Superfreaks Tackle Climate Change

A recent article in the New Yorker reviews Superfreakonomics, the latest book by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, authors of the best-selling Freakonomics.

Reviewer Elizabeth Kolbert makes the Steves sound like glib amateurs who are simply out of their depth. When they assert the solution to global warming lies at the end of an eighteen-mile-long hose that would shoot sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, thereby mimicking the cooling effects of a volcanic eruption, Kolbert coolly rips them a new one: “Though climate change is a grave problem, Levitt and Dubner treat it mainly as an opportunity to show how clever they are.”

And with a title like SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance, it’s hard to believe that the two authors are more interested in serious debate than in provocative soapboxing.

Massive geoengineering projects like the ones they propose have a pathetic track record, and Kolbert delivers a knockout punch to the two econo-hacks: “To be skeptical of climate models and credulous about things like carbon-eating trees and cloudmaking machinery and hoses that shoot sulfur into the sky is to replace a faith in science with a belief in science fiction.”

Brava, Kolbert!