Former Secretary of State, former senator, occasional Vietnam veteran, and armchair climatologist John Kerry testified earlier this week on climate change before the House Oversight Committee.
Why would Kerry be on a panel presumably stocked with climate experts? There’s no good answer for that but he was there and “took questions on the national security threat posed by climate change.”
Rep. Tom Massie (R-Ky.), an MIT-trained scientist and one of the best congressmen on the hill had some questions for Professor Winter Soldier. (You can learn about Massie here, he lives off the grid with guns in a solar-powered house!)
.@RepThomasMassie grills John Kerry on historic atmospheric CO2 levels at climate change hearing.
Kerry complains that it's “just not a serious conversation.”
Massie: “Your testimony is not serious. When you can’t answer the question, that’s the best answer you got.” pic.twitter.com/Eyx5t59mOa
— Nate Madden (@NateOnTheHill) April 9, 2019
Massie hit the Twitterverse with some more commentary about Kerry’s testimony.
Have you noticed that the scientists who feel most qualified to weigh in on climate science are political scientists? ????#sassywithmassie
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) April 10, 2019
Kerry replied:
It's almost as if someone said "Congress has hit rock bottom" and Massie replies with "hold my beer." https://t.co/UtkOHFwnlz
— John Kerry (@JohnKerry) April 10, 2019
That Kerry! He sure is hip to the Twitter lingo. But Massie is smarter.
It’s almost as if someone said “No one has less knowledge of science, a higher opinion of himself, and a bigger carbon footprint than Al Gore” and Kerry replies “hold my champagne, I’m going to testify as a climate change expert.” https://t.co/sSCbKMCuZK
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) April 10, 2019
Really, why would John Kerry (and former Obama admin SecDef Chuck Hagel!) testify on an issue about which he is not qualified to speak? When he was questioned about his suitability by Massie, Kerry was offended.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who has two engineering degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, began his line of questioning attempting to undermine Kerry’s authority on the issue by asking him about his “science degree” from Yale.
Kerry explained it was actually a bachelor of arts in political science.
“How do you get a bachelor of arts in a science?” Massie asked.
“Well, it’s liberal arts education . . .” Kerry replied.
“So, it’s not really science,” Massie said. “I think it’s somewhat appropriate that someone with a pseudoscience degree is here pushing pseudoscience in front of our committee today.”
“Are you serious?” Kerry said. “Is this really serious? This is really happening here?”
Kerry had difficulty responded to Massie’s questions about the climate. The WaPo classifies this as “bizarre” since the panel wasn’t expecting questions on, you know, science-y things.
Massie, during his bizarre back and forth with Kerry, asked why carbon dioxide was higher on Earth millions of years ago than it is today, to which Kerry responded, “But there weren’t human beings; that was a different world, folks.”
“Did geology stop when we got on the planet?” Massie asked.
An exasperated Kerry replied, “This is just not a serious conversation.”
Perhaps Kerry’s most important moment in the hearing when he sang the praises of Democrat party leader Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes (D-N.Y.): “Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez has in fact offered more leadership in one day or one week than President Trump has in his lifetime on this subject,” Kerry said. “And my question is, where is your proposal? Did you have any hearings on it in the last few years? Mostly on Benghazi, if I recall.”
There’s no proposal from serious scientist on how to change the weather.
Image from Getty Images