Louie Gohmert is Speaking "Jive"

 

ORBITS: Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) asks whether the Forest Service or the BLM can alter the orbit of the moon or the Earth in order to fight climate change during a House Natural Resources hearing pic.twitter.com/yYiOyi2cMZ

— Forbes (@Forbes) June 8, 2021

I'm seeing a lot of liberals assume that the gibberish that Rep. Gohmert is spouting here is ignorance or signs that he's nuttier than chipmunk turds, but actually, I understood what he was getting at because he isn't talking liberal language. He's talking a very specific kind of climate denialist "jive"--and I get it. I'm by no means fluent in it, but just to cut through the "Can we change the orbit of the moon?" bullshit--

 

He's being disingenuous. It's usually a kind of Christian climate denialist cop-out I think of as the "God is God" gambit. Climate change can't be anthropogenic because we're not powerful enough, and even if we were, nothing happens that isn't God's will, and since you can't change the moon's orbit or solar flares, well then! There's nothing to be done, so sorry. Nice run, old Planet Earth, but we've a place way up yonder.

(Often, it goes along with "God promised he would not kill us with a flood again", which is just--also bizarre and not right.)

It's not supposed to be connected to any science. He mentions the orbit of the earth and moon and the solar flares thing as a distraction. Scientists largely agree that climate change is mostly caused by humans. The slight changes in either the moon's orbit or Earth's around the sun are happening a a rate we wouldn't really notice. Solar flares cause barely a ripple. But the dismissiveness is the point. 

See Marjorie Taylor Green on the "so-called science" of evolution. The coronavirus had to be created in a lab because it didn't evolve you guys. That's just silly heathen science. Demons invented it in the labs with alien DNA and baby parts. That's the only thing that makes sense. Use your brain, morans!

If you wanted to question, well, how then, did anyone learn to engineer a virus except by observation of biological changes in organisms over time? Well, the moran is you, because nothing about her statement is intended to invite a debate or even a real conversation.  It signifies to people who agree with her that she's with them--it doesn't have a thing to do with the objective reality we want to talk about.

Now, don't get me wrong, I think the both of them are dumb as hell, and it's just as well. They aren't conveying anything of any sense to people who want a meaningful conversation, anyway. So maybe they deserve the Twitter outcry--it's just, they are probably wearing it as an "owning the libs" moment because they got the pointless display they wanted.