A climate bet - any takers?

So these stickers have been going up around Wellington.

Much of Wellington is built on land that rose up out of the harbour in the 19th century during one of Wellington's charming earthquakes. A climate change advocacy group's been putting up the stickers.

I hate climate scaremongering. It too easily leads people to dismiss both the sensible and the crazy versions of the argument.

And as I view bets to be a tax on bullshit, I'm happy to offer 10:1 odds against the 2040 shoreline being at any of the current 1840 shoreline markers. I offer the bet on Caplan's terms. Here's Caplan's terms on a recent bet against a European war:

You pay me $x today.  If any European country that was not Communist in 1988 has a civil war leading to 10,000 or more fatalities between today and December 31, 2045, I will immediately pay you $7x.  Germany counts, Turkey doesn't.  Any front page story in The New York Times, Washington Post, or Wall St. Journal stating that a literal civil war in one of the specified nations has led to 10,000 or more fatalities in that nation ends the bet in my opponents' favor.  If I die before the bet resolves, the bet ends and my heirs keep the money.
I am willing to accept up to $500 on this wager, committing me to pay up to $3500 if I lose.  Per my current rules, I will bet anyone willing to pre-pay me via Paypal.  If there is any doubt about my reliability, note that (a) I frequently bet, and have never been accused of non-payment, (b) I am a public figure with reputation to lose, (c) I have a stable address, having been a GMU professor for 18 years, (d) I am 44 years old, so am quite likely to survive until 2045.  Multiple betting partners have accepted such terms in the past.  
You may accept these terms in the comments or via email.  The bet officially begins when I receive payment.

I'm offering 10:1 against the 2040 shoreline being at the 1840 position due to climate change. The bet is cancelled in the event of a major Wellington earthquake that changes the shoreline position substantially. I'm happy to take liability of up to $15,000 on this one, in total across all those betting against me.

I'm 39 years old and so likely to be alive in 2040. I've never been accused of non-payment of a bet, but I haven't bet nearly as often as Bryan. I am a public figure with reputation to lose, though less than Bryan's. My address is less stable than Bryan's but I'm exceptionally easy to find. 

Like Bryan, I'm happy to bet with any public figures on their honour, or with anyone willing to pre-pay me. 

It's a sucker's bet - you shouldn't take it. But I particularly encourage those active in the 2040 Sea Level Wellington Community to consider taking my bet - if they believe their stickers. 

Picture HT: Nathan Ross

It's the bet, not the stakes

Robin Hanson wonders why folks have taken offence at Mitt Romney's holding fellow GOP nomination contender Rick Perry^{*, **} to account by offering a bet: $10k if Perry could prove what he claimed existed in Romney's book. Here's Robin trying to make sense of things:

The idea that a presidential candidate couldn’t afford a $10,000 bet is crazy, as is the idea that ordinary folks don’t know this fact. Candidates pay for TV commercials, which cost lots more than $10,000, and they fly all around the nation in planes, which gets expensive.

So clearly we have moved high up into belief meta-levels here. “Yes, most people know Romney can afford $10,000, but some aren’t sure that most others know this, and so this shows that Romney doesn’t know about such folks.” Or “It is rude to point out that you are rich, even when everyone knows you are rich. Yes wearing nice suits shows he’s rich, but not wearing suits is socially unacceptable. Offering smaller bets is acceptable, however, so offering a big bet could be interpreted as bragging about wealth. Not that I’d interpret it that way, but someone might, and this shows Romney doesn’t realize that.”

I'm not generally one to disagree with Robin, but I think explanations based on voters' having sophisticated conjectural variations models in their heads is a bit of a stretch.

My hypothesis: there'd have been just as much offence taken if he'd offered $100 or $1000 stakes. A non-trivial proportion of statements made in political debates are demonstrably false. They're thrown out in the heat of debate with little chance that the opponent will have ready access to counterevidence; worse, there's risk that bringing up counterevidence moves the debate to where the opponent wants to go anyway. Sure, plenty of online armchair quarterbacking lists all the falsehoods. The candidates never have to front up and answer FactCheck or the news articles. But paying up on a bet is far more humiliating, both for the candidate and his supporters. No partisan wants to witness his idol's humiliation in having to pay up. And so they come up with other reasons for being offended.

If partisanship is more faith-based than fact-based, offering a bet in political debate is akin to going into a Catholic Church with a gas chromatograph in the middle of Mass and offering to bet the priest $10,000 that the wafers are chemically identical before and after purported transubstantiation. The followers might say they're offended about the stakes, even though the Church could back it. But the real problem is nobody wanting to see that their prophets are false.

^* Rick Perry's campaign ad, nicely lampooned here, reminded me a lot of the old Dead Milkmen^*** song Stuart. Rick Perry's supporters aren't like the other people here in the trailer park - the ones who don't know what the queers are doing to the soil....

^** Why hasn't anyone done anything useful RickRolling Rick Perry?

^*** First, footnotes in footnotes is cool. Second, the Dead Milkmen are awesome. And "Big Lizard" is the 3-year old's current favourite bedtime song. But I have to Bowdlerize it. And I don't know whether it's better to keep him away from Dead Milkmen 'till he's ready for the proper version, or ease him into it with Bowdlerized versions. Tough problems.