Global warming, Joe Romm and famous wagers

October 10, 4:08 PMEnvironmental Policy ExaminerThomas Fuller

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Yesterday I did my part in continuing a grand tradition by wagering $1,000 with Joe Romm, principal contributor to ClimateProgress. The wager concerns temperatures in 2019--if they are .15 degrees Celsius warmer than 2009, he wins. If they are lower, I win. If I win, I will donate the proceeds to a charity to be named by my readers.

Here are the details as set forth by Romm on his weblog: "The bet is "the 2010s [2010 to 2019] will be the hottest decade in the temperature record, more than 0.15°C hotter than the hottest decade so far [i.e. the 2000s, from 2000 to 2009] using the NASA GISS dataset.” I am gonna ask, as I have for other bets, that “if two or more volcanic eruptions with the energy level equal to or greater than the 1991 Mount Pinatubo shall occur between now and the end of 2019, then the bet is voided.” Let me know if that’s ok — this is a bet about AGW, not the vagaries of volcanoes. We also didn’t settle on an amount. I have a lot of $1000 bets out there. I’m game at that level or less. Your call.]"

Betting on resources and the environment has provided low cost entertainment for decades, and I'm glad to do my part in continuing this. From Wikipedia: "Julian L. Simon and Paul Ehrlich entered in a famous wager in 1980, betting on a mutually agreed upon measure of resource scarcity over the decade leading up to 1990. Ehrlich ultimately lost the bet.  In 1968, Ehrlich was the author of a popular book, The Population Bomb, which argued that mankind was facing a demographic catastrophe with the rate of population growth quickly outstripping growth in the supply of food and resources. Simon, a libertarian, was highly skeptical of such claims."

As Wired wrote, "All of [Ehrlich's] grim predictions had been decisively overturned by events. Ehrlich was wrong about higher natural resource prices, about "famines of unbelievable proportions" occurring by 1975, about "hundreds of millions of people starving to death" in the 1970s and '80s, about the world "entering a genuine age of scarcity." In 1990, for his having promoted "greater public understanding of environmental problems," Ehrlich received a MacArthur Foundation Genius Award."

Other 'Long Bets' include one between Microsoft's Craig Mundie, who bet Google's Eric Schmidt that in 28 years, commercial airline passengers will routinely fly in pilotless airplanes, and a $20,000 bet between tech pioneer Ray Kurzweil (for) and Lotus founder Mitch Kapor (against) the proposition that "a computer--or 'machine intelligence'--will pass the Turing Test by 2029.

The funny thing about my wager with Romm is that I believe temperatures will rise by 2 degrees Celsius over this century. If it happens evenly each decade, I lose. What's even funnier is that Romm believes that temperatures will rise by (I think he has said this) 7 to 9 degrees this century, but he's only willing to bet on 1.5 degrees. Talk about the courage of your convictions.

I took the bet because in print Romm comes off as a hectoring bully, saving the worst of his invective for people (like your humble author) who actually believe global warming is real and should be addressed, but who don't believe the worst of the hysterical claims about the end of civilization. Now, Romm may well be a very nice person in person, but his weblog is not a force for good in this debate. And you have to stand up for bullies, even if it costs something real.

What I'd like to do is use the bet as a base for starting some kind of intelligenct conversation--perhaps even with Romm--about getting away from science fiction movies and back to real science. I'm not going to hold my breath, but I will make an honest effort. In fact, I have just issued him this challenge on his weblog:

"Okay, Mr. Romm,

Now that that’s out of the way, I’d like to challenge you to a comments debate, where we agree on a set of questions and post them to your blog and my editorial space on Examiner.com. Then we answer the questions and continue the discussion in the comments section. If we let our audiences participate we can metaphorically recreate a sense of the running of the bulls in Pamplona. My core proposition is that we each believe that the other is harming chances for effective policy to combat global warming."

While we're waiting, if you agree with my positon, I'm willing to lay off part of my bet. If you would like to subscribe to any portion of the $1,000 I've wagered, I'll let you in on it. You won't win anything at all--remember I'll donate the winnings to charity. And ten years from now, if I lose, I'll be knocking on your door for whatever you promised. (If you can't make good, I will--I'll guarantee the entire bet.) But it's a chance to show those most alarmed by non-scientific rumors of catastrophe that there are people who are willing to look at the real facts of the matter. If you're interested, contact me at the email address to the side.

Leave nominations for the charity our potential winnings will go to in the comments. Mr. Romm, care to talk about this in print?