Recently after some conversations with a former chemical engineer who provided me with some insight, I’ve come to the conclusion that many engineers have difficulty with many of the premises of AGW theory because in their “this has to work or people die” world of exacting standards, the AGW argument doesn’t hold up well by their standards of performance.
Today I was surprised to learn that one of the foremost and world famous engineers on the planet, Burt Rutan, has become an active climate skeptic. You may be familiar with some of Rutan’s work through his company, Scaled Composites:
Thanks to WUWT reader Dale Knutsen, I was provided a PowerPoint file recently by email presented by Mr. Rutan at the Oshkosh fly-in convention on July 29th, 2009 and again on August 1st, 2009. It has also now been posted online by an associate of Mr. Rutan’s.
There were a number of familiar things in the PowerPoint, including data plots from one of the USHCN stations I personally surveyed and highlighted, Santa Rosa, NM. Rutan had an interest in it because of the GISS adjustment to the data. For him, the whole argument is about the data. He says about his presentation in slide #3:
Not a Climatologist’s study; more from the view of a flight test guy who has spent a lifetime in data analysis/interpretation.
In the notes of his PowerPoint on slide #3, Rutan tells us why he thinks this way(emphasis mine):
My study is NOT as a climatologist, but from a completely different prospective in which I am an expert.
Complex data from disparate sources can be processed and presented in very different ways, and to “prove” many different theories.
For decades, as a professional experimental test engineer, I have analyzed experimental data and watched others massage and present data. I became a cynic; My conclusion – “if someone is aggressively selling a technical product who’s merits are dependant on complex experimental data, he is likely lying”. That is true whether the product is an airplane or a Carbon Credit.
Now since I’m sure people like foaming Joe Romm will immediately come out to label Mr. Rutan as a denier/delayer/generally bad person, one must be careful to note that Mr. Rutan is not your average denier/delayer. He’s “green”. Oh horrors, a “green denier”! Where have we seen that before?
From his PowerPoint, here’s his house, note the energy efficient earth walled design.
In his PowerPoint notes he says about his green interests:
My house was Nov 89 Pop Science Cover story; “World’s Most Efficient House”. Its big advantage is in the desert summer. It is all-electric and it uses more energy in the relatively mild winters than in the harsh summers – just the opposite of my neighbors.
The property has provisions for converting to self-sustaining (house and plug-in hybrid car) via adding wind generator and solar panels when it becomes cost effective to do so.
Testing Solar Water Heat in the 70s at RAF; the Rutan Aircraft Factory was converted to solar-heated water in the 70s, when others were only focused on gasoline costs.
My all electric EV-1 was best car I ever owned. Primary car for 7 years, all-electric with an 85 mile range. I was very sad (just like the guy shown) when the leased cars were recalled and crushed by General Motors. I will buy a real hybrid when one becomes available (plug-in with elect-range>60 miles). The Prius “hybrid” is not a hybrid, since it is fueled only by gasoline. A Plug-in Hybrid can be fueled with both gas and electricity. You might even see a ‘plug-in hybrid airplane’ in my future.
Interest is technology, not tree-hugging
Well that right there is reason enough to put all sorts or nasty labels on the man. Welcome to the club Burt, we are proud to have you!
Rutan’s closing observations slide is interesting:
And, in his notes he makes this mention:
Is the debate over? – The loudest Alarmist says the debate is over. However, “It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry”.
I think by the “loudest alarmist” he means Al Gore.
And his final slide:
Rutan’s PowerPoint file is posted at:
http://rps3.com/Pages/Burt_Rutan_on_Climate_Change.htm
For those that don’t have PowerPoint, I’ve converted it to a PDF file for easy and immediate reading online which you can download here.
I wonder if in conversations with his biggest client, Virgin’s Richard Branson, he ever mentions Gore and their joint project? I’d love to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.
Amen to that Burt – as a (bad) computer engineer and a (average) poker player I know bs when I see it too…
Sparkey (20:51:02) : I remember back in the 70’s (at the height of the energy shortage that allowed Carter to foist the Dept. of Energy on us) the CEO of BP announcing that the planet would run out of oil in less than 50 years. Forty years later we’re still 50 years away from oil deprivation.
Somewhere in my stored book boxes I have an old Oil Geology text from circa 1919 IIRC. I kept it for the simple reason that it predicted exactly when (then) known reserves would run out… in 50 years. I found it in some books the Engineering library was dumping in the ’70s right when BP was saying we would run out in 50 years… The irony struck me.
That seems to be the number where no body keeps looking for new oil and where everyone is comfortable that they have enough reserves “in the can” for their career…
I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction. I predict that in 20 years we will have … 50 years of oil reserves.
Rob Ryan (21:13:40) : It’s off topic for this post but yes, there’s lots of oil left. About half, to the best estimates of those who search for it for a living. There are two problems:
1. The second half is dramatically more difficult to get to than the first.
And our technology is dramatically more productive than it was when Drake drilled his first well…
So yes, we have about 1/2 the oil in the ground and know how to get about 1/2 of that up relatively well. THEN you get into the oil in things like tar sands and shales that make up more than all the other oil the planet has ever had…
Oh, and you do know about the giant field found be Petrobras off the coast of Brazil in deeper water than theory said was possible? And you do know that Standard Oil hit a bit well in deeper water in the Gulf of Mexico than theory said was possible? This now opens a whole new “shell” of depth for exploration, since before we just assumed there could not possibly be oil at those depths…
And consider how much oil exploration has been done in the coastal waters of the US Pacific ocean and the Arctic ocean. (You do know about the Alaska Naval Oil Reserve, yes?) How about the Atlantic ocean off Boston?… None for decades, you say? Almost the entire length of time that electronic oil survey methods have existed? Hmm…
The 1/2 in the ground is based on old estimates. As we find more, the 1/2 point keeps moving…
2. Exponential growth in the consumption of a finite reserve means that, basically, we’ll use as much oil in the next 30 years as we have in all previous history if rates of growth in consumption continue.
Oh dear, the old Club of Rome Exponential Growth curve dusted off again from the 1970s Meadows et. al. Limits to Growth…
Real growth curves are S shaped, not exponentials.
Real growth does not continue into a wall at hight speed, but “tops out” and switches to alternatives or finds a way to gently ramp down.
And real world economics has folks automagically shifting (called resource substitution) via price signals in a fairly smooth manner in most markets.
(Don’t believe that last one? Well, my family has 4 cars in play. 2 are Diesels. We slide back and forth between gasoline, mineral Diesel, and my car often gets bioDiesel. We’re always doing a 3 way fuel price optimize and smoothly transition between the fuels from one week to the next.
I bought an electric lawn more a couple of years back when they finally got cheap enough. Another smooth transition.
It’s called a market. And they work.
Jimmy Haigh (21:15:12) : When the UK North Sea came on production around 1970 they all said it would run out by 2000.
Rob Ryan (21:24:15) :
@ur momisugly Jimmy Haigh
North Sea production peaked in 1999.
Prediction was “run out” as in all gone dry hole, counter argument is “peaked” as in massively producing at the highest rate they had ever seen.
As a counter argument, it seems a bit weak to me…
Usually when you run out of something you do not set records for production of if.
bluegrue (06:20:44) :
I am always interested to discuss with a reasonable warmer.
Can you explain what this means? “….. the global average CO2 mixing ratio by 30% (as we have done already) …”
What is this ” global average CO2 mixing ratio ” ?
Monckton’s artful graphs (Lucia’s take) – I read this. It seems that Lucia’s argument is simply about the semantics of which IPCC report is used and the corresponding effect on the slope of the graph used. This is classic (AGW) diversionary tactic that ignores the substance of the issue. Do you challenge the substance?
Do you deny this is a false comparison? “….Are you contesting the magnitude of the influence of CO2 or the greenhouse effect in its entirety?….”
Everyone knows CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It is the feedback process that is contested. You should know that.
E.M.Smith (17:19:21) :
Many thanks, that NASA diagram sums it up nicely. So human emissions are roughly 2.6% of natural emissions. So, by the logic of some believers, nature is by far the biggest polluter….
.
But I think my point still stands. It’s a case of apples and oranges. All the other figures refer to amounts of carbon dioxide. But this figure (the small red dot) is a relative emission rate, which is quite different. I think that diagram should have made that clear.
.
But, having said that, Rutan’s point is very valid. The fact that human emissions are tiny compared to nature’s is quite extraordinary. It seems that a roughly 3% increase in emissions has caused a roughly 50% increase in the actual amount. It’s not what you would expect….
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About that comment about filling a room with 100% CO2: maybe WUWT should have cut it, on the grounds of sheer, unadulterated stupidity! But maybe not. It’s probably quite useful, as it gives all of us a demonstration of where this bizarre religion called AGW can lead otherwise sane people.
Chris
Bruce Cobb (12:31:16) :
“That all depends on what your definition of “green” is, doesn’t it? Does Rutan in fact make the claim that he’s “green”? And where, or where does he claim to be “100% behind the effort to green up our energy supply” (whatever the heck that means)?
Bruce, the man has a solar powered house and factory. How much greener can you get? And if you think our current energy supply is green – which very obviously means kind to the environment and renewable – then you have blinkers on. Anyone who doesn’t want to green up our supply is by definition an idiot. The cost is the only issue. Which leads us to your next objection:
How about instead of an ill-defined, nebulous “green energy” we instead support “smart energy”? , which is why Rutan will be “adding wind generator and solar panels when it becomes cost effective to do so “.
Exactly the same point i made! And the key thing that makes things cheaper is that people have to start buying it.
“Energy which is more expensive can almost never be smart”
This depends whether you are talking short or long term. The smart question is, does it have the potential to become cheaper or to save money long-term? Because when engineers improve things they always get cheaper. By your definition, no technological advance would ever have taken off because it was initially too expensive. Yet all it needs is for it to become trendy, then people buy it, then it becomes cheaper. Geothermal energy and solar panels are a prime example. If you can afford the initial outlay then they save money in the long term and in the future, as more people buy, they will be cheaper still. On that i suspect you agree. Yet what if it was possible to accelerate the process by smart policy. Would that not be smart energy policy? Every bit of home generated energy takes the load off the national grid. I suspect your real concern is with the replacement of power stations, not with home-generation. they are two entirely separate considerations though.
“Carbon taxes, whether small or large are not smart either, since raising energy costs can only hurt our already-suffering economy, and because punishing carbon makes no sense.”
A large tax would certainly hurt but a small tax wouldn’t. Notice that the effect of cheap gasoline was that everyone went out and bought utterly ridiculous (and often ugly) gas-guzzlers. This was a criminal waste of a scarce resource for mere fashion. So the lesson is that when our fuel is too cheap we just waste it. For that reason a small tax is good.
“Man can code a computer model to predict the airflow from dead calm to hypersonic over an airfoil. He can code a computer model to predict combustion dynamics in a cylinder. Mr. Rutan’s credentials (much like Anthony Watts’) to comment on the validity of geophysics is exactly equivalent to my credentials to comment on air and spacecraft design.”
um, even a dumb layman like myself can see the differece. Those airflow models can be checked in a wind tunnel and in real life.
Show me a climate model that makes 50 year predictions that regularly come true and I will belive them, regardless of how they are coded.
Climate science does not have a proven track record. Their predictions are indistinguishable from vague guesses. They have no proven track record, end of story.
I agree about the resource arguments being false: we are running out of cheap oil, not expensive oil and we aren’t running out of coal for a long time. However, by 2050 there will be 9 billion people on the planet and they’ll all be clamoring for more and more energy – as is their right. So any smart energy policy has to consider renewables. Yet all this talk about cost and markets ignores a lot of technologies that wouldn’t have got anywhere without a public sector push prior to the private sector pull. The internet is a pretty good example. Would you be without it? How much money has it saved your business? Renewables just need the same small push until the private sector pulls in force. Then we’ll all save money.
JamesG – Ah, so, Rutan is “green” because you say he is. He has obviously invested a lot of money into powering his home and factory with solar, but the question is, how long is the payback period, particularly given that solar panels typically have a life of about 25 years? Renewable energies like solar, wind and geothermal sound exciting, but the fact remains they are expensive. Trendy? Give me a break. They are for folks with money to play with, and with government subsidies it’s very often OUR money.
There certainly will be technological advances coming which will hopefully provide us with energy which can compete with coal and oil. Let’s hope it is soon. But meanwhile, paying more for energy just because it is supposedly “green” is idiotic, economic suicide for the U.S., and particularly hurts the poor and middle class.
Oh, and far as a “small tax” not hurting? They never do stay “small”, do they? We need a strong, vibrant economy, one which “raises all boats”, especially now. It is only with a vibrant economy that we can effectively deal with REAL issues of pollution, environmental degradation, and social issues.
Matt (23:58:01) :
I didn’t make the quote up: someone else did and a long time ago.
Of course I didn’t mean to insult the entire teaching profession at all – and I’m sure the author of the quote didn’t either. For the record, I thought that most of my teachers were pretty good.
I googled the phrase and found this:
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/Those+who+can,+do%3B+those+who+can't,+teach
Apparently it was George Bernard Shaw who came up with it. But it might be an old Chinese proverb…
More on BP regarding North Sea Oil. The boss of what was to become BP said, in about 1964, that he would drink all of the oil that they found in the North Sea!
I rest my case…
E.M.Smith (23:12:22) :-Oregon is California’s mini-Me…
One of the best presentations that I have seen. One small point though.
I think Rutan has it wrong on his slide 8 showing a 10 x 10 grid of greenhouse gas content. Is he not confusing annual CO2 contribution with accumulated CO2 content. If CO2 has gone from 280 to 380 ppm and that most of the increase is human, then almost one whole square should be red, shouldn’t it?
@ur momisugly Stefan
Such checking has been done. The GCM’s do a superb job on dramatically different time scales of “postdicting,” i.e., using known conditions as input and comparing output to known later conditions. They are not exact, just as the results of the combustion dynamics models are not exact. In fact, such uncertainty should elicit more caution, not less since the forcing is as likely to be worse as to be better than estimated. That is, if it’s predicted by known physical principles (note the distinction from “computer models”) that a doubling of CO2 will result in a 2.5 K increase in global mean temperature with a standard deviation of 2.5 K, then a 5 K increase is equally likely as no increase. Note that no application of known physical principles has led to a prediction of 0 K
The strawman used by the posters here is “computer models.” Computer models are nothing more than the application of known physical principles to initial conditions with a machine that can do a lot of calculations in a hurry. They are no more mysterious or arcane than modeling the acceleration of an object of known mass under a known force by using a calculator, a slide rule, or a pencil and paper (or a computer) to say a=F/m.
These arguments are reminiscent of the moronic young Earth creationists who say “show me a transitional form between species a and species b.” When shown one, say species a.5, they say “show me a transitional species between species a and a.5 and one between species a.5 and b.” When thinking people refuse to participate further in the charade, the creationists say “see, we told you.”
As to peak oil, there are three points to be made:
1. The infinite series (sum, i=1->infinity, 1/2^n) has a finite sum. It’s true that we can and will keep finding oil into the future, and that Exxon, et al, will continue to make money bringing it to us. But this will end.
2. As we are forced to go further and further out into the ocean, etc. the economic AND ENERGETIC costs dictate that, at some point, it won’t be worth it. If it takes more than about 1.5*10^9 joules to recover a barrel of oil, no one will recover it since that’s all the energy that can be gotten (assuming a utilization efficiency of 25%) from that barrel.
3. We are constrained by growth. The population grows and that vast proportion of the world that is subsisting on an average (per capita) rate of energy consumption of less than a kilowatt strives to live as we do, at a rate of 11 kilowatts. If you think that’s fine and we’ll all consume energy in this way, then I’m afraid that getting through your irrationality is hopeless.
Edit to the series above: it should be either both i’s or both n’s. It’s hard to type math in text.
I haven’t the time right now, as I am off to work, but I will be back later today and tear apart Rob Ryan’s post that is being disingenuous on EVERY point he makes. The delusion that he is being rational and no one else is, is laughable. Rob, try posting on a current thread so that EVERYONE can see your posts, instead of skulking behind the scenes. Doesn’t look good. Gives the impression that you are being weasel-like. “Every lock that ain’t locked when no ones around, …” is a direct quote from Rob’s webpage. Nice.
You’re buying into (or pretending to buy into) the speculation that “emissions from industry could cause additional climate change by warming the globe. This threatens more sea level rise, droughts, floods, heat waves and much else.” You’re also buying into the conclusion that it makes sense for governments “to reduce the emissions of the warming gases, notably carbon dioxide.”
This speculation (‘could’ is not a prediction) is just baseless fear-mongering, and attempts to reduce carbon dioxide are foolhardy in the extreme. Warmer climates benefit humanity and life in general. So why should we bother to prevent warming? Cooling, now that’s a different matter!
If the point of your article is just to deflect political attention away from CO2 and toward some other, more innocuous activity (like seeding clouds to block sunlight), the intention is understandable but misdirected. The political elites pushing AGW are not really interested in ‘climate change’; they’re interested in control and taxation.
/Mr Lynn
Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
In this case, unfortunately, I think we have to consider the alternative:
“The real enemy then, is humanity itself.” – Club of Rome
See here: http://www.green-agenda.com/
/Mr Lynn
What a sad and shocking state of affairs! Can it be that in the space of only a few decades the United States of America, the country of Thomas Edison and a host of others, has turned its back on the creative genius that propelled us to prosperity and world leadership? If anyone, in addition to our soldiers, should be celebrated, it should be our engineers and their ‘can do’ spirit.
Rather than fleeing the country, as EM Smith’s friends (and EM himself?) intend to do, we should be asking: “What can we do to turn this around, and get this country back on the track to greatness once again?”
/Mr Lynn
Matt (23:58:01) :
To Jimmy Haigh (20:11:24)
“There are plenty on my teahcers who i have had who can do!!”
Of course I could have said that maybe your spelling teacher couldn’t!
Jimmy Haigh (06:44:40) :
“More on BP regarding North Sea Oil. The boss of what was to become BP said, in about 1964, that he would drink all of the oil that they found in the North Sea!
I rest my case…”
Any talk of peak oil is political. Nothing more.
The rich get richer and the poor stay poor.
I have worked in nearly every oil refinery in the UK (left the game years ago) and have friends in various areas of the business who hardly ever talk to me about it in depth it now as I have moved on to
more interestingother things but…One close friend (considered by the best in the industry to be the best ever fast assayer of crude) I bumped into in his local recently had this to tell me – “I am snowed under and jet-lagged trying to get around all the sites they want me to evaluate.” He is not the only person in his field.
I then reminded him of something he said a few decades ago that made me laugh and sigh then and which makes me sad and angry now – “We only ever find oil where we look for it.”
I get nothing but pleasure from the open vitriol being directed at me, and Anthony’s encouragement of it. If all you can do is call me names, rather than talk science, do you think it makes me look bad, or do you think it makes you look bad?
So, ignoring all the personal attacks and sticking to a couple of at least vaguely scientifically-grounded points:
evanmjones:
“RW: If you follow the temperature trend from 1900 to present and match CO2 with temperature you get a different picture.”
No, you don’t. You see the same strong correlation.
“You get a very good correlation for PDO/AMO, which is strengthened by the up-down oscillation matching. But for CO2, it is relatively flat until post WWII, which means the big warming phase from 1915+ to 1945+ (as big a slope as 1975+ to 2000+) occurred without much increase in CO2.”
CO2 was not relatively flat until post WWII. Look at the data! From its pre-industrial 280ppm, CO2 increased to 310ppm.
“We then have a cooling from 1950 to 1979 coinciding with a serious CO2 increase. This was followed by the 1979 – 1998 warming. Then a decreasing trend from 1998 – present. All of this occurred with CO2 on a steady rise.”
There is “no decreasing trend from 1998” – only by ignoring statistics can you think so. The last decade has in fact been the warmest in the instrumental record.
“Therefore, during the time of steep CO2 rise, we have four decades of mild cooling and two decades of moderate warming (with a small net warming), roughly equal to the rise from 1900 – 1950. Not a very good CO2 correlation.”
Now seriously. Did you look at the data? Does it seem foolish to explain verbosely how bad the correlation is, when even the most cursory glance at the actual data shows the strong correlation?
“By the way, for 1900 – present, Joe D’Aleo shows a 0.83 correlation between PDO/AMO index and temperatures and a 0.44 correlation between CO2 and temperatures.”
Joe D’Aleo smoothed the data, thus artificially inflating the correlation, and the temperature data used was for the US only. Thus, the claim is meaningless.
Lucy Skywalker: “Ref 1 stopped at 2000 – missing the recent cooling that no model predicted”
Replace ‘missing the recent cooling that no model predicted” with “missing the warmest decade on record” and your statement becomes accurate. How many sets of climate model outputs have you ever looked at, by the way?
REPLY: I think you look bad no matter how you slice it. You attack a man (Rutan) who puts his name to his work and beliefs, yet hide in the shadows of net anonymity. Thus, you are a coward. If you want respect, come forward, take the same risks as Mr. Rutan, otherwise zip it.- Anthony
@ur momisugly David Ball
What the heck? This thread was created on 8/16, two days ago. I made my first post in it yesterday. I’m “skulking” like a “weasel?” You seriously have GOT to be kidding. It was a link from Morano’s “Climate Depot” site. You have time to hurl insults I see.
“Every Lock That Ain’t Locked When No One’s Around” is a quote from the old Roger Miler tune “King of the Road.” Thanks for visiting.
This thread started about Rutan and his contention that AGW is false. In my first post, yesterday AFTER GETTING HERE FROM A LINK ON MORANO’S SITE, I addressed his expertise on that subject, pointing out that he has every professional qualification to opine on it as any other smart dude who’s not in the field. Like me (though I repeat, he’s probably smarter).
Matt, you clearly suffer from a lack of having had a typing class. When I went to school, everybody had to take typing. You know. What your fingers do on a typewriter. The same typing technique is used for typing on a computer keyboard. Most kids these days don’t know that. With the advent of notebook computers on every desk, typing classes have disappeared, leaving many to struggle with index finger hunt and peck techniques. Yes, passing comments are given to typing technique and maybe a week out of the year to focus just on typing, but no one gets a semester grade on typing anymore. It is all rolled into computer class. Sad. Sad. Sad. It makes Matt look dumb.