I've spent the last three weeks camping out on the darkside - the land of Anthropogenic Climate Change denialists. The culmination of my little trip is a $100 bet in which the loser sends a check to the winner's selected charity. It just so happens this denialist blog, Climate Sanity, is run by a Senior Scientist for the US Department of Energy. My task?
GIVEN
A) The North Pole is a point
B) A location is ‘ice-free’ if it is covered by < 15% ice.
PROVE
The North Pole has never been ice-free; not once in the history of the earth.
My proof is on the flipside ...
First off, give me a break ... it's been almost 40 years since I wrote a proof :)
Secondly, I know it's of little value. I could have said "ice-covered" instead of "ice-free" and it would have been exactly the same proof. The whole point (sic) was to show that words mean things. You can't just arbitrarily change them and then act like the changed words are the originals.
As denialist websites go, Tom Moriarty's Climate Sanity isn't the worst of the lot. Of course that's really damning with faint praise. What caught my attention was Moriarty's use of "open water" as if the term was interchangeable with "ice-free." It isn't. In the science of the Arctic "ice-free" usually has a defined percentage attached. The National Snow and Ice Data Center publishes a popular graph of sea ice extent - their threshhold for "ice-free" is 15%.
So, when an Arctic researcher said back in 2008, "We’re actually projecting this year that the North Pole may be free of ice for the first time in history." Moriarty belittled the researcher and showed pictures of submarines at the North Pole, claiming the North Pole has often seen open water. Well, like I said, there's a big difference.
After a couple of weeks of detours and derailings we eventually reached a point where I offered him a 'bar bet' - you know, one that sounds like it's impossible - except, of course, there's always a trick involved. In the case of my silly little proof the trick is the mathematical definition of a 'point' and the fact that "ice-free" requires a calculation of area, something a point does not have.
Now, Tom Moriarty, our Senior Scientist for the US Department of Energy and blogger behind Climate Sanity, holds a Masters Degree in Physics. I never expected him to accept the bet - he should have known better. Of course he hasn't given up yet - says he'll post his criticism of my proof soon.
What are the odds he'll be writing a check to Fisher House soon?