From AOL News:
The House’s new Republican leadership will begin doling out coveted committee chairs after the Thanksgiving break, and it’s unclear whether Rep. John Shimkus is helping his chances to lead the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee by arguing that climate change is a myth because God told Noah he would never again destroy the Earth by flood.
Shimkus, an Illinois Republican, who won his seventh term this month, earned a dubious bit of YouTube notoriety in March 2009 when he told a subcommittee hearing on energy and the environment that we needn’t worry about global warming because of Genesis 8:21-22. In that passage, Noah emerges from the ark, sacrifices some birds and beasts to God, and in turn earns God’s pledge: “Never again will I curse the ground because of man.”
If America puts knuckle-dragging savages like this in positions of power, we can kiss our standing in the world goodbye. (Or what’s left of it post-Bush era). We simply can’t take such people seriously if we expect to succeed as a nation. The rise of goons like Shimkus will be the downfall of our civilization.
Wake up America! Look who the GOP is elevating to make decisions that influence our lives.
God, protect us from our followers, especially the freakin stupid ones.
Yes, well, it isn’t *God* cursing the ground that’s the problem here
[...] Powerful GOP House Member: The Bible Says God Will Protect Us From Global Warming. Read more [...]
The planet suffers with crazed idiots like this in charge, not just the U.S.. America is still the world’s largest polluter.
These biblical literalists never heard the words ‘metaphor’ or ‘literary device’?
Shimkus should ask the people of 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki about ‘not cursing the ground because of man’.
These people are INSANE and need to be got out of office in 2012. Wish there was a way to do it sooner, but 2012 might be the next chance.
Religion does so much damage in the world. When will people grow up and move beyond it?
Unfortunately it will be a loooonng tiiiime until we leave the caves of superstition where religion was born, much to our detriment, millennia ago. We are still too gullible, uneducated, and unwilling to change. The USA could be leading the world toward the future but instead it is slowly sliding backward, obsessed with returning to the 19th century when rich white religious males had everyone else under their thumbs. Americans will believe anything belched forth by the religionistas and their toadies, or they will pretend to believe it out of fear and laziness. It is so much easier to let right wing hate radio dictate one’s opinions than actually crack a book or explore diverse opinions.