SuperFreakonomics...This is interesting

I was a huge fan of the first Freakonomics book, so I was fairly anxious to get my hands on the sequel, SuperFreakonomics, particularly because they had proposed a fairly low cost geo-engineering solution that could effectively solve our global warming problem. After having read the book, I felt they presented a strong argument in favor of geo-engineering. That is, until I read the following retort by Professor Raymond T. Pierrehumbert - a climate science professor at the University of Chicago, which is the same school at which the chief author of SuperFreakonomics is an Economics professor.

I don't think I have ever seen anyone get owned in such an airtight way as when, in the following link, Dr. Pierrehumbert blows Levitt's SuperFreakonomics passage on geo-engineering out of the water.

Here is the link:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/an-open-letter-to-steve-levitt/

Without seeing the original argument, it's pretty hard to tell what's being refuted. I'm not for carbon credits...too easy to manipulate. I am for something called "cap & cash", where the negligent industries have to pay the people for their emissions, giving them an incentive to continue cutting back. And I think the solar industry is improving now in a big way, in terms of the amount of sunlight actually converted to energy, and in the ease of adding smaller modules capable of powering individual homes. There are certainly pluses and minuses to any energy solution, and maybe we got off-track with the whole "global warming" issue when we should be emphasizing global POLLUTION! We can't continue to rely on fossil fuels; the cost is too great to the human race...ambient pollution, destruction of the environment, and wars over resources...it's got to stop.

A friend of mine used to live in Israel off and on...he told me that they've been using wind power for many years...not the giant turbines, but turbines that rotate horizontally. This would certainly minimize the impact on the turbines in the event of hurricanes.