$30,000 to the First Person Who Can Prove Man-Made Climate Change Isn’t Real

Physicist Christopher Keating’s challenge to climate skeptics goes viral

Think you can prove that man-made climate change is a flat-out lie fabricated by the green Left? Well, you may just be in luck. Christopher Keating, a Texas-based physicist who has taught at the University of South Dakota and the US Naval Academy, will pay $30,000 to the first person who can prove, using the scientific method, that man-made global climate change is a farce.

globe photo
Keating says he’s sure he’ll never have to pay up because scientific evidence for the causes of global warming is overwhelming. Photo by Andrea Zeppilli.

Keating set up this unusual competition out of sheer outrage that climate change skeptics continue to deny the science surrounding human-caused climate change. “I am willing to put my money where my mouth is,” Keating posted on his blog, Dialogues on Global Warming. “But, I am sure I will never have to because it can’t be proven. The scientific evidence for global warming is overwhelming and no one can prove otherwise.”

The prize was initially set at $10,000, to be distributed out of Keating’s personal savings, but was boosted to $30,000 in June of this year thanks to two $10,000 donations.

This isn’t the first time Keating has posed this challenge. “I first started it in 2007 on a different website and I brought back this [current] challenge in the spring of 2012, so it’s been around for a while,” he told the Journal on Friday. The cash prize for the original 2007 challenge was only $1,000.

Keating says news of the current challenge went viral following a PRWeb piece promoting his new book, Undeniable: Dialogues on Global Warming, which mentioned the challenge and directed readers to his blog.

Can George Carlin’s comedy routine prove global warming a hoax? One competitor certainly thinks so.

The response, Keating says, has been overwhelming. “It’s pretty crazy. I think I’ve gotten about 50 submissions so far,” he said. They range from to bad but sincere, to absolutely dreadful…. One person submitted a comedy routine by George Carlin as proof!”

Confident about the lack of any valid climate-denier evidence, Keating has a second challenge on his blog: $1,000 “to the first person who can show there is any scientific evidence that refutes the conclusion of man made climate change” (emphasis added).

Keating is the sole judge of submissions to the competition, and has been responding to all the entries via his blog where he explains why they do — or more likely, do not — meet the competition criteria. “I think I’ve responded to close to 30 [submissions] so far,” he said. “It’s definitely keeping me busy.” Though all this is turning into quite a time-suck right now, Keating says he’s quite enjoying himself.

The competition will close on July 31, 2014. Keating set a deadline this time for sanity’s sake. “People have gotten pretty, let’s just say, involved,” he said. “There are a lot of colorful comments flying back and forth.”

Despite many spirited submissions, it appears that the scientist’s money will be safe. “I made my challenges for a purpose and think I’m achieving it,” Keating said

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