The idea for this book was born in a bookstore in Los Angeles in February 1997. I was standing leafing through Wired Magazine and read an interview with the American economist Julian Simon, from the University of Maryland. He maintained that much of our traditional knowledge about the environment is quite simply based on preconceptions and poor statistics. Our doomsday conceptions of the environment are not correct. Simon stressed that he only used official statistics, which everyone has access to and can use to check his claims.

I was provoked. I'm an old left-wing Greenpeace member and had for a long time been concerned about environmental questions. At the same time I teach statistics, and it should therefore be easy for me to check Simon's sources. Moreover, I always tell my students how statistics is one of science's best ways to check whether our venerable social beliefs stand up to scrutiny or turn out to be myths. Yet, I had never really questioned my own belief in an ever deteriorating environment – and here was Simon, telling me to put my beliefs under the statistical microscope.