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Climate Change Contrarians Lose Big Betting Against Global Warming (theguardian.com)
Layzej writes: Two members of the Global Warming Policy Foundation academic advisory board have each lost [roughly $1,320 (1,000 British Pound)] betting that 2015 would not be warmer than 2008. The Guardian reports: "Between 2008 and 2015 there would be more than 0.1C of human-caused global warming, so for 2015 to be cooler would have required a huge La Nina event, or big volcanic eruption, or perhaps the contrarians were banking on human-caused global warming being wrong. Whatever their reasoning, it was a foolish bet to make. 2015 was a record-breaking hot year, about 0.32C hotter than 2008. It wasn't even close." The winner of the bet, economist Chris Hope, also discussed the possibility of implementing climate betting markets, and noted: "they could offer a financial incentive for people who disagree about the likelihood of climate change to carefully assess the risks, instead of just shouting their disagreement across the void. If we do nothing, all the signs are that dangerous climate change is one of the safest bets around."
Why would I make a bet with the same people who are adjusting the temperature readings? It'd be like if the other guy flipped a coin, but then refused to show you what side came up, and just assured you that you lost.
If climate isn't location dependent, why aren't people vacationing in Antarctica?
You're right about climate not being short term. The problem is they can't predict a damn thing a few years out and we need to be thinking and planning for thousands of years out, as well as looking millions of years back.
Doesn't anyone know that 2016 is a strong El Nino year? just like 2012 and 2008 The temperature variation this year is natural and has nothing to do with the CAGW theory. Anyone who doesn't know this and is trying to shakedown bet money should be tarred and feathered as a charlatan !
CAGW postulates that water vapor causes temperature rises as an enhanced effect over the known effect of CO2 (a logarithmic effect, where CO2 increases surface temperatures by 1.1 C per doubling of CO2). The computer simulations suggest that water vapor should increase temperatures by around 4 C. Yet the latest measurement of this (the 'Transient Climate Sensitivity') show the computer simulations don't match reality - mostly because they completely fail to model the complex water vapor processes in the atmosphere. Hence, this prediction of CAGW is falsified, and as data is collected it is making the Null Hypothesis more and more probably (that is, human emitted CO2 is not the dominant controlling factor in terrestrial global warming, which started around 1850 at the end of the Little Ice Age as solar magnetic activity started increasing again and this has an effect on cloud formation mediated by the solar wind interacting with cosmic rays).
Furthermore CAGW makes the specific prediction that the Lower Tropical Troposphere temperatures will increase faster than the Earth's surface temperatures - yet not only is this not seen, the opposite is seen by all measurements, including our most reliable ones, the RSS and UAH satellites (and corroborated by thousands of weather balloon samples). Again this falsifies the CAGW Hypothesis.
If you are a Slashdotter who is interested in the climate system, but did not know these predictions of CAGW and how the empirical evidence falsifies the hypothesis at this time, then you need to do a lot more homework.
Oh, and I'm willing to take on and bet anyone that the CAGW hypothesis will remain falsified, because the observational evidence (that is, reality) is showing that the computer simulations of climate which the IPCC made its predictions on are diverging further and further from reality. So I'm glad to take money from suckers who don't understand the science and still believe in the falsified hypothesis of CAGW.
I resent you calling me a "denier". That is not the language of science. That is the language of religion.
I'm part of the scientific method - I'd like explanations of why past climate change predictions have been incorrect, I'd like the current gaps in climate change predictions acknowledged, I'd like to keep the politics separate, etc. This is tough science - computer models are a pathetic substitute for controls and double blind studies.
I'm skeptical about everything.