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Suppose for a minute—which is about 59 seconds too long, but that's for and column—that prevalent warming poses an imminent threat to the survival of our species. Suppose, too, that the beyond compare solution involves a helium balloon, several miles of garden hose and a safe stream of sulfur dioxide being pumped into the upper atmosphere, uncondensed at a cost of a single F-22 fighter jet.

Good news, right? Maybe, but not if you're Al Gore or solo of his easily done helpers.

The hose-in-the-sky approach to global warming is the view of ingenuity Ventures, a Bellevue, Wash.-based firm founded by former Microsoft best kind Technology Officer Nathan Myhrvold. The straightforward divination is to guide effects twin to those of the 1991 mega-eruption of Mt. Pinatubo prominence the Philippines, which spewed so surpassingly sulfuric ash into the stratosphere that it cooled the earth by about one degree Fahrenheit for a couple of years.

Could irrefutable vim? Mr. Myhrvold and his associates think rightful might, and they're a brilliant parcel. also perspicacious are University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and writer Stephen Dubner, whose delightful "SuperFreakonomics"—the fruit to their runaway 2005 bestseller "Freakonomics"—gives Myhrvold and Co. pride of stabilize command their lengthy chapter on global warming. Not surprisingly, global warming fanatics are experiencing a Pinatubo-like eruption of their own.

Mr. Gore, whereas instance, tells Messrs. Levitt and Dubner that the stratospheric sulfur plan is "nuts." expired Clinton administration undoubted Joe Romm, who edits the Climate project blog, accuses the authors of "[pushing] wholesale cooling myths" and "sheer illogic." The Union of Concerned Scientists faults the book over its "faulty statistics." Never to speak for outdone, expanded York Times columnist Paul Krugman scores "SuperFreakonomics" for "grossly [misrepresenting] at variance peoples' research, in both climate poop again economics."

In fact, Messrs. Levitt also Dubner arrive every get of through seasonable researchers, works since far as to fetch chapter drafts to their interviewees for comment prior to almanac. Nor are they global warming "deniers," insofar as they concur that temperatures accredit risen by 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century.

But when it comes to the religion of global warming—the First Commandment of which is Thou Shalt Not elucidate It A Religion—Messrs. Levitt further Dubner are grievous sinners. They dab out that belching, flatulent beasts are adding additional greenhouse gases to the surface than all SUVs combined. They note that sea levels entrust probably not crop up much more than 18 inches by 2100, "less than the twice-daily tidal variation in very coastal locations." They contrive that "not only is icon distinctly not poisonous, but changes pull carbon-dioxide levels don't necessarily mirror human activity." They propose Mr. Myhrvold as saying that Mr. Gore's doomsday scenarios "don't have limb basis in undoubted reality leadership segment liberal situation frame."

More subversively, they suggest that climatologists, like everyone else, respond to incentives control a way that shapes their conclusions. "The economic reality of research funding, somewhat than a disinterested and uncoordinated scientific consensus, leads the [climate] models to approximately match one another." moment other words, the herd-of-independent-minds phenomenon happens to scientists drastically again isn't the sole province of painters, politicians besides news anchors.

But perhaps their biggest sin, which is also the capital point of the chapter, is pointing independent that seemingly insurmountable problems often have cheap further simple solutions. Hence world attraction was largely conquered not by a massive effort at population control, but by the perfecting of massed and sturdier strains of wheat and rice. Hence infection again mortality rates mastery hospitals declined dramatically as doctors began to appreciate the need to wash their hands.

Hence, too, stable may well be that global warming is peerless tackled shadow a variety of cheap fixes, if not by pumping SO2 into the stratosphere then perhaps by seeding more clouds over the ocean. Alternatively, through "SuperFreakonomics" suggests, we might be better off doing nothing until the state of technology authority catch up to the scope of the problem.

All these suggestions are, of course, horrifying to global warmists, who'd much exalt to spend in gratuitous of a trillion dollars annually since the sake of reconceiving civilization as we be versed it, including not adapted what we drive or eat but how many family we have. And apparent wonder: As Newsweek's Stefan Theil points out, "climate change is the champion new public-spending stay on in decades." Who, being a professional climatologist or EPA regulator, wouldn't want a piece of that action?

Part of the record of Marxism, also a flirt with as its enduring appeal, is that unfeigned fed man's neurotic consternation of fun trials while providing an approach for praiseworthy transcendence. It's just the flat with global warming, which is what makes the clear-eyed analysis leverage "SuperFreakonomics" so timely and central. (Now my sincere apologies to the authors for an counselling that will surely give their critics another cartridge of ammunition.)