A Few Things Ill Considered

A layman's take on the science of Global Warming featuring a guide on How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic.

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

send this to... Digg it! | Technorati | Del.icio.us | Reddit | Furl | Spurl

An Easy 100,000 Dollars?

... or a fool and their 15$ parted?

I see via Deltoid that JunkScience is offering $100,000US for anyone who can prove the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming. The problems?
  • there is no such thing as proof in these kinds of scientific theories
  • JunkScience explicitly states they are the sole and subjective arbiter of all terms and conclusions
  • they want proof of the difference in global social, economic and environmental effects between two possible futures 100 years away!
I don't think they even take themselves seriously, it is just a cheap way to provide another shallow talking point.

Labels: , , ,

posted by coby @ 8/08/2007 07:20:00 PM  

5 Comments:

  • At August 10, 2007 12:43 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I have proof. Come on the http://www.methanemike.com show and I will light a match!

     

  • At August 10, 2007 11:43 AM, Blogger Wag the Dog said…

    This is just a cheap knock off of
    James Randi's Million Dollar Psychic challenge in the hope that climatology will be branded as charlatans. However in the case of Randi one need only demonstrate one phenomenon that defies rational explanation, but with the global warming and evolution challenges one has to prove a theory holds in all cases and under all conditions -- a bar which can be placed arbitrarily high. It is possible (but highly improbable) for someone with no psychic ability to win Randi's prize if they made several very lucky guesses in a row. No such possibility exists in either the evolution proof or the global warming proof contests.

    The proper way to do global warming bets is to make predictions and pay whomever's prediction was closest to what actually ended up happening.

     

  • At August 12, 2007 11:56 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    American and Chinese leaders are betting all of modern civilization's chips that Global Warming won't continue to happen.
    They're wrong.

     

  • At August 22, 2007 9:29 AM, Blogger Sheldon said…

    There is also the problem of prediction which built into the challenge. Climate is a potentially chaotic system which makes "prediction" quite difficult.

     

  • At September 06, 2007 1:34 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    The Junkman is merely having fun by pulling chains!

     

Post a Comment

<< Home