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Climatologists Wager on Global Warming
coflow writes "The Guardian is carrying a story about a $10,000 bet that a pair of Russian scientists have entered with British climate expert James Annan. According to the article, the Russians believe the world will be cooler in 10 years. "If the temperature drops Dr Annan will stump up the $10,000 (now equivalent to about £5,800) in 2018. If the Earth continues to warm, the money will go the other way.""
According to the article, the Russians believe the world will be cooler in 10 years.
Unfortunately, $9,999 will have gone towards building a giant air conditioner in the middle of Moscow.
Obviously inspired by the 10-year Julian Simon/Paul Ehrlich wager of 1980.M Simon had Ehrlich choose five of several commodity metals. Ehrlich chose 5 metals: copper, chrome, nickel, tin, and tungsten. Simon bet that their prices would go down. Ehrlich bet they would go up. Simon won.
"To decide who wins the bet, the scientists have agreed to compare the average global surface temperature recorded by a US climate centre between 1998 and 2003, with temperatures they will record between 2012 and 2017"
/., not like anyone would listen anyway...
I'd say to RTFA next time, but this is
Scientists who stand firm on the belief that humans are causing global warming, have been involved in several bet-challenges with skeptics. Here's how two of them panned out:
"Dr Annan first challenged Richard Lindzen, a meteorologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is dubious about the extent of human activity influencing the climate. Professor Lindzen had been willing to bet that global temperatures would drop over the next 20 years.
No bet was agreed on that; Dr Annan said Prof Lindzen wanted odds of 50-1 against falling temperatures, so would win $10,000 if the Earth cooled but pay out only £200 if it warmed. Seven other prominent climate change sceptics also failed to agree betting terms."- In other words, Lindzen made it so it wasn't a fair bet. He poisoned the wager.
"In May, during BBC Radio 4's Today programme, the environmental activist and Guardian columnist George Monbiot challenged Myron Ebell, a climate sceptic at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in Washington DC, to a £5,000 bet. Mr Ebell declined, saying he had four children to put through university and did not want to take risks."- In other words, Monbiot flat out chickened out.
The thing is, what happens if (by a miracle) enough nations enact policies that cause lower greenhouse gas emissions and global warming stops? Then who wins?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Ah, thanks for settling this one for us. If they only would have talked w/ you before they made their bet they could have saved themselves $10,000.
This type of "betting" has been going on for a while now at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Weather futures lets companies and traders buy and sell the risk of high or low temperatures For example a utility company might fear that it will incur high costs if the summer weather is too hot and a softdrink maker might fear that the summer weather will be too cold. These parties can agree to trade a weather future contract that profits the utility if the weather is hot (offsetting the extras costs) and pays the drink maker if the weather is cold (offseting the lost sales). Both sides reduce their own risks. Agriculture and energy traders can also use weather futures to hedge or correct for weather-related price changes in commodities to profit from non-weather-related effects.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Pretty soon Earth is chock full of sunbeams...their rotting corpses heating our atmosphere.
Fortunately our handsomest politicians came up with a cheap, last minute way to combat global warming.
Ever since 2063 we drop a giant ice cube into the ocean every now and then.
Of course, since the greenhouse gases are still building up, it takes more and more ice each time.
Thus solving the problem once and for all.
Each processor would proceed sequentially as if it had been better for them not to rise against Saul.
We *are* releasing a ton of gasses, much more than can be reabsorbed, and two giant economies, india and china, are just the past few years really bumping up the volume on what they burn.
So combine that with the aforementioned geophysical realities, and it looks like more warming coming to me. How long it will last I don't know because of political wildcards. All you can do is guess, but there's only enough oil for some countries to have a robust middle class, not enough for all nations. Anyone can do the math there, it's not that hidden or weird or debateable any longer. There is x-amount projected global demand, with y amount proven reserves/refinery capacity, etc. They aren't the same number and x is a lot larger. That and other strategic minerals, etc. We just *may* have a tremendous global warfare period over natural resources and availability (some contend it has started already),and if this happens, the amount of fires started (call them megafires, as in regional sized) and resultant release of even more gasses plus extra heat that will get trapped WILL be catastrophic. and large wars have started over much less than large nations economic survival.
I think it pays to remember that "leaders" in these various very large nations by and large tend to be *quite mad*. I am pointing in all directions right now, no favorites. You cannot predict what they might do or how things might spiral out of control.
I tend to think at best, just for a SWAG, we have to go on past planetary history. We usually wind up with major wars fought by major powers with whatever the major weapons of that time period were. It has eventually always happened. I see nothing that convinces me todays humans are any better than yesterdays humans in that regard. So the combination of lame hoomannz and natural cyclical warming trends should indicate for the next generation or more we will have _more warming_.
Do you mean the pro-warming scientists or the anti-warming scientists?
Grants from the Sierra Club spend just as well as grants from Exxon, and carry the same risk of biasing a scientist to report what he thinks his patron wants to hear.
I'd be interested in an analysis of the source of funds for climate scientists. How much is coming from the evil corporations, how much from scaremongering environmentalists, and how much from supposedly apolitical government agencies?
Also, you must not underestimate the power of peer review and tenure decisions to bias scientific research. The academic world is tough on people who undermine articles of "progressive" faith.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
The problem is that we don't know what it is that we ought to be watching out for (we only have trends), and we don't know what the risks are (because there are no scientific results we can draw on in living memory). So, we estimate.
The risk of something (anything) happening is not the probability of it happening, it's the probability of the event happening, multiplied by the consequences. We do have a fairly well-agreed definition of the consequences - there are many ice-cores, strata readings, magnetic effects etc. that show the earth can hit a 'tipping point', and snap to a new environmental mode - in some cases in as little as 50 years. Scientists on both sides of the debate agree with the tipping-point hypothesis, what is not agreed then is the probability of it happening. This is the contention.
I don't know of any extreme of weather where man battles and wins. The destructive power of nature is truly awesome - in the traditional rather than the watered-down Californian meaning. In my opinion, if there is doubt over the probabilities, we ought to be minimising the risk *anyway*, and that means trying to combat global warming (in as much as we are capable of it). Burying our head in the sands is sort of like sitting, waiting for the tidal wave to hit, rather than running to high-ground to try and stay alive. And just as foolish.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
The worst thing about the Kyoto protocol is the harm it could cause if it all went wrong. We have so much to loose because of it.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
That might be because that is in fact the consesnus of a majority of published peer reviewed papers in the ltterature.
It's pretty clear that the evidence is there - if you have an open mind.
I have no trouble accepting that carbon emissions could cause warming, however the evidence isn't there yet.
Just what would you require as evidence - a personal note from God? I can list some of the studies indicating a link, but I honestly doubt I could ever convince you...
I have several friends in climatology, geology and astronomy who shake their heads everytime a new panic prediction is released.
And I have many friends in geology and climatology, and I am an astronomer, and I have to say that while the "panic announcements" may not be very likely, I think some of them are more likely than the scenarios presented by the contrarians. Case in point - the West Antarctic ice sheet may not melt this decade, but some time in the next century (given no limits on CO2) it will melt. When it does, that's 10 meters of sea level rise right there. I'll probably be dead, but my children might not be.
They're scientists who see multiple cause for global warming, man being only one of them.
Man being the one we can control, and the largest one, at the present time.
The "better something than nothing" crowd loses traction with me when it comes to Kyoto. It's just a bad plan.
No, be honest. You just spent most of your post arguing against human responsibility for GW; you can't seriously claim that you just have a problem with how Kyoto implements greenhouse reductions, and that you'd support some other mechanism. I didn't hear you say "GW is real, but we should go with voluntary reductions" or something to that effect. You claim that GW is either due to natural causes, or just not real.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
Why do people keep saying things like this? There are only 2 countries in the UN that refuse to join the Kyoto Protocol: the US and Australia.
Yes, the the protocol imposes different targets on different countries, but this is as you'd expect. For example, you would never expect India, which puts out one-fifth of the CO2 of the US despite having 3.6 times the population, to cut its emissions by the same percentage. Ditto China, which puts out 40% less CO2 than the US, but has 4.4 times more people. And Brazil! Brazil has 62% of the US's population, and 5% of the CO2 emissions. Look for yourself.
You could more plausibly argue the opposite: that every country should be allowed to emit, say, 20 tons of CO2 per capita. That sounds fair. But that would mean allowing massive increases by every undeveloped country, while imposing cuts on the US. Because developed countries are responsible for many times more per-capita emissions than undeveloped ones.
The Kyoto Protocol targets aren't especially difficult anyway. The US target was a 7% decrease over 20 years. That's 0.35% p.a. And less than the reduction target accepted by the European Union (8%). The idea, obviously, is not to make countries shut down important industries, but to encourage the use of cleaner technologies where they are appropriate. To begin taking steps in the right direction.
But Republicans apparently believe that the environment is nothing more than an infinitely exploitable resource, so while 153 countries do their part, the world's #1 greenhouse gas polluter continues to belch out 25% of the world's CO2.
I should buy some cement.
While there are some isues with that graph, lets not examine those for a moment. Lets look at some of that data. A smaller portion of the whole.
If you will look at the date of ~1940 until ~1975. You will not something. The temperature during that time actually drops from a high in the late 30s until approximately the Oil Crisis of the 70s.
To give some context to this time. This period starts right about the time Hitler was invading Poland, and the entry of the world into WWII. During the beginning of this period, much of the world, including the US, was still agrarian. Few people owned cars, even fewer had ever ridden on an airplane. This is shortly after the rural electricification program ended, prior to this there were many people in the US who didn't have electricity or indoor toilets (In rural areas). As we entered WWII industry the world over soared, this was a period of the greatest increase in industrial output in all of Human history, dwarfing anything we have now. This continued throughout WWII, and then after (How are you going to keep them on the farm after they've seen gay Parie). It was during this time that two cars per household became common. People that had not flown on a plane were in the minority, not just here, but the world over. More importantly this wasn't the "efficient" and "clean" industry of today, recall the muscle cars of the 60's. Then energy efficiency wasn't even thought of. More importantly they didn't have the materials or technology to make efficient boilers or engines like we have today. It was during this period that we had the largest increase of greenhouse gasses.
And it was also during this time that the global climate dropped in temperature, enough so that Newsweek published the concerns of scientists that People were causing the problem of Global Cooling. http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/cooling1.pdf/.
As to the graph. This is the surface temperature record. One of the serious weakness of AGW (that is often glossed over) is that based on "Greenhouse theory" The atmosphere warms, warming the surface. What we see from direct measurement is that the surface is warming faster than the atmosphere, precluding that greenhouse warming is causing the surface temperature increase, and that a large portion of the heat increase can be attributed to larger land development, and the closeness of the sensors to developed areas, and less in rural, or in wilderness. And before someone posts any articles referencing the recent UAH MSU data that corrects for atmosphere warming by allowing for satellite drift. Keep in mind that that number, even in the most optimistic interpretations, still does not bring atmospheric warming up to the same level as surface temperatures, and based on greenhouse theory, atmospheric temperatures should be ~30% higher than surface. Even with the correction they are still below surface temperatures.
So a joint statment by 11 national academies of science (including the U.S.), or the IPCC doesn't represent a consensus? It's not just a matter of counting abstracts. Keep in mind you can never get every self-proclaimed scientist to agree on everything - so there will always be a few contrarian voices that you can dig up (with enough money), but the overwhelming majority of climate scientists hold the view that human greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
WOW, BRILLIANT!. You my friend are a genious!. You have thought of these things that no scientist ever even considered. Those scientists are obviously stupid and greedy. Too stupid to take into account things like the sun, loss of cloud cover and too greedy to be consider things like volcanoes and deepwater CO2. They are just riding around in their bentleys with their fat paychecks from the govt writing about how global warming is caused by human activity.
You should be a scientist man. Truly you are able to think of things not one of climatologists has ever thought of.
evil is as evil does
If you wanted to knock the American economy down a peg or two then convincing us that Kyoto is a good idea is a good way to do it.
Another good way to do it would be to leave America largely dependent on oil from Saudi Arabia, a country which may suffer a political and economic implosion any day now. Or to continue to pour money into that country when there is no doubt that a lot of that money is being used to fund the very people who are trying to kill you.
Global warming isn't the only reason to get off oil. If Kyoto will have that much of an impact on the economy, it's a good sign that something is already very wrong.
Nuclear power, by the way, has experienced something of a renaissance with environmentalists, especially with recent innovations like the pebble bed reactor which are far more resistant to meltdown. The problem with nuclear reactors is that they're expensive.
As for China, they aren't likely to do anything as long as their disregard for the environment and their labour gives them a competitive advantage. Because it isn't like a totalitarian regime is going to listen to the environmentalist lobby--they'll do whatever they can get away with. The only way to put pressure on them is to stop buying their goods. To spell it out for you, we would have to stop buying goods simply on the basis of cheap prices, and start considering the hidden costs. But too many large corporations cut costs by buying from countries that pay their people almost nothing and disregard the environment (Mexico is another example,) and the government looks the other way.
So yeah, that's a good question: why isn't anyone pressuring the Chinese to clean up their neighborhood?
We all know about global warming, but there is also the theory of "global dimming", which been backed up by extensive research. The global dimming theory says that the true extent of global warming is being masked by pollution particles, which block out UV rays and therefore prevents them from warming the planet. The cruel irony is that if we move to a %100 renewable, non-pulluting energy existance, these UV blocking particles will dissipate back to natural levels, thus allowing more UV to bounce around in the greenhouse, and exposing us to the full effect of global warming!
The greenhouse particles exist for greater than 100 years, meaning the only solution would be to remove both the greenhouse particles and the UV blocking particles, how that may be achieved is unclear.
Sky rocketing markets, wars over energy rights, mass unemployment and rioting as a result of that unemployment
Except that those prognostications are utterly wrong: a reduction in energy usage doesn't produce unemployment or result in wars or rioting. If anything at all, in increases employment, both in the development of more energy efficient technologies, and ultimately in the service sector (where automation is replaced with manual labor).
Yes we have a tremendous amount to lose if we're wrong.
No, we (as in "the people") only have to gain from lowered carbon emissions: we get a cleaner environment, less risk from global warming, reduced chance of conflict over energy, and more employment. Who stands to lose are the existing energy companies and manufacturers, who have a huge investment in old energy technologies and production methods; any change to the status quo threatens their business big time.
"You do realize that just because a majority of people believe one thing does not make it true, right?"
Your belief, and anyone else's belief is irrelevant to science in regards to a "scientific conclusion". Let me explain it to you historically with one of your own example, "At another, people thought atoms consisted of a proton with electrons orbiting around it."
This is not true, because it is inaccurate. No scientist thought or believed that atoms consisted of electrons orbiting atoms. It is more accurate to say that at one time, the best theory, which had the fewest weaknesses and was based upon empirical data and scientific methodology, was the model that electrons orbited protons. Yet even then, this theory was known to have weakeness, like the electron radiating because it was accelerating, but there was no better theory so this was the "scientific conclusion".
Now we physicists have gone even further, down to the level of quarks and leptons. The physics that describes this is "quantum field theory", and the model is called the "standard model". No scientist believes that atoms are made out of quarks and leptons becuase this believe is unnecessary. It is more accurate to say that scientists have concluded based upon empirical data and scientific methodology that the best theory with the fewest weaknesses is the standard model. Yet even now, without a better theory, this theory is known to have weakenesses. For instance, it can explain neither mass, nor neutrino oscillations, nor gravity.
One of the hottest topics in physics is the search for the next best model to describe the atom. Would physicist's be so eager to search for something they did not believe in? The answer is neither 'yes' or 'no', but rather 'belief is unnecessary in science to scientific conclusions'.
Similarly, no scientist believes in global warming. Their belief is irrelevant. It is more accurate to say that the best theory that describes the climate and the recent climate changes, is a climatological theory which includes the theory called "global warming", because this theory has the fewest weaknesses and is based upon scientific methodology and empirical data. To dispute this, you must show, using the scientific methodology of climatologist's, that there is a theory that better fits the empirical data and has fewer weakness than the previously prevailing theory, "global warming". Even though I am a physics graduate student in an accredited PhD program, I do not possess the scientific background that includes the scientific methodology and empirical data of the climatologists. Thus, I cannot dispute this. I will hazard a guess that neither can you, nor can 'certain politicians' (even if they right fancy books and news articles) nor anyone else who is not trained in the scientific methodology of the climatologists and their empirical data.
All you have is your beliefs, which you are free to have, so long as you are aware that they are both irrelevant and unnecesary to the scientific discussion of "scientific conclusions".
~Kevin
The problem with waiting for "real proof" is that by then it is too late. I hardly think that anyone would look back on us as stupid if we played it safe with the environment. Also, I think you are highly exagerating the consequences of environmentalism. There was a time when businesses thought that they could not get by without cheap slave/child labor. But eventually it was outlawed to no ill effect. It was the right thing to do and the economy adapted. Then again, maybe we just moved the slave/child labor overseas...
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death