This guy is dangerously out of touch:

Super nervous, very creepy, super crazy. This was only two weeks ago. Here is the first 42 seconds:

Cap and trade started out just like almost everything does, to have a good purpose. To save our environment. Unfortunately, by the time it was passed it ended up to be more of a hidden tax for all of us and only help the environment a minute amount. And this isn’t Doug Hoffman talking, this is the GAO, the Government Accounting Office that has analyzed this and said that every household in America this bill will cost them something like seventeen-hundred and sixty dollars per year… in increased energy costs and compliance costs.

Three mistakes/lies in 92 words. One mistake/lie every 31 words, topping the one flaw per 42 word ration in this USA Todaypiece piece by the Superfreakonomics authors.

1. The GAO is the Government Accountability Office, not the Government Accounting Office.  Not a huge deal but something you should probably know before running for Congress.

2. The takedown of the completely fabricated $1,761 clean energy bill lie is extremely well documented. It was made up by a libertarian CBS blogger on September 15. At least 20 Republican politicians have repeated it anyway.

3. And my personal favorite: the lie Hoffman is trying to tell here is supposedly based on this Treasury Department document, not a GAO document.

Could Doug Hoffman be any more confused about all of this?

Here are the real cost estimates on the clean energy legislation currently moving through Congress:

• The Congressional Budget Office estimates the cost (PDF) per household at $160 per year.
• An EPA analysis (PDF) estimates the cost per household at $98-$140 per year.
• An EIA analysis (PDF) estimates the cost per household at $83 per year.

None of these analyses take into account the costs of inaction, which would be far greater.

Greenfyre’s, which is an excellent site by the way, has a solid roundup of the latest news on Superfreakonomics.

Long story short: people are finding more and more problems with chapter 5 every single day.

Here is a tiny teaser:

“One of things that they do in this chapter is try to frame this as them versus the environmentalists, to say, ‘We’ve got the scientists on our side, and you’ve got Al Gore’,” says Romm. But, he argues, climate scientists familiar with the book see Dubner and Levitt as gravely mischaracterizing the state of the science

Go read the whole thing.

And I’ve also been meaning to link to this open letter to Steve Levitt, which is excellent. Very much worth taking the time to read if you are following the controversy over Superfreakonomics.

While gloating that a House Committee will hold a hearing on geoengineering next week, Dubner let this one slip:

While there is a lot of room for a lot of legitimate debate about many aspects of global warming, let us say one thing here: we believe that anyone who reads our chapter without an agenda wouldn’t even find it particularly controversial. They will see that we routinely address the concerns that critics accuse us of ignoring (the problem of ocean acidification, e.g., — touched upon in the previous chapter — and the “excuse to pollute” that geoengineering solutions might afford), and that we neither “misrepresent” climate scientists nor flub the facts.

Tim Lambert over at Deltoid bats this one down by quoting the entirety of what chapter 5 of Superfreakonomics says about ocean acidification:

[Caldeira] and a co-author coined the phrase ‘ocean acidification.’ the process by which the seas absorb so much carbon dioxide that corals and other shallow-water organisms are threatened.

Lambert also notes that those defending Superfreakonomics are almost all either GW deniers or completely clueless:

While Dubner has studiously avoided linking to any of the “attacks” he links to defences. Trouble is, the only defenders he has are global warming deniers like Bret “It’s a Mass Neurosis!” Stevens and Jonah “It’s the sun!” Goldberg, or people like Jon Stewart who admit that they don’t know anything about the subject.

Super-Freaking-Silly, if you ask me.

And while it is bad enough having respected economists, scientists and journalists tearing your work to shreds, having members of Congress do so is that much worse. Via Brad Johnson, here is a clip of Rep. Inslee doing so yesterday:

Here is the best part of that clip:

The second thing I want to note is this is not the only continuing effort to deceive the American public. I want to note a book called Freakonomics, or SuperFreakonomics, that some authors wrote, that basically said or asserted we don’t have to control CO2, we’ll just pump sulfur dioxide up into the atmosphere and that will solve the problem. They purported to quote a scientist named Ken Caldeira from Stanford who’s one of the predominant researchers in ocean acidification to suggest that Dr. Caldeira didn’t think we should control CO2. Which is an absolute deception. Dr. Caldeira I’ve spoken to personally. He’s told me we have to solve ocean acidification. You can’t solve ocean acidification without controlling CO2 and yet people are still trying to write books to deceive the American public. And we ought to blow the whistle on them, we’re blowing the whistle on one today, we’ll continue to do it, because ultimately science is going to triumph in this discussion.

Meanwhile, Things Break and Left as an Exercise continue documenting the atrocities as they unfold.

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’.

Read the rest of this entry »

Not cool, funny man, not cool:

On last night’s Daily Show, host Jon Stewart heaped praise on the contrarian approach to global warming taken by SuperFreakonomics author Steve Levitt, a University of Chicago economist. Stewart was dismissive of the widespread criticism of Levitt and co-author Stephen Dubner, asking, “Have you stepped on a secular religion?” Stewart, often a tough interviewer, coddled Levitt, saying, “I’m sorry you’ve taken so much s**t for it.” He blamed the uproar over SuperFreakonomics on people who “feel you are betraying environmentalism.”

Here is the clip:

Stewart rightly concluded, “I really don’t know what I’m talking about, do I?” However, he failed to understand his mistake when he added that he had “apparently frightened our audience by suggesting that conservation isn’t the only way out of any of our problems.”

Stewart has excoriated other media darlings for their laissez-faire approach to serious issues, from Tucker Carlson to Jim Cramer, and just last week skewered CNN for its failure to do even basic fact-checking of its guests. Unfortunately, in this instance, there was nothing funny about Stewart’s inaccuracy.

This was honestly the worst interview I’ve ever seen Jon Stewart conduct. Very disappointing.

Media Matters:

Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens advanced the claim made by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner in SuperFreakonomics — which has recently come under criticism by economists and climate scientists for what they say are distortions in the book’s climate change chapter — that, in Stephens’ words, “sea levels will probably not rise much more than 18 inches by 2100.” However, this claim is apparently based on projections made in 2007 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that did not include future changes in ice flow and therefore do not represent recent developments in climate science observations indicating that increased and accelerated ice sheet loss will cause sea levels to rise by more than previously projected.

More here.

Following up on my previous note to the authors of Superfreakonomics, I’d like to add this addendum: “When you find yourself employing the same tactics as the Chamber of Commerce to defend your views on climate change, you should probably re-evaluate your entire strategy.”

First, the never-ending saga of the Chamber of Commerce’s identity crisis on climate change continues, with the Chamber beginning to go on the offensive. On Tuesday they filed a Digital Millenium Copyright Act notice with the Internet Service Provider of the Yes Men — the activists that assisted the Chamber in making an utter fool of itself on Monday. This essentially strong-armed the Yes Men’s small ISP into shutting down the websites of hundreds of businesses and organizations, for fear of facing the legal wrath of the Chamber. That doesn’t seem very business friendly to me.

Then on Friday, the Chamber issued the fundraising email below:

The site the fundraising email links to says:

Liberal left-wing extremist groups and their leftist allies continue their attacks on us — because we are fighting for YOU!

Don’t let them muzzle us. Stand up for free speech by making a contribution below.

Leaving aside the irony of an organization that just intentionally silenced its critics saying ‘don’t let them muzzle us’, this is nothing more than a tone deaf attempt to prove their point by way of discrediting those who disagree with them. This is where the authors of Superfreakonomics come in.

On Good Morning America on Friday, George Stephanapoulos challenged Superfreakonomics author Stephen Dubner with a statement from the Union of Concerned Scientists. The video is not embeddable (WTF, ABC?), so I have transcribed the relevant portion below:

George: But a lot of scientists who’ve studied this for an awful long time say you’re not just simplifying, you’re over-simplifying. And here’s what the Union of Concerned Scientists said about this book: “The chapter on global warming is riddled with misrepresentations… The authors appear to have taken a purposely contrarian position on climate change, science and economics.”

Dubner: I think what we don’t represent at all, are the entrenched political and financial incentives of the global warming activist movement. So I would hate this book too if I were the global warming activist movement.

I think it is awfully telling that Dubner’s response to a salient criticism of his work was to attack the organization that leveled the criticism, without responding to the substance. And the implication that the Union of Concerned Scientists — a highly respected and thoroughly reputable organization — is some sort of corrupt special interest is deeply offensive. In reality, the entrenched political and financial interests in the debate about what to do about global warming are overwhelmingly polluting industries that stand to gain from delaying responsible action. This is extremely well-documented, to the extent that it is difficult for me to believe that Mr. Dubner actually thinks his characterization of the Union of Concerned Scientists is accurate. Dubner’s book, whether he realizes it or not, serves the very interests that are actually subverting the debate.

Rather than defending themselves on the substance of the debate, both Dubner and the Chamber have instead resorted to attacking those who are questioning their positions. The Ad Hominem attack is often the first resort of those whose argument has no substantive leg to stand on. It seems fitting then, that both the Chamber and the authors of Superfreakonomics have employed it so aggressively.

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:

Mr. Levitt and Mr. Dubner:

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. I mean, wow.

And while most who argue against meaningful action on climate change limit themselves to disputing either the science or the economics, you have apparently accepted no such limitations.  Perhaps if you had limited your arguments to one of these angles or the other you wouldn’t have made so many egregious factual errors.

But perhaps this was all just a clever marketing ploy.  I can’t help but wonder if chapter five was deliberately crafted to cause an uproar.  Some sort of hail mary attempt to draw attention to an otherwise less-than-spectacular book.  If this is the case — and you truly have adopted the ‘all news is good news’ mantra — then I guess congratulations are in order.  Your book is almost as relevant as the balloon boy.

P.S. This is not fooling anyone.

Here is the chapter everyone is so upset about:

Superfreakonomics –