Environmental Economics
The cromulent economics blog
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Typical of Stewart and his brand of news. Nothing that Jeff Sessions said could be considered to be “so wrong”. Is CO2 particulate? Not as that term is used by EPA. CO2 is a gas, not a 2.5-10 micron mote or something that can get caught in your lung and cause damage. Is CO2 NOx or SOx? Clearly not (I doubt that Stewart knows what that means). Is CO2 “plant food”? That’s a little squishy, but nevermind, it’s good for a laugh and modeled future results were proven (past tense) by, ah, … Appeal to Authority! Hit the laugh button! Squirrel! And, wrap. See, aren’t skeptics idiots?
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Where Sessions is wrong is what he was implying. Has anyone from the scientific community been arguing that carbon dioxide a particulate? Not that I’ve seen. So why bring it up? Sessions entire argument is that it isn’t pollution. Why isn’t it pollution? According to him, it doesn’t have the same properties of many of the other things we view as pollutants. The problem with that thinking is that a pollutant is anything that is in to great an amount. It doesn’t matter that carbon dioxide is a gas and is used to create energy by plants. What matters is that the amount of carbon dioxide is much higher than it should be, to the point that it is a pollutant. In that, Stewart is right.
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Well, yes, except that, ah, neither Sessions nor Stewart said any of that in the video above. Confirmation bias is part of the problem, I think. Stewart uses it extensively to play to his core audience, just like O’Reilly does to his.
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