Superfreakonomics authors Levitt and Dubner make it out like solving global warming is no more complicated than cooling off on the patio on a hot summer day. First, someone else puts up the umbrella, then they unwind the hose and spray all the kids so they stay cool. This may sound good to you, but it's not logical, despite what the Superfreaks insist. They're appealing to your laziness, your ennui, your fear, and your cynicism, all in the name of books and businesses that you don't hold stock in. Do you buy it?
Daily Show Economics
When Steven Levitt appeared on the Daily Show to talk about Superfreakonomics and the giant umbrellas that could be used to ward off climate change, Jon Stewart apologized for the collective response by scientists to Levitt and Dubner's unscientific treatment of climate change. : "I'm sorry you're taking so much shit for it".
For Levitt, climate change is an easy problem. He told the Guardian "We could end this debate and be done with it, and move on to problems that are harder to solve", (hat tip Curious Capitalist). But isn't climate change a more tenacious problem? What was Stewart up to, dismissing it?
When Your Advertisers Are Auto Companies?
But if you think about it, trashing "environmentalists" isn't new territory for Levitt or for Jon Stewart. The Freakonomics blog has argued repeatedly that recycling makes little sense. The Daily Show host has previously criticized actions to lower carbon emissions, for instance in his show "Auto-Neurotic Gas Fixation", May 20, 2009. At the time, Obama had announced his intention to set new, ambitious CAFE standards for gas mileage. Stewart chastised him for it: "Dude...Obama...don't blow your load on mileage baby, save it for when the Chinese invade."
On that show, Stewart claimed that gas efficient cars, being smaller, put people "in harm's way because they're in a lighter vehicle", that "safety" was a "valid", "reasonable concern" - mirroring lines from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). A nod to all the automobile companies that advertise with Comedy Central perhaps? Or ignorance? We thought that this ancient CEI argument died back in 2007, once people thought through their elementary math and physics and realized that yes, if you run your Prius into a Hummer, you may get hurt, but the more Priuses on the road, and the fewer Hummers, the less likely you will be to run into a Hummer, therefore less likely you'll get hurt. Alas, there we were in the spring of 2009 and Jon Stewart was giving us his schoolboy version of the old auto industry fueled CEI argument.
Coincidentally, at the same time -- April/May 2009 -- car sales had recently dropped to their lowest point in thirty years. A flurry of editorials pronounced the danger of small vehicles and so Stewart fit right in with The Wall Street Journal which droned on about about the "lethal effects" of CAFE standards and light vehicles. Lesson? Comedy Central is not always all that "progressive" people, really, don't leave your brain in the cold on 11th Avenue.
Just When You Thought Superfreak was Finally Gone
So Jon Stewart's accommodation to Levitt's argument isn't a surprise, nor is Superfreakonomics' bid to attract attention by rousing populist appeal. As the sequel to Freakonomics SuperFreakonomics seems to run aground the way many movie sequels do -- Rocky V, Clerks II, Caddyshack II... It maintains sufficient audiences to grind through talk-shows, stimulate blog chatter, and generate pay-out, but it disappoints fans.
Here's a collection of about 90 blog links that criticize Chapter 5 of the book. They call the authors on many points, for instance:
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Of distorting the science and misquoting scientists - From an atmospheric scientist (Ken Caldeira) in response to the book's quote - "Carbon dioxide is not the right villain": "I don't believe I said anything remotely like that...we should be outlawing the production of devices that emit carbon dioxide...I do see CO2 as the problem...it's like if you got shot by a bullet and you said, well, it wasn't really the bullet that was the problem, it was just that I happened to have this hole through my body..."
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Of distorting science consensus - From many economists: "it is terribly misleading that the two scientists you quote are BOTH skeptics. What are the odds of that? Probably a billion to one, so my unavoidable conclusion is that you are deliberately trying to cast doubt on the scientific consensus."
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Of presenting facile, improbable solutions to climate change like pumping SO2 into the atmosphere with a giant hose - From scientists: "'..thinking of geoengineering as a substitute for emissions reduction is analogous to saying, 'Now that I've got the seatbelts on, I can just take my hands off the wheel and turn around and talk to people in the back seat.' It's crazy.'"
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Of deceiving the American public - From a congressman: "We have seen a similar effort to hoodwink, defraud, and deceive the American public now to cover up the toxicity to the world environment...I want to note a book...that basically said or asserted we don't have to control CO2..They purported to quote a scientist named Ken Caldeira from Stanford...Which is an absolute deception."
Like the Daily Show, the Superfreakonomics authors have a history of distorting reality. But the two entertainers talk about the irrationality of environmentalists!
Stripping Away Moralism and Giving You Freedom: The Ruse
Note how Stewart barely batted an eye when Levitt offered his other offensive assertion aside from diminishing the seriousness of climate change, that prostitutes should retain pimps in order to earn more money. It's true, shrugged Levitt, as if nothing can to be done because the invisible hand has sealed womens' fates the world over -- as if he didn't just twist up that statistical interpretation to get people tittering and buying books.
"The heroes turn out to be the pimps", he said. Shrug. "Get rid of the moral part" he insisted, and you have pure unadulterated economics, that's what we're about. Jon laughed -- hahaha, heeheehee. Levitt shrugged again.
What Levitt claims, is that he simply "strips away the moralism" - then, all you have is the economics and prostitution, or economics and climate change. Glib. This is not uncommon rhetoric in economics, politics and public policy -- the ultra-rational, just do the math approach. It's used, for instance, to justify radical cost-benefit-analysis, where people argue that you can put a monetary value on everything - the price of one member of an endangered species, the price of the life of an old person, the price of the life of an infant, the price of a chemical to an industry - and otherwise complicated policy decisions fraught with difficult ethical choices can be reduced to simple math. Voilà.
The problem is, when the authors decided to write that prostitutes are better off with pimps then dug up some statistics to support that assertion, they made a moral decision. First Levitt and Dubner had to decide that this particular slant on prostitution was what they wanted to focus on, then they had to cherry pick some "data" to support it. Similarly, as we wrote in an earlier post, deciding that a male mule deer is worth $525.50, whereas a female mule deer is worth $163, while a just plain deer is worth $1, is not a decision without "moralism".
Moral sentiments are part and parcel of human decisions. Numbers and words that appear in print on a piece of paper or screen in front of you came from a formula or process derived by a human, based on that human's views, perceptions, expectations and desired outcomes. It didn't come from some superior amoralistic all-knowing power, intent on providing answers and comfort to confused humans beings -- despite what people say.
Ironically, by asking his audience to "strip away the moralism", Levitt is appealing to ethos or pathos, but certainly not logos. He's saying -- be logical like me, I'm being logical. Shrug. But he's dismissing tons and tons of scientific proof of climate change (as well as some about prostitution) and the need to decrease emissions as pathetic "moral" arguments (ethos), when those scientific studies are actually the logical ones (logos). He's appealing to his audience's laissez-faire tendencies, their desire to do nothing, their habits not to change, their pathos.
The Ploy: Technology will Suffice in Lieu of Action
Then, offering the equivalent of the old, chintzy plastic prize at the bottom of the box of Crackerjacks, he gives the audience something to grasp on to in the impending and threatening flood of unpleasant scientific reality, although again, it's not logical. Levitt insists that there's a simple scientific solution to solve the problem. Of course, there is no technological solution. The authors offer untested pie-in-the-sky idea that many, many scientists find problematic.
But this is what we all want to hear, right? The irrational, busy, lazy or pathetic side of all of all of us wants to be assured that electronic records will solve healthcare failures, that tsunami warning systems will prevent catastrophic losses, that ankle bracelets will prevent recidivism, that massive fences along international borders will prevent terrorism and drug trafficking, and that electronic surveillance will prevent crime. But giant garden hoses suspended up in the sky, are not even in the realm of feasible technical solutions. Yet we're so happy to slough off responsibility that Jon Stewart, and although he's a modern icon of cynicism, he doesn't even bother to ask questions.
Levitt plays to the audience's sentiments perfectly, first by laughing off science and scientists who present scary ideas as flimsy moralistic hogwash, then by presenting his very own special version of "science". I'm the logical one, he says, but I'm not dorky like a scientist.
His flavor of rhetoric is commonly used by those who oppose scientific evidence because it presents the type of science society likes, that which solves our problems, but is seemingly stress-free, simpler to understand than Tivo, and doesn't require you to have liked high school science. Therefore Superfreakonomics presents magic "technology solutions" in terms that the average American (is there such a thing?) will know and like.
According to them, solving global warming is no more complicated than cooling down on a hot summer day on the patio. First someone else puts up the umbrella to shield you. Then a kindly neighbor unwinds the hose and sprays away, and all the kids stay cool. Sound good? But its not logical. It's doesn't strip away moralism. It doesn't give you freedom. You do have to worry about global warming, you may have to change your lightbulbs. Superfreakonomics appeals not to your logical side but to your laziness, your ennui, your fear, your cynicism, all in the name of books and businesses that you don't hold stock in.
The Solution
This isn't to say that we don't need technology, quite the opposite, technology is imperative to global warming attenuation. But it's not the only effort we need, we need to conserve and to decrease emissions also.
Underlying Superfreaks' argument is the contention that people won't change. And true, people tend to squirm and stall when pressed to adjust, as we noted in "Sea Change or Littoral Disaster", Cars: Buying Cognitive Dissonance", Science Communication, Communicating Climate Change, and Climate Change, Fueling the "Debate", "Curvilinear Thinking on Climate Change", and other posts. But Real Climate's good point is that - people will change with the right incentives. People can work collectively for the better, they don't need a solution to be imposed from nigh. They do have a long history of employing morals as well as logic to solve problems, both are good, both are necessary. And given all that, it may simply be immoral for Superfreak authors to distort the truth of climate change and insist on selling implausible solutions.
