Texas is missing (one of its) Idiots: OMG That Man’s A Congressman Dept.
Via TPM TV:
Watch it and weep. I mean really. There are many reasons the GOP deserves to lose every election: Joe Barton (R – Magic Beans) is one of them. This man shouldn’t be allowed to operate power tools, much less have 1/435 votes on matters of national and international import. Until that sporadically loyal opposition decides that minimal competence is a virtue, it will continue to earn is deserved losses.
And for his part, Steven Chu deserves a medal for not blowing coke through his nose on hearing that question.
Explore posts in the same categories: climate, Energy follies, Republican follies, ridicule, seriously, Stupidity, Who needs science?
The Inverse Square Blog 
April 22, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Wow, the depth and breadth of the ignorance displayed by that question just boggles! Texas take him home.
April 22, 2009 at 10:43 pm
Hey, global warming’s nothing to worry about. We could turn into the next supply oil above the arctic circle. No biggie. We just need to get all that pesky ice out of the way.
April 22, 2009 at 10:43 pm
… supply of oil …
April 26, 2009 at 8:56 pm
Open question: which is more horrifying, the scope of this man’s ignorance or his self-evident pride in it?
This may be the defining quality of our age.
April 27, 2009 at 2:48 pm
There is slyness as well as idiocy operating here.
Barton, you’ll recall, spent a great deal of time and Congressional prestige a couple of years ago trying to discredit Michael Mann and his 1998 climate reconstruction co-authored with Bradley and Hughes. Of course, Barton didn’t come up with the idea on his own. The Mann paper has become a bête noire for the climate-denial community, because it found the present warming to be anomalous over the past several millenia. The leading question about how “it must have been a great deal warmer up there” seems to me intended to suggest that global warming has always been with us, don’t worry, be happy.
June 22, 2009 at 1:18 pm
One (very late) followup:
It appears that the congressman was actually puffed with pride over his exchange with Dr. Chu, setting what I think is a new benchmark approach to absolute zero in the self-awareness department.