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Parting fools from their money

By tlambert on April 13, 2007.

BetUS.com has set up a bunch of bets for suckers on global warming. Ker Than at LiveScience has the story:

BetUS.com spokesman Reed Richards said the company will personally back numerous bets, or "propositions," posted on the website related to global warming. "It's part of a campaign we've been doing for the past two and a half years called 'pop culture gaming,'" Richards said. "You can wager on things in the headlines."

One bet gives members 1-to-5 odds that scientists will prove global warming exists beyond any scientific doubt by the end of this year. Another gives 100-to-1 odds that polar bears will be extinct by 2010. ...

Climate scientists disagree that the public has the upper hand. Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeler at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, said the bets are "designed to part fools from their money."

For example, one of the bets the website offers is 150-to-1 odds that the oceans will rise six inches on average worldwide by the end of the year. "It's more like a billion to one," Schmidt told LiveScience. "Anyone who puts money on that would be an idiot."

Another bet for the taking has odds of 100-to-1 that Manhattan will be under water by 2012. "Do they have any idea how high the peak of Manhattan is?" Schmidt said. (The highest natural point in Manhattan is 265 feet above sea level)

James Annan, a climate scientist at the Frontier Research Center for Global Change in Japan, said many of the bets are "silly" and mostly of the "Elvis will be found alive and living on the Moon" type.

Read the whole thing.

Tags
global warming

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My favorite:

Antarctica will become livable for humans by 2015 (must be able to sustain crops in order for wager to win) Yes - 500/1

Surely one of those 200 species of Antarctic lichen can be turned into a sustainable crop!

The problem with these bets is that in order to place a serious one, the time scales are such that your children will have to collect. That may be fortunate, because they are the ones who will be struggling to adapt and mitigate.

Best,

D