"What do Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo have in common? The answer is that Gore and Pinatubo both suggest a way to cool the planet, albeit with methods whose cost-effectiveness are a universe apart."
(Levitt and Dubner, Superfreakonomics, p.196)
In 2005 Steven Levitt, an economist at the University of Chicago (gasp! not that sort of economist?), and Stephen Dubner, a writer, published Freakonomics. This year, drafting on the popularity of that book, they published (with a self-conciously horrible title) Superfreakonomics. Both books are written in a popular, accessible style, and talk about economics at street level, rather than droning on about central banks, the money supply, the balance of payments and other such high-falutin' stuff. They give us transparent, down-home economic reasoning about ordinary life.
I skimmed the earlier book. It was fun. I could see why it was so popular: it is a revelation to many people that so many day-to-day issues can actually be grappled with—and answered—if you mind the money.And, by the way, if you happen to know about, have access to, and cleverly apply certain arcane, but suprisingly relevant, data sets.
However, in Superfreakonomics they deal with, among other things, global warming. Oops. This is a fraught topic these days, and their breezy style and agnostic approach were bound to tread on some toes.Remember poor E.O. Wilson? He wrote that last chapter in Sociobiology almost as an afterthought, and was astounded to find himself roundly censured, and even viciously attacked (in print, that is), by his own colleagues—and, for good measure, by the entire political left...
Elizabeth Kolbert reviewed Superfreakonomics in the November 16th issue of The New Yorker. She is a journalist who recently (2006) published an eloquent bookOr so legions of amazon.com reviewers believe; I haven't actually read it. called Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. The editors probably felt she was a natural to review a somewhat controversial and irreverant new book with a chapter devoted to a "solution" to global warming.
Maybe that wasn't such a good idea. In the event, she did a hatchet job on their book. The "solution" chapter of Superfreakonomics gored her ox, so she was out for sanguinary compensation.
Judging from others of her reviews, Kolbert is not normally unfair, dismissive, and insulting (see, e.g. Flesh of Your Flesh). But her 2006 book was an exhortation to collective action—a moral demand, if you will, to halt global warming because of the wrongs it will inflict on people and animals. In this she is of a mind with Al Gore: we must work together to solve this problem, because it's the right thing to do.To be fair, this is actually the prevailing attitude of practically everyone—weakly and occasionally for most people, of course. But like belief in God, belief in our moral imperative and our ability to solve anthropogenic global warming is given lip service even as people continue driving everywhere, overheating large houses, and consuming other energy-intensive goods and services just as fast as they can.
What a shame it won't work. And how unwise of Dubner and Levitt to mention that.
People say they believe in the coming catastrophes that will accompany global warming, and quite properly deplore them. Yet they carry on their day-to-day activities every bit as wastefully as they always have. They seem quite immune to the calls for collective action. So are we doomed?
Maybe, but what if we could cool the planet back to "normal" cheaply and on demand, before we ever actually solve the problem of too much CO2? Wouldn't we want to do that? Apparently, if you listen to Gore and Kolbert, no, we would not.
Levitt and Dubner pay a visit to Nathan Myrvold and his company, Intellectual Ventures, in suburban Seattle. Myrvold is a brilliant engineer, and has surrounded himself with others of the same stripe. They invent things, all sorts of things. They get patents on these things, and buy other patents that interest them. They own lots of intellectual property, which fuels their research, and allows their not inconsiderable pro bono work, which includes saving the earth.
Myrvold et al have come up with a scheme to cheaply cool the earth by mimicking what big volcanic eruptions do—put sulfur dioxide droplets into the stratosphere. They propose using a hose 18 miles long but just about 2 inches across, and held up with balloons, to pump SO2 into the stratosphere. It turns out we have great piles of practically free sulfur accumulating in Canada as a bi-product of getting petroleum out of oil sands (ironic, eh?). So, using these cheap, abundant inputs and that low-rent technology a full-blown solution, with pumping stations at a half-dozen places on earth, would cost about $150 million to set up, and about $100 million annually. Compared to the more than one trillion dollars (a year!) that such worthies as Sir Nicholas Stern have proposed we spend to avert warming, this is pocket change.
Ok, that's basically the freight of the book's global warming chapter. If one had just read Kolbert's review one would not know that. One would, in fact, probably think the entire book was about global warming, and devoted to wacky schemes for modifying the climate. One would also think that these schemes were so beyond the pale that they were not worth explaining, other than to call them "horseshit". Further, one would have the distinct impression that Dubner, the writer, and Levitt, the economist, came up with this sulfur-spritzting plan and so, in their cosmic arrogance, were seriously proposing something they were stupendously unqualified to propose."Neither Levitt, an economist, nor Dubner, a journalist, has any training in climate science—or, for that matter, in science of any kind." (Kolbert, from the review) It is perhaps unkind to mention here that Kolbert has but an undergraduate degree, in English. (But is is from Yale...) One would not have any idea that knowledgeable, experienced, well-thought of engineers and scientists were actually behind it. Myrvold and his engineering associates were never referred to in any way in Kolbert's review.
It's sad really. I realize that this is a case of a popular book being reviewed in a magazine more used to art and literature than science, but still. Could we at least have some civility, some fairness?What is more, in his op-ed column Paul Krugman, of all people, gloated over her abuse. Certainly, the public discourse is polluted enough by disingenuous loudmouths. I'd like to think The New Yorker provides a haven from that.
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