TPM: What Thinking People Are Up Against

[Richard Tafoya]

TPM:http://tpmtv.talkingpointsmemo.com/?id=2410363

This one just hurts to watch. And to make matters worse, a smug Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) actually thinks he "baffled (http://twitterroom.thehill.com/2009/04/22/barton-thinks-he-stumped-energy-sec/)" Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate, during this exchange in a hearing today:

http://tpmtv.talkingpointsmemo.com/?id=2410363
Wow, they may need to expand the Daily Show to an hour with all the material the GOP is generating these days.

[pinky]

I love the comments that have been made......

Perhaps Dr. Chu was stumped that an apparent grown-up would ask something that probably a great many 7th-graders know??"



People this dumb should not be allowed in Congress.

[Richard Tafoya]

Scienceblogs.com sums it up nicely.
http://scienceblogs.com/authority/2009/04/rep_joe_barton_not_smarter_tha.php
I'm have no way of knowing for sure what the poor Energy Secretary took from the exchange, but I can make a few guesses. I suspect that the laughter was coming from hearing yet another person disprove the old classroom saying that there's no such thing as a stupid question. He moved from there to attempting to provide the sort of explanation that he'd give an adult, then after the first interruption he clearly shifted mental gears, and downgraded to the 6th grade level explanation.

Unfortunately, it wasn't enough.

So let me try.

Yes, Representative Barton, you are correct in thinking that the presence of oil and gas indicates that Alaska was warmer when the fossils were deposited. What Secretary Chu was trying to point out to you is that this is not because the North Pole had tropical temperatures back then. It's because Alaska was a lot closer to the equator back then.

By the way, that's pretty close to the explanation my 6th grader gave me when I asked her that question at dinner.

[Richard Tafoya]

And Think Progress ties it all up in a nice Earth Day bow:
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/04/22/barton-oil-science/

Ironically for someone who has called climate science “absolute nonsense,” Barton was actually onto something. During the Triassic, the entire planet was indeed a hothouse and entirely deglaciated. The carbon dioxide (CO2) content in the atmosphere was at its highest ever levels, spiking from 1000 parts per million to 3000 ppm. The end of the Triassic period was marked by one of the largest mass-extinction events in Earth’s history.

Habitable conditions for humanity, hundreds of millions of years later, are very different. Carbon dioxide levels, which had been below 300 ppm for the last 650,000 years and was stable at 280 ppm during the rise of human civilization, have skyrocketed since 1800 because of our burning of coal, oil, and natural gas to 388 ppm, a nearly 40 percent rise.

[DoubleEdgeSword]

Well. Nowhere is it written that one has to be smart to be elected to Congress, and... oh hell. Forget it.