Those Pesky Global Temperatures Lose A Bet for Climate Scientist

For an issue where the science is settled, some climate scientists seem to be pretty unsettled. The BBC carried a short segment today about a bet between two climate scientists regarding the trend in worldwide temperatures. Despite claims that the world would continue warming, we’ve gone more than a decade without a new temperature record. This stands in contrast to the projections of some climate models and the certainty that climate alarmists frequently tout.

Here is how the BBC put it:

A four-year bet between two scientists about global warming is settled. In 2008, after there had been no new record for the global average temperature since 1998, David Whitehouse and James Annan disagreed over whether there would be a new record set by 2011.

Well, the results are in and in the ensuing three years, the world did not see a new temperature record. Both Whitehouse and Annan do agree that the decade of the 2000s was the warmest average decade on record, but that wasn’t the bet. This undermines the claim that temperature increases would accelerate due to increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. This indicates that natural forces are playing a greater role than anticipated or that anthropogenic forces are less than believed.

When the interviewer, economist Tim Harford (who, by the way, has a new book out that I am excited to read), challenges them to renew the bet, they generally agree.

I promise to update the results four years on.

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