Freaking Out over Global Warming
From The Mises Institute
One of the ugliest battles in the blogosphere climate wars has involved the newly released Superfreakonomics, sequel to the best-selling Freakonomics. In their new book’s final chapter,
economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner set out to challenge the view that massively restricting carbon emissions is the only hope for averting planetwide catastrophe. Some of the most outspoken advocates for immediate “carbon legislation,” such as Joe Romm and Paul Krugman, were appalled by the chapter.
In this article I will link to some of the major commentary on the book so far, and try to explain to Austrian readers why the interventionists were understandably upset. In particular, I want to caution libertarians not to reflexively side with Levitt and Dubner because “they’re on our side.” I will remind readers of the admitted errors Levitt made in his battles (stemming from the Freakonomics era) with anti-gun-controller John Lott.
Having done all this, at the end of the article my merciful nature will compel me to defend Levitt and Dubner from UC Berkeley economist Brad DeLong’s specific claim that their support of geoengineering is somehow “bad economics.”
As we’ll see, Levitt and Dubner might be wrong in their views on global warming, but if so they are wrong because of the numbers. Regardless of their other possible sins, Levitt and Dubner should be acquitted of DeLong’s accusation that they aren’t thinking like economists.
Related posts:
- Video: Al Gore Gets Question About Errors In His Global Warming, Has Questioner’s Mic Cut Off
- Scientists Pull an About Face on Global Warming
- What Happened to Global Warming?
- Climategate U-turn: “No Global Warming Since 1995″
- Russians Confirm That UK Climate Scientists Manipulated Data to Exaggerate Global Warming
