Well it looks as though Steven Milloy is taking a page out of he infamous Kent “Prisoner #06452-017” Hovind’s playbook and offering up a Anthropogenic Global Warming Denial version of the Hovind $250,000 Challenge. (Here a link to the TalkOrigins.org page on the ridiculous audacity of Kent Hovind’s $250,000 Offer.)

Milloy is now giving us The Ultimate Global Warming Challenge:

I see this as just a desperation Hail Mary Pass publicity stunt from one of the leading Global Warming Deniers out there in debate over whether global warming is anthropogenic in origin debate. It just another one of The Stupid Things Partisans Sometimes Say and Do.

In much the same way that Hovind’s Challenge gives creationists something to cling too I think The Ultimate Global Warming Challenge will give the Global Warming Deniers that are still aroundsomething to hang on too. What we are going to hear now is desparate Global Warming Deniers without a logic arguement to stand on citing that no one has ever won The Ultimate Global Warming Challenge.

And no one probably ever will.

As Naomi Oreskes (a Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California San Diego) is quoted saying in the online article Global Warming: How Do Scientists Know They’re Not Wrong? :

Best predictor wins

Contrary to popular parlance, science can never truly "prove" a theory. Science simply arrives at the best explanation of how the world works.

Global warming can no more be "proven" than the theory of continental drift, the theory of evolution or the concept that germs carry diseases.

"All science is fallible," Oreskes told LiveScience. "Climate science shouldn’t be expected to stand up to some fantasy standard that no science can live up to."

Instead, a variety of methods and standards are used to evaluate the viability of different scientific explanations and theories.

One such standard is how well a theory predicts the outcome of an event, and climate change theory has proven to be a strong predictor.

The effects of putting massive amounts of carbon dioxide in the air were first predicted in 1896 by Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius.

Noted oceanographer Roger Revelle’s 1957 predictions that carbon dioxide would build up in the atmosphere and cause noticeable changes by the year 2000 have been borne out by numerous studies, as has Princeton climatologist Suki Manabe’s 1980 prediction that the Earth’s poles would be first to see the effects of global warming.

In 1988, NASA climatologist James Hansen outlined three scenarios of how the global average temperature might rise over the next 30 years. Nearly 20 years later, the observed rise has followed his medium-range scenario with high accuracy.

Hansen’s model predictions are "a shining example of a successful prediction in climate science," said climatologist Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University.

Schmidt says that predictions by those who doubted global warming have failed to come true.

"Why don’t you trust a psychic? Because their predictions are wrong," he told LiveScience. "The credibility goes to the side that gets these predictions right."

In another article on the LiveScience.com website, Global Warming or Just Hot Air? A Dozen Different Views, Naomi Oreskes is again quoted as having said in an editorial piece in The Washington Post in 2004:

"Many people have the impression that there is significant scientific disagreement about global climate change. It’s time to lay that misapprehension to rest. There is a scientific consensus on the fact that Earth’s climate is heating up and human activities are part of the reason. We need to stop repeating nonsense about the uncertainty of global warming and start talking seriously about the right approach to address it.

"The basic picture is clear, and some changes are already occurring. A new report by the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment-a consortium of eight countries, including Russia and the United States-now confirms that major changes are taking place in the Arctic, affecting both human and non-human communities, as predicted by climate models."

I think that Oreskes saying "We need to stop repeating nonsense about the uncertainty of global warming and start talking seriously about the right approach to address it" sums it up. The scientific debate is on global warming being real and anthropogenic in origin is over in much the same way as the scientific debate on creationism is too. Of what debate still remains 99% of it comes from politically aligned or motivated organizations (such as CEI, Heartland, Steven Milloy of JunkScience.com etc etc.) and not the scientific community. We need to stop all this partisan Baghdad Bob ranting on the right and shift the debate to just what to do about it.