Debunking Persistent Global Warming Myths

Published August 1, 2008

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism
by Christopher Horner
Regnery, 2007, 366 pages, $19.95
ISBN-13: 978-1596985018


Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Christopher Horner has written the best gift you could ever buy for your open-minded friends who enjoy a good read. No reasonable individual could read this very enjoyable book without becoming fully cognizant of the greatest scam ever perpetrated on the citizens of this planet.

Horner combines an unusually clear, concise, and humorous writing style with the keen eye and analytical mind of a scientist, enabling him to tell a comprehensive and persuasive story of how mankind is being fooled by an army of political socialists, anti-capitalist economists, and environmental zealots.

Excuse for Bigger Government

Horner tells us, “Global warming hysteria is truly the environmentalist’s dream come true. It is the perfect storm of demons and perils, and the ideal scare campaign for those who would establish global governance.”

He’s right. Horner shows how, following the spectacular fall of communism, ecology offered liberal-minded people what they longed for: a safe, rational, and peaceful excuse for remaking society and developing a stronger central state. Environmentalism became the anti-freedom vehicle of choice, drawing cash and adoration from leftists in business, Hollywood, media, social elites, and the government. Environmental activism today is one of America’s biggest industries. No longer is David fighting Goliath; David now is the Goliath.

Most pollution issues are local, however, and thus the effects of policies regarding them are relatively confined. Global warming possesses no such weakness–it can link alleged problems in Ohio to those in Paris, thereby demanding global solutions and bypassing sovereignty and democratic practices.

That’s how environmental activists get away with telling us worldwide deindustrialization is critical if we are to live with declining energy consumption.

We are daily told of an alleged “consensus” on the issue–a concept actually foreign to science–and global warming alarmists want to put disbelievers on trial. They want to control our lifestyles without anyone being allowed to question their cause. This book will give you the details about the issue and convey the debate they want to hide from you.

‘People Are Pollution’

Horner shows how the demands placed on business extend from the broadest business decisions to the smallest minutiae, while the green groups operate in a world free from accountability.

Their senior leadership, despite all evidence to the contrary, deeply believes human economic activity is enormously destructive to our planet. Horner observes, “It is important not to glaze over the green antipathy toward people. In the eyes of an environmentalist, people are pollution.”

That is why you must read and distribute this book. Those who consider themselves “environmental activists” sincerely believe human development and prosperity hurt the environment in general and the climate in particular. Busy people relying on superficial, breathless media stories about these issues can hardly help succumbing to this view.

Fortunately, with books such as this, their education and experience will enable them to understand that wealthier is indeed both healthier and cleaner.

Despite this correlation between wealth, health, and a clean environment, the greens worship from afar the primitive lifestyle, while those mired in such poverty would do anything to escape it.

Science Under Attack

Nowhere is Horner more brilliant than in convincing the reader of the odious concept of consensus taking root regarding climate science, where alarmists and the rest of the global warming industry assail scientists and other experts with ad hominem campaigns to discredit them.

History, Horner reminds us, is “full of efforts to stifle innovation by reference to unchallengeable authority of consensus.” Galileo and Copernicus come quickly to mind.

Science requires observation–not just selectively pointing to compliant glaciers or to computer models whose outcomes are directly dictated by the assumptions behind them. Science requires the testing of hypotheses. In other words, science is skepticism; it is the practice of holding out a hypothesis for others to challenge. Real scientists welcome that challenge.

Science Bringing Optimism

Horner repeatedly shows the amusing sides of global warming alarmism, but he also points out with great gravity the alarmists’ desire to use government and law at every level to restrict our freedoms and raise our cost of living with obvious and significant human consequences, all of which are ignored by the prophets of doom. Despite the short-term profits envisioned by the green enablers, we all stand to lose big from their policies.

As the curtain descends on the remnants of scientific inquiry, while governments seek to expand their power further, and while businesses move to profit from people’s gullibility, Horner remains optimistic.

“The future does not have to be like the recent past,” Horner concludes. “Simply opening the debate and holding it in the open air moves the ball from the alarmists’ court–no time for questions, we must act now–to the skeptics’ court.”

Horner explains how to do that: “Exercise your rights, … indeed your duties of inquiry and speech, and demand that the future remain free, and full of energy.”

MIT atmospheric scientist Richard Lindzen, in praising this book, said, “Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and on the basis of gross exaggeration of highly uncertain computer projections combining implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a rollback of the industrial age.”

Through both the laughter and tears provoked by this book, it can arm a large army to fight our way back to sanity.


Dr. Jay Lehr ([email protected]) is science director of The Heartland Institute.