Monday, June 06, 2005

3 more non-bets on climate change

Sherwood Idso quoted the Bashkirtsev and Mashnich paper approvingly a couple of years ago. But he won't bet on it being true:
we have never believed cooling is imminent
He still insists he "wouldn't be surprised" if cooling occurs, but declined to make any estimate as to the likelihood of this.

Having drawn a blank with B&M's fans, I went back to the horse's arse mouth himself, and looked up Mashnich's email address (can't find Bashkirtsev). But of course, Mashnich won't back his own forecast, which is a pretty good sign as to how much he thinks it's worth. By the way, I have a copy of the B&M paper, and may post a review of it some time.

Lastly (for now at least), William Kininmonth's article in an Australian newspaper contained the following:
Are we in a long-term cooling trend or will the warming of the 20th century continue? Science cannot tell us
I think that science can and in fact has told us that continued warming is more likely than cooling over the next couple of decades, and offered him 2:1 odds on it. Surprise, he's not interested at any odds.

So, that's another 3 septics who loudly proclaim that the scientific consensus (as expressed in the IPCC TAR) is wrong, but are not prepared to bet against it. Funny, that. I'm running out of opponents here.

6 comments:

markbahner said...

"So, that's another 3 septics who loudly proclaim that the scientific consensus (as expressed in the IPCC TAR) is wrong, but are not prepared to bet against it. Funny, that. I'm running out of opponents here."

The IPCC TAR predictions...er, "projections"...for methane atmospheric concentrations, industrial carbon dioxide emissions, and resultant temperature increases, are utter rubbish.

They constitute the greatest fraud in the history of environmental science:

The IPCC TAR fraud

I made far better predictions without the aid of a single IPCC international conference or a single minute running a climate model on a supercomputer:

Mark Bahner vs IPCC TAR

markbahner said...

Oops, forgot to include the CO2 atmospheric concentrations.

That sentence should have read,

"The IPCC TAR predictions...er, 'projections'...for methane atmospheric concentrations, industrial carbon dioxide emissions and atmospheric concentrations, and resultant temperature increases, are utter rubbish.

James Annan said...

So, Mark, will you step in where all these sceptics fear to tread and bet against the consensus on 20-30 year temperature changes?

I have no particular commment on things like the methane projections (note that a set of projections is not a probabilistic prediction). Maybe you are right, maybe not. One reason why I focus on the 20-30 year time scale rather than 100 years is that the difference between emissions scenarios have relatively little impact over the shorter time scale (plus, I can expect to live long enough to collect on the bet)

Dano said...

I see Mark Bahner found a site where he hasn't been run off yet.

James, you won't want to bet Mark, see, because he can see into the future. He knows that emissions will be blablabla in the future. Just ask him.

D

markbahner said...

Bet offers are here:

Bet offers

James Annan said...

I have posted my reply on sci.environment, and look forward to continuing negotiations there rather than playing blog ping-pong