An MIT meteorologist said three years ago that he would bet money that global average temperatures would cool back down in 20 years. The quote triggered a flurry of Internet dialogues and prompted scientists to challenge each other to make bets on climate-change issues.One scientist took the wagering meteorologist, Richard Lindzen, up on his bet, but the deal fell apart over a disagreement about odds.Now, an online gambling service is giving the public a chance to do what scientists have been doing among themselves for years. The service, BetUS.com, announced it will give members a chance to wager on various global warming-related issues.
Pop culture gamingBut scientists warn the odds are designed to part suckers from their cash.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. (A complete list of all the global-warming related bets is listed at the end of this article.)Richards said “thousands” of people have already placed money on the company’s global-warming bets, with $10 being the average wager.A dozen analysts combed through scientific studies on global warming to create the odds, Richards said.“This is where the advantage is to the player,” Richards said in a telephone interview. “Unlike sports, where there are set formulas and statistics and numbers, these are variables that we can’t anticipate.”A risky wagerClimate 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)
LiveScience
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