Rep Barton Wants to Chair Energy Committee. Lacks Basic Understanding of Earth Science.
Holy cow what an absolute moron. He must have missed that class on plate tectonics. Oh wait, he’s from Texas where they take an axe to textbooks. Maybe it’s not his fault. Maybe no one ever told him.
This one is just mind-blowing. Joe Barton (the one who apologized to BP’s Tony Haward for the White House’s “shakedown”) actually asks Energy Secretery Dr. Steven Chu where all that oil in Alaska came from. Barton implies that because oil exists under the Arctic Ocean, then it must have been warmer there once. Yessirree, the representative from Texas’ 6th district sure done schooled that Nobel Prize winner about “climate change.”
If you’re thinking to yourself, “I would have laughed out loud if he’d asked me that question,” you’re not alone. Chu actually did laugh.
We can give Mr. Barton one science point for actually knowing that oil comes from plant material, and another one for knowing that plants of the kind necessary to make oil do not naturally live under the Arctic Ocean, but he obviously missed the class when they talked about plate tectonics and continental drift.