Congressman Shimkus Says His Quote on Global Warming and God Taken Out of Context

By Chad Garrison Tue., Nov. 16 2010 at 9:30 AM

Categories: Follow That Story, Politics

Rep. John Shimkus: Dinosaurs loved carbon, too.

The man who wants to be chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee overseeing the nation's environmental regulation says a comment he made in a hearing last year was taken out of context.

The Republican from Collinsville, Illinois, was speaking before a subcommittee of Congress (video of his speech below) in March 2009 when he pulled out a Bible and read a passage from Genesis in which God promises not to destroy the world again after Noah's flood. At the end of the reading, Shimkus declared: "The Earth will end only when God declares it's time to be over. Man will not destroy this Earth ... I do believe that God's word is infallible. Unchanging. Perfect."

Yesterday, Shimkus defended his statement.

"Put into context I was at a hearing in which there were two theologians who were testifying using scripture (that God would destroy the earth through global warming) so I also wanted to address scripture really directed at those two theologians," Shimkus told KMOX.

The congressman went on to inform KMOX that global warming could actually be a good thing -- for the people of Greenland.

"Those people would like to see climate change, I'm not being funny, they would like to see a little bit of climate change," said Shimkus. "There is already debate (in Greenland) about a northwest passage with cruise ships going there to look at the ice bergs."

Gee, we hadn't thought about that. The opportunity to view icebergs from the deck of a Carnival cruise ship while wearing nothing but our swim trunks and flip flops is rather appealing!

Here's the video clip of Shimkus' quoting the Bible before Congress and then talking about how the amount of carbon in the atmosphere today isn't all that bad when compared to what it was when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Of course, they're all extinct now.