Reader Rev. El called my attention to the fact that a video I linked to yesterday was removed from YouTube. The video featured US Rep. John Shimkus at a congressional hearing arguing that climate change is a myth because God promised Noah after the Great Flood that he would never destroy the earth again.
Now that Republicans have taken control of Congress, Shimkus would like to be the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee—which oversees climate and environmental regulation. (Also vying for the position is Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), who famously apologized to BP for President Obama’s $20 billion escrow fund to cover damages by the massive oil spill.)
Oddly, YouTube’s cited reason for taking down the video was that it was, “… a violation of YouTube’s policy against spams, scams, and commercially deceptive content.”
(YouTube’s complaint policy places the burden of proof on the person who has posted the video, not on the person making the complaint. So, if you don’t like a video somebody posted of you, you may say that it’s copyright infringement—or some other reason—and the video invariably gets removed. The person who posted the video then has to prove that it does no such thing before it can be restored. It’s a really sneaky way to remove content that may prove embarrassing politically.)
Anyway, here’s a new version of the Shimkus video that Rev. El sent me:
Let’s see how long this one stays up before it’s removed. In case it does, here’s the rundown: Shimkus reads from Genesis 8:21-22:
God said… “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.
“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”
And then from Matthew 24:31:
And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.
Shimkus then says, “The earth will end only when God declares it’s time to be over. Man will not destroy this earth. This earth will not be destroyed by a flood. I appreciate having panelists here who are men of faith and we can get into the theological discourse of that position, but I do believe that God’s word is infallible, unchanging, perfect.”
