Things just got stranger in the already strange world of global warming/climate change. You can now wager on it. Yes that’s right, you can put down money on temperature futures.
An outfit called “PredictIt” is running a book on this question:
Will NASA find 2018’s global average temperature highest on record?
The global temperature “Annual Average Anomaly” for 2018 shall be greater than 0.99 degrees Celsius, as rounded to the nearest hundredth of a degree, according to the first-published such data on NASA’s Global Climate Change website, available upon launch of this market at https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/. Should no such data be published on or before January 31, 2019, PredictIt may at its sole discretion continue to await its availability or select a suitable alternate source.
Any revision to the first-published 2018 data and/or to prior years’ data will have no impact on the resolution of this market, even if such revisions cause the highest pre-2018 Annual Average Anomaly to be greater or less than 0.99.
PredictIt’s decisions and determinations under this rule shall be at PredictIt’s sole discretion and shall be final.
The way it works is this; PredictIt gives the YES scenario a 9 percent chance of coming true. That bet costs 9 cents to make, and if it comes true, PredictIt pays back 91 cents. If you were to bet the other way, NO — a 91-cent bet — PredictIt would pay out 9 cents if this year doesn’t turn out to be the hottest on record.
Looking at their website, temperature wagering seems to be anything but “hot”:
The market opened at 20 cents, peaked briefly at 34 cents, and has now dropped to 9 cents as of today.
Speculators seem to be cooling to the idea of 2018 being the hottest on record. “No” looks to be the safe bet to me, especially since 2017 was cooler than 2016, when El Nino driven temperatures peaked.
As a commenter on the website, Scott Supak says:
July 0.78C puts us at 0.818571429.
Need 1.24 per month now to get there.
Commenter Andrew Bullock notes:
The hottest year on record was 2016 which had a global anomaly of +1C. So far from Jan-June we are at +0.828C For this to resolve yes we would need an insanely hot rest of the year. But we are not likely to see that. We will probably end up being the 3rd hottest on record. Maybe 2nd if unlucky.
Basically need monthly anomalies of 117 or higher the rest of the year. When the highest we have had this year so far is 91. We have ONLY had 2 months total that have had monthly anomalies at or above the 117 needed when we need 6 months of that for this to resolve YES.
Looks like a buy NO signal to me.
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So, the odds of this being the hottest year (which it should be if it’s a year of ‘warming’) began at 10-1 against. Now, the website reads: “If this prediction comes true, PredictIt will redeem all Yes shares at $1. Shares in No will have zero value. If this prediction does not come true, PredictIt will redeem all No shares at $1. Shares in Yes will have zero value”.