Candidates Enhance Global Warming

With the recent entry in the presidential-2008-sweepstakes of Senators Obama, Clinton, Dodd, and Brownback, as well as Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, the wannabe-lottery, already huge, has become a vast array of speechify/campaign-mongers fit to affect every facet of life on the planet. Senator Kerry has threatened to make the run again and has even campaigned in Syria recently, along with Senator Dodd, apparently hoping to influence the Muslim-vote in this country.

It’s being strongly rumored that former veep Al Gore is “exploring” (don’t they all?) the possibility of a run, and this calls attention to the important matter of global warming, Internet-inventor Gore’s self-proclaimed area of expertise. The culprit in global warming is an elevated presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to the experts, who may or may not have a clue, since global-freezing and -warming have been going on, again according to the experts, for mega-millennia in numbers untold.

Carbon dioxide is generated in significant amounts in public speaking. This makes the large number of candidates a potential threat to the planet, since the speeches over the next two years by the prez wannabes will number in the multi-thousands. Whereas campaigns once lasted a few months in the pre-1970s era, they now actually never stop – think Senators Biden and McCain, for instance, or John Edwards, who have been speechifying for years. This indubitably accounts for an upsurge in the CO2 factor in especially the last two years. One only has to watch Al Gore explode a speech to understand that the amount of CO2 in his presentation could likely wither trees – which absorb carbon dioxide – besides drowning the first row in warm spit.

In this area, some candidates could be less threatening than others. This is from Karger AG, the International Journal of Phoniatrics ©2004: The results of dynamic measurements of carbon dioxide (CO₂, in %) in exhaled air during speech are presented. … It was determined that the average concentration of CO₂ in exhaled air while stuttering was 1/5 lower than the concentration of CO₂ registered during fluent speaking. Since maybe 50-60 percent of speech output is made up of carbon dioxide, the importance of this matter is obvious, especially since the campaign speech itself is relatively innocuous/inane/insane – sound bites and fawning and hopeless promises – and thus not itself worth all the expectorating of CO2, while being extremely dangerous to the atmosphere.

A candidate’s IQ doesn’t matter, since in the warm-fuzzy political haze of the day intellect is out and a huge EQ (emotion quota) is all that matters socially/politically. Love is IN these days. To determine a candidate’s worth relative to his respect for the atmosphere, and thus every living thing, however, one would do well, as per the conclusions of the experts, to check his SQ (speech quotient). Obviously, the campaigner who stutters a bit (Bush?) is 20% more ecologically acceptable, while the smooth-talking political pro – think Kerry or Edwards or Cheney – can be downright dangerous to society.

Then, there’s the matter of those campaign meals, most of them free-loaded and – yes – likely to cause (gasp) flatulence. Ironically, the flatulence is usually more sensible (okay, pungent) than the spoken words. “It is unclear whether carbon dioxide is a direct or indirect product of bacterial metabolism, but CO2 can account for up to 50%-60% of the gas in flatus,” according to Healthgate Update of December 2000. Of course, flammable gases are also present, so it is wise not to “light up” when in a gathering of politicians.

It may seem indelicate to mention this subject but history has numerous anecdotal accounts of flatulence, including Hippocrates himself professing, “Passing gas is necessary to well-being.” The Roman Emperor Claudius equally decreed that “all Roman citizens shall be allowed to pass gas whenever necessary.” Unfortunately for flatulent Romans, however, Emperor Constantine later reversed this decision in a 315 BC edict. (eMedicineHealth)

So…the candidates are playing fast and loose with the environment – with life itself – when they inflict themselves upon an unsuspecting atmosphere/audience after ingesting the usual pot-luck suspects and fast food. Most people favor the environment with between one and four pints of flatulence a day, according to the experts, but candidates in full campaign mode may present a threat of incalculable proportions. It may be that Emperor Constantine had discovered global warming in old Rome during the Senate season and made the connection 1700 years ago between it and the campaign-meals/speeches of the wannabes, thus his ban and perhaps the reason environmentalists should threaten candidate throats here with their famous chain-saws.

In any case, as the election season wears on and additional wannabes insist on polluting the atmosphere with ever increasing amounts of CO2, by 2008 there might not be a glacier left at either pole and the eastern seaboard may be halfway up the Appalachian Mountains.

And so it goes.

Jim Clark