Superfreakonomics

SuperFreakonomics [Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, William Morrow; First Edition, First Printing edition (October 20, 2009) ISBN-10: 0060889578, ISBN-13: 978-0060889579] is an iconoclastic look at several subjects. One of those is global warming, and possible solutions. The authors seem to feel that, while global warming is probably occuring, and human activities probably play a role, the liklihood of reversing the rate of CO2 production is small. They discuss other approaches to the problem, especially those proposed by Nathan Myhrvold, former Microsoft Chief Technology Officer.

The following are some quotes, with references to the approximate Kindle locations.

[Approximate Kindle location 2632] "Like all the best religions, fear of climate change satisfies our need for guilt, and self-disgust, and that eternal human sense that technological progress must be punished by the gods. And the fear of climate change is like a religion in this vital sense, that it is veiled in mystery, and you can never tell whether your acts of propitiation or atonement have been in any way successful.

So while the true believers bemoan the desecration of our earthly Eden, the heretics point out that this Eden, long before humans arrived, once became so naturally thick with methane smog that it was rendered nearly lifeless. When Al Gore urges the citizenry to sacrifice their plastic shopping bags, their air-conditioning, their extraneous travel, the agnostics grumble that human activity accounts for just 2 percent of global carbon-dioxide emissions, with the remainder generated by natural processes like plant decay.

Once you strip away the religious fervor and scientific complexity, an incredibly simple dilemma lies at the heart of global warming. Economists fondly call it an externality. What's an externality? It's what happens when someone takes an action but someone else, without agreeing, pays some or all the costs of that action. An externality is an economic version of taxation without representation."

[Approximate Kindle location 2890] "Also, coal is so cheap that trying to generate electricity without it would be economic suicide, especially for developing countries. Myhrvold argues that cap-and-trade agreements, whereby coal emissions are limited by quota and cost, can't help much, in part because it is already...

Too late. The half-life of atmospheric carbon dioxide is roughly one hundred years, and some of it remains in the atmosphere for thousands of years. So even if humankind immediately stopped burning all fossil fuel, the existing carbon dioxide would remain in the atmosphere for several generations. Pretend the United States (and perhaps Europe) miraculously converted overnight and became zero-carbon societies. Then pretend they persuaded China (and perhaps India) to demolish every coal-burning power plant and diesel truck. As far as atmospheric carbon dioxide is concerned, it might not matter all that much. And by the way, that zero-carbon society you were dreamily thinking about is way... Too optimistic. "A lot of the things that people say would be a good thing probably aren't," Myhrvold says. As an example he points to solar power. "The problem with solar cells is that they're black, because they are designed to absorb light from the sun. But only about 12 percent gets turned into electricity, and the rest is reradiated as heat-which contributes to global warming."

Although a widespread conversion to solar power might seem appealing, the reality is tricky. The energy consumed by building the thousands of new solar plants necessary to replace coal-burning and other power plants would create a huge long-term "warming debt," as Myhrvold calls it. "Eventually, we'd have a great carbon-free energy infrastructure but only after making emissions and global warming worse every year until we're done building out the solar plants, which could take thirty to fifty years."

[Approximate Kindle location 3086] "They are seriously proposing doing a set of things that could have enormous impact-and we think probably negative impact-on human life," he says. "They want to divert a huge amount of economic value toward immediate and precipitous anti-carbon initiatives, without thinking things through. This will have a huge drag on the world economy. There are billions of poor people who will be greatly delayed, if not entirely precluded, from attaining a First World standard of living. In this country, we can pretty much afford the luxury of doing whatever we want on the energy-and-environment front, but other parts of the world would seriously suffer."