James Hrynyshyn is a freelance science journalist based in western North Carolina, where he tries to put degrees in marine biology and journalism to good use.
In which your humble blogger makes a desperate attempt to write something original about the latest affront to reasonable discourse in the global warming crisis.
There's little point in duplicating the devastating criticism that has been leveled at Superfreakonomics, the sequel to the wildly popular book, Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. I will point to just two examples: Gavin Schmidt's take-down at Real Climate, and Joe Romm's series at Climate Progress. But there are plenty more.
Even NPR couldn't run an interview with one of the authors without including a postscript that qualified the item by noting "many scientists have come out against some of the view and conclusions in this book." So that leaves trying to explain just why it is the authors got it so incredibly wrong.
I suspect that this is the sort of thing that happens when one forgets that being a contrarian is just a means to end, not an end in of itself.
Let's be honest. Every decent writer, pundit or academic likes to think of themselves as an iconoclast, someone who has managed to break through the prevailing dogma that dominates "conventional wisdom" and seen things as they really are. And the less congruent that discovered reality is with how everyone else sees things the better. There's no glory in echoing popular sentiment and opinion, but iconoclasm offers the hope of leading a paradigm shift and having an entire approach named after you.
This is, after all, the entire basis for the modern scientific method. Science is only valuable if it sheds new light on a subject. The trick is to embrace this windmill-toppling philosophy without forgetting that you're standing on the shoulders of giants who have broken new paths of their own, that the likelihood you have discovered something that has eluded everyone else is actually quite small.
Levitt and Dubner, it would seem, are so enamored of their own brilliance (and there is no doubt that their first book was a valuable contribution to understanding how the world works), they now assume a contrarian position by default. So when they took on climate change, they lost themselves down the rabbit hole of pseudoskepticism.
Levitt and Dubner, of course, deny that they are denialists. (Not that anyone has accused them of that particular charge.) They write in the chapter in question of their acceptance of anthropogenic global warming. And yet throughout the chapter, they cite standard denialist arguments. They even begin their entire discussion by digging up that old thoroughly discredited canard about a "global cooling" consensus in the 1970s. They just can't resist drawing attention to pieces of evidence they think undermine the conventional wisdom, even as they claim to support it.
This leads them to strange waters indeed as they eventually conclude that geoengineering, primarily by injecting sulphates into stratosphere, is the cheapest and most sensible response to a warming planet. At one point, they even implicitly condone such wild-eyed schemes as "extending the [coal-fired power plants'] smokestacks at a few strategically located plants."
So,instead of spewing their sulfur-laden smoke several hundred feet into the air, these smokestacks would release it some eighteen miles high, into the stratosphere, where it would have the same net cooling effect at the garden-hose scheme."
Schmidt easily demolishes the notions that such schemes are either cheap or effective. More worrisome is the lack of any mention in the chapter of the marine consequences of continuing to allow business as usual in the fossil-fuel industry. Ocean acidification is not a hypothetical scenario, guys. It's already begun.
There's a certain degree of irony here. The authors of a book that claims to be exploring "The law of unintended consequences" make the very mistake they are warning us about. They don't see the big picture.
The lesson here is two-fold. First, being adept at playing with numbers and statistics doesn't give you a pass on understanding the science behind those numbers. And second, contrarianism may be fun, but it's not for amateurs.
Environment
Comments
Did you check out today's New York Times article addressing the climate treaty in Copenhagen? Looks like they will be holding off again. That makes about 40 years right?
I created a graphic summary of it...all of the information is captured in a single image.
http://www.blog.imagethink.net/line-by-line/2009/10/20/hopes-fade-for-comprehensive-climate-treaty.html
Posted by: ImageThink | October 20, 2009 11:19 AM
Romm's screed can hardly be described as a take down since he gets the facts wrong. http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/global-warming-in-superfreakonomics-the-anatomy-of-a-smear/
Or if you want to link to something that has both the Superfreaks side and Romm/Krugman, there's this blog post: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/features/view/feature/SuperFreakonomics-on-Global-Warming-220
Posted by: Stan Kjar | October 20, 2009 4:58 PM
Thanks for this post, I have wondered about writers (often offenders are sensational yet rational journalists) who seem to view things with a contrarian lens by default.
It makes sense that some writers default to this, as written exploration of opposite sides tends to represent additional unrealized revenue one may obtain by writing about currently popular subjects. Atheism, religion, evolution, creationism, happiness, folk-psychological theories -- they all have rather well-sold books of support and contradiction (support and contradiction on both sides of the argument, that's 4 genres to get paid to write about per debate).
Anyway, mostly here just to applaud your lucid post. Cheers!
Posted by: Brian Jordan | October 21, 2009 2:51 AM
When I posted that last comment I hadn't realized you were a science journalist. I just wanted to note that I find it curious that journalists tend to be more sensitized to other journalists' motivations than the public. It's an interesting lens to approach articles from -- journalists seem to use it well, and it makes fodder for even another genre of books. I don't use that lens often enough! :)
That said, assuming beliefs, desires and intentions of others (the "intentional stance") can cause nasty social situations. I try to be careful and remember how little information these assumptions tend to be based on.
Posted by: Brian Jordan | October 21, 2009 3:00 AM
Stan Kjar: Romm is hardly alone. There's even loads of criticism for some of their other claims outside of the climate chapter, such as drunk walking and prostitution.
Even among the climate attacks, looking at the events chronologically, not even Romm used "denial" or "denier" in their early critiques - the first people to deal with that accusation were Levitt and Dubner themselves, essentially inventing a charge no one was using and defending themselves from it. This reminded me entirely too much of "I'm not a crook".
Finally, Levitt and Dubner do this misdirection in the same post they start linking to one particular set of criticism, which they only ever refer to as from a "well-known environmental advocacy group". People who don't follow their links will think it's Greenpeace or similar, while those who do will learn they're talking about the Union of Concerned Scientists, which is not an environmental group but rather a scientific integrity group. The irony is, Levitt and Dubner keep this misdirection up while accusing everyone else of smearing them and being shrill.
This is not honest defense. Why do you, as they, ignore the other attacks on their claims?
Posted by: Brian D | October 21, 2009 2:03 PM
Thats really interesting Article on Climate change. I just wanted to note that I find it curious that journalists tend to be more sensitized to other journalists' motivations than the public.
Posted by: acai berry | October 22, 2009 6:51 AM
This is a very useful addition to the corpus ;) of work critiquing this chapter of Superfreakonomics.
It can be a very short journey from healthy skepticism to "all conventional wisdom is wrong", which is the same sort of position as "all western medicine is wrong" and so on. In the words of my favorite Poincaré quote, "Douter de tout ou tout croire, ce sont deux solutions également commodes, qui l'une et l'autre nous dispensent de réfléchir." And here, if I understand what has been written (I haven't read the chapter itself), the problem is that the authors seem to be "raflecting" a great deal, but in fact are presenting all kinds of "evidence" without regard to how much credence it should command.
I look forward to reading the book, and reflecting on it.
Posted by: a little night musing | October 22, 2009 9:36 AM
Powerful Essay on Understanding Global Warming as Human-Induced
To truly understand Global Warming as due to HUMAN activity one needs to understand the time-scales involved.
Here's a powerful essay in advance of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, with a foreword by Dr. James Hansen, Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies:
A Day in the Life of the Earth
http://blogontheuniverse.org/2009/06/13/a-day-in-the-life-of-the-earth/
In addition, a number of other powerful CLIMATE CHANGE posts at Blog on the Universe at: http://bit.ly/HHgif
These posts are also outlined for use in classrooms, with essential questions, key concepts, learning objectives, and hands-on activities.
Jeff Goldstein, Center Director
National Center for Earth and Space Science Education
Posted by: Jeff Goldstein | October 22, 2009 9:41 AM
:)
Posted by: Netereyon | October 22, 2009 12:27 PM
Dr Tim Ball
By Dr. Tim Ball, Canada Free Press
The full proverb says, “Give a dog a bad name and hang him.” They’ve given carbon dioxide (CO2) a bad name and it is now being hanged by draconian and completely unnecessary legislation. Consider this comment by Susan Solomon, NOAA senior scientist, “I think you have to think about this stuff (CO2) as more like nuclear waste than acid rain: The more we add, the worse off we’ll be,” An alarmist, outrageous and completely unsupportable comment, but not surprising from the co-chair of Working Group I of the IPCC 2007 report.
The reality is if CO2 is reduced we are worse off as the plants suffer. Something must be done to protect the plants from fanaticism.
There is no evidence CO2 is causing global warming or climate change but that is the basis for the slur and the proposed actions. As usual little thought is given to the direct and collateral damage such as the economic impacts from increased taxes and cost of doing business. No thought is given to the damage to nature. So you have the paradox of environmentalists screaming to reduce CO2 to save the planet, while putting all life in jeopardy by killing the plants. It is blind faith. But this is not surprising because the great problem of environmentalism as a religion is the failure to do full and proper cost/benefit analyses. For example, all you ever hear about are the down sides to warming when there are actually more up sides. One major downside rarely mentioned is the impact on plants of reduced CO2 levels.
Extreme environmentalists consider plants and animals more important than humans. Ron Arnold, Executive Vice-President of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, said, “Environmentalism intends to transform government, economy, and society in order to liberate nature from human exploitation”
Posted by: Francis Tucker Manns | October 24, 2009 1:29 PM
Remember the lesson of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”. The assumption that there is or ever will be man-made climate change (remember the Orwellian global warming?) is the big dead elephant in the room. I think all the politicians on the bandwagon need to be replaced by public servants who can objectively evaluate scientific and technical data. The backlash should be swift.
Posted by: Francis Tucker Manns | October 24, 2009 1:34 PM
Eric Hoffer, 1951 – “The True Believer – Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements”
P.11
“When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors , shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the actions that follows them. It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
And p.12
“People who see their lives as irremediably spoiled cannot find a worth-while purpose in self-advancement...Their innermost craving is for a new life – a rebirth – or failing this, a chance to acquire new elements of pride, confidence, hope, a sense of purpose and worth by an identification with a holy cause. An active mass movement offers them opportunities for both...”
and P. 13
“ It is true that in the early adherents of a mass movement there are also adventurers who join in the hope that that the movement will give a spin to their wheel of fortune and whirl them to fame and power.”
Posted by: Francis Tucker Manns | October 24, 2009 1:36 PM
Tim Ball?? Seriously:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/global_warming/timball/
Anyway, Ball makes the typical mistake that CO2 is "good for plants". It's not good for all plants, it is often not the limiting growth factor, and it only helps in creating more cellulose, which is not the main food stuff we (including most animals) get from plants. That means that some plants may grow faster, but we would need to eat more to get the same nutritional value.
Posted by: Marco | October 24, 2009 3:28 PM