What's Methane, Chopped Liver?

Conservative think tank launches climate-skeptic TV ads

"Carbon dioxide: They call it pollution; we call it life." Nope, not a story in The Onion. That's the punch line of two TV ads that the industry-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute began airing in 14 U.S. cities yesterday, timed to correspond with the big-screen debut of Al Gore's climate-change movie An Inconvenient Truth. The ads, replete with happy, energy-guzzling families and a little girl blowing dandelion fluff, protest the maligning of poor, innocent CO2 -- which, according to one ad, "some politicians want to label ... a pollutant." (Gasp.) What will happen if we stop spewing CO2 into the atmosphere? The ads aren't specific, but apparently it has something to do with riding a bike in heavy snow. CEI acknowledges that global temperatures have risen in the past century, but according to president Fred Smith, warming is moving us "a lot closer to heaven than hell." So, the road to heaven is paved with CO2 emissions. The road to hell is paved by Al Gore. And reality has left parody in the dust.