Political Irony

Here is an amazing video of Congressman John Shimkus (R-Illinois) at a hearing on climate change (note that they don’t call it global warming anymore). Shimkus reads from the bible in order to justify his claim that global warming is false, because God promised to never ever destroy the earth ever again. He also claims that carbon emissions are not bad, because carbon dioxide is “plant food”. Watch it:

My favorite response is from biologist PZ Myers:

Could one of you voters out there in Illinois take Shimkus aside and explain to him with short, simple words and short, simple sentences that global warming isn’t going to destroy the world? It’s not an argument anyone is making. It could very well make the world more tropical, and it could be of some advantage to certain kinds of plants.

However, please note: human beings aren’t plants (well, most of us, anyway — John Shimkus does seem to share some similarities with root vegetables). The concern with global warming is change that will cause economic disruption and environmental disturbances and damage to places we like… like cities. Honestly, if nations collapse, we know that algae will still thrive. We just happen to generally take the side of humanity.

On a more serious note, despire Shimkus’ claims, there is good evidence that rising CO2 and temperature levels are doing lots of damage to plant life, by increasing the number and severity of wildfires. In addition, Shimkus ignores the fact that we are currently spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere faster than plants can consume it.