(Click the cover to go to the book’s official page and read the synopsis and blurbs. Pay attention to who’s giving it the best praise.)
Short review: If you’ve listened to me discuss denialism and PR at all in the last two years, consider that a Coles-notes-version of a course on the subject. This would be the required textbook to such a course.
I’ve been waiting for this book for years before I knew it was coming out. Climate Cover-up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming is easy to read (my father, who isn’t as steeped in the material as I am and thus isn’t likely to enter the “skim the familiar bits” mode, finished it in two and a half hours, including time for lunch) and covers an incredible amount of territory - from the foundations of public relations itself to the brutal specifics of the modern-day inactivist noise machine. It’s also, in a refreshing change, not entirely American-centric: the authors, based out of BC, spend a good chunk of time observing Canadian inactivism and the impact it’s had on our leadership. (I’ve certainly cited them before: they’re the main people behind the DeSmog Blog. Oh, and by the way, Ian, the federal Liberals get hit almost as heavily as Stephen Harper here. It seems the accusations of partisanship may only apply to Kevin Grandia.)
For someone like me, obsessed with this very subject (and science communication as a whole), many of the details aren’t new, although seeing them all in one place puts them in a different perspective. However, for people less familiar with the scope of the Denial Machine, this book may be one loud wake-up call after the other. James Hoggan pulls no punches and isn’t afraid to name names - some professional denialists, most notably S. Fred Singer, are mentioned so often that the reader learns to recognize their names, which should prove useful in spotting denialist op-eds.
Content-wise, the book follows a logical organization: After a brief introduction to public relations as a whole (including an often-ignored ‘oath’ of sorts to serve the public interest), it progresses through the inner workings of the Denial Machine not in chronological order (which would only make sense to those familiar with PR in the first place), but rather in chapters based on specific PR techniques. One chapter highlights astroturfing (fake grassroots movements), for instance, while another talks about petitions, another on “follow the money”, another on think tanks, another on SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation - in essence “you can’t afford a legal defense so stop criticizing big business”), and so on. Later chapters focus not only on specific techniques, but also specific lobbies, notably Exxon (a recurring theme in the book) and the coal industry. As I’m fond of saying, a good PR company is invisible (its goal is to promote its client, not itself), so many of the techniques here simply aren’t known about by the general public, and the book does an excellent job in both discussing them and providing illustrations from the Denial Machine.
In brief, this is a must-read book. I’ve read a lot of climate/energy books over the past couple of years (trying to glean how to get the message across to the public); this is one of the two best books on the subject you will find, even if you aren’t involved in the issue at all. (The other, of course, is What’s The Worst That Could Happen? by Greg Craven; sample reviews at Only In It For The Gold and ClimateSight.) Another decent review of the book is from energy policy guru Joe Romm; it takes a monumentally impressive work to get him to refer to something as a “must-read”. As long as I am listing reviews, I should mention John Mashey’s review, which is where I heard of the book in the first place; Mashey is a diligent observer of inactivist strategies as they develop (and his work is cited in the book), and his review goes into more detail than my rather more casual piece.
Consider it required reading for anyone remotely interested in a livable climate, or defending public interest from industry. Although, fair warning: You will probably be angry (or angrier) at the status quo after reading this. It certainly makes me want to take a stronger stand than before… maybe I can find a way to link studies of PR and denialism into my grad studies…
FAIL: Superfreakonomics
Edit: By request, click here to skip the history and go straight to the links to criticisms.
Contrarian positions can occasionally provide great insight into academic research - indeed, one of my research heroes, Rodney Brooks, is (in)famous for exactly this. However, sadly, contrarianism is more frequently used as a simple bid for attention, and if it’s done irresponsibly by the right people, it can have dire consequences for real people - the antivaccination promoters rallying against “western medicine” (I’m looking at you, Maher) come to mind.
I bring this up because contrarianism was the whole point of the landmark book Freakonomics, arguably the most well-known book in the ‘academics applied to everyday things’ subgenre (one can argue that The Black Swan and Outliers are written for similar audiences, for context). The authors, Levitt and Dubner, took contrary points to conventional wisdom and told their version of the events as just-so stories (not always entirely accurately). This model sold rather well, so they went for a sequel, not-so-controversially titled Superfreakonomics.
There’s a major problem with it, though - they decided to keep the contrarian position on areas that neither of the authors had any expertise in whatsoever. Chapter 5 is dedicated to climate change, and predictably, they adopt a position very similar to that of well-known arch-delayer Bjorn Lomborg - essentially, it’s not a serious problem, and it’s more cost-effective to geoengineer our way out of it. (Lomborg’s version has an extra facet - essentially “given limited resources, here are other social causes that give us more bang for our buck than climate, we should focus on them (but I won’t)” - but Superfreakonomics likely wasn’t written as an inactivist policy work.) Due to the popularity of the original book, I’m predicting that this book will give new life to zombie arguments that were laid to rest ages ago.
Note that, apparently, people writing on the Freakonomics blog about this issue tend to have their comments quietly deleted (Update: photographic evidence of same.). When the authors eventually did respond, they ignored charges of misrepresentation, called their accusers’ claims “essentially fraudulent” without addressing any of them, and dubbed the Union of Concerned Scientists an “environmental advocacy group” (they link to, but do not name, the group, leaving people who read but don’t follow links to think it’s Greenpeace or something). Levitt also says that they don’t deny AGW, but ten posts earlier, his co-author posted favorably about pro-denialist coverage, and dismissing the pro-science side as “shrill” without looking at their points. This makes the Unscientific America fiasco look patently honest by comparison.
EDIT: 18/10/09: The authors keep the deceptive terminology and nameless linking in their subsequent post, except here they claim that the whole attack on them is a smear. They offer an (unsubstantiated) defense on the misrepresentation claim by saying Romm himself engaged in misrepresentation, but ignore the other substantive critiques.
EDIT: 27/10/09: The Associated Press wrote an excellent piece on temperature trends recently (they sent the unlabeled data to several statisticians and asked them what they’d make of - and surprise, no cooling trend), and as part of it spoke to Levitt on his claims of global cooling:
(Emphasis mine.) You’re welcome to read the chapter yourself (Brad DeLong links it below) and see if his book purports the idea of a cooling trend in an “ironic” fashion, what with the subtitle of the book being “global cooling” and including quotes like “Then there’s this little-discussed fact about global warming: while the drumbeat of doom has grown louder of the past several years, the average global temperature during that time has in fact decreased.” (Emphasis in original)
(It reminds me of another incident, where well-known Australian denialist Jennifer Morohasy posted these two anti-AGW arguments, which violate elementary thermodynamics, and then tried to save face by posting the definition of Socratic irony.)
For the record, read about their newest form of defense here - it’s changed again.
UPDATE: 16:37/28/10/09: Levitt and Dubner have a new op-ed out. Guess what? They’ve changed their defense again, this time comparing those skeptical of geoengineering to flat-earthers. An acquaintance of mine summed it up adroitly: “This is frantic back-pedaling disguised as elaboration, isn’t it?” You can check this yourself by seeing how their defense tactics have changed over time.
(Minor update: Josh at EnviroKnow also notes this piece’s factual accuracy leaves much to be desired.)
UPDATE: 10:33/29/10/09: Levitt’s been doing the promo circuit (as many authors do). His appearance on the Daily Show took some flak (see below), but I was just informed of another appearance, on the Diane Rehm Show, in which he put forth this whopper. This is significant because it’s the first time either Levitt or Dubner has mentioned ocean acidification, a critical problem with carbon emissions that their favored flavour of geoengineering won’t fix. Levitt’s solution? “Pour a bunch of base into it”. See the link for an explanation on just how fractally wrong this is.
UPDATE: 14:49/03/11/09: Steve Dubner was interviewed by Metro. In it, he claims “I don’t know why everyone keeps calling it the Global Cooling chapter” (hint: you say it yourself on page 186), accuses his critics of being financially motivated, and closes with “We’re heading towards cataclysm and carbon mitigation alone is not enough…there’s no excuse to forget about alternative energy” (hint: See page 186 again, where you start by attacking wind energy and transition to an attack on solar power, page 187 where you claim abandoning coal is “economic suicide”, or indeed the entire climate chapter, where you claim carbon mitigation strategies don’t work because, contrary to your entire earlier book, economic incentives don’t change behaviour in this one case). This, on the heels of Dubner’s earlier lie that ocean acidification was covered in the book, suggests he’s gambling on people either not reading the book or not understanding the issues. Exactly how is assuming your critics are ill-informed going to help address their concerns, Mr. Dubner?
In the same manner that Things Break collects links to responses to George Will, I’ve been collecting people responding to Superfreakonomics‘ climate chapter on a forum I frequent, but I figure I should put this up on the blog, if for no other reason than increasing the chances a search will uncover it. Check below the fold for the links.
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