SuperFreakonomics isn’t even on sale yet, and the attacks on our chapter about global warming are already underway.
A prominent environmental blogger has attacked us. A well-known environmental-advocacy group pressured NPR into reading a statement critical of the book at the end of an interview I had given on Scott Simon‘s Weekend Edition show. Even Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong got in on the action before they’d even read the book.
We are working on a thorough response to these critics, which we hope to post on the blog in the next day or two. The bottom line is that the foundation of these attacks is essentially fraudulent, as we’ll spell out in detail. In the meantime, let us just say the following.
Like those who are criticizing us, we believe that rising global temperatures are a man-made phenomenon and that global warming is an important issue to solve. Where we differ from the critics is in our view of the most effective solutions to this problem. Meaningfully reducing global carbon emissions has proven to be difficult, if not impossible. This isn’t likely to change, for the reasons we discuss in the book. Consequently, other approaches represent a more promising path to lowering the Earth’s temperature. The critics are implying that we dismiss any threats from global warming; but the entire point of our chapter is to discuss global-warming solutions, so obviously that’s not the case.
The statements being circulated create the false impression that our analysis of the global-warming crisis is ideological and unscientific. Nothing could be further from the truth.
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“Even Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong got in on the action before they’d even read the book.”
Looks like Krugman’s read some of it now and found some reading comprehension problems in you guys.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/superfreakonomics-on-climate-part-1/
Considering that:
1. The planet has not warmed as significantly as the AGW crowd would have us believe and appears to have begun cooling after 1998.
2. There are indications the planet will cool for as much as 30 years before warming again.
3. Warmer periods have been better for human life and survivability than colder.
4. CO2 is a trace element that promotes plant life and therefore the animal life that depends on it.
It would seem that perhaps we and our governments should focus more on real toxic environmental impactors and less on using CO2 emissions as a means for extracting more taxes and making life more difficult for us.
It is your critics that have a blind religious need for global warming to be true as conventionally understood. Yet they avoid solutions like geoengineering and nuclear power that would not raise the status of white liberal yuppies relative to the rest of the countries. This shows that they are not truly concerned with global warming per se, but simply are trying to raise their own status.
Why is the phase “Global Cooling” in the title then? It’s been pointed out that there will be a number of people who will only see this book on the shelves of an airport bookstore. Even if you qualify the “Global Cooling” aspect of your title in the text, the folks who never read the book but saw the title will still be mislead. As for geo-engineering, I’d say the authors are probably letting their boyhood love of science fiction novels to get the best of them…
Everything you say here is consistent with the detailed ClimateProgress critique, which talks entirely about how your proposed solution is unscientific and based on induced errors.
ClimateProgress says, in essence, that you attack certain mitigation strategies (solar power, collective action, etc) based on your own estimation of the economic threat of global warming (far less alarming then most) in favor of a very risky, outlandish solution (spraying goo into the atmosphere).
You can embrace rising global temperatures as a manmade phenomenon and still write a stupid, misleading book. Get the science of mitigation wrong, screw up the math of global warming, and peddle an “easy” solution with little foundation. Done!
ClimateProgress’ point is: you are not scientists. You are economists. You have not independently tested the claims of your authorities, and are not aware of the scientific consensus respecting global warming. How do you KNOW that these people you quote are correct?
Don’t worry about it.
Just the bare fact that you sorta, kinda, maybe questioned part of the AGW theory puts you squarely in the “opposition” camp with many of the people who really, really want to believe that Global Warming is the single most important issue facing mankind. Eventually.
You’re “denialists” now, and nothing you can say will redeem you in their eyes.
“The statements being circulated create the false impression that our analysis of the global-warming crisis is ideological and unscientific. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
You call global warming a “religion.”
That’s about as ideological and unscientific as you can get.
Oxpo – It can hardly be fair to blame Levitt and Dubner for the fact that America is filled with non-readers who will believe anything they hear in a soundbite. That’s a deeper societal problem. It is perhaps the oldest cliche of print culture that you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover. That extends to SuperFreakonomics.