Barton’s Greatest Hits: Wind Power Might Mess Up Global Wind Patterns and Make the Earth Warmer

Created: September 18, 2009 14:55 | Last updated: July 31, 2020 00:00

Speaking of Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) — who apparently is weighing a run for the Senate seat being vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) — Kate just passed along the all-time money-est Barton quote ever (and that’s saying something) about how wind power might aggravate climate change. From a March 10 House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing:

Wind is God’s way of balancing heat. Wind is the way you shift heat from areas where it’s hotter to areas where it’s cooler. That’s what wind is. Wouldn’t it be ironic if in the interest of global warming we mandated massive switches to energy, which is a finite resource, which slows the winds down, which causes the temperature to go up? Now, I’m not saying that’s going to happen, Mr. Chairman, but that is definitely something on the massive scale. I mean, it does make some sense. You stop something, you can’t transfer that heat, and the heat goes up. It’s just something to think about.

This man was once the chairman of the committee, which this year passed the Waxman-Markey climate bill.