"Check out this discussion on climate wagers:

http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2005/05/yet-more-betting-on-climate-with-world.html

I'm willing to bet against the denialist position. No reasonable offers refused. "

Really? What odds are you giving?
And more importantly how do we determine the winner of the bet?
According to their graph I would say that since 1998 the trend looks down, though I wouldn't say "significantly" down. So I agree that I wouldn't be overly confident that these bets are going to be won.
BUT recall what the warming freaks and there hockey stick predictions were saying? So are you now willing to concede that the UN hockey stick is complete bunk? As it says here:
http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=6513_0_5_0_C

My point has been that the evidence shows that we are in a long term warming trend and that it seems somewhat reasonable that after the Little Ice age, global temperatures are recovering and we are still in a long trend warming trend. If we were to see a significant downward trend then the assumption should be to worry about a ice age- little or big. But I don't think it's at all likely that we about to enter an ice age before 2008.
Additionally I don't have a lot of confident that the recorded temperature of global temperature in 1998 is accurate, so I would rather bet on this stated number rather rely on some later corrected number. Finally I know of no data that shows sea level dropping at this point in time, therefore overall I would say we are still in a warming trend and it's possible that 1998 was measured fairly accurately but it was some weird freak spike in temperature.
Now the real bet involving billions of dollars [and some of these billions have being already spent] is the global temperature is rising [at an alarming rate] as a result of human CO2 emission and that if these human emissions are not curbed there could good possiblity that trillions of dollars could be lost globally from the increased global temperatures.

This a big money bet I wish I could gotten in on, because if I could've gotten .1 % of this I would already be a millionaire. Unfortuately this is a bet that all these politican have already won their fees and the tax payer has already paid excessive amounts money for this hot air. Not to mention all issues which weren't address because this SO important issue, for instance being much more important than say the geniocide occuring in Sudan. Or as Blix the UN weapon inspector said the global warming is far more important then whether or not Saddam has WMD.