He’s trolling, plain and simple. Not a doubt in my mind. Those who support him and his cohorts will either believe he is serious and believe him (the minority of his supporters) or take it as him just having fun with “the libs” by yanking their chains. I think it’s part of the defense mechanism they use to ignore Trump’s lies.
How else would you interpret this direct quote:
is there anything that the National Forest Service or BLM can do to change the course of the moon’s orbit, or the Earth’s orbit around the sun?” Gohmert inquired. “Obviously that would have profound effects on our climate.”
In reply to another poster above, maybe Gohmert is the best and brightest in Texas. Okay, I didn’t really mean that.
Back in college, I had a roommate who always managed to find new ways to act like a jerk. At the time we were learning about “Renaissance men”, guys like Michelangelo or Leonardo who dabbled in a little bit of everything. So in an attempt to quantify this guy’s jerkiness, we starred to describe him as a Renaissance Jerk.
Louie Gohmert is a Renaissance Idiot. 
Stoopid with two O’s.
If he’s sincere, then that means his question was a genuine attempt to address climate change.
How likely do you think that is?
This is obviously correct.
Yup, Gohmert’s comment is obvious mockery. But in defense of posters who don’t see that immediately, our Poe’s-Law-based expectations of the range of stupidity exhibited by Republicans have been conditioned by four years of Trump, who is stupid enough to ask in complete seriousness if astronauts protected by bleach-infused blood could be sent to move the moon.
So if Gohmert is bleating about a “gotcha” on some liberals for taking his comment as stupidity rather than trolling mockery, perhaps he should reflect on the leadership of his party, some other current Republican members of Congress, widespread genuine belief in Q-Anon, and why some people might reasonably now think a Republican Representative is actually that stupid. It’s hardly an indictment of liberals for being gullible when we observe what is real, the limited extent to which most Republicans have any grasp at all on reality.
Ok, let’s apply Occam’s Razor.
The following are all (I think) well-established facts:
- Louie Gohmert is an anthropogenic climate change denier.
- A frequent talking point among such, and a talking point Gohmert himself has used, is that to the extent climate change exists, it is driven entirely by large scale natural cycles and phenomena such as variations in Earth’s orbit.
- All human communication is contextual.
- Sarcasm, iron, ridicule, Socratic questioning, and other non-literal rhetorical devices exist, and are frequently used by people trying to make a point.
- Politicians commonly use such devices when making points in order to appeal to their constituents and potential donors.
The hypothesis that Gohmert was trolling with his question is consistent with all of the above and requires the postulation of no new facts.
On the other hand, the hypothesis that Gohmert was seriously asking if the U.S. Forest Service could alter the orbits of the Earth and Moon because he seriously thinks this is a live possibility requires at least two novel postulates:
- Louie Gohmert thinks that human beings can alter planetary orbits.
- He thinks the U.S. Forest Service, possibly has this in their remit.
Note that 1. is not only not previously attested, as far as I know, but it directly contradicts Gohmert’s well-attested belief that humans can’t alter such large scale, and not incidentally divinely-ordained, natural cycles.
I think Occam’s Razor cuts overwhelmingly towards the first hypothesis.
Put another way: if Gohmert is trolling/ridiculing measures to prevent climate change, he’s acting in accordance with his own previous statements, policy positions, and ideology. If he’s genuinely wondering if the U.S. Forest Service can change the orbits of the Earth and the Moon, he’s contradicting his own ideological positions. Which is more likely?
Being a troll and being an idiot are not mutually exclusive.
Sure, I agree. But that doesn’t imply that it’s correct to parse a specific comment as idiocy when it is in fact sarcastic mockery.
A shorter and simpler list of facts:
- Louie Gohmert is an idiot.
- An idiot trying to sound clever generally makes himself sound like a bigger idiot than he already is.
Ergo, Gohmert’s idiocy is the natural result of an attempt to “herp derp own teh libs”.
He’s an idiot who doesn’t understand or believe in science. It’s hard to put limits on how stupid he is and what he doesn’t understand.
It’s a problem with pretending to be stupid, people may just believe you.
ETA: and I still, were I in the position of the Forest Service, recommend that he try jumping up and down at noon every day.
This is where the stupid enters:
One has to accept this stupidity to appreciate the trolling. Unfortunately for Gohmert, this particular idiocy, I would guess, is not well-known among the general, not-stupid population, and since his “move the Earth/moon” stupidity is based on this underlying stupidity, all the typical person is left with is the first-derivative “move the moon” stupidity.
And a Renaissance Jerk as well.
In fairness, he asked about altering lunar orbits. 
Does that mean we can moon him?
Yes.
I think it’s actually quite well known and believed by climate change deniers, who are his target audience.
Which he cares about…why?
Here’s the thing. He’s not talking to you. Or to the “non-stupid population.” He doesn’t care what “the libs” think. It makes no difference to him. Why on Earth would it?
There seems to be an unspoken, and I think unexamined, assumption among a lot of posters in this thread that Gohmert is talking to them, and thus he’s supposed to be saying things that make sense to them. He’s not. He’s talking to his constituents - at least, to the portion of them that make a difference in the Republican primaries in his safe district - and to potential donors.
And while climate change denial is stupid, calibrating his public persona to appeal to critical primary voters and motivated donors very much isn’t. In point of fact, he shouldn’t care what Dopers, or “the non-stupid public”, or the mainstream media think about him or what he says. He should care about what his constituents think. And personally, I’d bet they appreciate his approach. Which, in a democracy, is how that’s actually supposed to work.
Or, I guess, maybe he’s not the kind of stupid that actually occurs among real human beings with ideological biases and filters, and is actually the kind of stupid that I had thought only occurred in fictional parodies of politicians.
No, we realize that he is talking to his supporters, stupid people. That doesn’t mean that we can’t make fun of both him and them.
Then, maybe, make fun of them for believing that climate change isn’t happening, or for believing that climate change is entirely driven by large scale natural cycles, or for believing that humans can’t interfere in God’s natural order and thus can’t change the climate, or the other things they actually believe, not for supposedly thinking that the U.S. Forest Service can alter the Moon’s orbit, which they don’t actually believe.
Gohmert Stupid Logic:
Climate change has nothing to do with human activity; it’s caused by natural variations in Earth’s orbit. Take that, Libs.
Can we do anything about that? Of course not. Let’s ask: “Mr. Forest Service, can you move the Earth or Moon?” No? Then nothing can be done about climate change. QED. Take that, Libs.
Stupid premise leads to stupid punch line. Whom it’s aimed at doesn’t diminish the stupidity.
I can’t make fun of them for the things that they say?
What he said was stupid, no matter the context. It deserves ridicule.
I’m not really getting the defense here. He said something stupid in order to make a stupid point. Making fun of him for the statement, even is we know it isn’t something that he truly believes, is fair game.
Do people really believe that bringing a snowball into congress proves global warming isn’t happening, do they truly believe that sticking a key to their neck proves that COVID vaccine causes magnetism? It really doesn’t matter what they believe, they made the statements and deserve to be called out for how stupid they were.