[ Tongue-in-cheek note for sedate and aesthetic viewers : apologies for the excruciatingly brash, unappealing and over-complex nature of the video above and the nasal twangs and high-pitched, high-speed ranting of the speakers in the above presentation. They’re Americans. You need to forgive them. ]
Those who laughed and joked with Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner over the Freakonomics investigations may well have cause to blanche and run away screaming at their latest tome, Superfreakonomics.
It covers a number of tasteless subjects that will probably make a few people reconsider buying it for someone else’s Christmas stocking present. I think it’s entirely unsuitable for teenage boys, for example. Plus, there’s the matter of Dubner coming out as a Climate Change denier :-
https://thinkprogress.org/2009/11/25/superfreaks-climategate/
This is a very sorry episode for intellectual America, and unfortunately the popularity of the book means that unhealthy, unfounded Global Warming scepticism will remain high.
Here is a lengthy record of drubbing on Levitt and Dubner that appears to be ongoing as regards updates :-
https://leftasanexercise.simulating-reality.com/?p=90
And here’s an open letter correcting the authors, with a handy map showing how they could have consulted someone who knew what he was talking about, just down the road :-
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/an-open-letter-to-steve-levitt/