Yesterday I noted the obvious:

When Paul Krugman, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Joseph Romm, Bradford Delong, Brad Johnson, Matt Yglesias, Melanie Fitzpatrick, David Roberts, Tim Lambert, Felix Salmon, Corbin Hiar, William Connelly, Oliver Willis, Scott Lemieux, Ezra Klein, Daniel Davies, Brian Dupuis, and Mark Thoma have all published scathing criticisms of your book — several days before the book is actually released — something has gone terribly wrong.

The authors of Superfreakonomics have now responded on their blog, characterizing the entire dust-up as a smear. They go on to deny the charges made against them:

They have given the impression that we are global-warming deniers of the worst sort, and that our analysis of the issue is ideological and unscientific. Most gravely, we stand accused of misrepresenting the views of one of the most respected climate scientists on the scene, whom we interviewed extensively. If everything they said was actually true, it would indeed be a damning indictment. But it’s not.

But the economists and scientists I mentioned yesterday — you know, the people who actually follow this issue closely — have not relented.

Here are a few key responses to to Dubner and Levitt’s denial of their denialism (how meta!):

Paul Krugman writes:

Legalistic quibbling about who said what in an email isn’t going to help Dubner and Levitt here: in this crucial chapter, there’s an average of one statement per page that’s either flatly untrue or deeply misleading.

Bradford Delong:

I have a little unsolicited advice for Levitt and Dubner. If I were them, I would abjectly apologize. And I would then start editing the chapter thus…

Delong goes on to provide a pretty damning page-by-page list of factual mistakes in the chapter.

John Quiggin:

The main point, though, is that the fuss over the global cooling chapter in Levitt and Dubner’s new book is the first occasion, I think, where the refutation of specific errors has taken a back seat (partly because, in this case, it’s so easy) to an attack on contrarianism, as such. The general point is that contrarianism is a cheap way of allowing ideological hacks to think of themselves as fearless, independent thinkers, while never thinking (in fact reinforcing) the status quo.

Ken Houghton:

First, the climate scientists called b*llsh*t. Now, the economists are coming out—and the song remains the same.

I have a feeling this won’t be ending anytime soon.

Once again, here is the chapter in question: