Let's talk about a popular scientific theory warning us of a coming catastrophe.
The theory is supported by leading scientists, politicians and celebrities.
Research is conducted at distinguished universities, funded by distinguished philanthropies.
Important research is done at Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Princeton.
The science is taught in junior high school, high school and college.
The science is supported by presidents, ex-presidents, Supreme Court justices, and Nobel Prize winners.
The science is supported by The National Academy of Sciences, The American Medical Association, The National Research Council, and others.
Opponents of the theory are shouted down and called ignorant.
Few people object to the theory.
Since this is a climate science and politics blog, you probably assume I'm talking about "climate change" -- the unproven theory of a coming runaway global warming catastrophe, treated as junk science at this blog, because it is junk science.
Sur-prize, sur-prize (use Jim Nabor's funny ''Gomer Pyle" voice).
I was NOT talking about climate change.
I have been describing the theory of eugenics -- junk science claiming that "stupid" people are breeding faster than "smart" people, which will cause a catastrophic deterioration of the average intelligence of the human race.
German scientists especially fell for eugenics, and without pressure from Nazis telling them what to believe.
Eugenics theory led to German mental hospitals killing patients with poison gas, and then cremating them, for the benefit of the country ... which was later expanded to killing millions of Jews, and other so-called "feeble-minded" people.
"Feeble-minded" was never clearly defined, so could be stretched and applied to anyone who was different than the majority, such as immigrants, Jews, gays, blacks and gypsies.
After World War II, nobody was a eugenicist, nor would anyone admit to having been a eugenicist prior to World War II.
But before World War II, eugenics supporters included:
Teddy Roosevelt,
Woodrow Wilson,
Winston Churchill,
Oliver Wendel Holmes,
Louis Brandeis,
Alexander Graham Bell,
Margret Sanger,
Luther Burbank,
H. G. Wells,
George Bernard Shaw,
The Carnegie foundation,
The Rockefeller Foundation,
and many others.
Source:
Appendix 1, from "State of Fear",
a novel by Michael Crichton:
The book presents real climate data
within a fictional story (to avoid lawsuits, I assume).
I skimmed through the book when it first came out in 2004,
and recently bought a copy for 25 cents at a Salvation Army store.
It's a much too long 600-page book
... that could have been a good 200 page book.
PS:
Today, when people tell me world politicians and government climate scientists say CO2 is dangerous, I respond by telling them almost every science consensus in history has been proven wrong.
And then I may tell them about eugenics.
I've read about climate change since 1997, and am confident the claim that CO2 controls the climate is junk science, and the claim that anyone can predict the climate 100 years into the future is a hoax, with 30 years of wrong predictions to demonstrate the hoax.