First up:  this site was graciously and skillfully designed by Michael Baumgardt, a German web developer and author who was inspired by my videos, and contacted me to volunteer his services just when I couldn't put off the website any longer.  He is one of my many fairy godmothers who arrived just in time.  Full gratitude to him.  (Any weaknesses of content on gregcraven.org are mine.)

Now. . . What the heck was I thinking, creating a website, when the last thing I needed after a two-year sprint of producing videos and a book was another project??

I created it because, while the last two years have been hell, they also demonstrated to me an extraordinary dynamic.  The thing I have most enjoyed about teaching science in high school has been how it has refined my own ideas, through the process of having them challenged by my students, and then together we come up with better ideas.  (One of my students dubbed this "the sledgehammer" method of improving an idea:  you try as hard as you can to break it.  If you succeed in breaking it, then you can see where to fix it.  If you fail, then you are more confident of the idea.)

After posting TMTV in the spring of 2007, that process exploded.  Instead of having 30 people at a time trying to find weak spots in what I was saying, I had millions.  Ho-lee cow . . . That's part of why I'm so proud of What's the Worst That Can Happen.  It's been pruned and polished by the tumult of debate.  As a result it contains way, way, way better ideas than my first attempt at solving the global warming debate with a little 2x2 grid.

Now that my proposals might reach an even larger audience, with even more brains looking for ways to break and improve them, it would be tragic to let that "crowd-sourcing" opportunity go by.  I'm told that I'm "totally Web 2.0."  And, while I'm not sure what that means, their tone indicates it's a compliment, so I'll take it.

I have no interest in continuing to be the point person on that process.  But I can at least provide a forum for others to take it up.  That's why I hope the central part of the website that will be used is the discussion forum.  I'm hoping to work myself out of a job in this debate, so that I can go back to being a father, and a husband, and a teacher.

To that end, I'm not just going to give you a place to do the debating.  I also want to pass along everything that I've got to offer--all the raw materials that might inform the debate--so that you can use them as grist for the mill in your own discussions, thinking, and actions.

So here are the main things you'll find on gregcraven.org:

• A forum for your questions, comments, brainstorms, assertions, critiques, suggestions, coordinated actions. This is where you work me out of my job as point person--both in coming to a conclusion, and to taking action once you have. This is where you change the world.
• Material that I developed for the book, but got cut for various reasons. (Mostly space reasons, though some was cut because it was too dry or convoluted for the general audience.)
• "Landing spots" for times in the book when the reader is directed to come to gregcraven.org and share their conclusions, get information, or challenge what say.
• Links to the best web resources that I (and the research crew who helped me at the manpollo.org site) have found while we researched the book.
• A chance to sign up for my email list, if you want to be kept posted of developments. Won't you want to be alerted right away if I change my own conclusion? or someone convinces me the methods I propose in the book are shown to be invalid? or the tipping point is reached on action and you have a chance to get in on the ground floor? or I just come up with a fun new explosion to share in a video? (Let's do keep perspective, after all.)
• A place to order the book and the DVD from the author. The regular booksellers handle the details, it's the same cost and effort to you, and it helps out the family finances.
• You know . . . other stuff. Poke around.