Thursday, June 09, 2005

Betting Summary

To save people having to dredge through my blog and elsewhere for the "betting on climate change" stuff, I'll try to keep this article reasonably up-to-date as a set of links to relevant pages, both my own and those others have written.

Recent updates:
24/08/2005 The Bet hits the news-stands, first covered by Jim Giles in Nature and then David Adam in The Guardian.
7/07/2005 Some comments on the RC article and debate, and an update on the Bashkirtsev and Mashnich situation.
18/06/2005 The RealClimate article, plus Pielke and Stoat comments.


Me first of course :-)

Betting on Climate Change
An introduction, and the Lindzen bet.

Pat Michaels and Chip Knappenburger withdraw their previous offer.

Piers Corbyn's not interested.

Myron Ebell (challeged by George Monbiot).

Jaworowski disowns the solar cooling forecast.

Idso, Kininmonth and Mashnich all refuse to bet. Then Mashnich seems interested...maybe.

My first comments on Ron Bailey's article in "Reason".

Realclimate.org article, and my comments on the discussion that followed.

Bashkirtsev and Mashnich have agreed a bet!


Other related articles:

Ron Bailey's article in Reason, which in trying to be sceptical oversteps the mark in a few places. It still calls on the sceptics to "put up or shut up" though.

A brief mention on Chris Mooney's blog.

Brian Schmidt on "Backseat Driving" has comments here and here. He also amended Lindzen's Wikipedia page to mention the non-bet.

I even rate a brief mention on William Connolley's world famous mustelid farming site, in particular here, here and here (oh, and my real work too).

Roger Pielke Jr. has this article on his blog. He also wrote this article a few years ago, which talks about prediction markets more generally.

The Nature article that broke the story of my bet with Bashkirtsev and Mashnich. An article in The Guardian followed the next day. It's been mentioned in several blogs, including Slashdot, Deltoid, Marginal Revolution, Educated Guesswork, Technology Review, Reason, Backseat Driving.


I've also got a bet with Joe Romm related to sea ice. And another on nearer-term temperature change with David Whitehouse.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

James- This is really great stuff. I will discuss this over on our blog next week. Meantime, have a look at this:

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/zine/archives/31/editorial.html

coby said...

James, have you tried Bob "warming stopped in 1998" Carter?

James Annan said...

Coby,

Brian already tried him.

Hank Roberts said...

From Hank Roberts---

I trust you've heard by now about this advertising/marketing expert at Wharton? He wants a bet on ten specified weather station temperature averages over ten years, with Al Gore. I guess Lord Whatsisname's handed off to him for now.

http://theclimatebet.com/2007/07/06/how-would-you-respond/#more-20

My reply there is pending moderation; I'm sure you can do better! I wrote:

Jul 8th, 2007 at 11:44 am (must be UT)

Seems a ten year trend would be a 50:50 bet, even if the entire data set were used. Small signal in a noisy environment:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2007/05/the_significance_of_5_year_tre.php

The professor seems to be confusing weather and climate. Nobody claims to be able to make ten year weather forecasts, anywhere.

He’s challenging whether any “global climate model” can make pinpoint ten year weather predictions. What part of “global” isn’t understood here?

He’s asking people to focus (for ten years) on only ten instruments, throwing out virtually all the information available, asking to bet only a tiny subset of the available information.

A very small signal will be lost in the annual variability. This is well known in climate history; see note 33 here: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/20ctrend.htm#N_33_

Only with a very large collection of data can a small signal be reliably detected in a noisy environment, as mentioned here for example:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/07/05/the-power-of-large-numbers/

As marketing this is very clever.

James Annan said...

Hank,

I've already covered that here.

Wondering Aloud said...

Well Steve Milloy still has a mighty fine offer over at Junkscience.com,

I don't understand Richard Lindzen backing down, looks like he made a mistake. Perhaps because of the term significant? 10 yeahs is too short for that, though that never stopped James Hanson.

It looks like he is offering exactly what you want and you don't need to even put up your own money.

skanky said...

More from that esteemed journal, The Sun:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/columnists/kelvin_mackenzie/article578227.ece

Do you think he's confident enough to bet money?

James Annan said...

Let us know how you get on with him :-)

skanky said...

TBH I expect he'd just bluster in a typically tabloid way.

I can only afford to do bets where the money's not upfront - done a couple with mates on trust, though. Somehow I doubt McKenzie would go for one of those, but I've emailed him. I'll post here if I get a response.

Unknown said...

“At this point we can’t say for sure that this is the result of global warming, but I think it is,” says Caldeira. “I would bet that the trend in the jet streams’ positions will continue. It is something I’d put my money on.”

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-04/ci-cjs041608.php

Unknown said...

dang, where'd _that_ spewdonym come from? some old file from the early Blogger.

c'est moi -- Hank Roberts

crandles said...

I think you may have lost your status as the climate bettor with largest amount at stake.

Stoat now appears to have a $10,000 dollar bet on arctic sea ice with Rob Dekker.
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2011/05/sea_ice_part_2.php#comments

Or there is me with approaching $3000 won and $5000 currently at stake on short term bets, I think I must have staked over $10,000 in total.

Of course, I prefer the measure of amounts won ;)

Desertphile said...

I have been tracking wagers on the subject of climate change. Thank you for your list. I have it on warmwagers.org and I have my own $1,000 wager listed.