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.
Hans Verbeek (00:27:38) : Apparantly he doesn’t realize that a finite space (Earth) can only hold finite amounts of coal and oil. (we will run out someday)
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/
There is a matching “not running out of stuff” link too:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/there-is-no-shortage-of-stuff/
Yes, we run out of coal in a few hundred years. We can also make motor fuels of all sorts from garbage, trees, pond scum, … and we have a functionally infinite supply of Uranium:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/ulum-ultra-large-uranium-miner-ship/
So can we PLEEEASE let go of the notion that we’re gonna “run out’? It just does not happen. STUFF does not leave the planet and we have an unlimited quantity of energy to rearrange the STUFF into other STUFF as we see fit.
The whole ‘running out’ fantasy is brought to you by the same Club of Rome jokers who love to promote AGW and they are just hopelessly wrong and clueless (I prefer to apply Hanlon’s razor here – the alternative is not something I’d want to contemplate… )
Gene Nemetz (15:33:23) :
Still OT… but agreed! 🙂
I just poured out a little of my 40oz for my homie Billy. My wife and I are still sad that there aren’t going to be any more Pitchmen episodes – not sure why but we got hooked on it… fascinating!
Back OT, kinda-sorta, imagine Billy Mays giving Burt’s presentation or, heaven forbid, going to the Dark Side and giving Al Gore’s presentation… either way maybe it’s for the best that his powers can no longer be used for good *or* evil
@ur momisugly Richard S Courtney (13:58:47) : Not bad. I noticed a couple minor grammatical omissions, but you made a good points. Have you considered submitting this for publication to a mainstream outlet?
Part of the problem, as I see it, is that both sides of this issue essentially “preach to the choir” (there are a few exceptions, of course ). To be effective an argument must be presented to the target audience – those whose behavior or attitude you wish to change – and in a manner, venue, and format that they will be inclined to absorb. It does no good, for example, for me to lecture someone on their failure to appreciate my viewpoint; which is what I see a lot of lately from both sides. As the Captain (movie Cool Hand Luke ) said: “What we have here, is a failure to communicate.” His point was that “Communication” requires a communicator and a communicatee and takes many forms. As both the Captain & Luke discovered.
Not being critical, just offering some suggestions that may yield a greater degree of success.
Richard S Courtney (16:25:17) :
I did wink 😉
DaveE.
Oh, and I ought to add that the not running out and the re-arranging some stuff into other stuff we want AND the unlimited energy are all brought to you courtesy of Engineers like Burt Rutan.
If you ever get a chance to even kiss the feet of such a person, even that is not enough. You owe them everything that keeps you alive and comfortable today.
Burt Rutan is one of my all time heroes, up there with Richard Feynman. I wish he were alive today. he would have poked so many holes into the AGW theory, you couldn’t even use it as a sieve.
Anyway, I posted it to reddit. Not surprisingly, it was deleted from the environment sub-reddit (This is the second time this has happened to me), but it’s holding it’s own in the science sub-reddit.
It’s nice when someone of Mr Rutan’s stature uses the IPCC’s own data to demolish their own hypothesis
Chris Wright (04:23:24) :
Bobn (20:22:18) :“but look at the pdf, many of the graphs/data he cites are flawed in themselves. For example the first one cites the flawed argument that human emissions of co2 are only about 3% of total co2 emissions.”
.
After a quick look at the slides, that one jumped out at me. It does seem to be completely wrong – or possibly Rutan believes that the 20th century CO2 increase was primarily natural. However, it could have been an honest mistake.
Before you jump all over this, take a look at this chart. It’s cute, and it’s from NASA, so it must be right 😎
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carbon_cycle-cute_diagram.jpeg
It shows the human C component as 5.5 out of (what looks to me, rapidly adding in my head the big numbers) about 210 (from the land plants, soils, and sea alone) so the percentage looks close to me… (The units are GIGA tons of C).
If you are basing your “worry” over some projection based on C12 / C13 ratios, well, that approach “has issues”:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/02/25/the-trouble-with-c12-c13-ratios/
E.M.Smith (16:29:44),
Great response. Since I have been following your exploits with GIStemp so I LOL at RW’s silly assertion. His reply was a remarkable example of cognitive dissonance. He had no idea what you were stating yet his belief is so strong in CAGW that he threw out an uninformed response immediately. I doubt he will enjoy the embarrassment.
Keep up the good work.
and on reflection
Woof.
I might point out that many engineers have problems with the evidence for evolution, also. Just because you are a good engineer does not mean that you know or understand the evidence for a given scientific theory, especially if it is one outside of your area of expertise.
Rattus Norvegicus (17:37:31):,
Once you look at climate science you will quickly understand that NOBODY understands everything that would be needed to deal with the complexities. There are just too many overlapping fields. OTOH, many of the aspects of climate are not difficult for any educated person to understand. Just how hard is it to read a thermometer 😉
OTOH, no one can tell me what the progenitor of man is past Homo Ergaster.
Homo Erectus turns out to be a separate line (and, of course, Neanderthal). And now we are told that Homo Habilis might well be a dead end.
So where did we come from? Somewhere, that’s for sure. But we are very uncertain as to which line. Ergaster seems to be the only direct connection we can identify. And that’s just of last scan. The scholarship may have changed since then.
I think Rutan should probably stick to planes, with naive comment like “warm period are good, not bad, it would be beneficial to have more warming than present”
This is a common catch cry in the denier movement it ignore the basic physics of what happens to ice in a warmer world and the flow on effect of what that does to sea level.
Or this “warm periods have been brief and they are not the ‘normal’ planet state.”
Rutan appears to have done no research on what he is talking about except for the recent glacial cycle (2.5 million years) the planet has actually been warmer for most of it’s history but with little ice and much higher sea levels.
His comment about oil reserves ignores the fact that they have fallen, and the source for this is not greenies or alarmists but BP
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a6.7NWiQ5wGw
they have even attached a figure “The world has enough reserves for 42 years at current production rates” The likelihood of current demand staying the same is slim as throughout the history of our use of oil demand has only ever grown.
RW (05:00:42) : – 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.
Since the models are predicting a fantasy that they are modeled upon, that would not surprise me. The only problem is that the real temperatures are not the same as what GIStemp et.al. say they are. (Covered earlier under The March of the Thermometers).
And yes, I do computer stuff professionally. Ran a super computer site doing computer modeling of plastic flow (even donated time to a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford trying to model clouds). I “know a little bit about this”… including having read all of GIStemp code and porting it to a machine running just a few feet from me as I type this…
– The effect of human greenhouse gas emissions on global temperatures is obvious.
SImple. Obvious. And wrong. The classic trilogy…
– Statements that “warm is good, not bad!” amuse me. It’s like saying “food is good, not bad!” – that is, basically it’s meaningless.
Glad it amuses you. Go to the center of the Greenland ice sheet, sans food, and see if you are still amused.
It is not meaningless, it is a statement of fact. Plants in general, and food plants in particular, need a certain number of “degree days” to mature and make food. To cool? Even by a bit? No food. Too warm, even by a lot? A whole lot more food a whole lot sooner.
(If you want to argue this point, lets do it elsewhere. But first compare the food production from California and Arizona to that of Alaska and The Northwest Territories…)
– 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.
Well, I’ll happily do that (as long as it’s less than 2.8 minutes) as long as you will spend the same time in a room full of Nitrogen. (Yes, my record for breath holding is 2.5 minutes+ figure I can pant straight CO2 for a few seconds getting the O2 going…)
Your “troll” piece is pointless. The “poison is in the dose”. With too much SUGAR, SALT, or even WATER you WILL DIE!!!! (Needed to get those patronizing all caps bold in somewhere…) But too little you die as well. Both hypo and hyper natremia are lethal. It means nothing to say something like your example.
What matters is the limits to the dose. For CO2, it is beneficial to life, especially to plants, up to about 2000 to 3000 ppm. Drop too low (below about 200 ppm) and plants die. They certainly grow much more slowly for each step below 2000 ppm (indicting the evolved for higher levels than are in the air now and are struggling to adjust). YOU will die if the CO2 level at the lung tissue surface drops too low. Upper bound is somewhere over 10,000 ppm.
So with present levels about 3xx and the lower bound 2xx with the upper bound 2xxx to 10xxx I’d vote for more, not less, as the prudent thing to do. Besides, we get more food production (about 20% to 40% more) up to that level. Chose to use it for more people, healthier people, or just a lower “footprint” on the land from farming. It’s “all good”. Drop from 350 or so to 220 or so and you need to cut down 15% to 20% of wild lands to make up the loss of food. Your good with that?
– if he believes ever-rising claims of reserve size, I’ve got a bridge he might like to buy.
You clearly have a poor understanding of how reserves are calculated. They HAVE been ever-rising. Once you have about 20 to 30 years worth “in the can” you stop looking. There is no reason to spend the money (and risk confiscation by nutty governments, and risk market collapse from “glut”).
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.
Ok, your a Brit. Got it. Small place, close quarters, running out paranoia.
Well, did you notice when the “exponentially increasing” fish consumption hit “peak fish”? No? Maybe that’s because we added aquaculture when we “hit the wall” (now about 20% and rising). How about “peak whale oil”? It was a big deal in the 1960’s. Oh, that Jojoba thing… “Peak Cotton”? (Rayon). Peak Silk (Nylon). Peak Coal (Oil – a big deal back in the 1800’s) See:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/jevons-paradox-coal-oil-conservation/
I could go on, but I won’t. The entire history of economic advance and engineering accomplishment is based on the very fact of finding ever more resources that can be used in ever more ways and substitution for ever more expensive rare things to be replaced with ever more inexpensive common things.
Heck, want Star Saphire? Ruby? Emerald? I’ve got a big chunk laying around here somewhere. It used to be a laser. We can now MAKE all we want. At one time it was a “kings ransom” and know it’s just a chunk of fancy glass. We’ve even got diamonds so cheap and so good that folks need highly specialized equipment to tell which are man made and keep up the scarcity fantasy.
Get a grip, please. Engineering is the art and science of turning nothing into wealth. There is plenty of planet for everyone to live a very wealthy life style AND save the best bits in pristine shape. Take a look at Earthships and Rutan’s home. Heck, everyone on the planet could live a beach front condo in North America and leave the rest of the planet absolutely empty.
So just look at how to make a great place for everyone and start building it. Works much better than the doom and gloom thing…
(If the N.America Condo thing doesn’t work for you, consider that the entire planet could live in six cities the size of England at a level of density that of London leaving the rest of the place empty. We CHOOSE to spread out, but we don’t need to…)
Are the trolls aware that most greenhouses consider 1000 ppm CO2 as ideal and that the Navy considers 8000 ppm acceptable on submarines?
“– 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.”
What a rediculous statement!
By this argument water is a polutant. What would we do in a room full of water.
Also by this argument pure oxygen is a polutant. In fact anything is a polutant by this argument.
The real question should be if we remove CO2 and try to grow plants how would they fare?
E.M.Smith (16:29:44),
I have been following your GIStemp series on your blog. I’ve watched all day waiting for your response to:
>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?
Great Post. It was worth the wait. Keep up the good work.
Exactly correct in your premise about engineers…I’m a skeptic but read both sides to try to ascertain reality. In my experience as an EE, and also trained in fluid dynamics / heat transfer, it is baffling to understand how meaningful conclusions can be drawn from climate models and the climate data thusfar presented in the literature. While modeling has grown exponentially in accuracy, the complexity of the various processes is paramaterized due to incomplete definition of the exact mechanisms at work. That’s ok — but one has to recognize the limitation — which is that there is a high degree of uncertainty associated w/ the inability to accurately model a process. Further, from what i read on the data side — there leaves much to be desired in terms of data accuracy. Calibration of instrumentation and analysis to compensate for changes in ambient environmental biases over time are amateurish mistakes that seem to get hand-waved. The theory of AGW could very well be true – or more likely partially correct – but going off half-cocked w/ expensive propositions that won’t solve a real problem is insanity. I leave you with this quote from a renowned journalist of the previous generation, describing what he observed of a lot of government activity:
“The chief cause of problems is solutions”
– Eric Sevareid
Damian M., re peak oil.
Please, you must understand that oil reserves are a function of oil price. The higher the price, the more oil is “discovered.” It has always been thus. And always will be.
Note that after OPEC increased the price of oil in the 1970’s and early 80’s by a factor of roughly 4, oil was “discovered” (drilled for and produced, actually) in many places around the world, including the North Sea and Alaskan North Slope.
OPEC learned a good lesson from that, which any first year economics student could have taught them: high prices attract competition. Note that OPEC has not raised prices dramatically since then…instead, they have worked diligently to maintain prices as low as possible consistent with meeting their cash flow needs.
Now, with oil at $70 or so, alternatives are attractive that would never have been attractive with oil at $20 per barrel. But, OPEC needs oil priced at $70 or thereabouts to meet their cash flow needs. My link below discusses this under the Grand Game.
There is no oil shortage. Never has been, and never will be. You might ask just how can I be so certain, what credentials do I bring to this argument? Not much, by some people’s reckoning, just have worked with or for oil and chemical companies for 30-plus years, come from a family in the oil and gas business since 1949, and now provide legal advice for those in the industry. Here’s a hint: the major oil companies would not be investing billions in drilling for oil if they thought it was all gone, with no more to find, and therefore their drilling has a zero chance of producing any more oil. They are not in the business of drilling dry holes. Oh, and one of my classmates in undergrad was a guy named Rex Tillerson. Yup, that guy; currently Chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil. Rex is on record many times (and I agree with him on this) that the only obstacle to more oil is lack of access to known oil deposits.
For my views on peak oil (as mythical as unicorns) and the Grand Game (energy for our future), see this site:
http://energyguysmusings.blogspot.com/2009/07/peak-oil-and-unicorns-both-mythical.html
Measurements of CO2 from an engineering standpoint would prompt an engineer to determine where CO2 is being siphoned off. To illustrate: We can pour oil into a car’s well-tuned engine, if it is a closed system, and the engine will run fine with little oil used. One needs to clean it, but one does not need to keep putting more oil into the engine until it is time to replace the oil. On the other hand, if there is a leak (or multiple leaks) in this system, one will need to put more and more oil into the engine until the mechanic finds the leaks. The oil is still there and can be accounted for, it just leaked onto the ground.
The case can be made that at Mauna Loa, a local source sensor, the measurement of CO2 appears to be increasing (more going in than going out). But the increase seems more likely to be an artifact of some kind. Very few things in nature are this regular. It will be interesting to continue to monitor CO2 in the troposphere (AIMS) through different complete oceanic flips (and probably several).
But that leads me to a question. Are there anomaly charts of CO2 for each of these sensor locations?
Damian M (Climate scientist) (17:53:59) :
“This is a common catch cry in the denier movement it ignore the basic physics of what happens to ice in a warmer world and the flow on effect of what that does to sea level.
”
So much for your ‘scientific’ credentials. Maybe you should stick to hyping scientology. Of course I do wonder about what basic physics you are referring to there. Are you trying to say that warming water that is somewhat below 4 degrees C will cause it to expand? There’s basic physics involved in that – although that’s actually not what happens.
“His comment about oil reserves ignores the fact that they have fallen, and the source for this is not greenies or alarmists but BP
”
So much for your understanding of economics too. Just how much oil exploration do you think is going to happen when little to none of it will be developed in the next 30 years? Can you really think that a company is going to spend large amounts of money finding and establishing reserves that will not be needed or used in the next few decades? Especially considering too the potential risk factor of anticarbon hysteria.
I suspect Damian M (Climate scientist) is young. As I indicated previously I think our education system is responsible for an ever increasing lack of critical thinking skills. Instead, younger scientists are taught to use references, so they tend to believe way too much of what they read.
This was clearly evident in his post. Hopefully, this experience will jolt him … although I doubt it.
Damian,
As a scientist I’m sure you’ve used physics to make life or death design decisions right?
Currently you can find the slides here
http://www.bobscherer.com/Pages/Burt_Rutan_on_Climate_Change.htm
I expect he is frustrated to see all these wasted Government funds going to fraudulent scientists and policy makers and their pretense to objectively study Global Warming (usually involving field trips to nice Carribbean Islands to study sea levels no doubt). Frankly the whole Global Warming thing is utterly disgraceful.
One of the slides has a nice list of other big “scares” that proved false or exaggerated – like the Ozone hole nonsense. And like DDT.
He even points out that the real threat to mankind is a very large asteroid. Of course, this is a very low probability to occur any time soon but almost certainly it is inevitable that one day BOOM and the whole evolutionary clock gets a complete reboot (unless we do something about it).
RW (05:00:42) :
“The easy response is to invite the claimant to spend just a few minutes in a room filled with pure CO2.”
This isn’t a rational response: it’s just plain stupidity. It’s on a par with the guy who suggested that someone should spend some time in a room with 300ppm Sarin gas in the atmosphere as an analogy for 300ppm CO2 being dangerous.