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James Annan finally has takers for his bet on global warming. The news was published in Nature, but for those without a subscription, here is the gist of it:

James Annan, who is based at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology in Yokohama, has agreed a US$10,000 bet with Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev, two solar physicists who argue that global temperatures are driven by changes in the Sun's activity and will fall over the next decade. The bet, which both sides say they are willing to formalize in a legal document, came after other climate sceptics refused to wager money.

Annan detailed their refusals here. The Nature article continues:

Annan's search ended with Mashnich and Bashkirtsev, who are based at the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics in Irkutsk, Russia. They say that global surface air temperatures closely correlate with the size and number of sunspots. Sunspot levels follow regular patterns and the Sun is expected to be in a less active phase over the next few decades, leading Mashnich and Bashkirtsev to predict a drop in temperature.

Both sides have agreed to compare the average global surface temperature between 1998 and 2003 with that between 2012 and 2017, as defined by the records of the US National Climatic Data Center. If the temperature drops, Annan will pay Mashnich and Bashkirtsev $10,000 in 2018, with the same sum going the other way if the temperature rises.

Piers Corbyn, head of Weather Action, a private meteorological service based in London, told Nature he would like to enter into a similar bet. Corbyn's theory, the details of which he has not revealed, predicts that changes in solar activity will cause "considerable world cooling" by 2040. Annan challenged him to a bet in May, but Corbyn says he did not receive the e-mail. "I'm happy to bet loads of money," he says.