“Republican” Congresscritter Thinks Climate Science is Just Like Surgery.

So, how about we arrange for a climate scientist to perform surgery on GOPee Rep. Benishek? Perhaps a vasectomy, gall bladder resection, or a colostomy? Dan Benishek, you see, thinks that since he is a surgeon, that makes him a “scientist”. He says so:

Rep. Dan Benishek (R-Mich.) says his medical background qualifies him to reject the overwhelming consensus among climate scientists that emissions from human activity are causing the planet to heat up. Pressed to address scientific findings to the contrary, Benishek claimed that no peer-reviewed climate change studies have been able “to prove that there’s man-made catastrophic global warming.”

As of 2013, 97 percent of more than 12,000 peer-reviewed climate science papers have concluded that human activity over the last century has contributed to global warming. Nearly 200 scientific organizations worldwide, including the American Medical Association, the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences also endorse the consensus position.

“Well, I am a scientist,” said Benishek, who worked as a general surgeon for nearly 30 years before running for Congress in 2011. “You know, I believe in peer-reviewed science. But, I don’t see any peer-reviewed science that proves there is man-made catastrophic climate change.”

So, “studying the sciences” makes you a scientist, eh, boyo? That makes this writer a scientist, one supposes. Wow, who knew a couple of college classes (in between drinking bouts) made the Cranky One a scientist? Dang, the lucrative career opportunities that were foregone, because of the silly belief that one had to spend time and effort over a period of years in a specialty before declaring one’s self the master thereof.

And by the same token, if a surgeon is somehow automatically imbued with the ability to do all sciences of all types after graduating medical school, surely the same applies to anyone who has “studied the sciences”, yes? So, chemists should be performing brain transplants, physicists could easily do organ transplants, and astronomers could whip out heart bypasses without breaking a sweat. Right, Danny Boy?

If the distinguished gentleman really thinks that his medical education and time in the O.R. is truly the equivalent of advanced degrees and years of work in climatology and related disciplines, then let him show it. Volunteer to go under the knife as oceanographers and geologists demostrate their “scientific studies” on his internal organs. Put some skin in the game, if you’ll pardon the pun.

After all, the risk is much smaller: only Benishek would be at risk in this fantasy scenario. But the whole f***ing planet is at risk if we accept his “scientific” judgment on the all-too-real phenomenon of global climate change.