To anyone with bad memories of how Gore's fact-filled debate performances against George W. Bush in 2000 failed to connect with voters, it may come as no surprise that Our Choice has a graphic on "how a wind turbine works," and a long section that begins: "Conventional hydrothermal plants are built according to one of three different designs. The steam can be taken directly through the turbine and then recondensed...."

A wind turbine GRAPHIC! In a book about green energy!? What on Earth was he thinking.

As to our memories of those 2000 debates, maybe Begley meant to type "reporters" instead of "voters." As Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler has been doggedly remembering for years now,  actual voters seemed to think Gore did pretty well in those debates--"instant polls of viewers credited Gore with a rather decisive win." The media created a different narrative--one of a petulant and sighing Gore who couldn't behave himself. And that's the way that they want everyone else to remember it.

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 contributed to global warming.

It's as if the premise of solar panels is that they don't absorb as much heat from the Sun as coal-burning plants, and Myhrvold has discovered that because they're black (actually, they're usually blue) this won't work. In reality, of course, the actual advantage of solar panels over coal-burning plants is that they don't burn coal.

That's a kooky thing to put in a book. But even worse is Levitt and Dubner's misrepresentation of actual climate scientist Ken Caldeira, of whom the authors say, "His research tells him that carbon dioxide is not the right villain in this fight" (against global warming). Caldeira actually calls for outlawing devices that release carbon into the atmosphere, saying: "I compare CO2 emissions to mugging little old ladies.... It is wrong to mug little old ladies and wrong to emit carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The right target for both mugging little old ladies and carbon dioxide emissions is zero."

It's surprising that bestselling authors who have written regularly for the New York Times Magazine would get a story so ridiculously wrong--but maybe it shouldn't be. When the original Freakonomics came out, University of Michigan economist John DiNardo wrote a review (American Law and Economics Review, Fall/06) that pointed out that the book misrepresented a study that was cited as substantiation for one of Levitt's more controversial claims: that legalizing abortion led to lower crime rates. Citing a study by Cristian Pop-Eleches of children born after Romania banned abortion, Levitt and Dubner wrote:

Compared to Romanian children born just a year earlier, the cohort of children born after the abortion ban would do worse in every measurable way: they would test lower in school, they would have less success in the labor market, and they would also prove much more likely to become criminals.

But in the actual study cited by Freakonomics, Pop-Eleches wrote:

On average, children born in 1967 just after abortions became illegal display better educational and labor market achievements than children born just prior to the change. This outcome can be explained by a change in the composition of women having children: urban, educated women were more likely to have abortions prior to the policy change, so a higher proportion of children were born into urban, educated households.

DiNardo has pointed out (though he does not do so in the version published in the American Law and Economics Review) that Pop-Eleches found that if you correct for demographic characteristics, children born after the abortion ban did less well than those born before, but this is very different from saying that the cohort did worse; DiNardo noted (quoting Pop-Eleches) that the study indicated that "the positive effect due to changes in the composition of mothers having children more than outweighs all the other negative effects that such a restriction might have had."

Levitt actually responded to diNardo's criticism in a snide blog post (Freakonomics blog, 2/6/08), which quoted Freakonomics' claim about the cohort doing worse, quoted Pop-Eleches' finding about outcomes after "controlling for...observable background variables," then deceptively concluded, "Sounds to me like Freakonomics and Pop-Eleches are saying the same thing"--ignoring the part where Pop-Eleches found that the cohort actually did better, thus giving readers no clue as to what DiNardo's actual complaint about Levitt's use of the paper was. ("C'mon, John, you're a top economist, and our book is 300 pages long. You must have better criticisms than that!" Levitt snarked. Well, yeah--most criticism sounds better when you actually explain it.)

This dishonest response to criticism foreshadowed Levitt's similarly slippery response (Freakonomics blog, 10/17/09) to Joe Romm's critique--see Climate Progress, 10/17/09. Maybe the climate change chapter from Superfreakonomics isn't an aberration--maybe people are just catching on to Levitt's smartest-guy-in-the-room act.

Obama Admin: Cap And Trade Could Cost Families $1,761 A Year...

The link goes to a CBSNews.com post, which declares:

A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration's estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

Well, there's one problem: $1,700 is the upper estimate. The second, far more important problem: This was an analysis based on a plan that called for auctioning all of the carbon-burning permits; the bill that passed the House auctions just 15 percent of the permits, meaning that this document (FOIAed by the corporate-friendly Competitive Enterprise Institute) bears almost no relationship to reality.

The CBS report has an "update" at the bottom of the piece, from the kind of people CBS didn't bother to quote (preferring the likes of the Heritage Foundation and CEI, staunch critics of cap-and-trade):

Update 9/16/2009: The Environmental Defense Fund has responded to the documents' release with a statement saying, in part:

"Even if a 100 percent auction was a live legislative proposal, which it's not, that math ignores the redistribution of revenue back to consumers. It only looks at one side of the balance sheet. It would only be true if you think the Administration was going to pile all the cash on the White House lawn and set it on fire.

"The bill passed by the House sends the value of pollution permits to consumers, and it contains robust cost-containment provisions. Every credible and independent economic analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (such as those done by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the Energy Information Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency) says the costs will be small and affordable -- and that the U.S. economy will grow with a cap on carbon."

That is kind of like saying "IGNORE THE PRECEDING REPORT."

The Politico had a brief story on this as well by Ben Smith--not nearly as bad as CBS's-- that also included a late correction:

CORRECTION: The League of Conservation Voters' Navin Nayak points out to me that the documents are a bit less than meets the eye: They refer to a version of the legislation profoundly different than the one that passed. Specifically, the original White House plan had 100 percent of emissions permits being distributed by auction; the plan that passed has just 15 percent.  "Can you say 'irrelevant analysis'? It would be like pricing the healthcare bills currently in front of Congress based on a single-payer system," he writes.

He also notes that the revenue comes directly from polluters, not taxpayers, and continues (and I'm quoting him at length because my original post was sloppy):

"Why not use the CBO analysis of the house bill? Republicans seem more than happy to use CBO when it helps their case (i.e. Against some of the health care bills). But CBO said that ACES would only cost a postage stamp a day per household...in 2020."

So the scary-sounding statistic is nonsense. Nonetheless, one can expect to hear this "It will cost you $1,700!" factoid all the time.

In the Jones case, there is little question that the traditional media botched the story of an Obama administration official who, wittingly or otherwise, lent his name to those who believe that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney deliberately allowed thousands of Americans to be slaughtered. Some conservatives accused journalists of liberal bias; it is just as likely that their radar malfunctioned, or that they collectively dismissed Beck as a rabble-rouser.

Kurtz presented his evidence:

By the time White House environmental adviser Van Jones resigned over Labor Day weekend, the New York Times had not run a single story. Neither had USA Today, which also didn't cover the resignation. The Washington Post had done one piece, on the day before he quit. The Los Angeles Times had carried a short article the previous week questioning Glenn Beck's assault on the White House aide. There had been nothing on the network newscasts.

Kurtz's piece concluded: "The followup news pieces focused on the administration's failure to vet Jones' background. Perhaps the media bloodhounds should be just as curious why they failed to sniff out a story that ended with a White House resignation."

Well, if that's the question they're going to be asking themselves, they'll have to start by figuring out why they paid so little attention to Philip Cooney. Who, you might well ask?  In the Bush II administration, Cooney was chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality, the same rather obscure White House office to which Jones was a special adviser; in other words, he was a higher-ranking official than Jones. Cooney, a former oil industry advocate, resigned in 2005 after a New York Times expose (6/8/05) charged him with editing climate-change reports to make them more industry-friendly. That is, he was accused of actual malfeasance in office, on a matter of global consequence, rather than of holding objectionable opinions unrelated to his job. Cooney almost immediately got a job with ExxonMobil, giving the story a newsworthy whiff of corruption.

The New York Times, which broke the story, ran a total of five news stories on it and four editorials.  The Washington Post had one editorial (6/11/05) that mentioned Cooney in passing before his resignation, and one news story (6/15/05) on his new oil industry job, along with three opinion pieces that referenced the controversy; Cooney's name also came up in a news story (8/5/05) about Exxon Mobil more than a month later.  USA Today (6/15/05) mentioned him in an editorial after the resignation, but had no news coverage. The L.A. Times had a news brief (6/15/05) after the resignation, and later dropped Cooney's name in an editorial (6/19/05) and an op-ed (6/24/05).

CBS TV didn't mention Cooney in all of 2005, according to Nexis transcripts; nor did ABC.  NBC Nightly News (6/8/05, 6/11/05) ran two pieces on the subject, and Tim Russert (6/19/05) brought him up in an interview with John McCain. ("I'm shocked," was McCain's response.) CNN mentioned the Bush official three times, while he came up once on MSNBC's Countdown (6/16/05). Cooney doesn't come up at all in Fox News' Nexis transcripts, an omission that leaves me feeling as shocked as John McCain.

Note that almost all of what little coverage there was appeared after Cooney resigned--so evidently these outlets did not find documented evidence that a Bush administration official was altering scientific documents to benefit his corporate pals to be newsworthy in itself. Yet conspicuously absent from the Cooney story was any complaining by Howard Kurtz about the paucity of coverage.

Apparently, Ben Stein has never heard about global warming. How else can someone interpret this paragraph:

I don't believe we need to do something radical about energy, but even assuming that we do, why do it right now? Do we need to take one of the few sectors that is working like clockwork through the recession--oil refining--and wring its neck by making it pay for pollution "cap and trade" credits? Why attack a healthy industry when so many other sectors are ill? What is all of this anger at Big Oil, which has not done anything blameworthy, all about? Why endlessly beat up the companies that keep the country going?

He then goes on to complain about the Obama administration's efforts to change the laws on foreclosures. This would be a good idea, except the Obama administration is not working to change the laws on foreclosure.

Baker explains that "Stein is opposed to this plan because he is worried that it will further discourage mortgage lending," even though "there is no problem of mortgage lending at present. Mortgage rates are near historic lows and the Mortgage Bankers Association applications index indicates that few people are having trouble getting mortgages." Baker is impressed with how, "once again, Ben Stein distinguishes himself by how many things he can get really seriously wrong in a relatively short column."

Global Insight projected that after 20 years of higher defense spending, annual car sales would be down by more than 700,000. Housing starts would be almost 40,000 lower. Exports would be 1.8 percent lower and imports would be 2.7 percent higher, leading to a trade deficit that was almost $200 billion larger. The model also projected that there would be nearly 700,000 fewer jobs as a result of the higher level of defense spending.

In short, the economic harm projected from high levels of military spending is far larger than the damage projected from the Waxman-Markey bill. Given this situation, we should expect that all the oil and coal industry folks who are now so concerned about the average family's well-being would have been screaming about the economic pain that would result from sustaining the Iraq War levels of military spending.

Did anyone ever hear them raise this issue? Does anyone recall members of Congress giving speeches about how the job loss from the Iraq War levels of spending will be devastating? Does anyone recall any newspaper columns or editorials making this point? How about a news story that analyzed the economic impact of higher levels of military spending?

"For some reason," Baker says, "job loss and economic pain associated with the military are just not worth mentioning. These items only become newsworthy when the issue is saving the environment." Listen to the FAIR radio program CounterSpin: "Miriam Pemberton on Military Budget" (4/17/09).