WINTON CAPITAL SETS UP
CLIMATE CHANGE PREDICTION MARKET
WIDOWS & ORPHANS BEWARE !
One of Europe’s largest hedge funds is looking to move into the gambling industry in the UK, as it sets up a new venue where players can bet on the effects of climate change. The project is hoping to tempt climate scientists to put their money where their models are.
The new “climate prediction market” is the brainchild of Winton Capital, founded by David Harding, and is aimed at finding a market consensus on the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and global temperature rises in the future.
The not-for-profit project, which is being funded out of Winton’s philanthropic budget, is hoping to tempt climate scientists to put their money where their models are, and to provide a clear benchmark of the academic consensus at a time of intense interest in man-made climate change.
News of the project comes as the UN General Assembly meeting in New York focuses on the theme of a sustainable planet. Climate change also continues to dominate the political agenda around the world, after President Donald Trump declared he will withdraw the US from the Paris climate accord and roll back regulations on the production of coal.
“With a prediction market, getting the information is the primary objective,” said Mark Roulston, a scientist at Winton who is overseeing the project. “There’s not necessarily a consensus on all the implications of climate change. The idea is to have a benchmark which could track any emerging consensus.”
Under the plan, scientists and experts from around the world will be able to trade contracts based on the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and how far temperatures increase, going decades into the future.
Winton will act as a market maker and subsidise trading, rather than taking a cut ... The hedge fund will initially target professionals in the climate field to participate,
though it will be open to anyone in the UK. It is being run internally at Winton, with employees able to place notional bets rather than using real money. Mr Roulston said they are hoping to launch it externally later this year to universities, and will open it to the public sometime next year.
Extend the logic to realise that they mediate the climate response to everything that would otherwise serve to disrupt hydrostatic equilibrium.
So, one can concede that human emissions might affect global air circulation patterns INSTEAD OF changing surface temperatures but due to the vastly greater effects of solar and oceanic variability we could never notice or measure it.