The Superfreaks come up with their biggest aerosol smoke screen yet to obscure their book’s countless mistakes, as Brad Johnson reports in this Wonk Room repost. Note also how Dubner, in playing the victim card, trivializes the very serious issue of religious persecution.
In the latest of many fawning interviews promoting SuperFreakonomics, author Stephen J. Dubner claimed the critics of his “global cooling” chapter have issued a “fatwa for entertaining alternate theories.” On Public Radio International’s morning program, “The Takeaway,” Dubner told hosts John Hockenberry and Celeste Headlee that he was right to call global warming a “religion.” In fact, he considers the criticism the book has received from economists, climate scientists, and energy experts to be “essentially a fatwa“:
In terms of the biggest result, I’d say is: We argued that the movement to stop global warming has the feel of a religion. I think if anything we should strengthen that sentence, because what’s been issued here is essentially a fatwa for entertaining alternate theories.
Listen here:
A fatwa is an Islamic clerical legal ruling. Dubner is evidently alluding to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s twenty-year-old fatwa calling for the death of author Salman Rushdie, whose novel Satanic Verses was considered blasphemous by hardline Muslims. Rushdie has suffered assassination attempts and decades in seclusion. Translators of the book were stabbed, shot, and killed, and bookstores were firebombed.
Despite this supposed global warming “fatwa,” however, Dubner is heroically appearing all week on the Takeaway to flack his book, co-written with University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt. The SuperFreakonomics authors have now enjoyed softball interviews from Charlie Rose, Jon Stewart, 20/20, the Guardian, the UK Telegraph, and others. The Diane Rehm Show did a much better job, bringing in IPCC lead author Peter Frumhoff to debunk their nonsense.
SuperFreakonomics has been edged out on the bestseller list by Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue, and Glenn Beck’s Arguing with Idiots.
[JR: For the record, while Dubner claims "We argued that the movement to stop global warming has the feel of a religion," what he wrote in the book was "Any religion, meanwhile, has its heretics, and global warming is no exception." And what Levitt keeps asking on their website -- and answering affirmatively -- is not about the movement to stop global warming, but "Is Climate-Change Belief a Religion?" The bottom line is that Levitt and Dubner have abandoned science and embraced victimhood. Yet as one contrarian explains, "Rules for Contrarians: 1. Don't whine. That is all."
Finally I'd love to know which critics Dubner is talking about. Personally, I'm just looking for more apologies and retractions -- One error retracted, 99 to go. Superfreaknomics authors will, in future editions, correct their claim that Caldeira believes "carbon dioxide is not the right villain."]
Update from Brad: Dubner actually trotted out the “fatwa” claim last month on a different WNYC program, saying on the Leonard Lopate show on October 21st:
The movement to stop global warming has some of the components of a religion and I’ll tell you we’ve certainly experienced that in the past few days. It feels very much like a fatwa has been levied. As with fatwas there’s obviously a bizarre twisting and omission of facts.
[JR: Finally, in a perverse coincidence, I'm posting this while on the train up to NYC, and the person sitting next to me is reading ... yes, Superfreakonomics! These victims of religious persecution are laughing all the way to the bank!]
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Aw gee, just how am I supposed to feel about someone who would put a small personal gain in front of the survival of civilisation.
Superfreakonomics: pure propaganda, repeat the lies until people just automatically accept they are true.
Since Levitt and Dubner have taken the effort to tell me what my religion is, perhaps I can return the favor.
Their religion is burn, baby, burn. Their religion is consumerism. It is consumptionism. It is cornucopianism. Their religion is to pour as much as possible into the gaping, growing maw of GDP.
I have spent a lot of time in their church, and it is rotting from the inside out. Consumption is a disease.
I feel sorry for anyone who decides to read Superfreakonomics while on a train next to Joe Romm ;-)
[JR: We had a good chat. He was a nice guy, bond trader, interested in the behavioral economics stuff. He had read the Bloomberg piece.]
Yes, and they also think they’re eligible for the Booker Prize!
Yet, I’m afraid a best seller on the backs’ of our children’s misery will have to suffice.
It’s true. I commanded all my followers to kill him, for insulting the Prophet Hansen.
George, I think the only Prophet involved here is actually Profit. These “contrarians” are out to make a buck–the scientific truth be damned!
mmm that fatwa stuff is pretty heavy-duty, not for amateurs, limbaugh’s very protective of his anti-intellectual property
The Superfreaks change the way they describe things so often it is difficult to understand exactly what they believe, if anything.
But, if someone wants to say “the movement to stop global warming has the feel of a religion”, I think we have to admit that there is some truth to it.
For example, I read Al Gore’s chapter on nuclear power in his latest book Our Choice, then I looked up the articles that are the source of the quotes he uses. The authors of the articles and study that Gore quotes from do not agree with Gore that the problem with nuclear power is its “grossly unacceptable economics”, yet Gore cherry picks quotes from these people, i.e. those he calls “the experts at MIT”, or from Forbes magazine, to support a conclusion MIT or the author of the Forbes article he quotes would take to be the opposite of what they were saying or had concluded.
I wrote a post about this and Joe would not put it up.
I examined the writing of Joe’s favorite nuclear opponent Craig Severance, I found the same type of cherry picking, and again, Joe would not post my observation.
In “Our Choice”, Gore touts Desertec, the proposal to bring Saharan solar power to Europe, and tells us MIT are “the experts” when it comes to nuclear – I took the cost figures on each type of power, from Desertec’s proposal itself, and from MIT, for comparison and posted them to this blog. Joe would not put them up.
My comments are subject to “moderation”.
If you don’t recognize that objective analysis does not necessarily support a belief you have, if you find it necessary to cherry pick words from studies that do not support your case in order to pretend there is high level authoritative support for it, if you do not allow reasoned debate about your position, you are part of a group that “has the feel of a religion”.
JR wrote: “These victims of religious persecution are laughing all the way to the bank!”
That is exactly the ONLY thing that needs to be said about Levitt and Dubner.
ALL they care about is enriching themselves. ALL they care about is money. They will say anything, and do anything, to sell more books and get more MONEY.
The “fatwa” drivel, the “climate change belief is religion” drivel, the steady stream of idiotic denialism and inane sci-fi “geoengineering” fantasies, the insults directed at scientists and environmentalists in order to provoke criticism in response to which Levitt and Dubner can whine about being “victims”, is all very deliberate and calculated to create “controversy”, in order to sell more books, in order to get more MONEY.
Levitt and Dubner LIE, for MONEY.
It is really as simple as that.
Next time, screen shot!
http://wonkette.com/412314/the-only-book-okay-for-republicans-to-read-in-public
The first freaks book sold really well, but very few knew who the authors were (including me).
Now, thanks to all this “controversy”, the whole bloody world knows their names–they’ve turned themselves into brands, with all that implies about greatly increased income from speaking fees, future book deals, etc.
Sounds like Mission Accomplished to me. All they need a big ol’ Bush-style banner and monogrammed flight jackets to announce it.