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A University of Pennsylvania professor is betting former Vice President Al Gore $10,000 that his dire predictions about global warming are based on flawed climate models.Wharton School marketing professor Scott Armstrong is challenging Al Gore to a ten-year bet on how many degrees the global temperature will increase over that period.Armstrong says he and Gore would both put $10,000 into a charitable trust in December, and ten years later the money would go to the winner's charity of choice.Armstrong says his annual forecasts would be based on a no-change model while Gore could select any available climate model to make his predictions."It's not just Al Gore, I guess; it's the people who are developing these climate forecasts that don't seem to know much about forecasting," he contends. "Now they know a lot about climate, and I know hardly anything about climate-I'm just a layman there-but I do know a lot about forecasting. And when we went through and looked at how they're making their forecasts, we realized they know nothing about how to forecast."Armstrong says he has a pretty safe bet because he claims he has been unable to find a single scientifically derived forecast.
"The major purpose of this bet is not to win; it's to get people to start using scientific methods of forecasting in the field," he admits. "So even if there's that outside chance that I lose, I think if we can have people coming and saying 'Gee, there are better ways to forecast and there are better ways to evaluate forecasts, and we're going to do that'-that would be a big advance."
As in the days of Noah...
