John Boehner Deems It “Almost Comical” to Say Carbon Dioxide is Harmful
The House GOP’s leader, John Boehner (R-OH), took some time over the weekend to wallow a bit in ignorance and dishonesty:
STEPHANOPOULOS: So what is the responsible way? That’s my question. What is the Republican plan to deal with carbon emissions, which every major scientific organization has said is contributing to climate change?
BOEHNER: George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you’ve got more carbon dioxide.
Joe Romm observes that Boehner doesn’t even seem to know what the climate change debate is about. But suffice it to say that it’s not about carbon dioxide being a carcinogen. It’s about the fact that carbon dioxide, in high levels, contributes to the destabilization of the planet’s climate.
On the subject of cow farts, Boehner’s a bit confused in that the issue is methane rather than CO2. But methane really is a contributor to climate change. The fact that this is a bit funny doesn’t change the fact that climate change is a real problem and that bovine flatulence genuinely contributes to it, albeit not on the same scale as industrial activity.
43 Responses to “John Boehner Deems It “Almost Comical” to Say Carbon Dioxide is Harmful”
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April 20th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
I deem John Boehner not almost comical, but highly comical. And yet it is not comical but frightening that this man speaks for a good 30% of the country.
April 20th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
The idea that water can kill you is comical. After all, you exhale water vapor with every breath. So don’t worry, you don’t need those swimming lessons after all.
The idea that salt can kill you is comical. After all there’s salt in all your food and it’s in fact necessary for life. So go ahead, drink as much seawater as you like.
You could play this game all day!
April 20th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
And another million college students decide they will never, ever, vote for the Republican Party.
By the way, to me the most unintentionally hilarious part starts around 2:06, when they start getting into the “proper answer” section. Seriously, how do you emphasize the phrase “proper answer” and not actually have any sort of answer whatsoever prepared?
April 20th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
The idea that sunlight can kill you is comical. I mean, look at John Boehner’s tan! Don’t worry: You can get all the sun you’d like.
April 20th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
I think his tan comes out of a bottle, though. I’ve never seen anybody turn orange from exposure to sunlight.
April 20th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
boehner is an idiot. horrible to think of the calibre of “leaders” we have put in place over the last two decades.
so much so that obama, who is kind of a plain vanilla liberal (although he also seems like a terrific fellow) is lauded for ‘visionary’ leadership. well, at least he does seem to know what “the vision thing” IS.
a small point, though, about cow flatulence and methane. methane is many times (about 21 times)as powerful a greenhouse gas as is CO2 itself. the fact that the climate change/geenhouse potential of ALL emissions is measured in ‘CO2 equivalents’ does not mean that only CO2 matters, or even that it is the main problem to addresss. No lesser climate change leader than Dr. Hansen himself thinks that we would be best advised to hammer as hard as possible on methane emissions, since methane is indeed such a powerful greenhouse gas. doesn’t mean we stop worrying about carbon dioxide itself, nor that we stop expresssing climate risks in carbon equivalents. but there ARe other greenhouse gases that matter a lot.
including animal emissions–this happens to be one of the vegetarians current arguing points that is scientifically sound. it is one reason that acres devoted to food crops have such a dramatically better carbon balance than the same acres convereted to raising cattle.
still, boehner is an unforgivably idiotic public ’servant.’ i though W’s defeat meant i wouldn’t have to be ashamed of my country’s political idiocy anymore, but that was obviously premature.
April 20th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
It’s a major Republican talking point that because you exhale carbon dioxide, it can’t be harmful. They should take everyone who wants to make that point and seal them together in an airtight room; let them talk it over for long enough and I guarantee they’ll all emerge believing otherwise.
April 20th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Holy Toledo, he should go on a comedy tour with Inhofe.
As a person of so-so intelligence I’m consistently amazed at how much more I know than so many of our congresscritters. The bell curve’s certainly wide enough for them!
April 20th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Why do you people want to deprive plants of sustenance? Tsk. Isn’t there a consensus about that sort of stuff somewhere?
April 20th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
I’d like to fart in John Boner’s face. That would be really funny.
April 20th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Speaking as someone who considers himself as a conservative, i would love for their to be a conservative alternative to obama not to hinder him ,but to keep some of his policies more moderate .there simply isn’t ,which is why many conservatives [like myself] voted obama . the day the republican party kicks out clowns like boehner and stops listining to glenn beck will be a great day for our country. I know most of readers here are liberal, but even they have to admit that having two political parties , that are both sensible and intelligent , to choose from would be great. All countries and political systems need checks and balances . I like Obama , but even the best man needs a check on his power ,for his own good.unfourtantly the only intelligent checks and balances out there now are Susan Collins and Olymia Snowe from Maine. If Mcaine had picked one of those two to be vice president instead of Palin .he might be president right now. The fact that he did not and that they are disliked in large sections of the republican party makes me think that we need a new party to represent small government, free market conservatism without the homaphobia , racism, anti -enviormentalism and just sheer nastiness that is prevalient in the republican party today
April 20th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Or preferably, NOT emerge at all.
April 20th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
I’m still a little confused. Is the Republican story that
(A) Carbon dioxide is absolutely harmless! It’s plant food! You exhale it all day long!
or
(B) Carbon dioxide is “a problem,” but the United States can’t do anything about it by itself (and we oppose all efforts to handle it globally, too).
I didn’t borrow your car. Your car doesn’t have a new scratch on it. And the scratch was already there when I borrowed it.
April 20th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
They’d emerge feet-first, which would be a terrible thing to wish for, right? Right?!?
April 20th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
pete from Baltimore- even though I’m a flaming liberal who is unhappy with Obama’s neoliberalism and would like to nudge him to the left, I still agree with you. In a (rigged) two-party system, it’s extremely dangerous when one of the parties is insane and inept.
April 20th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
The mysterious “carcinogenic” comment must be left from Boehner’s early days handing out checks from tobacco lobbyists on the House floor.
Anyway, you have to admit the man knows his global warming science. Tobacco farts are not a major contributor to the ozone hole, or something like that.
April 20th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Cattle are industrial activity and they are responsible for a lot of human-related methane (about a fifth of the US total).
Mostly they do this by belching, which just isn’t as funny as a good fart joke. Always funnier if you can work in farts.
April 20th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Also, all government owned sewage treatment plants should be shut down tomorrow, and the money used to operate them refunded to the taxpayers. After all, everyone urinates and defecates every day! How could that stuff possibly be dangerous?
April 20th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
pete from baltimore,
I also agree with you. We need two sane, viable political parties.
April 20th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
They aren’t giving you much to work with, eh shooter?
April 20th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
We need two sane, viable political parties.
Why only two?
April 20th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
On a short scale, CH4 is many times more potent than CO2 as a GHG, but CO2 lingers in the atmosphere longer and there’s more of it.
Ruminants contribute around 3% of greenhouse gases because we eat a lot of beef and drink a lot of cow milk. Scientists are working on additives to cow feed to help cut down on the CH4 they belch, and the person who finds one that significantly reduces CH4 should be honored. Boehner is just making the “sounds funny” argument. Look for him or Mitch McConnell to bring a whoopie cushion to some news event. They sure love their props.
April 20th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
I agree – one to the left of the Democrats, and one to the left of the Republicans.
April 20th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Indeed, but >2 with any chance to win won’t happen in my lifetime or maybe even in my daughter’s. The system is intricately rigged at every level.
April 20th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Why only two?
Sorry, I should have said “We need at least two sane, viable political parties.” More than two would be fine with me, although the current structure of our federal goverment makes anything but two instable.
April 20th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Boehner ought to have remembered that axiom about keeping one’s mouth closed and only be thought a fool than opening it and removing all doubt.
Pontificating on something you know nothing about as if you do is something everyone has done. Doing it when you are a ranking member of the minority party in Congress and doing it on TV is just amaturish.
April 20th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
I disagree with the idea that any party is “too left” or “too right”. as i wrote in a comment on the recent post about castro and cuba,the problem with Hitler and Pinochet wasn’t that they were too conservative or that Stalin,Mao and Catro were too left wing. The problem was that they were tyrants that murdered people. There is nothing “right wing” about gassing Jews to death. i am not comparing republicans to hitler or democrates to stalin,quite the contrary , true liberals and conservatives were those mass murders worst enemies. my point is that there is no idelogical reason for a republican to want the enviroment to go to hell. or for a liberal to want America to be weak . this does not mean that republicans and democrats are the same. it means that they should have the same goals [ eliminating poverty for example],but different methods of acheiving these goals. the rest of us should judge these methods on their merits ,and then choose the one we feel is best ,regardless of which party supports it. There is nothing wrong with being conservative or liberal ,but if you support a political partys positions no matter what ,then a person has no free thought of their own. i see no idelogical reason why i can not support the enviroment and our national parks AND be in favor of the free market. Smaller government does not mean NO government .
April 20th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
The man clearly doesn’t know what the word “carcinogen” means. He thinks it means “poison.”
Someone needs to explain the distinction to Boehner with a four-year-old listening in. If the child can repeat back the salient points, we can assume that Boehner has finally got it, too.
Not that he would admit it in front of a camera.
April 20th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
By the way, Boehner and other conservatives tend to think highly of the founding fathers. but the public ownership of land, and the idea that the government has a responsibilty to look after those lands goes back to those days. Remember the louisiana purchase? And Yellowstone Natational Park is over a 100 years old. the Secratary of the Interior used to be much more important then he is today. the taking care of the land we live on ,the air we breathe and the water we drink ,has always been one of the govenments basic responsibilities. Some of these so called conservatives need to remember that
April 20th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Pete, Democrates is more comparable to Heidegger than to Stalin; since Heidegger was a Nazi cabinet member, I guess that makes Democrates Nazi.
The real problem is that the GOP is, by now, intellectually corrupt and electorally untouchable. The aren’t a serious party, and they have no interest in effectively governing the nation. I think what we’re seeing is a partisan repositioning in which serious people (regardless of ideology) are becoming Democrats, much like serious Federalists became Democratic-Republicans.
That doesn’t necessarily take us further to the left; it just takes us a bit further from the brink of imperial collapse.
April 20th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
@27 — well said. I’m probably somewhere to your left on the smaller/bigger gov’t spectrum, but I would agree with you that we need responsible advocates for both points of view.
And like many readers here, I do actually wish that the Republicans were doing a better job of presenting the small-gov’t point of view in a responsible, constructive way.
April 20th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
If I had to bet I would say that he’s not really that dumb. He know very well that the carcinogenic effect of CO2 is not at issue. It’s rather, a disingenuous straw man. If you pretend to not understand the scientific details of why rising CO2 levels are harmful. It makes if impossible for anyone to engage in a public debate about the relative danger and possible responses.
April 20th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Didn’t you watch the Mythbusters Young Scientist Special? The bulk of methane from cows is produced in a cow’s rhumen (first stomach), and from the decomposition of a cow’s waste. Comparatively little of the methane comes from cow flatus.
[cue "the more you know" rainbow]
April 20th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
This guy is FUCKING ORANGE and he’s giving lectures on cancer?
April 20th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Boehner is comically inept in this clip, but over the medium term it’s not a bad political strategy. The Rep. minority is hoping to demogogue the CO2 issue; to do that, they need to take pot shots at all proposed solutions, and avoid offering any substantive plan of their own.
I think it’ll probably work — at least to some extent. When gas prices go back up (as they inevitably will), people are going to get very sensitive about anything that adds a few more cents to the price. Climate change isn’t as easily grasped as the price of gas, so it’s going to be a tough issue for us. Our best bet, I think, is to tie the cap-and-trade system to a very visible tax credit. Even so, this is going to be tough.
April 20th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
If I had to bet I would say that he’s not really that dumb.
Based on many observations, I would be willing to take the opposite side of that bet. Of course he could also just be a genius performance artist engaged in an extremely long project, but I would be willing to risk a small sum that he is not.
April 20th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Pete,
No offense but: zero spaces before a comma, one space after it. Two spaces after a period. First letters of sentences are capitalized. Paragraphs are nice things.
You make some good points but I find your posts really hard to read and find myself skipping past them.
April 20th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
On the subject of cow farts, Boehner’s a bit confused in that the issue is methane rather than CO2. But methane really is a contributor to climate change. The fact that this is a bit funny doesn’t change the fact that climate change is a real problem and that bovine flatulence genuinely contributes to it, albeit not on the same scale as industrial activity.
This is probably nitpicking word choice, but I would say that agriculture GHG emissions are on the same scale as GHG emissions from burning fossil fuels — indeed, agriculture is almost the only other human activity on that scale. It is true that fossil fuels represent a much larger source of GHG emissions, however.
April 20th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
A useful read is Peter Huber, ‘Bound to Burn’, in the City Journal. Burn appetit!
================================================
April 20th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
I’ve been reading Don Surber’s blog for the past couple days because I occasionally say to myself “I must be oversimplifying the conservative position on this stuff, nobody could be this dumb.” and yet, Surber has made repeated posts to this effect. It never ceases to shock me. Where do these people come from?
April 20th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
That video of Bohner reminds me of what Paul Krugman said about the gop being reduced to snickering over words like Beevis and Butthead. He said ‘fart’ hehehehehe.
April 20th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
In any other country, Boehner’d be selling used cars and lemonade out of a tumble-down shack along the side of the road. You’ve got to love a country where a man with his obvious limitations and wearing George Hamilton’s skin can lead his party in the House.
April 21st, 2009 at 7:24 am
ADAM I apolgize, I don’t normally type. This is my first time. Thanks for the advice. I will try harder.