Blarney: Dave, you still haven’t told me why you think Lisa P. Jackson was stupid to call carbon dioxide a pollutant. After all, the UN has stated that it definitely causes global warm… Climate Change. Humans are to blame.
Dave: Blarney, have you ever heard of photosynthesis?
Blarney: Is that something like using Photo Shop to make up phony pictures?
Dave: Good parsing of the word, but no. Photosynthesis is the process in which plants convert carbon dioxide and water to make glucose. In the process, the plants release oxygen into the air.
Blarney: Really? You mean carbon dioxide is food for plants?
Dave: Yes. I forgot you attended liberal arts schools. The lack of plants to generate oxygen is one of the concerns about deforestation.
Blarney: I thought you were a conservative. Why are you worried about the planet? Aren’t you one of the Global Warm… - I mean Climate Change – deniers?
Dave: Wow. No sane person denies climate change, Blarney. We only deny that man is causing it.
Blarney: Oh.
Dave: See, that is one of the problems in talking with you. You drop out significant words, like “man-made” or “anthropogenic” when calling us “deniers”.
Blarney: Well…
Dave: And when you were confronted with the fact that the earth is actually cooling, you switched from “global warming” to “climate change”.
Blarney: That’s because you might get by with denying global warming, but you would be an idiot to deny climate change.
Dave: Indeed. And. As I said, nobody does deny climate change. We simply point out that it will happen with or without man’s activities.
Blarney: Don’t you care about the environment?
Dave: There you go again. We can be all for clean air and water without getting hysterical about some mythological man-made climate catastrophe.
Blarney: Well, you don’t have to resort to name-calling.
Dave: What?!? Never mind. Plants take the carbon dioxide from the air and use it along with light and water to make glucose. In the process they release oxygen back into the air.
Blarney: OK. So plants clean up the pollution.
Dave: No, Blarney, that isn’t my point. Humans breathe in the oxygen and use it in a reverse process to extract the sugar from foods and release carbon dioxide back into the air.
Blarney: So I’m polluting the atmosphere just by breathing?
Dave: One more time. Carbon dioxide is NECESSARY for the plants. In fact, the richer the atmosphere is in carbon dioxide, the better the plants do.
Blarney: How can a pollutant be good for plants?
Dave: I think you are almost getting it. That’s my point.
3 comments:
"We can be all for clean air and water without getting hysterical about some mythological man-made climate catastrophe."
That's a point that seems nearly impossible to get across to the "true believer" types...although Lord knows I've tried. *Sigh*
In fact plants are "starved" for CO2 right now. That's why horticulturists enrich the atmosphere inside their greenhouses with excess CO2. If, by some new technology, man were to reduce the atmospheric CO2 by 50%... most plant life on earth would die. Idiots.
camojack:
Me too.
Hawkeye:
It's just amazing how little actual science these guys know. and yet they pull the wool over other people's eyes. Call it the dumbing down of the educational system.
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