Gohmert's Pile: Let's Move The Moon To Adjust Climate Change

DALLAS, TX —There's an old D.C. comic depicting people on the street laughing at Superman for standing on his head.

Later in the story, readers learn that the Man of Steel was pushing Earth out of the way of an asteroid headed for his adopted home planet.

Apparently, Texas GOP Congressman Louie Gohmert has a similar crusade in mind. He's asked associate deputy chief of the U.S. Forest Service Jennifer Eberlien (who has planet-moving nowhere on her job description) if she couldn't get on that, pronto.

Quoth Gohmert, “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."

The congressman is quick to add that a NASA ex-director once told him orbits of the Earth and its moon are in flux.

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“We know there’s been significant solar flare activity, 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?” the congressman quizzed. “Obviously that would have profound effects on our climate.”

Rather than call him out, Eberlien diplomatically replied that she'd need to “follow up with you on that one."

Apparently oblivious, Gohmert responded, “Well, if you figure out a way that you in the Forest Service can make that change, I’d like to know.”

Some pundits have speculated that there was craft in the statement. Gohmert, they suggest, is advancing the notion that it is orbits causing climate change rather than man-made pollutants, and nothing can be done to budge the solar system.

Well darn it, we'll just have to trudge along, leaving as heavy a carbon footprint as we like.

This is what happens when you don't understand, know or respect science. It's the same kind of thinking espoused last year when a certain Chief Executive suggested drinking disinfectant and lightbulb suppositories rather than masks and social distance to combat a global pandemic.

The inquisitive Mr. Gohmert's remarks came three years into a congressional hearing looking into how science could be brought into the fight against climate change.

Not that he was alone in his creative thinking. A fellow Republican, Alabama's Mo Brooks, posited that the problem is land erosion, or more specifically, falling rocks like the English Cliffs of Dover, or the majestic mountains that line the California coast.

“Every time you have that soil or rock or whatever it is that is deposited into the seas," said the lawman, "that forces the sea levels to rise, because now you have less space in those oceans, because the bottom is moving up."

You can't argue with that kind of logic.

And if your elevator's cable snaps or your plane is falling from the sky, find an open spot, and just before it crashes — jump as high as you can!

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