Guardian UK: Super freaking wrong

[marmar]

Super freaking wrong
Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's new book promotes a contrarian view of climate change that has no scientific merit


Brad Johnson
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 21 October 2009


Superfreakonomics is a super freaking mess. US publisher Harper Collins promotes the sequel to the pop-economics bestseller Freakonomics, authored by economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner, as "bigger, more provocative, and sure to challenge the way we think all over again". Too often, however, the book provokes by just getting things wrong – including matters involving life and death.

Levitt and Dubner begin by arguing that if you're intoxicated, "driving is safer than walking" – based not on actual research but on "shoddy statistical work". The authors boast about their time spent interviewing a $500-an-hour call girl, describing her as "essentially a trophy wife who is rented by the hour", while getting the economics and history of prostitution wrong. But the most serious concerns are raised by their treatment of climate change.

Superfreakonomics promotes a contrarian view of climate change, calling global warming a "religion" and lionising Microsoft billionaire and scientific dilettante Nathan Myhrvold. Myhrvold unscientifically pooh-poohs solar power and promotes the "cheap and simple" solution to global warming of pumping sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to blot out the sun. But this Bond-villain fantasy solution cannot come to pass, the Superfreaks bemoan, because the "people like Al Gore" think "it's nuts".

The chapter "What do Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo have in common?" essentially cribs from previous contrarian work, repeating confused arguments against climate science by conservative columnist George Will, and following slavishly a 2006 Rolling Stone profile by Jeff Goodell of Star-Wars physicist Lowell Wood and climate scientist Ken Caldeira. Like Will, Levitt and Dubner complain about a "drumbeat of doom" growing louder from "doomsayers" even though a "little-discussed fact about global warming," is that the average global temperature "has in fact decreased". .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/oct/21/superfreakonomics-climate-change-book-science

[imdjh]

1. Sounds like fun. And what is the problem with the $500/hr trophy wife?