Jon Stewart Argues That Concern About Global Warming Is Just A ‘Secular Religion’
Jon Stewart Argues That Concern About Global Warming Is Just A ‘Secular Religion’
On last night’s Daily Show, host Jon Stewart heaped praise on the contrarian approach to global warming taken by SuperFreakonomics author Steve Levitt, a University of Chicago economist. Stewart was baffled by the widespread criticism of Levitt and co-author Stephen Dubner, asking, “Have you stepped on a secular religion?” Stewart, often a tough interviewer, coddled Levitt, saying, “I’m sorry you’ve taken so much s**t for it.” He blamed the uproar over SuperFreakonomics on people who “feel you are betraying environmentalism”:
I’ve been somewhat surprised at how angry people are. The global warming chapter, you don’t deny global warming. You don’t say that CO2 isn’t a factor, but they feel you are betraying environmentalism or our world. Why are people so mad?
Watch it:
SuperFreakonomics mischaracterizes the field in order to argue that “moralism and angst” has blinded scientists and policymakers from pursuing the “cheap and simple solution” of geoengineering. Although the book condemns scientists for fearmongering and promotes a radical alternative to existing policy, Levitt tells Stewart, “I don’t try to pretend I know the science.”
In reality, the critics of Levitt’s treatment of climate science and policy are not “dogmatic” believers of a “secular religion” — they are highly respected climate scientists, energy experts, and economists, including climate scientist Ken Caldeira, who has said Levitt and Dubner misrepresented his views. The widespread criticism isn’t based on the book’s personal attacks on Al Gore or its mocking of global warming as a “religion,” but on the multitude of factual errors, misrepresentations, and false conclusions that the authors use to promote their mindless contrarianism. As science journalist Eric Pooley writes, “The book claims the opposite of what Caldeira believes.”
Levitt recommends untested, planetary scale geo-engineering to block the sun as a “band-aid” that “buys us time” if “we might need to do something,” because carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for a long time. However, scientists concerned that global warming needs to be reduced rapidly have already found a well-proven approach that’s cheaper and safer than pumping unlimited amounts of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere: stopping black carbon emissions of soot from diesel and biomass burning.
Stewart hit the nail on the head when he concluded, “I really don’t know what I’m talking about, do I?” However, he failed to understand his mistake when he concluded that he had “apparently frightened our audience by suggesting that conservation isn’t the only way out of any of our problems.”
Stewart has excoriated other media darlings for their laissez-faire approach to serious issues, from Tucker Carlson to Jim Cramer, and just last week skewered CNN for its failure to do even basic fact-checking of its guests. Unfortunately, this time Stewart ended up being just like those he usually mocks — neither funny nor accurate.
Transcript:
STEWART: Let’s get to the global warming. that’s the one — I’ve been somewhat surprised at how angry people are, because the global warming chapter, you don’t deny global warming. You don’t say that CO2 isn’t a factor, but they feel you are betraying environmentalism or our world? What is it, why are people so mad?
LEVITT: I think you are right. We start with the science. I’m not a scientist, I don’t try to pretend I know the science. We try to go with the facts that are agreed on, the world is getting warmer and maybe there’s going to be cataclysm and there’s something we might need to do something about it. But instead of jumping to the conclusion that mankind owes a debt to future mankind to not put carbon into the air, we asked a different question, which is, “If we really wanted to cool the earth down quickly and cheaply and in a way that’s reversible, what would we do?” And the answer I don’t think at all, is not carbon mitigation, because that’s number one, very expensive about a trillion dollars a year to do it. The biggest reason is it takes 50 years. Because of the way carbon stays in the air, if we really cut carbon today the benefits will be 50 years from now. The earth will continue to heat up. Scientists have what are called geoengineering solutions, so different ways. Some of them are quite environmentally friendly, like seeding clouds to grow over the oceans, and others are kind of science fiction, like running a 100,000 foot garden hose up into the sky and spreading sulfur dioxide up there.
STEWART: That was my favorite one. It was the guys who want to use the garden hose. There’s kinda like these mad scientists that come up with these solutions, like they have one for getting rid of hurricanes cooling the water by floating little pontoons in the Gulf of Mexico.
LEVITT: Yeah.
STEWART: Why don’t we try this? I don’t understand people are angry about this. why does it have to be so dogmatic. No the only way is to get us off of fuel, uh fossil fuels and use these squirrelly light bulbs that curl and not try this crazy umbrella. I (bleep)ing love this umbrella thing. [ laughter ] You don’t say in here that conservation is useless or can’t be done, you are just suggest other things. Have you stepped on a secular religion?
LEVITT: Yeah, I think — the idea that we don’t have to pay the price for polluting is a really, really hard idea for people to take. Seems to me you put the moralism away. How do you solve the problem. We got here. We burned too much stuff. There are all sorts of other reasons why you don’t want carbon in the air. I don’t want to say this is real… It’s a band-aid.
STEWART: You’re also factoring in human nature. You are saying we’re not going to be able to reverse 5,000 years of human nature which is to do things easier, quicker, louder and with more smoke, so why not put up an umbrella?
LEVITT: Yeah, so, it’s a band-aid. I mean, you gotta be realistic about it. You put this up, it buys us time. If the worst things of climate predictions are still coming through, then it gives us 50 years to have more technological solutions.
STEWART: I appreciate you adding to the conversation. I don’t think that you are somehow denying science or any of these other things and I’m sorry you’re taking so much (bleep) for it. But the only other thing I would say is we should apply some of this to another field, economics. Because this is the kind of the thinking that could maybe help us with the banking thing. That could be your next book, like “Super Freaky Economics.”
LEVITT: Supercagi, fragilistic…
STEWART: I really don’t know what i’m talking about do I? I’ve apparently frightened our audience by suggesting that conservation isn’t the only way out of any of the problems in the world. I sincerely apologize and I do also believe we should just eat vegetables. “Superfreakonomics” on the bookshelves now. It’s recyclable!
[BREAK]
STEWART: Look, I know you are kind of mad about that whole global warming thing before. I just want to let you know I was just kidding around. It’s all good. That’s our show. Join us tomorrow night at 11:00 where the entire set will be made of hemp.
Also posted at ThinkProgress.
Helpfully, when you offer facile dismissals of science and policy to which people have devoted their lives—“We could end this debate and be done with it,” sighs Dubner, “and move on to problems that are harder to solve.”—they get angry, and they express that anger. Then you get to be the Brave, Persecuted Freethinker battling the Quasi-Religious Orthodoxy, and the press loves you all the more. Why else would anyone know Roger Pielke Jr.‘s name? Lomborg rode that train, along with Shellenberger/Nordhaus and Dyson. In a smaller, grubbier way, even a flack like Patrick Moore (“co-founder of Greenpeace”!) has made it work for him. It’s no wonder Levitt/Dubner thought they could do the same thing, and you can sense their hesitation now that it’s not working so well. Though it did work like a charm on the normally sharp Jon Stewart, who offered Levitt this pathetically fawning interview.
In short, Stewart misses the point completely. There’s no doubt the environmentalist movement is full of people who are ideologically opposed to consumption. But there are also plenty of people (like myself) who are no fan of hairshirts, but still worry about the potential catastrophic impacts of climate change. The problem with Levitt’s book isn’t that it attacked a holy cow (it may have done that, but that isn’t the problem). Where Levitt went wrong is that the solution he and his co-author Stephen Dubner propose isn’t actually a solution.
That’s right, Levitt doesn’t even have to BS the interview because Stewart does it for him. From mocking green living to calling climate science “a religion” Stewart sounds like he is reading Levitt’s talking points. Instead of challenging Levitt, Stewart does all of the disinformation and obfuscating for him. Journalism schools could use this as a case study of really appalling interview technique; it’s that bad.
9 Responses to “Jon Stewart Argues That Concern About Global Warming Is Just A ‘Secular Religion’”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Wonk RoomContact Us
Donate
Stewart plummeted in my estimation after that display. Did he ‘go with his gut’ on this one? Did he do no research? Or did he decide those idiot PhD climate scientists don’t know their elbow from their arse when it comes to climate science? Or that the Nobel economist just got a bit confused?
Levitt and Dubner’s ’solution’ is the equivalent of suggesting that the best remedy for a lion gnawing at your leg is a blood transfusion.
“I think the lion just hit a major artery – pump the blood in faster!”
October 28th, 2009 at 6:40 pmI saw this last night and was so upset I couldn’t sleep. What was JS thinking? Was it an attempt at being ‘fair and balanced’ or did he simply think he was being cool? I think he needs to get out of NYC for a few days….
October 28th, 2009 at 8:07 pmNo Stewart does not miss the point. This is the problem with dogmatic people, “I’m right why don’t you just shut up and listen to me?” is the premise of everything those who don’t see other ways as a possibility, say. Just because you’re convinced of your “rightness” and have a lot of people agreeing with you it doesn’t mean all debate must stop. That isn’t anything like what the Western Ideal of our society is and has always been. You cannot shut down debate just because you think you’re right or have reached the best conclusion. Even idiotic proposals have their uses. They clarify the truth, often they trigger new and profitable (not economical usage here:) avenues of thought, and so on. It is the continuous and unrestricted offering of the sublime and the ridiculous that is the basis of our society and all human development. Where this freedom has been stifled so has progress been stifled. Learn to open your mind beyond the end of your fears, you may find a new idea there. I gotta ask all of you people who object, when was the last time you changed your mind on something significant?
October 28th, 2009 at 10:02 pmThe thing that proves the religiosity and lack of reason on the part of all of the detractors I have thus far heard and read is that it is all personal attacks. None of them address the ideas w/o making a personal attack on either Mr Stewart or the authors.
Anger and hateful manipulative personal attacks won’t do anything but lead to violence. They always have and always will.
Carbon reduction may or may not be “THE” solution, but that particular dogma is not the premise of the book, and the intellectual bankruptcy that prevents people from seeing a new point of view for what it is, is also a hallmark of the dogmatic religious thinker. It is far more likely that there will be several solutions working in concert that gets us out of this problem, if we do get out of it. Not solving this problem, is also a possibility. Have you thought about that? How are you going to accept that possibility? Are you one who will devolve or will you continue to try to improve the situation anyway. I’m betting the Dogmatics will devolve.
Allow me to preface this by saying that I haven’t read the book but, based solely on what was said in the interview, people are overreacting to this.
Have you ever heard of a thought experiment? It’s something that you work through mentally that you would probably never actually do in real life–and that’s what Stewart made the scenarios in the book sound like.
I don’t see how people take a phrase like “conservation isn’t the only answer” and turn it into “we don’t need to conserve.” We should be open to approaching this problem from multiple angles, we should be thinking both in and out of the rapidly heating box.
I’m going to go and read the book, but I trust Jon Stewart. If he says that the book doesn’t really attack conservationism, then I am inclined to believe that the people attacking it for doing so are merely finding what they set out to find in the first place.
October 28th, 2009 at 11:06 pmDid Stewart drink the climate contrarian kool-aid? Why does he cavalierly dismiss the science of hundreds of life-long climate researchers, and glibly endorse the SuperFreakonomics mumbo-jumbo on geo engineering? 20 blogs and news articles and climate science summaries have excoriated the too-clever-by-half SuperFreakonomics dudes on their hipshot science, engineering and economics. Stewart, who in a past life evicerated the shouting stock trader TV guy, just lapped up Levitt’s piddle.
Wuss.
October 29th, 2009 at 12:49 amThe reason why the Climate Change synod has turned on Levitt and Dubner like a rabid dog is because they gave a bit of coverage to a method of addressing climate change that does not involve massive upheavals of how we live in modern society.
To the Climate Chnage synod, AGW has always only been a vehicle for social engineering. It is just the latest tool used to try to implement an anti-Western, anti-capitalist, anti-industrialist agrarian society. Thus, solviog AGW while maintaining our current modern way of life must be violently attacked, because it takes away the Big Stick that the Luddites are currently employing in their attempt to transport us to the Gaian Utopia (aka the 17th Century).
October 29th, 2009 at 10:23 amGrow up, kids! mommy earth and daddy atmosphere don’t want to spank you. They’re just a bio-eco system, not god. you dont have to “pay the price”. just invent new technologies to reverse the damage of old.
Stewart does not dismiss anything. Since when is it wrong to ask questions about science?! when did it turn into a dogmatic religion? How is this different than flat earthers? because you “know its wrong!”? so do they.
You don’t Have to “pay the price”. Just invent new technologies to reverse the damage of old.
October 29th, 2009 at 11:19 amLevitt – “the idea that we don’t have to pay the price for polluting is a really, really hard idea for people to take”. Sell, sell, sell. The fantasy, the contrived conundrum, their book.
October 29th, 2009 at 2:25 pmLevitt – “You put this up, it buys us time.” Umbrella and book sales – up.
Levitt – ” If the worst things of climate predictions are still coming through”. Make it Iffy and we still have time to read their book. Buy now. We don’t have to face annihiliation. Relax. Make that purchase.
I’ve been tracking the critiques and defenses of the book on my website since before it came out.
I would like to offer people the challenge: Look through the criticisms of the book. Point to any one of them where the criticism is “you are a denier” or something similar to that (i.e. accusing them of being contrarians as opposed to showing them why they’re wrong).
It will be difficult, because it hasn’t happened. Instead, you have elements like Levitt claiming it’s cooling when it isn’t (indeed, the Associated Press sent the same dataset (without labels) to independent statisticians and they all agreed the trend was up, with no sign of a short-term decrease – and in that same interview, Levitt admits he just eyeballed the data). You have Levitt saying his main source on climate science, Ken Caldeira, doesn’t support carbon mitigation when he has been very vocal about his support of that very subject. You have Levitt citing the head of the George C. Marshall Institute (conservative think tank founded to defend Reagan’s missile defense program by finding a handful of contrarian physicists to write op-eds rather than do actual research) as an authority on carbon dioxide. You have Levitt advocating for a type of geoengineering in the book that involves a huge gamble in risk and doesn’t address ocean acidification (a serious problem of rising carbon emissions), then comparing the scientists opposed to it to “flat-earthers” and claiming you can solve ocean acidification by just pumping a lot of base into it. (In this regard, DavidCognito’s comment #1 is surprisingly astute.)
(This says nothing about the *rest* of the book, where Levitt and Dubner say things like it’s safer to drive drunk than walk drunk.)
Stewart softballed him and missed the point. For me, though, the worst was how he assumed anyone who cared about climate change was a hemp-smoking hippie (watch as he tries to save face towards the end).
Jon, we aren’t mad at you because you offended our sensibilities – you’re a comedian, offending people is part and parcel of your gig. We’re mad at you because you basically did the climatological equivalent of doing nothing while letting Jim Cramer come on your show and say “Buy Bear Sterns”, or Betsy McCoughey come on your show and say “Death panels!”, or Tucker Carlson come on your show and say “We’re legitimate debate”. In all of those cases, you did your homework and called the bullshit what it was – and even while staying funny, you tore them the new arsehole they rightly deserved. Here, that didn’t happen, and Levitt was able to spread his lies and misrepresentation to the world unchallenged.
October 29th, 2009 at 2:58 pm