Comments on: More Superfreakonomics: emails from Steven Levitt

By: Chango

Chango — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:05:06 +0000

When I was taking economics courses back before the beginning of time, my professor spoke of the Buffalo’s. He gave fond reverence for those who chose to lower their heads and charge rather than consider an argument thoughtfully. Either I’ve stumbled into a Colorado Alumni Site or my professor would really enjoy the banter.

By: Michael Alt, MD

Michael Alt, MD — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 19:24:52 +0000

Superfreakonomics: Page 74. “Measuring doctor skill is a tricky affair” The authors state that the best doctors by patient selection results in the worst patient outcomes because the sickest patients choose the “best doctors”. Then they repeat the same method and come to different conclusion with ER doctors, even resulting in a gender bias which in itself should raise eyebrows. EMERGENCY ROOM STAFF SELECTION (triage and staff nurses, techicians etc) make sure the worst cases get to the “best doctors”. Therefore raising the mortality outcome stats for these doctors. Likewise female staff nurses make sure female doctors see more female patients than their male counterparts. Page 81 at the top:” women are slightly better at keeping people alive”
3rd paragraph, line 10 from top “women are much less likely than men to die within a year of visiting the ER”
Result: Women doctors seeing more women patients will have a better mortality outcome than than male counterparts. The Authors need to work their methods backwards from a “no-gender” bias result until they figure out where the method failed them. There is no gender bias in doctors anymore than there is a gender bias in Economists, lawyers, carpenters, etc. Back to the Drawing board fellows. Thanks for you time, if indeed you really read this, sincerely, Michael M. Alt, MD

By: Mike H

Mike H — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:38:58 +0000

Did Superfreakonomics kill Copenhagen? The news that the U.S. Congress has put off climate legislation until next year means that there will be no meaningful carbon reduction agreement at the Copenhagen Summit next month. The release of Superfreakonomics was timed just right for the for the kill. But they also needed to stir controversy to generate mass publicity and influence Congress to delay climate legislation.

Had Levitt and Dubner just presented a fair argument for a geo-engineering solution for global warming, they might not have generated enough attention. So they tossed in some superfluous climate denier talking points to guarantee a strong reaction from the bloggers. The talking points were easily refuted, but the mainstream media just reported that Levitt and Dubner were under attack, and made them look like martyrs.

This was when Congress needed to decided if it could act before Copenhagen. There was no time for the problems of Superfreakonomics to disseminate to the public. With the other priorities of Healthcare, Jobs and Bank Reform, Congress did the political thing and put climate legislation on hold. Superfreakonomics was not the only factor, but it may have been the proverbial straw that broke the will of Congressional leaders to fight.

The environment movement has defined Copenhagen as the last chance for a global climate treaty that would start the process to reverse climate change in time to avert the foretold cataclysm. Ironically, by killing Copenhagen, Superfreakonomics may have made geo-engineering necessary to buy enough time for a future carbon reduction plan to work.

By: TruePath

TruePath — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:22:04 +0000

I think many of the comments radically underestimate how differently the same material may be interpreted by people coming from different backgrounds/perspectives. I mean to give a really silly example consider how the statement, “It’s totally absurd to think that jesus descended to heaven after his death to appear to the disciples.” In the usual public discourse one interpret this as expressing skepticism about christ’s divinity. On the other hand the same statement made by a seminarian to his peers would likely communicate a theological quibble about the timing of jesus’s ascent to heaven.

Now given that Levitt and Dubner are academics and (even as economists) embedded in a professional and social mileu that takes the basic facts of global warming and the scientific consensus for granted it seems quite understandable that it might not occur to them that some readers would interpret it as supportive of climate skepticism. After all it’s always totally obvious to you what you mean so it’s easy to miss the fact that it’s not obvious to others.

By: Bill D

Bill D — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 23:49:24 +0000

Anyone who thinks that pumping SO2 into the atmosphere, greatly increasing acid rain, probably disrupting rainfall throughout the world and rapidly acidifying the oceans is a good way of solving the climate problem on the cheap needs to think again. How is a massive, uncontrolled experiment in polluting the earth’s atmosphere with SO2 not a worse form of government control than sifting toward conservation and alternative energy? The acid rain problem has been largely solved by taking SO2 out at the smoke stack. The new plan is to pump large amounts of the acid producing gas into the admosphere on purpose. As a scientist, this is a government action that I would fight.

By: sb

sb — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:16:18 +0000

A note on several of the objections written here on the unwillingness of climate change “believers” to accept dissenting opinions: it is easy to make this sound unreasonable and even out of line with scientific principles. However, dissenting opinions offered on climate change are primarily not scientific. And when they are you ought to look closely at the funding, because if you are worried about the political motives and government funding behind the IPCC, you should worry more about the motives behind the energy companies that have funded most of the dissenting research I have come across (not obviously that there isn’t valid research questioning and challenging specifics and providing alternative solutions, but at this point I know of no substantial scientific studies questioning the basic consensus as described by the IPCC other than those funded by major corporations that stand to benefit from the continuation of current consumption patterns).

I admit I haven’t read this chapter yet, but have only been following the debate on it. From Levitt’s responses here, it seems their goal was to provide alternative ways to address climate change with new technologies such as geo-engineering that might make more economic sense given the vast uncertainties — despite widespread consensus on anthropogenic causes of increased CO2 — on how natural systems will react to this change. This seems to me to be very reasonable as politically brought behavioral change as a solution will be extremely hard to bring about and could be detrimental in its own right. However, the fact that the people speculating about new technologies in this case don’t have a solid enough base knowledge of ecology or climatology to understand why the source of CO2 matters for the solution (See Levitt’s comment; “Why does it matter if natural processes are in balance or not? CO2 is Co2!”) frankly terrifies me.

By: zbicyclist

zbicyclist — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:47:43 +0000

The argument Bauman and DeLong (and others) make isn’t that hard to understand. Just paraphrase Dickens:

“Annual CO2 income twenty pounds, annual CO2 expenditure twenty pounds, result happiness. Annual CO2 income twenty pounds, annual CO2 expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”

I would think economists would have no trouble understanding the difference between “in balance” and “a bit out of balance” in the long run (when I hope we will not all be dead).

By: Barry

Barry — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:28:38 +0000

Peter, the recent increased accumulation of CO2 the atmosphere, and of ‘fossil CO2′ is well documented. (See the Keeling Cycle in Wikipedia for a start).

By: Peter Dorman

Peter Dorman — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 04:55:07 +0000

Hi Yoram. Thanks for drawing out Steve Leavitt on this and not just letting it go. One comment on the “2% of CO2 emissions” business: This represents a deep misunderstanding of the nature of the problem, one that is shared, alas, by many climate activists as well. The accretion of GHG is not modeled very well as a simple pollution problem, in which CO2 (or methane etc.) escapes from the safe confines of our fields, factories, forests and other f-in’ locations to the atmosphere. If it were, Leavitt would be right. Instead, the problem is that carbon is being released from its eon-long sequestration in the earth’s crust via extraction of hydrocarbons, upon which it enters the “fast” carbon cycle. There is enormous carbon exchange between the atmosphere, ocean and terrestrial ecosystems. Our knowledge of the dynamics of this process is still evolving and much is unknown. But the more carbon that enters this cycle, it is safe to say, the more will end up as GHG, even given the continuous back-and-forth exchange. In other words, the total flow within the carbon cycle is very large, and we humans are responsible for very little of it. But the expansion of this flow, which has doubled atmospheric CO2 since the onset of the industrial revolution (and the concomitant greatly increased extraction of fossil fuels) is our bad.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 04:23:49 +0000

Yoram repeatedly expresses his disappointment that Levitt “misleads” the public about the consensus on global warming. I think most people are aware that the majority of scientists support the view that global warming is caused by humans, so why is it such a terrible thing if Levitt or someone else expresses or reports others views that are not the consensus?

The debate on Climate Change alarms me because of an unwillingness to accept dissent as a legitimate opinion, which even this reasonable sounding article contributes to. I am sure there are plenty of other subjects where people use facts reported by others and draw different conclusions. I would say that is how science normally progresses, but in Climate Change debates that is usually looked upon as unprofessional and inappropriate.