After a stunningly
non-confrontational chat with Jon Stewart last night, the authors of
Superfreakonomics have now taken to the
USA Today Opinion blog to continue pushing their nonsense. While they deliberately cited increasing global temperatures — as well as legitimate concerns such as oil wars and ocean acidification — the fact remains: they have gone way too far off the beaten path to successfully walk this one back. As has been the case throughout this episode, they continue to grossly oversimplify and commit numerous logical fallacies in order to make their seemingly-compelling contrarian argument.
I’ve identified 22 flaws in this latest 920 word piece. Let’s look at them individually.
Imagine for a moment that a terrible, unforeseen threat to humankind had suddenly arisen, one so grave that it endangered the very future of the planet. Two teams of respected scientists immediately set to work, trying to find a solution to the impending disaster.
Flaw 1: Catastrophic climate change is not an ‘unforeseen threat’. Scientists began warning about the threat of increasing the level of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere as early as 1896. 172 countries (including over 100 heads of state) met in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 to work on a collaborative solution. Referring to climate change as an unforeseen threat is not accurate.
Flaw 2: Equating mainstream climate scientists — who overwhelmingly advocate reducing emissions to prevent and minimize the impacts of climate change — with the few who advocate geoengineering as a primary solution is extremely misleading.
The first set of scientists returned with a potential solution, but it had some shortcomings. It was expensive, with a price tag in the trillions of dollars. It also required nearly every human being on the planet to change his or her behavior in fundamental ways. And even if the scientists’ scheme worked, it would take decades for the benefits to be felt.
Flaw 3: The job-creation and other economic benefits associated with developing, manufacturing and deploying clean energy technologies are well documented. Citing the economic costs of a solution without accounting for the economic benefits — despite being good enough for the Congressional Budget Office — is fundamentally dishonest. Further, the economic models such cost estimates are based on tend to undercount low-and-zero carbon alternatives and underestimate innovation.
Flaw 4: Putting the impetus for changing behaviors on individuals rather than policymakers is disingenuous at best. Smart public policy can drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions without having an unpleasant impact on individual behavior. The changes in individual behavior such policies would bring about are undeniably changes that lead people to lead healthier lives. Eliminating subsidies for factory farms, switching out coal-fired power plants with natural gas or renewables and investing in public transportation rather than bailing out automakers are three simple examples. Further, assuming that drastically changing the earth’s atmosphere can be solved without changes in human behavior is a prime example of the nirvana fallacy, in which solutions to problems are said not to be right because they are not perfect.
The second set of scientists returned with a very different answer. Their solution cost less than one-thousandth as much to implement and did not require anyone to change his behavior. The scientists could get their solution up and running in roughly a year, with the benefits to be felt immediately. And if the simple fix turned out to not work as expected, it was quickly and easily reversible.
Flaw 5: While the hypothetical scientists advocating an emissions reduction strategy had a ‘potential solution’, the scientists advocating geoengineering offered a ’solution’.
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