Freaked Out Over SuperFreakonomics
Global warming might be solved with a helium balloon
and a few miles of garden hose.
By BRET STEPHENS
Suppose for a minute—which is about 59 seconds too long, but that's for another column—
that global warming poses an imminent threat to the survival of our species. Suppose, too,
that the best solution involves a helium balloon, several miles of garden hose and a harmless
stream of sulfur dioxide being pumped into the upper atmosphere, all at a cost of a single F-
22 fighter jet.
Good news, right? Maybe, but not if you're Al Gore or one of his little helpers.
The hose-in-the-sky approach to global warming is the brainchild of Intellectual Ventures, a
Bellevue, Wash.-based firm founded by former Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Nathan
Myhrvold. The basic idea is to engineer effects similar to those of the 1991 mega-eruption of
Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines, which spewed so much sulfuric ash into the stratosphere that
it cooled the earth by about one degree Fahrenheit for a couple of years.
Could it work? Mr. Myhrvold and his associates think it might, and they're a smart bunch.
Also smart are University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and writer Stephen Dubner,
whose delightful "SuperFreakonomics"—the sequel to their runaway 2005 bestseller
"Freakonomics"—gives Myhrvold and Co. pride of place in their lengthy chapter on global
warming. Not surprisingly, global warming fanatics are experiencing a Pinatubo-like
eruption of their own.
Mr. Gore, for instance, tells Messrs. Levitt and Dubner that the stratospheric sulfur solution
is "nuts." Former Clinton administration official Joe Romm, who edits the Climate Progress
blog, accuses the authors of "[pushing] global cooling myths" and "sheer illogic." The Union
of Concerned Scientists faults the book for its "faulty statistics." Never to be outdone, New
York Times columnist Paul Krugman scores "SuperFreakonomics" for "grossly
[misrepresenting] other peoples' research, in both climate science and economics."
In fact, Messrs. Levitt and Dubner show every sign of being careful researchers, going so far
as to send chapter drafts to their interviewees for comment prior to publication. Nor are they
global warming "deniers," insofar as they acknowledge that temperatures have risen by 1.3
degrees Fahrenheit over the past century.
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Associated Press
But when it comes to the religion of global warming—the First Commandment of which is
Thou Shalt Not Call It A Religion—Messrs. Levitt and Dubner are grievous sinners. They
point out that belching, flatulent cows are adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere
than all SUVs combined. They note that sea levels will probably not rise much more than 18
inches by 2100, "less than the twice-daily tidal variation in most coastal locations." They
observe that "not only is carbon plainly not poisonous, but changes in carbon-dioxide levels
don't necessarily mirror human activity." They quote Mr. Myhrvold as saying that Mr. Gore's
doomsday scenarios "don't have any basis in physical reality in any reasonable time frame."
More subversively, they suggest that climatologists, like everyone else, respond to incentives
in a way that shapes their conclusions. "The economic reality of research funding, rather than
a disinterested and uncoordinated scientific consensus, leads the [climate] models to
approximately match one another." In other words, the herd-of-independent-minds
phenomenon happens to scientists too and isn't the sole province of painters, politicians and
news anchors.
But perhaps their biggest sin, which is also the central point of the chapter, is pointing out
that seemingly insurmountable problems often have cheap and simple solutions. Hence world
hunger was largely conquered not by a massive effort at population control, but by the
development of new and sturdier strains of wheat and rice. Hence infection and mortality
rates in hospitals declined dramatically as doctors began to appreciate the need to wash their
hands.
Hence, too, it may well be that global warming is best tackled with a variety of cheap fixes, if
not by pumping SO2 into the stratosphere then perhaps by seeding more clouds over the
ocean. Alternatively, as "SuperFreakonomics" suggests, we might be better off doing nothing
until the state of technology can catch up to the scope of the problem.
All these suggestions are, of course, horrifying to global warmists, who'd much prefer to
spend in excess of a trillion dollars annually for the sake of reconceiving civilization as we
know it, including not just what we drive or eat but how many children we have. And little
wonder: As Newsweek's Stefan Theil points out, "climate change is the greatest new public-
spending project in decades." Who, being a professional climatologist or EPA regulator,
wouldn't want a piece of that action?
Part of the genius of Marxism, and a reason for its enduring appeal, is that it fed man's
neurotic fear of social catastrophe while providing an avenue for moral transcendence. It's
just the same with global warming, which is what makes the clear-eyed analysis in
"SuperFreakonomics" so timely and important. (Now my sincere apologies to the authors for
an endorsement that will surely give their critics another cartridge of ammunition.)