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
During a Tuesday hearing of the House Natural Resources Committee, Rep. Louie Gohmert seemed to float a novel idea for solving the climate crisis: changing the orbits of the Earth and moon.
Gohmert, R-Texas, posed that highly speculative theory in the form of a question to Jennifer Eberlien, associate deputy chief of the National Forest System.
“I understand, from what’s been testified to the Forest Service and the BLM [Bureau of Land Management], you want very much to work on the issue of climate change,” Gohmert told Eberlien. “I was informed by the immediate past director of NASA that they’ve found that the moon’s orbit is changing slightly, and so is the Earth’s orbit around the sun. We know there’s been significant solar flare activities, and so, is there anything that the National Forest Service or BLM can do to change the course of the moon’s orbit or the Earth’s orbit around the sun? Obviously that would have profound effects on our climate.”…
IT GETS BETTER…
As video clips of the exchange began circulating, Gohmert lashed out at critics who mocked the idea that altering our planet’s orbit was a viable or wise solution to climate change. Specifically, he took issue with those he said had conflated the Bureau of Land Management and Black Lives Matter, which share the same initials…
Nobody I can find conflated these two acronyms. Or called him a racist. Just an idiot.
… Long a climate change denier, Gohmert in 2015 mocked Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Al Gore over their advocacy to address global warming, saying that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was a good thing because it meant “we’ll have more plants.”…
For some reason, I am reminded of the Molly Ivins’ signature quip about a different Texas legislator: “If his I.Q. slips any lower, we’ll have to water him twice a day.”
patrick Il
Earlier today someone in comments suggested that Gomert could not be that dumb and he meant it as sarcasm. I looked again and agree with the consensus –he’s that dumb.
mrmoshpotato
Oh. I read that as Black Lives Matter earlier today, since Louie is such a nutjob.
Rocks
Damn!
dmsilev
Look, at least he recognizes that the Earth orbits around the Sun and not vice versa.
mrmoshpotato
@dmsilev: Setting a real high bar for elected officials there. :)
dmsilev
@mrmoshpotato: One has to have realistic expectations.
NotMax
I’d use the phrase lunatic fringe but in Gohmert’s case it’s an insult to fringe.
jl
I suppose Gohmert thinks that electric cars and renewable energy are very risky outlandish, inefficient, unworkable dreams of communist tyrants trying to stuff us into tiny hobbit houses…
Maybe Gohmert will offer to make the trip up there to check out the possibilities?
craigie
I have often wondered about a version of this, namely, if we transported today’s conservaloonies back 100 years or so, to the start of the automotive age, would they have been trying to pass legislation to force people to own multiple horses, and restrict gas stations to one every 50 miles, etc? It seems like they would.
jl
Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902) – Georges Méliès – (HQ) – Music by David Short – Billi Brass Quintet
https://youtu.be/ZNAHcMMOHE8?t=442
NotMax
@jl
“Why don’t we build cars out of chlorophyll? Why isn’t the Department of Energy working on that?”
//
Kelly
Alexandra Petrie https://twitter.com/petridishes/status/1402701685764640768
everyone knows changing the moon’s orbit falls under the FDA not the Forest Service because it is regulated as a cheese
JaneE
It seems the appropriate answer to that question is “Just as soon as you provide the lever and a place to stand”.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Y’all should be ashamed of yourselves, casting aspersions on Louie’s asparagus.
Robmassing
I for one am impressed. I didn’t think Gohmert knew the earth revolves around the sun
mrmoshpotato
@Kelly: LMAO!
Ms. Petri continues to be a national treasure.
NotMax
@BillinGlendaleCA
Gohmert: Asininity ascendant.
HumboldtBlue
I love the moon and I love cheese, and over the past year or so I came to love Gurdeep Pandher of the Yukon.
HumboldtBlue
There’s also this little dancing homie.
mrmoshpotato
Just occurred to me – does this this Texass assclown think the United States owns the Moon because our flag is on it?
mrmoshpotato
@HumboldtBlue:
These two like the moon as well.
MattF
Yeah, Louie is below average. The bleach injection probably didn’t help.
Keith P.
It’s finally time to blow up the moon.
Ruckus
@MattF:
Someone has to be the bottom. And we aren’t talking bedroom.
Gofart is one useless clump of something and if it wasn’t for autonomic breathing, he never would have been able to figure out how – or why breathing was important.
scav
DAMN! I read Orbits as Obits.
Redshift
Maybe Louie is feeling the need to respond to the new competition for the title of Dumbest Member of Congress…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@mrmoshpotato: yes, the rest of the world will just standby while our home grown nitwits try some stunt that could kill everyone?
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
Nazis got there first, don’tcha know.
;)
NotMax
@Enhanced Voting Techniques
But we’ve got –
dum dum dum– Space Force!HumboldtBlue
@mrmoshpotato:
I love that song. And the moon.
I love the moon.
NotMax
(
tap tap</em) Is this thing on?Music, maestro, please. Sugar Moon.
evodevo
Well, in the old days, people this stoopid were confined to state legislatures (See: MO and OH)…nowadays they are routinely elected to positions in the national spotlight…..local dumbassery is now federal dumbassery….
SFAW
@mrmoshpotato:
Wow, Gohmert has a career as a singer/songwriter? Who knew?
Kayla Rudbek
@craigie: they made laws about having to have a flagman for a car going over a particular speed in the late 1800s if I recall correctly…
Ken
@Kayla Rudbek: That was because if the car (or train) moved too fast, passengers would be suffocated as the air moved past too quickly to inhale. This is of course why people are cut down en masse on windy days.
Gravenstone
Gohmert is a prime example of the adage “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing”. Hears something once vaguely related to a topic at hand, then tries (and fails) to sound intelligent by attempting to regurgitate the information he heard.
Or as they say in Texas, that fella ain’t right….
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@Gravenstone: Like Bill O’Reilly not understanding how tides work?
J R in WV
@Boris Rasputin (the evil twin):
Was that “The tides come in, the tides go out, nobody can explain that!” ?
Both aggressively stupid AND painfully pig-ignorant~!!~
Nettoyeur
@jl: One look at new apt blocks GOP idol Putin’s Russia: rabbit hutches, even worse tha hobbit houses.