Via UCS.

WASHINGTON (November 23, 2009) — Some opponents of climate action are attacking climate science by misrepresnting illegally-obtained private e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain.

Below is a statement by Peter Frumhoff, the director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a lead author of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

“Climate science contrarians are using the release of e-mails from several top scientists to attack climate science. Unfortunately for these conspiracy theorists, what the e-mails show are simply scientists at work, grappling with key issues, and displaying the full range of emotions and motivations characteristic of any urgent endeavor. Any suggestions that these e-mails will affect public and policymakers’ understanding of climate science give far too much credence to blog chatter and boastful spin from groups opposed to addressing climate change.

“We should keep in mind that our understanding of climate science is based not on private correspondence, but on the rigorous accumulation, testing and synthesis of knowledge often represented in the dry and factual prose of peer-reviewed literature. The scientific community is united in calling on U.S. policymakers to recognize that emissions of heat-trapping gases must be dramatically reduced if we are to avoid the worst consequences of human-induced climate change.

“The oil and coal industries and the front groups they finance have long sought to sow doubt about climate science. Now that governments around the world are finally taking steps to address climate change, these industries and their surrogates are turning up the volume of their attacks.

“Policymakers and the general public should reject these attacks and not be distracted from building solutions to this urgent threat.”

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 –

Union of Concerned Scientists:

An article in today’s Washington Post exposed the coal and oil industry interests behind recent anti-climate-change advertisements.

In a “smoking is good for you” twist on reality, the ads actually call for higher levels of carbon dioxide, the primary heat-trapping gas driving global warming. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, an industry-funded libertarian think tank, released similar ads last year.

Here is one of the ads: