Contributed by Michelle Stirling © 2021
I was honored to be invited to join the panel of “The World According to Ben Stein” on the recent Episode 92 #BenSteinEP92: “They Blinded Us with Science”. The panel was made up of the great Ben Stein himself, guest, Ben Boychuk of amgreatness.com and moderator Judah Freidman…and me.
Watch the Teaser: https://youtu.be/Y5dKb0IflY0
Watch the Full Show:
Listen to the Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-world-according-to-ben-stein/id1540015480
On the show, I had promised a blog post with links to some of the things I had mentioned, so here it is.
Much of our conversation centered on the fact that scientists are often held in high regard by society, so much so, that they are rarely questioned, and this has been true of the COVID lockdowns as well as climate change ‘theology’.
As Ben pointed off at the top of the show, carbon dioxide is not the control knob on climate. As shown in our early documentary “Climate Catastrophe Cancelled” – the sun is the main driver of climate change.
Of course, the minute someone says that you’re called a ‘denier’.
This societal approach to silencing questions and critics has had serious consequences. Much of today’s distortion of science and policy is due to computer models – as we show in our recent video “COVID policies …or Climate policies”. Today we see the carnage of the COVID lockdowns, as we look back, we see the impact of unquestioned, politicized science in the horrors of history.
Those horrors include the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, the Holodomor imposed famine in the Ukraine, Lysenkoism that swept the Soviet Union, the Maoist China’s “Great Leap Forward” – all of which killed millions of people – citizens murdered by their own governments, with policies supported and cheered on by scientists and academics.
I mentioned to Ben Stein a Michael Crichton piece entitled “Why Politicized Science is Dangerous”. When you start reading it, you think he is about to talk of global warming. But Crichton recounted that in pre-World War II Germany, eugenics had become ‘politicized science’ and euthanasia of the ‘feeble-minded’ or so-called lesser beings had been fully sanctioned by scientists and society. But indeed, eugenics was politicized science that was popular on both sides of the ocean! For decades!
I was shocked to read that: “Since the 1920s, American eugenicists had been jealous because the Germans had taken leadership of the movement away from them. The Germans were admirably progressive. They set up ordinary-looking houses where “mental defectives” were brought and interviewed one at a time, before being led into a back room, which was, in fact, a gas chamber. There, they were gassed with carbon monoxide, and their bodies disposed of in a crematorium located on the property.”
This was pre-Holocaust and apparently accepted by society!
Crichton’s point was that eugenics was not founded on science, but it became part of approved societal activity and policy for some 40 years. Crichton writes: “After World War II, nobody was a eugenicist, and nobody had ever been a eugenicist.”
I had mentioned this on the Ben Stein show because it seems that many themes running through climate change dogma reflect many themes of the now disgraced eugenics and the euthanasia movement.
Ben agreed that the climate change movement is fundamentally a death cult, but he disputed some of the things I brought up from a book I am reading about pre-World War II euthanasia in Germany – a shocking book called “Death and Deliverance: ‘Euthanasia’ in Germany 1900-1945” by Michael Burleigh.
Some parts of this book are astounding, as they reflect conditions and a mentality that one thinks does not exist today, a kind of ‘why not put them out of their misery…and save us money’ thinking. Disturbingly, recent legislation in Canada on easy access to Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD – aka assisted suicide) seems to insidiously move such thinking in that direction.
Burleigh’s book discusses the eugenics economics of ‘negative human worth’ – not only the life-negating suffering of a dying person, but also “the negative burden placed upon relative or the community by the incurably ill and mentally defective.”
In the early part of the book (where I am presently reading), various calculations are made as to how money can be saved for the state, by simply not having to treat the feeble or the people deemed to be less desirable anymore. Of course, Weimar Germany suffered a tremendous financial losses following World War I, which led to inflation such that a wheelbarrow of paper money was required for a loaf of bread. The global Depression of the 1930s also hit Germany hard. Author Michael Burleigh reports: “The Depression intensified on-going debates about the ways in which the Weimer Republic’s burgeoning welfare state had outstripped national resources”.
Eugenics and euthanasia were used as cost-saving measures for the state. Troublesome or vulnerable people were brought in for ‘assessment’ and quietly disposed of. This occurred for individuals in families, and for those already institutionalized in mental hospitals.
There was little public opposition and great support from the scientific and medical communities.
It is deeply concerning that such thinking may become part of society again, as countries face COVID debt and limping economic recovery. How can I say such a thing?
In contemporary times, themes of depopulations are rife in the climate community. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2020, Jane Goodall made headlines by claiming that the world would be a better place if we only had 500,000,000 people.

And indeed, I noted to Ben’s panel that I found it odd that about the same time eugenics was publicly dismissed, climate change arose from the ashes.
Ben Stein also made the argument that it is absurd for Western nations and the United States to try to cut emissions when China was aggressively moving ahead, and they would thus end up having the economic and energy advantage.
This is what we, at Friends of Science Society, have also seen and questioned in research contributed to us.
Professor Samuel Furfari questions if it is an “Energy or a Chinese Transition”.
I citied Robert Lyman’s recent report “When Giants Arise” – wherein Lyman shows that the demographics of Western nations are only 15% of the world’s population; meanwhile, South Asia makes up 60% of the world’s population. Do you really think the West will be able to tell them what to do with their energy policies, when those people also want to have real jobs, a more comfortable life and to enjoy the pleasures we enjoy?
We also discusses how the climate activists love COVID lockdowns and see them as the way forward since emissions dropped 8% during the first year of lockdown…and the UNEP claims that we need to reduce emissions 7.8% every year going forward. Some non-climate scientists commentators are calling for climate lockdowns.
This is deeply concerning as there is no evidence of a climate emergency and no need to impose climate lockdowns on society. Deutsche Bank is even advocating for an ‘eco-dictatorship’ to “Build Back Better”. (see below)
More than 900 scientists and scholars of CLINTEL have issued a number of reports and commentaries showing that there is no climate emergency. I told Ben about how when I read the CLINTEL press release on video, Facebook began censoring as it even reached 700,000 views. Obviously, the public are interested in questioning climate dogma – Big Tech and Politicized Science don’t allow it. That’s a problem. We are not learning from history.
Roger Pielke, Jr. and Justin Ritchie have shown that these catastrophic climate claims stem from outdated and distorted science, and the influence of green billionaires who stand to profit from climate calamity thinking (which provides the rationale for wind and solar and related carbon market trading).
All in all, it was enlightening, and despite the difficult topics, enjoyable, to chat with Ben Stein and his guest, Ben Boychuk of amgreatness.com and moderator Judah Freidman! My thanks!
Please watch the show, listen to the podcast, and subscribe, share, and join the next chat on “The World According to Ben Stein”.
RELATED:
Davos Depopulation and Climate Crisis Talk is Disturbing and Inaccurate – Posted Jan. 31, 2020

Homo sapiens is a political animal. Scientists are of the same species. The discipline of science is to separate the scientific from the political as much as possible. But a scientist who goes with the political flow today gains more power and research grants to help solve “problems” and even more so a « crisis ».