The Manpollo Videos

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How it all ends

Index, Menu, Trailer

The Nature of Science

part 1, part 2, part 3

Risk Management

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7

Why There Is Still Debate

part 1, part 2

The Manpollo Project

part 1, part 2

The Mechanics of Global Climate Change

part 1, part 2, part 3

Scare Tactics

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6

The Solution

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4

Operation Saturation: The Threshold

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4

God's Will

How it all Ends: God's Will

Get What You Want

part 1, part 2, part 3

I Hope I'm Wrong

part 1, part 2

No Holds Barred

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6

Your Mission

part 1, part 2

Arithmetic, Population and Energy; Dr. Albert Bartlett

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8

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About

Are you confused by the debate about climate change? Wonder why, with widespread scientific agreement saying human caused climate change is a serious danger, the political sphere claims there's a lot of doubt? Want some guidelines on "how" to make decisions about climate change NOW, rather than waiting 30+ years until climate change effects are more apparent and it is too late to make meaningful change?

In October 2007 a high school science teacher released a series of videos asking us to think clearly about climate change. The videos offer a risk management based logic framework with which we can think about hypothetical dangers while having limited information. Making good decisions about climate change means assessing hypothetical risks, with limited information, about a process that takes decades to unfold, while facing climate change denialism seemingly pushed by business interests with a vested interest in undermining efforts to change, and want to preserve business as usual.

There were 49 videos in the series, including a set of four videos from 2008 that refined some of the messages. He also posted Dr. Al Bartlett's ground-breaking lecture titled Arithmetic, Population and Energy. All the videos have been embedded on this website for ease of navigation.

The props were the sort of things you'd find in a high school science classroom, meaning pictures on a white board and various cheesy science experiments. The videos lay out for us a well-known logic framework we can use to reason about tough questions when we have limited information.

How It All Ends

This is the main video in the series and itself is the sequel to an earlier video by the same guy named "The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See". The two of them have been viewed over 14 million times. After the videos got a lot of attention, they fostered a book What's the Worst That Could Happen?: A Rational Response to the Climate Change Debate

Author Bill McKibben said about the book that it "... trumps most of our accounts of the global warming crisis," the former Commander-in-Chief of U.S. CENTCOM Gen. Anthony Zinni called it "innovative and intelligent.... superbly crafted.... A must read," and the New Scientist said "If Craven could get everybody who has weighed in on this debate to go through the exercises in the book, Al Gore should share his Nobel peace prize."

You can download a 25 page preview of the book from the authors website.

From Publishers Weekly: In 2007, high school science teacher Craven posted a ten-minute video, The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See, , predicting dire consequences without strong measures to stop global warming. That video attracted millions of viewers; his focus now is not "what" to think about global warming, but "how." Using clear language and charts, Craven sketches not just the cost/benefit analysis of over-reacting and failing to act, but the fundamentals of sound science. Training readers to evaluate competing arguments, he points to a number of expert sources for reliable information (American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences, National Security Agency, leading climate scientists like James Hansen). Take a measured look at the skeptics (from the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, etc.), he finds that the risk of global climate destabilization outweighs the supposedly prohibitive costs ("devastating economic consequences") of implementing environmental protection measures. Craven's popular style might be better suited to the classroom-cutesy graphics, groan-worthy section heads like "Dude, Where's My Science?"-but science and ecology novices will find his approach welcome and enlightening.

The videos shown here led to this book