PA State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe A Big Carbon Dioxide Fan

CRANBERRY TOWNSHIP, PA - Pennsylvania state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe is fond of vegetables and carbon dioxide and isn’t afraid to publicly say so.

The Cranberry Republican has uploaded a video to his official Facebook page in which he argues against minimizing carbon dioxide (C02) emissions.

“Just to be on record,” he said. “I enjoy my vegetables and plants need CO2. So I want to make sure we have plenty of CO2 out there so we have green grass and green vegetables growing.”

Metcalfe’s remarks came during a House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee informational meeting. He said in the Facebook post that he was refuting the “fake science insinuating that (state) job creators are not paying enough carbon taxes to reduce emissions.”

Metcalfe technically is correct that plants need CO2. But there’s a big difference difference between natural and and man-made CO2, as the Philly Voice newspaper found. In an article on Metcalfe’s remarks, the newspaper quoted a 2013 blog posting by Mike Gunson, a NASA scientist specializing in atmospheric chemistry.

"Without people, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere would be balancing between the amount released by respiration (i.e., animals and plants) or from warm ocean water, and the amount absorbed by plants (i.e., for photosynthesis and growth) or in colder ocean water," Gunson wrote. "We disturb this balance when we burn fossil fuels and have steadily added to the atmospheric concentration. This increase has led to [climate change] from the equilibrium climate of pre-industrial times."

You can see Metcalfe's remarks in their entirety here:

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