Kentucky state legislator says the dumbest thing ever about climate change

July 11, 2014 • 6:10 am

UPDATE: If you want to email Senator Brandon Smith, the guy who’s in the video below, there’s a simple email form here. You’ll have more clout if you’re from Kentucky, but I’ve sent an email myself.

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God help America! (Of course he can’t, because he doesn’t exist). Here’s a Kentucky state senator making a complete ass of himself about climate change. The report and video appeared in Louisville’s Leo Weekly on July 3:

Kentucky’s Interim Joint Committee on Natural Resources and Environment met today to discuss the new EPA rules to fight climate change by limiting greenhouse gases from power plants. The committee is chaired by Rep. Jim Gooch, D-Providence, a proud climate change denier who has suggested in the past that Kentucky secede from the union in order to avoid federal environmental regulations. Yes, he chairs the committee, because Kentucky.

I don’t even know where to start on sharing some of the wisdom that was expressed by our state legislators during this hearing. No, actually I do. I give you the honorable Sen. Brandon Smith, R-Hazard:

“As you (Energy & Environment Cabinet official) sit there in your chair with your data, we sit up here in ours with our data and our constituents and stuff behind us. I don’t want to get into the debate about climate change, but I will simply point out that I think in academia we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here. Nobody will dispute that. Yet there are no coal mines on Mars. There are no factories on Mars that I’m aware of.”

Have a gander:

It’s amazing that a democratically elected official can be so completely stupid. But, as we’ll see in the next post, climate-change denialism is largely independent of one’s knowledge of the scientific data (i.e. the scientific consensus), and depends far more on one’s political affiliation. Democrats know as much about climate change as do Republicans, but tend to attribute it, correctly, to human activities, which most Republicans deny. And of course Smith, speaking in the video above, is a Republican (but note that Gooch, who also is a denialist, is a Democrat).

The facts:

. . . while the average temperature on Earth is roughly 58 degrees Fahrenheit, the average temperature on Mars is approximately -80 degrees Fahrenheit. In Sen. Smith’s defense, he’s only off by about 138 degrees or so, which happens sometimes. Let’s go ahead and round up (up up up up up up up, etc…).

h/t: Merilee

125 thoughts on “Kentucky state legislator says the dumbest thing ever about climate change”

  2. Climate change denial has morphed into a stance that opposes anyone that wants to take steps to protect the environment, which also seems to be an ideological stance along party lines. You see this with the obnoxious “Rolling Coal” trucks on the road to show affiliation with those vs. democrats & Obama’s environmental stance.

    Ideology will be the death of us all.

    1. Yes, those are unbelievably awful. I do not know why they are not illegal for violating emissions standards and for simply obstructing visibility in traffic.

      1. Worse yet, climate change denial seems to have morphed into one of the “requirements” to run for office as a Teapublican, along with anti-abortion (and/or anti-contraception of ANY kind); anti-immigration, and a decided love for guns. When called on his absurd claim, this idiot will no doubt claim that his comments were “misunderstood”, or, “taken out of context.”

    2. “You want clean air and a tiny carbon footprint? Well, screw you.”

      Wow. This is the first I’ve heard of the phenomenon of “coal rolling.” How double-super-bananas-crazy-ass-stupid does one have to be to think this is a good idea? And, if these ignoramuses, and all their y’all qaeda buddies, oppose the President’s policies, just because they don’t like him, it’s probably because they’re a bunch of racist horses asses.

    3. One depressing vision:

      Last human standing on earth holding a Rosary…”Wait, but I thought this thing could solve our problems…”

      1. That was hilarious! I loved this line:

        The great irony, of course, is that no resident of Lower Derpistan would ever roll coal on me, even though my politics make me indistinguishable from the love child of Stalin and Saul Alinsky in their eyes….

          1. Yes, that was a good one too, especially because of the word, “overlappiest”.

    5. “Rolling Coal” trucks

      Downside : that this phenomenon exists.
      Upside : from Bob’s Guitar Shop, “y’all qaeda“. there’s gotta be a song in that, Bob?

        1. George was the best. This entire HBO special (from the mid 1990s if memory serves) is a comedy tour de force and it was so sharp that it is still far more relevant and substantive, two odd decades later, than most contemporary comedy . . . but George was nowhere near as funny as the things Kentucky politicians say about science.

          Kentucky’s Interim Joint Committee on Natural resources and Environment = BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

      2. I disagree with Carlin on this one. If only the crazy people vote, you can’t exactly act surprised when the government turns out to be completely nuts.

        1. I’m with you there, but I think he has a point that the game is rigged to a certain extent. The two-party system doesn’t leave much room for political change and if you don’t agree with any of them there’s no hope of influence.

          At the las EU-election I voted blank, though.
          None of the candidates eligible covered my opinions to a satisfactory degree.

          A blank vote doesn’t change anything, but it is the only way you can display your dissatisfaction if the current political parties are beyond reasoning.

          1. Not that it’s much better in multi-party systems, at least ones like what we have in the UK, where the only likely parties are Conservative, Labour, and arguably Liberal Democrats (though in a coalition with either). There are other parties, but usually no one expects them to have a realistic chance in a general election.

            Griping about politicians seems to be a regular way to pass the time here, presumably because everyone believes “politicians suck”. George Carlin’s words are as relevant to this side of the Atlantic as they are on the other.

            On the point about not voting, I don’t think that’ll do much by itself. It’d probably be more productive to start your own political party than to stop voting, or find somebody who’s willing to make their own party and support them in doing so.

            Come to that, how do political parties begin and grow? Given how easily people make their own groups, societies, and lobby groups, I’m surprised the trend has only produced two or, at best, a handful of parties in places like the US and the UK. Where are all the parties for the myriads of opinions, positions, and combined creeds people express?

          2. Same here in Denmark where the two big opposing parties rely on the support from minor parties, although the Danish People’s Party ( more or less the danish equivalent of UKIP ) is growing rapidly and in some polls close to top spot.

            I suspect it’s a bit easier to get your voice heard around here with a population of 5.5 mil.

            It has it advantages.

          3. Given how easily people make their own groups, societies, and lobby groups, I’m surprised the trend has only produced two or, at best, a handful of parties in places like the US and the UK.

            It’s a near mathematical certain result of the “first past the post” voting system we have.

            Political reform cannot happen without electoral reform, and electoral reform cannot happen without voting reform. If you would see change, advocate for the adoption of any of the preferential voting methods. (None is perfect; all have their particular advantages and disadvantages; and all are infinitely better than what we have today.)

            Given how favorable today’s method is to the entrenched political machines, the only way to get them to move is by voting for third party candidates. We need more “spoilers” such as what happened in Florida in 2000. That will convince the Republicrats and Democans that preferential voting is, for them, the lesser of two evils. It will provide short-term relief for the establishment, but cost them their stranglehold over the long term. But since they only care about the short term, they should be quite happy with that outcome.

            Cheers,

            b&

        2. I see your point, but I’m more with Carlin here that if the plurality of people are crazy, that’s precisely who will get elected. We don’t get engineers and scientists adept at problem solving running for office, we get lawyers and people successful in business; i.e., people who can give a good sales pitch, say what the people want to here and then proceed to fuck things up on a mssive scale.

          In my local elections, there’s little difference between the two major parties, in other areas of the United States, I can certainly see the desire to vote against fundamentalist Republican block. In the last Presidential election, I threw away my vote on a write-in candidate because I was disgusted with the entire thing and also agreed much more with the third party point-of-view.

        3. You are assuming only crazy people vote and that all who abstain are rational.

          Vote if you like; it takes no effort, incidentally. Volunteering for work in one’s neighborhood, school, community is much more difficult. It is visible and has a lasting effect regardless of who is in office. In fact, volunteer efforts of citizens can often undermine the stupidity of elected officials. This is one, among several, reasons I do not vote.

          1. If you received a ballot through the mail would you vote? Just curious, because that’s how WA manages their elections and it makes it LOTS easier for all. Doesn’t mean anyone is more informed, but it does raise participation. Perhaps this is naive, but I think it’s a good thing. I help out at the local food bank, and agree with your thoughts on volunteering.

            Though I would like to point out that since Republicans currently run the judiciary, I’d argue they are by far the most powerful party. If it stays that way we are truly in trouble.

          2. I would definitely vote, but then I would write in Frank Zappa or Miles Davis. At my college they used to have Mickey Mouse written in for student body elections and he almost always had more votes than most humans.

      3. The thing that checks my cynicism in this regard is that things could be, and have been for much of the past, worse. Somehow we’ve lurched and muddled through the mass of ignorance and self-interest and produced a society that is, today, a little better than it was when we started, and a lot better than a lot of other societies one can point to past and present. It’s almost a miracle, given the astonishing low quality of most of our leaders and officials and the unrelenting demagoguery that is always on display but, nevertheless, it has happened.

        1. I can’t think of a better time to be alive, but there’s good days and there’s bad days.

          Let’s just hope that this civilization is the one that lasts and that we figure out how to supply clean and ideally free energy to the entire globe.

          Oh, and hands of the nukes everyone. Hopefully they’ll end up in museums around the globe.

  4. He must be basing his conclusion on science fiction movies like “John Carter” that show earthlings walking around on Mars without space suits.

    2. Another underrated movie that I thought was pretty good for its movie niche. Or maybe my standards are low, I cannot tell.

      1. Not a bad movie at all. The major problem, I think, is that a lot of what Burroughs imagined has become the common currency of movie science fiction, so that much of John Carter had a feeling of “been there, done that”. Also, the marketing really sucked.

        1. I liked it too. Edgar Rice Burroughs was my favorite author when I was a kid. Do young people still read him?

          2. I listened to his first John Carter book, A Princess of Mars, a little while ago (at librivox.org). It, uh, how can I put this delicately, uh, wasn’t very difficult for me to understand why it didn’t win its author a nomination for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

  5. In Sen. Smith’s defense, he’s only off by about 138 degrees or so, which happens sometimes.

    And the good Senator’s brain is exactly as aware as a lump of Kentucky coal. I might be off a bit. It happens sometimes.
    .
    Hope I’m not insulting the coal.

  6. What was his reaction after someone pointed out to him that he was wrong?

    1. Probably would be something like, “doesn’t matter, you know what I mean, stop trying to change the subject.”

  7. Well, as another august and learned member of the same body pointed out, the dinosaurs all died out and the earth is still around, so what’s the big deal? What a maroon!

  8. Well, had he been comparing surface temperatures on Mars to winter temperatures in Illinois this past winter….not that bad of a comparison. 🙂

    Seriously, I think that someone told him that there had been an increase in surface temperatures on Mars and he confused temperature CHANGE with temperature itself.

    2. Thanks for pointing this out. I feel sure that’s what happened here, and it’s a good head’s up of a new denialist argument making the rounds.

  9. So here’s my itch. We get stories about these knuckledraggers saying what they will, but there is rarely a followup where the dunce is confronted with the evidence and offered a samurai sword to disembowel his or her self.

    The stories always end as if there were no consequences at all for stupidity.

    Oops. Maybe there aren’t.

    1. Good point. I’ve put an update in the post linking you to an email site for Senator Smith. I’ve already written him, but of course Kentucky residents will have more clout!

          1. He’s got people for that.

            But they can only read … oh, it’s OK – they speak Indian English in India. Close enough to American.

  10. My favorite part is not [really wrong claim], but the awesome prelude of “…in academia we all agree” [really wrong claim].

  11. Democrats know as much about climate change as do Republicans, but tend to attribute it, correctly, to human activities, which most Republicans deny.

    Very good point! Though it is likely that Democrats are a bit more knowledgable about the issue but perhaps not as much as we would like them to.

    Also, I believe I have read about a similar phenomenon about evolution that a lot of people who claim to accept it don’t even have a rudimentary knowledge of the evolution.

  12. “Mars is essentially in the same orbit…Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe.” – George W. Bush

    1. Without going into details, the atmosphere on mars is about 96% carbon dioxide, and 0.145% oxygen. Waaay different, and way thinner than our atmosphere.
      What an extraordinary lack of interest in simple facts! Checking Google 1st is really not that hard.

      2. To be fair, that is a rough take away from the then NASA Mars plans:

        – “essentially in the same orbit” – close to the outer edge of the habitable zone

        – “canals” – ancient river systems

        – “water” – water ices

        – “water … means oxygen … means we can breath” – water contains oxygen for breathing.

        But Bush sure knew how to simplify a message beyond any reasonable context. He could as well have said: “I plan to send men to Mars, and it is doable [at least vs water & oxygen].”

      3. Amusingly, this was the exact argument I used about the latest episodes of “24”. I think mass entertainment has begun to reflect mass ignorance & a cavalier attitude toward facts.

    1. There may be some truth to that. Many people will be stunned speechless, many will be too busy laughing to dispute it, and yet many others will be too busy crying.

    2. The trick is to sell it. I’ve seen so many people do this – just say whatever with utmost confidence and you’re in!

      1. There is no trick to selling things to conservative audiences.

        Or rather, the one trick is to make sure whatever you’re trying to sell contradicts what someone on the left is saying.

  14. According to his Bio, Senator Smith is the owner of a company called Mohawk Energy which develops and implements systems used in oil & gas extraction. So, I’m not terribly surprised that a man whose profession is servicing fracking wells makes statements to the effect of Sen. Smith. I’m sure his knowledge of science is abysmal, but I’m equally sure that an energy industry business owner who sits on a panel such as the Joint Committee on Natural Resources and Environment will say just about anything to avoid changing the status quo, which is lining the good Senator’s pockets.

    1. “which develops and implements systems used in oil & gas extraction.”

      Wrong Mohawk Energy, I’m afraid! The one you’re referring to is in Houston (which has a different owner/president).

      Smith’s company is in Lexington, KY.
      And it’s being described as a mining company. Given that it’s in Kentucky, that probably means ‘coal mine’. While I’m not sure about that, that WOULD explain a bit his desire to downplay the effects of burning fossil fuels.

  15. If Senator Smith really thinks there’s no difference between Earth and Mars, he owes it to himself to move there so he can get in on the ground floor of such an amazingly exciting growth opportunity.

    I’ll even chip in a few pennies for a rocket chair he can ride there. Several dozen O model rocket engines properly configured should be plenty to solve all our mutual problems.

    b&

    1. Noooooooo!

      Curiosity is there. It should not have to share a planet with a dunce.

        1. It would be much more of an improving experience for him to go to Venus. There he can become a global expert on the consequences of the Runaway Greenhouse Effect, coal mines not included.

          1. That wouldn’t help at all. As he burns up on Venus, he would roast proudly stating that “(just like Earth) HUMANS did not cause the greenhouse effect on Venus!”

            He would die self-vindicated.

          2. I don’t believe you. And I’m sure the only way to settle the matter is with empirical evidence. Would you care to join me in building a rocket chair to launch him to Venus to determine what he’d actually do?

            b&

          3. Sure! It will be easy to do, I can purchase all the necessary materials for the rocket chair through mail order from Acme Corp!

    2. I don’t know the performance figures for an “O model rocket engine”, but I’m guessing that the guy might get to an altitude of a few hundred feet?
      Solve this particular problem, at least.
      Brings a new meaning to a campaign launch.

      1. According to Wikipedia, they’re the biggest model rocket engines; anything after that is “amateur” rocketry — whatever that means.

        No clue what sort of altitude they’d achieve in what kinds of quantity. Do I look like a rocket scientist?

        …but there’s only one way to become a rocket scientist, and we’re gonna need Senator Smith to achieve our goal of putting Senator Smith on Mars or Venus or Uranus or wherever….

        b&

  16. I blame the short-term political career for a lot of this. These guys don’t have to worry right now about this and, in a few years or decades, it will be remembered as ‘someone else was in office’ when the coprolites hit the fan, so to speak. We cannot live with a system where long term crises rest on decision-makers with 4 to 10 year plans, it’s absurd.

    1. It is disheartening that these guys are elected in the first place. Things weren’t always this bad but it appears that anti-intellectualism has hit an all time high in the US and I’m afraid it will seep outwards to the rest of the West.

      1. Thanks President Reagan for all the shit you caused. He started it as Governor of California. Here’s how he “tackled” the “education problem”.
        Once elected, Mr. Reagan set the educational tone for his administration by:

        a. calling for an end to free tuition for state college and university students,

        b. annually demanding 20% across-the-board cuts in higher education funding,[2]

        c. repeatedly slashing construction funds for state campuses

        d. engineering the firing of Clark Kerr, the popular President of the University of California, and

        e. declaring that the state “should not subsidize intellectual curiosity,[3]
        this is from a 2004 article by a Mr. Clabaugh.
        I can’t find the quote, but he also said something to the effect “why should I allow kids a free college education when they are all taught to dislike my(Republican) policies?” And the dumbing down of America started in the 80’s as well in public schools. Civics no longer taught in grade/middle school (can’t teach kids that unions are good…or even what they are). Economics is also not taught anymore except in some high-schools and colleges. Just a shame…purposeful and cynical. We all know too well about the state of evolution…goes on and on.

        1. You’re probably right as it does seem that America got dumber after Reagan but it could also be that I was just old enough to notice by then.

          1. Well, I don’t know if America is getting dumber or just getting smarter slower than the rest of the world (I actually think I’ve read some research indicating the latter but don’t have time to go Googling for it at the moment). There is this sad little piece though: http://nypost.com/2013/10/08/us-adults-are-dumber-than-the-average-human/

            I can certainly attest to this; I recently sifted through some resumes at work for applicants from an Ivy League school. There were just over 100 resumes and not a single applicant was American. 95+% of them had gone to school in China, Europe or India and then transferred to the U.S. This may be slightly distorted since my company sponsors H1Bs, but nonetheless, I found it absolutely staggering. There’s no doubt the U.S. is falling behind and you have morons like Santorum out on the campaign trail saying that American kids don’t need to go to college.

        2. We must also thank Reagan and his neo-con cronies for politicizing the fundies and creating the Religious Right. Before Reagan the Fundies were more or less apolitical, focusing on living for the afterlife rather than changing this world. Under Reagan, the GOP made promises to the Fundies (that they had no plans to keep) in order to build a populist voter bloc that they could rely on to keep them in power.
          And it worked. But the influx of Fundies has driven most of the real conservatives out of the GOP.
          Forty years ago there would never have been a scenario where FOUR Repub presidential candidates admitted that they were creationists; and the GOP would would have kept someone like Smith hidden away as an embarrassment.

    2. when the coprolites hit the fan

      I know what you mean. I threw a piece of coprolites at a fan once. Broke the fan ; didn’t harm the coprolites at all. Result!

      1. It’s been my experience, too, that the old, desiccated, fossilized pieces of shit are completely oblivious when the fan goes to pieces because of the fits they threw….

        b&

    3. OTOH, I often hear it argued that term-limits are good, because career politicians are interested in doing things that will get them re-elected, not in what would actually be the best thing to do.

  17. Email sent.

    I noticed that the security question for submission was “Is fire hot or cold?”. I wonder if the good Senator would be able to answer that one.

  18. But the Sun becomes very cold when it turns off at night, eh Smith? You can’t explain _that_! (O.o)

  19. “What you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hfYJsQAhl0

    1. Oh, damn. I had no clue.

      For what it’s worth, that asshole-idiot is from Tucson, which I thought was somewhat more enlightened. My own US Representative is Krysten Sinema, who’s the least-religious member of Congress and one of the few (only?) openly bisexual members, too. The whole state isn’t benighted, though we clearly have a great deal of housecleaning to do.

      b&

      1. And as someone on Hermant’s site says, what if he comes across Trig, with its “Sin” function?

    3. Whoah….pretty scary letters hiding behind every bush. Caint nobody trust that there algebra ( it sounds Arabic, plus it has the word bra in it:-)

  21. According to Wikipedia, “At the time of the senator’s remarks, the Curiosity rover had last reported a high of −17 °C (1 °F), low −80 °C (−112 °F) [9] T”

    So, technically there are some places on earth that can be as cold as Mars sometimes.

    If he had only used qualifiers….and stuff. 🙂

    1. Try mailing it to him and see if he uses it in his next statement.

      1. I don’t want to encourage him. It would be funny to send him an email that appeared to agree with him but to any intelligent person was a clear indictment. I’d only do it in hopes he’d quote it somewhere & we’d all get the LOLz.

  22. We need a stupidity standard. Once someone says something that falls below the standard they are immediately ineligible for reelection. Then maybe a few politicians would actually think about and research what they say before bloviating all over their microphones.

  23. What really puzzles me (not really), is why he picked Mars!

    If you want to point to a planet and say “Look THEY too have a rampant greenhouse problem and temperatures getting out of control, and there are NO humans there, let alone coal mines and factories!”, then why not pick Venus? Why Mars?

    1. He’s seen pictures of mars. Looks like Arizona, so obviously the temperature must be like Arizona.

    2. I’m not sure they want anyone thinking too long and hard about Venus. Sure, you may prove the point that global warming can happen without any human activity. However, even a Kentucky legislator can probably understand that regardless of the cause, the effect is one that humans can’t live with. So, shh, don’t mention Venus.

  24. OK, as much as I hate to do this, there is a more charitable interpretation of the state Senator’s words. A climate-change-denial talking point is that the temperature trend on Mars has been following that of the Earth. That its temperature has also been rising and its polar ice caps shrinking.

    1. Quite possible, but if meant he trend, he should have said trend. So he couldn’t even get his misinformation correct. And they let this man make laws. *shudder*

    2. When Kathleen Sibelius testified before the committee of which Shimkus is a member, Shimkus repeatedly interrupted her/cut her off, saying words to the effect that he didn’t have to let her speak/answer his questions. Apparently, hubris runs rampant in the halls of Congress.

      I note that the honorable state senator Smith from KY has an undergraduate degree in herd management – uh, Ah mean political science. (cattle, polled heifer/steer, polis, policy, polite, police, polity, political, hoi polloi.)

  26. The Jihadists in the Middle East don’t frighten me nearly as much as the ones trying to take over the U.S. from within; I fear that the “last gasp” of the far-right and its “handmaiden”, fundamentalist religion will be a messy, violent one, given the character of this violence-obsessed society.

    Remember: “Fully half of the American population is of below-average intelligence.”

  27. Sub. I’m steeling myself to endure the audiovisual crucible of listening to this avatar of omniscience.

  30. Don’t get too carried away. I think he meant to say that the temperature change trend on Earth and Mars are similar, which is true. However, if I’m wrong, and he truly thought that Earth and Mars share the same temperature, then he needs to look for another job.

  31. Well at least we get accurate scientific information from Republicans in Minnesota:

    When you have egg and sperm that meet in conception, there’s an enzyme in the front that burns through the egg. The enzyme burns through so the DNA can enter the egg. If the sperm is deposited anally, it’s the enzyme that causes the immune system to fail. That’s why the term is AIDS – acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.

    1. This is one of the many times that politicians remind me of the quote often attributed to Mark Twain: “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt”.

  32. Each time I read about one of these cases it pushes me that much closer to adopting the view that there ought to be an intelligence and knowledge test to be a member of any legislative body.

  33. I sent this to a friend, and he said Bill Maher mentioned this today. Good; hopefully the idiot politician will get the ridicule he deserves.

  34. If the temperature ranges, atmospheric composition, etc. on Mars are so different than that found on Earth, then please explain how Bugs Bunny was able to defeat his Martian combatant so easily while on the red planet?

  35. How about a 5th grade end-of-grade test? If candidates refused, one could embarrass them by offering to lower the grade level grade-by-grade.

    If such a law passed in the U.S., would candidates likely complain that such a test is unconstitutional?

    Could/Would the omniscient, intellectually-curious, humble KY state senator claim to have passed such a test by virtue of having obtained a bachelor’s degree in herd management – Ah mean, political science?

  36. “It’s amazing that a democratically elected official can be so completely stupid.” Well, actually, no. The late great Molly Ivins observed that if all the liars, fools and adulterers were thrown out of Congress, it would cease to be a representative body.

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