title:  Ted Cruz Used #ScienceFacts Hashtag And Instantly Became Laughingstock Of Scientific Community
text: Sen. Ted Cruz, a man whose climate science expertise extends no further than his ability to hold his arm out a window to see if it s raining, tried to troll Democrats by proving climate change was wrong in a single tweet   and it backfired massively.A vehement denier of climate change who once claimed he was just like Galileo because both held unpopular opinions (*eyeroll*) and who accused the 97% of scientists who say climate change is real of being liars, Cruz caused considerable damage to America s scientific community while he was in the Senate. Now he is poised to be in the White House, where he could downright derail it.With those stakes in mind, over the weekend the Democratic Party s Twitter account took a dig at Cruz for brushing off the idea that carbon dioxide contributes to global warming.Yesterday Ted Cruz said that "carbon dioxide isn't a pollutant." Someone needs to go back to science class  pic.twitter.com/cTp3QBxa2X  The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) April 16, 2016Cruz, whose philosophy appears to be  Well if I m already in a hole, I may as well dig,  immediately fired back with of a tweet of his own.Dems kill jobs, ignore facts. CO2 is what every human breathes out; every plant, in turn,consumes CO2. #ScienceFacts https://t.co/0eESF2Oz08  Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) April 16, 2016To which the scientific community responded in unison:  You can t be that stupid, can you? Cruz may not be an avid reader, but even a quick google search can debunk his premise conclusively. In an article published in Scientific American in 2014 and aptly titled  The Worst Climate Pollution Is Carbon Dioxide , writer Gayathri Vaidyanathan walks us through the reasons why: as far as climate change goes, the gas that truly matters is carbon dioxide. Unlike its shorter-lived cousins, CO2 sticks around in the atmosphere for decades to centuries, wreaking climate havoc. It has become very clear that if you want to stabilize warming at any level, you have to start talking about phasing out CO2,  said Joeri Rogelj, a research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and lead author of the study.  Reducing other climate pollution can help in different ways and for different things, but in climate stabilization terms, it s noise on the fact that you have to phase out CO2. Here s a simpler experiment Ted can do in his own home. Take a blanket. Put the blanket over your head. Breathe in and out. Notice how it starts to not feel great? Now imagine that on a planetary scale. Too much CO2 can be a disaster and it wouldn t be a great place to live.The always on point science writer for Slate, Phil Plait, tackled this exact climate denier myth just a few months ago on his blog. CO2, so the deniers say, is harmless because it s just what we breathe out, and isn t carbon what all life is based around? How can that be bad?This is nonsense, says Plait:This is a stunning statement. Like most denier talking points, there s a germ of truth to it the carbon in living tissue does come in large part from atmospheric CO2 but to say that means it can t be a pollutant is pretty silly.For example, our bodies produce formaldehyde naturally; it s a byproduct of the metabolic process. Yet the Center for Disease Control and Prevention classifies it as a pollutant. Why? Because too much of it under the wrong conditions is a bad thing.As ever, Cruz managed to be both wrong and smug at the same time. He s not just ignorant, he s proud of it.Why does this matter?As you may have noticed, last October was the hottest October ever recorded. So was November. So was December. So was January. So was February. So was March. Climate change isn t just theoretically possible, it s happening now and more quickly than many scientists ever dared worry it would. This means the time for action is already here. President Obama has done several key things to help America play catch up on the war against climate change. First he dumped tons of money into researching alternative energy and America is finally getting serious about solar and wind power. But perhaps most significantly of all, we are beginning to work with other countries around the world to globally combat the worst effects.This all goes away with Ted Cruz. A President Cruz not only doesn t believe climate change is worth fighting, he doesn t believe it exists. For four to eight years, America will rollback and dismantle the progress it has made at this crucial time. What this means for the future is the stuff of nightmares.But on the bright side, if our cities are flooded and our crops are failing at least President Cruz can provide us have plenty of good, healthy carbon.Featured image via Darren Hauck/Getty Images 