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CBS 4 Reporter Shomari Stone was praised on the “Schnitt Show,” a syndicated, moderately conservative talk-show, for his ground-breaking report on "Global Warming." ( http://cbs4.com/video/?id=3... )

South Florida affiliate station 610 WIOD airs the show from 3:00pm to 6:00pm, Monday - Friday. On average, host Todd Schnitt has an estimated 800,000 listening audience across the country after scoring a huge deal XM Satellite radio.

The Schnitt Show began praising Shomari Stone on Monday, May 21, 2007 at 4:00pm about his report on Global Warming.

Schnitt said, “I have to give credit where credit is due. I have to highlight this individual. I am taking the time to reach out to a reporter, Shomari Stone, in Miami, he’s a CBS 4 WFOR reporter. Shomari did a news story on Global Warming. Instead of asking Hurricane Expert Dr. William Gray about hurricanes, he did a story about how Dr. Gray says humans ARE NOT causing global warming.” “Shomari Stone dared to expose the other side. He had the cahoonays.”

“I have no idea what Shomari’s position is personally. I have no idea. But you’ve got to hand it to him for presenting the other side of the story. A rarity. He’s good. Good job Shomari Stone. I appreciated the diligence that you put into the report." "Finally, mainstream media, has a Dr., a professor that says, wait a sec, not so fast, on this annointed reason that’s been shoved down our faces. That’s all I ask for. Is just the other side of the debate. I’m not saying Al Gore should not present his stuff in "An Inconvenient Truth." I just like both sides of an issue presented. Fantastic report! Finally I can’t tell you the last time I saw something like that. I don’t think it’s been done.”

You can watch CBS 4 Reporter Shomari Stone's Exclusive Global Warming Report by clicking or copy and pasting the following link:

http://cbs4.com/video/?id=3...

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Perhaps I am confused, but isn't it possible that both Limbaugh is "right" and Lindzen is "wrong." Perhaps someone will correct me, but I had thought that Gore does not really rely on the IPCC consensus but brings up all kinds of results that assume more drastic consequences than the most likely scenario discussed by the IPCC. In that event, Limbaugh might be correct to bet with Gore, even though his bet would not challenge the IPCC. In other words, Limbaugh's challenge to Gore is less controversial than Lindzen's statement that temperatures are as likely to fall as rise.

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There are some conflict of interest implications to betting on climate change. Environmental activists such as Mr Gore do not harp on about global warming for giggles, they are trying to promote changes that would mitigate the perceived threat.

If Mr Gore made a meaningful bet with Mr Limbaugh (i.e. for a significant chunk of Gore's net worth), Mr Gore would have an incentive to stop his activism in order to decrease the chances of action on global warming and increase the chances of collecting on the bet.

This sort of thing is why Pete Rose isn't in the hall of fame.

Having said that, smaller bets (i.e. enough money to be interesting, but not enough to modify behavior) have some significant value in that formulating the bet forces us to set out specific predictions that can then be either confirmed or falsified.

The value of this approach was demonstrated by the famous Simon-Ehrlich bet. The results of which conclusively sunk Mr Ehrlich's theories on resource scarcity (interestingly Mr Ehrlich is now a noted proponent of global warming, which just goes to show that a history of being consistently and spectacularly wrong isn't a barrier to getting your name in the papers).

I suspect the Mr Gore would have a much better chance of winning a reasonably formulated bet than Mr Ehrlich did. Global warming is a far more credible proposition than Mr Ehrlich's Malthusian rants. Regardless, formulating a proposition (or set of propositions) that can be conclusively confirmed or falsified is a very valuable intellectual exercise.

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Alex, these various popular biases (perhaps combined with various redistributive effects that keep speculative money from quickly concentrating in the hands of the least biased people) seem to be a general limit on the accuracy of predictive markets. The responses Ann's post has engendered by you and others is part of why I think it was a valuable contribution to the thread. It's worth looking at the various natural predictive markets already in existence and see what they indicate about the likilihood of various phenomena to occur -if nothing else, it may be worth it to inform guiding the creation of markets specifically for the purpose of predicting future events. For example, we may want to screen market participants for general literacy on the topic and threshhold level of lack of bias, but then allow exceptions in if they're willing to place unusually large investments to allow relatively biased, illiterate people who happen to have insider information to participate in the market.

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If warming is from other causes than anthropogenic causes, then screw it.What!? David Friedman smacks that argument down here.

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Anyone who refuses to bet even money on whether global warming is a catastrophe is a coward. This is true whether his name is Rush Limbaugh or Robin Hanson. Let's get real, people. If warming is not a catastrophe then screw it. If warming is from other causes than anthropogenic causes, then screw it. That is not settled. The IPCC is not a consensus of informed climate experts. Far from it. IPCC is highly political. Watch yourselves.

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Panu: Cite?

HA: I'm very dubious of the "beachfront property" thing because real estate of all kinds is on a massive bull run right across the world, itself probably due to high global liquidity. As the effects of sea-level rise aren't predicted for much before 2100, any signal is likely to be outweighed by the secular boom in real estate.

However, there are effects that are expected sooner - more, stronger storms being a case in point. Arguably, buying property in Florida has been shown to be unwise since Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and it's only because there's a perception of an implicit Federal guarantee that people still do it. Certain biases - catastrophe blindness, confirmation bias - would suggest that response is only likely after an example. Hence - Louisiana.

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There exists a growing number of scientists who are predicting global cooling starting around 2020.

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Isn't all of this an argumentum ad crumenam?

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Aaron's comment highlights a problem here. One has to be very precise about what one is betting on. Thus, does a onetime storm that floods the streets count as "New York being underwater"? What about all the debates we have already seen about what is the actual global temperature? We talking about some kind of an average, after all, and it is well known that even while the average may be going in one direction, certain parts of the earth may be going in the opposite direction. So, one would have to make sure that one were betting on something clearly determinable in an unambiguous way, such as the 1980s debate between Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich over the prices of certain commodities in 1990 relative to 1980.

In the meantime, I am still waiting for Robin to set up an option on the futures price of whether or not Rush will bet. I want to go both long and short on it, preferably in the most complicated way possible, :-).

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Alex, your response (and many in this thread) seem interestingly indicative of the points in the "Are Your Enemies Innately Evil?" post. It seems to me people are picking a side and then supporting a wide range of arguments on that side. For example, throwing "ever wondered how beachfront property in Louisiana is doing?" into a hodgepodge of lines all written to shore up a position in favor of anthropogenic global warming as a real phenomenon. Here on overcomingbias, I hope we can be focused on attempting to overcoming bias, and I think there is a bit of bias creep into discussions when we become argumentative rather than scrutinizing.

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Brian wrote:

"Beachfront property purchases are bets against catastrophic sea level rise due to global warming, and they seem to be holding strong. "

Also land purchases in Maine about 10 - 20 feet above current sea level could be seen as bets that tempratures and sea level will rise.

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Manhattan already underwater.

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Robin, you might want to clarify that you're calling out blowhards in your post. Your post (specifically the post you excerpt) gives the impression that you and betters think the IPCC is probably right.

I thought I read about a site that offered betting on GW catastrophes, people were buying at such ridiculous odds that skeptics could buy fast enough.

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I'd be willing to bet warming will be less than IPCC expected better than even odd.

Overall, net cooling isn't likely. But a cooling trend seems like a good possibility. I think flat with occasional cooling and warming is most likely. Net will probably be slightly warmer, but quite a bit less than IPCC.

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