Left as an Exercise

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:

Levitt, a University of Chicago economist, said he does not believe there is a cooling trend. He said the line was just an attempt to note the irony of a cool couple of years at a time of intense discussion of global warming. Levitt said he did not do any statistical analysis of temperatures, but “eyeballed” the numbers and noticed 2005 was hotter than the last couple of years. Levitt said the “cooling” reference in the book title refers more to ideas about trying to cool the Earth artificially.

(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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Climate chapter critiques:
Several of these have been reposted on Grist; I’m using the originals wherever possible. The critiques vary from those based on science to those based on economics to those based on journalism. (I didn’t sort them at first, but will slowly be doing so over time.)

Joe Romm:
Error-ridden Superfreakonomics, part 1
Error-ridden Superfreakonomics, part 2
Error-ridden Superfreakonomics, part 3
Error-ridden Superfreakonomics, part 4
Error-Ridden Superfreakonomics, part 5
Anatomy of a Debunking
Bloomberg Interview of Dubner and Caldeira Backs Up My Account
Co-Author of Superfreakonomics Apologizes To Me
One Error Corrected, 99 To Go
Is Levitt Again Denying Unequivocal Evidence For Warming?
(I’ve shortened the titles somewhat; Romm tends to use paragraphs as headlines.)

NATURE: Climate Feedback
Superfreakonomists spout off about global cooling

Union of Concerned Scientists (actually addressing the science of the entire climate chapter):
New Book, Superfreakonomics, Mischaracterizes Climate Science

The New Yorker:
HOSED: Is there a quick fix for climate? (”Indeed, just about everything they have to say on the topic is, factually speaking, wrong.”)

Yale University:
Environment 360: Geoengineering the Planet:
The Possibilities and the Pitfalls
(Editor’s Note: This is actually an interview with Ken Caldeira, a frequently-cited scientific source in SuperFreakonomics. Many of the questions ask him about his views on the book: “The casual reader can… come up with the misimpression of what I believe.”.)

Harvard Business Review:
Superfreakonomics Ignores The Business Case For Sustainability

Paul Krugman (”the first five pages, by themselves, are enough to discredit the whole thing. Why? Because they grossly misrepresent other peoples’ research, in both climate science and economics.”):
A Counterintuitive Train Wreck
Superfreakonomics on Climate, Part 1
Weitzman in Context
Superfreakingmeta (”in this crucial chapter, there’s an average of one statement per page that’s either flatly untrue or deeply misleading.”)
Contrarianism Without Consequences

The Economist:
Freaking Out: The Controversy over Superfreakonomics (Editor’s note: This is from The Economist as a whole; the other two are The Economist blogs.)
Free Exchange: Expertise, and “expertise”
Democracy in America: Contrarianism’s End?

TIME Magazine:
Justin Fox: The Freakonomists vs. The World (”I’m pretty sure they could have made all three of these points without bringing the wrath of the climate “zealots” (a.k.a. scientists and stuff) down upon them…”)

Newsweek:
We Read It So You Don’t Have To: Superfreakonomics (”Four observations from the dismal-science duo…”)

The Boston Globe:
Freakonomics Duo Tackles Climate Change… and Discovers the Limits of Cleverness

RealClimate (”The reasons…are based on a misreading of the science, a misrepresentation of proposed solutions, and truly bizarre interpretations of how environmental problems have been dealt with in the past.”):
Why Levitt and Dubner Like Geoengineering and Why They Are Wrong
An Open Letter to Steve Levitt (Must-read! Note that Levitt replies in comment 47, with predictable results.)

Richard Littlemore (DeSmog Blog)
Superfreaks: Smart, Arrogant, and Ill-Informed

Melanie Fitzpatrick (Union of Concerned Scientists) writing on HuffPo for a more general audience than above:
Superfreakonomics Will Misinform Readers On Climate Science

Eric Pooley (Bloomberg News):
Freakonomics Guys Flunk Science of Climate Change

The New Republic:
Does Superfreakonomics Need A Do-Over?

The Washington Independent:
Climate Change Skeptics Embrace Freakonomics Sequel

Media Matters
WSJ column forwards outdated climate info published in SuperFreakonomics

Climate 411:
When Books Collide: Sloppy Superfreakonomics meets its match in lucid Climate For Change

Ezra Klein:
Law of Unintended Juxtapositions

Brad DeLong:
Levitt and Dubner Disarm Themselves In Their Battle Of Wits With Joe Romm
Solar Panels: John O’Donnell on Nathan Myhrvold, Steve Levitt, And Steve Dubner
Correspondence on Global Warming And Superfreakonomics
Six Questions For Levitt And Dubner
Superfreakonomics (Download chapter 5 to read it for yourself here)
Four Defenders of Dubner and Levitt
*Sigh* Last Post on Superfreakonomics, I Promise
All right, one more, I gotta correct the record
Yet More Superfreakonomics Blogging - Yes, I Know, I Know…
The Very Last Superfreakonomics Post Of All Time (”I can’t conclude anything other than that Levitt and Dubner have failed to sit down and think any of this through to its conclusion.”)

EnviroKnow:
Superfreakonomics Crazytalk: You Can’t Walk It Back After Going Off The Deep End
(regarding their op-ed piece mentioned above: “Follow me, after fold, for a look at these 22 flaws … This represents a flaw every 42 words.”)

Andrew Sullivan:
Not So Super Freak
Not So Super Freak, Ctd.
The Liberal Beck and Limbaugh? (”The Pundit’s Dilemma”)

Kate Sheppard (she’s all over the place, but here for the Guardian):
Freakonomics Without The Facts

Mother Jones:
The Freaky Science of Superfreakonomics

Kevin Bullis (Technology Review):
How SuperFreakonomics Gets Climate Engineering Wrong

Jo Abbess: (”It’s like reading something written by the Coal Industry, or the Tobacco interests back in the 1980s. It’s that bad.”)
Superfreakonomics: Ooh baby!
Superfreakonomics Flunks Climate Science

TreeHugger: (”offering some of the worst climate journalism this side of Sean Hannity.”)
Superfreakonomics Screws Up Climate Change

Brad Johnson (Think Progress):
Superfreakonomics Gets Climate Change Super Freaking Wrong
Ken Caldeira Contradicts SuperFreaks: ‘Carbon Dioxide Is The Right Villain’
Answers for DeLong about the SuperFreaks, part 1 (See Brad DeLong, above)
Answers for DeLong about the SuperFreaks, Part 2: “Global Cooling” and “Economic Suicide”
Answers For DeLong About The SuperFreaks, Part Three: Solar Power And Warming Debts
SuperFreaks Claim Their Book Doesn’t Have “A Moral Or Policy Perspective”
Inslee Slams SuperFreakonomics For ‘Absolute Deception’ On Climate Science (Editor’s note: Inslee is a member of the US House of Representatives, and this was part of a speech from his seat, not a press appearance.)
“Academic Malpractice”: Fellow U of C Professor Calls Steve Levitt Out For Laziness And Sloppiness

Matthew Yglesias (”Correctly ascertaining the color of widely available macroscopic objects is not much to ask from authors”):
Journalistic Malpractice from Leavitt and Dubner
Steven Dubner Digs The Hole Deeper

Yoram Bauman, Stand-Up Economist
Climate Change in Superfreakonomics
More Superfreakonomics Emails from Steven Levitt
A Bit More on Superfreakonomics

Mark Thoma:
Superfreakonomics on Climate

Mark Leiberman:
Freakonomics: The Intellectual’s Glenn Beck?

Tyler Cohen:
Superfreakonomics, Chapter 5

Doug J (Balloon Juice)
Anecdotes Will Happen

Stephan Faris:
Three Ways Superfreakonomics Went Wrong On Climate Change

Scott Lemieux (”When you say that your critics are shrill rather than explaining why they’re wrong, it’s a pretty clear sign that you’ve got nothing.”):
Evasive Tactics In Arguments You’re Hopelessly Losing, Part I

Simon Donner (”This time, the authors are simply getting paid for disagreeing with others.”)
Superfreakonomics and the Glory of Contrarianism
The Message Or The Messenger

Lou Grinzo:
The Superfreak Show Comes To Town
Superfreaky Lessons

A. Seigel:
Super Freaks of the Economics Profession
Fellow Univ. of Chicago Professor Owns Super-Freaky Economist Levitt

Chris Mooney:
Levitt and Dubner Embarrass Themselves On Climate Change
Superfreakonomics: Laughing All The Way To The Bank

Michael Tobis:
Romm vs. Freakshow II

James Hyrnshyn:
Superfreakonomics: How did they get climate change so wrong?
Another Nail in the Superfreakonomics coffin

Mike Kaulbars:
Superfreakonomic Expialidocious: I Did Not Deny Climate Change With That Woman (Editor’s note: This is my favorite summary of events so far, although (or perhaps because) it doesn’t deal with errors directly.)
Scary Monsters (and superfreakonomics)
Ouch… more Superfreakonomic Uber-PWNage - all sorts
PWN-fest Continues Despite Superfreaks’ PR Spin Attempts
Climate Change Bytes and Blogs VII

Pushing Possibilities:
The Superfreakonomics Debacle: An Overview
(Editor’s note: And this is my second-favorite summary. None can accuse him of any journalistic bias here.)

Andrew Gelman:
My Review of Freakonomics 2

Carl Zimmer (Short and to the point):
Pwnage Made Easy

Things Break:
The Freakonomics Solution to Finding Yourself In A Hole - or, Levitt and Dubner Keep Digging

William Connolley (nb: a co-author on the definitive anti-”70s cooling”-meme paper linked above):
SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling (and some other stuff)?

Tim Lambert (”The result is so wrong that it has even Joe Romm and William Connolley in agreement.”):
Why Everything In Superfreakonomics About Global Warming Is Wrong
Underwhelming Response from Superfreakonomics Authors
What Do Superfreakonomics and Senator Inhofe have in common? (Editor’s note: Do follow Tim’s link to their source of information on carbon dioxide.)
Superfrakonomics: Levitt Missing The Point
Levitt and Dubner liken Climate Scientists to Flat-Earthers
Dubner Falsely Claims That Ocean Acidification Is Addressed In Superfreakonomics

Grist.org:
David Roberts: Why Richard Branson and Superfreakonomics are Wrong, In Pictures
Tom Laskawy: Help Us, [Insert Techno-Fix Here], You’re Our Only Hope! (More on a meta-level but still critical)

I don’t normally quote Amazon reviews of the book, but given the sources of these, I felt compelled to:
Greg Craven, author of What’s The Worst That Could Happen? A Rational Response To The Climate Change Debate: terrified, vindicated, disgusted, and resigned
A. Siegel: Beneath Disappointing

There’s also a DenialDepot article on the subject, proving Superfreakonomics lives up to the standards of Blog Science!. (For those not in the know, DenialDepot is a Poe’s Law version of Marc Morano’s ClimateDepot denialist talking-points clearinghouse.)

The Center for American Progress also created a summary of events. (I still prefer Mike Kaulbars’ summary above, but this provides more source links, including to elements outside the climate chapter.) (Until this link showed up, this was restricted to their mailing list; Michael Ham was kind enough to repost the pertinent elements.)

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I should also note at this point that there are critiques of parts of the book outside the climate chapter. These include:

Drunk Driving / Walking Drunk

Ezra Klein (”shoddy statistical work that could literally kill somebody”)
The Shoddy Statistics of Superfreakonomics

Tom Vanderbilt (Author of Traffic):
Friends don’t let friends walk drunk

(While evaluating this claim, this summary of results as of December 2008 was sent to me. It’s worth a look.)

Prostitution

Sady Doyle (The Guardian)
Prostitution for Fun and Profit - “The men behind Freakonomics offer a stunningly shallow and flawed view of sex work as a career option for women.”

Echidne:
The New Career Choice For Women: High-End Prostitution!

P, O’Neill:
Freaky Gurls

Anna North (Jezebel.com):
Superfreakonomics Authors Ask: Why Aren’t More Women Prostitutes

General Economic Complaints

Daniel Davies:
The Long-Awaited Freakonomics Post
The Heterodoxy Theory of the Criminal Firm
Natural Experiments Ain’t So Freakin’ Natural
Freakiology

Felix Salmon (Reuters):
Levitt and Dubner on the Northern Spotted Owl
(He also links an earlier criticism on Freakonomics, pointing out that Levitt and Dubner favor eye-catching statistics over accurate ones.)

John Whitehead:
Some Thoughts On Superfreakonomics

Robert P. Murphy, of the libertarian/Austrian-economics (!!) Ludwig von Mises Institute:
Freaking Out Over Global Warming (”I just want to caution Austrian and libertarian readers not to assume that anyone who ‘thinks global warming is a big hoax’ is automatically a great scholar.”)
(Note that Murphy does defend Levitt and Dubner from some economic criticisms, but it’s still a slam on the climate chapter.)

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In all fairness, I am also including defenses of SuperFreakonomics.

Levitt and Dubner (the authors themselves, on their own blog (not counting information given in interviews)):
The Rumors Of Our Global Warming Denial Are Greatly Exaggerated
Global Warming in Superfreakonomics: The Anatomy of a Smear
Are Solar Panels Really Black? And What Does That Have To Do With The Climate Debate
The Superfreakonomics Global Warming Fact Quiz

Tim Hartford:
Superfreakonomics Reviewed
Steven Levitt in Controversial Claim Shock… (Note: This defends the book as a whole but makes it clear he is “worried about the [climate] chapter”).

American Spectator:
Superfreakonomics: Freaking Out

Bryan Caplan:
The High Points of Superfreakonomics

Robert Waldman:
Tubes!

Josh Gans:
The Climate of Superfreakonomics

Finally, there’s an excellent summary of the entire book from Slate’s The Big Money:
Where Superfreakonomics Falls Down: The Limits of Homo economicus.
This doesn’t deal with specific arguments but rather the Superfreakonomics endeavor as a whole.

More will follow as I uncover them or as you submit them.

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UPDATE: 14:58/17/10/09: Reformatted so the links are both clickable and titled; the original list was lifted from a thread I started at Manpollo.org, which autoparsed the links.

UPDATE: 10:10/19/10/09: I’ve been linked to by several of the places above, along with favorable shout-outs on some (thanks, Lou!), but just got a front-page link on Pharyngula (don’t kill the server, plzkthx!).

The silly part is, last night I had an epiphany on their messaging strategy, and didn’t edit it in. Today, I see PZ Myers inadvertently walked right into it.

Levitt and Dubner’s own defense, on their blog, is to insist “we’re not denialists”. The amusing part is, not even Joe Romm actually called them that, or anything of the sort - the criticism was all focused on specific things. (PZ did say it was “promoting climate change denialism”, which is the closest I’ve seen; this own post used the word, but in response to their coverage of a particularly egregious story, not their own opinions.)

However, Levitt and Dubner are focusing comparatively large amounts of time on defending against this virtually nonexistent attack, which is likely throwing up smokescreens on the more substantive claims, since as soon as words like “denialist” come out in tandem with their “global warming religion” line, there’s blood in the waters of the comment threads.

This reminds me somewhat, again, of a less-sophisticated Lomborg defense: “I am an environmentalist, but…” when none of the substantive arguments against Lomborg hinge upon him being an environmentalist.

Update: 13:44/21/10/09: I’ve added a couple of subcategories, including a defense-of-Superfreakonomics section. This means the paragraph on the American Spectator defense can be removed, since it’s linked above in that section.

Update: 00:27/28/10/09: One of the few TV shows I still watch is The Daily Show, on which Levitt was just a guest. I’m going to have to count this as a “defense”, because even though Jon Stewart was (comedically) critical of the Superfreak position on prostitution, he basically let Levitt re-iterate most of his claims from the chapter on climate change utterly unchallenged, which was the majority of the interview’s focus. (Levitt said “we started with the science” but didn’t mention that he said it was cooling, and of course ocean acidification didn’t show up.) Stewart even echoed the “religion” terminology Levitt uses (and then proceeded to use comedy typecasting those concerned with climate change as hemp-smoking hippies.).
Due to regional agreements between Canada and the US, I can’t directly link to videos on TheDailyShow.com, but looking up the October 27th show should allow you to view it.
(Personal note: It reminded me very, very much of Levitt’s initial defense: Both Stewart and Levitt talked about Levitt “not denying” as if this answered the critics. I challenge the reader to find one entry above that renders “denier” as a critique.)

More on Levitt’s appearance on Stewart from Brad Johnson, Stephan Faris, More About Politics, and David Roberts. The always-astute Mike Kaulbars puts forward an interesting observation as well.

Update: 15:01/05/11/09: See my following post for the followup climate-relevant Daily Show segment. In it, Stewart points out that scientists have spoken out and declared the science in Superfreakonomics as “bad”. He does still miss the point slightly: he thinks we’re critical of Superfreakonomics for suggesting geoengineering as well as carbon mitigation, when we’re critical of it for getting the science wrong, and then suggesting geoengineering as an alternative to carbon mitigation. This suggests that he simply misread the chapter - I strongly urge you to read the chapter yourself to see just how supportive of the combined approach Levitt was in the book.

(This segment, sadly, was a victim of extended-interview edits and was not in the broadcast version of the interview.)