Representative Michelle Bachmann (R-MN): Carbon Dioxide is Good for You

(2009 July blog post)

! Preliminary ! More dirty laundry may be added to this post.

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On Friday, April 24, 2009, Representative Michelle Bachmann (Republican-Minnesota) had the following to say on the House floor : "Carbon dioxide, Mister Speaker, is a natural byproduct of nature. Carbon dioxide is natural. It occurs in Earth. It is a part of the regular lifecycle of Earth. In fact, life on planet Earth can't even exist without carbon dioxide. So necessary is it to human life, to animal life, to plant life, to the oceans, to the vegetation that's on the Earth, to the, to the fowl that -- that flies in the air, we need to have carbon dioxide as part of the fundamental lifecycle of Earth." And she went on and on. I lived for many years in Iowa and grew to respect the intelligence of most mid-westerners, including those from Minnesota. However, now I have to wonder about Minnesota. How could they elect someone like this to represent them in Congress? Although it is true that plant life (vegetation) takes in carbon dioxide (CO2) as a 'food', I find it shocking that she apparently believes that humans, animals, and fowl need carbon dioxide as an essential element. She talks about it as if it were oxygen.

I saw Senator Bachmann on TV saying that CO2 is a natural substance and hence harmless. She said there is no scientific evidence that CO2 is harmful. Well, I have a suggestion. She can quickly test whether CO2 is harmless by sealing a plastic bag over her head and breathing into in for about 5 minutes, more or less. Apparently, she has never heard of warnings on plastic bags --- warning to not put the bag over your head and warning to not let children play with them. The plastic bag manufacturers should be pleased. Now they don't have to spend money putting those warnings on the bags any more. If she has heard of those warnings, she apparently does not understand that the reason for those warnings is that humans exhale CO2 as a waste product --- and THAT waste product kills - by suffocation. How do people that dumb get elected to Congress? Minnesota, one of your villages is missing its idiot. Or is it more a question of greed? Is she saying these things because of the money she gets from the coal industry and other allied interests? Either way, she is another blight on Congress --- one that stands out among the other blights --- and that is saying something, considering the magnitude of blighting going on in those halls nowadays. She just doesn't seem to get that the issue is not that there is CO2 in the atmosphere, but the PROPORTION of CO2 to O2 (oxygen). That proportion is increasing --- and the rate of increase has accelerated in the past 50 years or so. See graphs below. One human waste product down. Two more to go. What's she going to say next? Urine is good for you. Feces are good for you. That sure would save a lot of money being spent on sewage treatment plants, if the taxpayers could be convinced of that.

To follow her logic further : Smoke is natural, so it is good for you. Tars and nicotine are natural, so they are good for you. (Cha-ching. The tobacco industry would love those statements and will probably pay you handsomely for saying so on the House floor and in public interviews, Michelle.) Nuclear radiation is natural, so it is good for you. (There's another check from the energy industry for you, Michelle.) Oh, what the heck. Let's not hold back. Let's take her logic to further logical conclusions : Swine flu is natural, so it is good for you. The black plague is natural, so it is good for you. Ebola is natural, so it is good for you. Let's go astronomical : Solar flares are natural, so they are good for you. Meteors are natural, so a meteor collision would be good for you. Galaxy collisions are natural, so a galaxy colliding with our Milky Way galaxy would be good for you. Black holes are natural, so to be sucked into one would be good for you. Since her logic is so similar to theirs, no doubt if she had run her speech by Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Rupert Murdoch, and Rush Limbaugh, they would have all told her to "go for it". I expect to see "Carbon dioxide is good for you" added to the Republican platform at its next national convention, along with "level the mountain tops" "who needs polar bears" "more roads for clear-cutters" "fraud is free enterprise too"

Right about the time of Rep. Bachmann's CO2 statement, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania switched his affiliation from the Republican party to the Democratic party. I figure there may be a connection. After months of outlandish statements, in public, by various 'representatives' of the Republican party, this statement by Michelle Bachmann may have been the straw that broke the Senator's back. Palin-Bachmann in 2012!! (joke)

These two graphs (above and below) indicate that CO2 in the atmosphere is definitely increasing in the past hundred years. AND ... the rate of growth in concentration seems to be accelerating ... along with human population growth. Since the main 'adders' of CO2 on earth are man's burning of wood and fossil fuels (and animals breathing) --- and the main subtracter of CO2 is incorporation by plants (and perhaps some loss into outer space, which was always occurring), it appears that main causes of the continuing increase are due to man : burning (and breathing) cutting down plants (forest harvesting, plowing up prairies, etc.) The exploding world population has led to a significant increase in these actions. This does not bode well for the future --- unless we can develop gills that utilize CO2, like the ones that Ms. Bachmann seems to claim she has.

This is essentially a close-up view of the tail of the graph above.

Bottom of blog page Michelle Bachmann: Carbon Dioxide is Good for You. To return to a previously visited web page location, click on the Back button of your web browser, a sufficient number of times. OR, use the History-list option of your web browser. OR ... < Return to Top of Page, above. > < Return to Blog menu. > < Return to Home page. > Or you can scroll up, to the top of this page. Posted 2009 Jul 28. Changed, to facilitate better printing, 2009 Aug 17.

I breathe CO2, and exhale oxygen.

The devil (Bush) kissing the devil (Bachmann).