A Colorado Republican state senator justified the practice of hydraulic fracturing — commonly known as “fracking” — by saying that the presence of burnable amounts of methane gas in drinking water is a perfectly natural phenomenon. In fact, he said, the “Indians” used it for “warmth in the wintertime” many years ago.

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According to Right Wing Watch, state Sen. Randy Baumgardner (R) was speaking to former Navy chaplain turned conservative activist Gordon “Dr. Chaps” Klingenschmitt at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver.

Klingenschmitt recorded the interview for his daily “Pray in Jesus’ Name” show. He asked the Republican what he thought of the government trying to “pick and choose” and prioritize some forms of energy over others.

“I’ve been doing a lot of the fracking seminars,” said Baumgardner, “and if people haven’t been, then they really don’t understand it.”

“They talk about methane in the water and this, that, and the other,” Baumgardner went on, “but if you go back in history and look at how the Indians traveled, they traveled to the ‘burning waters.’ And that was methane in the waters and that was for warmth in the wintertime.”

“So a lot of people,” he said, “if they just trace back the history, they’ll know how a lot of this is propaganda.”

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Watch the video, embedded below via Right Wing Watch: