In her November 7 article for the Washington Times entitled “Chilly wind blows against global climate pact”, reporter Kara Rowland describes “China, India and other rapidly growing economies” as “leading polluters” because of their carbon dioxide emissions. Such language plays right into the hands of the “global warming” industry by terming CO₂, perhaps best thought of as plant food, as pollution.

A less biased portrayal of the role of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would note that the vast majority of the so-called “greenhouse effect” comes from water vapor, essentially all of which is naturally occurring. Of the under-4% of the atmosphere that is CO₂, under 5% of that is man-made. Thus, the contribution of man-made CO₂ to “climate change” is likely to be dwarfed by natural and random variation.

If a country is to be called a “leading polluter”, it should be for actual pollution, not for producing a fractional percentage of the earth’s other (beside oxygen) life-sustaining gas. Indeed, by that standard, China and India may earn the “leading polluter” moniker, but in the context of a discussion about carbon emissions, Ms. Rowland’s terminology effectively concedes the climate debate to the junkiest of junk science.