If you’re a Seinfeld fan like me, then of course you remember Jason Alexander’s character, George, who was known for asking bizarre questions. Much like George, the authors of the best-selling book Freakonomics like to focus on things most people don’t spend much time thinking about, and look for ways to make them interesting and informative.
The authors, University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and former New York Times Magazine editor Stephen Dubner, are back with a sequel called SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance. They ask out-of-the-box questions such as: Are cows to blame for global warming? Can eating kangaroo save the planet? Is chemotherapy actually bad for cancer patients? What would happen if we could teach capuchin monkeys to use money?
Dubner stopped by Fool headquarters recently to chat about some of the stories in the new book. Here are some tidbits from his super-freakin'-cool visit to the Fool.
Global warming and agriculture
In the last chapter of the new book, the authors explore the topic of global warming. Their conclusions have caused some controversy, but first, their questions: If the Earth is getting catastrophically warmer, what’s the best way to cool it? And is carbon mitigation sufficient if cooling is the issue?
The answer they reach is that carbon mitigation in and of itself is “too little, too late, too optimistic,” says Dubner. “… Carbon mitigation will not produce the desired result of cooling the earth.”
Not everyone agrees, of course, but the reason Dubner cites is this: “Carbon dioxide has about a 100-year half-life in the atmosphere … [so] the carbon dioxide that’s in the air already is going to be there for several generations.”
What’s more, contrary to popular belief, Dubner says, the agricultural sector emits more greenhouse emissions than the transportation sector. “You find that cows are much more wicked polluters than cars,” he notes. Cows, and other animals that chew their cud, emit methane, which Dubner says is 25 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Dubner gives this example: If you buy a Toyota (NYSE: TM ) Prius to do your part for the environment, but then you drive to the grocery store and buy some beef, you’re easily canceling yourself out.
The global-warming solution the book explores is something called geo-engineering. The idea is to replicate a volcanic explosion so large that it shoots sulfur dioxide high into the stratosphere, which rarely happens with a volcano. The sulfur would then blanket the planet, mixing with water vapor to cool the Earth. “If it’s a question of ‘How do you cool the earth?,’ we think that is a better answer than carbon mitigation,” Dubner says.
Health care and cost-cutting
Software called Amalga (which is now owned by Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT ) ) is practical and easy to integrate into our economy, according to Dubner. The software has created a centralized, integrated system that allows doctors in an ER to retrieve information on any given patient they’re working on in an effort to ensure the proper outcome for that patient.
“It was a revolution for emergency care, and now it’s used everywhere throughout the medical system,” Dubner says. “Now the administration wants electronic records, which would be so easy with the current system in place.”
Dubner and Levitt also found through research that the efficacy of chemotherapy in most cancers -- particularly the solid organ cancers -- is very bad, not to mention very unpleasant and costly. “If you look at Medicare, you find that 20% of Medicare patients are involved in cancer care, but 40% of the budget goes to chemotherapy,” said Dubner. “And most of that isn’t doing much good if at all.”
Buy, sell, or hold the Kindle?
Dubner gives the future of Amazon’s (Nasdaq: AMZN ) Kindle a “late buy.” He says the economics of the eBook are still shaking out. For instance, Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS ) just launched its new reader, the Nook. However, Dubner concludes that “market share is increasing. I think eBook share will rise a lot.”
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