I’m sure I’ll regret asking this, but what evidence do you have that climate scientists are intentionally making bad predictions to increase their funding?

regards.

1) Start the awards much lower, but end the awards much higher. For example, for the first 10 years, award only $20,000, $10,000 and $5,000 for each parameter, but for the last 10 years award $60,000, $30,000, and $15,000 for each parameter.

2) Replace only the worst 10 every 5 years, bringing on 10 more. And allow everyone to change their predictions every 5 years. However, for the new people, and the people who change their bets, they don’t get the big bucks at the end, if they’re closest. Instead, they get the little bucks like is awarded for the early years.

But all these changes are really just gilding the lilly. The main problem is addressed either way. Either way repairs the problem caused by the conflict of interest, wherein ridiculously high predictions (or “projections”) are rewarded with more money, and accurate predictions aren’t rewarded at all.

Answers:

1) Yes.

2) Yes…but to what extent is debatable. (This is not a “yes/no” question, since human influence on the degree to which the earth is warming can range zero percent to 100 percent.) (And this does not even address WHICH human activities might be responsible for the warming, e.g. what is the role of black carbon, or methane, or land use changes, versus CO2 emissions?)

3) THERE is your whole enchilada! THAT is the question–”what will happen in the future?” (especially “with or without government intervention”)–that’s the most important question of all.

And a panel of experts, followed by a review panel of MORE experts, doesn’t get away from the fundamental conflict of interest that exists. The conflict of interest is that the experts can accrue more money and fame to their area of expertise by exaggerating both the warming that will occur, and the magnitude of the ill effects that will occur. (Not to mention their conflict of interest to also ignore any benefits that might occur from a warming world.)

This would be much better than a panel of experts, followed by another panel of experts:

1) Get 30 scientists. Require that every single one of the scientists provide “50 percent probability” predictions for each of the parameters of interest (e.g., methane atmospheric concentrations, CO2 emissions and atmospheric concentrations, and resultant temperature increases).

2) Pay the experts in direct relationship to the accuracy of their predictions. For example, let’s say each of the experts has provided a prediction for a) methane atmospheric concentration, b) CO2 emissions, c) CO2 atmospheric concentrations, d) world surface temperature, and e) world lower tropospheric temperature, every year from 2005 to 2030. Each year, pay the one who is closest on each parameter $40,000, pay the one who is second $20,000, pay the one who is third $10,000, and pay the rest nothing.

Assuming we use the 5 parameters that I mentioned above, that would be a total reward of $350,000 per year, for the next 25 years. That represents a total payout of $8.75 million. (That’s probably less than 1/50th spent by the IPCC to date.)

I guarantee that such a system would produce more accurate predictions than the IPCC has produced to date! (That’s partially due to the fact that, as of the IPCC TAR, the IPCC has produced NO “predictions”…only pseudoscientific “projections.”)

The only problem with my method (from the standpoint of the “climate change community”!) is that the resultant predictions would probably be so low that fear of global warming would be considerably diminished.

P.S. An even better way to do it would be to permanently drop the 15 least accurate scientists from the program each year, and to replace them with 15 more. Then allow all 30 scientists to re-predict for the remaining years.

(Heh, heh, heh! Imagine that…climate scientists actually being rewarded for accurate predictions, and punished for inaccurate predictions!)