So, So Painfully Stupid

The continuing rolling wave of news about torture continues, and is almost too upsetting to write about. Many other bloggers, particularly Marcy Wheeler, are really where to get good information on that topic.

As of this writing, it's becoming increasingly clear that high level Bush administration officials were preparing for and authorizing torture well before any memo alleged it was legal and that high administration officials, not 'bad apples' were in fact responsible for the abu Ghraib crap. Also, that a key motive behind the insane number of waterboarding sessions at Gitmo (183 in one month!) was the White House's political need to get some 'evidence', even if false, connecting al Qaeda with Saddam Hussein.

None of which should really come as a surprise, people. It is good to be getting to hard confirmation, though.

But enough of that. That's horrifying and evil, not primarily painfully stupid. What's painfully stupid is Congressman Joe Barton of Texas. Today he got to ask questions of Secretary of Energy and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu.

Later, Barton sent a message on Twitter that suggested he thought he'd really stumped Dr. Chu.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) thinks he stumped Energy Secretary Steven Chu at a hearing today. He tweets:

I seemed to have baffled the Energy Sec with basic question - Where does oil come from? Check out the video: http://bit.ly/O4m0p #tcot

When you look at the video, I have to admit that, for a second, Energy Secretary Chu does seem baffled, although the question Barton asked is a bit different than his tweet.

But it's clear that Chu is baffled that a supposedly educated adult, a sitting Member of the US House of Representatives, is being so painfully stupid. To Chu's credit, he was far nicer in his response than I would have been.

Barton: You’re our scientist. I have one simple question for you in the last six seconds. How did all the oil and gas get to Alaska and under the Arctic Ocean?

Chu: (laughs) This is a complicated story, but oil and gas is the result of hundreds of millions of years of geology, and in that time also the plates have moved around, and so, um, it’s the combination of where the sources of the oil and gas are–

Barton: But, but wouldn’t it obvious that at one time it was a lot warmer in Alaska and on the North Pole. It wasn’t a big pipeline that we created in Texas and shipped it up there and then put it under ground so that we can now pump it out and ship it back.

Chu: No. There are–there’s continental plates that have been drifting around throughout the geological ages–

Barton: So it just drifted up there?

Chu: That’s certainly what happened. And so it’s a result of things like that.

It seems, for a moment, like Barton is on his way to some kind of debunking of global warming or something, doesn't it? Like, since there is oil under Alaska, which is near the pole, it must have once been much hotter there? "Wouldn't it obvious that at one time it was a lot warmer in Alaska and on the North Pole."

Wild.

It's certainly clear that he doesn't really have a grip on the whole concept of plate tectonics, much less a Pangean supercontinent in remote geological time, so I guess it would be pointless to expect him to understand the biology and climate of the Carboniferous and Permian.

What I don't get is why Barton, who apparently knows less about pre-history than most dinosaur-crazy grade school boys, would be so certain that he knew the answer to his question that he would ask it that way. Is Barton really so stupid that he doesn't know how ignorant he is?

Quite possibly. He did put the video up on his own YouTube channel. He's actually proud of it.