonder if controlling our CO2 emissions might not be good thing in the long run. I said, “sensible people.”
There was a smackdown of Bachmann in the House floor later that evening, by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), who accused Bachmann for “making things up on the floor of the House”:
My good friend, the gentlelady from Minnesota, doesn’t think there are any problems with the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It’s interesting to listen to her say that something that was naturally occurring simply couldn’t be harmful, ignoring the fact that we have the highest concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for 2/3 of a million years.
The consensus of the scientific community — not people making things up on the floor of the House — is that this has been profoundly influenced by human activity, starting with the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, where we started consuming huge quantities of coal, burning fossil fuels, accelerating that over time. The consensus of the scientific community is that this is in fact a serious problem
This woman was narrowly re-elected last November. I wondering how long it will take before she has a complete meltdown, and has to leave office before her term ends. Bachmann is missing so many fries from her Happy Meal that she could become a rightwing AM radio host.
H/T to The Wonk Room
I believe that the increase in the human population, and the deforestation of the earth in the lase century is probably the biggest cause of the rise in CO2 levels(if this is really occurring). I do not believe everything that “a consensus of the scientific community” tells me. For instance, as a christian, I do not believe in evolution. I see trees being cut down in the rural town that I live in every week. It’s no wonder that there is more CO2 in the air, there aren’t enough trees to remove it anymore.
Delores, you have hit one of the nails on the head here. CO2 levels have risen abnormally in the last century for two main reasons: clearing forestland for crops, pasture and human habitation, and burning of fossil fuels (and the forests). The increasing human population is the ultimate cause, of course.
We’re doing two stupid things at once. Burning fossil fuels at ever increasing rates and cutting down the trees that could remove the excess CO2.
Yes, CO2 levels are really increasing, and if our current behavior continues, there is no reason to doubt CO2 levels will continue to rise. As the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere rises, more infrared radiation is trapped (the greenhouse effect), and we have “global warming.”
There is other evidence, too. The world’s glaciers are receding (melting), the polar ice is melting, and sea levels are gradually rising.
It is good to be a skeptic, so questioning the consensus of scientists is not a bad thing. But if 99 people in a room of 100 yell “fire!” should the 100th person question their judgment?
And since you raised the subject, being a Christian does not mean you must reject evolution. If you believe that it does, then you are not as skeptical as you suggest. It is possible to question the consensus of your religious community, too, you know.
I came across this website by chance and after browsing the opinions decided to put in my two cents worth. I have to say first that back in the 1990′s I was a believer. But I began to see cracks in the story and as I dug into the facts it became apparent that it didn’t add up.
With all due respect to the opinions above I always get a bit anxious when people use general terms and not numbers and quantities. Someone said that an opinion without facts is a prejudice.
Here are some numbers:
A recent poll showed that 46% of earth-science scientists researching in the area of climate and ocean levels are global warming skeptics. About 15% are unsure, which leaves 39% global warming proponents. Of 9 earth scientists at the university in my home town, 6 are skeptics. Where is the concensus everyone talks about? These figures are from an Australian university conducted poll.
Of the 370 parts per million that CO2 makes up of the atmosphere what is the contribution from mankind? It’s 11 ppm or about 3% of total CO2 (US Dept of Energy figures). Most CO2 (97%) is of natural origins and we can’t do anything about it.
What is the most powerful greenhouse gas? You may be surprised to know it is H2O (water vapour) which contibutes 95% of greenhouse warming of the planet. Curiously, this is seldom mentioned when people talk about global warming.
So, let’s say 5% of global warming is due to CO2 (actually it’s less because we are ignoring methane and a few other gases), and remember that only 3% of total CO2 is man-made, then the total contibution to global warming by mankind is a around 0.2 percent.
You may also be surprised to know that the earths atmosphere has been cooling slightly since around 2001. We know this from radiosonde (weather balloons) and satellite data. You can check this assertion if you care to. This is a big problem for the global warming greenhouse theory because that theory prdicts that the atmosphere should be warming up at certain altitudes and it’s not.
For these and a hundred other reasons I am now skeptical about man-made global warming.
But has the world warmed up? Yes, from about 1970 to 2001 it did warm a little. Prior to that, from about 1945 to 1970 it had been cooling. You may be interested to know that there were several years between 1900 and 1945 that were hotter than any year we have had between 1995 and the present. The world is probably for the next decade more likely to cool than it is to warm.
Now people are saying we can’t afford to wait for proof that man-made global warming is real – that we must act now. But I can tell you, because I have worked in many third world countries over the last 25 years, that the policies that are being proposed will lead to misery for millions of people and ecological disaster in those countries. For example, it was trendy to move towards bio-fuel. This caused a spike up in the price of maize and 300 million people, who had been on the borderline, suddenly couldn’t afford to eat. In Indonesia, the clearing of rainforest accelerated to make way for palm-oil plantations that can be used to make fuel.
It’s OK for us in developed countries. We live in comfort and poverty for us means not being able to afford a new car this year. The decisions we make about carbon dioxide won’t affect us much (maybe set our standard of living back 10 years), but what is being proposed will kill millions of people in the third world.
If you say “well, some people may have to die so that we can save the planet” I think you may find others have said that before and you can read their words in the transcripts from the Neurmeberg War Crimes Trials.
We may not agree on Global Warming but I ask you to consider the effects of going off half-cocked and implementing policy before we know for absolute sure what the truth is.