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.
“Oil\ coal are called ‘non renewable’ bbut every decade shows an estimated increase in reserves.”
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qvha0CSgc90/SVqaog6mHjI/AAAAAAAAABU/Hu8CMcUN5hI/s1600/growing_gap_oil-discovery-vs-production.png
These figures include the doubling of reserves by OPEC in the 80s to boost quota share (they were backdated)
Every decade since the 80s we have consumed more oil than we produce.
No mention in this article whether Rutan is a ‘its not warmingist’ a “its warming but its the sun” a “its warming but its the PDO” or a ‘svensmarkian’.
*Shrugs*. Bit weak really.
Methow Ken (19:29:18) :
Time for a little adult supervision from real scientists and engineers, sez me.
————————————————–
Real scientists….. you mean people you agree with. Relevant qualifications are pretty meaningless to the kind of ‘skeptic’ found round here.
Burt Rutan’s ‘observations’ are quite fatuous.
– Of course humans can code a computer model to predict global temperatures, and we’ve been doing so for three decades. The models have been pretty accurate.
– The effect of human greenhouse gas emissions on global temperatures is obvious.
– Statements that “warm is good, not bad!” amuse me. It’s like saying “food is good, not bad!” – that is, basically it’s meaningless.
– Statements that “CO2 is not a pollutant” also amuse me, particularly when they make use of patronising bold face. The easy response is to invite the claimant to spend just a few minutes in a room filled with pure CO2.
– if he believes ever-rising claims of reserve size, I’ve got a bridge he might like to buy. If he believes there will be a ‘gradual switch’ then he doesn’t understand maths. When use of a finite resource is exponentially increasing, there will be nothing gradual when the end comes.
And yet simultaneously he almost gets the point. He just about acknowledges that current global temperatures are unusual in the context of the last several centuries. He offers no explanation of why he thinks that is, or why the simple, well-established radiative properties of CO2 should somehow not be working.
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.
henrychance (20:34:00) :
My conclusion – “if someone is aggressively selling a technical product who’s merits are dependant on complex experimental data, he is likely lying”.
Now that is a quote of the week
The Rutan starship was a flop.
Rutan is a creative artist. he is not good for successful manufacturing.
Aviation has a lot of people that understand the weather. Algore is decades behind aviation.
henrychance
“The Rutan starship was a flop.
Rutan is a creative artist. he is not good for successful manufacturing”.
I don’t agree with your assessment.
The Rutan Starship in the end was a little to heavy and to expensive, but still a marvelous airplane.
This was caused mainly because of new FAA regulations which were introduced after the prototype was build.
Most manufacturers score at least one in three projects to come up with a single commercially successful product and these companies have big (military budgets) and huge grants available to pay for it.
You mention me one single aircraft designer with a comparable success rate and design volume like Burt Rutan, operating without any Government support.
There is none.
Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composite designs aircraft including the entire mass manufacturing tooling and process.
This makes him an extremely successful “manufacturer”.
He has not only revolutionized the entire concept of prototyping and construction, but also the way the risky business of aircraft manufacturing is performed.
He enables companies who do not have the resources for design and research to produce state of the art aircraft products, thus reducing the overall business risks, the amount of capital that is needed making the industry more competitive and dynamic.
Without him we would still be flying “Blech Bomber” with struts, limited speed and range.
I think about this a lot, especially when I encounter a Cessna flying at top speed and I am able to circle it with an aircraft that uses half the fuel, cruises at twice the speed carrying a comparable pay load.
Well
The Australians have just thrown out Cap ‘N Trade legislation, so there’s hope yet.
It will take a politician of rare courage to achieve this, however in the UK and US, since they are all totally in thrall to it all.
I read his slide presentation with interest. Certainly well documented from a wide variety of sources. I especially liked this item from his slide number four where he discusses bias in the interpretation of data:
“7. Global Governance foreigners (UN and America’s other global adversaries).”
Any American who equates the UN to America’s global adversaries is demonstratably a very cogent observer of the scene. Wonder how he felt about the “Oil for Food” scheme in Iraq that so handsomely rewarded Kofi Anan’s son?
Cheers,
John
Little guys doing their own thing and coming up with great achievements are kinda rare these days. Rutan joins the likes of Edison, Lindbergh, and Jobs.
I’m disappointed with this talk. Just a few examples.
Slide #10: Rutan uses the Beck graph to accuse climate scientists of cherry-picking data with regard to CO2 background level measurements, where Beck’s data points do include non-background measurements of CO2. Note also that Beck’s data implies CO2 mixing ratio swings of the order of 100ppm within years, way larger than the seasonal variability of about 6ppm (peak to peak) measured today.
Slide #12: He uses as an example of “No intended deception here” a Monckton plot that puts Cuffey & Clow’s central Greenland temperature reconstruction into the Antarctic and has its last data point 95 years ago (if not 150 years, depending on the definition of “before present” (1950?) used) but proudly points to “300 years of warming”.
Slide #15: In order to diss Jim Hansen Rutan shows not the surface temperature of GISS or HadCRU, but chooses lower troposphere UAH instead, cut off in May 2008, the absolute monthly minimum since February 2000, and hiding the last 1 year of data where UAH has risen again. This in a July 2009 talk, where he accuses others of deceiving the public. I guess the 0.16°C/decade slope does not bother him.
Slide #16 & #18: Rutan uses the 1990 IPCC schematic adaption of Lamb’s Central England temperature estimate to prove a global medieval warm period and to accuse scientists of data manipulation.
Seeing how after #20 Rutan starts to recite Monckton’s artful graphs (Lucia’s take) I gave up on the rest of the talk.
Hans Verbeek (00:27:38) :
RE: “. . . a finite space (Earth) can only hold finite amounts of coal and oil. (we will run out someday)”
Your posting does not demonstrate an understanding of the physics and economics of coal and oil. We will run out of economically-feasible coal and oil, but to simply say that “we will run out someday” is to ignore key fundamentals. As a limited resource gets strained, a substitute will be developed — such as Rockefeller developed below-ground oil to substitute for resource-constrained whale oil. As technology improves, more and more coal and oil resources become economically viable. Yes, eventually, subsitutes will be cheaper; whether that will be 50 years from now or 150 years from now, I do not know. But I do know that shifting our industries overseas is bad for our economy and bad for the environment.
“It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry”
Wonderful Thomas Paine quote – perfect response to this issue.
“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.”
I’ve noticed that engineers tend to be conservatives politically while university professors tend to be liberals. My contention that the underlying root cause of this is similar to your quote above. Engineers are used to having to deal with the real world and living with real world constraints. What one “desires” or “feels” doesn’t count compared to what is real. With many liberals on the other hand, the feelings or intentions behind something are more important that the actual results (and unintended side effiects).
Per the liberal mentality, Cap and Trade feels good.
Per the engineering mentality, Cap and Trade makes no sense.
RW (05:00:42) :
In all seriousness, RW, it would benefit you to reconsider your views. The CO2-temperature curve you cite shows conclusively that CO2 is not related in any way to temperature. I show that same curve when I make formal presentations on Global Warming’s legal aspects, and I have yet to have a single person disagree – and my audiences are engineers.
Peak oil is a myth, as clearly demonstrated on my blog.
Wander over to sowellslawblog.blogspot.com, also energyguysmusings.blogspot.com, and do a search for “peak oil.”
Then do a search for “Latour.”
D. King’s proposal of letting the strict enforcement of laws, a la Lincoln’s suggestion, lead to repeal of nuttiness is a poor tactic because Cap and Trade will lead to a lot of damage, first, and who knows how difficult it’ll be to repeal the laws, second. Better to head this off early. But how?
Waxman, Pelosi, and Gore may be the “three marketeers” at present in all this, but they hardly represent the mass of the opposition (comments about Gore’s profile aside).
Everyone on this site is starry-eyed and gushing for the past two days because Burt Rutan has openly joined your side. Well, I think that’s fine, but look at what the other side has: a confused general public who think science is about “facts” rather than data or method, a compliant, duplicitious media, opportunistic politicians who are also confused, duplicitious and ascientific, scientific journals, opportunistic businessmen, foaming at the mouth activists, and worst of all, most celebrities. In other words the other side has star-power. We’ve none. I’ll bet half the people posting on this site wear pocket-protectors and horn-rimmed glasses!
The Australians have set their government’s plans back, but that is about all–a delay. The U.S. health-care legislation has run into headwinds because it scares people directly. Maybe Cap and Trade will scare a few politicians sufficiently to defeat it, but mixing oil companies into the fray is probably not good because they are so easy to villify (even otherwise sensible people believe the craziest conspiracies about oil and mining companies). And finally, Rutan himself gets into off-topic issues like the 3% of CO2 emissions claim. It is true, but really not pertinent, and so easily parodied and deflected.
Maybe I am just pessimistic today, but I see the best case as some sort of compromise on Cap and Trade that does damage, but leaves the gods unplacated, and the next unusually hot summer or bad hurricane season, or appearance of a comet, or whatever, reignites this trouble and finds us defending a narrower strip of land.
I’ve been watching the global warming scare grow remarkably over the past four years or so. It’s like watching a hurricane pass over extremely warm water.
Brian Johnson uk (23:58:42) :
“Starship was a Rutan design for Beechcraft. Twin turbine canard. Carbon fibre. Beech aimed at a market that wasn’t there and the Starship was withdrawn because Beech did not want to offer support. Rutan was not involved”
One of the unexpected problems was the good’ol FAA that freaked when such an innovative design was put out there.As it wasn’t anything they had seen before.So, they started to ‘improve’ it with caution.Development costs,and other Govn’t red tape was
a big factor in the Starship’ s demise.
bluegrue (06:20:44) :
Engineers know that CO2 cannot have anything to do with climate change. I make two points below, and these are the basis for the engineers’ certainty that the “A” in AGW is a non-entity. All the rest is arm-waving and shouting.
As Dr. Pierre Latour wrote, if you cannot measure it, you cannot control it. Measuring a global temperature is meaningless, over a time range that is long enough to be useful in the climate change debate.
Second, even assuming one could properly and accurately measure global temperature, if the proposed control system does not have a consistent response, the manipulated variable (CO2) is not a candidate to regulate the controlled variable (global temperature).
“CO2 in the atmosphere is not the way to control global temperature. What one can also see from the CO2 estimations and temperature estimations throughout history is that CO2 remained relatively stable, while global temperatures went up during the Roman Warming, the Medieval Warming, and decreased dramatically during the Little Ice Age. More recently, while CO2 perhaps was fairly constant or even rising a bit due to industrial activity, the globe warmed from 1900 to 1940, then cooled from 1940 to 1970. Clearly, CO2 is not a good control variable because it does not seem to matter what the CO2 level is, as temperatures go up, and go down.” — from:
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/chemical-engineer-takes-on-global.html
This news about Burt Rutan looks even better this morning than it did last night—and it looked good last night!
Hans Verbeek (00:27:38) : “And uhh …. planes don’t fly on coal, Bart.”
I think you will find, Hans, that the Luftwaffe ran at least partially on fuel made from coal during WW2.
Mark UK (04:40:02) :
“Well, I am en engineer and the level of ignorance, arrogance and complete lack of understanding of the substance of climate science shown by most commenters here is depressing.
There is no excuse for being this ignorant on the subject when the information is readily available. Comments here put the entire species of engineers to shame.”
Mark, it would help if you would clarify your position. What and where is the objective information that is readily available for commenters here (most of whom I would guess are not engineers) to persuade any sceptics to become true believers?
Regards
Stoic
Old rule of thumbs we had were:
“The more complicated the analysis, the more suspicious to be” or
“Suspicion should be, at least, proportional to complexity”
Great post. Glen Beck may be weird at times, but he gives a non-conformist view, which in these times, is a good thing.
Roger Sowell (07:40:49) : “Engineers know that CO2 cannot have anything to do with climate change. I make two points below, and these are the basis for the engineers’ certainty that the “A” in AGW is a non-entity.”
A good engineer distinguishes between “certainty that the ‘A’ in AGW is a non-entity” and “there is no certainty that the A in AGW exists”.
Or as it has been put more elegantly “Absence of proof is not proof of absence”
@RW (05:00:42)
Few posts make me want to yell out, but that one does.
“- Of course humans can code a computer model to predict global temperatures, and we’ve been doing so for three decades. The models have been pretty accurate.”
No they have not. Not even close. They have been retrofitted to account for all sorts of anomolies we do not pretend (unless we are arrogant beyond belief) to understand. Still they fail to predict. That is not accurate.
“– The effect of human greenhouse gas emissions on global temperatures is obvious.”
No it is not. What is this ‘obvious’ effect that transcends natural (and therefore chaotic) variability? How can it definitely be attributed to CO2? Has it ever been, irrefutably?
“– Statements that “warm is good, not bad!” amuse me. It’s like saying “food is good, not bad!” – that is, basically it’s meaningless.”
Warm periods in our civilisation have been definitely beneficial. Cold periods have been definitely detrimental. What amuses you about thousands of people dying from cold (as they do every year), exactly?
“– Statements that “CO2 is not a pollutant” also amuse me, particularly when they make use of patronising bold face. The easy response is to invite the claimant to spend just a few minutes in a room filled with pure CO2.”
We are talking about 0.038% of the air – that is 0.00038 as a decimal. That is not ‘full’. Even the most dire scenario gives us less than 1% CO2 in total. That is with ALL (note patronising capitals) fossile fuels burnt. 1% CO2 I will happily breathe, any day (and have, as I used to work in a brewery, where CO2 is a natural by-product of fermentation).
“And yet simultaneously he almost gets the point. He just about acknowledges that current global temperatures are unusual in the context of the last several centuries. He offers no explanation of why he thinks that is, or why the simple, well-established radiative properties of CO2 should somehow not be working.”
Because climate is constantly changing. The only constant about climate is change. We are recovering from a bad cold period, very slowly if at all right now (less than 0.01C a year). Good thing, too.
RW (05:00:42) :
– Statements that “CO2 is not a pollutant” also amuse me, particularly when they make use of patronising bold face. The easy response is to invite the claimant to spend just a few minutes in a room filled with pure CO2.
Let me see if I follow; lack of O2 in a room means CO2 is a pollutant.
Conclusion: She’s a Witch!
A US Senator from Michigan recently said she could “feel” global warming when flying(!). Here we have this world renowned engineer saying that the global warming crowd is daft. Let’s see, who do we believe? A Senator who has a feeling in her fanny when she flies, or this engineer? Umm…..I go with the engineer. I also am an engineer. Global Warming is the biggest hoax in the history of man. Our society is so “sleepy” right now that it might succeed. How do we combat it? We have to be loud. Yes, we might face ridicle by some pea-size brainiacs we work with, but be loud we must. Stand up for yourself and be confident standing by your convictions. Make sure you tell people that there is not a “consensus of scientists” on global warming, and the science is not “concluded.”
@ur momisugly D. King (08:00:50)
“we found a witch, can we stop people making it?”
“How do you know it’s a witch?”
“It looks like one!”
“Bring it forward!”
CO2: “I’m not a witch!”
“But you are dressed like one.”
CO2 “They dressed me up like one. And this isn’t my effect, it’s a false one.”
“Well?”
“Well, we did do the effect…”
“The effect?”
“and the positive forcing. But it is a witch!”
… I could go on, but it’s past my bedtime here in Oz….
dorlomin (04:50:44) :
“Every decade since the 80s we have consumed more oil than we produce.”
Since we don’t have a huge tank full of oil to make up the difference, I suspect your statement does not read exactly as you intended.
Rutan builds things that work. One design flew around the world on a single tank of gas. Another made it into space. They weren’t intended as commercial products. He accomplished what he set out to do. That’s what computer models are for. Design it, build it, test it. Make it work.
GCM’s predict things that haven’t happened. Why trust them?
That’s the difference between real world Engineers and ivory towered Academics. Our designs have to work. Otherwise companies fail and worst case, people die. (Managers take a dim view of this) In academia, you adjust the data, apply for another grant and go on your merry way. Worst case, you blame it all on the engineers. (been there)
Eventually we will have alternates to fossil fuel. Academics may talk about it. Engineers like Rutan will make it happen.