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Mainstream Scientists Cashing In On Climate Wagers (reuters.com)
Layzej writes: Climate contrarians have long predicted imminent global cooling. A few have been willing to place wagers that mainstream scientists have been quick to accept. Often acceptance of the bet is followed by immediate retraction, as was the case when "Bastardi's Wager" was accepted by Joseph Romm or when Maurice Newman's $10,000 bet was accepted by physicist Brian Schmidt. In some cases, bets have been formalized and the terms of many of those wagers are coming to a close. It may not be surprising to learn that those who put their money on the side of mainstream science are the ones who are cashing in.
Reuters reports that British climate expert Chris Hope just won a 2,000 pound sterling ($2,830) wager made five years ago against two members of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, who had bet Hope that the Earth would be cooling by now. They also highlight a $10,000 bet made in 2005 between British climate modeler James Annan and two Russian solar physicists. The solar physicists had counted on waning solar output to halt warming. Annan will win if average global temperatures from 2013-17 are warmer than 2003-07. "Things are looking good for my bet," Annan said.
Keith Pickering reports on a series of three bets between Brian Schmidt and climate contrarian David Evans, who also believed that diminishing solar output would dominate the temperatures of the last decade and beyond. The wagers pay out in 2019, 2024, and 2029. Pickering concludes, "What Evans apparently doesn't realize is that because of the thermal inertia of the oceans, within narrow bounds we can already predict what global temperatures will be in 2019, 2024, and 2029. And David Evans is going to lose his shirt."
Reuters reports that British climate expert Chris Hope just won a 2,000 pound sterling ($2,830) wager made five years ago against two members of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, who had bet Hope that the Earth would be cooling by now. They also highlight a $10,000 bet made in 2005 between British climate modeler James Annan and two Russian solar physicists. The solar physicists had counted on waning solar output to halt warming. Annan will win if average global temperatures from 2013-17 are warmer than 2003-07. "Things are looking good for my bet," Annan said.
Keith Pickering reports on a series of three bets between Brian Schmidt and climate contrarian David Evans, who also believed that diminishing solar output would dominate the temperatures of the last decade and beyond. The wagers pay out in 2019, 2024, and 2029. Pickering concludes, "What Evans apparently doesn't realize is that because of the thermal inertia of the oceans, within narrow bounds we can already predict what global temperatures will be in 2019, 2024, and 2029. And David Evans is going to lose his shirt."
Your local temperature will be almost irrelevant. It could be warmer, it could even be colder. Even now, the atmosphere doesn't cool or warm the surface in a uniform fashion everywhere.
Adding 2 degrees to the entire system is adding energy to the whole world's climate. That could express itself by more energetic behavior which could generate locally colder temperatures in certain places and certainly much warmer temperatures in others.
In reality, you'll see low lying islands go underwater and also some coastal flooding due to rising sea levels because ice packs are big enough to have a global effect if they start melting even slightly faster. Bad news, but not the end of the world. Global warming doesn't mean we end up like Venus, it means we have a humanitarian crisis on our hands due to displaced persons and loss of coastal cities.
For that reason, I think we need to be less concerned about taking extreme measures for "stopping" AGW as much as we should be starting evacuation preparations for the point in the future where we need to get people out of there. In the meantime we'll be able to replace our carbon releasing power sources on a more attainable timeframe.
Humanitarian crisis? Initially sure. But in the end....
This will end up in war, a really really nasty one as those nations with surplus population being displaced look to take land and resources from others. There have been very few situations in human history where a large population was displaced that didn't end up in war.
> And you don't think mainstream scientist have absolute FAITH and conviction in their science?
No, they don't have absolute faith. That's why they have things called error bars that show the margins of error for any given results. That's why they often conclude with phrases like "further study is required". That's why there is an emphasis on reproducibility of results so that others can perform the same experiments to ensure that the study was done correctly.
The people who are the most skeptical about climate change tend to be the ones who haven't even looked at the evidence before claiming that it is all a hoax. No wonder the least skeptical are the scientists because they have actually looked at the overwhelming number of studies from all different scientific disciplines.
Remember, just because you simply "go with you gut feelings" on this subject doesn't mean that those whose job it is to study climate change unthinkingly believe that mankind is contributing to global warming. That is the mistake that the uneducated make; they assume that everyone else thinks along ideological lines like they do.