Idiot Alert

Megan McArdle is a definite contender for dumbest professional blogger out there.  I don't think I agree with her, ever.  And it is not just that I disagree with her conclusions, but her sense of logic is from another planet.  For example, today she writes:

All the carbon we're burning used to be in the atmosphere.  Yet the planet supported life.  Indeed, the oil we're burning comes from the compressed, decayed bodies of . . . phytoplankton.  This suggests that some number of phytoplankton should be able to survive high concentrations of the stuff.

Holy fuck, this is wrong.  If I were still in 6th grade, I probably would have called it gay-retarded wrong (on a side note, that calling someone gay or retarded was certainly a common insult on the playgrounds of NJ in the mid 80s says a lot.  I wonder what now-common-but-later-horrible insults our children will use?).  Let's try some other version of this sentence.  "Ammonia used to be in the atmosphere.  Yet the planet supported life.  Indeed, the synthesis of many amino acids uses ammonia as a building block.  Even though I'm describing the state of the earth billions of years ago, clearly modern incarnations of organisms could survive a rapid increase in ammonia concentrations, because that's how evolution works, very very quickly.  Indeed, I kinda like the smell of Windex!"