Super Freakonomics Part 27

"AN INTELLECTUALLY VENTURESOME FELLOW NAMED NATHAN": This section is drawn from author interviews with Nathan and his colleagues, whom the reader will meet in fuller detail in Chapter 5. Neal Stephenson-yes, the same one who writes phantasmagorical novels-was particularly helpful in walking us through some of the details and showing computer simulations. The hurricane killer described is also known as Jeffrey A. Bowers et al., "Water Alteration Structure Applications and Methods," U.S. Patent Application 20090173366, July 9, 2009. Among the "et al." authors is one William H. Gates III. The abstract from the patent application reads like this: "A method is generally described which includes environmental alteration. The method includes determining a placement of at least one vessel capable of moving water to lower depths in the water via wave induced downwelling. The method also includes placing at least one vessel in the determined placement. Further, the method includes generating movement of the water adjacent the surface of the water in response to the placing."

CHAPTER 5: WHAT DO AL GORE AND MOUNT PINATUBO HAVE IN COMMON?

LET'S MELT THE ICE CAP!: For the section on global cooling, see: Harold M. Schmeck Jr., "Climate Changes Endanger World's Food Output," The New York Times, August 8, 1974; Peter Gwynne, "The Cooling World," Newsweek, April 28, 1975; Walter Sullivan, "Scientists Ask Why World Climate Is Changing; Major Cooling May Be Ahead," The New York Times, May 21, 1975. Ground temperatures over the past 100 years can be found in "Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report," U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

JAMES LOVELOCK: All Lovelock quotes in this chapter can be found in The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity (Basic Books, 2006). Lovelock is a scientist perhaps best known as the originator of the Gaia hypothesis, which argues that the earth is essentially a living organism much like (but in many ways superior to) a human being. He has written several books on the subject, including the foundational Gaia: The Practical Science of Planetary Medicine (Gaia Books, 1991).

COWS ARE WICKED POLLUTERS: The potency of methane as a greenhouse gas as compared with carbon dioxide was calculated by the climate scientist Ken Caldeira, of the Carnegie Inst.i.tution for Science, based on the IPCC's Third a.s.sessment Report. Ruminants produce more greenhouse gas than transportation sector: see "Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options," Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, 2006; and Shigeki Kobayashi, "Transport and Its Infrastructure," chapter 5 from IPCC Third a.s.sessment Report, September 25, 2007.

WELL-MEANING LOCAVORES: See Christopher L. Weber and H. Scott Matthews, "Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States," Environmental Science and Technology 42, no. 10 (April 2008); see also James McWilliams, "On Locavorism," Freakonomics blog, The New York Times, August 26, 2008; and McWilliams's forthcoming book, Just Food (Little, Brown, 2009).

EAT MORE KANGAROO: See "Eco-friendly Kangaroo Farts Could Help Global Warming: Scientists," Agence France-Press, December 5, 2007.

GLOBAL WARMING AS A "UNIQUELY Th.o.r.n.y PROBLEM": For the "terrible-case scenario," see Martin L. Weitzman, "On Modeling and Interpreting the Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change," The Review of Economics and Statistics 91, no. 1 (February 2009). / 169 A Stern warning: see Nicholas Herbert Stern, The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review (Cambridge University Press, 2007). / 169 There is much to be read about the influence of uncertainty, especially as it compares with its cousin risk. The Israeli psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, whose work is generally credited with giving ultimate birth to behavioral economics, conducted pioneering research on how people make decisions under pressure and found that uncertainty leads to "severe and systematic errors" in judgment. (See "Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases," from Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, ed. Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky [Cambridge University Press, 1982].) We wrote about the difference between risk and uncertainty in a New York Times Magazine column ("The Jane Fonda Effect," September 16, 2007) about the fear over nuclear power: "[The economist Frank Knight] made a distinction between two key factors in decision making: risk and uncertainty. The cardinal difference, Knight declared, is that risk-however great-can be measured, whereas uncertainty cannot. How do people weigh risk versus uncertainty? Consider a famous experiment that ill.u.s.trates what is known as the Ellsberg Paradox. There are two urns. The first urn, you are told, contains 50 red b.a.l.l.s and 50 black b.a.l.l.s. The second one also contains 100 red and black b.a.l.l.s, but the number of each color is unknown. If your task is to pick a red ball out of either urn, which urn do you choose? Most people pick the first urn, which suggests that they prefer a measurable risk to an immeasurable uncertainty. (This condition is known to economists as ambiguity aversion.) Could it be that nuclear energy, risks and all, is now seen as preferable to the uncertainties of global warming?" / 170 Al Gore's "We" campaign: see www. climateprotect.org and Andrew C. Revkin, "Gore Group Plans Ad Blitz on Global Warming," The New York Times, April 1, 2008. / 170 The heretic Boris Johnson: see Boris Johnson, "We've Lost Our Fear of h.e.l.lfire, but Put Climate Change in Its Place," The Telegraph, February 2, 2006. / 170 "Rendered nearly lifeless": see Peter Ward, The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive? (Princeton University Press, 2009); and Drake Bennett, "Dark Green: A Scientist Argues That the Natural World Isn't Benevolent and Sustaining: It's Bent on Self-Destruction," The Boston Globe, January 11, 2009. / 170171 Human activity and carbon emissions: see Kenneth Chang, "Satellite Will Track Carbon Dioxide," The New York Times, February 22, 2009; read more about NASA's view of carbon dioxide at http:/oco.jpl.nasa.gov/science/.

THE NEGATIVE EXTERNALITIES OF COAL MINING: For American coal worker deaths, see the U.S. Department of Labor, Mine Safety and Health Administration, "Coal Fatalities for 1900 Through 2008" and Jeff Goodell, Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future (Houghton Mifflin, 2007). Deaths from black lung were gleaned from National Inst.i.tute for Occupational Safety and Health reports. Chinese coal worker deaths were reported by the Chinese government to be 4,746 in 2006, 3,786 in 2007, and 3,215 in 2008; these numbers are likely underestimates. See "China Sees Coal Mine Deaths Fall, but Outlook Grim," Reuters, January 11, 2007; and "Correction: 3,215 Coal Mining Deaths in 2008," China.org.cn, February 9, 2009.

LOJACK: See Ian Ayres and Steven D. Levitt, "Measuring Positive Externalities from Un.o.bservable Victim Precaution: An Empirical a.n.a.lysis of LoJack," Quarterly Journal of Economics 113, no. 8 (February 1998).

APPLE TREES AND HONEY BEES: See J. E. Meade, "External Economies and Diseconomies in a Compet.i.tive Situation," Economic Journal 62, no. 245 (March 1952); and Steven N. S. Cheung, "The Fable of the Bees: An Economic Investigation," Journal of Law and Economics 16, no. 1 (April 1973). Cheung, in his paper, writes a remarkable sentence: "Facts, like jade, are not only costly to obtain but also difficult to authenticate." For a very strange twist on this insight, see Stephen J. Dubner, "Not as Authentic as It Seems," Freakonomics blog, The New York Times, March 23, 2009.

MOUNT PINATUBO: For one dramatic telling of the eruption, see Barbara Decker, Volcanoes (Macmillan, 2005). For its effect on global climate, see: Richard Kerr, "Pinatubo Global Cooling on Target," Science, January 1993; P. Minnis et al., "Radiative Climate Forcing by the Mount Pinatubo Eruption," Science, March 1993; Gregg J. S. Bluth et al., "Stratospheric Loading of Sulfur from Explosive Volcanic Eruptions," Journal of Geology, 1997; Brian J. Soden et al., "Global Cooling After the Eruption of Mount Pinatubo: A Test of Climate Feedback by Water Vapor," Science, April 2002; and T.M.L. Wigley, "A Combined Mitigation/Geoengineering Approach to Climate Stabilization," Science, October 2006.

INTELLECTUAL VENTURES AND GEOENGINEERING: This section is primarily drawn from a visit we made to the Intellectual Ventures lab in Bellevue, Washington, in early 2008, and from subsequent interviews and correspondence with Nathan Myhrvold, Ken Caldeira, Lowell Wood, John Latham, Bill Gates, Rod Hyde, Neal Stephenson, Pablos Holman, and others. During our visit to IV, several other people contributed to the conversation, including Shelby Barnes, Wayt Gibbs, John Gilleand, Jordin Kare, Casey Tegreene, and Chuck Witmer.... Conor and Cameron Myhrvold, Nathan's college-age sons, also partic.i.p.ated. They have already stepped into the invention racket themselves with a "wearable/ portable protection system for a body," or a human air bag. From the patent application: "In an embodiment, system 100 may be worn by a locomotion-challenged person to cushion against prospective falls or collisions with environmental objects. In another embodiment, system 100 may be worn by athletes in lieu of traditional body-padding, helmets, and/or guards. In another embodiment, system 100 may be worn by people riding bicycles, skate-boarding, skating, skiing, snow-boarding, sledding and/or while engaged in various other sports or activities."...For some interesting further reading on their father, see: Ken Auletta, "The Microsoft Provocateur," The New Yorker, May 12, 1997; "Patent Quality and Improvement," Myhrvold's testimony before the Subcommittee on the Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property, Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Congress of the United States, April 28, 2005; Jonathan Reynolds, "Kitchen Voyeur," The New York Times Magazine, October 16, 2005; Nicholas Varchaver, "Who's Afraid of Nathan Myhrvold," Fortune, July 10, 2006; Malcolm Gladwell, "In the Air; Annals of Innovation," The New Yorker, May 12, 2008; Amol Sharma and Don Clark, "Tech Guru Riles the Industry by Seeking Huge Patent Fees," The Wall Street Journal, September 18, 2008; Mike Ullman, "The Problem Solver," Washington CEO, December 2008.... Myhrvold is himself famous for writing-in particular, many long, provocative, extravagantly detailed memos that are intended primarily for internal use. See Auletta, above, for a good discussion of some of Myhrvold's Microsoft memos. Perhaps his greatest memo to date is one he wrote for his current company, back in 2003. It is called "What Makes a Great Invention?" We hope it will someday be made available for public consumption. / 177 Mosquito laser a.s.sa.s.sination: for more fascinating detail, see Robert A. Guth, "Rocket Scientists Shoot Down Mosquitoes with Lasers," The Wall Street Journal, March 1415, 2009. / 178 "I don't know anyone [who] is smarter than Nathan": see Auletta, above. / 179 More T. rex skeletons: see Gladwell, above; based also on correspondence with the paleontologist Jack Horner, with whom Myhrvold collaborates in hunting for dinosaur bones. / 180 Definitive research...including climate science: see, e.g., Edward Teller, Lowell Wood, and Roderick Hyde, "Global Warming and Ice Ages: I. Prospects for Physics-Based Modulation of Global Change," 22nd International Seminar on Planetary Emergencies, Erice (Sicily), Italy, August 2023, 1997; Ken Caldeira and Lowell Wood, "Global and Arctic Climate Engineering: Numerical Model Studies," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, November 13, 2008. / 180 For the next ten hours or so: During a break, if you were to casually ask Myhrvold a question of interest-his take on, say, whether an asteroid strike was indeed responsible for the extinction of dinosaurs-he is apt to regale you with a long narrative history of the various competing theories, the logic (and caveats) behind the ultimate winning theory, and the fallacies (and lesser truths) behind the losers. On this particular question, Myhrvold's short answer is: yes. / 181 Wood himself was a protege: for an excellent exploration of geoengineering that is also a dual profile of Lowell Wood and Ken Caldeira, see Chris Mooney, "Can a Million Tons of Sulfur Dioxide Combat Climate Change?" Wired, June 23, 2008. / 181 "As many as a million": see Gladwell, above. / 182183 Myhrvold cites a recent paper: see Robert Vautard, Pascal Yiou, and Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, "Decline of Fog, Mist and Haze in Europe Over the Past 30 Years," Nature Geoscience 2, no. 115 (2009); and Rolf Philipona, Klaus Behrens, and Christian Ruckstuhl, "How Declining Aerosols and Rising Greenhouse Gases Forced Rapid Warming in Europe Since the 1980s," Geophysical Research Letters 36 (2009). / 183 The carbon dioxide you breathe in a new office building: derived from guidelines of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers. / 183 Carbon dioxide is not poison: for a trenchant overview of the current state of thinking about atmospheric carbon dioxide, see William Happer, "Climate Change," Statement before the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, February 25, 2009; data also gleaned from the Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Information a.n.a.lysis Center. / 183 Carbon dioxide levels rise after a rise in temperature: see Jeff Severinghaus, "What Does the Lag of CO2 Behind Temperature in Ice Cores Tell Us About Global Warming," RealClimate, December 3, 2004. / 183184 "Ocean acidification": see Ken Caldeira and Michael E. Wickett, "Oceanography: Anthropogenic Carbon and Ocean pH," Nature 425 (September 2003); and Elizabeth Kolbert, "The Darkening Sea," The New Yorker, November 20, 2006. / 184 Hard-charging environmental activist: see Mooney, above, for interesting reading on Caldeira's background / 184 Caldeira mentions a study: see Caldeira et al., "Impact of Geoengineering Schemes on the Terrestrial Biosphere," Geophysical Research Letters 29, no. 22 (2002). / 186 Trees as environmental scourge: see Caldeira et al., "Climate Effects of Global Land Cover Change," Geophysical Research Letters 32 (2005); and Caldeira et al., "Combined Climate and Carbon-Cycle Effects of Large-Scale Deforestation," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104, no. 16 (April 17, 2007). / 187 The half-life of atmospheric carbon: see Archer et al., "Atmospheric Lifetime of Fossil Fuel Carbon Dioxide," Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 37 (2009). / 188 "Would put an end to the Gulf Stream": see Thomas F. Stocker and Andreas Schmittner, "Influence of Carbon Dioxide Emission Rates on the Stability of the Thermohaline Circulation," Nature 388 (1997); and Brad Lemley, "The Next Ice Age," Discover, September 2002. / 189 The northern tip of Newfoundland: this former Norse settlement is known as L'Anse aux Meadows. / 189 Benjamin Franklin's volcanic suspicion: see Benjamin Franklin, "Meteorological Imaginations and Conjectures," Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, December 22, 1784; and Karen Harpp, "How Do Volcanoes Affect World Climate?" Scientific American, October 4, 2005. / 189 "Year Without a Summer": see Robert Evans, "Blast from the Past," Smithsonian, July 2002. / 189 Lake Toba super volcano: see Stanley H. Ambrose, "Late Pleistocene Human Population Bottlenecks, Volcanic Winter, and Differentiation of Modern Humans," Journal of Human Evolution 34, no. 6 (1998). / 191 The Vonnegut brothers make rain: see William Langewiesche, "Stealing Weather," Vanity Fair, May 2008. / 191 The idea was attributed to...Mikhail Budyko: see M. I. Budyko, "Climatic Changes," American Geophysical Society, Washington, D.C., 1977. Improbably, Ken Caldeira did postdoctoral work at Budyko's inst.i.tute in Leningrad and met his future wife there. / 196197 Perhaps the stoutest scientific argument: see Paul J. Crutzen, "Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulfur Injections: A Contribution to Resolve a Policy Dilemma?" Climatic Change, 2006. / 198 There is no regulatory framework: for further reading, see "The Sun Blotted Out from the Sky," Elizabeth Svoboda, Salon.com, April 2, 2008. / 199 Certain new ideas...are invariably seen as repugnant: the dean of repugnance studies is the Harvard economist Alvin E. Roth, whose work can be see at the Market Design blog. See also: Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, "Flesh Trade," The New York Times Magazine, July 9, 2006; and Viviana A. Zelizer, "Human Values and the Market: The Case of Life Insurance and Death in 19th Century America," American Journal of Sociology 84, no. 3 (November 1978). / 200 Al Gore is quoted here and elsewhere in Leonard David, "Al Gore: Earth Is in 'Full-Scale Planetary Emergency,'" s.p.a.ce.com, October 26, 2006. / 201202 The "soggy mirrors" plan: see John Latham, "Amelioration of Global Warming by Controlled Enhancement of the Albedo and Longevity of Low-Level Maritime Clouds," Atmospheric Science Letters 3, no. 2 (2002). / 201 Contrail clouds: see David J. Travis, Andrew M. Carleton, and Ryan G. Lauritsen, "Climatology: Contrails Reduce Daily Temperature Range," Nature, August 8, 2002; Travis, "Regional Variations in U.S. Diurnal Temperature Range for the 1114 September 2001 Aircraft Groundings: Evidence of Jet Contrail Influence on Climate," Journal of Climate 17 (March 1, 2004); and Andrew M. Carleton et al., "Composite Atmospheric Environments of Jet Contrail Outbreaks for the United States," Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 47 (February 2008). / 203 Fighting global warming with individual behavior change: the difficulty of this endeavor was ill.u.s.trated, if indirectly, by Barack Obama as he ran for president in 2008. While preparing for a debate, Obama was caught on tape complaining about how shallow the debates could be: "So when Brian Williams [of NBC News] is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f-ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective.'" As reported in "Hackers and Spending Sprees," Newsweek web exclusive, November 5, 2008.

DIRTY HANDS AND DEADLY DOCTORS: For Semmelweis's sad ending, see Sherwin B. Nuland, The Doctor's Plague: Germs, Childbed Fever, and the Strange Story of Ignatz Semmelweis (Atlas Books, 2003). / 204 "A raft of recent studies": see Didier Pittet, "Improving Adherence to Hand Hygiene Practice: A Multidisciplinary Approach," Emerging Infectious Diseases, MarchApril 2001. / 204205 "To Err Is Human": Linda T. Kohn, Janet Corrigan, and Molla S. Donaldson, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System (National Academies Press, 2000). It should be noted that hospitals had already been trying for years to increase doctors' hand-washing rates. In the 1980s, the National Inst.i.tutes of Health launched a campaign to promote hand-washing in pediatric wards. The promotional giveaway was a stuffed teddy bear called T. Bear. Kids and doctors alike loved T. Bear-but they weren't the only ones. When a few dozen T. Bears were pulled from the wards to be examined after just one week, every one of them was found to have acquired at least one of a host of new friends: Staphylococcus aureus, E. coli, Pseudomonas, Klebsiella, and several others. / 205206 Cedars-Sinai Medical Center: see Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, "Selling Soap," The New York Times Magazine, September 24, 2006. It was Dr. Leon Bender, a urologist at Cedars-Sinai, who led us to this story. / 205 The Australian study: see J. Tibbals, "Teaching Hospital Medical Staff to Handwash," Medical Journal of Australia 164 (1996). / 207 "Among the best solutions": for disposable blood-pressure cuffs, see Kevin Sack, "Swabs in Hand, Hospital Cuts Deadly Infections," The New York Times, July 27, 2007; for the silver-ion antimicrobial shield, see Craig Feied, "Novel Antimicrobial Surface Coatings and the Potential for Reduced Fomite Transmission of SARS and Other Pathogens," unpublished ma.n.u.script, 2004; for neckties, see "British Hospitals Ban Long Sleeves and Neckties to Fight Infection," a.s.sociated Press, September 17, 2007.

FORESKINS ARE FALLING: See Ingrid T. Katz and Alexi A. Wright, "Circ.u.mcision-A Surgical Strategy for HIV Prevention in Africa," New England Journal of Medicine 359, no. 23 (December 4, 2008); also drawn from author interview with Katz.

Table of Contents

AN EXPLANATORY NOTE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NOTES