Savant Idiot

On CSPAN this morning there was a MIT professor, Jason Pontin, espousing on the 10 breakthrough technical developments occurring today ... see: CSPAN Video. He was quite knowledgeable and interesting until he got around to global warming. He then said that there are 40 parts per million of carbon in our atmosphere (correct, if he means carbon dioxide by volume ... actually just carbon would be less). Then he said something that had me shouting at the TV. He said that he would bet all the money in his pocket that, in his lifetime, all this carbon would be removed from our air! This, of course,would mean that we would not have any plants since this carbon dioxide is what they feed on. No plants means no sustenance for animals ... for plants are the basis of all life ... and thus no MIT professor.

And then no one to either pay or collect his idiotic bet.

The End is Near!

The UN is now having a cow ... CO2 levels in our atmosphere have now reached 396 parts per million which is about 0.04% (not even 1/10 of one percent) ... see: EN News Article. Isn't it clever of these blatherskites to express these things in parts per million ... which sounds big ... when the actual real percentage sounds so puny? Given this revelation, the rest of this UN's arm waving about carbon dioxide levels is just so much eye wash when one couples it with the fact that temperatures on Earth have not risen for the last 15 years at least. Why is this? Perhaps there are other forces at work counteracting the effects of CO2? And might we not be getting colder if not for the work of our life-giving friend, carbon dioxide?

I will concede to the UN's numbers ... that there has been an infinitesimally small increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in out atmosphere. So what? The thing that continually amazes me is that the plant life on our planet can convert such a small helping of its primary food into such a lush harvest. Can we not be grateful for that?