Who Will Win the $500,000 Global Warming Challenge?

[Wild Cobra]

The Ultimate Global Warming Challenge (http://ultimateglobalwarmingchallenge.com/index.htm) is now increased to a cool half-a-million. Since the science is settled on this, why hasn't anyone won the prize?


CHALLENGE

$500,000 will be awarded to the first person to prove, in a scientific manner, that humans are causing harmful global warming. The winning entry will specifically reject both of the following two hypotheses:

UGWC Hypothesis 1

Manmade emissions of greenhouse gases do not discernibly, significantly and predictably cause increases in global surface and tropospheric temperatures along with associated stratospheric cooling.

UGWC Hypothesis 2

The benefits equal or exceed the costs of any increases in global temperature caused by manmade greenhouse gas emissions between the present time and the year 2100, when all global social, economic and environmental effects are considered.

[braeden0613]

Yeah I doubt this will get rewarded any time soon.

[PixelPusher]

UGWC Hypothesis 2

The benefits equal or exceed the costs of any increases in global temperature caused by manmade greenhouse gas emissions between the present time and the year 2100, when all global social, economic and environmental effects are considered.
This would be the "insurance policy" of the challenge. They get to pull a supposition out of their ass, but you would have to send an economist in a time machine in order to "prove" them wrong.

What a bunch of bullshit. :lol

[Wild Cobra]

This would be the "insurance policy" of the challenge. They get to pull a supposition out of their ass, but you would have to send an economist in a time machine in order to "prove" them wrong.

What a bunch of bullshit. :lol

So, would you call Al Gore a liar? He says the science is settled!

[PixelPusher]

By 2100, Polka will mesh with Hip-Hop to become the dominant form of popular music around the world.

PROVE ME WRONG!!!!!

You can't, can you? NO PRIZE FOR YOU!!!!

M5QGkOGZubQ

[xrayzebra]

This would be the "insurance policy" of the challenge. They get to pull a supposition out of their ass, but you would have to send an economist in a time machine in order to "prove" them wrong.

What a bunch of bullshit. :lol

Or prove them right?

[DarrinS]

Early IPCC model predictions are ALREADY WRONG. Why would anyone have faith in their predictions 30-50 years into the future?

[sabar]

Just more political propaganda, the prize isn't serious (obviously).
We won't know about this issue until after the fact anyways. No matter how the world sees it,

I guarantee we will exhaust oil and coal long before we have a definitive answer. It is too cheap and efficient. The US and Europe could go 100% green overnight, but China and India will gladly roll around in their now even cheaper energy as they become superpowers.

I don't even see how there is a global warming 'debate' personally. The whole thing is moot.

[xrayzebra]

Just more political propaganda, the prize isn't serious (obviously).
We won't know about this issue until after the fact anyways. No matter how the world sees it,

I guarantee we will exhaust oil and coal long before we have a definitive answer. It is too cheap and efficient. The US and Europe could go 100% green overnight, but China and India will gladly roll around in their now even cheaper energy as they become superpowers.

I don't even see how there is a global warming 'debate' personally. The whole thing is moot.

You are right on on point. Oil and Coal. Wrong on the other. We could not go green overnight. No way, shape, form or fashion. If we even attempt it, welcome to the third world.

[sabar]

You are right on on point. Oil and Coal. Wrong on the other. We could not go green overnight. No way, shape, form or fashion. If we even attempt it, welcome to the third world.

Hypothetical of course.

Going green would take years but the same situation would play out. As a matter of fact that same situation DOES play out right now. We develop and research all these green technologies and put them into practice at higher costs that need to be subsidized while China just rolls out more coal plants and incandescent light bulbs.

That's why this whole 'debate' is pointless and why it's a political issue of course. Yeah, we can go green and save the planet or whatever, but every single developing/3rd world country can't afford it and they'll use all the coal and oil left if we don't.

[xrayzebra]

Hypothetical of course.

Going green would take years but the same situation would play out. As a matter of fact that same situation DOES play out right now. We develop and research all these green technologies and put them into practice at higher costs that need to be subsidized while China just rolls out more coal plants and incandescent light bulbs.

That's why this whole 'debate' is pointless and why it's a political issue of course. Yeah, we can go green and save the planet or whatever, but every single developing/3rd world country can't afford it and they'll use all the coal and oil left if we don't.

Yes, unfortunately, and they do use the excuse of saving Mother Earth and the Planet, good grief, to subsidizing some of the junk they call green. But I suspect that a good donation to the pols re-election fund helped insure that subsidy. And pleased all the greenies with more funds.

[Sec24Row7]

What a two faced contest...

I would have just stuck with the first hypothesis and let them spin in the wind on that one alone...

[Wild Cobra]

Alright. Another year has passed and nobody has claimed the prize.

[Jacob1983]

What will Al Gore do if say that in 20 years, NYC is not under water and everything is still pretty much the same? He will be 81 in 20 years. Isn't NYC suppose to be underwater in the near future? Will Al Gore admit he was wrong if his predictions don't come true? Or will he blame it on Bush?

[ChumpDumper]

First you need to establish that he actually claimed that would happen to New York in 20 years. Pulling it out of your ass doesn't quite cut it.

[Jacob1983]

I believe he has given a window of 50 to 80 years of that happening. I said 20 years because I doubt that Al Gore will be alive in 50 to 80 years. Remove your mouth from Al Gore's cock. You might also want to remove your mouth Obama's balls too.

[LnGrrrR]

There's also prize money for proving the existence of the supernatural... god, ghosts, etc etc.

No one's been able to claim it yet, and IIRC, it's twice as much as this prize.

I guess that means those things don't exist, right? :)

[rjv]

there's a lot more at stake than 500,000 if we can't create regulations and a more responsible ecological culture ahead of the point of no return.

[TheProfessor]

there's a lot more at stake than 500,000 if we can't create regulations and a more responsible ecological culture ahead of the point of no return.
Don't expect to get far with that kind of thinking in this thread.

[DarrinS]

there's a lot more at stake than 500,000 if we can't create regulations and a more responsible ecological culture ahead of the point of no return.


We're all gonna die.

[jack sommerset]

there's a lot more at stake than 500,000 if we can't create regulations and a more responsible ecological culture ahead of the point of no return.

I saw this one girl with a rat tail growing from her forehead.

[DarrinS]

A short essay, by liberal ecologist, Philip Scott.





In any discussion of climate change, it is essential to distinguish between the complex science of climate and the myth, in the sense of Roland Barthes, or the 'hybrid', following Bruno Latour, of 'global warming'.

The latter is a politico-(pseudo)scientific construct, developed since the late-1980s, in which the human emission of 'greenhouse gases', such as carbon dioxide and methane, is unquestioningly taken as the prime-driver of a new and dramatic type of climate change that will inexorably result in a significant warming during the next 100 years and which will inevitably lead to catastrophe for both humanity and the Earth. This, in turn, has morphed, since 1992 and the Rio Conference, into a legitimising myth for a gamut of interconnected political agendas, above all for a range of European sensibilities with regards to America, oil, the car, transport, economic growth, trade, and international corporations. The language employed tends to be authoritarian and religious in character, involving the use of what the physicist, P. H. Borcherds, has termed the 'hysterical subjunctive'. Indeed, for many, the myth has become an article of a secular faith that exhibits all the characteristics of a pre-modern religion, above all demanding sacrifice to the Earth.

By contrast, the science of climate change starts from the principle that we are concerned with the most complex, coupled, non-linear, chaotic system known and that it is distinctly unlikely that climate change can be predicated on a single variable, or factor, however politically-convenient that factor might prove to be. Above all, in approaching the science, as distinct from the myth, it is necessary to exercise precision with regard to three specific questions.

First, is climate changing? The answer has to be: "Of course, climate is changing." Evidence throughout geological time indicates climate change at all scales and all times (see 'Tractatus' on the 'Nature and Society' Page). Climate change is the norm, not the exception, and the Earth, during each moment, however temporally defined, is either 'warming' or 'cooling'. If climate were ever to become stable, it would be a scientifically-exciting phenomenon. To declare that "the climate is changing" is thus somewhat of a truism.

Here we encounter the first major contradistinction with the 'global warming' myth, in which, classically, the myth harks back to a lost 'Golden Age' of climate stability, or, to employ a more 'modern' sensibility, climate 'sustainability'. Sadly, the idea of a 'sustainable climate' is an oxymoron. The fact that we have re-discovered 'climate change' at the turn of the Millennium tells us more about ourselves, and about our devices and desires, than about climate. Critics of 'global warming' are often snidely referred to as 'climate change deniers'; precisely the opposite is true. Those who question the myth of 'global warming' are passionate believers in climate change. It is the 'global warmers' who deny that climate change is the norm - they are, perhaps, the true 'climate history' deniers.

Secondly, do humans influence climate? Again, the answer is: "Of course, they do." Hominids and humans have been affecting climate since they first manipulated fire to alter landscapes at least 750,000 years ago, but possibly as far back as 2 million years. Recent research has further implicated the development of agriculture, around 10,000 years ago, as an important human factor. Humans thus influence climate in many ways, through altering the albedo (the reflectivity) of the surface of the Earth, through changing the energy balance of the Earth, by emitting particles and aerosols, as well as by those hoary old favourites, industrial emissions. Here, therefore, we encounter the second major contradistinction with the 'global warming' myth. Human influences on climate are multi-factorial. Unfortunately, we know precious little about most of them. My own instinct is that our ability to change the reflectivity of the Earth's surface will, in the end, prove to have been far more important. After all, if Lex Luther covered the Tibetan High Plateau with black plastic sheeting, even Superman might have problems dealing with the monsoons.

Thirdly, will we be able to produce predictable (the operative word) climate change, and a stable climate, by adjusting, at the margins, one human variable, namely carbon dioxide emissions, out of the millions of factors, both natural and human, that drive climate? The answer is: "One hundred per cent, no." This is the seminal point at which the complex science of climate diverges irreconcilably from the central beliefs of the 'global warming' myth. The idea that we can manage climate predictably by adjusting, minimally, our output of some politically-selected gases is both naive and dangerous.

The truth is the opposite. In a system as complex and chaotic as climate, such an action may even trigger unexpected consequences. It is vital to remember that, for a coupled, non-linear system, not doing something (i.e., not emitting gases) is as unpredictable as doing something (i.e., emitting gases). Even if we closed down every factory in the world, crushed every car and aeroplane, turned off all energy production, and threw 4 billion people worldwide out of work, climate would still change, and often dramatically.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, therefore, the myth is starting to implode. The conservationist and Green guru, Professor David Bellamy, has recently called 'global warming' "poppycock". Serious new research at The Max Planck Institute has indicated that the sun is a far more significant factor; Dr Bill Burrows, a climatologist and a member of the Royal Meteorological Society, has concluded: "Perhaps we are devoting too many resources to correcting human effects on the climate without being sure that we are the major contributor." The recent temperature 'spike', known as 'the hockey stick', has been unmasked as a statistical artefact, while the 'Medieval Warm Period' and the 'Little Ice Age' have been statistically 're-discovered'. Moreover, the latest research has shown that there has probably been no real warming, except that which is surface-driven. And in Russia, 'global warming' has been likened to infamous Lysenkoism.

Accordingly, the predication of government, and United Nations', policy for energy growth on the unsustainable myth of 'global warming' is a serious threat to us all, but especially to the 1.6 billion people in the less-developed world who have no access to any modern form of energy. The twin curses of water poverty and energy poverty remain the real scandals. By contrast, the political imposition on the rest of the world of our Northern, self-indulgent ecochondria about 'global warming' could prove to be a neo-colonialism too far.

[DarrinS]

KtPDuZzfzhw

[Wild Cobra]

there's a lot more at stake than 500,000 if we can't create regulations and a more responsible ecological culture ahead of the point of no return.Thing is, we are responsible in such things.

When it came apparent we had a pollution problem, one of the few good government entities was created. The EPA. Carbon Dioxide is not a threat. If the alarmists could just realize that.

We are no where near a point of no return with the climate. We are near that with the out of control spending our government does however. We are not in a recession, but are in a repression. We are repressed by our government. If liberals have their way, it will pass that point of no return.

[LnGrrrR]

My question is: if the climate is changing, whether due to manmade or naturally or WHATEVER, how will we adapt to that?

[Wild Cobra]

there's a lot more at stake than 500,000 if we can't create regulations and a more responsible ecological culture ahead of the point of no return.If you believe that propaganda.

My question is: if the climate is changing, whether due to manmade or naturally or WHATEVER, how will we adapt to that?
It's been changing for all of known history, and all of history as shown to us by proxy data.

First of all, we will adapt. Second of all, we cannot change climate near as much as natural forces do. Worse case scenario, CO2 accounts for about 1/3 of the warning we have seen since 1700, or about 0.25 C.

If CO2 was the only short term climatic change we had, then I would be concerned. Solar output is the source or 99% or more of the earth's heat. If the temperature of the sun increased by 0.05%, then the radiation of the sun increases by 0.2%. Can we really expect the temperature of the sun to remain that stable? Temperature/heat calculations are done with the Kelvin scale. 0 Celsius = 273.15 Kelvin. Assuming the average temperature of 15 C, or 288 K, 0.2% is a 0.576 increase in temperature. Indications are that solar irradiation has increased by as much as 0.3%, which would be a 0.764 increase in temperature. Don't the experts say that the Earths temperature has increased bu 0.7 to 0.8 degrees since 1700?

We have solid evidence that solar irradiation has increased by at least 0.2% since 1700!

What are we suppose to do? Send a water hose to the sun?

[Cane]

Fuck politics.

Bill Gates is on this shit with his weather controlling machine.

[DarrinS]

Fuck politics.

Bill Gates is on this shit with his weather controlling machine.

:lmao

[LnGrrrR]

WC, by changing, I meant, changing to a climate that will be inhospitable for us.

I'm more worried about our ability to adapt to widespread climate change than I am about the reason for such climate change. I doubt our ability to recover from raised sea levels and the like.

[Wild Cobra]

Fuck politics.

Bill Gates is on this shit with his weather controlling machine.
Anything like the Stargate Atlantis episode where a climate cooling experiment went bad?


Brain Storm, 5th season episode 16:

Rodney McKay is invited to a landmark scientific presentation by an old rival from his school days. The device appears to be a solution to global warming, but then everything goes awry. Guest Stars include Dave Foley, playing Malcolm Tunney, with Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson playing themselves.

[DarrinS]

WC, by changing, I meant, changing to a climate that will be inhospitable for us.

I'm more worried about our ability to adapt to widespread climate change than I am about the reason for such climate change. I doubt our ability to recover from raised sea levels and the like.



What kind of change would worry you more? Warming? Or cooling?

[Wild Cobra]

WC, by changing, I meant, changing to a climate that will be inhospitable for us.

I'm more worried about our ability to adapt to widespread climate change than I am about the reason for such climate change. I doubt our ability to recover from raised sea levels and the like.As long as we have a means to produce enough energy, I don't see a problem as long as we stay in any historical levels... for warmth. If we were to go into an ice age, in time, there would likely be no way to combat glacier ice growth in areas like where I live.

[RandomGuy]

Early IPCC model predictions are ALREADY WRONG. Why would anyone have faith in their predictions 30-50 years into the future?

People predicting heavier than air flight by 1890 were wrong! Why would anyone have faith in their prections 30-50 years in the future?

[RandomGuy]

The Ultimate Global Warming Challenge (http://ultimateglobalwarmingchallenge.com/index.htm) is now increased to a cool half-a-million. Since the science is settled on this, why hasn't anyone won the prize?

Is there anyone who seriously thinks this is meant seriously?

Is there anyone who thinks that the guy offering the prize wouldn't try the slimmest of arguments to weasel out of this if seriously challenged?

[LnGrrrR]

What kind of change would worry you more? Warming? Or cooling?

Either or, I guess. Anything too far outside our norms to be able to handle easily. (I'm not a scientist... don't expect anything too technical.)

[RandomGuy]

JunkScience.com, in its sole discretion, will determine the winner, if any, from UGWC entries. All determinations made by JunkScience.com are final.

---------- uh huh.

No entries will be accepted after December 1, 2008.
The results of the UGWC will be announced on February 1, 2009.


Meh. I would want them to prove to me that the money exists before I would spend any effort on it.

I could offer a million dollar prize today, if I never had to pony up the cash...

[Wild Cobra]

Is there anyone who seriously thinks this is meant seriously?

Is there anyone who thinks that the guy offering the prize wouldn't try the slimmest of arguments to weasel out of this if seriously challenged?
How, the test is clearly spelled out. What legal maneuvers could be made if the criteria was proved?

[Wild Cobra]

No entries will be accepted after December 1, 2008.
The results of the UGWC will be announced on February 1, 2009.

I didn't realize the time had run out.

It was there.

[Jacob1983]

The fight against global warming is an epic fail and lost cause. You're never going to get every human being on Earth to go green. And I guarantee you that you're not gonna get humans to give up their cars in the fight against global warming either. So why bother? And when you think about it, why do you care anyway? If global warming is as bad as Al Gore says it is, what will it matter in 50 to 10 years? You will probably be dead and won't have to worry about it. And why worry about something that is out of your control? I'm not saying that you should pollute or litter but you shouldn't freak out about all of this green stuff. Take your trash out, recycle if you can, don't waste electricity i.e. don't leave lights on in rooms that you're not occupying and don't turn your AC down in the 60s or 50s. Common sense.