I thought I had read enough about Superfreakonomics and its horrifyingly ignorant chapter on climate change to prepare myself for the actual text. But nothing could prepare me for the assault on science, logic and the English language that is this excerpt.
Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner managed to pull together just over 43 pages on science they clearly don't understand, with contradictory assumptions, clichés and gimmicky analogies. The chapter reads like a student term paper, a compilation of various factoids accumulated over the semester but displaying no real grasp of the subject matter. The logical leaps between sentences and at times bizarre sentence structure make me wonder if they actually farmed this chapter out to an undergraduate.
The scientific flaws are numerous, starting with the claim that the majority of scientists worried about global cooling just a few decades ago. This idea, based largely on a 1975 Newsweek story, is categorically false. It was never a widely accepted idea, and besides, the magazine has since acknowledged that the projections in the story cited so often in this chapter were "spectacularly wrong".
Levitt and Dubner also seem to think that scientists are not aware that water vapour exists, which, I assure you, isn't the case, and they argue that carbon dioxide was not responsible for historical warming, when, in fact, it was.
All of these are things that a simple deployment of The Google might have helped them avoid, but they don't seem very interested in facts. I won't dwell on the scientific flaws, as actual scientists have covered them quite well already (see William Connolley, Joe Romm and Melanie Fitzpatrick to start).
Besides, Levitt and Dubner are economists. I can forgive them for some misunderstanding. I'm more interested in their blatant disregard for the truth. They came into the chapter, it seems, believing that global warming science has "taken on the feel of a religion", are they wanted to seek out the "heretics".
Problem is, even one of the main "heretics" they cite says his work and statements were taken out of context. Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at Stanford University, says that Superfreakonomics includes "many errors" as well as a "major error" in claiming that he downplays the role of carbon dioxide in warming.
What's truly offensive is the response from Dubner and Levitt as their numerous errors have been exposed. Rather than contend with the science, Dubner and Levitt took to their blog to call their critics names and write them off as "activists". The chapter, Dubner wrote, "will likely produce a lot of shouting, name-calling and accusations ranging from idiocy to venality."
"It is curious that the global-warming arena is so rife with shrillness and ridicule," he ponders. "Where does this shrillness come from? Some say that left-leaning activists have merely borrowed their right-leaning competitors from years past. A reasonable conjecture?"
It might also be a reasonable conjecture that there are a number of scientists out there who are deeply concerned about the misinformation that the duo wantonly spreads. Levitt and Dubner have doubled down as the criticism has increased, accusing their critics of trying to "smear" them. They also don't deal with Caldeira's concerns about the misrepresentation of his work, and instead treat it as a difference of opinion – not grossly misstated "facts".
And then, over the weekend, they officially jumped the shark. On Saturday, Levitt appeared on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition programme. Near the end of the segment, host Scott Simon referenced a critique of the chapter from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Levitt took to his blog shortly thereafter, alleging that environmental bullies forced NPR to note the critiques. "A well-known environmental-advocacy group pressured NPR into reading a statement critical of the book," he wrote.
It's hard to know whether all this chatter about how badly Levitt and Dubner screwed up the science of climate change will hurt or help them. They sold four million copies of their last book, and I would never have picked up this new one had it not been for all the hubbub. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Of course, this is the sole goal of this kind of gimmicky book aimed at people who don't actually understand economics, the environment or whatever other complicated topic they turn their pop lens to. That's how you sell books, and that seems to be their only goal here.
