On the one hand, I see Griffin’s work on the Federal Reserve as a very important contribution to understanding how things are stacked against the ordinary folk in favor of entrenched financial interests.
On the other hand, my best assessment of the body of his work is that while there are a number of threads, underlying all of them is a fairly extreme libertarian perspective. All of them describe some sort of conspiracy and deception designed to increase centralized control.
There may be more or less truth to some of Mr. Griffin’s claims. He and I probably agree that centralized control is in my opinion on the whole a major part of the problem, but that doesn’t mean that the issues those in power use to support increased controls are fiction. After all, why not use a real problem and come with a centralized solution to it? Or maybe, you just come from that mindset and you see a real problem, genuinely want to solve it and come up with centralized solution.
Also, just because centralized control is exacerbating the problem doesn’t mean an extreme or even moderate libertarian approach will help. It just might make things worse too. I think most of us agree that most of what we face are predicaments with no good solutions.
Finally, the fossil fuel, transportation, heavy manufacturing, construction mining and refining industries comprise perhaps $10-$20 trillion in annual sales. These comprise perhaps the industries that are most interested in maintaining the status quo regarding fossil fuels. The climate change “industry” is perhaps 1000 times smaller. If we include renewables and other industrial supporters of decarbonization, then we’re probably still at or close to 100 times smaller. If you’re looking for conspiracies, at least the ones that count, follow the money!
My big question is that if the author of such an important book can perhaps fall into advocating for other ideas that seem to be more toeing the line of his world view than an honest evidence based assessment, aren’t we all vulnerable to that? Where have we done this in our own lives even if our views are different? As usual, ruthlessly and compassionately looking at ourselves is the path to the transformations we seek.
I have worked in oil & gas and in the metal mining industry. These industries benefit from the unlimited consumption of fossil fuels. There’s no conspiracy, it’s blatant profit-seeking. I’m not saying these are evil companies or evil individuals. That’s just how industry and society operates. Companies choose to consume fossil fuels and ignore climate change. They choose to mine copper, uranium, phosphate, iron ore, and everything else needed to supply our industrial civilization.
Honest conversations about what we know and what we choose to do (or not do) about it are always appreciated. I’ll mention again: The oil industry knew about climate change in the late 1980’s, and Shell Oil even created an informative movie about climate change in 1991:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/28/shell-knew-oil-giants-1991-film-warned-climate-change-danger
It helps to recognize that we ALL have benefited, and are suffering, from our wide-spread use of fossil fuels and the affect it’s had on earth’s atmosphere.
That said, the interview with G. Edward Griffin was well done. His work in exposing the Federal Reserve and the “nuts and bolts” (mostly nuts!) in our financial system is priceless. Thank you, Chris, for conducting this interview. And thank you, Mr. Griffin, for sharing your knowledge with us in such a humble and approachable way.
While I agree with Mr. Griffin’s opinions on banking, finance, and the FED, he is profoundly misinformed about climate change/global warming. He actually claimed that the atmospheric CO2 concentration was dangerously low, and lower than at any other time in history. This is beyond ridiculous. Through most of the last one-half million years, the atmospheric CO2 concentration varied between 170ppm to 280ppm. Only rarely did the CO2 concentration ever exceed 310ppm. It now stands at over 400ppm and is rising at the unprecedented rate of between two and three ppm per year. Global warming is the greatest existential threat mankind has ever faced. Is was sad and shameful to hear his views on this subject.
Studies of glacial ice cores, where gases are trapped in the ice and can be dated, reveal that over the last half million years the atmospheric concentration of CO2 has NEVER been above 310ppm. For most of this period it ranged between 180ppm and 250ppm. The present atmospheric CO2 concentration stands at over 400ppm, completely unprecedented during both the Pleistocene and Holocene Epochs. It is also rising at close to three parts per million each year. So, your comment “just perhaps he knows something we don’t” can be answered without hesitation. HE DOESN’T KNOW.
Like others I admire and Griffiin’s work on the Fed and am grateful to him for the effort. It is important stuff.
But on climate change…his views are looney tunes. Jim Eberle is exactly right about the incontestable scientific fact regarding atomspheric CO2 levels and the increased rate of change.
So I suppose, as CM advises, we take what was if useful and disregard what isn’t. It is unfortunate however, as most people don’t take that approach, the end result being Griffin’s seminal analysis of the Fed doesn’t get the traction it would otherwise.
What about the information here, is this inaccurate?
https://www.infowars.com/al-gore-backlash-why-environmentalists-are-cele…
Here are other sources that seem to corroborate that:
Goodness what an idiot! Please do some research before interviewing people like this, Chris. Barking mad nutjob. Wikipedia has him nailed.
In terms of who benefits. I see SO many more dollars being made and spent by keeping people confused about AGW. Basically, keeping everyone confused means business as usual, and there are trillions of dollars in the BAU camp. The Science camp gets little in comparison, and yet they keep coming out with research that shows things are worse than we think.
Change at the level needed may not be possible even under the best of circumstances. When there are thousands of companies making trillions of dollars keeping things like they are, I think this change will not happen.
Chris, are you actually planning to look at the science and scientists that Ed has assembled?
If he is as truth seeking as he says he is, I would expect him to be open to other evidence that might refute his beliefs. In that vein, it seems to me that the debate style where arguments could be heard from both sides (I believe you and Adam reported on something like a mock trial on climate change at Freedom Fest?) would lend him much more credibility than a conference intended to completely debunk the idea of human-made climate change.
On that note, it’s one thing to say “is it possible we don’t know everything about climate change?” It’s quite different to say it’s been completely disproven.
Everyone should reply with an example of a staunch point of view they have that might be in need of an honest, evidence-based assessment. 
I’ll get right on that when I’m not at work.
I find taking that approach to be very challenging. Probably evolutionary wiring…
I’m trying, though…
I think the honor of “exposing” the Federal Reserve should go to William Greider for his book “Secrets of the Temple” in 1986. It is more thoroughly researched and historical. We have known about the Fed for a long time and the pleasure of creating money has just been too tempting.
Somebody really kicked the hornet nest here. I see by a lot of the remarks on both sides that entrenched beliefs are really at play. Forget it, get back to his main message and what brought him to all of our attentions years ago. The Fed is a cartel that benefits its members and does nothing for me and you out here trying to live our lives. Privileged people are becoming unbelievably wealthy every day just because they have access to the Fed and its’ money printing power. They could not do what they do if we had a hard currency based on a fixed asset. In the meantime people who save 10 or more percent of their paycheck every payday, hoping they will have enough to get through their senior years are getting shafted. We will end up poor and on our own. It would be best for all of us to keep the AGW argument on a separate plain. Just my two cents.
I have to file this under “Interesting, and I’m not sure what to make of it.”
A Dutch banker tells of (or at least hints at) his life serving the elite. He describes “8,000 people who run the world” in secret. A culture of darkness. They all know each other and work together, even when they appear to be on different sides.
He began to develop a conscience and that made him become unable to serve.
They have a culture of Lucifer / Satan worship, which plays an important role in their cohesiveness and hatred of life.
He strikes me as authentic. But again, lots of stuff that doesn’t fit with my current viewpoint and is hard to know what to do with. Except, perhaps, just to see it.
Five years ago I would have thought G Edward Griffin was a “denier”. But, that was before I thoroughly researched the science behind the global warming narrative. I’m a liberal environmentalist, former engineer and current natural medicine practitioner. I am a very unlikely person to challenge an environmental issue. I should be a believer, and I was, but I changed my mind after a long hard look at the science.
I encourage everyone to at least look at the skeptic argument. The mainstream narrative appears sound on the surface, but falls apart upon further scrutiny. If you don’t believe me, how about world renowned physicists Freeman Dyson who said “I’m 100 per cent Democrat myself, and I like Obama. But he took the wrong side on this issue [climate change]” . He also says “It’s clear now the [climate] models are wrong, but it wasn’t so clear 10 years ago.”
There are many other credible environmentalists and scientists who have become skeptics, they just don’t get attention in the mainstream media.
I have not tried to tackle the science pro/con AGW.
When I hear about an extreme weather event, I’m more inclined to wonder what government or multi-national corporation has been experimenting with their weather control tools again.
G. Edward Griffin: …And as a matter of fact, historically, I’m going to go back over a million years, you can tell what the content was by looking at the fossils and so forth. We are now at the lowest level of CO2 in the environment that we have ever been. We’re actually, it’s dangerous. We need more CO2 in the atmosphere now because we’re pushing threshold of maybe human life and animal life will, is going to become ill because we don’t have enough CO2 in the system. So, and this is shocking to me. I said, that can’t be true. Well, it is true. [Laughter] G. Edward Griffin: And the evidence is there. They’ve known about it. It’s in the textbooks, really, if you want to go back and look at it. So, that’s just one little thing, for example. We have college professors that are talking about this-I know that CO₂ levels can be measured from ice-core samples but I've never heard of them being measured from fossils. (Various assumptions are made about the prevalence of C¹⁴ in the atmosphere when carbon-dating fossils but how that might relate to the concentration of the gas in the atmosphere is unclear.) I have not seen any data suggesting that CO₂ levels are dropping and the increasing acidity of the oceans and the knock-on effects on corals and shellfish aligns with the idea of increased levels of CO₂. Even if global warming and the consequent climate change was discovered to be wrong tomorrow, the solutions that are being employed to tackle the issue would still be worth following; reduction in consumption of energy and finite resources.
Hi John
I am an engineer and have looked at various skeptic arguments. I have not found any that stand up to scrutiny. Some cherry-pick data and attempt to show declining short term temperature trends within the data while ignoring the overall upward progression in the data they use. Some build on the fact that CO₂ is used by plants as a building block for carbohydrates [true but irrelevant]. Some attempt to discredit individuals or organisations for adjustments to datasets (as explained above by another commentator). Some claim that all of the changes that we see are part of natural cycles. Some acknowledge that CO₂ and temperatures are indeed rising but claim that it isn’t our fault. Some point out that H₂O is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO₂ [true but irrelevant]. What else have I missed?
Which particular argument do you find persuasive? You don’t link to any material or refer to any particular knock-out argument. I’m willing to look at other evidence or arguments but none of the hypotheses that I’ve come across to date hold any water.
Thanks