Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Reason: Betting on Climate Change: It's time to put up or shut up

Reason: Betting on Climate Change: It's time to put up or shut up

This story has now popped up again in "Reason", which is where it all started. The article is not too unreasonable (given its location), but it tries to take a sceptic viewpoint which results in it overstepping the mark in a few places.

Ron Bailey refers to me as
people like Annan, who are convinced by climate model projections that average global temperatures should be increasing about 0.3C per decade
but in fact the temperature rise in the near future is expected to be about 0.1-0.2 per decade - from the IPCC TAR:
anthropogenic warming is likely to lie in the range of 0.1 to 0.2°C per decade over the next few decades
It's particularly disappointing that he uses the invented 0.3C figure since I emailed him with this quote from the IPCC only yesterday (in reply to his email asking about the Lindzen non-bet)! Moreover, I'm already betting on a temperature rise of less than 0.26C per decade.

It seems like he to wants to bid up the market (invent a straw-man) so as to get a better deal. Wonder why that could be?

Ron Bailey also omits to mention the large (and steadily increasing) number of septics who have refused the bet completely. He even suggests that Pat Michaels could pony up for the sceptics. Pat Michaels has already ducked the challenge!

Still, all publicity is good publicity, right? I'm certainly not complaining about his headline.

3 comments:

William M. Connolley said...

I wonder why Reason is giving this publicity, since it can only end in tears for "their side".

I rather dislike his ending: which amounts to, we won't bother with this unless someone famous takes it up, you're just a pleb.

BTW, do you know about the Bahner prediction Reason mentions?

Brian said...

I emailed the Reason article author that Schneider has offerred a global warming bet, one of the first offers I know of:

http://www.stanford.edu/group/CCB/Pubs/Ecofablesdocs/thebet.htm

Brian said...

Longbets.org, where Bahner makes his bet offer that temperatures will increase by less than 1.94 degrees in 2100, is finally working again (I've had many problems accessing their website in the past). Bahner's offer is here:

http://www.longbets.org/180

I think I'm interested in a bet that will be decided before 2100.