Elizabeth Kolbert writes about “SuperFreakonomics” and climate change in The New Yorker and slams them (like everyone else, but better).
"Given their emphasis on cold, hard numbers, it’s noteworthy that Levitt and Dubner ignore what are, by now, whole libraries’ worth of data on global warming. Indeed, just about everything they have to say on the topic is, factually speaking, wrong. Among the many matters they misrepresent are: the significance of carbon emissions as a climate-forcing agent, the mechanics of climate modelling, the temperature record of the past decade, and the climate history of the past several hundred thousand years. Raymond T. Pierrehumbert is a climatologist who, like Levitt, teaches at the University of Chicago. In a particularly scathing critique, he composed an open letter to Levitt, which he posted on the blog RealClimate.
‘The problem wasn’t necessarily that you talked to the wrong experts or talked to too few of them,’ he observes. ‘The problem was that you failed to do the most elementary thinking.’ Pierrehumbert carefully dissects one of the arguments that Levitt and Dubner seem to subscribe to—that solar cells, because they are dark, actually contribute to global warming—and shows it to be fallacious. ‘Really simple arithmetic, which you could not be bothered to do, would have been enough to tell you,’ he writes, that this claim ‘is complete and utter nonsense.’
But what’s most troubling about “SuperFreakonomics” isn’t the authors’ many blunders; it’s the whole spirit of the enterprise. Though climate change is a grave problem, Levitt and Dubner treat it mainly as an opportunity to show how clever they are."
4 comments:
so is this book not worth buying? are the claims all false?
I haven't gotten it. The first one was supposedly quite fun though some of the claims were I believe later disproved.
All the complaints I've seen for this book are on the climate change chapter, not sure about the others.
I've read Super Freakonomics and while not as good as Freakonomics, it is still interesting reading. It is significantly more political than the first one with a conservative bias which I found annoying. Al Gore is a target but without particularly convincing arguments. Their suggested approach to climate change is to engineer systems that will cause global cooling in much the same way a volcano eruption does.
I suggest getting the book at the library.
The volcano for global cooling idea comes from the summer that never was - 1816 I believe; the Tamora eruption.
If one actually invests the necessary time (years) and mental energy (college level physics, chemistry, mathematics, and planetary science) attempting to understand the complex interaction of the climactic/ geologic/ oceanographic/ solar/ and atmospheric systems which govern the weather of planet earth, the seriousness and complexity of this issue becomes readily apparent. These systems are intertwined in ways we barely understand, and have unpredicable interactions. At best, only broad generalizations (melting polar ice, receding glaciers, average global temperatures trending upwards, etc...) should be made with confidence. Predictions beyond that are more speculative, but none the less, important. It all comes down to how lucky you feel.
The point I try to make is that, even if there is only a 1% chance that increased CO2, or other greenhouse gases/anthropomorhic activities would signifcantly alter the climate, is that a chance we really want to take. Likely outcomes to significant climate change certainly include reduced food and water supplies. Shall we see what would happen if a billion people in India, China, the US, or Europe start to go hungy. I'd rather not.
I think the evidence is pretty clear that increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere result in atmospheric warming. The question is whether the earth will adjust by, say, making more clouds which would reflect more sunlight back to space, keeping things just right temperature wise. At the same time, the increased ocean temperatures may cause a decrease in CO2 absorption, or worse a CO2 release (i.e., a runaway greenhouse gas effect feedback loop). Who wins that fight....who knows?
Perhaps my position is a bit alarmist. However, I wouldn't bet the house on either outcome, but unfortunately, the house, no the entire planet, is exactly what we are betting. For Earth, the complex, but currently stable, interrelationships of the atmoshpere, the oceans, the biomass, and the land that we are fortunate enough to be experiencing right now, is likely on its way through some profound changes that no one can predict. That's my whole point. No one can predict what the changes will be.
Sure polar ice and high altitude glaciers are melting. That's an easy prediction which I first heard 30 years ago, and have now come to pass. But what if the global rain patterns change significantly and we can't grow the food we need, or supply water to our major urban areas.
It's funny that most people would have the common sense not to seek medical advice from Economists, but will take seriously, what they have to say about global warming.
I have often enjoyed Levitt's unique perspectives on "economic" issues, and clearly he is a creative thinker. However, writers like himself and George Will really need to just admit they are out of their league on a topic like global warming and leave it to the tweed jackets from the other side of the campus, whether academic or corporate.
TT
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