Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli gets a science lesson

By Emily Heffling, Virginia Campus Organizer
22 February 2013 If Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli was featured on the TV show, Are you smarter than a 5th grader?, he would have been out before the first commercial. In his new book, The Last Line of Defense, Cuccinelli has a chapter called “Weird Science” dedicated to his qualms with climate science and his use of taxpayer dollars for lawsuits to fight it. As highlighted in Beth’s blog post last week, among other things, the chapter quips that perhaps 97% of the world’s climate scientists are confusing the ‘supposedly dangerous’ greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, with the deadly household gas, carbon monoxide. Feel free to check out the book yourself for a play by play of his losing lawsuit against the EPA, but for now, it’ll suffice to say that on a basic level, our Attorney General doesn’t understand why carbon dioxide is so dangerous – after all, it’s in our soda! So what did I do about it? Last Friday during his book signing in Fredericksburg, I gave our Attorney General a 2nd grade science lesson to catch him up with the majority of elementary school students who understand the Carbon Cycle. And thanks to stretchy yoga pants and my cell phone, I was able to catch the action on film. Equipped with a graph of the carbon cycle, I told our Attorney General that because he seemed confused about the difference between carbon dioxide and soda, I wanted to give him a quick science lesson on what most elementary students understand by now. Handing over the graph, I explained that too much CO2 in the atmosphere heats up our planet and disrupts the natural cycle he outlines in his book. Therefore, similar to the deadly carbon monoxide he warns of, too much carbon dioxide will also kill you. After a quick chuckle caught on film, Cuccinelli and I exchange a monoxide -vs- dioxide back and forth, and I’m gladly escorted away by his assistants. [more]

Ken Cuccinelli gets a Science Lesson