>> In The New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert pans SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner:

Neither Levitt, an economist, nor Dubner, a journalist, has any training in climate science—or, for that matter, in science of any kind. It’s their contention that they don’t need it. The whole conceit behind “SuperFreakonomics” … is that a dispassionate, statistically minded thinker can find patterns and answers in the data that those who are emotionally invested in the material will have missed….

Given their emphasis on cold, hard numbers, it’s noteworthy that Levitt and Dubner ignore what are, by now, whole libraries’ worth of data on global warming. Indeed, just about everything they have to say on the topic is, factually speaking, wrong. Among the many matters they misrepresent are: the significance of carbon emissions as a climate-forcing agent, the mechanics of climate modelling, the temperature record of the past decade, and the climate history of the past several hundred thousand years.

>> For those who like me have signed up for eco-conscious nonviolent protest on BeyondTalk.net, Mike Roselle’s new book Tree Spiker: From Earth First! to Lowbagging: My Struggles in Radical Environmental Action sounds like an inspiring read. From Dean Kuipers’ review in the L.A. Times:

The book is a litany of [Mike's] exploits: sitting on top of underground nuclear tests with Greenpeace; co-founding Earth First! to block roads made by oil and timber companies in the West; co-founding the Ruckus Society to occupy old-growth forests; co-founding Rainforest Action Network to halt ships exporting Amazonian hardwoods.

Meet Mike in person at his book signing in Malibu on Sat., Nov. 14!

>> Jonathan Safran Foer answers some questions about his book Eating Animals at Salon — and what he says isn’t quite as veggie-manifesto-ish as some reviewers have intuited from the book. Says Jonathan:

It’s not like everybody has to go vegetarian. There are plenty of people who feel like, for whatever reason, they just can’t stop eating meat, but if they bought meat at the green market, from farmers they know by name, that’s as effective a rebuttal.

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