Anthony Campisi at the Daily Pennysylvanian reports [1]:
For the past year, Al Gore has been the darling of environmentalists, as his popular documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, made their case about the dangers of global warming to people worldwide.
But now, Scott Armstrong, a Wharton Marketing professor, wants Al Gore to put his money where his mouth is.
Armstrong has challenged the former vice president to a 10-year bet, in which $10,000 from the two would be set aside in escrow as Gore pits his forecast of how much global temperature will increase during that time against a so-called “naive model,” in which temperature would be expected to stay the same.
The winner would get to donate the $20,000 and accumulated interest to the charity of his choice.
Armstrong explained that the idea of a bet arose out of research a colleague and he – both specialists in forecasting – had done on global-warming forecasts put out by Gore and organizations like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations-sponsored entity formed to help achieve scientific consensus on climate change.
Armstrong said that he discovered that most climate-change forecasts use bad methodology.
“We’ve been unable to find any scientific forecast, and what we have are forecasts by scientists,” he said.
[…]
While Gore has yet to respond to his challenge, which was sent out Tuesday, Armstrong says he “wouldn’t expect him to respond right away.”
Gore and his associates at Participate, an organization that promotes his message, couldn’t be reached for comment.
One of Armstrong’s students has created a website [2] to give some background on the wager as well as follow future developments related to it.
Considering how Gore doesn’t really like to be challenged because, well, he’s right, damn it!, I’m fairly certain he’ll laugh this one off – as he has [3] others [4]. Iain Murray over at National Review’s Planet Gore blog is on the same wavelength [5].
Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters has more [6], including the details on Armstrong’s forecasting credentials – which are lengthy and impressive.
Oh, and it’s been 95 days [7] since Senator James Inhofe asked Gore to take the “Personal Energy Ethics Pledge [8]” – which reads as follows:
Hat tip: Ian Schwartz [9]