Bets on global warming

Cherry picking on the weekend. From Marginal Revolution:

Inspired by Robin Hanson's work on betting markets, James Annan, a climate scientist, has been trying to get skeptics of global warming to put up or shut up, mostly with no success on either front.  A number of prominent skeptics refused to bet (perhaps having learnt from Paul Ehrlich's embarassment) or offered to bet only at very high odds in their favor (i.e. implicitly admitting that they thought the probability of global warming was high).  The failure to bet is telling and a nice reminder that even markets with no trades can tell you things of importance!

Finally, however, Annan has found some takers. ...

Read the rest here.

The resulting bet is for a payoff of $10,000 in 2018. If a risk free investment averages 3% for the next 13 years, the loser needs to put away $6809 today in order to cover the bet.

Comments

[Lee A. Arnold]

People referring to the Ehrlich-Simon bet on trends about resource scarcity, (made famous largely by the anti-science propaganda machine in order to infer that ecologists don't know what they are talking about,) never mention a second offer from Ehrlich and Steven Schneider (Stanford climatologist) to Simon, to bet on: global warming, agricultural soil, grain crop totals, overfishing, virgin tropical forests, species extinctions, human male sperm count, and a dozen other environmental indicators, plus the worsening distribution of income. The bet was to cover the period 1994 - 2004. Julian Simon refused to take that bet, although he continued to claim that "all trends" are positive.

Ehrlich is also often taken to task for his earlier prediction of enormous starvations totalling in the hundreds of millions --although it seems to me that is close to the total which has occurred since, and added-to every day.

[Tim Haab]

Damn, I got scooped. Now I have to cancel my Monday post.

[Tim Haab]

Just to piggyback on John's post, an article in The Guardian on Friday suggests that Annan (the bettor) would like to take this idea a step further:

"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."

Could markets really put pressure on science to improve climate cahnge predictions?

[joshua corning]

This does not compare to ehrlichs bet...it was well known that commodity metals go down in price as we get better at extracting them...a global warming skeptic does not know if the global temperature will rise or fall...they also think no one else knows that either..that said i will take 2:1 odds that the global tempreture will fall...also I will take 2:1 odds that the temperature will rise :)

[Eric H]

Simon also made a counter-bet: anything that was a measure of human well-being, not simply measures of the environment that may or may not have anything to do with our happiness. After all, people living in modern Phoenix have much better living standards than did people in more temperate climates 100 years ago, so it's hard to argue they are worse off because the air outside is warmer. Ehrlich et al declined Simon's offer to bet on human well-being, preferring to bet on questionably relevant "environmental indicators".

[joshua corning]

"Ehrlich is also often taken to task for his earlier prediction of enormous starvations totalling in the hundreds of millions --although it seems to me that is close to the total which has occurred since, and added-to every day."

This has to be responded to...yes millions of people have died of starvation since Ehrlichs bet...but it is not for lack of food. A prime example would be North Korea where well over a million people starved to death in the 90s becouse of communist policies...the same policies those on the extream enviornmental left support.

[Lee A. Arnold]

"it is not for lack of food." --I think this is not exactly correct. I seem to remember learning that most people who die of starvation are victims of drought, and/or war.

The combination is going on in Darfur right now.

(If global warming follows a typical complex-systems acceleration, drought could become more likely in some places. ...Highly conjectural, no doubt.)

(There are also lots more people who go to bed hungry, including even children in the United States. But let's not bring up the distribution of income.)

It should be noted that the Ehrlichs have admitted their error in the prediction of famines in the 1970's -- which did occur, although not as severely as they predicted. The Green Revolution crop yields increased beyond expectation and did not start to taper-off until more recently. Also, in some countries like India, their warnings stimulated extra efforts in food production and distribution.

And unexpectedly, but luckily for all of us, world population growth started to decelerate juust after their prediction -- although it will still double more quickly than ever before, before levelling-off around mid-century.

Paul and Anne Ehrlich are among the few scientists who will own-up publicly to having been wrong, and then go back to getting the advocacy right. (Quite refreshing, actually.) Because of this, they are among the very few people worth reading on these subjects, and are liable to be among the few remembered from this era.

A very good book of theirs is "The Betrayal of Science and Reason: How Anti-Environmental Rhetoric Threatens Our Future" (1996). It contains dozens of fascinating analyses of various issues and the accompanying brownlash propaganda. Highly recommended!