Very amusing review by Elizabeth Kolbert:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/11/16/091116crbo_books_kolbert
esp. her last paragraph. Early in the book, Levitt and Dubner bring up what she calls "the parable of horseshit," the fact that people once predicted that we'd be buried in the stuff but it turned out not to be true. Her short exposition of the history behind that story is really quite fun. But mainly it's great as a set up for her last paragraph:
<quote>
To be skeptical of climate models and credulous about things like
carbon-eating trees and cloudmaking machinery and hoses that shoot
sulfur into the sky is to replace a faith in science with a belief
in science fiction. This is the turn that "SuperFreakonomics" takes,
even as its authors repeatedly extoll their hard-headedness. All of
which goes to show that, while some forms of horseshit are no longer
a problem, others will always be with us.
<unquote>
Michael