Carbon dioxide fairytales

I just watched the documentary “Greedy Lying Bastards” – a movie about how the petroleum-industrial complex has very successfully created doubt regarding the veracity of global warming. I don’t believe they would have been so successful if the religion-industrial complex had not conditioned so many people to doubt science. If you’re interested in that line of thought then click on over to my essay “Codependent irrationalities vs. the economy.” But that is not what I am going to write about this evening.

The movie included a lot of clips of “Climate Change Deniers” saying really dumb stuff – some incredibly so. It was made worse because it was dumbness wrapped around deceit. For example one of the “Climate Change Deniers” was blathering on about how “carbon dioxide is not a pollutant” and how “carbon dioxide is beneficial to plants.”

Well, I’ll tell you what else is beneficial to plants: bull shit. Cow manure makes a most excellent fertilizer. But you don’t want to bury your plants in the stuff. Too much nitrous waste will cause fertilizer burn – even if you don’t bury your plants in cow manure. The thing which “Climate Change Deniers” pretend not to understand is the concept of “too much of a good thing.” This is a simple concept. A little salt enhances the flavor of food. A plate overloaded with salt is an entirely different thing. Folklore carries this further with ritualized “salting of the earth” to symbolize utter annihilation of an enemy and their lands.

Carbon dioxide is an interesting thing. According to the National Climatic Data Center if all carbon dioxide were removed from the atmosphere then the average global temperature would drop from the current fifty-seven degrees Fahrenheit to around zero. But a little goes a long way. Carbon Dioxide accounts for only about 390 parts per million of Earth’s atmosphere. The activities of mankind have increased that from pre-industrial levels of about 270 parts per million.