The rumbles continue (and are likely still building) over the publication of Superfreakonomics, the book that is quickly shaping up to be the biggest single example we’ve seen recently of bad research and writing practices, whether accidental or as part of a willful attempt to gin up a controversy and make more money.[1]

The latest noteworthy aftershock is an interview with Ken Caldeira, the scientist who’s views seem to have been the most abused by the Superfreak authors, Geoengineering the Planet: The Possibilities and the Pitfalls (emphasis added):

Caldeira has become a focal point recently in the controversy surrounding the publication of Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner’s SuperFreakonomics, the follow-up to their previous best-seller, Freakonomics. A chapter of the book that deals with geoengineering and quoted Caldeira was circulated on the Internet prior to the book’s publication and was widely criticized for its poor understanding of climate science and its cynical, contrarian perspective.

In an interview with Yale Environment 360, conducted by author Jeff Goodell, who is working on a book about geoengineering, Caldeira spoke about how his work was misrepresented in SuperFreakonomics, as well as the prospects — and pitfalls — of plans to engineer the planet’s climate system. He views geoengineering as a last resort, one fraught with risks and unintended consequences. What if, for example, industrialized nations decide to inject heat-reflecting dust into the stratosphere and set off a climate reaction that causes drought and famine in India and China? For this and many other reasons, Caldeira argues that sharply reducing greenhouse gas emissions is by far the most prudent course.

Still, given the huge volume of carbon dioxide that humanity continues to pour into the atmosphere, Caldeira says it would be folly not to undertake research into geoengineering. With the prospect that the world could reach a level of dangerous warming this century, Caldeira maintains it’s necessary to determine which projects — such as putting particles in the stratosphere to reflect sunlight into space — might work and which will not. He likens geoengineering schemes to seatbelts — a technology that might reduce the chance of injury in case of a climate crash.

But, warned Caldeira, “Thinking of geoengineering as a substitute for emissions reduction is analogous to saying, ‘Now that I’ve got the seatbelts on, I can just take my hands off the wheel and turn around and talk to people in the back seat.’ It’s crazy.”

Frankly, Caldeira’s views, as highlight above in bold, are exactly where I think we should all be on these issues. As I’ve said before, as much as I detest the idea of geoengineering, if I were to find out tomorrow that my home office was at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and not Rochester, I would be pushing hard to get Congress to fund geoengineering research. But unless someone finds a near-miraculous solution, I can’t imagine geoengineering changing the basic fact that we need to drop our global CO2 emissions as soon as possible.

I haven’t quoted any of the actual Q and A with Caldeira because it’s long and deserves to be read in its entirety.

[1] Just so there’s no misinterpretation by people who love to read between the lines: I am not, in any way, shape or form, implying that the authors did this on purpose to sell more copies of the book and raise their public profiles. This is not a “wink wink nudge nudge” thing; I have no idea how they got from the established facts to the words on the pages of Superfreakonomics. But being a long-time technical writer, I will say that this level of error and spin is either a gigantic smoking gun or it’s a sign that the authors were stupefyingly sloppy.


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