Saturday 28 May 2011

Ah, Michelle Bachmann

She's showing off her extensive scientific education again.

Check out the article, it's a laugh riot. There's video, or just a transcript of her little speech if you don't want to wait for it to load. The whole thing is apt to make you either laugh or cry, depending on how you're feeling tonight, but there was one bit in particular that really got me going.

Well, carbon dioxide is a natural part of Earth’s atmosphere. The carbon dioxide is perhaps three percent of the total atmosphere that’s in the Earth. So if you take a pie chart, and you have all of Earth’s atmosphere, carbon dioxide is perhaps three percent of that total.

Is it the idea that natural is equal to good, all the time? No; that's a dumb idea, but it's not what I'm talking about. Is it her saying that CO2 makes up three percent of our atmosphere, when in reality it's about four one-hundredths of a percent? Nope.

It's her saying that if you take something that's three percent of something else, and put it in a pie chart, that pie chart will then show that that thing is three percent of the total!

ASTONISHING!

Edit:

Wow, she keeps going. I hadn't even finished reading her speech, but that made me laugh so hard I had to post it immediately. But then she comes out with this gem:

Human activity contributes perhaps three percent of the three percent. In other words, human activity is maybe 3 percent contributing to the 3 percent of carbon dioxide that’s in Earth’s atmosphere.

I hate to break it to you, but that's not 'in other words'. It's in the same words, almost exactly.

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