Transcript:

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to a bill that overturns the scientific finding that pollution is harming our people and our planet.

However, I won't physically rise, because I'm worried that Republicans will overturn the law of gravity, sending us floating about the room.

I won't call for the sunlight of additional hearings, for fear that Republicans might excommunicate the finding that the Earth revolves around the sun.

Instead, I'll embody Newton's third law of motion and be an equal and opposing force against this attack on science and on laws that will reduce America's importation of foreign oil.

This bill will live in the House while simultaneously being dead in the Senate. It will be a legislative Schrodinger's cat killed by the quantum mechanics of the legislative process!

Arbitrary rejection of scientific fact will not cause us to rise from our seats today. But with this bill, pollution levels will rise. Oil imports will rise. Temperatures will rise.

And with that, I yield back the balance of my time. That is, unless a rejection of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity is somewhere in the chair's amendment pile.

Friggin' brilliant

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by Tymbrwulf.

The woman behind: "I am slightly amused.."

Very cleverly written propaganda.

What he leaves out, of course, is that the bill doesn't overturn "pollution". It overturns the definition of carbon dioxide and water vapor as pollution.

I appreciate the Schroedinger's Cat reference. I think many bills work like this. Quite a bit like Punxsutawney Phil and his damned shadow that's in superposition; while he sits in his hole of course.

Reality has a well known liberal bias. If you are going to fight the liberals, you must, ipso facto, fight reality.

>> ^maestro156:

Very cleverly written propaganda.
What he leaves out, of course, is that the bill doesn't overturn "pollution". It overturns the definition of carbon dioxide and water vapor as pollution.


At higher amounts, carbon dioxide becomes a contaminant which upsets the balance of the ecosystem. This is pollution. yes, it is naturally found in the ecosystem. But so are any other number of molecular structures composed of different elements.
It is, however, only one of the by-products of burning millions of years worth of jurassic carbon deposits in a very short time. We are introducing high amounts of substances from a by-gone age and ecosystem into the atmosphere that our CURRENT ecosystem must now adjust to in order to find balance and stability. Just as the human body seeks homeostasis with it's environment....so does the ecosystem. The planet's balance and stability however comes at our expense, as well as the expense of all other species of plant and animal life.

some people "believe" in global climate change. some people believe in god-man in the sky too. but then there is probability and reality. and in the end, it doesn't matter what you believe.

Snooty woman behind him ruins it for me.

'Yeees, well-played Edward, you really gave those Republicans a good intellectual thrashing... oh, looks like the bill passed, hmm... oh, looks like things are getting worse now... maybe we shouldn't have been pompous assholes and talked down to the Republicans at every opportunity...'

The ocean (biggest 'carbon sink') is becoming more acidic. Most coral reefs are a goddamn disaster now compared to just 50 years ago. Its scary stuff.

>> ^criticalthud:

>> ^maestro156:
Very cleverly written propaganda.
What he leaves out, of course, is that the bill doesn't overturn "pollution". It overturns the definition of carbon dioxide and water vapor as pollution.

At higher amounts, carbon dioxide becomes a contaminant which upsets the balance of the ecosystem.

>> ^bamdrew:

The ocean (biggest 'carbon sink')

It's also a huge source of that "water vapor" greenhouse gas too. And when average temperatures rise, so does the amount of water that persists as water vapor in our atmosphere, which makes temperatures rise. Our surface temps are cool enough that it stays in a rough equilibrium, but if we push the temperatures high enough to disrupt it...

It'd be a bad cycle. Venus probably had liquid water oceans at some point in the distant past. Now the surface of Venus hotter than Mercury's, despite being much further away from the Sun.

I find it so strange that people really think it can't happen here. We're not so different from Venus. Just a little cooler, that's all.