Posted on 08/19/2005 10:37:30 AM PDT by Irontank
Two climate change sceptics, who believe the dangers of global warming are overstated, have put their money where their mouth is and bet $10,000 that the planet will cool over the next decade. The Russian solar physicists Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev have agreed the wager with a British climate expert, James Annan.
The pair, based in Irkutsk, at the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics, believe that global temperatures are driven more by changes in the sun's activity than by the emission of greenhouse gases. They say the Earth warms and cools in response to changes in the number and size of sunspots. Most mainstream scientists dismiss the idea, but as the sun is expected to enter a less active phase over the next few decades the Russian duo are confident they will see a drop in global temperatures.
Dr Annan, who works on the Japanese Earth Simulator supercomputer, in Yokohama, said: "There isn't much money in climate science and I'm still looking for that gold watch at retirement. A pay-off would be a nice top-up to my pension." 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.
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.
The bet is the latest in an increasingly popular field of scientific wagers, and comes after a string of climate change sceptics have refused challenges to back their controversial ideas with cash.
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 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.
Most climate change sceptics dispute the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which suggest that human activity will drive global temperatures up by between 1.4C and 5.8C by the end of the century.
Others, such as the Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg, argue that, although global warming is real, there is little we can do to prevent it and that we would be better off trying to adapt to living in an altered climate.
Dr Annan said bets like the one he made with the Russian sceptics are one way to confront the ideas. He also suggests setting up a financial-style futures market to allow those with critical stakes in the outcome of climate change to gamble on predictions and hedge against future risk.
"Betting on sea level rise would have a very real relevance to Pacific islanders," he said. "By betting on rapid sea-level rise, they would either be able to stay in their homes at the cost of losing the bet if sea level rise was slow, or would win the bet and have money to pay for sea defences or relocation if sea level rise was rapid."
Similar agricultural commodity markets already allow farmers to hedge against bad weather that ruins harvests.
This just goes to prove that the scientists really dont know what is going on... they just get paid to use big words and confuse people.
For instance, if melting ice shelfs result in more North Atlantic rainfall, the large convection currents in the ocean that drive the Gulf Stream could be sufficiently diluted - that would result in parts of the world getting considerably colder... I'll spot you twenty...
I once ask people what heats up the earth more. Ozone, emissions from cars, sun, forest fires. The sun came up last.
A cooler world will be touted as proof of global warming.
Oh and here's my theory...
Weather is a cyclic process. Worst case scenario, the earth warms up and the ice caps melt, regardless of human interaction; its just nature's way of obtaining equilibrium. Once the caps melt, the temperatures rise and as such the ocean currents cease to move, since there is no longer a "hot to cold" energy flow. Since this happens areas of the earth that get less sunlight, become colder once again and the ice caps grow, dropping the temperature of the earth. It goes on and on...
... Just my theory.
Not sure how to interpret the scientists' confidence of this.
He seems to be betting on decline in Sterling vs. the Greenback as well.
"But where are the snows of yesteryear?" - Francois Villon, 15th Century
Your theory is correct. The climate cycles about every 10-20,000 years on a minor scale as cxompared to millions of years but relative to us it is large, that fact comes from ice core samples in Antartca and Peru.
All this warming bunk makes me tired, it is a cycle!!!
I have offered similar bets to global warmers. They usually don't take it.
The global warming crowd claim that every scientist agrees that human caused global warming is a hard fact.
A million to one odds should be perfectly acceptable.
A true environmentalist would say that if its cooler its because man is doing it, and if its warmer, then its man doing it. Doesn't matter.
The sunspot idea would settle an awful lot of questions and start to really worry people more. If you show that this is true, a severe sunspot period or a sever lack of sunspot period would totally shake the media and cause daily worries. Just put yourself in the position of knowing that the next 40 years will be 12 degrees cooler than normal, and you can't change a dang thing about that (even the environment). And just look at all of the environmentalists that would be out of work and unable to appear on NPR or CNN. They would have to get real work at Denny's or Wal-Mart.
It is patently false to say that most mainstream scientists dismiss the idea. It is a correlation so simple that a first year chemistry student can demonstrate it.
I've done the correlation back to about 1880 and the correlation is good to a confidence level of 0.001 or so. [Don't ask for the data; I did it years ago, and the calc was lost over several moves - just trust me :)].
The only question remaining is, does rising global temperature cause the number of sunspots to increase, or vice versa.
Another hint, if someone wants to redo the correlation: the correlation r2 maximized when the global temperature used was three years after the sunspot measurement. What is the time for complete atmospheric mixing?
So you think we should have turned to poets, journalists and politicians to develop transistors, A-Bombs and the Salk vacine?
When scientists speak within the fields of their expertise and experience, they have far more insight and knowledge than the layman. When they speak on other matters, they may be well informed, intelligent people and yet have no particular knowledge of what they are talking about.
The classical example is Simon Newcombe, a great Nineteenth Century Canadian-American astronomer (only to the extent that New Foundland, which was an independent country until 1928 is part of Canada) whose theory of lunar ephemeris is the basis for the current definition of the second, made the disasterous prediction in late 1903 that "Man will never fly."
They could prove the relevance and assumptions of their computer models by "predicting" the past.
We know a lot more about the past than we do of the future.
I remember in the seventies the predictions were that the Ice age would return.
I deeply suspect that the suns varying energy output is the dominating factor. Humans contribute, but I have a hard time accepting that it is the dominant factor on a global scale. Did humans make it a little warmer then normal during a normal warming up period due to the sun? contributing to the trend? possibly. Did humans cause the whole trend? Seriously doubt it.
Human contributions are probably a much smaller part of the equation then massive volcanic activity in the past has been.
Much ado about nothing in the long run Im sure. Fossil fuels will be replaced one day rendering the whole arguement moot. A time scale of millenia for these things to play out and humans think they are the determining factor in all of it. LOL
Is that how they spell skeptic in the UK?
Don't think I'd engage in any business transaction with someone named "Annan" - he'd either make sure his sons got paid off or if he lost he'd say the US had to pay.
On another topic, where do volcanos fit in all of this. Seems to me if the earth is getting warmer why couldn't it just be to the fact that we haven't had a Krakatoa-like explosion in a while.
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