The Global Warming Challenge

Click here for the full-length video of the television interview. Broadcast live Thursday, July 7th, 2007 at 7:15am.

Prof. Scott Armstrong from Penn’s Wharton School talks about how he can’t find any forecast model that predicts global warming. He has offered to make a bet with Al Gore over climate change. So far, Gore hasn’t taken him up on it.

Click here for the audio of the interview. Click “Listen now” and move the slider to about 34 minutes to hear the relevant clip.

Making predictions is a difficult business, Dr Kesten Green an expert in the field, says that many scientists when looking at the future impact and extent of climate change fail to take into account the basic principles of forecasting.    

Counterpoint is a program on the Radio National Network of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, presented by Michael Duffy and Paul Comrie-Thompson. 

• Special Report with Brit Hume recently covered the challenge with the piece “One Expert Is Willing to Bet Money Al Gore Is Wrong About Global Warming.” Interview by FOX News Channel’s Matthew Hill.

Armstrong says he hasn’t gotten a response yet — and Gore’s office did not return a call from us asking for reaction to the challenge.

• Armstrong was also featured on American Family Radio News. Interview was done by Jim Brown, education reporter for American Family Radio News.

• Australia’s Courier Mail featured Dr. Kevin Trenberth as well as Armstrong and Green’s work in the article “Forecasts all up in the air.” Article by Bob Carter.

In a paper [presented] at the 27th International Symposium on Forecasting in New York this week, Scott Armstrong and Kesten Green audit the relevant chapter in the IPCC’s latest report. They find that “in apparent contradiction to claims by some climate experts that the IPCC provides ‘projections’ and not ‘forecasts’, the word ‘forecast’ and its derivatives occurred 37 times, and ‘predict’ and its derivatives occur 90 times” in the chapter.

Are you waiting for Gore’s response too? Why not digg us? 

“Meet the Ivy League professor and expert on forecasting who is challenging Al Gore to a $20,000 bet that he is wrong on global warming.“

This Monday June 25th, 2007, the article “Put your money where your ‘myth’ is” by Brendan O’Neill was featured on spiked-online.com, an online magazine with a global and critically minded readership. Armstrong was interviewed for the article by O’Neill. Read on for two excerpts from the article.

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Today, the University of Pennsylvania newspaper “The Daily Pennsylvanian” covered Armstrong’s challenge on the front page (pdf). Click here to view the online version of “An Inconvenient Bet?”

Of note in the article is the author’s interview of an MIT climate scientist:

Carl Wunsch, a professor of physical oceanography and climate-change expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that though different forecasting models show different outcomes for the planet as a result of global warming, most which are taken seriously by climate-change experts do show the world overall becoming warming and wetter because of human activity.

“They should be regarded as possibilities … that need to be taken seriously,” he said.

Wunsch also questioned whether someone who is admittedly unversed in the scientific principles of meteorology and geology could provide a better forecasting model than experts in these fields.