Customer Reviews

Environmental Overkill: Whatever Happened to Common Sense?

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If you have the courage to test your own intellectual honesty, you'll find great value in Dr. Ray's "Environmental Overkill". As a working environmental scientist, I have over 15 years of practical experience with the regulatory infrastructure, the nature of the problems it attempts to control, and the hopelessly irrelevant (at best) or absolutely destructive (at worst) effects of political environmentalism. If one is willing to concede that the environmentalists' fundamental assertion is true - that technology & economic development cause the environmental problems we face today - the logical conclusion would be that a more conscientious, more responsible, more enlightened, more humane approach to technological and economic development marks the path toward the solutions to those problems.

Dr. Ray exposes the hard truth that the agenda and goals of political environmentalism are antithetical to conscientiousness, responsibility, enlightenment, or humanity. Their agenda and goals are manifest of the most primitive recidivism since the Medieval Inquisition. Dr. Ray's documentation is robust to the point of incontestibility. The easily accessible corroborative proof in her references clearly shows that political environmentalism provides civilizational benefits equivalent to those of witchcraft, only with less emphasis on rationality. That's precisely why Dr. Ray's book is so powerfully irrefutable, despite another reviewer's assertions that her sources are not credible. A significant percentage of Dr. Ray's references come from sources whose presumed credibility he does not care to challenge: the political environmentalists themselves. The reason why Dr. Ray's book is so devastatingly effective in revealing the fraud of political environmentalism is that she lets its spokespersons destroy their own credibility. She simply quotes their fully documented fraudulent assertions, presents the controverting evidence, and lets the reader reach the overwhelmingly obvious conclusions. Don't take my word for it; read the book and draw your own conclusions.

That is, unless your beliefs about the environment are emotion-based, and you'd prefer not to see that truth.

It's too bad this book is presently out of stock, because it's needed now just as much as when it first came out. In a well-worded, step by step logical fashion, Ms. Ray smashes the demagogues of the environmentalist movement by exposing the facts behind the scare-story headlines that scream that we are destroying the earth and that the only solution to environmental disaster is to return to the horse and buggy days with a dramatically reduced population. An earlier reviewer of this book, jimn469897@aol.com is full of nonsense when he slams the book through association. In checking the hundreds of references Ms Ray includes to back up her assertions, there are only a tiny handfull that come out of the New American or some other politically incorrect magazine. Most of her references are from sources such as CNN, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and a number of professional trade publications and scientific journals. Try to buy this book used. It will be worth the effort.

Dixy Lee Ray, former head of the Atomic Energy Commision, writes the scientific facts to counter environmentalism. The truth about who is behind Earth Day, how your aerosol cans are really affecting the ozone layer, how much oil seeps out of the earth and into the ocean every day. The earth is not fragile. Mt. St. Helens erupted with the force of 500 atomic bombs, and spewed 220,000 metric tons of sulfur dioxide, aerosols and other gases 15 miles into the stratosphere! She explains that man has little effect on this earth, but environmentalists use natural occuring changes as fuel to tax us to death. Just follow the money.

A favorite liberal ploy across the spectrum is to pretend that only liberals care about various problems. Those who are against their usually soft-headed and invariably costly problem prescriptions are then labeled as for the problem. Sometimes there was not really even a problem to begin with. Remember the Alar apple scare propigated by 60 Minutes?

Environmental Overkill destroys radical environmental arguments with common sense. A brilliant scientist and former governor of Washington, the late Dixy Lee Ray exposed the radical enviros for what they are: a bitter ice cream sundae of money-grubbing scam artists with a good bit of totalitarian earth-mother nuts sprinkled on top.

At the same time she gives examples of how property rights and the free-market save wildlife and wilderness. It makes all the more sense if you know about the hellish stewardship of land and property provided by governmental agencies (Russia, China, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Land Management). I couldn't put this book down.

As a resident of Washington during Dr. Ray's tenure as governor, I quickly grew to respect her knowledge and common-sense approach to issues. In "Environmental Overkill", she brings that same approach to an issue which has long been clouded by alarmists who sense environmental catastrophe at every turn. Well-researched facts from one of America's finest scientists. Bravo!

I found Dr. Ray's book a refreshing counter to the Left's contention that mankind alone is responsible for the sad state of the planet. I was shocked to learn that theories, such as "global warming" are just that: postulations which are unproven. I think this book should be required reading for all school children, to offer a little balance to the cultural elite's idea that we are shamelessly "Trashing the Planet."

I read Dr. Ray's books in high school and college to get information for debating. I was surprised to find out that they are among the most heavily footnoted books on the subject of environmentalism. Dr. Ray's use of science and statistical data is so overwhelming that the critics of this book have to resort to political mudslinging to discredit it. If you can find a copy of this or "Trashing the Planet," give it a read. These books are extremely insightful and full of real data that would be hard to compile from other sources.

I had this book as a required text in college about 10 years ago. At the time I was young and unfortunatly very much convinced that the government had solutions to our problems. This book made me realize how much I had been duped by the socialist propaganda of mainstream media. Don't get me wrong, I did not become an instant "right winger". In fact, it made me conclude that I did not know much and needed to start from scratch and throw out all my old assumptions. I decided to subscribe to The New Republic(left), The conservative Chronical(right) and Reason (Libertarian). After a year of reading these publications from cover to cover, I realized that the Libertarian philosphy actually held the answers our society desperatly needs to actually succeed in resolving issues like environmental neglect or abuse. My point is, it was this book that made me realize I had basically been brainwashed my whole life through the network news. SO it really holds a special place in my heart.

Every now and then there is a book that takes the bull by the horns. This is such a book. Warning this is not a book for weak of mind! Dixie Lee Ray's premise is that sky is not falling and the planet is not collapsing. She skillfully uses her various arguments to waylay many of the popular myths of junk science that ends up passing for the real thing. She is pro-enviorment, but not a tree hugging wacko. She wants people to use their heads when it comes to the enviorment. This is the type of book that should be used against anyone who starts crying the planet is dying. It should also be required reading for all that want a serious subject treated fairly.

As a high school senior in 1975, I well remember the predictions of another Ice Age that was thought to be fast approaching. And so as Chicken Little was convinced that the sky was falling, so too are some people in their belief that the globe is warming (or cooling as the case may be). It was encouraging to see Dr. Ray lay out the data to explain the "appearance" of a warming or cooling trend and explain why it must be put into perspective before jumping to conclusions about the results.