Wednesday, April 15, 2009

God, global warming, and a congressman from Illinois

Vow! No - no, this is not from the Sharia council in Swat. This is from a US House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment hearing from Mar 25th and the enlightened gentleman is John Shimkus (R) from Illinois (tip richarddawkins.net):

I like his reasoning for denying the dangers of global warming: "man" will not destroy the Earth - because it seems that God will...

And on the benefits of more CO2:

Yes - and also look at Venus. It is so carbon-happy that it doesn't have any idiot Congressmen on its cozy surface.

Enjoy.

4 comments:

hedge said...

You know, raffles and prize giveaways in Canada require a basic knowledge (usually simple geometry) question which must be answered correctly in order to receive your prize. I would like to institute a similar requirement in the US, only for public offices. Are you smarter than a 5th grader? If not, no seat in congress for you!

Salman Hameed said...

That's too tough. No one will with that... :)

Matthew said...

We're deficient in CO2? I had no idea!

We cannot allow a CO2 gap!

(Weee'll meet again... don't know where... don't know wheeeen...)

To be more serious, just out of curiosity, do their numbers regarding CO2 abundances in the thousands of ppm during the Cambrian and Triassic originate from anywhere reputable? Given how little un-metamorphosed rock there is from those eras, I can't imagine those figures are known accurately.

Salman Hameed said...

matt,

"To be more serious, just out of curiosity, do their numbers regarding CO2 abundances in the thousands of ppm during the Cambrian and Triassic originate from anywhere reputable? Given how little un-metamorphosed rock there is from those eras, I can't imagine those figures are known accurately."

I actually don't know. However, there have been times in the past when Co2 values have been very high - but that doesn't mean that it would have been good for humans. Remember the "Snowball Earth" theory. Those severe bouts of ice-ages were followed by extreme heat. Now I forgot the exact process - but it had to do with continents being towards the polar regions (and CO2 sinks were reduced because of snow-cover). This is right before the Cambrian explosion.

I think I have poured everything I remembered from Scientific American articles about a decade ago :)

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