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Climate Modeller Wins $10,000 Wager Against Solar Physicists, Fails To Collect (blogspot.com) 195

Layzej writes: Back in 2005, solar physicists Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev made a $10,000 bet that global temperatures, driven primarily by changes in the Sun's activity, would fall over the next decade. The bet would compare the then record hot years between 1998 to 2003 with that between between 2012 and 2017. With temperatures falling from their peak during the 1998 super El-Nino, and solar output continuing to fall, this seemed like a sure bet. The results are now in and all datasets show that climate modeler James Annan is the clear winner.

At the time of the wager, Annan had supposed that the reputation of the scientists involved would be enough to ensure payment once the bet was settled. Unfortunately, as was the case with Alfred Russel Wallace's famous 1870 bet against flat-Earthers, the losing parties have refused to pay up.

"More precisely, Bashkirtsev is refusing to pay," writes the climate modeler on his blog, "and Mashnich is refusing to even reply to email.

"With impressive chutzpah, Bashkirtsev proposed we should arrange a follow-up bet which he would promise to honour."
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Climate Modeller Wins $10,000 Wager Against Solar Physicists, Fails To Collect

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  • No Surprise (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Anyone denying the reality of anthropogenic climate change while at the same time claiming to uphold scientific integrity has none to begin with.

    • Re:No Surprise (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Saturday October 20, 2018 @08:56PM (#57511270)

      Anyone denying the reality of anthropogenic climate change ...

      They weren't denying AGW. They just thought the sunspot cycle would dominate. They were wrong.

      Anyway, Annan should have used a blockchain based smart contract [wikipedia.org] to implement the wager. Then it would have auto-paid, with no ability to welch.

      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        If he had, there would have been no bet since time travel would be cheating.

      • Re:No Surprise (Score:4, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 20, 2018 @09:16PM (#57511324)

        There's an implicit refutation of AGW in the supposition that solar activity is more consequential to warming than greenhouse gasses.

      • Then it would have auto-paid, with no ability to welch.

        This is the age of the welsher, Bill. It goes all the way up to the top.

        • All the AC posters are russian trolls, and if they delete the post., the underlying comments get fucked.

          I no longer post to AC's.

        • This is the age of the welsher, Bill.

          Sure, Pope; that sort of behavior never used to occur until recently.

          A real student of history you are.

      • Look, if you're going to put all you money on sun activity and say that the temps will drop then you are denying human activity is a factor. Otherwise you're not very good scientist with modeling. You cannot bet on temps dropping without being a climate science denier. The two are mutually exclusive.
        • by dryeo ( 100693 ) on Saturday October 20, 2018 @11:39PM (#57511610)

          Nothing wrong with proposing an alternate hypothesis and testing it, that's how science works, failures are just as important.
          The problem is getting so emotionally involved that you would bet a large sum instead of a pizza or case of beer and not accept the negative result and change viewpoints.

        • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Sunday October 21, 2018 @12:38AM (#57511706)

          then you are denying human activity is a factor.

          They did not deny it, they just underestimated it.

          You cannot bet on temps dropping without being a climate science denier. The two are mutually exclusive.

          Nonsense. They were NOT denying global warming. They were just underestimating how quickly it would dominate other factors. There is no doubt that solar activity affects earth's temperature. There is no (reasonable) doubt that human activity affects earth's temperature. Disagreeing about the relative magnitudes does not make them "deniers".

          • by Anonymous Coward

            "They did not deny it, they just underestimated it."

            Probably half of deniers flat out deny it's happening.

            The rest are doing exactly what you're saying. They're denying that humans like themselves are having a measurable impact on the world's climate and insisting that everything is within normal expectations for the planet or that anything we see going on are a result of forces we have no hope of controlling.

            So yes, those two were deniers. To make their bet they had to deny there was an actual sustained gl

      • by Anonymous Coward

        I know you are probably joking, but it would not have auto-paid. Blockchain knows nothing of real-world facts.

        Now, you could have a 2of3 multisig to release the funds and have a neutral trusted party have the 3rd key.

        • I know you are probably joking

          Yes, I was joking.

          but it would not have auto-paid.

          It could. Smart contracts can be pre-funded with crytocurrencies.

          Blockchain knows nothing of real-world facts.

          A smart contract can pull from an external data source, at a predetermined time and date.

      • just re-label the guy as Vladimir the Welcher....

        there is not one society that I know of that really will deal with a known welcher and will actively shun him...

        problem solved

        Oh don't get me wrong, his "comrades" will laugh onhow sharp he was to fool the other scientist, but slowly
        as the influence move away, he will be sidelined

        • Re:No Surprise (Score:4, Informative)

          by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Sunday October 21, 2018 @12:50AM (#57511720) Journal

          there is not one society that I know of that really will deal with a known welcher and will actively shun him...

          You are being sarcastic, right? Because the USA currently has a huge welcher as President right now.

          • that's funny, but we are talking about scientist which should always be above politics.
            and yes, the current president of the USA is a known user of bankruptcy and other tricks
            of the trade so as not to pay and has even said "we need to print more money"

        • there is not one society that I know of that really will deal with a known welcher

          Not even Wales? Their whole culture is built around welsh. To them, actions come before facts so often that the verb comes first in the sentence.

      • Anyway, Annan should have used a blockchain based smart contract [wikipedia.org] to implement the wager. Then it would have auto-paid, with no ability to welch.

        Perhaps we need a new word for this problem. Instead of welshing on bets, it would now be called russianing.

  • You'll never have to deal with those scumbags again, and it only cost you $10k.

    If they had paid up, you'd never hear the end of them.

    • by Grog6 ( 85859 ) on Saturday October 20, 2018 @10:08PM (#57511476)

      Loaning someone $20, and them not paying you back is a great way to never deal with them again.

      "You still owe me, I'm not giving you shit."

      One of my nephews lost out on $1200 worth of car troubles for $20.

      Fuck them if they don't pay, he has no currency. (paul simon, if you don't get it.) ...
      He holds no currency
      He is a foreign man ...

  • Why would anyone dishonest enough to deny climate change be considered honest enough to honor a wager?

    • by theycallmeB ( 606963 ) on Saturday October 20, 2018 @10:38PM (#57511538)
      Well, back in 2005 the evidence, while clear, wasn't so overwhelmingly documented as to come all the way down to the reading comprehension level of posturing idiots. By now the posturing idiots have fled the field, leaving the willfully ignorant and deliberately obtuse to carry the Global Cooling is Coming banner.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      How the fuck did you get modded up, they weren't climate change "deniers", they simply believed the solar cycle was going to be a more significant influence over the next 10 years than climate change, they were wrong but it was not an unreasonable bet.
      • by samkass ( 174571 ) on Sunday October 21, 2018 @11:12AM (#57513128) Homepage Journal

        How the fuck did you get modded up, they weren't climate change "deniers", they simply believed the solar cycle was going to be a more significant influence over the next 10 years than climate change, they were wrong but it was not an unreasonable bet.

        You might have had a point, except his defense for not paying is that the duration wasn't long enough, and if you wait another 20 years it will cool again. That's pretty much global warming denial in my book, which is the main driver of climate change.

    • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Sunday October 21, 2018 @05:00AM (#57512130)

      Why would anyone dishonest enough to deny climate change be considered honest enough to honor a wager?

      He didn't deny climate change. Quite the opposite his, side of the wager was that there many things influencing climate change and he wagered that the climate would cool based on the weighting he applied to those influences.

      Not everyone is a "climate change denier". Some people are legitimately wrong.

  • These researchers must be pretty poor. After paying out $10k, all they'd be able to afford to eat is Crow.

  • In the future for such bets, put the money in an escrow account managed by an independent, trust worthy banker. There could be some other way to keep the up front money safe that are possible. There might even be some interest earned over the years.
  • the closest thing to reportage here is links to a blog and also a graph of some sort i honestly don't have time to bother figuring out. it looks like temperature readings from... somewhere? someone?, hosted by "woodfortrees.org", which seem to support the claims of the blog post. um, okay? who the fuck are these people?

    no, i'm not accusing slashdot editors of political bias. that is precluded by hanlon's razor, as they have already proven themselves utterly incompetent.

    nor am i claiming that the story is ev

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "[the facts of the case] i honestly don't have time to bother figuring out"

      and

      "i just have no strong reason to believe it's true yet."

      The first probably leads to the latter.

      • by Layzej ( 1976930 )

        the closest thing to reportage here is links to a blog and also a graph of some sort i honestly don't have time to bother figuring out.

        The graph is showing that every available temperature data set, whether it be it from USA [woodfortrees.org] or UK [woodfortrees.org], land [woodfortrees.org] or satellite [woodfortrees.org], and even those [woodfortrees.org] by skeptics [woodfortrees.org] - all show the same thing. Temperature is warming by about 0.2C/decade. The later period is warmer than the former. The climate modeler had greater insights into the mechanisms that affect global mean temperature than the solar physicists. The winner is clear.

        For more authoritative reportage, you can read this nature article [nature.com] from when the bet was made, this New S

    • nor am i claiming that the story is even false. i just have no strong reason to believe it's true yet.

      The bet was well published when it was first made so if you had been paying attention in the right places you would have heard about it.

      And I'll also add that just because the solar scientists made the bet doesn't make them climate science deniers. But I would say they were poor solar scientists because they should have known that the solar variation that we've seen in studying the sun is not great enough to overcome the effects of radiative forcing over more than a few short years. They should have known

      • The bet was well published when it was first made so if you had been paying attention in the right places you would have heard about it.

        If you look up "Scientific Wager" [google.ca] in google, chances are at least a couple of the top ten results reference this bet. For example, here [newscientist.com] and here [wikipedia.org].

  • Is that what the news on slashdot is now... every time two random dudes make a bet, if one does not pay up, it's an article on slashdot?

    On the plus side, there is going to be a lot of articles

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Bet you 10K there wont be

    • by Layzej ( 1976930 )

      Is that what the news on slashdot is now... every time two random dudes make a bet, if one does not pay up, it's an article on slashdot?

      This wager was written up in Nature [nature.com] at the time of the bet. It was included in New Scientist's Five scientific theories decided by wager [newscientist.com] It is included in Wikipedia's article [wikipedia.org] on scientific wager.

      If your wager is literally included in the definition of a scientific wager, then I would not be shocked to find it written about.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • How are they sure that the person even really checked her mail? She could just have lost password for one. Many people dislike email very much lately. Perhaps they switched to fb/whatsapp/discord/whatever.
  • Bet something normal like $20 or a steak dinner. No need to wave your cock around over these science bets, unless... It was all for the publicity.

    • by Layzej ( 1976930 )

      It is interesting to see who is willing to pony up some money to back up their rhetoric, and who is merely spewing denial that they do not themselves believe. For instance, look at Joe Basatardi [slashdot.org] who in 2011 said "the earth will cool .1 to .2 Celsius in the next ten years, according to objective satellite data [woodfortrees.org]." He later refused to follow through when a number of people accepted the bet. Good thing too as his prediction is not looking so good.

      Then there's renowned climate skeptic Richard Lindzen who wo

  • ...and continue to make wildly wrong predictions vs. mainstream climate science. News at 11.

    Seriously though, climate denialism (or more accurately, climate conspiracism) is the most dangerous form of denialism/conspiracism known to man. Anti-vaxxers, holocaust denialists, they're horribly offensive and can cause greater short-term harm, but in the medium/long term they're mildly annoying pissants compared to the planet-baking, civilization-ruining potential of climate denialism. Nobody holds as much potent

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