Others have said it before, and likely better, but it seems worth mentioning that the climate change industry and political fellow travelers have inflated an industrial bubble with their irrational exuberance for various exceedingly costly but utterly ineffective climate change policies. Much of it was instrumental, a way for otherwise distasteful policies based in extremist ideology to hitchhike on the climate change bandwagon.

This may be why there has been so much wailing and gnashing of teeth about what seems to me to be a small beer objection by the Superfreakonomics folks.

For all the blogosphere shouting against our chapter, I have to be honest and say that I just don’t get it. I can’t understand why any environmentalist who really cares about the Earth’s future could say with a straight face that geoengineering doesn’t deserve a seat at the table as the global-warming debate heats up.

Oliver dissembles:

This mischaracterises the debate/furore/ritual clubbing/whatever (see previous posts). Quite a lot of the people attacking superfreakonomics — eg Brad Delong — *do* want geoengineering to have a seat at the table. It’s just that they don’t like the superfreaks’ treatment of the subject — and may, as I do, think such treatment is going to make it harder to get that seat, not easier. They, and I, are criticising the chapter not because geoengineering shouldn’t be taken seriously, but because Levitt and Dubner don’t seem to be trying to take it seriously: their handling of the issue is partial and unsatisfactory. It mixes a poorly tempered enthusiasm for geoengineering with some tired tropes of global warming denialism (which serve no clear purpose in the argument), and it frames the idea specifically as an alternative to emissions reductions (”Mt Pinatubo versus Al Gore”, “solve the whole global warming problem”) rather than as an additional strategy should there be a need for prompt cooling.

Nah. It's the reverse if anything. Levitt and Dubner may be light-weight popularizers whose work glosses over the complicated bits to make high level claims, but in doing so they have raised consciousness about geoengineering and so seized a place at the table for themselves and others who have been reluctant to endure a ritual clubbing by the opportunists and culture warriors whose lives and livelihoods depend on the climate bubble.

As Oliver notes:

Generosity dictates, though, that we should also look more generally at the real phenomenon that Levitt points to: people who don’t want geoengineering discussed at all, or only under the strictest of limits. I disagree with these people. But I don’t find it very hard to understand where they are coming from. Here are five components to their arguments, as I see them.

1. Geongineering adds to the climate risks unconscionably. . . we don’t know how to do any of these things well, and if we sanction the general idea that geoengineering is plausible we are prohibitively unlikely to retire all these risks before going ahead with a scheme. . .
2. It is reasonable to distrust a priori the motives of anyone who tries to argue for any approach to global warming other than emissions reduction. . .
3. I think its clearly true that many environmentalists have a pre-existing desire for people to live low-impact, low-consumption lives, often because they sincerely believe that this will make everyone happier. . .
4. The first moral argument. At an everything-I-need-to-know-I-learned-in-kindergarten level people think that when you make a mess you should clean it up, not paint over it, even if painting over it is much easier. . .
5. The second moral argument: the purpose of environmental action is to restore nature. . .

None of these arguments make sense when looked at closely. It is true that such confusions animate paleo-environmentalists and fellow travelers, but they are part of the problem set not the solution set. Indeed, it isn't very difficult to turn them around and show that they increase the threats from climate change. Haring off on nonsense adventures that satisfy some obsession without effectively addressing the threat should be opposed by sober thinkers.

Those who are sincerely concerned about climate change will likely gain a better grasp of the problem by cleaving the irrelevant obsessions of activists from the base problem of climate. Even if you share some of these emotional tics - as I do: for example I too feel that the mess should be cleaned up rather than papered over, no matter how effective the papering - it is better to quell the emotions while doing analysis. It is also better to reason in good faith, to make it clear that your policy preferences are grounded in extraneous obsessions. It's especially important to do so when privately contemplating the problem. Do I favor atmospheric cleanup solely due to my emotional preference for neatness and hygiene? If so, then I will make foolish decisions which I will later regret due to another obsession for honest inquiry.

Update:

Oliver objects to the use of the word dissembles, which has some meanings that are harsher than others. My use of that word can be interpreted as having called Oliver a liar, though my intent was more along the lines of pulling his punch and letting them off too easily. I'm not the first to note that Oliver sometimes does this in print, and it is rumored (Oliver said it) that his friends note that he is more direct in private.

There may be some word that means what I intended, and that would not skate so closely to rudeness, but I can't think of one.