What Steven Chu should have said

Rep. Barton presented Chu with a teachable moment; it's a shame that Chu is a physicist and not a geophysicist, because he could have basically said this:

"Representative Barton, the reason that there are oil and gas deposits in Alaska is due to plate tectonics. Because the continental plates move around, during the Mesozoic when marine organisms were deposited on the seafloor, which over millions of years slowly transformed into oil and natural gas, the oceans adjacent to Alaska were warm and tropical. There are two reasons the oceans were warm and tropical: one, the position of the continents was significantly different than in modern times, so the shape of the oceans and their circulation patterns was much different. The other reason is that during the Mesozoic Era, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were much higher than now, ranging between 1000 and 3000 parts per million, nearly 10 times more than present. This is why there was no Arctic ice cap during the Mesozoic Era. Because the continental positions and ocean circulation were so much different, no reasonable comparisons with modern-day climate conditions can be made. However, the fundamental fact that higher CO2 concentrations in past geologic eras caused the Earth's global temperatures to be considerably higher is related to the present day concern about climate change."

The Late Triassic and Early Jurassic was a critical time in Earth history representing a fundamental end member of Earth System states