Plus, it's going to make carbonated beverages so much easier to manufacture!

The Al Gore film on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, is causing some interesting reactions. Big Oil-backed think-tank The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has actually gone so far as to put out two astounding commercials not only denying that global warming exists, but that more CO₂ in the atmosphere is good for you. It's a pro-CO₂ advertisement! We breathe it out every day! Trees need it to live! It comes from the earth, how could it be bad for us?

Their tagline seems right out of an SNL parody commercial: "Carbon dioxide -- they call it pollution. We call it life." Watch it here.

Apparently, CEI's founder Fred Smith had a similar "lalalalala I can't hear you" exchange on Crossfire years ago talking about how “global warming was actually a good thing because of all the cool new crops we could grow.”

Here’s the transcript from Crossfire, 3/27/92:

Mr. SMITH: Look, the point- what we do know and don’t know, we know that carbon dioxide is increasing. We know carbon dioxide is a plant fertilizer which is a positive benefit to the peoples of the world. We know that there are these elaborate computer models that have never been right before, may be right this time, that suggest climate changes, possibly good, possibly bad. Most of the indications right now are it looks pretty good. Warmer winters, warmer nights, no effects during the day because of clouding, sounds to me like we’re moving to a more benign planet, more rain, richer, easier productivity to agriculture-

KINSLEY: Wait a minute.

Mr. SMITH: We’re basically to a world now that’s a lot closer to heaven than hell.

(via Boing Boing)



Technorati tags: global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, environment