SuperFreakonomics, the sequel to the pop economics
mega-bestseller Freakonomics, is already generating a
controversy on par with the controversies its predecessor caused
-- except this time it's the left that is irate, over some of the
book's dubious economics that downplay the threat posed by global
warming.
The book, written by the University of Chicago econometrician
Steve Levitt and the journalist Stephen Dubner, has the subtitle
Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide
Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance. Clearly, it's meant to be
provocative. The influential blogger and physicist Joe Romm read
a review copy and strongly objected to the findings of the global
warming chapter on
his blog, faulting the economics and logic that lead Levitt
and Dubner to conclude that geoengineering is a more promising
method than carbon emissions reductions for countering global
warming. Other left-wing blogs have
quickly
seconded the
charges.
Paul Krugman, especially,
called Romm's post "pretty damning," accusing Levitt and
Dubner of "falling into the trap of counterintuitiveness."
Krugman finishes,
Clever snark like this can get you a long way in career terms -
but the trick is knowing when to stop.... if you're going to
get into issues that are both important and the subject of
serious study, like the fate of the planet, you'd better be
very careful not to stray over the line between being
counterintuitive and being just plain, unforgivably wrong.
It looks as if Superfreakonomics has gone way over that line.
The irony is rich. The whole point of the original
Freakonomics was also to be counterintuitive in a
provocative way. Famously, the most controversial claim in
Freakonomics, repackaged from Levitt's doctoral
dissertation, was that the legalization of abortion in the '70s
led to decreased crime in the '90s. That findings of that study
have been found over time to be
less than robust. I would characterize abortion as an issue
that is "both important and the subject of serious study."
If Levitt was "just plain, unforgivably wrong" on the
abortion/crime findings, I haven't heard Krugman or anyone else
on the left complain about it. But now that Levitt is applying
that same questionable level of scholarship to the left's pet
issue, suddenly he has fallen into the trap of
counterintuitiveness, and is prioritizing shock value over
academic rigor.
topics:
Paul Krugman, Climate Change, Freakonomics
