Congressman Responds to Michele Bachmann's CO2 Nonsense

PZ Myers fisks Bachmann's nonsense here. Minnesota once again embarrassed by Michele Bachman Category: Politics Posted on: April 25, 2009 11:15 AM, by PZ Myers Michele Bachmann gave a science lecture to congress. As you might imagine, this was a grand spectacle of stupidity. ***snip**** She repeats over and over that CO2 is a natural gas. Yes, we know…no one is claiming otherwise. (Also, what would an "unnatural" gas be, anyway?) Nitrogen is also a natural substance, it helps plants grow, and we produce perfectly natural nitrogenous materials from our bodies — so does that mean that we should stop sewer services and allow everyone to wallow in their poop? She claims that not one study has ever been produced to show that CO2 is harmful, and she goes further to claim that CO2 is a harmless gas. We could correct that in just a few minutes: give me a large tank of CO2 and a small room containing Michele Bachmann, and we'll give her a personal experience. The atmosphere is 3% CO2? Is she really that ignorant? It's more like 0.03%. And again, no one is arguing that CO2 is evil — it's that its concentration has distinct effects on the temperature of the planet, and that concentration is changing. I apologize, world. We'll try harder to get this loon out of office at the next election. Until then, could you all either just ignore her, or point and laugh? From the comments: Posted by: BobH | April 25, 2009 11:34 AM I tried, PZ; I honestly tried, but I just can't watch or listen to more than about a minute of this video. What the heck motivates the scientifically illiterate to stand in front of a microphone and pretend to sound intelligent by talking about things they simply know nothing about? It's embarrassing enough to live in Florida, given our history in trying to push religion into K-12 science classes - I can't imagine what the folks in Minnesota must go through every day with this dingbat as a representative.