Need some extra cash to put in savings? To pay your bills? To fund a vacation to the Maldives before the islands sink under the rising sea levels thought to be the result of climate change? Disprove such climate change, specifically, global warming, and that cash is yours.
A disillusioned physicist is offering deniers of man-made, or anthropogenic, global warming (AGW) $10,000 for concrete proof that it isn't real. He's also offering $1,000 for anyone who gives him scientific evidence, rather than proof, that global warming isn't happening.
Christopher Keating, a former professor at University of South Dakota and the U.S. Naval Academy, wrote the book, "Undeniable: Dialogues on Global Warming" (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, April 2014). He runs a blog based on his book where he continues to debate anyone who sends him claims that AGW is false. Using this blog he posts about entries from contestants vying for the $1,000 and $10,000 prizes, and discusses, at least so far, why he thinks they are wrong and they don't deserve the prize money.
The proofs, he says, do not have to be original. He will accept evidence collected from other scientists and papers.
The first submission was refuted on the basis that the graph sent in as evidence denying global warming was actually "cherry-picked," or designed and selected to show the results the denier wants to see. He then voluntarily submitted the graph as "evidence" for the $1,000 prize and continued to refute the entry, claiming that it didn't even work as proper evidence. He says that valid evidence must include the entire globe, and that the contestant's graph only looked at the lower part of the atmosphere.
He refuted the second $10,000 submission, which submitted proof he or she believed justified the theory that, while warming is occurring, it is part of the natural warming cycle that the planet has always experienced. Keating argues that simply because there were warm periods in the past and there is a warm period now, that does not mean today's warm periods are of the same natural causes as the ones in the past. He believes the submission "does not detract at all from the data that shows we have changed the climate today with our emissions."
Some have complained that the contest is unfair, and that Keating would not be objective in his judging of deniers' claims. To these complaints he says, "Deniers are the ones that made the claim, why is it unfair to make them stand by their own words. If they think it is unfair to hold them to their own claims, then stop making the claims."
He believes his money is safe and says that the only way to deny AGW is to deny science. "But, if someone could give me a scientific proof global warming isn't real, it would be worth the money."
