CO2 Is Not Satan

Yesterday I attended a lecture put on by the Ayn Rand Institute titled "A Critique of Global Warming Science and Policy".  It was at USC and I didn't want to go alone so I took a friend from work.  After getting on the wrong freeway twice, parking as far away from campus as possible, and looking into every room of Taper Hall except the right one, we were half an hour late.  We snuck in the back of a room of about thirty or forty people and sat down, trying to catch onto what was going on.  The first speaker had already given his talk proving how Global Warming is pretty much false and data is skewed.  So if you ask me, "Hannah, what about An Inconvenient Truth and Mr. Gore's jaw dropping discoveries?  You can't say that's all false!"  I will say, "I wish I could tell you what Willie Soon said."  Because I really do.  But I did get to hear the majority of Keith Lockitch's speech about the policies and ridiculous amounts of funding caused by the global (sounds scary, doesn't it?) warming.  (Put the word "global" in front of anything and it sounds pretty intimidating.)  

After both speeches there was a time for questions and answers.  I listened to Mr. Soon repeat some of his findings after eighteen years of working on this issue.  So I was somewhat clued in.  I still had so many questions, though I could never ask them because it's likely that the question is either (a) unintelligent because and I was very uninformed compared to the rest of the audience or (b) just plain already answered in the first part of the lecture.  So I kept my hand down.  Except to move away a piece of hair from my face, which evidently caught Mr. Soon's attention.  He pointed at me, letting me ask the question he thought I had prepared.  I looked around,  hoping there was someone behind me (which is silly because the only thing behind me was a wall) who had their hand raised.  Alas, it was me everyone was looking at.  I made weird noises like, "Uh, mmm, oh."  And instead of saying, "Oh, sorry, I didn't have a question" like normal person, I proceeded to spout the most ridiculous, unintelligent, made from thin-air question.  I don't even want to write what I said.  (If you know me, you might know that I blush if anyone just looks at me.  I was probably Trojan red, but kept my eye contact with Mr. Soon, nodding my head as he answered my question.)  Of course, Mr. Soon didn't really understand my question.   I didn't even really understand my question.  Something about CO2.  

He answered briefly then took that subject and went on to explain that CO2 is not the problem.  Heat, the rise in temperature is the problem.  Yes, he says, there is a definite rise in CO2 level; no one can deny that.  "But people forget that CO2 is not bad.  It's good!  CO2 is not Satan!"  Mr. Soon got very passionate during that two hours.  "We breathe out CO2.  The plants need the CO2 to live!"  

I really wish I had enough sense to wear roller blades or heelies (those shoes with wheels that I've always wanted) or something to speed from our car to campus, but my foolish brain decided to wear ordinary sandals.  I did pick up some free pamphlets and such that have helped clue me in a little more about evil environmentalists. (really, I have one right here titled "Environmentalism:  A Doctrine of Man-Hatred")  But I am still totally uninformed about the science of the whole thing.  Disappointment.  

The same lecture is being held at UC Berkeley tomorrow.  Go to it if you can.  Then tell me what I missed!