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Global Warming/Climate Change Super Thread

The following article is found online here: http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/19842304.html

Global Warming and the Price of a Gallon of Gas
by John Coleman

You may want to give credit where credit is due to Al Gore and his global warming campaign the next time you fill your car with gasoline, because there is a direct connection between Global Warming and four dollar a gallon gas.  It is shocking, but true, to learn that the entire Global Warming frenzy is based on the environmentalist’s attack on fossil fuels, particularly gasoline.  All this big time science, international meetings, thick research papers, dire threats for the future; all of it, comes down to their claim that the carbon dioxide in the exhaust from your car and in the smoke stacks from our power plants is destroying the climate of planet Earth.  What an amazing fraud; what a scam.

The future of our civilization lies in the balance.

That’s the battle cry of the High Priest of Global Warming Al Gore and his fellow, agenda driven disciples as they predict a calamitous outcome from anthropogenic global warming.  According to Mr. Gore the polar ice caps will collapse and melt and sea levels will rise 20 feet inundating the coastal cities making 100 million of us refugees.  Vice President Gore tells us numerous Pacific islands will be totally submerged and uninhabitable.  He tells us global warming will disrupt the circulation of the ocean waters, dramatically changing climates, throwing the world food supply into chaos. He tells us global warming will turn hurricanes into super storms, produce droughts, wipe out the polar bears and result in bleaching of coral reefs. He tells us tropical diseases will spread to mid latitudes and heat waves will kill tens of thousands.  He preaches to us that we must change our lives and eliminate fossil fuels or face the dire consequences.  The future of our civilization is in the balance.

With a preacher’s zeal, Mr. Gore sets out to strike terror into us and our children and make us feel we are all complicit in the potential demise of the planet.

Here is my rebuttal.

There is no significant man made global warming.  There has not been any in the past, there is none now and there is no reason to fear any in the future. The climate of Earth is changing. It has always changed.  But mankind’s activities have not overwhelmed or significantly modified the natural forces.

Through all history, Earth has shifted between two basic climate regimes: ice ages and what paleoclimatologists call “Interglacial periods”.  For the past 10 thousand years the Earth has been in an interglacial period.  That might well be called nature’s global warming because what happens during an interglacial period is the Earth warms up, the glaciers melt and life flourishes. Clearly from our point of view, an interglacial period is greatly preferred to the deadly rigors of an ice age.  Mr. Gore and his crowd would have us believe that the activities of man have overwhelmed nature during this interglacial period and are producing an unprecedented, out of control warming.

Well, it is simply not happening.  Worldwide there was a significant natural warming trend in the 1980’s and 1990’s as a Solar cycle peaked with lots of sunspots and solar flares.  That ended in 1998 and now the Sun has gone quiet with fewer and fewer Sun spots, and the global temperatures have gone into decline.  Earth has cooled for almost ten straight years.  So, I ask Al Gore, where’s the global warming?

The cooling trend is so strong that recently the head of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had to acknowledge it.  He speculated that nature has temporarily overwhelmed mankind’s warming and it may be ten years or so before the warming returns.  Oh, really.  We are supposed to be in a panic about man-made global warming and the whole thing takes a ten year break because of the lack of Sun spots.  If this weren’t so serious, it would be laughable.

Now allow me to talk a little about the science behind the global warming frenzy. I have dug through thousands of pages of research papers, including the voluminous documents published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  I have worked my way through complicated math and complex theories. Here’s the bottom line: the entire global warming scientific case is based on the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the use of fossil fuels.  They don’t have any other issue.  Carbon Dioxide, that’s it.

Hello Al Gore; Hello UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  Your science is flawed; your hypothesis is wrong; your data is manipulated.  And, may I add, your scare tactics are deplorable.  The Earth does not have a fever.  Carbon dioxide does not cause significant global warming.

The focus on atmospheric carbon dioxide grew out a study by Roger Revelle who was an esteemed scientist at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute. He took his research with him when he moved to Harvard and allowed his students to help him process the data for his paper.  One of those students was Al Gore. That is where Gore got caught up in this global warming frenzy.  Revelle’s paper linked the increases in carbon dioxide, CO2, in the atmosphere with warming.  It labeled CO2 as a greenhouse gas.

Charles Keeling, another researcher at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute, set up a system to make continuous CO2 measurements.  His graph of these increases has now become known as the Keeling Curve.  When Charles Keeling died in 2005, his son David, also at Scripps, took over the measurements.  Here is what the Keeling curve shows: an increase in CO2 from 315 parts per million in 1958 to 385 parts per million today, an increase of 70 parts per million or about 20 percent.

All the computer models, all of the other findings, all of the other angles of study, all come back to and are based on CO2 as a significant greenhouse gas. It is not.

Here is the deal about CO2, carbon dioxide.  It is a natural component of our atmosphere.  It has been there since time began.  It is absorbed and emitted by the oceans.  It is used by every living plant to trigger photosynthesis.  Nothing would be green without it.  And we humans; we create it.  Every time we breathe out, we emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  It is not a pollutant. It is not smog.  It is a naturally occurring invisible gas.

Let me illustrate. I estimate that this square in front of my face contains 100,000 molecules of atmosphere.  Of those 100,000 only 38 are CO2; 38 out of a hundred thousand.  That makes it a trace component.  Let me ask a key question: how can this tiny trace upset the entire balance of the climate of Earth?  It can’t.  That’s all there is to it; it can’t.

The UN IPCC has attracted billions of dollars for the research to try to make the case that CO2 is the culprit of run-away, man-made global warming.  The scientists have come up with very complex creative theories and done elaborate calculations and run computer models they say prove those theories. They present us with a concept they call radiative forcing. The research organizations and scientists who are making a career out of this theory, keep cranking out the research papers. Then the IPCC puts on big conferences at exotic places, such as the recent conference in Bali. The scientists endorse each other’s papers, they are summarized and voted on, and viola, we are told global warming is going to kill us all unless we stop burning fossil fuels.

May I stop here for a few historical notes?  First, the internal combustion engine and gasoline were awful polluters when they were first invented.  And, both gasoline and automobile engines continued to leave a layer of smog behind right up through the 1960’s.  Then science and engineering came to the environmental rescue.  Better exhaust and ignition systems, catalytic converters, fuel injectors, better engineering throughout the engine and reformulated gasoline have all contributed to a huge reduction in the exhaust emissions from today’s cars. Their goal then was to only exhaust carbon dioxide and water vapor, two gases widely accepted as natural and totally harmless.  Anyone old enough to remember the pall of smog that used to hang over all our cities knows how much improvement there has been.  So the environmentalists, in their battle against fossil fuels and automobiles had a very good point forty years ago, but now they have to focus almost entirely on the once harmless carbon dioxide.  And, that is the rub.  Carbon dioxide is not an environmental problem; they just want you now to think it is.

Numerous independent research projects have been done about the greenhouse impact from increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.  These studies have proven to my total satisfaction that CO2 is not creating a major greenhouse effect and is not causing an increase in temperatures.  By the way, before his death, Roger Revelle coauthored a paper cautioning that CO2 and its greenhouse effect did not warrant extreme countermeasures.

So now it has come down to an intense campaign, orchestrated by environmentalists claiming that the burning of fossil fuels dooms the planet to run-away global warming.  Ladies and Gentlemen, that is a myth.

So how has the entire global warming frenzy with all its predictions of dire consequences, become so widely believed, accepted and regarded as a real threat to planet Earth?  That is the most amazing part of the story.

To start with global warming has the backing of the United Nations, a major world force.  Second, it has the backing of a former Vice President and very popular political figure.  Third it has the endorsement of Hollywood, and that’s enough for millions. And, fourth, the environmentalists love global warming.  It is their tool to combat fossil fuels. So with the environmentalists, the UN, Gore and Hollywood touting Global Warming and predictions of doom and gloom, the media has scrambled with excitement to climb aboard.  After all the media loves a crisis.  From YK2 to killer bees the media just loves to tell us our lives are threatened. And the media is biased toward liberal, so it’s pre-programmed to support Al Gore and UN.  CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The LA Times, The Washington Post, the Associated Press and here in San Diego The Union Tribune are all constantly promoting the global warming crisis.

So who is going to go against all of that power?  Not the politicians. So now the President of the United States, just about every Governor, most Senators and most Congress people, both of the major current candidates for President, most other elected officials on all levels of government are all riding the Al Gore Global Warming express.  That is one crowded bus.

I suspect you haven’t heard it because the mass media did not report it, but I am not alone on the no man-made warming side of this issue.  On May 20th, a list of the names of over thirty-one thousand scientists who refute global warming was released.  Thirty-one thousand of which 9,000 are Ph.ds.  Think about that.  Thirty-one thousand.  That dwarfs the supposed 2,500 scientists on the UN panel. In the past year, five hundred of scientists have issued public statements challenging global warming.  A few more join the chorus every week.  There are about 100 defectors from the UN IPCC.  There was an International Conference of Climate Change Skeptics in New York in March of this year.  One hundred of us gave presentations.  Attendance was limited to six hundred people.  Every seat was taken. There are a half dozen excellent internet sites that debunk global warming.  And, thank goodness for KUSI and Michael McKinnon, its owner.  He allows me to post my comments on global warming on the website KUSI.com.  Following the publicity of my position form Fox News, Glen Beck on CNN, Rush Limbaugh and a host of other interviews, thousands of people come to the website and read my comments.  I get hundreds of supportive emails from them.  No I am not alone and the debate is not over.

In my remarks in New York I speculated that perhaps we should sue Al Gore for fraud because of his carbon credits trading scheme.  That remark has caused a stir in the fringe media and on the internet.  The concept is that if the media won’t give us a hearing and the other side will not debate us, perhaps we could use a Court of law to present our papers and our research and if the Judge is unbiased and understands science, we win.  The media couldn’t ignore that. That idea has become the basis for legal research by notable attorneys and discussion among global warming debunkers, but it’s a long way from the Court room.

I am very serious about this issue.  I think stamping out the global warming scam is vital to saving our wonderful way of life.

The battle against fossil fuels has controlled policy in this country for decades. It was the environmentalist’s prime force in blocking any drilling for oil in this country and the blocking the building of any new refineries, as well. So now the shortage they created has sent gasoline prices soaring. And, it has lead to the folly of ethanol, which is also partly behind the fuel price increases; that and our restricted oil policy.  The ethanol folly is also creating a food crisis throughput the world – it is behind the food price rises for all the grains, for cereals, bread, everything that relies on corn or soy or wheat, including animals that are fed corn, most processed foods that use corn oil or soybean oil or corn syrup. Food shortages or high costs have led to food riots in some third world countries and made the cost of eating out or at home budget busting for many.

So now the global warming myth actually has lead to the chaos we are now enduring with energy and food prices. We pay for it every time we fill our gas tanks.  Not only is it running up gasoline prices, it has changed government policy impacting our taxes, our utility bills and the entire focus of government funding. And, now the Congress is considering a cap and trade carbon credits policy.  We the citizens will pay for that, too. It all ends up in our taxes and the price of goods and services.

So the Global warming frenzy is, indeed, threatening our civilization.  Not because global warming is real; it is not.  But because of the all the horrible side effects of the global warming scam.

I love this civilization.  I want to do my part to protect it.

If Al Gore and his global warming scare dictates the future policy of our governments, the current economic downturn could indeed become a recession, drift into a depression and our modern civilization could fall into an abyss. And it would largely be a direct result of the global warming frenzy.


My mission, in what is left of a long and exciting lifetime, is to stamp out this Global Warming silliness and let all of us get on with enjoying our lives and loving our planet, Earth.
 
Well, I'm on board with global warming now.  Just the other day I was out weeding the pineapple patch when I got clunked on the head by a coconut that fell out of one of my Alberta Palm trees.  Now I'm worried, the coconuts weren't due to ripen for another month.
 
Here in Brussels it was 14 degrees yesterday.  We took a straw poll in the Grand Place and 75% said they would vote FOR global warming.  We still have the furnace on. 
 
All of these reports, facts, and evidence and proof of the scam has hugely opened my mind (Not to the point of falling out, like some). I can't even imagine the uproar that particular piece would create in my High School. All the teachers are riding the Gore bus, so naturally the kids are, too. I get the deer in the headlights look whenever I say the words "Global Warming" and "Scam" in one sentence. Along with mentioning anything to do with the sun or how it affects the planet's atmosphere. Unbelievable, especially coming from the science teachers etc.
 
Why should science teachers be immune?  Very few of them are actually scientists by training.  They only go by the material they read and they are subject to the same mis-information that the MSM puts out.  Just ask this question of them though: "Where does the money trail lead?"  What is happening to the millions of euros/dollars that are being invested in carbon credits etc. and you will find the trail leads back to people like Al Gore, the Power Corp., and a few other very shrewd business people who are increasing their wealth daily.  Simple facts:  there were vinyards in England in the first century.  Potatoes grew in Greenland until the 15th century.  Have you ever asked where it got its name?  It was green, a wonderful place until the cold weather started.  A chinese (or maybe Japanese) admiral navigated the Northwest Passage around the middle of the 15th century.  And incidentally, even though it was warmer, all of central Europe wasn't flooded as the doomsayers are preaching.  Good luck though.  Very few people have the intellectual integrity to actually look things up for themselves.  It is easier to take someone else's word for it: especially if that person has PHD behind his name. 
 
must be after all, it is in print with pictures and pictures don't lie.
 
I found this today too.

An environmental group actually saying there are 5 Things That Are Worse Than Global Warming

If you want to win an argument I think the best tack is to highlight how AGW activism distracts us all from real environmental issues.  I often go further with how AGW activism actually causes harm.  Even a teacher can understand that point. ;D
 
YZT580 said:
Why should science teachers be immune?
To my son's Grade 5 teacher's (in New York) dredit, she circulated to all students the  article below (link)details Al Gore’s artifice and cowardice in ducking an interview with people who actually know something about the environment and global warming. It seems that he prefers Sunday morning potshots on MSM interviews, where a panel or reporters, half asleep, lob softballs. He realizes that a debate with someone knowledgeable would be fatal to his book and movie sales if not to his political career.

Maybe Dion should step up to the plate that Gore left behind.

Excerpts below (link)[/url:

Rose & Lomborg in WSJ said:
Will Al Gore Melt?

By FLEMMING ROSE and BJORN LOMBORG

January 18, 2007; Page A16
Al Gore is traveling around the world telling us how we must fundamentally change our civilization due to the threat of global warming. Today he is in Denmark to disseminate this message. But if we are to embark on the costliest political project ever, maybe we should make sure it rests on solid ground. It should be based on the best facts, not just the convenient ones. This was the background for the biggest Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, to set up an investigative interview with Mr. Gore. And for this, the paper thought it would be obvious to team up with Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist," who has provided one of the clearest counterpoints to Mr. Gore's tune.

The interview had been scheduled for months. Mr. Gore's agent yesterday thought Gore-meets-Lomborg would be great. Yet an hour later, he came back to tell us that Bjorn Lomborg should be excluded from the interview because he's been very critical of Mr. Gore's message about global warming and has questioned Mr. Gore's evenhandedness. According to the agent, Mr. Gore only wanted to have questions about his book and documentary, and only asked by a reporter. These conditions were immediately accepted by Jyllands-Posten. Yet an hour later we received an email from the agent saying that the interview was now cancelled. What happened?

One can only speculate. But if we are to follow Mr. Gore's suggestions of radically changing our way of life, the costs are not trivial. If we slowly change our greenhouse gas emissions over the coming century, the U.N. actually estimates that we will live in a warmer but immensely richer world. However, the U.N. Climate Panel suggests that if we follow Al Gore's path down toward an environmentally obsessed society, it will have big consequences for the world, not least its poor. In the year 2100, Mr. Gore will have left the average person 30% poorer, and thus less able to handle many of the problems we will face, climate change or no climate change.

*snip*

He considers Antarctica the canary in the mine, but again doesn't tell the full story. He presents pictures from the 2% of Antarctica that is dramatically warming and ignores the 98% that has largely cooled over the past 35 years. The U.N. panel estimates that Antarctica will actually increase its snow mass this century. Similarly, Mr. Gore points to shrinking sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere, but don't mention that sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere is increasing. Shouldn't we hear those facts?

*snip*

Al Gore is on a mission. If he has his way, we could end up choosing a future, based on dubious claims, that could cost us, according to a U.N. estimate, $553 trillion over this century. Getting answers to hard questions is not an unreasonable expectation before we take his project seriously. It is crucial that we make the right decisions posed by the challenge of global warming. These are best achieved through open debate, and we invite him to take the time to answer our questions: We are ready to interview you any time, Mr. Gore -- and anywhere.
 
Looking at alternative energy, with real numbers:

Sustainable Energy– without the hot air

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/book/tex/cft.pdf
 
Here's one you can file under "Boo-friggin' Hoo":

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/080703/world/climate_scorecards_1
Canada ranked 2nd last on World Wildlife Fund G8 Climate Scorecard
Thu Jul 3, 8:35 AM

By The Associated Press

BERLIN - A new study suggests Canada ranks second to last among G8 countries when it comes to addressing global warming.

Only the United States scores lower on the Group of Eight Climate Scorecard, released Thursday by the World Wildlife Fund.

The study also found that none of the eight countries are making improvements large enough to prevent drastic temperature increases.

The World Wildlife Fund say none of the G8 countries are even half-way to meeting ideal emissions targets.

It says Britain has done the most to reach emissions targets set out in the Kyoto Protocol, with France and Germany close behind. Following in order are Italy, Japan, Russia, Canada and the United States.

The scorecards were released ahead of next week's gathering of the Group of Eight on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.

Regine Guenther, director of the World Wildlife Fund Climate Change Program in Germany, told reporters in the German capital that G8 leaders should commit to reducing emissions in their countries by 40 per cent by 2020 and 80 per cent by 2050.

"If we don't achieve that, the world's climate will change in ways that we can't even imagine today," Guenther said.

The scorecard was compiled by Ecofys, a Dutch consulting company, and commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund and insurer Allianz SE.

Joachim Faber, an Allianz board member who helped compile the scorecards, said a global emissions trading market is important to fighting climate change, and that the EU should lead its development.

"The EU-specific trading system we have at the moment must serve as model system for one that we can found outside the EU, for the world economy," he said.

The study also analyzed - but did not rank - five of the world's fastest growing economies: Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa.

"These countries cannot be measured with the same ruler as industrialized countries," the study said.


Whatta joke.  And in what weird sky planet do those highlighted countries not count as being industiralized?  Seems that every single thing that I buy is from China.  That strikes me as being somewhat industrial. 
 
Unfortunately, the article doesn't reveal the score which separates "first" from "last", nor what was measured.  (If all the article measures is good intentions expressed in legislation rather than actual reductions, there is nothing useful being measured.)
 
Brad Sallows said:
Unfortunately, the article doesn't reveal the score which separates "first" from "last", nor what was measured.  (If all the article measures is good intentions expressed in legislation rather than actual reductions, there is nothing useful being measured.)
The fact that couintries the size and polluting potential of China and India aren't ranked makes the study useless. Why should the US and Canada cut back so as to give those other countries a free pass?
 
Of course the WWF wouldn't gain anything from hyping this at all would they?  ;)

What's their revenue $500 million?  AGW was the best thing to ever happen to WWF and Greenpeace!!

Personally, my thought is that anyone who pushes AGW propaganda is ANTI- environment because it distracts us from real and tangible issues.
 
Regine Guenther, director of the World Wildlife Fund Climate Change Program in Germany, told reporters in the German capital that G8 leaders should commit to reducing emissions in their countries by 40 per cent by 2020 and 80 per cent by 2050.

The only way we're going to achieve those numbers is if the entire population of the Northern Hemisphere moves to Tahiti and lives off coconuts.......................and speaking of nuts.
 
Back in the 1970's, scientists predicted that we were slipping into a new Ice Age, and proposed solutions like sprinkling carbon soot on the ice caps to increase the global absorption of solar energy. I think we can all be thankfull that no one actually had the ability to generate "Global cooling" hysteria at that time.

Today, many people are noticing that a reduction in solar activity is leading to another period of global cooling, which has the potential to slide into another "Little Ice Age" should solar activity remain depressed for a prolonged period of time (the last little ice age ran from the @ 1250 AD [the advance of the arctic ice packs] to the mid 19th century).  While reducing (or even increasing) so called GHG will probably have little effect on the global climate, focusing all our resources and efforts on this has a huge potential to divert resources from other activities with greater return, and of course if the IPCC sock puppets guessed wrong, then they have eliminated the ability to correct the situation (the ultimate opportunity cost!).

Politicians who want to set long term "targets" for anything might want to contemplate the fate of nations and empires which used that methodology in the past: four and five[/quote] year plans.
 
Global cooling was the reason pollution control devices were added to cars in the early 70's; global warming reminds me of the Y2K marketing program used to scare people into purchasing new computers. Now the strategy is being used to scare people into buying more energy efficient appliances etc.
 
Matty Lowe said:
Global cooling was the reason pollution control devices were added to cars in the early 70's; global warming reminds me of the Y2K marketing program used to scare people into purchasing new computers. Now the strategy is being used to scare people into buying more energy efficient appliances etc.
Great way to force middle class people who barely make ends meet to waste money, isn't it?
 
It is a wonderful way to make a lot of money though.  Just take a look at the companies that Al (I am fully committed to the environment in my Gulfstream 111) Gore has his investments in.  Our very own Power Corp. (fund raiser extraordinaire for the liberal party) has duplicate interests.  Incidentally, during the mini ice age referred to above, CO2 levels were significantly lower than they are now
 
Australia is beginning to have a healthy debate on the subject (i.e. hysterics can't just shout down the skeptics anymore)

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24122117-7583,00.html

Climate hysterics v heretics in an age of unreason

Arthur Herman | August 04, 2008

IT has been a tough year for the high priests of global warming in the US. First, NASA had to correct its earlier claim that the hottest year on record in the contiguous US had been 1998, which seemed to prove that global warming was on the march. It was actually 1934. Then it turned out the world's oceans have been growing steadily cooler, not hotter, since 2003. Meanwhile, the winter of 2007 was the coldest in the US in decades, after Al Gore warned us that we were about to see the end of winter as we know it.
In a May issue of Nature, evidence about falling global temperatures forced German climatologists to conclude that the transformation of our planet into a permanent sauna is taking a decade-long hiatus, at least. Then this month came former greenhouse gas alarmist David Evans's article in The Australian, stating that since 1999 evidence has been accumulating that man-made carbon emissions can't be the cause of global warming. By now that evidence, Evans said, has become pretty conclusive.

Yet believers in man-made global warming demand more and more money to combat climate change and still more drastic changes in our economic output and lifestyle.
The reason is that precisely that they are believers, not scientists. No amount of empirical evidence will overturn what has become not a scientific theory but a form of religion.

But what kind of religion? More than 200 years ago, Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume put his finger on the process. His essay, Of Superstition and Enthusiasm, describes how even in civilised societies the mind of man is subject to certain unaccountable terrors and apprehensions when real worries are missing.

As these enemies are entirely invisible and unknown, like today's greenhouse gases, people try to propitiate them by ceremonies, observations, mortifications, sacrifices such as Earth Day and banning plastic bags and petrol-driven lawnmowers.

Fear and ignorance, Hume concludes, are the true source of superstition. They lead a blind and terrified public to embrace any practice, however absurd or frivolous, which either folly or knavery recommends.

The knaves today, of course, are the would-be high priests of the global warming orthodoxy, with former US vice-president Gore as their supreme pontiff.
As Hume points out, the stronger mixture there is of superstition, with its ambience of ignorance and fear, the higher is the authority of the priesthood.
As with the Church in the Dark Ages or the Inquisition during the Reformation, they denounce all doubters, such as Evans or Britain's Gilbert Monckton as dangerous heretics, outliers in Gore's phrase: or as willing tools of the evil enemy of a healthy planet, Big Oil.

This is not the first time, of course, that superstition has paraded itself as science, or created a priesthood masquerading as the exponents of reason. At the beginning of the previous century we had the fascination with eugenics, when the Gores of the age such as E.A. Ross and Ernst Haeckel warned that modern industrial society was headed for race suicide.

The list of otherwise sensible people who endorsed this hokum, from Winston Churchill to Oliver Wendell Holmes, is embarrassing to read today.
Then as now, money was poured into foundations, institutes, and university chairs for the study of eugenics and racial hygiene. Then as now, it was claimed that there was a scientific consensus that modern man was degenerating himself into extinction.

Doubters such as German anthropologist Rudolf Virchow were dismissed as reactionaries or even as tools of the principal contaminators of racial purity, the Jews.
And then as now, proponents of eugenics turned to the all-powerful state to avert catastrophe.

A credulous and submissive public allowed politicians to pass laws permitting forced sterilisation of the feeble-minded, racial screening for immigration quotas, minimum wage laws (which Sidney and Beatrice Webb saw as a way to force the mentally unfit out of the labor market) and other legislation which, in retrospect, set the stage for the humanitarian catastrophe to come.

In fact, when the Nazis took power in 1933, they found that the Weimar Republic had passed all the euthanasia legislation they needed to eliminate Germany's useless mouths. The next target on their racial hygiene list would be the Jews.

Real science rests on a solid bedrock of scepticism, a scepticism not only about certain religious or cultural assumptions, for example about race, but also about itself.
It constantly re-examines what it regards as evidence, and the connections it draws between cause and effect. It never rushes to judgment, as race science did in Germany in the 1930s and as the high priests of climate change are doing today.

Politicians everywhere should be forced to take an oath similar to the Hippocratic oath taken by doctors: above all else, do no harm. The debate in Australia on this issue is rapidly building to a climax.

Before they make decisions that could trim Australia's gross domestic product by several percentage points a year and impose heavy penalties on Australians' lifestyle, Labour and Liberal alike need to re-examine the superstition of global warming.

Otherwise, the only thing it will melt away is everyone's civil liberty.

Arthur Herman is a historian and author, his most recent book is Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age. He and Ayaan Hirsi Ali will speak at the Centre for Independent Studies Big Ideas Forum tonight at Sydney Opera House on the Ideas of the Enlightenment.
 
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