Steven D. Levitt

Here's a novel idea: in order to save the world from global warming, people who regularly exercise should have to pay a carbon tax for their selfish and egotistical burning of extra calories.

Sound crazy?

Well, as "Freakonomics" co-author Steven D. Levitt satirically laid out in a New York Times piece Tuesday, this actually makes about as much sense as any of the other absurd solutions being proposed by the likes of Nobel Laureate Al Gore (emphasis added):

Business & Media Institute director Dan Gainor appeared on "Fox and Friends" this morning to talk about a blog posting by Freakanomics blogger Steven D. Levitt that asked, "If You Were a Terrorist, How Would You Attack?"

"This from the media right after they were criticizing how Rupert Murdoch might run The Wall Street Journal. Why doesn't anyone in the mainstream media criticize how The New York Times is run by Arthur Sulzberger," Gainor told Fox News Channel viewers.

Gainor also pointed out that Levitt was trying, "to get as much possible press...and The New York Times is loving it."

Blogger Steven D. Levitt asked his readers to imagine themselves as terrorists today and come up with their own ways of "maximizing terror" at the new home of the Freakonomics blog, The New York Times website. Levitt speaks:

Hearing about these [airline restriction] rules got me thinking about what I would do to maximize terror if I were a terrorist with limited resources. I’d start by thinking about what really inspires fear...Also, I’d want to create the feeling that an army of terrorists exists, which I’d accomplish by pulling off multiple attacks at once, and then following them up with more shortly thereafter.