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| Posted: 19 Oct 2009 09:41 AM PDT I wish I didn't have to waste valuable blogging time writing this post to set the record straight. If, like most people, you understand that Dubner and Leavitt — and Roger Pielke, Jr and Marc Morano — regularly make misstatements and/or misrepresent what others say and that the latter two regularly smear people based on those misrepresentations, you might skip this post. On the other hand, Dubner and Leavitt still don't understand what they got wrong — both in the entire chapter and in how they mis-portray the views of the primary climatologist they rely on. So this post will be useful to set that record straight. Also, anyone who wants to know how I do things may also find this interesting. As you'll see, I have accurately represented what Caldeira believes, and the Superfreaks have not. The verdict on the book by leading economists is in. As Nobelist Krugman writes today: Berkeley economist Brad DeLong writes today: He then goes through the chapter, offering them suggested page by page edits. Thus, when I broke the story last Monday, I was accurate in my assessment: Error-riddled 'Superfreakonomics': New book pushes global cooling myths, sheer illogic, and patent nonsense — and the primary climatologist it relies on, Ken Caldeira, says it is an inaccurate portrayal of me and misleading in many places. I have mostly explained what happened in Part 5, but since Dubner has spun out a variety of falsehoods with the help of Pielke and Morano, let me tell the story chronologically. I will note first, however, that Dubner just makes crap up in his attack on me. Dubner another one of the Superfreaks typical un-fact-checked and false assertions yesterday, "The text was never searchable on Amazon." Gavin Schmidt of RealClimate replied directly to Dubner on his NYT website: Ouch. Gavin's debunking is here, with links to debunkings by other physical scientists. Here is Brad DeLong's entire piece yesterday, "All Right. One More. I Gotta Correct the Record…":
DeLong posted the above screenshot of this cached web-page from last Tuesday, when the book was searchable online. I myself searched the book repeatedly to check the quotes in the draft I had been sent. I have before never seen someone stop the search feature of a book on Amazon. Perhaps they were scared that people would see that my debunking was dead on — and that the chapter was in fact much, much worse than I had time to show in the first post. So it's time for Dubner to retract and apologize his statement. THE CHRONOLOGY: On October 9, I was sent the photocopied "global cooling" chapter by someone who just couldn't believe all of the errors and misrepresentations in it, including misrepresentations of the work of Ken Caldeira. I know Ken and have the greatest respect for him, so I wanted to get his attention and wrote him a strong email titled, "URGENT: The Superfreakonomics folks make you look like Bjorn Lomborg or worse." I explained I wanted to strongly debunk them — yes, I use strong language in private emails and yes, Caldeira has already apologized to me for sharing those e-mails with the Superfreaks, naively thinking they would stay private. Let me excerpt it at length:
Other than some inopportune words, kind of basic stuff. Yes, I did ask him to put in his own words a quote stating that the Superfreaks had misrepresented his views — because I knew very well that they had based on my previous emails with him (and my reading of his work and having heard him talk). It is exceedingly common in regular journalism to ask people for a quote that makes a very specific point — I've been asked many times by reporters to do similar things. And he gave me that quote:
I probably should have put that in the first post, instead of merely excerpting in the headline. Lesson learned on that. Back to the chronology. Caldeira emailed me back:
In the subsequent emails to me, three things became clear:
As to point 3, on October 9, Caldeira sent me an email containing this point quoting a line from the book and responding to it:
This is a key point. The Superfreaks continue suggest that the leading "climate heavyweights" they talked to support their geo-engineering-only solution. Caldeira has said before and stands by his statement to me that geo-engineering without the kind of aggressive mitigation the Superfreaks diss is "a dystopic world out of a science fiction story." And, as he made clear here, he just supports research into geo-engineering. Caldeira did NOT believe that the other quotes by him were erroneous, but had problems with how they were framed. In an October 9 email, he wrote me:
To be clear here, he is talking about errors in how he was quoted, not in the chapter. Yes, he thinks the Superfreaks operated in good faith. I don't, for reasons you will see. You can be the judge of who is right about that. Crucially that is not the end of the emails, as Dubner and Pielke would have you believe. Indeed, Caldeira spent a lot of time trying to figure out just what went wrong. And when he figured out what happened, he explained it to me in later e-mails, which I noted in Part 5:
Ken disagreed with the sentence, communicated it to Nathan. Amazingly, Dubner did get it, but did not make the change. If someone had sent back that comment to me on my book, I would have dropped the line. I emailed Ken back:
and Ken emailed me back
I think the point is clear. Ken disagreed with the notion that CO2 is not the villain, they wanted to keep the line and attribute it to him, and they did. I wrote it part 1:
That's why I stand by what I wrote. If I find out that a book I'm writing contains a line attributing something to a scientist that they don't believe, I'd change it. I'd also be in direct communications with them and if I really, really wanted to keep that line, I would explicitly and directly send them back that line and ask them. Unlike Dunber, I have worked hard to represent what Caldeira believes. Caldeira did in fact write to me on the 10th:
And just to be 100% certain, I wrote him back the same day:
And he gave me the go-ahead:
After rereading the chapter, I sent him another email on the 11th pointing out other areas where I thought they had misrepresented his views. He wrote me back, directly quoting a line from the book and commenting on it:
So, yes, Caldeira is accusing them of selective quoting here. Remember that the next line in the book is:
The point, of course, is that what Caldeira said is well understood and not a meme that is all wrong. It is the Superfreaks spin and selective quoting that is all wrong. In this same email, Caldeira wrote me:
I know my regular readers understand how hard I try to accurately portray what the scientists I talk to mean — and what they mean to say. But for those others who might be persuaded by the selective quoting and misrepresentations of Dubner, Levitt, and Pielke, I think it is pretty clear that my original, debunking blog post — including the headline — was in fact an accurate representation of what Caldeira wrote to me:
Yes, Caldeira is unhappy that he got caught up in this. Who can blame him? He is a leading climatologist and wants to spend his time doing climatology and persuading policymakers of the urgent need for action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. So now you know the whole story of how I came to wrote my accurate debunking of the error-riddled book, Superfreakonomics. There's been no smear job — except by Dubner, Pielke and Morano. Of course, the story was never about me or some emails, but about the "average of one statement per page that's either flatly untrue or deeply misleading," in the chapter, as Krugman says, for which, the authors should "abjectly apologize," as DeLong says. If the publisher had not taken down the chapter I posted or if someone hadn't stopped the book from being searchable, then everyone would have seen from day one that my analysis was dead on, rather than it taking a few days for that to be clear. I'm glad I broke the story. I wish Caldeira hadn't gotten caught up in all this, but we are still on very good terms and in fact last night he sent me a major unpublished analysis he did that readers have asked to see. I'll be posting it soon. If you're still reading, I welcome comments. Ken You need to read this and see how your words have been taken out of context and give me a reply (by Sunday, if possible), because I want to trash them for this insanity and ignorance. Lines about you like (page 184) "Yet his research tells him carbon dioxide is not the right villain in this fight" seriously abuse your reputation and your extensive publications and warnings about the threat of ocean acidification. My blog is read by everyone in this area, including the media, so I'd like to do a major reply. I have attached the entire chapter for you to read (and you can confirm it is genuine by going to Amazon and searching for your name). I'd like a quote like, "The authors of Superfreakonomics have utterly misrepresented my work." plus whatever else you want to say. I assume you stand by the Post quote: "Geoengineering is not an alternative to carbon emissions reductions," he said. "If emissions keep going up and up, and you use geoengineering as a way to deal with it, it's pretty clear the endgame of that process is pretty ugly." and your email to me, including "dystopic world out of a science fiction story" that I can requote. |
| Posted: 19 Oct 2009 05:57 AM PDT The key point about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is that they do not speak for "American business." That's why there's been an exodus of leading companies from the denial-pushing industry group. That's why as Grist reported, Microsoft's Rob Bernard wrote in an e-mail that "The views expressed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce do not reflect Microsoft's position on climate change and we are not participating in their climate initiatives." This repost from Wonk Room tells the story of yet another industry leader speaking out for clean energy jobs and against the Chamber. Last week, over 150 business leaders from major American companies came to the capital to tell Congress to "pass comprehensive climate change and energy policy legislation this year." One of the corporate titans who participated in the We Can Lead effort was Jeffrey Hollender, the co-founder, executive chairman, and "chief inspired protagonist" of Seventh Generation, the leading producer of green household products. In an exclusive interview with the Wonk Room, Hollender had strong words for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, explaining that it made sense for prominent companies like Nike and Apple to cut ties to the chamber over its opposition to climate action:
Hollender further described membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as a "reputational risk":
Pausing in the Russell Senate building between meetings with senators from some of the 20 states in which Seventh Generation has manufacturing facilities, Hollender explained why capitalists like himself support the efforts of Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) to craft legislation with a cap-and-trade and energy efficiency provisions to cut global warming pollution and promote clean energy investment. Responding to critics who claim that advocates of a green economy are "socialists" who want to "kill capitalism," he said, "the fact that we should be responsible for the effect we have on other people, anyone who tells you that's anti-capitalist is crazy." Hollender concluded that Congress should pass clean energy and climate legislation immediately, because it's "right for business, right for the economy, right for jobs, and good for the future of the country." |
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