Other Wagers
In 1996, Simon bet $1000 with David South that the inflation-adjusted price of timber would decrease in the following 5 years. Simon paid out early on the bet in 1997 (before his death in 1998) based on his expectation that prices would remain above 1996 levels (which they did).
In 1999, when the Economist headlined an article entitled, "$5 a barrel oil soon?" and with oil trading in the $12/barrel range, David South offered $1000 to any economist who would bet with him that the price of oil would be greater than $12/barrel in 2010. No economist took him up on the offer. However, in October 2000, Zagros Madjd-Sadjadi, an economist with The University of the West Indies, bet $1000 with David South that the inflation-adjusted price of oil would decrease to an inflation-adjusted price of $25 by 2010 (down from what was then $30/barrel). Madjd-Sadjadi paid South an inflation-adjusted $1,242 in January 2010. The price of oil at the time was $81/barrel.
In recent years, there have been many bets and bet challenges related to global warming. For instance, J. Scott Armstrong challenged Al Gore to a climate-related bet in 2007 that focused on year-to-year variation in temperatures but not on betting over longer term changes in global average temperatures.
Asset manager Jeremy Grantham wrote that if the Simon-Ehrlich wager had been for a longer period (from 1980 to 2011), then Ehrlich would have won on four of the five metals. He concluded, "So, please "Cornucopians," let's not hear any more of the Ehrlich-Simon bet, which proves, in fact, both that man is mortal and must make short-term bets, and, more importantly, that Ehrlich's argument was right (so far)."
Read more about this topic: Simon–Ehrlich Wager