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.
“But if we act now, we can prevent catastrophic human and economic impacts”
I know this is OT – well maybe not completely when you think about Mr. Rutan’s statements regarding “[trying to sell you something using complex data]” – but was anyone else waiting for him to throw in some OxyClean and Mighty Putty if we call within the next 30 seconds?
Just to be sure of context, I was in agreement with RunFromMadness
re: RW (05:00:42) :
Retired Engineer (08:12:58) :
Me too 🙁
DaveE.
Water intoxication is a potentially fatal condition resulting from drinking too much water. Does that make water a pollutant, too? Man, it’s hard to keep up with the kooks these days. Have they outlawed breathing yet?
Mark
Way to go, dude !
Great post Anthony. It is nice to read blog comments that are not censored. Some of the best comments are those in response to differing view points.
There are two things I wanted to respond to. I don’t have time to find a quotes but it is not really necessary anyways.
-That even big oil (EXXO) supports XYZ enviro legislation so XYZ must be in the right direction.
*If the CEO or any other director or officer of a publicly traded company made a decision or took a public stance that was not 100% based on improving the company’s financial strength they would not have a job the next day.
-That we should contact our politicians and let them know our opinions.
*Politicians don’t care about your opinion besides in the voting booth. I don’t mean this in a negative way what so ever. A politician’s job is to get elected and stay elected… that’s it. They listen to who is paying them and the only thing that will get their attention from you is “I will vote for whom ever runs against you if you vote for XYZ.”
HERETIC!!!
Roger Sowell (13:50:48) :
Sorry, I was calculating as percent of current emissions using Arthur Rosenfeld’s numbers, I missed the business-as-usual of 2050 bit. My mistake. So, according to Rosenfeld’s numbers California needs to cut to 89% of the projected 2050 BAU emissions. Whether 89% or 93%, it’s substantial. If you agree we could drop this point as settled.
That’s the bit I’m much more interested in.
RW: If you follow the temperature trend from 1900 to present and match CO2 with temperature you get a different picture.
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.
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.
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.
I said CO2 may well have an imprint, a direct effect (which you ignore when you accuse me of “pure denialism”). But it does not coincide well with the large up-down oscillations of the last century. And it certainly does not demonstrate positive feedback. And if there is no positive feedback, there is no emergency.
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.
Have they outlawed breathing yet?
Just yours.
Richard S Courtney (13:58:47) :
I like the ‘Barrage balloon’ solution! It could be deployed over major cities & reduce UHI at the same time 😉
DaveE.
CaptainPlanet (14:27:00) : some OxyClean
Not that this is on topic…. but OxyClean works
RW claims that CO2 is a pollutant.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is, ” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty. “which is to be master—that’s all.”
The US Supreme Court has ruled that carbon dioxide (CO2) is a pollutant ergo it is!
End of story, end of the Scientific Method. Welcome to Wonderland!
[REPLY – That’s not Wonderland. That’s Looking Glass Garden! ~ Evan]
Why are so many feeding trolls here?
Thank you for posting this. It is an inspiration to all of us Engineers out there who watched moon landings as kids and took the toughest courses and studied hard only to graduate in the mid 80’s to find that the sun had set on the glory days of NASA moon missions and big blue sky child hood dreams. Many of us found a cynical world that had left us and our big dreams far far behind: Aerospace programs and Nuclear programs and big R&D jobs in high tech industry were vanishing on scale never seen before. Large projects became the whipping boy of derision as irrelevant big wastes of money – after all, social scientists and accountants asked what did landing on the moon achieve for the average man – nothing we were told – what a waste of taxes! Computer scientists, business schools and Ecologists was what the world really needed – there was no need for outdated traditional engineers like Burt Rutan.
Thirty years on. I have watched how science has almost been completely subverted to the eco-gravy train fascist philosophy. Countless study after study confirmed that everything Engineers have ever done has been NEGATIVE for Gaia – industry, polution etc. Countless documentaries taught our very own children to hate us (documentaires usually conducted on Carribbean islands and filmed by artists and commentated upon by fake scientists like David Suzuki, who prognosticate on science that they no nothing about with an air of absolute convition). Of course, it was only a matter of time before the fascists “proved” that the very air we breathe out and the output of almost every industrial activity, “CO2” was THE guilty party.
Most Engineers of my generation have learned to not mention what they build, what they manufacture, what they design or what they do – lest one is attacked and villified. And above all, don’t dare point out that the energy and products sourced from fossil fuels has been the greatest boon in the history of mankind, on par with the discovery of farming, fire or the wheel! No we must not dare to offend, instead we must behave deeply humbled and ashamed of everything we have done and do.
Good on Burt Rutan for calling a spade a spade!
wattsupwiththat (11:58:54) : RW is just another internet coward acting as foil. Burt Rutan is the real deal and unlike RW has the courage to put his name to what he believes. Ignore him/her/it. Waste of bandwidth. – Anthony
Anthony, I am 200% in support of you and I think you (and others here) have the patience of a saint, when I survey the hundreds of hours you have all spent courteously arguing the case, and insisting on civility, with a thousand other RW’s. Though I too care passionately, I know I could not do what you do. I have to take time out so I don’t get hopping mad. Without quiet sanity, all efforts are wasted.
Nevertheless, there is an important issue here that I think you miss. I can explain it better by referring to Plimer, whose book is excellent, a good read, and a mine of information for skeptics. But it’s been shot down by quite a number of professors on many counts. Last night I collected a decent cross-section of these debunks, because now, many intelligent people “know” that Plimer’s been shot down by highly-qualified academics. They may not know who to believe, other than trusting the Science they’ve always believed they could trust. I maintain that skeptics need to have answers at our fingertips, linked to the best sources, to all the standard debunks. Otherwise we still remain two sides, polarized. RW asked Jerome, IMO quite reasonably from his POV, had Jerome actually looked at RW’s references? I did look. It’s just as easy to debunk RW’s refs as to give some other classic skeptic argument – but, it seems to me that debunking his refs is rather more likely to make RW stop in his tracks – and by extension, millions more – and think again. Ref 1 stopped at 2000 – missing the recent cooling that no model predicted. From CA, we now know that Rahmstorf (ref 2) widened the range of the model predictions post facto so that they cover the downtick (otherwise the records would no longer be “compatible” with the prediction). And since the Ugly Sister has cut his toes off this year to fit Cinderella’s Shoe, he has no more toes to cut off next year.
Smokey has a cache of such info at his/her fingertips. But not always impeccable. You have a lot. Monckton has a lot – but with his isolation, it’s easier to dismiss him. I know a lot now but don’t have the refs at my fingertips. IMHO, this is what I think we need a skeptics wiki for. A resource for effortlessly debunking the standard debunks of the standard debunkers like RC, Deltoid, Coby Beck, Michael Tobis, Monbiot, Grumbine Science etc – a group effort by skeptics, and an excellent exercise to keep folk interested and busy, producing something of quality that can be used. I don’t have the resources to manage it, otherwise I would. However, it could start really simple, with an FAQ picking up some of the commonest AGW beliefs and references.
That’s IMHO of course.
I see the trolls come out more for people like Burt Rutan. They stir when they are scared.
What would happen if Antonino Zichichi was featured in a post? Or, maybe the trolls wouldn’t know his name so they wouldn’t know they are supposed to come out from under the bridge.
Excellent!
As for the “EV” … hey I’d love to own a vehicle that doesn’t require weekly or bi-weekly visits to the filling station.
[REPLY – That’s not Wonderland. That’s Looking Glass Garden! ~ Evan]
I’d read it as Cooking Gas, Pardon?
Oops Evans,
I should have said –
Cooking Gas, Graundian!
and on reflection- you’re right!
DaveE:
Thankyou for your interest. But please note that the purpose of the proposed policy is to provide the politicians with a way out. The purpose is not climate control.
At present AGW-alarmists are lobbying the politicians to do something. Climate realists have adopted the position of asking the politicians to do nothing, and agreeing to that request may make scientific sense but it is not a viable political response to the lobbying. The politicians need to be seen to be responding to the lobbying by doing something and, therefore, they are doing harmful and pointless things.
The possibility of using climate change counter measures if and when needed allows politicians to be seen to be doing something without imposing harmful Cap&Trade, ETS, CCS, etc.
If global temperature does not rise to the ‘2 deg.C trigger’ (and I am confident that it will not) then the counter measures would not be used. And until that time negotiations can continue about what emissions reductions may be needed and how they will be imposed.
The negotiations could continue indefinitely (which many negotiators would like) or until the time when the ‘2 deg.C trigger’ is reached (everybody agrees that will not be reached for decades to come if ever). And the AGW-scare can fade away as has its predecessors (few remember ‘acid rain’ unless reminded of it).
The negotiators will continue their junkets in Bali, Copenhagen, etc. at our expense when AGW is gone because they will find another excuse for the junkets. The problem is that at present they need to make decisions. The proposed policy removes the urgent need for them to make decisions and allows them to keep talking instead. And it enables them to be seen to be doing something because they would be providing the climate control research which would have media impact with each experiment and trial.
Richard
RW (04:23:50) :
E.M. Smith “I can see no reasonable way to avoid the conclusion that the “warming” of the temperature record is because we put a pot load of thermometers closer to the equator and in the Southern Hemisphere.”
Did you know that the equator and the southern hemisphere show the least warming? The northern hemisphere at high latitudes is warming much faster than either. So, how does a warming signal come from a part of the world that isn’t warming very much?
The short answer is “by putting more thermometers there”. You see, the S.H. can’t “warm much” since there is little record for it to warm against. But it CAN put more “winter degree days” into the present record. The longer form is:
Notice that I said “temperature record”. I’m talking about the body of data, not a patch of dirt. You are talking about a patch of dirt. But if you want to talk dirt, I can do that too.
First up, how do you know how much the southern hemisphere has warmed since, oh, 1860? I’ll give you a hint: Take a look at the link I gave you, I’ve added percentiles now. We had exactly ONE PERCENT of world thermometer records from south of the equatorial band in 1860. Yup. 1%
So, you gonna smear 1% of records over 1/2 the planet? And that will mean what again? (Oh, btw, that 1% was in the S. Temperate band only. NONE were in the Southern Cold band…)
But that’s outside the GIStemp baseline, surely it gets much better!?
OK, 1879 decade ending (i.e. as we enter the first records kept by GIStemp) we have dramatically risen all the way to 5.5%. I can hear the whoops of joy now “MORE THAN 5 TIMES THE THERMOMETERS!!!” Yeah, all 29 of them. For almost 1/2 the planet. Wonder where they were… Probably not a lot of them in the center of the Sahara, the Amazon, the Congo, The Outback. Probably a lot more in port cities near the ocean…
But what the heck, I’ll gladly agree with you that the Southern Hemisphere isn’t warming and can not warm the planet. (You clearly have no idea how much it makes me happy to agree with you on that point…) So all the freight must be carried by the Northern Hemisphere thermometer record (for purposes of this discussion only…)
Lets take a look at that northern hemisphere you claim is getting so hot so fast..
We have a dramatic rise in number of thermometers from ONE in 1701, to about 7000 at peak, then back to the circa 2000 range, but with a dramatic percentage of them moving from the “cold band” to the temperate band. (From 100% in the cold band at peak, dropping to 8.7% at bottom in the cold band, now 10.3%. The Temperate band changed from ZERO in 1701 to 69.6% at peak, faded to “only” 57.4% now as more thermometers took off for the Tropics…)
You can find the numbers posted here:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/thermometer-years-by-latitude-warm-globe/
So I’m not at all surprised you would find “warming” in the N. Hemisphere thermometer record. They were moving from Siberia to Italy… in Latitude.
But what happens when we pick a stable set of thermometers? What if we don’t let the thermometers run around so much? Well, picking the Top 10% of stable thermometers, those with a life span of over about 103 years – that incidentally leaves out most of the Southern Hemisphere, we find no warming of the record.
No,these are not gridded,boxed, zoned, or otherwise molested. Just a nice stable cohort of thermometers measuring the same places for decade after decade as the centuries roll by. Not much need to grid, box, homogenize, zonalize, or any other -ize a clean stable record of what really happened. No need to patch and fill, stretch and blend, spice, dice, or re-imagine the data. Just look at it.
And it clearly says that the record did not warm. And that record, being by far the Northern hemisphere (last stop to add a 103 year old thermometer was in 1906)… I’ll use the 1909 data, just to be conservative: In that year, ALL S.H. thermometers (even adding in the WHOLE equator band to 10 N) were less than 10% of the record. So we can say with certainty that there were not a whole lot of those S. Hemisphere thermometers in the record to survive unchanged the next 100 years.
So what do those stable, (more than 90%+ N. H.) thermometers say about the change of the average of their temperatures? They say nothing has changed much.
Remarkably devoid of trend. Within a few tenths C decade to decade in all months columns and in the average for each year. If you told me that the average thermometer reading for a given month for the planet would not change by more than a couple of 1/10 C over 150 years I would not have believed it possible.
You can find more of the text, along with the table of actual numbers at:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/gistemp-quartiles-of-age-bolus-of-heat/
Source code is freely available so you can “do this at home” under other postings at the site. If you care that much, you can visit the “gistemp” tab at the top of the site.
Realize that none of this depends on GIStemp. It is looking at the GHCN data directly.
I’ve also “run the numbers” through GIStemp up to the zonalizing steps. Through all the temperature steps (where things are still kept as temperatures for locations) GIStemp acts as an amplifier, not a filter. The impact of thermometer change increases in the product,not decreases.
The gridding, zoning, anomalizing et. al. steps are next on my shopping list, but I can tell you already that since there is NO warming in a stable set of thermometers: any effect from grids, zones, etc. can only be to fabricate a warming in a place that does not have one.
(FWIW, this change in thermometers by latitude work comes directly from my making a baseline for the purpose of testing the GIStemp grids, zones, boxes, etc. on the data and on the record. To have a “benchmark” to be able to say EXACTLY how much the last couple of GIStemp steps can undo – or amplify – the impact. No, don’t have it done yet. Maybe by next week. But right now it’s very clear that it needs to overpower a 10:1 power factor in the raw data plus some for it’s early amplification.)
You see, GIStemp likes to be seen as a filter, but what I’ve seen and demonstrated so far (by running it on real data) is that it’s an amplifier. Even if the grid, zone, etc. steps do dampen the signal some at this point, it first must remove the amplification it has already added into a trend that is already strongly (as in 10 to 1 strongly) skewed by The March Of The Thermometers. That takes a filter with one heck of a high “Q”, and GIStemp just doesn’t have the bones to cut it.
And that stable set of benchmark thermometer records confirms that assertion on my part.
Now, you can assert that GIStemp is a perfect filter. And you can assert that the zones, boxes, grids et. al. will exactly undo the mess that’s being fed to it (shown, not asserted, DEMONSTRATED above), but “I don’t think so Tim!”
And in the end, the result of the characterization of the final steps will be a public suite of data, source code, and analysis. Not opinion.
So I’d suggest being cautious about what opinions you espouse, you will find the facts in your face soon enough. Rather like all the other facts above. You see, it’s all about the data, and just letting them speak.
If you torture the data enough, they will tell you what you want to hear. I believe in respecting the data and asking them politely what they have to say. So torture all you want with grids, boxes, zones, homoginization, …
but those simple stable thermometers will still be there, softly speaking, saying that things are more like they have always been than you imagine. Or re-imagine…
But how can a STABEL S.H. that IS NOT WARMING (that you have said is so, and that I 100% agree with) warm the world? Here, you work it out:
S is south, N is north. T is Temperate. W is warm, C is cold, EQ is equator.
The March of the Thermometers, in big bites:
Just to put a bit of a finer point on it, if, excluding the poles due to very poor coverage, we add up the “warm areas” of SW, EQ, NW and add up the cold areas (SC, ST, NT, NC) we get the following, by 1/2 century steps:
YEAR Warm Cold
1839 2.8 97.2
1889 8.3 91.5
1939 15.5 83.8
1989 25.4 73.2
Unless you are an engineer or scientist the odds are (unfortunately) that you have never heard of Burt Rutan.
I went to watch SpaceShipOne’s first flight into space back in 2004. Almost everyone there was an engineer or worked in aerospace (a few Trekkies, maybe).
It says something about a society where everyone knows what pop stars are in rehab but almost no one knows the name of the man who is probably the greatest living aeronautical engineer and possibly the greatest one of all time.
In any event, there is another reason to admire Rutan: He’s got guts as well as brains. He’s too smart not to know what happens to “deniers”.
Alexej Buergin (04:47:26) :
” Hans Verbeek (00:27:38) :
And uhh …. planes don’t fly on coal, Bart.”
Of course they do, Hans. Needs some treatment first, though.
Yup. If you tank up your Jet in South Africa, you will get jet fuel from SASOL, who make it from coal… And
The U.S.A.F. has begun qualifications for the entire fleet to run on synthetic fuel produced from your choice of coal, trash, or anything else with lots of carbon in it. Test batches of fuel provided by Syntroleum IIRC (though it might be Rentech – I own bits of both of them for entertainment and sometimes get their press releases crossed…)
So right NOW there are both commercial and USAF jets flying on coal. Just like the German airforce flew on coal derived fuels via F.T. processing in WWII.
It’s really a pretty easy process, well understood, and not too expensive.