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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."
an even bet
What are the odds on the election?
That is like betting on how long it is going to take the Titanic to sink, while you are ON the Titanic.
Now, if only we can get conservative pundits (Hannity, Rush, O'Reilly, etc ...) to bet their lives.
I guess trying to associate those who don't accept the concept (or claimed extent) of man made global warming with the holocaust with the term 'deniers' wasn't working... a new term has been coined.
Granted, this is from the same group who has had a hard time naming the issue, going from global cooling, to global warming, anthropomorphic global warming, to climate change, to climate weirding and seemingly back to climate change.
Rather than arguments as to what we think the weather will be today, tomorrow or in the following decades... I'm still waiting for someone to tell me what the temperature is supposed to be.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Yeah, totally made a killing when I bet that the Chiefs would take out the Patriots last week.
All I had to do was apply a few post-game corrections to the score and the money just flowed right in.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
...are soon parted.
"War makes me sad." - Me
I don't know about the others, but I can see at least with Bastardi's Wager, they went with satellite data. That proved to be wise in retrospect. As regardless of which you use, lower troposphere satellite data has shown much less warning than the land/sea models used by the NOAA and the like. For them, 2015 was the third warmest year, and 2010 and champion 1998.
To actually make wagers expecting cooling seems extreme. Why not simply bet that warming would come in far short of the predictions mainstream scientists were putting out at the time? Maybe they couldn't get anyone to bite on those terms, maybe they were just that cocky, or most likely, they just wanted the media from putting money up predicting cooling.
Whatever the reason, if they'd wagered on more sane "you're models show too much warming" terms, they could have made some good money.
Well, at least losing the shirt will make it easier to withstand the higher temperatures.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
The subject may say it all . . . While the right to say "I told you so" is nice, it sucks to be in the situation to say it.
www.wavefront-av.com
If David loses he won't need his shirt. So the downside is limited.
I bet 9/10 times you will loose. It is real weird but those referees have an uncanny ability to predict the outcome of a fight on any given night. This is especially true if there is money involved. Perhaps some smart individual could get a grant from the NSF to study this and determine scientifically if there is a correlation.
This is what science is all about. 1/2 the time spent writing grant proposals to the NSF. 1/2 the time laughing at anyone who dares to question them. You can't question science. Science is objective and all scientificy and shit.
What is this the 5th time they've adjust the raw data to fit the politically correct narrative of MSM?
Torture the data long enough and it'll eventually submit to anyone's model...apparently.
It depends which temperature record you are using. The Satellite records are better quality, as they cover the entire Earth evenly with a single instrument, all measurements taken at the same time of day using the same method, and so on. So there is nothing to adjust. Using any combination of those high-quality records, 2015 is about the 3rd warmest year they have seen, behind the previous El Nino year of 1994, IMS. So don't lose sight of the real long-term trend, which may still be downward. Picking the highest year of this cycle isn't a very good comparison.
"It's the logarithm of CO2, lagged by 14 years and scaled appropriately. [...] The 14-year lag was determined empirically; that's the lag needed to maximize the correlation between ln(CO2) and temperature."
Ridiculously contrived. If you're allowed to shift the x-axis and scale the y-axis you can make any two graphs correlate.
Correlation isn't causation and modeled data is not science.
Haven't we all seen the glacial core samples that show the earth warming and cooling all by itself over it's recent lifespan (millions of years)? And that we currently fit right into one of those peaks. Which would suggest it's all a natural occurrence?
Don't get me wrong I'm all for cutting down, and out, pollution of all kinds. But I still haven't seen any evidence of man-made global warming. Just data on a warming planet and a whole bunch of post hoc ergo propter hoc rhetoric which just so happens to further consolidate money and power into their hands..
It would not have been wise to bet that temperatures would go up, and base the results on information which can be adjusted to give a specific result.
Well it's not like he's going to need a shirt the way the temperatures keep going.
...because betting is a tax on bullshit. If anything needs to be taxed in this country, it's bullshit.
That said, it doesn't look like anyone has changed their minds over these bets. Even the losers are ignoring the holes in their pockets. I guess we need more bets...
It's also interesting to know who is making the bets. I've always wondered who genuinely disbelieves global warming and who claims to be a skeptic for political (or other) reasons. I'm guessing those that make large bets are sincere.
"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...' "
A major part of science is the ability to verify a theory by independently repeatable experiments and observations. Predicting the future is not "science". You can create a predictive model by retro-fitting current observations to past data, looking at trends and making certain assumptions, but it's still only a model. Such a model can be used, but it should never be "believed". That's the problem with the global warming *cough* "Climate Change" alarmists. They honestly think they KNOW what global temperatures are going to be over the next several decades based on their climate models. The same types of models from decades ago made all sorts of dire predictions that never came to fruition and the same is true of today's models.
Of course it's getting warmer, we're still coming out of an ice age. The question isn't whether it's getting warmer or not, it's whether man is accelerating it.
The bet is rigged. It's like betting the trainer that the horse will can't lose. All the trainer has to do is "adjust" the horse feed.
Climate change is a political statement not a scientific statement with sigma 5.
The specifics of it relies on ditching satellite data, and balloon data gathered at least twice a day which shows temperatures 1km up and above where the air has had a chance to mix to give temperature and CO2 readings which show nothing has changed.
http://www.weatheraction.com/
A lot of the scientists I know are buying the S&P 500 index minus fossil fuels ETF. It's a bet that people will continue to deny reality and it makes it so you take out the overvalued fossil fuels and replace them with the higher performing Near Dogs Of The Dow.
Is that a bet? Nah, it's our retirement.
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everyday...Redefine conflicts that bought the farm... be fun. It used posts on Usenet are gawKer At most Again. There are more grandiose steadily fucking 40,000 coming wall: *BSD faces a poor dead last Distro Nis done Here Fact: *BSD is dying Faster chip
What is really going to drive the reality of climate change home will be disaster insurance premiums. People and companies in danger of coastal flooding as sea levels rise will have to pay higher and higher premiums or just give up and move to higher ground. Property values will decline or coastal cities will have to build infastructure at great expense (turn the Golden Gate Bridge into the Golden Gate Dam anyone?). And that is not to mention other effects of climate change, such as prolonged droughts.
Gee, I wonder how honest these people are. They make a bet and then do everything in their power to win it regardless of the truth. Mainstream media is a biased joke and to paraphrase Ben Franklin, the best educated people are those that don't read the newspaper,(or watch the mainstream media).
I don't care about the coastal cities and an extra few degrees will do us good. Look at the Pax Romana. After all, we are all just playing for time before the next ice age. Which is late anyway....
You'd have to be crazy not to buy fossil fuels. Unless someone comes out with a miracle energy source (cold fusion or something) then fossil fuels will always go to the moon. They may temporarily slump as the oil barons kill off alternative energy competition but they will always go back up... Way, way up!
NASA and NOAA are fudging the number, i.e. land and ocean temperature records, to push UP the trend and win the prize by forgery.
Sad and true.
Did they use verified data? or data doctored by "climate change" scientists?
Computer models? You get out what you put in, and the majority of the temperature is caused by the sun spots, those computer models would only be right by luck. And lets not forget, all the "climate change" predictions have been wrong. Though the wrong projections have been ignored.
Stupid bet since you can't predict if the temp goes up or down over a given few years.
Earth has a ton of feedback systems. This is a bit like betting your internal temp will increase (to a meaningful degree) when you walk into a hot room. I would accept just about any bet where I win if the even doesn't happen or the feedback systems compensate, and I only lose if the event happens and the feedback systems don't compensate enough. Summary is wrong to credit being on the side of mainstream science. This is just probability.
betting on nearly anything is a gamble.
The fact that some people won a few bets on certain global warming predictions does nothing at all to offset all the opposite predictions the AG advocates have made that were wrong and would have cost THEM money had they put any on the line.
Manhattan was not under water in the summer of 2015 as predicted
The north pole was not ice free in the summer of 2015 as predicted
Presidential science adviser Holdren is famous for having lost a bet predicting the global depletion of many raw materials (which he bet we'd run out of decades ago)
Even the related catastophism prediction of "peak oil" has been turned into a joke with the current global glut of oil
Anybody betting EITHER way on any controversial issue involving future events and conditions is perfectly capable of losing the bet.
“It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” - Yogi Berra
Which is why they renamed it 'climate change', which is MEANINGLESS, yet always meant to be taken to mean 'catastrophic man-made global warming'.
What a bunch of liars the 'climate scientists' are.
www.climatedepot.com
www.wattsupwiththat.com
Except for the fact that in the 1970s mainstream scientists were predicting a resumption of glaciation. Then they changed to global warming. Next year after el-nino is done and la-nina kicks in the planet will show cooling so all bets to be settled after 2017 will have winners on the cooling side. This el-nino has lead to a lot of bets being settled in favour of warmer bets. Making bets on short term windows like 5 years is kind of silly.You expose yourself to fluctuations both ways caused by the el-nino/la-nina cycles.
That doesn't mean that CO2 is controlling the climate. In case you missed it, the largest effect on short term climate is the el-nino/la-nina and the long term is regulated by the PDO/AMO and solar cycles.
It would be interesting to see what temperature dataset the bets were based on. The US CRN, RSS & UAH all show 2015 as 3rd warmest in the instrumental record (~150 years).
Will always be lost.
The variation caused by Maunder minima is measurable but too small to push things around much.
In particular it's not enough to account for the little ice age (which was regional anyway, not global). Current thinking is that it was mostly caused by volcanic eruptions but there's a possibility that gulf stream disturbances triggered by northwest atlantic freshwater incursions might have come into play.
A Maunder minimum at the moment would gain some extra years delay dealing with global warming but the reality is that the 2 degree target is already blown and we're pretty much fucked.
Apart from the sea level rises (which take decades to be noticed) a more pressing issue is that almost every CO2 spike in the geological record has an accompanying global anoxic oceanic event (the last one is what gave us most of the oil fields being exploited) and an accompanying dieoff of large terrestrial/aquatic animals. It's hard to put the timings together on "thousands" let alone "hundreds" of years from fossils so it's hard to tell how close those events have happened in the past, but there're already indications of deepwater dead zones starting to spread.
It may well be that sea level rises won't matter because there won't be enough people left around to notice them.
I agree, whale oil and kerosene will always power America!
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