Rep. Shimkus: Capping CO2 emissions will take away too much ‘plant food from the atmosphere

[Are_grits_groceries]

Progress Illinois notes that earlier this week at a House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) tried to argue that the United States doesn’t need a cap-and-trade system to limit CO2 emissions in the atmosphere. (In the past, he has called cap and trade “a shell game to hide the cost from the ultimate person who is going to pay.”) Here is Shimkus’s newest theory:

SHIMKUS: It’s plant food. … So if we decrease the use of carbon dioxide, are we not taking away plant food from the atmosphere? … So all our good intentions could be for naught. In fact, we could be doing just the opposite of what the people who want to save the world are saying.

Watch it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdHjhJTf6RE

Of course, as the National Wildlife Fund points out, the excessive burning of fossil fuels has not been good for Earth’s plant life at all. Matt Yglesias adds, “The point about our CO2 emissions is that the rate at which fossil fuel use puts new carbon into the atmosphere greatly exceeds the rate at which plants remove it. The aim is not to eliminate the CO2 from the atmosphere but to stabilize the amount of CO2, which means curtailing emissions to a level much closer to the rate at which plants consume it.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/28/shimkus-plant-food/#comments

Okay then! Gonna have to rewrite the ENTIRE science curriculum to say that no CO2 emissions should be stopped.

[w4rma]

1. Is insanity a requirement for acceptance into the Republican Party? I think it is. (nt)

[adamuu]

2. wow. unbelievable. n/t

[Schema Thing]

3. too.stupid.forlife.

[global1]

5. What Do You Expect From A Guy That Passes Out Baseball Cards.....

with him as the baseball player?

[billyoc]

4. It's got what plants crave!

:rofl:

[SalmonChantedEvening]

6. Aspirin please.

Just reading the stupid hurts my head.

[annabanana]

7. "Won't somebody think of the saplings?!?"

teh stoopid!!1!!

it burns. .

[Turbineguy]

8. Another guy

to whom the expression "why pay more?" is too intellectual.

[Canuckistanian]

9. OMG, how did nature ever survive without us humans?

According to them, we provide much-needed warmth for Caribou by building oil pipelines and prevent forest fires by "clearing flammable brush"

Now, we make "plant food" merely by driving around in Hummers!

Nature must think we're teh awesome.

[Laelth]

10. You have got to be kidding!

Oh, no, wait. It's a Republican speaking. Outright distortions are the norm. Truth and sanity are not required. I forgot.

:eyes:

:dem:

-Laelth


Edit:Laelth--sloppy proofreading.

[tavalon]

11. Teh stupid. It hurts so much to see such stupid trying to run our country

Ouch.