by David Finkel
March 9, 2012
Review of The Global Warming Deception: How a Secret Elite Plans to Bankrupt America and Steal Your Freedom, by Grant R. Jeffrey (Waterbrook Press, 2010).
If you’re an environmental, Occupy or some kind of social justice activist, you’re probably familiar with writers like Bill McKibben, Tim Flannery, maybe John Bellamy Foster or David Suzuki. Chances are, you haven’t been reading works like Grant Jeffrey’s The Global Warming Deception. This is unfortunate, because you really need the information presented in this highly revealing book.
You need to know that “the international effort to ‘save’ humanity from the proclaimed threat of an unbearably warm climate is built on lies, manipulated research, the destruction of historical temperature data, and the intimidation and silencing of climate-change critics.” (3) Furthermore, “the globalist elite, pursuing their world-government and socialist-Marxist goals, long ago decided to first promote and then hijack the AGW [anthropogenic global warming] movement.” (17)
You need to know that “even in the face of overwhelming evidence that disproves AGW, continuous propaganda has overwhelmed the common sense of millions of Western citizens…The AGW movement has carried out the most successful propaganda campaign since the Nazi ‘Big Lie’ campaign in the years leading up to World War II.” (57)
On a more reassuring note, there are things you don’t need to worry about: “The small increase in temperature from 1860 to 1977 is a normal recovery of planetary climate equilibrium following the cooling of the Little Ice Age. The gradual temperature increase over nearly 150 years provided ample time for humanity to adapt to a slightly warmer environment without causing significant problems.” (62)
In fact, the whole global-warming hoax is the latest in a long line of scare stories peddled by the billionaire-globalist-socialist elite. These included the proclamation that air pollution would cause a new Ice Age, the population bomb hysteria, the myth that PCBs are a threat to human health, and the campaign to ban DDT promoted by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.
The author Grant Jeffrey brings impeccable credentials to this scientific investigation, having written numerous previous works including Shadow Government, Countdown to the Apocalypse, and The Next World War. His background in Biblical prophecy study gives him authority when he writes:
“When we consider the earth and its remarkable qualities, we can see that all the resources that God has provided for humanity’s needs are either renewable or practically inexhaustible…God’s unbreakable promise to humanity after the end of the Flood was His prophecy that He would never end the variability in temperature and climate. He promised to continue the sequence of seasons that are essential to life on earth.” (187-8)
You need to know all these things and more–not because they are true, or scientifically grounded, or coherent–-but because they are the underpinning of a widespread, strongly rooted and massively financed climate-change denial industry. It draws sustenance from a large sector of evangelical Christians (although by no means all of them) and opportunistic secular right-wingers, from Americans for Prosperity and other tactical arms of the infamous Koch brothers, and from the fossil-fuels industry. Taken together, these forces control something close to a Congressional majority, and certainly strong enough to effectively block anything resembling serious environmental legislation.
There are some halfway serious scientific works promoting global warming denial (notably Ian Plimer’s Heaven and Earth – Global Warming: The Missing Science, 2009), but these aren’t the books on the shelves of large numbers of pastors and Bible Belt politicians–or rather, if they’re on those shelves they’re less likely to be actually read.
The United States may be (fortunately) the only major economic power where the political center of gravity is so far out of balance with scientific opinion on the looming climate disaster, but the realities of this country demand that the environmental movement had better learn the deniers’ arguments. Because those arguments rest more on religion and on deep-rooted “globalist conspiracy” paranoia than on serious science, Jeffrey’s book is actually a decent source–and entertaining too.
Banksy takes on climate change deniers. Photo: unusualimage
We might even find a few points on which we could engage with Jeffrey’s readership, such as where he proposes serious investment “in clean water, sanitation, and medical care [which] would produce an enormous improvement in the quality of life for the billions of people living in the Third World.” (141) In Jeffrey’s logic, this is the alternative to spending that money on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. For us, of course, the two go together as components of a program to save humanity and the planet.
Meanwhile, don’t sweat the CO2 problem. As Dr. Jeffrey informs us, “A doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere will reduce the amount of water the plants require by approximately 50 percent. Therefore, increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have a positive impact on agricultural production, especially in arid and semiarid regions.” (133-4)
Tell that to the farmers from East Africa to west Texas to Australia, watching their lands devastated by drought and their crops burn up in the fields. Not to worry, though, Genesis 8:22 guarantees it will be all right. You can look it up.
David Finkel is an editor of Against the Current.