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.
I had only had a chance to skim the comments to this post prior to this evening but, having read them more extensively, I’m amazed. This “I’m an engineer, we know best” mantra is surprising to me. My business partner is an engineer, we employ seven other engineers among other professionals. None would be as arrogant as those here who say “I’m an engineer, I know much better than those who make career of it how to understand climate, interpret climate data, and act on the results.”
My degree is in mathematics, without dispute the most precise discipline. Definitions are exact, circularity is eliminated, theorems follow inexorably by logical deduction from explicit hypotheses. I’ve had many statistics courses as well. Therefore I also know how to interpret data and reason from facts. Were I to tell one of the engineers who works for me “I know better than you how your design should function” he’d listen, evaluate my input, then make a decision which I would respect because that is his field of expertise, his life’s work.
In this thread, many of the posts from engineers exhibit the opposite attitude. People assume their expertise in their own field gives them special insight, superior to experts in the field of climatology. I wouldn’t want a mechanical engineer designing a foundation, nor a geotechnical engineer designing a turbine. I employ them both. And I wouldn’t want either of them removing my appendix or setting policy relating to CO2 and climate.
Ok, had a long day, thanks for asking. Now Rob, having gone over this thread, I think I was correct in my initial assessment. “King of the Road” is a classic, but why would you use that particular line from the song unless it fits the devious nature of your personality? You have not responded to most of the posts directed at your statements. It is as if you never even saw them. I always watch past threads and have seen a lot of people like you come through here, do a lot of hand-waving, claim they are being insulted when it is they who are being condescending and arrogant (m.o. of a lot of alarmists cause we’re all stupid and you aren’t). The models all predicted WARMING (cause they were programmed to) and the real world is NOT. That is superb work , that is. The climate is no longer alarming people so now you guys are on about “peak oil’, and “ocean acidification”. What will it be after these hobgobblins have also been laid to rest? My guess is you’ve probably stopped reading by now. I am always flabbergasted by people who have long ago accepted Co2AGW, and are now 2 or 3 steps beyond, not realizing the foundation of their argument has rotted out beneath them. It is a horse of a pill to swallow. Come to the Canadian prairies and I’ll show you around some of the recent finds of oil. Big uns, too. The elephants in the room, so to speak. Did not realize Saskatchewan was so far out on the ocean as to make it’s oil inaccessible. 8^]. Just so you know, I am not alarmed. Let’s go back to the stone age, that will be good for the kids and grandma. Or can we use nuclear? Back to you Rob, ….
Rob Ryan (21:27:00) :
We wouldn’t want anyone spending tens of billions of dollars and coming up with… well, nothing much actually. Maybe this is what makes engineers think they should criticise and feel they could do a better job. Maybe it is the slightly bitter taste that started with the realization of the massive waste in the “industry” that has produced nothing to persuade them that there is anything to be alarmed about, let alone alter the fiscal dynamic of nations over.
It purchases a large amount of hand waving and hot air but where, thus far, is the real world benefit? $80 billion here, $80 billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money. No wonder the spouted $trillions of yet to be extracted carbon taxes are not much questioned yet salivated over by the bankers that have funded and will benefit the most from this.
Could you please name 5 climate scientists? Not physicists, meteorologists, astronomers, mathematicians, chemists, biologists, geologists, palaeo-anything, divinity students, etc., but indentured, credentialed and, more importantly, experienced climate scientists?
Rob Ryan, engineers are not arrogant, just right. We have fundamentals to fall back on, and those never, ever, ever let us down. As was written earlier, when engineers get it wrong, people die. We do not have the luxury of merely running computer models, we must build whatever it is we build, and see that it works safely, economically, and reliably.
When climate scientists violate various fundamentals, that is when the engineers stand up and say that is wrong. We laugh a bit, too.
I have worked all over the world as a practicing chemical engineer, in many cultures, languages, and economic systems, and the one constant was engineering fundamentals. They are never wrong.
Most people have no idea what an engineer knows, or how he knows it (or she), but it is quite easy for engineers to point out the BS from arm-waving and graph-posting climate scientists.
One other thing: the problem of scale-up. Somebody above mentioned that the climate models simply take well-known phenomena based on valid scientific facts and algorithms, then run the calculations in a large model. Then they believe the model has it right.
Engineers laugh ourselves silly over that one.
Engineers know that there is a world of trouble, difficulties, and pain between the laboratory experiment, the bench-scale demonstration system, a small commercial sized system (sometimes known as a pilot plant), and a large commercial sized system. Each increased step in size creates manifold problems, as is well-known throughout the various engineering disciplines. Something as simple as a stirred-tank batch reactor for polymerizing vinyl chloride monomer into poly-vinyl chloride created massive problems for many years. There were very few variables at play: mixing, temperature, catalyst, monomer, and water. Nothing at all like the complexity of a planetary climate system.
For IPCC climate scientists to tell the world, with a straight face, that their models have it right when modeling, on a planetary(!) scale, the response to an increase in CO2 from 300 ppm to 600 ppm, is absolutely ludicrous. Ask any engineer who has ever had to scale up a working system from laboratory to commercial scale.
That is not arrogance. That is experience. Hard-won, sad, often very expensive, and painful experience.
Rob Ryan, one other thing about your perception of the arrogance of engineers on this thread.
Climate scientists are getting a taste of the scale-up problem, as each of their predictions falls flat on its face.
It is a humbling experience to be an engineer and try so very hard to get it right, then see the next-larger size plant fail. I know, because I have been there. Fortunately, the fate of a planet was not riding on the engineers being correct on those projects. All I had riding on the outcome was just a few hundreds of millions of dollars, sometimes billions of dollars, some professional reputations, and a few thousand jobs.
Not like the IPCC and various countries and states with climate change laws, or carbon regulation laws. Billions of people’s lives and living conditions, and equally billions of jobs are at stake.
This is not a game. The engineers that I work with, and speak in front of, are quite dismayed and very unhappy with the arrogance of the climate scientists who so obviously are so wrong in so many areas.
They say the seas are rising. No they’re not.
The ice is melting. No, it is not.
The planet is warming. Nothing out of the usual. We are between ice ages, after all.
CO2 is the cause of the warming. No, it is not.
The earth will stop warming if we just stop emitting CO2 and other greenhouse gases. No, it will not.
Rob Ryan (21:27:00)
And I wouldn’t want either of them removing my appendix or setting policy relating to CO2 and climate.
How about this guy, who is setting policy?
http://tinyurl.com/o3ebd2
Uh, aren’t a lot of climate scientists meteorologists, physicists, mathematicians, paleo-whatever, even engineers, etc. by training?
Is that a problem?
Roger Sowell (22:46:55) :
Rob Ryan, engineers are not arrogant, just right. We have fundamentals to fall back on, and those never, ever, ever let us down.
I would hazard the guess that good engineers are actually the ones who leave room for the possibility they might be wrong and devise skillful safeguards against it.
Roger Sowell (23:10:27) :
The most valuable thing engineers could be doing now is possibly to use their skill in identifying specific problem areas and potential costs of mistakes while forming alternatives. Hand waving or blanket assertions about outside areas where the particular engineer does not have expertise are unhelpful.
>>>I guess he ain’t getting much sunlight for his ‘weird’
>>>House and has started to becoming a Sceptic…
Ha, ha, yes.
A friend of mine did the same – fitted a huge solar heating panel but he was so confident of his Green credentials, he also disconnected the gas boiler. Bad move that – this is Britain, and the resulting lack of hot water for four years quadrupled his electricity bill and nearly cost him a divorce.
Happily, he has seen the light, and reinstalled a gas boiler. 😉
.
Rob Ryan (21:27:00) :
Your degree is in mathematics. The celebrated intellectual Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of ‘The Black Swan’, is also a mathematician. There is a report in today’s Financial Times of a debate Taleb held yesterday with David Cameron, former PR executive and current leader of the UK Conservative Party, who has (or has plans for) a domestic wind turbine attached to his chimney-pot.
Here is an extract of the FT’s report of the debate in which Taleb also warned of the dangers of group-think: “When Mr Taleb suggested that climate change was not necessarily man-made, Mr Cameron’s reply was curt: “You know that’s not what I think.”
So it turns out that Nicholas Taleb too is an AGW sceptic. Slowly, slowly………….
The full report may be found at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/78ec4a8c-8c25-11de-b14f-00144feabdc0.html
Kind Regards
D. King (23:54:35) :
It has been pointed out that policymakers in the U.S. are, by and large, neither trained scientists nor engineers, and that this might be a problem for us all.
>>>Apparently the old “running out” canard is raising it’s
>>>beak again too 😉 OK, time to dust this one off again:
>>> http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
>>>So can we PLEEEASE let go of the notion that we’re
>>>gonna “run out’?
I disagree – we will run out, and fairly soon.
For a start I do not like that wonderfully symmetrical bell-curve fossil fuel supply graph. The extracted fields are all the largest and easiest fields to work, whereas the new fields are all small, complex geologically and expensive. The downslope will be much more rapid than the upslope.
Secondly, we ARE running out in Britain. N Sea oil is on the decline and coal is more difficult to mine, despite the predictions that we have 300yrs of coal left. The great new coal production hope of Selby pit turned out to be so hopelessly fractured that the site was closed in 2004. Yes, there might be coal down there, but how much do you want to pay to extract it?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/2129050.stm
And it does not matter if there is oodles of oil and gas elsewhere in the world. We are in Britain, and there is no point having all our oil in Arabia and gas in Russia. Neither location is politically reliable, and Arabia likes to manipulate oil-price spikes, while Russia loves turning its gas supply off in January.
To all intents and purposes, oil and gas are virtually finished already for the West. We DO need to diversify energy supply, but quite obviously renewables are simply an annoying (and dangerous) distraction.
Renewable Energy – Our Downfall
http://wattsupwiththat.com/?s=nuclear+downfall
What we do need, is more nuclear production, be this fission, fast-breeder fission, or fusion.
The other engineers have done a fine job of explaining why it is so obvious to us that AGW is BS (bad science). This is our fundamental objection; that AGW, while certainly a potential concern, has failed as a useful scientific theory. We know about feedback and know that when models are “tuned” with arbitrary factors, that the knowledge isn’t there and we really don’t understand the system enough to even predict whether overall it is cooling or warming, much less how much.
When an engineer is confronted with a problem, which is by definition a failure of the “model” we designed our system with, we swallow our pride and have to figure out why the part we thought would work has failed. Global climate models have failed.
When I finally dug into the mechanism in the “models” and discovered they presumed amplification of the tiny, also modeled CO2 forcing, it was obvious that was the bad “part”, the source of the failure. It also revealed to me that the models were not physical at all, but just statistical exercises, doomed to spurious correlations. We know that the reality is the reverse; that clouds, water vapor, circulation and vegetation all act as negative feedbacks and damp the forcing. And that if the model leaves out cloud cover as a forcing instead of a feedback, it is useless.
The global climate models have failed. If someone really cared enough about whether global temps were going up .1K or .2K, we could probably spend another billion on better satellites to really figure out the overall CO2 forcing by observing the very small changes in outgoing longwave radiation by season versus air temp and water vapor content. Of course the governments really know that the answer is so small to be irrelevant, so that will never get funding.
It is obvious that ocean circulation drives dramatic changes in weather. Any working engineer that deals with heat can calculate off the top of his head how thick a water column has as much heat capacity as the air above it. Think about this a few seconds and then see how good your “intuition” is if you don’t have the knowledge to calculate the answer. I will reveal the truth at the end of my post. Moderator, please don’t let any of the ignorant waste our time asking about heat capacity or try to tell us the oceans can’t store heat. Frankly, if you don’t understand specific heat and heat transfer, you do not have the basic tools to evaluate the climate models.
I suspect that we really are close to a breakthrough with Svensmark’s theory of cosmic ray seeding of clouds, but politicians haven’t figured out a way to tax them or subsidize them yet.
Climate “scientists” are just pompous bureaucrats justifying the latest government tax scheme. Meteorologists that work for private services have customers that will not pay them unless they can forecast better than the government services.
This is our fundamental objection. The forecasts have been worse than useless because they are wrong and yet we are expected to believe that they are really right and make decisions based on them.
2.5 meters of water has the same heat capacity as the air above it at sea level within 10% under all barometric pressures, humidities, and saliniities that exist on earth. And we are expected to believe that with ocean depths over 2500 meters on average, 1000 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere and 50 times as much CO2 content, that the oceans don’t have any long term effect on climate and can be ignored? Please.
oms (00:19:16) :
The most valuable thing engineers could be doing now is possibly to use their skill in identifying specific problem areas and potential costs of mistakes while forming alternatives.
Thanks! I was wandering aimlessly just waiting for someone to tell me,
“The most valuable thing engineers could be doing…possibly”.
Now I have purpose.
P.S. Does your mom know you’re blogging?
oms (00:19:16) : said
“The most valuable thing engineers could be doing now is possibly to use their skill in identifying specific problem areas and potential costs of mistakes while forming alternatives. Hand waving or blanket assertions about outside areas where the particular engineer does not have expertise are unhelpful.”
I think that you are missing Roger Sowell’s point. There are principles that engineers adhere to in their testing and design work. Both experience and reason show that these principles are valid and can’t be flaunted with impunity. When climate scientists ignore these principles we don’t have to prove them wrong or offer alternatives. It is up to them to correct their methods.
Some of these principles are obvious like “The data are the data”. You don’t go around “correcting” data because you don’t like what they look like. If you think that your instrument was wrong then you go test the instrument, you don’t just alter the data to make it fit some a priori idea of what the data “should” look like.
If you have a computer model to make predictions then you test it in cases where you know the answer and you don’t calibrate the model using the data over the period that you intend to “predict”.
When your model fails to predict what happens you don’t engage in special pleading or ad hoc hypothesising, you fix the model.
When asked for your data by a critic, you provide it without question. If you think that your critic wants to destroy you then be prepared to defend your data and your methods of analysis. There is a correct answer and if you’re right then there’s nothing to worry about. If you’re wrong, then be grateful that someone caught your mistake before something terrible happened.
I would pay big money just to watch somebody like Hansen be forced to defend his analyses in a typical engineering design review. You haven’t lived until you have faced ten or so people hired to find any potential problems in your work. These are not collegial lectures, they are adversarial proceedings that leave you wishing you had chosen a less stressful profession like, say, putting pins in hand grenades.
So when we observe certain climate scientists repeatedly violating principles like these (and never being called on it) we don’t take them seriously.
This engineers’ attitude isn’t arrogance. On the contrary it’s the result of having been humbled by nature on a regular basis. We fail far more often than we succeed, it’s just that we don’t try to sell our failures as successes. We can’t because as has been mentioned several times on this blog, when we screw up people can die.
RW (09:01:07) :
Several times you’ve given a link to a graph showing a linear relationship between temperature and CO2. But there is no indication of where the graph comes from or what measurements it’s based on. Is it a laboratory measurement or based on climate measurements or what? Or is it a fabrication? It’s unlikely to be based on climate measurements as the graphs of global temperature and CO2 look quite different.
.
The graph you cite covers a large range (about 50% change in CO2). The relationship between CO2 and AGW warming is in fact not linear, so this graph is just a bit suspicious. So, could you *please* provide proof of its source and information on precisely how the measurements were obtained. If you fail to do so I will assume, probably like most other people here, that it is a fabrication.
Chris
“Roger Carr (05:03:10) :
Patrick Davis (18:58:19) : “I have been wondering these last few months since discovering this site, are there enough people aware of this site … here in Australia…”
WUWT? has a fair sprinkling of Australian contributors, Patrick, and many blogs and websites in Australia (including the high hit number Andrew Bolt blog) refer to and quote it. Additionally, Anthony links to Australian content. Based on that I would venture many if not most Australians interested in manmade global warming, aka climate change, are aware… but that all interested must continue to promote WUWT? as widely as possible.”
I wasn’t aware of Andrew Bolts’ blog, but I will certainly have a gander one day, thanks! I constantly read posties comments here in Aus about Co2 being “pollution”, it really boggles my mind that so many, world wide too, accept all that is fed to them via Gummint and the media.
Wherever possible, I send people here. There is a vast wealth of real information here which, if tested, would put Mann, Hansen, Gore to shame.
I especially like posts by the “Smith” brothers (No offense), Roger Sowell and Smokey etc etc to name a few this instant.
Thank you all, thank you Anthony.
Roger Sowell
“Rob Ryan, engineers are not arrogant, just right”
Good one. Always nice to see some comedy.
evanmjones:
“Not on the ups and downs. PDO/AMO correlation is stronger.”
What can I say? Your statement doesn’t really make sense, and it isn’t true. Get hold of CO2 data from Mauna Loa, and from Law Dome if you want to go back to 1900. Get hold of HadCRUT or GISTEMP temperature data. Plot T vs CO2, T vs. PDO, and T vs. AMO, calculate the correlation coefficient, and you’ll see that you were wrong.
“CO2 was not relatively flat until post WWII. Look at the data! From its pre-industrial 280ppm, CO2 increased to 310ppm.
That is relatively flat. It is over 385 ppm now. But the warming for 1900 – 1950 is about equal to that of 1950 – 2000.”
It’s very frustrating that you keep on flagrantly mis-describing the data. It’s ridiculous to call a 10 per cent rise “relatively flat”. log(310/280) = 0.102, log(385/310) = 0.217, so the climate forcing from the rise to 310ppm was about half of that from the subsequent rise.
“There is a decreasing trend. It is also the hottest in the instrumental record. The buildup was quick from 1979 – 1998. It was fairly flat from that point until 2007. In the last two years there has been a considerable drop. That is what the instrumental record shows.”
Again, you’re just describing what you want to see, and not what the data shows. There is no decreasing trend. If you want to prove otherwise, explain how you can make the error bars smaller than the magnitude of the trend you’re claiming, for any period of 10 years or less. As for the last two years, well, here’s trends for the last 24 months from Hadcrut, GISS, UAH, and RSS. Exactly which instrumental record shows you a considerable drop?
“True but not meaningless. The AMO/PDO combination affects North America more than any other land mass.”
A spuriously inflated correlation is always meaningless. When you spuriously correlate something with US temperatures, and then claim something about global warming based on that, do you think it somehow gets meaningful?
Chris Wright:
“Several times you’ve given a link to a graph showing a linear relationship between temperature and CO2. But there is no indication of where the graph comes from or what measurements it’s based on. Is it a laboratory measurement or based on climate measurements or what? Or is it a fabrication? It’s unlikely to be based on climate measurements as the graphs of global temperature and CO2 look quite different.”
Chris, it’s advisable to be at least a tiny bit familiar with the data, especially if you’re going to accuse people of fabrication. Get hold of CO2 data from Mauna Loa, and from Law Dome if you want to go back to 1900. Get hold of HadCRUT or GISTEMP temperature data. Plot T vs CO2. Simple.
oms (00:19:16) :
“The most valuable thing engineers could be doing now is possibly to use their skill in identifying specific problem areas and potential costs of mistakes while forming alternatives.”
Some of us are actually doing what we can. I have a modest blog (two actually), with a small but growing following. I also speak to as many assemblies as I can, usually engineers, but other groups as well. Not everyone wants to be a public speaker, and that is more than fine. I also work to repeal AB 32 by informing and persuading legislators and policy makers that the climate warming science is wrong and no cause for alarm exists. I also comment on the warmists’ blogs from time to time. All of these are more fun than a person should be allowed to have.
RW: You completely ignore the big picture. Stipulating that CO2 increase is responsible for 100% of the 20th century warming, where is the danger without positive feedbacks? If the rate of warming this century is the same as last, stop the emergency, I want to get off.
And are you saying that the trend has risen since 2007? Certainly not from January, which was the break point. (You start halfway down the drop.) I think you’d better look at the graphs again. You seem to be saying there has been a large increase in temperatures since 2007. There was a big drop in 2007 through early 2008 with an increasing trend since, which still averages out to a considerable cooling.
As for your links, try 30 months instead of 24 for completely opposite results!
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/last:30/trend
That’s for UAH, but it’s the same for GISS, HadCRUT and RSS.
Same for 100-month results.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/last:100/trend
(One generally looks at trends from low points to high and vice-versa if one wants meaningful results.)
Or to put it another way, are you warmer now than you were in Jan. 2007?
You also seem to be saying the AMO and PDO are not meaningful to temperatures. Really? Are you saying CO2 is responsible for the rise from 1979 to 1998?
To be clear, my current position is that CO2 is partially responsible for the rise from 1900 to 2000. That is to say it has a minor effect. There are serious indications that feedback is more negative than positive. Therefore, no emergency. Therefore, further study before action.
As for 1976 – 2001, do you think that at least six major oscillations (PDO, AMO, NAO, SO, AO, AAO) going from cold to warm one by one might have had an effect?
If we want a better perspective, we must look at the lows-to-highs, highs-to-lows, lows-to-lows and highs-to-highs.
Bob Meyer (02:33:18) :
This engineers’ attitude isn’t arrogance. On the contrary it’s the result of having been humbled by nature on a regular basis. We fail far more often than we succeed, it’s just that we don’t try to sell our failures as successes.”
Very well put, Bob.
I especially liked the part about engineering design review boards. Been there, on both sides of the table. Those reviews began with the fundamentals, and only if those are navigated successfully, moved on to the fine points. No need to waste everybody’s time if something fundamental is violated. Climate models fail the fundamentals. If only the politicians could be made to understand this.
I’m a Mechanical Engineer, in my mid 50’s, and have designed/built big complex expensive things that could hurt people if we got it wrong. So I get what it means to be an engineer. I should add that I’m also a long time admirer of Mr. Rutan and his accomplishments.
To my astonishment, I also just finished reading every blessed comment to this Rutan post.
I haven’t studied global warming up close and personal. I have however read quite a bit about the broad consensus and related trend lines within the scientific world community who study climate change as their primary professional activity.
I tend to hold to a line of reasoning that views trained scientists, on average, as being the most likely subset of humans to pursue the truth over all other considerations (such as profit, religious beliefs, personal philosophies, power, control etc). Said differently, most educated people would agree that scientists are the least likely group of people to be willfully misleading or unwilling to accept hard data/evidence and adjust working theories accordingly. Not that they aren’t a stubborn lot or subject to various human failings, just that science is fundamentally about discovering the truth; not adjusting the facts to fit a theory.
After taking in the bulk of the above comments, and taking it all at face value, I would have to conclude that my view of science and scientists is woefully flawed and that my engineering brethren, who are neither trained in climatology nor work in this field, have it all figured out and that indeed, the climate scientists are instead a collective of twisted misleading nutbags unwittingly bent on the destruction of life as we know it including truth, justice and the American way.
I’m reminded of a quote by Bertrand Russell who said….”The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.” But then again, he was just a Nobel Prize winning philosopher, logician, mathematician ad nauseum so what did he know!
Morten
Bob Meyer (02:33:18) :
This almost HAS to be true in any field where there is accountability.
This indeed is true, but it hasn’t stopped many posters from trying. If the prevailing climate science is wrong, then it’s wrong. Once someone thinks they have a better idea, then it’s a fair expectation that they prove their alternative is better.
That’s fine by me. I’d love to see the current and previous U.S. presidents subjected to the same as well.
Your approach is commendable, but somehow that wasn’t the tone I was getting from the OP. Apologies if I was indeed missing the point.
It appears to me from some of the comments above that there are those who doubt that scale-up is a problem. I offer the following for those to read and ponder. Then consider that the IPCC is attempting a scale up to the planetary level. There are numerous articles and books on the subject.
Click