On the Climate Feedback blog, freelance science writer Keith Kloor teases apart debates stirred up by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt's Superfreakonomics, a book that is decidedly cool on global warming (http://go.nature.com/HwNoR6).

Several rounds of blog posts between the book's authors and their critics have escalated into smear campaigns, with some calling the authors global-warming deniers. But many have focused on scientific issues. “Real Climate's Gavin Schmidt has scolded the ... authors for embracing geoengineering, which Schmidt asserted: 'is neither cheap, nor a fix ... [with] still-uncertain scientific merits',” writes Kloor. And Dubner has not yet replied to charges of huge scientific errors in the book's logic, summarized by a previous post (http://go.nature.com/Z87xTn).

You can follow the whiplashing exchanges on the topic through Kloor's post, which also includes links to unusual climate-related news, such as the decision by computer company Apple to drop its US Chamber of Commerce membership in response to “the latter's hostility to regulatory action on global warming”.