Last year the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared CO2 a pollutant and set about banning such emissions to save the planet. Real scientists tried to point out that nature needs CO2 to thrive. OK, so the Greens kind of heard that logic and quickly sought ways to subvert it into a new Frankenstein-style horror story. The result, headlines in The Washington Post (August 31, 2010) that rising CO2 levels are... wait for it... causing poison ivy to grow more prolifically.
Said the Post article, "According to a report in the journal 'Environmental Health Prospectives' last year, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has grown by 22 percent since 1960, which may not be good for humans but is great for poison ivy and other vines."
The fact is, rising CO2 levels are good for all plants (and offer no danger to humans) and there is evidence of plant life responding across the boards. But the Greens don't tell you that. Instead, they pick the one plant that is dangerous to humans and make a big deal out of it growing like, well, like a weed.
The article went on to quote an obligatory scientific "expert," Jacqueline Mohan, an assistant professor at the University of Georgia's Odium School of Ecology, who has been studying poison Ivy since 1998. She, of course, used a computer model to look into the future and found that "Tree seedlings grew 8 - 12 percent more (under the increased CO2). But, "Poison Ivy grew 149 percent more." Breathlessly she pointed out, "Poison Ivy is getting bigger, faster and nastier." Of course any botanist could attest to the fact that weeds always grow faster than any other plants, especially trees. That's why gardeners and lawn care experts hate them.
That's how the whole green propaganda machine has operated for decades, in particular blowing the global warming issue (later abbreviated to just climate change) all out of proportion, predicting global Armageddon unless man changed his ways. Melting ice caps, drowning polar bears, massive ocean storms, and flooded Manhattan were just some of the punishments awaiting man's ruthlessness toward the environment.
Last year's shocking Climategate scandal proved that most of the scare tactics of the global warming promoters were hog wash, made up to support their theories. Hacked e-mails of the leaders of the climate change movement showed deliberate intimidation of science publications that tried to print stories by those who doubt the global warming theories. None of their scares ever panned out. No islands have been engulfed by water. Polar bears are not endangered. US temperatures are still a full degree cooler than the 1930's.
Today, the average citizen they sought to dupe with their lies and intimidation know the truth. Global Warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on human kind. As a result, money for green causes is drying up and they are desperate to come up with the next dire threat to fill in the void and fill up their coffers. The current cause of choice is biodiversity - the human threat to plants and animals. Poison Ivy, apparently, is the rash of choice. And watch for more such lies and scare tactics growing like weeds in the near future, as the greens struggle to scratch their way back to the top of the political vine.
Tom DeWeese is one of the nation's leading advocates of individual liberty, free enterprise, private property rights, personal privacy, back-to-basics education and American sovereignty and independence. Go to www.americanpolicy.org for more information
