Why is an MIT alum in Congress pretending he doesn't know climate change is real?

[FM123]

(Vox article) Republicans really want to deny climate change — even when they should (and probably do) know better.

“Are you serious?” former Secretary of State John Kerry asked Rep. Thomas Massie during a congressional hearing on Wednesday in which the Kentucky Republican seemingly tried to catch Kerry in a sort of “gotcha” moment about scientific credentials and climate change. (Kerry has a bachelor's degree in political science)
snip
Here’s the thing: This is all very silly. Political science is a field of study, just like history or literature, and if Massie has a bone to pick with the name of the field, he should take it up with … academia? Kerry’s not claiming to be a climate scientist with his bachelor’s degree. He’s not claiming to be a scientist at all. But Kerry, a former senator from Massachusetts and secretary of state, is a longtime advocate of combating climate change. He signed the Paris climate agreement, from which Trump has now withdrawn the US.

But here’s the other thing: Massie probably knows that. He’s just acting like he doesn’t and has awkwardly dug himself into a hole.
Maybe there could be some benefit of the doubt for Massie if he had never come into contact with science. But he definitely has.

Massie, 48, holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. According to the biography on his congressional website, he “invented a technology that enabled people to interact with computers using their sense of touch” and out of that launched a company called SensAble Technologies, which he later sold. He has obtained two dozen patents.
On the “issues” page of his website, Massie claims that he is “keenly aware of the practical issues involved in energy production.” He says that he designed and built his own house, which “generates all of its own power using a combination of solar, geothermal, propane, and wood.

So as to Kerry’s baffled question in the midst of Wednesday’s hearing of whether or not Massie was “serious,” it’s hard to tell. On the one hand, the Kentucky Republican is, presumably, a very smart and well-educated guy, particularly in engineering and energy. On the other hand, he is a Tea Party conservative, and whatever he thinks about climate change — or the name of the political science field — it’s politically expedient to ignore it. (read more)
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/4/12/18307727/thomas-massie-john-kerry-video-political-science

[benld74]

1. He's an idiot

[exboyfil]

2. I recommended that he read this

book by my former Heat Transfer professor.

Since it was written by someone who wasn't a climate scientist, I thought it might offer more credibility to the topic for him.

Of course he is intentionally obtuse.

https://www.amazon.com/Climate-Change-Complexity-Uncertainty-Intersection/dp/1107521130

[superpatriotman]

3. Transcripts, please

Everyone knows he didn’t really attend MIT...

[Dazbog]

5. If MIT...

Morons Institute of Turdwiping, then he's an alum, but if it's Mass Inst of Tech, he's a failure.

[JI7]

4. playing to the fucked up Republican base

[Guilded Lilly]

6. He has obviously suffered a humongous brain fart, or...

He is a total toady tool of the Republicans in their obsessive quest to ruin the planet for profit.

[5X]

7. generates all its own power...with propane and wood.

he bought his way through mit

[mr_lebowski]

9. I know, right?

Where does the propane from, exactly, out his ass?

And the wood? Does that come from breaking off shingles and throwing them in the fireplace, or?

What a fucking joke ... you can't even make this kinda stupid UP ...

(to be fair I suppose he's implying he's off the grid, but still ... someone's gotta deliver the friggin propane ... and probably the wood ... and what, is his house sitting right on top of a geothermal well, and he has a turbine and generator onsite? I'm thinking most likely not).

[UniteFightBack]

8. Maybe his parents bought his way in. nt

[dewsgirl]

10. [phone]

[SoCalDem]

11. Money money money n/t

[defacto7]

12. Because that's the message he's peddling.

[fescuerescue]

13. Politics of course

He gets more votes by disagreeing with it, than by agreement. No more than that.

All politicians, even Republicans know that their first goal is getting (re)elected. If they get elected, they can write policy. They can compromise or not compromise. They can help people. They can stop wars. They can start wars. They have a millions things they can do and choose from. But those millions things? Can't be done if they won't win.

[caraher]

14. Because scientific literacy does not predict belief in climate change

His degrees are in engineering, not climate science. And in fact, what the research shows is that that when you take a conservative with more scientific literacy, they are less likely to believe climate change is human-caused and a significant problem. Higher levels of scientific literacy are associated with polarization and not more belief in the scientific consensus.

Study participants who scored highest on a general-science-literacy test did the best on the study’s climate-literacy test. But contrary to the researchers’ expectations, those participants were not more likely to agree on whether human activity is causing climate change, according to the study.

“Despite consistently giving the correct answers to climate-literacy questions,” Kahan noted, “the most science literate study participants were even more politically polarized.”

Previous studies, Kahan said, have found the more science-literate members of the public are more polarized. “Nevertheless, one might reasonably have supposed that those individuals must at least differ in their levels of climate-science literacy, maybe because of biased interpretations of the evidence. But apparently that’s not what’s going on,” said Kahan.

<snip>

“Republicans and Democrats alike already understand that climate scientists have shown we face huge risks from global warming,” said Kahan. “Just telling people that over and over — something advocacy groups have been spending millions of dollars doing for over a decade — misses the point: Positions on climate change have become symbols of whose side you are on in a cultural conflict divorced from science.”

emphasis added

[Buzz cook]

15. Just because you graduate in the sciences

Doesn't mean your branch of science is relative to the one in question.

And even if you graduated in a relevant field there are reasons why the graduate might not be able to competently deal with the questions at hand.

Just as there are creationists that take biology so they can lie their asses off for Jezuz, there are idiots that sat in the back of the class in environmental science so they can lie their asses off for Exxon.

[democratisphere]

16. If a rethug politician comes from Kentucky, you know they

will lie, cheat and steal to remain in power. Just ask Mitch and Rand and now liar Thomas Massie.

[smirkymonkey]

17. Massie is more dedicated to his party's backward ideology than he is to

his scientific background. He was intentionally making Kerry look like an idiot, when the only idiot in the room was him. The man is just another disgusting republican partisan pig who has no business questioning anybody.