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."

Comments

Re:Silliness

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

No, some people on the sinking boat are still betting on wether or not the boat is sinking.

That was pretty stupid.

[BStroms]

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.

Re:That was pretty stupid.

[Darinbob]

The problem I think is that the climate change skeptics don't think that way. They have supreme confidence that it's all a hoax, that the data is falsified, that it's a plot to undermine the economy, etc. So they make the bet with bravado, expecting the mainstream scientists to back down or look foolish. Anyone starting with an attitude of "oh ya, put your money where your mouth is" won't be the sort of person who's going to be inspecting the data very closely, analyzing the odds, choosing the best measurement methods, etc.

Re:Let's bet on something more useful

[Anonymous Coward]

It is forecasted that the Americans have a 100% chance of losing.

What Brian fails to realize

[Anonymous Coward]

If David loses he won't need his shirt. So the downside is limited.

Re:"Climate contrarians"

[gurps_npc]

What's going is we are trying really hard not to call you

Morons who don't understand basic math, record keeping, science, logic.

We tried climate skeptics, but you complained. So we moved to deniers and you complained again, like a little whiny Trump.

As for your references to what we call climate change, again, one of those terms is 50 year old reference, the rest are names YOU made up and insisted we use.

We can only bend over backwards to help you out so many times.

You asked about what the temperature is supposed to be. The answer to that is simple.

We are talking about a SMALL change - 2 degrees Celsius in the next century. That can have a huge impact. Because it is so small, most people don't notice it. It's not enough to be visible and you should not notice it. Note, the world has already experienced a 1 degree Celsius change over the past 100 years.

But 1 degree Celsius is real, easily measurable, and our best projections show it will be at LEAST 2 degrees in 100 more years, possibly as much as 5 degrees. Now, even 5 degrees won't be enough to stop snow from falling most places. But it will be enough to melt large portions of the ice on Greenland and Antarctica, rising sea level enough to flood most major costal cities, where most of the wealth in the world currently resides.

Re:"Climate contrarians"

[serviscope_minor]

Oh look: moron alert!

going from global cooling

You've latched on to an old thing that was reported in the popular press decades ago and never widely accepted by mainstream science. This identifies you as an idiot who clearly has a strong opinion but has not lifted a finger to find out the actual truth behind it.

to global warming

Global warming means the earth is getting hotter.

anthropomorphic global warming,

This means people are causing the earth to get hotter.

to climate change,

The earth warming will cause the climate to change.

How is that so hard to understand?

climate weirding

I'm pretty sure you just made that up or got it off someone's tumblr pages.

I'm still waiting for someone to tell me what the temperature is supposed to be.

No you're not.

Re:Completely fabricated nonsense

[SoftwareArtist]

No, they've actually done that 0 times. What they've often done, and continue to do, is try to find ways to remove sources of error from the data. That's called "calibration", and is an essential part of any measurement technology.

Ars Technica just published a very thorough article about this, describing all the different types of corrections and why they're needed. See http://arstechnica.com/science.... If you truly want to understand the subject, I highly recommend it. On the other hand, if you're just being a troll and don't care about the facts (I don't know whether you are or not--that's for you to decide), you obviously should ignore it.