Explain Climate Change to Little Stevie

grist.org

Little Stevie Milloy's outfit is offering $100,000 to the person who can "prove, in a scientific manner, that humans are causing harmful global warming." Fine print: This exciting opportunity will cost you $15. Think of it as a sweepstakes, only with Ed McMahon peer-reviewing articles on particle physics, and nobody winning.

Now, the phrase "prove in a scientific manner" should tip you off that a childhood of eating paste has left Little Stevie fighting this war with a pea shooter. Epistemological category mistakes aside, however, he's a clever scamp. For years he's bamboozled Exxon out of money with the promise that he'll cast his body on the rails of science. Now he wants our money too.

It takes a special kind grifter to make money on both ends, Stevie! You should have thought of this back in your cigarette days. You could have charged lung cancer patients $15 for the opportunity to prove that the product you shilled was killing them. Live and learn, right?

I'm going to start a contest of my own. Send me $15 and your refutation of AGW theory. If you succeed in "proving" the world's scientists wrong, I'll personally send you a unicorn that pees champagne and poops $100 bills.

I bet I'll make a lot more money than Little Stevie. After all, it's an intelligence test.