Congrats to James Annan

Back in 2005 a British climate scientist, James Annan, made a bet for US$10,000 with two Russian physicists who were skeptics about global warming.

The Russians, Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtseva, took the position that the years 1998-2003 had been as warm or warmer than the years 2012-2017 would be.

The three scientists involved in the bet agreed that win/lose would be determined by temperature data from the US National Climatic Data Center as it was then known. (It has changed its name to the National Centers for Environmental Information.)

Now we near the end of the latter of the two periods covered by the bet. The Russians will be the payors.

Congrats to Annan, and actually to all three for conducting science according to the Popperian rule. Popper didn't say you actually have to risk money on falsification, but still ...

My final comment on this point will be that the outcome of the bet wasn't even remotely close. In the graph above, which was compiled without 2017 data. the red dots represent the temps from the agreed-upon database for years covered by the bets, The two red lines represent the averaging of those two periods. The yellow dot at the bottom right represents where the 2017 average would have had to come in to make the Russians victorious. It will come in slightly below 2016 but on the high side of the averaging line.

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