Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Cool video: "What's the worst that could happen?"

The environment blog at New Scientist has a video by a US science teacher about a risk management approach to climate issues: How lucky do you feel? There's always a chance that climate science has got things wrong, a fact which is illustrated by the IPCC's confidence intervals - which tend to be large, and error bars. (The IPCC says, for instance, there is "at least a 9 in 10 chance" that human activities are causing changes in our global climate.) Given that chance - how lucky do you feel?

A US high school teacher called Greg has created a series of 10 minute videos that illustrate the point nicely, and released them thanks to the wonders of YouTube. The saga started with "The most terrifying video you will see", which a user drew my attention to. Since launching his "most terrifying video", Greg has received thousands of posts from sceptical viewers which spurred him on to produce a series of updates. The final version, entitled "How it all ends" is below.

I liked the style of the 1st video a bit better, so check that out too. Catherine Brahic, Online environment reporter

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