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Jim: jdipeso@rep.org
(253) 740-2066 / 2010
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Through the Looking Glass with
Joe Barton
'The time
has come,' the Walrus said, 'to talk of many things...'
June 17, 2010
Oil
companies have been skewered over the disclosure at a House
subcommittee hearing June 15 that their spill response plans include
vows to protect walruses that might be wallowing in the subtropical
Gulf of Mexico.
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Even
Rex Tillerson, the hard-nosed CEO of Exxon, pronounced himself
embarrassed.
At the very same hearing, Congressman Joe Barton let loose with a
throwaway sound bite that should come back to haunt him.
It probably will pass without notice, however, since Barton followed up
two days later with a spectacular burst of rhetorical flatulence – his
comment that the $20 billion that BP agreed to contribute to a spill
damage compensation fund was a "shakedown."
As if requiring payment of restitution for the damage that people or
companies cause is the moral equivalent of gangsters plying an
extortion racket.
Barton apologized later in the day.
Back, however, to Barton’s comment of two days previous. He said: "The
laws of nature and the laws of physics do not respond to 30-second
sound bites."
Absolutely right, Congressman. We’ll remember that if and when you next
make a cack-handed comment about climate and science.
Such as this statement from last year:
"CO2
is odorless, colorless,
tasteless – it’s not a threat to human health in terms of being exposed
to it. We create it as we talk back and forth. So, and if you go beyond
that, on a net basis, there’s ample evidence that warming generically —
however it is caused — is a net benefit to mankind."
Or this one, also from 2009:
"Wind
is God’s way of balancing heat. Wind
is the way you shift heat from areas where it’s hotter to areas where
it’s cooler. That’s what wind is. Wouldn’t it be ironic if in the
interest of global warming we mandated massive switches to energy,
which is a finite resource, which slows the winds down, which causes
the temperature to go up? Now, I’m not saying that’s going to happen,
Mr. Chairman, but that is definitely something on the massive scale. I
mean, it does make some sense. You stop something, you can’t transfer
that heat, and the heat goes up. It’s just something to think about."
We will, Congressman, while we await word of a walrus sighting in the
Gulf of Mexico.
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