The recent “Superfreakonomics” by best selling authors Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, is fraught with misleading and misinformed claims. For example:

For an example of just how [foolish] this book is…it was suggested that solar panels “are probably not a good thing” when it comes to global warming because they are “black,” which, of course, absorbs heat, and they are only able to translate a percentage of that heat into usable energy.

On a scientific level, it is difficult to conceive of a statement that is more idiotic, than this. In any context.

The sun produces that heat (that the “black” solar panel absorbs) anyway. It goes somewhere. Even if the solar panel is black (though many are not), it might otherwise hit a black roof. Or dark ground.

But the real problem is the idea that the sun’s heat energy that the panel absorbed is anywhere near equal to (let alone greater than) the warming potential of greenhouse gases saved — even if, somehow, “all” of the sun’s heat that hits that panel would otherwise have miraculously disappeared as if it did not exist in the first place, in the absence of said “solar panel.”

This is beyond comical science. It is like Beavis and Butthead do science. But that would be unfair to Beavis and Butthead, who don’t hold themselves out to the world as experts, and write books making these assertions.

Even if only a small percentage of the sun’s energy is captured (though technologies are well ahead of the perecentages that the book uses), the heat warming differential of the energy is up to several hundred thousand times greater by using at least some of that captured energy to produce non greenhouse gas emitting, usable energy.

…One quick reason, among several, is that this heat from the sun is transitory. By turning a small fraction of it into energy which does not emit CO2 in the process, it replaces CO2 emitting sources, and thus heat trapping CO2 molecules. These would have become part of the (now increasing) carbon cycle, but they do not break down. In other words, instead of just trapping or accumulating heat for that instant (as in the absorption by black, blue, or yellow polka dotted solar panels), a portion of the carbon dioxide emitted by fossil fuel consumption, will persist, and trap heat, indefinitely.

That’s only the beginning of the problems with the wildly misinformed “Superfreakonomics”…”

Leading climate site climateprogress.org, seems to too frequently berate others for not understanding; imply manipulative or deceitful ends to what may often simply be misinformation or lack of subject matter comprehension; or occassionally take for granted what is “obvious” or what people “should” or do know, when they don’t. But as NewsAffair has noted, it is an exhaustively researched and presented blog; and a literal cornucopia of vital information and news for media sources and those interested in the issue, presented by one of the country’s leading (and more passionate) experts in the subject area.

A post from ClimateProgress regarding the “Superfreakonomics” book, among many, is quoted from, below. It offers up a sobering analysis in consideration of the fact that “Superfreakonomics” is being relied upon by so many for information and insight on the subject matter — when it is doing far more to compound the state of misinformation and even outright ignorance when it comes to the issue of climate change, than anything else.   As noted (emphasis in red ours):

UPDATE:  John O’Donnell, VP Business Development, GlassPoint Solar and a former lead engineer at Princeton Plasma Physics Lab (old bio here, Business Week profile here) just emailed me to be sure I don’t miss the forest for the trees here in debunking this nonsense:

[This is] howlingly off base.  Not because solar panels are (whatever cover with whatever relative emissivity), but because solar panels, like wind turbines and solar thermal power plants, eliminate the emission of CO2 which would otherwise occur from electricity production.

As Ken Caldeira so grippingly points out (and I tried to make graphically clear in my Stanford talk last year) , each molecule of CO2 released thermal energy when it was formed — that’s why we formed it.  In the case of electricity generation, about 1/3 of its thermal energy went out a wire as electric power, the rest was released promptly as waste heat.  But each molecule of CO2, during its subsequent lifetime in the atmosphere, traps 100,000 times more heat than was released during its formation.

A hundred thousand is a big number.  It means that running a handheld electric hairdryer on US grid electricity delivers a planet-warming punch comparable to [the heat given off by] two Boeing 747s operating at full takeoff power for the same time period.  The warming is delivered over time, not promptly, but that don’t matter; the planetary heating is accrued, the accountants would say, the moment you hit the switch.

The thermal energy balance for a solar panel runs vastly in the other direction.  If our solar panel is pure black, and 14% efficient, then for each kWh of electric power that comes out, there are 7 kWh of heat that were absorbed and radiated.  But each kWh it generates it eliminates the release of 1.4 pounds of CO2, which during its lifetime in the atmosphere will absorb 210,000 kWh of heat.  So the energy balance for the solar panel (when it’s connected to the US grid) is about NEGATIVE 209,993 kWh(heat) per kWh(electric) — since some fossil power plant somewhere is being turned down based on its generation.   And hey, if it’s blue instead of black, that might increase to negative 209,995 kWh.

An expression of  extreme disappointment, and further illustration on the solar panel matter, is found in this open letter to fellow University of Chicago Professor Steven Levitt.

It is also interesting to point out that the original source for the mindboggling inane suggestion in “Superfreakonomics” that solar panels are “probably not a good thing” for global warming because they are dark and capture heat, is Nathan Myvhold. Myvhold’s company, Intellectual Ventures, holds a patent on technology that authors Dubner and Levitt suggest in the book can arrest global warming.

In other words, unless they purposefully manipulated their audience (the American and European public), the authors have exhibited that they know very little about the subject matter, or even enough about related subject matters to be able to exercise any reasonable common sense on the matter; they quote from someone who, though with a reputation in his own field for intelligence, doesn’t know anything about the subject matter; and they quote from someone who in addition to this does not even appear as a disinterested, objective party, because his own company stands to gain considerably by believing that this problem can not be largely arrested by simply altering what is contributing to it, and that geoengineering, instead, is a wise “solution.”

This error alone (although it is far from the only one), both because of its magnitude, as well as its relevance (that is, capturing instantaneous energy directly from the sun rather than indirectly from fossil fuels built up over millions of years, such as through solar panel, needs to and will play a critical role in addressing this problem) renders the book simply unfathomable, despite the fact that more than one initial reviewer has been hoodwinked by the fact that it ”seems sensible,” and covers complex topic areas. But if they are able to postulate something this scientifically absurd when covering science, what does that say about the rest of their reasoning?

What is also interesting to note is that Myvhold, suggests the following regarding the rather reckless (and only temporary) idea of spraying the edges of space with sunlight reflecting sulfur dioxide:

“Look, I’d prefer not to do it,” he said. “I’d prefer we weren’t in this pickle, but we seem to be, and our political and diplomatic efforts to get out of the problem so far aren’t getting any traction.”

Perhaps the main reason that they are not getting any traction, is because of widespread misinformation on the science and topic of climate change.  Misinformation that Levitt, and Dubner, are greatly adding to.