I'm working on a new climate bet offer - that for 2017 or for a subsequent year that someone would like to bet with me, that year will be in the record top five years for the type of ENSO year that the particular year ends up being, whether it's El Niño, La Niña, or a moderate year. Quickly perusing the temp record suggests it would be a fairly safe (but not guaranteed) bet although I haven't really analyzed it.
I think it could in some modest way help focus attention on comparing apples to apples rather than stupid finger-pointing at La Niña years being colder than El Niños. Showing almost every year is in the top five is usefully alarming, too.
Haven't quite worked out the details, especially the best data set. Suggestions are welcome, and credible betting opponents are even more welcome.
An interesting bet would be that we never see a year cooler than 1998 again (or in the next decade, to give it a time limit). Given how much of a freak year 1998 was at the time, this does make a point.
ReplyDeleteI bet 5 kg of carrots that 2017-18-19 will be cooler than 2014-15-16.
ReplyDeleteFernando
ReplyDeleteYour reading skills don't seem up to snuff. You may want to try reading the post again.
"I bet 5 kg of carrots..."
ReplyDeleteEli might be tempted, Brian... maybe not so much.
How about betting on an ENSO-corrected temperature dataset? That should allow for bets over relatively short periods in the near future.
ReplyDeleteElspi, whereas the "universal declaration of blog commenters rights" states clearly we can change the betting terms, and whereas my proposal is much more understandable, I hereby proclaim my bet is a better deal, and that takers should be aware I reserve the right to replace said carrots with an equivalent prize of equal or lesser value.
ReplyDeleteAs worded I think yours is a fairly safe bet at even money, though I wouldn't want to offer, say, 5:1 odds.
ReplyDeleteFernando--
ReplyDeleteDon't be too confident. NOAA climate prediction center has 50% odds that a new El Nino will start this fall.
Yes, Fernando you're missing the point. 2014 was almost an El Nino year, 2015 and 2016 were very strong El Ninos. Even if we have an El Nino in the 2017-19 period, it's highly unlikely to be as strong.
ReplyDeleteYou are right though that commenters can blatantly disregard the post and write whatever they want to write. Usually practice though is to say something like, "Off-topic regarding your post about comparing apples to apples, but I'd like to compare oranges to apples."
Even ignoring El Niño, we have had 31 years in a row in the "Top Ten" warmest. Putting in ENSO makes it a slam-dunk.
ReplyDeleteIf Fernado & Brian will accapt the judgenent of The World Carrrot Museum I will bet them five pounds of shelled & salted pistachios each that the northern & southern limits of commercial carrot production will move less than one degree of latitude in this growing season or the next.
ReplyDeleteRussell, you're reminding me of the happy-clapping Bible-thumpers who say that water cannot erode mountains.
ReplyDeleteBottom line is, with the realtively short amount of time you have left in the living realm anything and everything will appear "lukewarm". It's simply a matter of reference points and scale.
For people with longer foward-projected spans that you, and for as-yet unborn generations, your perspective is nothing more than quaint wishful thinking, and rather self-indulgent wishful thinking at that.
The ground is still frozen and it's already a record year for carrot bet evasion .
ReplyDeleteLet us hope Bernard remains in the living realm long enough to avoid next year's.
Now how many pounds of pistachios is Fernando willing to ante ?
the northern & southern limits of commercial carrot production will move less than one degree of latitude in this growing season or the next.
ReplyDeleteContrarianism gets old.
Since when do contrarians bet on continued volatility in the existence of futures markets ?
ReplyDelete"The ground is still frozen and it's already a record year for carrot bet evasion . Let us hope Bernard remains in the living realm long enough to avoid next year's."
ReplyDeleteQED.
That which is thus far demonstrated is Bernard's predeliction for bet-dodging
ReplyDelete"That which is thus far demonstrated is Bernard's predeliction for bet-dodging"
ReplyDeleteHardly Russell. Check the archives at Deltoid - a few years ago I was quite willing to put down five figures on the Arctic minimum sea ice volume this year, and I would likely have lost it had I been taken up... but probably by not much in the aggregate of the first three dimensions, or in the fourth...
And this was the whole point - to demonstrate my faith in the inexorable trajectory of both human-caused climate change, and its impacts. And to see how confident deniers are in their counter claims...
Let's talk about those impacts Russell, and not about straw men eating frozen carrots. Perhaps you'd like to place a bet on the health of the Great Barrier Reef in, say, two decades?
Bad move, Bernard- better send the money to UN coral conservationist and microbubble cooling fan Dr. Tom Goreau, as the odds on coral health there ride on UNEP's efforts to locally lower SST
ReplyDeletehttps://bravenewclimate.com/2011/10/08/low-intensity-geoengineering-microbubbles-and-microspheres/
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/geoengineering/bLxEs1hA6kk/BIe7GZIXV9oJ