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SuperFreakonomics

November 24, 2009
11:00 AM

This new book by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner starts off with a discription of the crisis of equine droppings which was hitting large cities at the end of the nineteenth century.
At the time one commentator predicted that by 1930 horse manure would reach
the level of Manhattan’s third-story windows.

The whole situation was of course diffused totally by the advent of steam and the internal combustion engine.

Levitt and Dubner then proceed in this extremely silly book to misuse this occurance as a sign that the incidence of Global Warming will be likely and miraculously resolved by some external force.
Neither of these are, it should be noted, in the least qualified to speak about either climate or weather but this doesn’t stop them flying all sorts of crazy notions as to how it could be resolved.

Elizabeth Kolbert reviews this book in this weeks New Yorker and I just love her final sentence of the review so much that I will quote it to you :
“… while some forms of horseshit are no longer a problem, others will always be with us.”

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