Do you really believe in climate change? Gambling and global warming

[UATrewqaz]

An interesting thing I heard in the news recently. Some guy challenged Al Gore to a 10K wager (10k fight yo?) for charity regarding some of his climate change predictions.

The guy is a professor and the story is here (warning, fox news link, try not to go insane)
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,287045,00.html

And someone else pondered, with all these gambling websites out there where you can wager on crazy things (reality tv shows, American Idol, how many iPhones will be sold the first week, etc.) what if you put up lines on some of the global warming predictions?

Wouldn't such an exercise be pretty useful in determining whether or not the advocates of such predictions actually believe they will occur?

What sort of line would you want or need before committing alot of money? (I know it would depend on the particular predicition in question)

[natedogg]

try http://www.longbets.org/

natedogg

[adios]

I was in a bookstore today (Barnes & Noble) and saw Al Gore's book, An Inconvenient Truth, in the nature section of the book store. Thought it should have been in the politics section.

[Nielsio]

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Wouldn't such an exercise be pretty useful in determining whether or not the advocates of such predictions actually believe they will occur?

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Correct.

Another way of smelling the BS is looking at the consistency of what they are claiming and how they live their lives. For example: the major war parties should immediately cut all military spending to a bare minimum, if they also talk about how they want to help the environment.

[NewTeaBag]

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I was in a bookstore today (Barnes & Noble) and saw Al Gore's book, An Inconvenient Truth, in the nature section of the book store. Thought it should have been in the science fiction section.

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[wacki]

Funny, the climate scientists have been trying to get the skeptics to accept bets for years. They've even openly stated "if Exxon was smart they'd front the bets for the skeptics". Now that election season is heating up it will be interesting to see if there will be more of these. Also, if somebody is honestly willing to bet on climate change I know a lot of scientists that don't make a lot of money that are willing to gamble their life savings with a generous 2:1 odds for the skeptic.

EDIT: This guy is a professor of marketing. And from what I can tell he's not a member of the AGU which means he's probably clueless. It would be interesting to see if he could answer some basic questions on the science. I'm wondering if he simply based his conclusion off of an "expert systems" program.

When it comes to skeptics it seems that most of them come from the marketing or economics fields. A curious trend to say the least.

[wacki]

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Wouldn't such an exercise be pretty useful in determining whether or not the advocates of such predictions actually believe they will occur?

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Pretty much all of the leading skeptics (that actually have a relevant degree) have claimed that there will either be global cooling or some counter consensus variation in front of a camera or infront of Congress. Despite making proud claims that they will bet money they (skeptics with relevant degrees e.g. Lindzen, Gray, Michaels, etc) have all backed down when approached. When election season comes I fully expect some of them to change their mind. I expect the ones with the closest ties to Exxon, CEI, API, etc will be the first to switch. Either that or we will see some irrelevant professor of marketing or anthropology come out of nowhere and make bets. This election season will probably be the last election where the oil industry has a reasonable shot with their denial tactics.

[iron81]

What sorts of bets would be possible to test this theory over a reasonable time period (less than 30 years)?

[NickMPK]

If a politician actually bet money on the outcome of something he advocates (whether or not he has control over the outcome), he would be trivializing both himself and the issue he advocates in the mind of the general public.

To most people, gambling is at worst a sin and at best a petty leisure-time activity. Gore's reputation, which would be hurt by accepting a bet regardless of outcome, is far more valuable to him than any money he would risk.

[Jcrew]

One problem of making a workable bet is the nature of the skepticism. Hardcore skeptic believe the warming is close to 100% natural. Next are climate agnostics that believe that the science is too immature to make accurate predictions to make any policy adjustments based on them. The least skeptic skeptic believe that Co2 contributes to warming but not at dangerous levels. For anyone of them the AGW believers need to lay significant odds. Even against the hardcore skeptics, the odds would have to be around 5:1 for it to be reasonable for them to take. On the surface it may seem coin-flippish scenario given the "it is all natural" position, but it could be reasoned that whatever mechanism that is causing the recent warmth may still be in play.

Being a weak skeptic, I am willing to bet up to 1000$ that the average of the decade after 2015 will be cooler than the decade that precedes it if I was given 9:1 odds(which is around the confidence level that the latest IPCC summary feels that CO2 contributed to the majority of the warming).