At today’s House Energy and Power Subcommittee hearing on EPA’s job killing greenhouse gas regulations, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) asked panel witness Gina McCarthy — chief of EPA’s air programs, including the agency’s greenhouse gas regulations — whether she had any idea of what the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide is, SHE ADMITTED THAT SHE DID NOT!
Simple question is: why are we shocked? With a surname as hers, ignorance it should be expected. Next thing, she’ll be telling us Carbon Dioxide is red!
And her ignorance certainly didn’t get in the way of her becoming the boss two years later.
I am not sure if McCarthy is that ignorant but probably so. Even if she had the %’s spot on she would still pursue the administrations agenda.
After all, what did William Ruckelshaus know when he banned DDT in 1972? He had already ordered studies in 1971 and decided against a ban. Then a year later he ordered one after admitting he had not attended any of the hearings or read the reports.
This is politics at its finest. Most countries soon followed suit and more than 100 million persons, mostly pregnant women and young children have died unnecessarily since.
When I was working on my SCAF patent application I read that the orange and corn harvests were up 35% in the last decade. That is exactly the increase in CO2 in that time! Could there be any correlation?
Take the Vostok ice core studies that show the change in temperature and CO2. Put a straight edge horizontally. As you from left to right, moving ahead in time, you should encounter a blue (CO2)line before a red (temp.) to show CO2 causes it to rise. Exactly the opposite is the case. The biome increases, more stuff grows and dies, more CO2 appears. To solve the “problem” kill all the damn trees and flowers!
The shock is not that she is ignorant of the most basic facts relevant to her job duties. The shock is that she would admit to her ignorance.
James Hanson, should be removed from his position for manipulating data in the surface temperature record. (“Normalizing” I think he calls it). The man is an idiot, and a threat to humanity.
After McCarthy says she has no idea, Barton asks (approximately), “if I were to say it was about 380 parts per billion (sic), would you accept that as being in the ballpark,” and she agrees!
The answer is “I’m not sure, but it’s obviously much higher in D.C. thanks to all the politicians.”
The tragedy here is that EPA has lost one of it’s duties to protect us from poisons. DUH !!! CO 2 is not one of them, yet focus on it & by the pigeonhole principal, you lose focus on those that are real. Maybe pigeonbrains @ work???
The much more significant H2O “greenhouse gas” atmospheric variation is orders of magnitude greater than all of the feared CO2, let alone its proportion. These people are preposterous. Morons or thieves.
Michael Crichton’s ” State of Fear”, I believe.
One of his best books. Really blasts the environmental movement and corrupt organizations that profit from it while stealing from everyone else.
Oh come on! Be nice to the girl! She just wants to be boss of something.
Hey guys, I was merely pointing out that oxygen is about 21% and C02 1/3 of 1%, a lot less. I stand corrected on the proper usage of “order of magnitude”, realizing it is in fact related to “power.” (to be an order of magnitude greater is to be 10 times as large). Math rusty, usage ;loose.
Aw shucks, I liked it Goodskpr’s way better. We’re in the Land of great lies, aka Science, anyway.
Right on: See my google-doc which includes references to recent skeptic books and (some of the) websites.
http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddrj9jjs_0fsv8n9gw
goodskpr, back to remedial math for you – an order of magnitude usually refers to a factor of 10, and disregards smaller differences.
Take CO2 at 0.036 %, move the decimal point three to the right – 3 orders of magnitude, you get 36%. Oxygen is at 21%. The numbers 36 and 21 are the same order of magnitude.
Ruckleshaus did not even attend the two weeks of hearings which exonerated DDT. Shortly after that he banned DDT and refused to provide any rationale or show anybody his notes. I bet he did not have any.
Gina McCarthy – here’s you sign!
http://energycommerce.edgeboss.net/wmedia/energycommerce/energy/ep030111.wvx
Barton’s questions are is 3 hours in ( you can jump to that) the money quote is at 3:04
One of the defining features of religion (AGW – my add) is that you are not troubled by facts. Michael Crichton (2003).
http://energycommerce.edgeboss.net/wmedia/energycommerce/energy/ep030111.wvx
Do you have a link to the transcript of the Q&A? I’d like to see her exact words in their context.
Kind of like Tinkerbell.
Arnold, it is worse than you thought. CO2 is almost 6 orders of magnitude less than oxygen.
That kills more people than… don’t get them started or they will have to ban that!
The upper limit for CO2 exposure at 1 atm. for humans is 15,000 ppm, 35 times that now in air. The greatest quantity we have ever had in air was 12,000. Marine algae used it to make sea sediments that now lie under layers of sediments and could be easily mined by robot drillers. There is 50 times more oil in the bottoms of the oceans than we have used in 100 years, a 5,000 year supply. Every oil field we have today was a sea bottom that became land locked in time.
Reminds one of Ruckleshaus, who banned DDT (in 1972) without being aware of the science of the safety of the much needed pesticide!
Well, it stands to reason that the chief of the EPA’s air programs doesn’t care what the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is: after all, they outlawed CO2! Case closed.
When Carol Browner took over at EPA she changed meaning of the acronym. The P once meant Protection it now means Politics.
President Eisenhower warned us about the “scientific elites” in his “military-industrial complex” speech in 1961:
” The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever presentand is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
He was so right.
What else doesn’t she know ? What does she know that is wrong ? Who hired her for this job? How much do we pay her? What does she use for a brain ?
A German environment secretary of county North Rhine Westphalia once told the radio interviewer before she left for Copenhagen that the co2 level in the atomosphere is 3,6 %
You expect a political appointee to actually know anything? Heaven, forbid.
Can anyone provide a link to the actual testimony?
With food prices causing ME mayhem it is becoming very clear to me that higher CO2 levels are rapidly becoming part of the solution to the food crisis and were never part of the problem! I published my first scientific papers on greenhouse gas emissions (nitrous oxide) in 1981! The Carbon economy is a scam! We should develop renewables and save energy but not for CO2 reasons. A four corner feeding frenzy feedback loop of Govt, NGOs, Funding Hungry Scientists and sadly now companies who scent a carbon asset windfall. In 50 years we will look back in amazement at all this!
I have just spent a couple evenings drifting through the California climate hierarchy’s websites (1000s!). Must be 3 or 4 $billion worth of bureaucrats in Sacramento feeding on the CO2 hoax. If we could get them out of Sacramento and off to the coal mines, we might be able to balance the state budget. California is just a microcosm of the Washington climate bureaucracy. Couldn’t the West Virgina coal mines use some of that Beltway labor?
I agree too.Only problem is she is Plancks constant! Double thick at that
Let’s ask her the question”If you can get rid of the CO2,how do you intend to keep the plants green?” Numbskull.
It is amazing how people who make multi- billion dollar decisions about taxes know nothing about our atmosphere, what is in it, how it works and what it does.
The only plausible answer is to follow the money trail. Fortunately AGW is on its death throes.
But what is next on the money tree? We shall hold our breaths and ponder. Meanwhile the alarmists are most likely cooking up something new.
It will be dramatic, whatever it is. Perhaps the end of earthworms?
Good thing Barton didn’t ask if dihydrogen monoxide was a pollutant
I have tried to call the White House at 202 456 1111 but always get a busy signal. Spend the postage by writing that CO2 is not a pollutant and that EPA should be reined in.
I agree
Knowing what the number is is one thing. Knowing what it means is another. NASA’s ever-present propagandist, James Hanson, tells us that 350 ppm is the upper end of the safe limit, so we’re already in deep doo-doo because we’re around 389 ppm. The Robinsins at OISM.org stated years ago in their famous Petition Project, agreed to by some 32000 signers, that there are benefits to us from both higher temps and higher CO2 levels. Any number of controlled experiments have show increased plant growth when CO2 concentrations are raised. Plants carry on photosynthesis by removing CO2 from the air, so nature has a way of dealing with
“excess” CO2, but all of that is contrary to the mantra of the Climate Change crowd/ industry, so it seldom makes the news.
Seems like in australia. The Chief scientist resigned, and was replaced ……………………………………………………………………..with a Banker with no scientific expertise.
Do not ask that woman to explain the absorption spectra or the implications of E = (h X c)/w where E is energy, h is Plancks constant, c is the speed of light and w is wavelength. Or, that CO@ is a trace gas in air and a poor absorber of IR (heat) energy. Or, that water vapor is seven times better per molecule and has 80 times as many molecules generating 560 times the atmospheric heating of CO2 or 99.8% of it.
Anthropogenic global warming is the greatest science fraud in history. Greater that that for DDT or Freon(tm)
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An incompetent government employee, come on!
CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a life sustaining molecule without which humans would not be able to survive on this planet.
She doesn’t have to know, she just has to believe!
She has no idea what she is doing either . we have children running the EPA and until we get adults on the job wee will lose money7 hand over fist.
Here you go Ms. McCarthy:
Nitrogen – 78.084%
Oxygen – 20.95%
Argon – 0.934%
Carbon Dioxide – 0.036%
Neon – 0.0018%
Helium – 0.0005%
Methane – 0.00017%
Hydrogen – 0.00005%
Nitrous Oxide – 0.00003%
Ozone – 0.000004%
Water vapor is variable but typically makes up about 1-4% of the atmosphere.
Note that CO2 is less than oxygen by 3 orders of magnitude, you ignorant political hack!