SuperFreakShow
Due to its climate change denial, and thanks largely to online media, Superfreakonomics is dead on arrival.
By Sahil Kapur
October 26, 2009
(Photo illustration by Lauren Ferguson) Economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner’s new book, Superfreakonomics, the follow-up to their successful Freakonomics, invites readers to question the realities and causes of climate change. By crafting clever, counterintuitive explanations as to why the phenomenon is largely illusory, Levitt and Dubner expect the reader to walk away reconsidering global warming—a theory that, among scientists, is about as controversial as evolution.
Unsurprisingly, the authors have had the opposite effect of what they intended. With their shoddy reporting and parsing of empirical data, Levitt and Dubner have unwittingly helped expose global warming denial for the farce that it is. The book has been out for less than a week, but climate scientists and independent bloggers have already thoroughly dissected (and in some cases demolished) Superfreakonomics’ flurry of erroneous claims and harebrained logic, which are front and center in the chapter: "What do Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo have in common?"
But obscured by the well-warranted attacks on the legitimacy of Superfreakonomics’ assertions is the fact that in the tome’s aftermath, America quietly saw a huge victory for democracy and common sense—all courtesy of online media.
Joseph Romm, expert for the Climate Progress, a project of Campus Progress‘ parent organization the Center for American Progress, fired the backlash’s opening salvo with a series of blog posts challenging Superfreakonomics’ global warming allegations. Romm’s work was then echoed by influential economists Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong, along with popular progressive writers like Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias. Like wildfire, the blowback spread to the Huffington Post and Daily Kos before setting ablaze Facebook, Twitter, and aggregator venues like Digg. In other words, you only missed it if you weren’t paying attention.
Sixteen years ago, Levitt and Dubner could have been to the impending climate change bill what right-wing charlatan Betsy McCaughey was to the Clinton health care effort. After Clinton-care was demolished, mostly by fierce propaganda and a conservative Congress, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich lauded McCaughey’s disingenuous and error-laden New Republic article “No Exit,” calling it the health care plan’s "first decisive breakpoint." Unfortunately, online media outlets were too feeble to patch the holes in the flailing Clinton ship, while traditional news organizations failed to tackle McCaughey’s blemished logic head-on. As a result, health care reform crumbled, leading to skyrocketing premiums and tens of millions losing coverage in the following decade.
Fortunately for the Obama administration, Superfreakonomics arrived in the era of robust Internet media. Instead of the book harnessing enough wind to shift the political tides, possibly sinking a long-awaited and much-needed policy transformation, it’s dead on arrival. In fact, Levitt and Dubner are already backtracking, whining about being misinterpreted and about being attacked for their careeristic pageantry. The extensive uproar the book has received on the internet has helped embed into the American consciousness the dangers of global warming denial, wherever it exists.
Indeed, this episode showed us in real time the opportunities available in the new era of accountability journalism. No longer are we dependent on establishment journalists to hold accountable establishment politicos, who are all too often in league with each other. No longer must we sit idly by as spectators, harrowed by our helplessness to promulgate truth.
What’s most inspiring about this book’s public demise is that it reveals the opportunities for regular people to influence the direction of a society—through blogs, social networks, and online media. Today, each of us has an unprecedented capacity to debunk errant nonsense and spread the truth, building a more educated populace and as a result helping actualize democratic values in practice, rather than merely in theory.
This is just the beginning of a long trend. Independent media outlets, with their capacity to permeate ideas across a society, are rising in influence over not only constituents but also mainstream journalists, opinion-makers, and legislators, all of whom construct the apparatus of our economic and social structure.
Realistically, Superfreakonomics or not, some Americans will continue to believe there is no limit to how much we can punish the planet without punishing ourselves. Luckily, as common-sense thinkers continue to face them and the challenges accompanying them, the tools now at our disposal will allow us to more effectively strike back.
Sahil Kapur is a regular contributor for The Huffington Post and The Guardian. He blogs at The Daily Musing.
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Comments
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Superlulzonomics!
Mainstream capitalist economists have been trying to dress themselves up as “hip” and “rogue” and “revolutionary” since the 1980s. (I remember reading a TIME Magazine op-ed in the early 90s, that said if Che was still alive, he’d be pushing free-market globalization.)
Thankfully, few people are buying it anymore.
— ForStudentPower - Oct 29, 01:59 PM - #The problem with evolution and climate change is that they are both theories and have yet to be proven. Basing massive policy that would cause further increases in energy costs based on a theory is short-sighted. Climate change has been talked about for 200 years yet has been tied to nothing that we as humans have created..
instead why dont we work on opening up energy sources that are in the US territories so that American companies can create jobs instead of sending billions of dollars to the mid-east? The only thing that this administration has proposed is increasing taxes which would be passed on to us consumers in exchange for ‘green’ jobs. i’m all for cleaner energy sources however, an investment in US sources needs to help boost our economy.
Peace.
— Chris - Oct 29, 03:22 PM - #Calling the #2 (NYT) nonfiction hardcover dead on arrival is a bit puzzling. I understand that you’re probably just saying “For ME, it is dead on arrival.”
But you may as well say, “I’ve made up my mind. Further study only complicates the issue and makes my head hurt.”
“The science is settled” is a great vehicle for setting your opinions in stone. It’s the easiest way to deal with the question. Absolutely no further thought is necessary. Congrats on your retirement.
— rodger thomas - Oct 31, 05:02 PM - #I recently reviewed it for the University of Chicago’s newspaper, where Dr. Levitt teaches: www.chicagomaroon.co…
While the climate change chapter is terrible, the book at least does a good job of teaching basic economic ideas with interesting stories.
Rodger – The book was popular before it was even released, because Freakonomics was popular so people assumed this one would be good, too, well before almost anyone had actually read the thing.
— Kyle - Nov 3, 07:21 AM - #