Climate bet; Africa Cup of Nations
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 20 January 2012
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A four-year bet about global warming between two scientists is settled. In 2008, after there had been no new record for the global average temperature set since 1998, David Whitehouse and James Annan disagreed over whether there would be a new record by 2011. As the UK Meteorological Office publishes the figures for the past year, presenter Tim Harford brings the two scientists together. Who has won, and does the victory tell us anything about global warming? Plus, Peter Stott from the Met Office tells us how the world’s temperature is measured. Also in the programme: sports statistician Robert Mastrodomenico attempts to predict the results of the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations football tournament. Will his numerical analysis impress the BBC’s African football expert Farayi Mungazi? This programme was originally broadcast on the BBC World Service.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for downloading from the BBC. |
| 0:04.0 | The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use go to |
| 0:08.0 | BBCWorldService.com slash podcasts. |
| 0:12.0 | You're listening to a download from the BBC. |
| 0:15.0 | This is more or less. |
| 0:17.0 | We make an addition of the programme for BBC Radio 4 |
| 0:20.0 | but this is a special addition broadcast on the World Service. |
| 0:25.0 | Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:29.0 | We're your weekly guide to the numbers in the news and in life and I'm Tim Halford. |
| 0:34.0 | In this programme we'll be using a sophisticated statistical computer model |
| 0:38.0 | to try to predict the results of the Africa Cup of Nations. |
| 0:42.0 | But first, climate change. |
| 0:44.0 | Almost everyone agrees that in the past 100 years the globe was warmed |
| 0:48.0 | by about three quarters of a degree. |
| 0:50.0 | But that's not really what has provoked concern about global warming. |
| 0:54.0 | Rather it was a more dramatic increase in the past few decades, |
| 0:57.0 | especially the 1980s and 1990s. |
| 1:00.0 | According to data from the UK's Meteorological Office, |
| 1:03.0 | the record for average global temperature was broken in 1983, |
| 1:07.0 | 1988, 1990, 1995 and most recently in 1998. |
| 1:13.0 | But then over 10 years went by without a record. |
| 1:17.0 | Some people think this is telling us something about the planet. |
... |
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