The Airhead At EPA
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03/02/2011
investors.com
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency's office of air and radiation admits she doesn't know how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere. How can someone so ignorant have such an important job?
It's not like Gina McCarthy has no experience in environmental policy. Her EPA bio says she's been commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection and "worked at both the state and local levels on critical environmental issues."
McCarthy even "has extensive experience with the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the nation's first market-based greenhouse gas cap-and-trade system," as well as a "master of science in environmental health engineering and planning and policy from Tufts University."
Yet when Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, asked McCarthy on Tuesday during a House hearing if she knew what the atmospheric CO2 level was, she admitted that she didn't, reports Steven Milloy of junkscience.com.
This is knowledge that even the after-hours cleanup crew at the EPA building should have. That the person who could be considered America's top greenhouse gas regulator couldn't answer the question is inexcusable.
It's a good bet that by now an embarrassed McCarthy does know how much CO2 is in the atmosphere — unless her staff is as ignorant as she is. If that's the case, we can help: The CO2 level in our atmosphere is roughly 391 parts per million — a number readily available through the most primitive of Web searches.
But McCarthy has better things to do than gather facts related to her job. She's too busy regulating human-caused emissions of the very substance of which she apparently has less-than-rudimentary knowledge.
Just as they seem to know what the Earth's temperature should be, global warmongers also pretend to know the appropriate level of CO2 in our atmosphere. Some years ago they said 350 parts per million was the top limit for human safety.
But that's not what the scientific community believes. Some researchers — climatology professor Robert Balling, for instance — make a compelling case that increased CO2 will create a greener, lusher planet.
Isn't that what environmentalists want? Or is the global warming scare simply a cover intended to allow the political left to impose their anti-capitalist, freedom-choking ideas on the rest of us?
The campaign against global warming is raw, media-aided politics hiding behind the facade of science. McCarthy's ignorance only confirms this. Her job is to push a political agenda, not expand knowledge.
She and people like her should be in Washington only as tourists, not as lawmakers and bureaucrats who have power over others' lives.
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