100,000 Offered to Prove Global Warming: Can You Save Al Gore?

Question

100,000 Offered to Prove Global Warming: Can You Save Al Gore?
As soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore continues to duck every person on the planet willing to debate him about his unproven anthropogenic global warming theories, one well-known skeptic has put his money where his mouth is.
On Monday evening, the website JunkScience.com, owned and managed by Steven Milloy, announced The Ultimate Global Warming Challenge.
As laid out in this video, entrants are asked the following in order to receive $100,000 while, at the same time, saving Al Gore from looking like one of the biggest charlatans to ever walk the face of the planet:

Answer 1

That is because every scientist knows, that the only way to prove it, is to allow it to occur.
If it is proven, the guy will not have to pay, if it is prevented, it isn't proven, so he'll be crying that it never existed.

Either way, he knows, he'll never have to pay, unless someone has a spare planet, exactly like Earth, lying around to experiment on.
Now he if he wanted to run a contest to prove our pollution causes harmful environmental and health problems, that would be an easy one.
Thanks for playing.

Answer 2

Where can I pick up the money?

1. Go to the public library near you.

2. Ask the lady behind the counter for a copy of the June, 2007 issue of that pinko, commie, Democratic liberal publication, National Geographic magazine.

3. Open it to page 32. Look at the pictures.

4. Explain: how did this happen? Do YOU or Rush have a logical explanation?

5. Or do you believe the earth is flat, humanity was created by alien invaders, there were dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden?
There was no Jewish Holocaust, Hitler won the war?

6. Do you believe anything that Rush and his employers, ExxonMobile, tell you?

7. Rush is laughing all the way to the bank.

8. Did you, by any chance, send him money to create this fund?

9. You are a chump and a flunkie for the right. There are people getting PAID to do PR for the oil companies; you're doing it for free!!! Joke's on you!!!

Answer 3

What a bogus "challenge". Milloy and JunkScience (more about them later) will just say "no you haven't proven it". Here's the challenge:

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.

Hell, the first hypothesis is a no-brainer. The definition of a greenhouse gas is that it causes global warming! If it weren't for greenhouse gases our planet would be a freezing hellscape!!

The catch is that the second is absolutely impossible to prove. Virtually every climate scientist agrees that it's false (it's obvious that higher temperatures will cause terrible consequences), but nobody can "prove" it. James Hansen (possibly the foremost climate scientist in the world) recently noted that

"When temperatures increased to 2-3 degrees above today’s level 3.5 million years ago, sea levels rose not by 59 centimetres but by 25 metres. The ice responded immediately to changes in temperature."

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/07/03/a-sudden-change-of-state/#more-1072

Does that "prove" negative consequences of global warming? No, but it's pretty goddamn strong evidence.

As for Milloy and JunkScience, they started out being funded by Phillip Morris tobacco company to depict peer-reviewed scientific papers which found a connection between secondhand smoke and lung cancer as "junk science" and corporate-funded "research" finding no link as "sound science". Now Exxon Mobile pays the site to do the same for global warming and human greenhouse gas emissions.

Answer 4

Of course, Bush has also said Global Warming is real and largely caused by humans as well.

In fact, so have McCain, Giuliani, Brownback, and even Newt Gingrich.

To frame this as a liberal vs. conservative issue is as ridiculous as pretending that Al Gore is the only one promoting it. Gore is merely reporting what the scientific community has long since accepted.

Answer 5

How can you prove a theory that bases it's predictions on events that are going to happen 20~100 years from now?

We can prove that things are happening on the planet, and we can prove that we are dumping tons of pollutants into the atmosphere.

But we cannot even "prove" gravity -- that's still a theory based on observable evidence. So is the theory of quantum physics, and the theory of sub-atomic particles that we use every day to generate electricity -- so, if you want "proof" to a scientific certainty, that's not a reasoable demand.

Answer 6

Why bother. The rules are probably fixed or ambiguous so that winning the prize would be next to impossible anyway.

Answer 7

You mean the guy from Fox News (milloy) who claims second hand smoke isn't bad for you? Oh yeah, that will be a difficult challenge

Answer 8

how about freezing milloy with liquid nitrogen (you know like they did with ted williams' head) then he can wake up in the future and find out for himself

Answer 9

Oh please! It is obvious that no one is going to win this contest. It’s a sham. If the data and findings of the majority of reputable scientists haven’t convinced him, how is someone’s little essay going to do that?

Answer 10

That's a "safe" wager for Mr Milloy, no chance to lose his money on that one.