This will be a top post for a day or two, new posts appear below. For those waiting…PAYPAL is now available
I’m participating in this, as are some other well known climate skeptics. The producer (Australia’s video pundit Topher Field) has 4 weeks (28 days) to get it funded in IndieGoGo. I ask your help to make it happen. Note, I have no financial interest in this film, I’m merely one of the people to be interviewed. Thanks – Anthony
UPDATE from Topher:
What an incredible initial response! Thank you so much to everyone who has donated!
Paypal WILL be available soon (unless something goes horribly wrong). We are awaiting final confirmation from Paypal that our account is 100% set up and then we will enable Paypal donations.
UPDATE2: Topher responds to questions in this thread in comments, jump here
50-to-1 has the potential to shift the climate debate for good!
Watch the video to see how, or read on!
What if we could show you that trying to ‘stop’ climate change is 50 times more expensive than adapting to it? And what if we could prove it using numbers and formulas accepted by the IPCC, CRU and other ‘consensus’ bodies? Well that’s exactly what 50-to-1 does.
The original calculations were done by Lord Christopher Monckton who has since presented his conclusions to audiences of scientists, economists and mathematicians all over the world. You can see the calculations and a FULL LIST OF SOURCES here: 50 to 1 calculations and sources
Lord Monckton has now approached me to take the above and present it in a video and web package suitable for mass consumption on the internet. If we can successfully help the general public to understand the futility of ‘stopping’ climate change and the relative value of adapting, then we can stop wasting money on useless schemes and start putting our money where it will ACTUALLY make a difference.
The 50 to 1 project is designed to get this message to the general public in three different, complimentary ways:
1. A 7 minute video. This video is designed to be fun, easily understood and contain everything you need to know in one tight and beautifully produced package. This 7 minute video is the centrepiece of the project. It’s designed to be enjoyable, informative and SHORT enough that people will watch it and then pass it on via email and social media. This in turn will encourage people who want to know more to go to…
2. … The 50 to 1 website. The website will host the video and more importantly will contain ALL the references for ALL the information contained in the video (see the link above for an example). Anyone who wants to fact-check or dispute the video will have open access to all our sources so they can see for themselves that the conclusions drawn in ’50 to 1′ are consistent with the science as understood by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. For those who really want to go deep into the issue and wrap their head around the current state of climate economics the website will also host…
3. … Expert Interviews. So far we have 7 confirmed interviewees, Former President Vaclav Klaus, Prof Henry Ergas, Prof Fred Singer, Anthony Watts, Prof David Evans, Christopher Essex, and Joanne Nova . Whilst excerpts of the interviews will be used in the 7 minute video, the real value is that we will be spending 30 minutes to 1 hour with each of them (so 3.5+ hours combined run time!) and the full interview with each of these internationally respected experts will be available on the 50-to-1 website as they share their thoughts and perspectives on climate change and in particular policy responses such as carbon taxes and trading schemes.
Each part of the 3 part structure is designed to work together, attracting people with the professionally produced, fun, funny and engaging 7 minute video, and then allowing them to fact check and explore on the website and discover for themselves through the interviews the true cost of ‘stopping’ climate change… which is 50 times more than adapting!
50 to 1 cuts across all the noise and fury surrounding the ‘climate debate’ and gets right to the point: Even if the IPCC is right, and even if climate change IS happening and it IS caused by man, we are STILL better off adapting to it as it happens than we are trying to ‘stop’ it. ‘Action’ is 50 times more expensive than ‘adaptation’, and that’s a conclusion which is derived directly from the IPCC’s own predictions and formulae!
This video, website and interview combination is a game-changer and could radically shift the climate debate. But it will only have an impact if a large number of people watch the video. The video needs to be so fun, fast paced and visually engaging that people will not only watch it, but also pass it on for their friends to watch. 7 minutes is an ideal length because it’s short enough to keep people’s attention, whilst being long enough for us to pack in all the information required to understand the maths and economics behind 50 to 1. It’s effectively a short film which mixes the presentation of the maths and formulae with animations to illustrate every step along the way AND snippets of interviews with internationally respected experts lending the weight of their professional opinions to the subject.
President Vaclav Klaus, Professor Henry Ergas, Professor Fred Singer, Anthony Watts, Professor David Evans, Christopher Essex, and Joanne Nova have all agreed to be interviewed and we are still waiting to hear back from a few others. Traveling with a production crew (to North America and Europe and back as well as around Australia) to get the interviews, as well as studio filming, editing, animating, colour grading and audio sweetening costs money. That’s why I need your help.
The 50 to 1 project has the potential to shift the climate debate for good. It has the potential to undermine political attempts to impose more taxes, stupid subsidies and the myriad of ‘green schemes’ which we’ve seen spring up in the last decade or so. It has the potential to save us all a small fortune in years to come if we can totally undermine public support for ‘Action’ on climate change and shift the focus instead to adaptation as required.
I’ve enlisted the help of an award winning production company here in Melbourne Australia to ensure the highest possible standard of production. All up we’ve calculated a budget (including all the travel etc) of $155,000 to do everything properly, although we can scrape by with less if we cut a few corners, potentially as little as $130,000, but any less than that and it will start to cost us money rather than enable us to pay our bills!
Your donation will help us to reach our minimum budget and once we get there it will be ‘game on’ and we will be able to get cracking and make 50-to-1 a reality.
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/50-to-1-project-the-true-cost-of-action-on-climate-change
Twitter Share Shortlink: http://igg.me/at/50to1
@ur momisugly Monckton of Brenchley says:
May 4, 2013 at 10:03 am
One thing I am not clear about, which I (and others) wondered about above.
I read above your description of the effectiveness of your personal presentation of the facts you want to get across in this video. Presumably, the audiences were of a specialist sort, with or without an established (putative) knowledge of the area, but with an interest in engaging.
Is that the target audience? Those who are possibly in a position to have a more direct influence than the average person? Or who at least feel already they should devote some attention to this?
Or is it aimed at general consumption by those who might otherwise not make an effort to establish the facts?
One reason for asking is that a great deal of the argy-bargy around this, and what people actually respond to or take seriously, seems to occur within the already established groups with an interest, and, it seems to me, suffers somewhat because of it, with endless rehashing of positions and re-statements of the obvious. It’s a bit of a cul-de-sac.
These types of exchanges seem to carry over into the more public arena when they (rarely) appear at all. For all the detail, it seems likely to me that the single most effective piece of information presented to the public – which I know you have used to effect also – is the Sunday Mail publication which in essence consisted of a statement that no warming had occurred for 16 years and which was shown graphically.
Do you intend the video to communicate at that simple – but not simple minded – level?
After all, what is most extraordinary about this issue is its lack of complexity at an intellectual and policy level, regardless of scientific detail, and the apparent impossibility of getting that across.
And that has occurred because of endless, intentional, presentations which rely on the idea that this is by nature arcane and impenetrable to the outsider, a level which those trying to refute it seem to, on the whole, feel obliged to join.
dp says:
May 4, 2013 at 10:43 am
1+
When ever there is a large split politically factions form. Luke-warming and technocrats drive too much of skeptic talking points. You have to be half-asleep not to see the problem for skeptics in adaptation rhetoric.
I don’t want AGW fear monger politics warehoused as it falls from current favor with adaptation rationalizations to keep it on life-support. I want it destroyed and ring leaders punished. It does seem to me that there are many who like the middling approach of a never ending public debate.
The focus should be on post-normal science and political abuses involved. They should receive no reward for 40 years of social decline associated to AGW propagation. Central planning adaptation is appeasement of the worst ideas.
cwon14 says:
May 4, 2013 at 10:34 am
“AGW isn’t about science or logic to believers.”
Agreed.
BUT outside the Transcendentally Religious, who on the whole are not publicly presentable except as extras since all they can say is “I feel it”, the proponents themselves DO think they can process information. It is part of their delusion and conceit that they have a more penetrating understanding of True Fact, so it at the least makes them uncomfortable when something actually undeniably factual is presented to them. Witness even their Champions extreme reluctance or outright refusal to debate or even come into contact with a purveyor of reality.
“Media, academia, the “consensus” and even close to half the electorate aren’t making their judgements by anything close to “logic”.”
Agreed again.
BUT as with the active believers and proponents they THINK they are functionally intelligent. Even if avoided – but known to exist – they will be inclined to SHUT UP because they run the risk that they will be revealed as being irrational. And the very fact that there is an alternative interpretation in the ether is a challenge to the monolithic inscrutability that underpins such a blindly accepted faith rather than a considered one. Diversity is a threat to the required equanimity of such a mind.
“You’re clearly misunderstanding Rule #4 by validating the IPCC for them.”
A real risk, as many have pointed out.
Can it be not just mitigated but turned to advantage? I think so. The IPCC is an expression of politics as the runs is an expression of rotten food. Can this be shown in the video? Surely. Will it be? Don’t know.
“We would do better if skeptics crossed the Rubicon and acknowledged the specific political culture that is the global driver of AGW belief.”
Agreed -partially.
To be greeting-card mawkish: “It takes all sorts”. There is and will be an important role for those focused on “the science” even to the complete exclusion of acknowledging its context. But it is true that regardless of any “science” what happens is dependent on and compelled by other factors. This is where I would qualify your focus on political structures as easily defined by general ideology or claims to it – although I don’t for a minute dispute these exist. I think, as i’ve said elsewhere, this must be viewed fron a very fundamental place based on values. This position is how to make sense of both perversions to science and corruptions of social and civic structures. Without starting, and holding to this base, things degenerate into “politics” of the us and them sort, as is seen precisely in “The Science” of this. Rather than “political culture” it is “personal and societal values” that count, and political structures, ambitions, and methodologies will stand starkly apart from these and therefore be able to be identified and dealt with.
@cwon14 says:
May 4, 2013 at 11:30 am
“I want it destroyed and ring leaders punished.”
It must be so. And not just ring-leaders but any who can be shown to have been dishonest in advancing this. Many are dead. To not achieve this is to fail in a responsibility to humanity.
“It does seem to me that there are many who like the middling approach of a never ending public debate.”
This is an Inconvenient Truth. But a real one. Just as on the side of the Hysterics and their handlers, there are others for whom this is now habitual, and also, are reluctant to grasp that this is not in any way an exchange based on real respect for truth or responsibility, and that any apparent civility is either a facade or a mockery.
This issue is about transgressions and assaults on civilization and humanity and it should be cleared of any distractions from that, and a real accounting done.
@mitigatedsceptic says:
May 4, 2013 at 10:40 am
“I expect that all the nonsense apparatus that AGW has prompted will remain in place long after the alarmists are dead and gone.”
A major part of the Warmist mental landscape is that what they are involved with is ordained by the development of culture and society along certain lines. They believe this because it is all they have ever seen. In other words they are not just ignorant on this issue, they are profoundly ignorant in general about life and history.
The world will be a very different place in 2020. All the dogmas that have developed over 40 years will be gone.
Don’t make their mistake of thinking that nothing can substantially change. It will, it is only a question of what to.
Yes JC – everything changes, yet nothing changes. With the inadvertent destruction of confidence in empirical science by the mishandling of math modelling, I do wonder what craze will takes its place.
I will contribute $155.
Great work and thanks for all the efforts.
brilliant idea ,
See! Even the deniers are now admitting there is going to be warming! This is fantastic!
See! The deniers are changing their strategy and just complaining about having to pay! Conservatives are just greedy corporate types; they don’t want to pay for the damage they’ve done to the planet. This film is an excuse to weasel out of paying; deniers want to leave the problems to future generations!
(That’s to point out why the script must be written in such a way that these specific kinds of arguments become insupportable.
But how?:
The film will have to show that its ideas are not only a way, but THE compassionate way. Proving adaption to be compassionate, and depicting the warmist movement to be an elitist money grubbing, money wasting political hacks, who endanger the poor of the world: that will make for a real victory.)
God, you guys are Leninists. Claiming that “the people” are with you, but “the people” are also dupes unable to see the truth, planning campaigns to defeat your enemies who are powerful but also weak as they prevent you from achieving victory, which is always imminent. All in the name of your “rationality”.
I just went to the web site to donate, but there is still no Paypal option.
What alternatives to government spending are being proposed?
You have my encouragement and support. Thanks and good luck.
It seems to me on reflection that Monckton’s analysis can be presented in one of two ways.
1. As an alternative to spending money now.
2. As a way of holding the IPCC and Alarmists to account, and showing their failure.
If the first, then it does cede ground to the orthodoxy by seeming to accept their unsubstantiated claims and will result in the continuation of this program within, possibly, a modified framework.
If the second, it will both provide an alternative for those unable to move to a full clarity on this issue, and will reveal both incompetence and duplicity in the IPCC/Warmist menagerie.
The claims to the imperative of immediate action are what, for the public, this is all about.
If this is approached in the video, NOT as an alternative, but as a way of showing that on their own assumptions this is WRONG this underscores that they are untrustworthy and incompetent and opens the question wide up as to what exactly they are really all about.
No one can claim, in this issue of Survival, that they “forgot” to look at ALL ways of dealing with it.
They have absolutely nothing to stand on.
So to use the analysis NOT to dispassionately contribute to “the debate”, but to instead reveal, could be devastating.
The calculations and logic will, necessarily, still be clear. In fact more so, because the video will not be trying to advance an argument with the aim of persuasion or as an invitation to take an alternative viewpoint, it will have the strength of rebuttal of an exceptionally weak and intellectually contemptible position.
This can be done through presenting statements from Agitators and Hysterics as counterpoint through the video. Make it stark.
Denounce.
@ur momisugly indigo says:
May 4, 2013 at 2:51 pm
God, you guys are Leninists. Claiming that “the people” are with you, but “the people” are also dupes unable to see the truth, planning campaigns to defeat your enemies who are powerful but also weak as they prevent you from achieving victory, which is always imminent. All in the name of your “rationality”.
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“The people” have been subject to unrelenting propaganda, deceits, manipulation and gross betrayal of human trust and VALUES for a quarter of a century, deliberately designed and executed by organisms just like you with the clear aim of enfeebling their capacity to make any sort of balanced judgement.
The fact that most are not devotees of your creed and still retain some reservations about your program of degradation is testament to human resilience in the face of a relentless attempt to imprint them in such a way as to comply with your requirements.
You are structurally powerful but intellectually weak, bankrupt of values, conformists to a sect orthodoxy for personal gain, and when revealed, a very very small number of people who, removed from the positions you have insinuated yourself in, are nothing.
That day is coming.
The only thing that you elucidate above is your relationship with rationality shown by using the word in quotations, thereby demonstration your hostility to this foreign and threatening condition.
Expect to be seen and judged.
@ur momisugly Greg House.
In my comment to you on May 4th at 4.18am I was over the top. Sorry.
The nature of this thread particularly, and the core issues generally have obviously over- sensitized me to anything that looks like it is less than sincere. Your comment that the IPCC was not in effect to be considered disreputable triggered that without further consideration. I took that as being an indication that you were intentionally trying to introduce confusion into this. I realize now that you, like many commenting here, including me, are just trying to workout the best way of approaching this, and that at any time we all probably overemphasis or overly discount points as we go through that.
I believe you are bringing your true thoughts to this, and I am sorry I responded in a way appropriate only to those whose intention is to undermine through deceit.
jc says:
May 4, 2013 at 11:05 pmYou are structurally powerful but intellectually weak, bankrupt of values, conformists to a sect orthodoxy for personal gain, and when revealed, a very very small number of people who, removed from the positions you have insinuated yourself in, are nothing.
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Oookaaay. You really are a Leninist. Maybe a Maoist with all that abuse.
More seriously, it is those who reject the science and evidence that supports global warming who are indoctrinated by a dominant ideology. You can imagine no other form of human progress other than one propelled by the extraction and consumption of fossil fuels and other resources.
@ur momisugly indigo says:
May 5, 2013 at 12:38 am
You seem very familiar with communist tyrants and murderers, fixated even, which perhaps goes some way to explaining the enfeeblement shown in being unable to distinguish between abuse and description.
Any science has become psuedo-science in the hands of your Leaders; there is no evidence at all, none, nothing, there are only the abstract manufactures of soothsayers, who received enough training to be given the opportunity to handle a body of knowledge, but not enough education to be able to use it properly. And who stir the entrails for reasons of personal gratification.
I and many others can imagine many forms allowing human progress. You are not one of them.
You have exceeded your capacity “indigo”. Go back to your tie-dying supported by the things you are trying to destroy.
indigo:
At May 5, 2013 at 12:38 am you say
That is NOT sensible: it is deluded nonsense.
There has been no discernible global warming at 95 % confidence for at least the last 16 years according to all available data sets.
It is those who ignore the fact that global warming has stopped who are indoctrinated.
There is no evidence – none, zilch, nada – for discernible anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) global warming (AGW).
Three decades of research conducted world-wide at a cost in excess of $5 billion a year has failed to find any evidence that AGW exists. In the 1990s Santer claimed to have found some evidence for AGW but it turned out that he had deliberately cherry-picked the data to provide a false indication so that was soon ‘swept under the carpet’.
It is those who pretend there is “evidence which supports” AGW who are indoctrinated.
There is evidence that anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) global warming (AGW) is NOT happening.
Missing tropospheric ‘hot spot’, missing, ‘Trenberth’s Heat’, missing “committed warming”, cooling Antarctic with growing Antarctic ice, increasing total polar ice, etc..
It is those who ignore the evidence that AGW is NOT happening who are indoctrinated.
Some AGW cult organisations employ pay people to be trolls disseminating disinformation about AGW on the web.
Indigo, you are an anonymous troll providing disinformation on this thread: are you receiving remuneration for this?
Richard
indigo says:- ” it is those who reject the science and evidence that supports global warming who are indoctrinated by a dominant ideology. You can imagine no other form of human progress other than one propelled by the extraction and consumption of fossil fuels and other resources.”
farmerbraun respectfully suggests:- “Indigo, rather than persisting with your “tilting at windmills”, why don’t you just say what it is that you want.
@ur momisugly richardscourtney says:
May 5, 2013 at 1:50 am
There is no evidence – none, zilch, nada….
jc says:
May 5, 2013 at 1:50 am
There is no evidence at all, none, nothing, ….
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A cosmic connection? Perhaps we should invite indigo to sit down and Om. Maybe he is a portal. Certainly vacant enough, who knows what has passed through.
jc says “Maybe he is a portal.”
farmerbraun suggests :- ” maybe he is a portaloo”
@ur momisugly farmerbraun says:
May 5, 2013 at 2:08 am
jc says “Maybe he is a portal.”
farmerbraun suggests :- ” maybe he is a portaloo”
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You’ve nailed it. Unpleasant thought, but some realities are.
What a waste of time! All this is going to do is give Topher a job for a while. If you think this video will be “influential” you’re out of your mind, it won’t do didley idly to influence the Chinese solar juggernaught, if fact I dare say it’ll make it worse and speed up green energy adoption among the public.
People invest in solar/renewables because they are concerned about the rising price of electricity, not save the plant crap. What do you think people will do if you highlight and drive home an idea that adoption will mean rising energy prices! You’ll just convince people to turn to solar, it’s the classic trump card the solar industry plays each time, that’s why Anthony bought his solar panels – to insulate himself from rising electricity prices.
Besides this, Monckton’s calculations are dubious at best, given that 1) energy efficiency, 2) wind energy in a lot of countries is now a cheaper form of electricity than gas or coal, and 3) solar is soon to be cheaper than fossil fuels I honestly can’t see how he arrived at that number. He would have had to use some really expensive forms of renewable in the equation.
But hey it’ll give Topher a job for a while so why not I guess :/
Well, I seem to have touched a nerve. Anyway, I am pretty sure there is lots of evidence for global warming, which I won’t dwell upon. It’s more the rhetoric and politics here that interest me. The howls of personal abuse and threats, the denunciations, the accusations. It really is very Leninist or Maoist, and that disturbs me greatly.
Global warming is an extraordinary challenge to the global order. From extracting fossil fuels at great profit to the consumer goods we buy and the national and global politics that keep the whole system hanging together, global warming challenges it all at the most fundamental level. It’s a bit like Galileo challenging the power of the church. For a while, reality itself had to be made to bend but ultimately it was the power of the church that bent. People find challenges to the way they think the world is and should be ordered very frightening, as this blog demonstrates.
@indigo says:
May 5, 2013 at 2:34 am
Rank conformist as visionary and revolutionary.
Inversion as perversion.
Give it up, you will get absolutely nowhere trying to strike that juvenile pose. You are obvious.