Hoodwinking the Nation

by Julian L. Simon

Book Overview

Most people in the United States believe that our environment is getting dirtier, we are running out of natural resources, and population growth is a burden and a threat

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1560004347
• ISBN13: 9781560004349
• Release Date: July 1999
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 154 Pages
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Good Introduction to the Topic

I took a course from Prof. Simon at the University of Illinois in 1978 titled "The Economics of Population, Resources and the Environment" and he literally changed the way I thought about everything. He was a gifted teacher and used vast amounts of data to support his arguments debunking the alarmists that always seem to be with us. I actually bought this book for my son because we discuss this stuff all the time and Prof. Simon does a better job explaining it than I ever could. Think of this as the Readers Digest version of Ultimate Resource 2: it is a quick read for the uninitiated and is a good introduction to the topic.

Highly recommended!

In this fascinating book, American author and economist Julian L. Simon (1932-98) looks at a perplexing phenomenon - as things get demonstrably better, polls show that people perceive things to be getting markedly worse! Beginning with the "vanishing farmland" crisis, the Dr. Simon analyzes various environmental crises, and uses reliable statistics to show how the situations have been distorted by the press and various vested interests (usually environmental groups and U.S. governmental agencies). Indeed, all too often data which show improving situations are massaged so that they are actually presented as bad news. Along the way, the author spears many sacred cows, and shows how the public has been hoodwinked into fearing a future bright with potential.I must admit that I tripped across the book quite by accident, and I am quite happy that I did. Dr. Simon is a welcome ray of light on a subject kept dark and murky. If you want to get a view on how the public can be (and often is) misled on environmental issues, then you would do well to read this book. I highly recommend it!

Are t-stars out tonite I don't know if it's cloudy or bright

Simon does his usual thing in this book as he debunks the bunked-up balderdash of the blinkered. His "Ultimate Resource" book, his book on "the State of Humanity" and his posthumous offering, "It's Getting Better All the Time" with Stephan Moore, all converge with the theme of exposing the political agenda under which the progressive Left operates as they disguise their true motives while waving their banner of concern for the environment. The recent publication by Bjorn Lomborg, "the Skeptical Environmentalist", just adds more fuel to Simon's fire. Lomborg has impeccable Leftist credentials as a former member of Greenpeace who also works as a professor in the political science department of a Danish University. He's just that oddity of oddities, an honest Leftist intellectual. Lomborg set out to prove Simon wrong, but found him to be...drumroll...., to in fact, be right. Lomborg's shock parallels Ron Radosh's experience in setting out to prove the Rosenbergs innocent, but in fact finding that they were guilty. Both men have received scorn at the hands of the Far Left. They are made to be an un-person in true Stalinist style as they suffer the dispersement of disinformation at the hands of their former comrades. The rabbit is out of the hat, as Simon has always known, it's a political agenda that fuels almost all the environmental scare tactics of the Left and in no way does their agenda resemble a search for the truth.Simon and Lomborg both used statistics and science, freely available in the public domain, leading Lomborg to question why so many environmental myths are so truculently lodged in the minds of the public? Just as Simon talks about the need for a "Truth Lobby" Lomborg was amazed at the closed minded religiosity of his friends who refused to believe, nor had an interest in discussing, his research findings. It is this compartmentalized-brain-syndrome that has consigned Simon's works to the dustbins of bookstores who continue to extol the virtues of always wrong, but presumably well intentioned, environmentalists such as Paul Erhlich of Stanford. If we are fortunate enough to have a collective national awakening it will probably be because Simon's work, like Bach's music, will have been discovered at some later date in a more rational time in some collectors trunk in an attic, deep in the heart of the land of the fruits and the nuts.

Antidote to Dumbing Down

For ten years I (a physicist) have been reading both scientific and political news about global warming. This has led to strong feelings of frustration in trying to answer the question: "Why is the global warming steamroller so overwhelming?" Julian Simon provides the answer - not a very encouraging one, but his explanation of the causes of the hoodwinking could form the basis for fixing what is wrong with the way we form opinions. I am not confident that we could ever develop his suggested "Truth Lobby," but the idea is intriguing. My reading of a library copy of this book has motivated me toward buying the book for presentation to the president of our local college. I would do so in the hope that reading it would help her understand the hoodwinking that is happening under her nose in the college's "Environmental Studies" program (part of the college's Department of Politics). Simon exhibits admirable restraint where I might have resorted to ridicule. I think that he didn't go far enough in identifying vested interests in people with impeccable motives (e.g., "Saving the Earth"). Now, if we can just convince Al Gore, Leonardo DiCaprio, Barbra Streisand, Robert Redford, Dan Rather and Bill Clinton that they don't know jake about climate science ... . This is an important, scholarly book with importance outside the area of environmental activism.

Terrific - Must Read

Tired of the psuedo-science and nonsense that surrounds environmental and population issues? This is just the cure - Simon eviscerates the notion that things are bad and getting worse - this book confirms that things are indeed getting better, there is no substantive eco distaster on any large scale, and demolishes the myth of over-population. He doesn't do this from a soapbox, though, he is a Ph.D. in economics and has a clear understanding of statistics, data, noise, and what the difference between the three are. Having said that, this book is very readable and not some arid intellectual treatise. Along the way he thoughtfully explains why our culture, our media, our government, and indeed, our very own psyche prefer bogus bad news to the truth. A real breath of fresh air. Buy it, read it, you'll love it...