Burt Rutan writes in via email about an exchange he had with the proprietor of the website Scholars and Rogues, Brian Angliss. Burt writes:
I recently read a treatise showing that CAGW theory is a fraud. I thought it was a good summary and agreed to have my name used as a supporter of the facts when it was published by the Wall Street Journal. You can find it here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html
Then, shortly after publication, an alarmist engineer wrote and “open letter to Burt”.
http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2012/01/27/open-letter-to-burt-rutan/
I usually ignore these diatribes, but found a few moments to respond:
Scroll down to comment #4 for my answer.
I’ve reproduced Burt’s answer here for all to see:
Brian,
In my background of 46 years in aerospace flight testing and design I have seen many examples of data presentation fraud. That is what prompted my interest in seeing how the scientists have processed the climate data, presented it and promoted their theories to policy makers and the media.
What I found shocked me and prompted me to do further research. I researched data presentation fraud in climate science from 1999 to 2010.
I do not have time here to define the details; if interested in my research, a PPT or PDF can be downloaded at:
http://rps3.com/Pages/Burt_Rutan_on_Climate_Change.htm
In general, if you as an engineer with normal ethics, study the subject you will conclude that the theory that man’s addition of CO2 to the atmosphere (a trace amount to an already trace gas content) cannot cause the observed warming unless you assume a large positive feedback from water vapor. You will also find that the real feedback is negative, not positive!
Specifically, the theory of CAGW is not supported by any of the climate data and none of the predictions of IPCC since their first report in 1991 have been supported by measured data. The scare is merely a computer modeled theory that has been flawed from the beginning, and in spite of its failure to predict, many of the climate scientists cling to it. They applauded the correlation of surface temperatures with CO2 content from 1960 to 1998 as proof, but fail to admit that the planet has cooled after 1998 in spite of the CO2 content increasing.
The failure of the IPCC machine is especially evident in the use of “models” to justify claims, so it might be worthwhile to just look at modeling and science.
Modeling is more correctly a branch of Engineering and there are some basic rules that have been flouted by CAGW _ CO2 modelers.
Firstly there has to be a problem analysis which identifies relevant factors and the physical, chemical and thermodynamic behaviors of those factors within the system.
Any claim that this has been done in the CO2 warming problem is PREPOSTEROUS.
There are perhaps a thousand PhD topics there waiting to be taken up by researchers.
We could start with work on understanding heat transfer between the main interfaces; eg Core to surface / surface to ocean depths/ ocean depths to ocean surface / ocean surface to atmosphere and so on, not having yet reached the depth of space at just slightly above absolute zero.
To claim that the entire system of atmospheric temperature moderation has been described by the fluctuations of atmospheric CO2 content while excluding the other obvious factors such as atmospheric water vapour content, solar flux and orbital mechanics is just nonsense.
The whole point of modelling when done correctly is that it links accurately measured input of the main factors and accurately measure target output. Where you have major input factors that are not considered and poor and uncertain measurement of all factors then all you have is a joke or more seriously Public Fraud based on science.
You do not have science.
CO2 is not a pollutant. When the Dinosaurs roamed, the CO2 content was 6 to 9 times current and the planet was green from pole to pole; almost no deserts. If we doubled the atmospheric content of CO2, young pine trees would grow at twice the rate and nearly every crop yield would go up 30 to 40%. We, the animals and all land plant life would be healthier if CO2 content were to increase.
Do the study yourself. Look at how and why the data are manipulated, cherry-picked and promoted. I will bet if you did, you too would be shocked.
The mark of a good theory is its ability to be falsified by new data. The mark of a good scientist is the ability to accept that.
Burt
The Difference between an Environmentalist and a Denier.
You can easily tell if someone is a true environmentalist, i.e. an advocate for a healthy planet – he is one who is happy to hear the news that the arctic ice content has stabilized. He is one who celebrates when the recent climate data show the alarmist’s predictions of catastrophic warming might be wrong. The denier, if he is an eco/political activist, always denies new data that show the planet may be healthy after all. The Media usually defines deniers as those who deny the scientist’s computer model predictions. However, denying the measured climate data meets a better definition in the world of science.
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Hansen’s argument is simple, J Gibbons.
What’s new about the present era … the novel element that is propelling humanity and our planet in an never-before-experienced climate realm … is the geologically unprecedented pace and magnitude of the 21st century’s CO2 increase.
The often-heard opinion that “Nothing bad will happen” is a message that every skeptic should regard sceptically (how else, eh?), especially when the “Don’t worry” message comes from folks like the WSJ-16, whose track record of scientific prediction is so unimpressive, compared to Hansen’s.
Just a note to Robert E. Phelan:
Well you did get my curiosity up about whether or not the Australopithecus was in the human ancestor linage or not. At least from the article, it seems they likely were:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus_garhi
And, it appears they did use some primitive stone tools. So I’d be curious as to your sources that state otherwise.
Excuse me Mr. Connolley you answered exactly squat at 146pm.
As for R. Gates and physicist and the other warmists here. It is well documented that the global atmosphere was 6-9 times higher in CO2 than it is today. If your theory of positive feed back is correct then please explain how on earth did the earth not burn up from the much higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere in the distant past.
Without the positive feedback in every single climate model used by the IPCC, there is nothing to the fear generating BS of AGW theory. We await your response.
Smokey
do not, I repeat, do not go to Climate4You. I have it on good authority, Skepticalscience, that they are not trustworthy, go to RC.
Ignore the interesting comparison graphs, data references & primary links, that will confuse you. Go RC and learn the truth.
.
[Reply: Please add “/sarc” or something similar when being sarcastic. Some folks will take you seriously. ~dbs, mod.]
Connolley says:
Ah. So when CO2 was very low during the Holocene, temperatures were routinely higher than they are now.
Obviously, CO2 did not cause those global warming episodes, therefore the current warming trend [continuing unchanged from the LIA] is probably not due to CO2, either.
Connolley lacks any perspective. The global temperature has risen from 288K to 288.8K over a century and a half – an extremely tiny change. Global temperatures naturally vary by a much larger amount, and usually in an undesirable direction. And just like today, CO2 didn’t seem to matter.
I’m glad Connolley is coming here, because what he believes turns out to be wrong. Maybe he’ll learn something factual for a change. Then maybe the scales will fall from his eyes, and he will then understand that CO2 is harmless, and beneficial. More is better, because it greens the planet. And there is no downside.
Just so we are clear. Are you saying the earth did not experience runaway global warming when the atmosphere had ~10 times higher CO2 in the distant past but today one tenth of that historic CO2 level is a significant risk factor for runaway global warming? Is that your position?
R. Gates,
Your comments always bring two medical terms to mind,
OCD and Herpes.
The first one is incessantly irritating to both the owner and the observer,
and the second is the gift that keeps on giving,
always lurking and ready to attack the nerve endings.
I understand that generic Indian Prozac and Zovirax are quite cheap these days.
Maybe just a little dab of each might control your “posting habit” ?
Personally, after reading your stuff, I need an aspirin.
William M. Connolley says:
January 29, 2012 at 2:51 pm
> Why are the supposed rise in co2 that started at the end of the LIA not evident in any proxy record?
I’ve no idea what you mean by that. The, err, “official” so to speak CO2 record looks like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr.png CO2 variations in the ~10 kyr period before 1800 are minor.
I think your reference would be better if it went to the data:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/lawdome.smooth75.gif
It is very easy to see that co2 did not start rising till after temperature had started rising as the rebound from the LIA. So, once again, co2 was NOT the driver of said rise.
Something else had to start the warming out of the LIA:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png
The LIA is very evident in this proxy reconstruction.
In fact, what else is evident, when looking at the individual graphs is the early Holocene may have had those “spikes” that I mentioned earlier.
From the above what can we conclude?
1. Co2 was not the driver that stopped the LIA from continuing.
2. Co2 was virtually flat until the mid to late 1800’s, yet the temperature kept climbing.
3. Co2 was not responsable for the early 20th century warming. Solar was not responsable for the early 20th century warm spurt…..what was?
According to AGW theory, the rate of warming should accelerate because of the increased co2.
The following shows the rate of warming early 20th century verses the rate of warming late 20th century, early 21st century to be identical. Yet, the concentration of co2 has risen. This shows that co2 does not affect the rate of warming.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1910/to:1945/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1975/to:2012/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1910/to:1945/trend:1.0/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1975/to:2012/trend:1.0
What has caused virtually identical rates of warming? It is not the sun, it is not co2. What is it?
I see green activist William M. Connolley, “The Butcher of Wikipedia”, is commenting in WattsUpWithThat.
[REPLY: Yes he is, but can we ask commenters to be a little more polite and address his arguments? -REP]
Harrison N: “And eggs always hatch into chickens. Therefore chickens can’t lay eggs. Great logic!”
So your refutation is that a chicken exists prior the egg it hatched from. Great fallcy! Perhaps you are a climate scientist?
nomnom: “It’s accelerating. Just look at the data. Why do you think they call it the Keeling **Curve**?”
If we’re playing the colloquial literalism game then it’s called a Keeling curve because it describes the path that Keeling takes when he’s had a few too many to drink. This is not at all the same as a Brownian walk and let’s us know that Keeling holds his liquor better than Brown.
R. Gates: ““The timescale dictated by the IPCC process brings with it the risk of prematurely exposing problems with climate models as we learn how to develop them.” — Trenberth
That is very appropriate. The only takeaway from this is that Trenberth thinks that a problem shouldn’t be exposed when it is found. Which begs us to ask when it is we’re ‘allowed’ — deontologically — to point out that a hypothesis is falsified. More illuminating is a quote from the middle:
“Although important progress has been made in this area, the techniques are not yet fully established5. In part because it takes at least a decade to verify a ten-year forecast, evaluating and optimizing the models6 will be a time-consuming process.”
According to Trenberth climate science cannot, and does not, do predictions because the models are known to be vacuously in error due the youth of the discipline and the lack of time available to test them. Therefore, according to Trenberth, climate “science” is not yet an empirical discipline. Which makes it strictly a philosophical issue; or, if you are a true believer, a religious one.
aaron says:
January 29, 2012 at 3:10 pm
Use <pre>. See my Guide to WUWT, http://home.comcast.net/~ewerme/wuwt/index.html , about 2/3s of the way down.
RobW, it’s not complicated: (1) the sun was dimmer way back then, and (2) the low-lying East Coast states like South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, Texas were deep underwater.
That’s why rational skeptics say: “You know, it makes no skeptical or scientific sense at all, to assume we can dump all that CO2 into our atmosphere, and yet be sure our planet will keep its icecaps.”
I know what you are saying -REP, but I didn’t think I was being rude. Sorry about that.
I was making people aware of who he is. Most people have never heard of him. I think it’s fair that people know that he is a green activist, involved in green politics, including running for an office under the green ticket. He also has spent years altering pages at Wikipedia and has been disciplined by those who run Wikipedia for egregious violation of rules. William M. Connolley really is called “The Butcher of Wikipedia”
R. Gates says: January 29, 2012 at 3:59 pm
Thankyou. As usual, wikipedia over-simplifies things, as did I. The question of Australopithicus’ place in the hominid family tree has always been a subject of debate. As recently as 2008 the consensus was that A. Afarensis and A. Africanus were apes rather than human and that their line diverged from the homo line even before chimps did. I did a little (just a little!) checking after your comment and note that most of the claims for homo ancestory tracing back to the australopithicenes is mostly of 2010-11 vintage and there are new and surprising claims that homo-habilis may have been an australopithecus descendant but not a homosapiens ancestor. At the risk of sounding snarky, the science is far from settled.
My own area of interest is cultural anthropology rather than physical, and I sometimes fall behind. For the moment, I am still tending toward the older formulations but should probably update my notes to reflect the newer thinking and emphasize the ambiguity before offering the course again. Apologies for being so abrupt and didactic.
For those who don’t know who Burt Rutan is here is a nice series of videos at YouTube with him speaking. He is a brilliant engineer.
A physicist: “Elevator Summary: James Hansen and his colleagues have predictively “hit more bulls-eyes” than skeptics like Rutan / Lindzen / the WSJ-16.”
And my life long prediction is, and always will be, that climate changes. My prediction has never failed and so your elevator summary must properly deify me in your blooming personality cult.
A physicist: “(2) in the long run, the cause of skepticism would be advanced if Rutan / Lindzen / the WSJ-16 would venture to publish similarly concrete predictions. Because those brands of skepticism that make no predictions are weak.”
The “cause,” eh? Yes, I suppose the “cause” would be helped if the “cause” but more Miss Cleo clones on staff. But that’s all vapid cultural in-group/out-group nonsense. That said, I do agree with you, scientific skepticism is far weaker than cultilt prognostications; and it always will be. Those that are willing to accept “I don’t know” as a valid answer are far less numerous than those that fondle at the font of received ideas.
R. Gates: “If you ask a broad question, you’ll get a broad answer. Ask a specific question, and you’ll get a specific answer.”
“They certainly were not Homo Sapiens” — R. Gates
Terrible sophistries are the one’s in which you refute your own answer within the post. Savvy sophists are better at avoiding such quotation foibles. I have optimism in your ability to evolve into better rhetoric.
R. Gates: “Natural variability is only masking CO2 (and other greenhouse gas) forcing…it is not preventing it. Models do not handle natural variability well…nor can they ever.”
If the model cannot handle natural variability then it cannot predict what would occur with ‘unnatural’ variability in combination with the ‘natural’ variant. And that’s all presupposing that CO2 from man is somehow plays by special physics rules that CO2 produced from other animals and sources does not. Absent custom physics there is nothing but natural variability.
How many years has it been since the last major improvement in the climate models?
At least 10.
How many other fields of science are that static?
None.
Conclusion — Climate models are not science.
Dr Burns (January 28, 2012 at 10:58 pm) says,
“Did Rutan jump ships ? I thought he used to be a true believer ?”
Well, it happens, thank God Almighty. Consider another “true believer” who says,
“I started out actually just being a climate alarmist.”
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2010/06/anthony-watts-interviewed
Physicist:”RobW, it’s not complicated: (1) the sun was dimmer way back then, and (2) the low-lying East Coast states like South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, Texas were deep underwater.”
As for point one I can hardly wait for proof of that?
Point two has what to do with global atmospheric temperatures?
R. Gates
In regard to this “CO2 forcing” you refer to, when you can find any empirical evidence that any radiation from a cold atmosphere can warm (or slow the cooling of) a much warmer surface then I suggest you recommend to the authors of the study that they watch for the $50,000 reward soon to be offered to anyone producing such evidence.
Show everyone on this forum that such proof is available, or depart with your nonsense about CO2 forcing which would require that for which you have no proof.
In the meantime, please explain why spectroscopy shows warm gases do not absorb from cooler sources of spontaneous blackbody radiation, and why all that “backradiation” shining on a bit of frost in the shade all day long can’t melt it, whereas the Sun can do so in less than an hour.
RobW says:
It is well documented that the global atmosphere was 6-9 times higher in CO2 than it is today. If your theory of positive feed back is correct then please explain how on earth did the earth not burn up from the much higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere in the distant past.
Rob, do you realize the Earth was a _completely different planet_ in the distant past? The continents and oceans weren’t even in the same place — 200 Mya the Pangaea supercontinent existed. In addition the Sun was weaker (look-up “Faint Young Sun Paradox”).
These are big complications for trying to draw simple conclusions based purely on one factor like CO2 abundance. To understand science you need to look at the details….
Babsy says:
Take a closed container of air at room temperature and inject into it sufficient CO2 to raise the CO2 concentration to 5,000 PPM. After two weeks time what will be the temperature inside the container? After one month? One year?
Babsy, there can be no radiative transfer — the basis of the GH effect — in a closed container. Even if there was, the effect would be far too small to see it in a small volume.
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
For those who don’t know who Burt Rutan is here is a nice series of videos at YouTube with him speaking. He is a brilliant engineer.
Perhaps, but he is a lousy climate scientist and a lousy statistician. As the example I gave up above proves, one of the calculations he uses as evidence of a lack of warming completely fails to detect a simple warming world. One must wonder if the graph wasn’t purposely designed to be obfuscatory.
Erinome
Yes the earth was very different and it had CO2 levels approximately ten times that we see today. So unless the laws of physics have changed since way back then I can not accept a negative feed back system then and a positive feedback system now. Are you suggesting a huge difference in land surface area/ocean surface area?
Now current differences may have contributed a little to local temperatures (the south pole land mass is a good example) but the globe as a whole is in the same solar system at the relatively same position in space relative to the sun and the sun is radiating at relatively the same intensity.
Oh and we are talking about a few tens of million years ago. The sun was young 3-4 billion years ago. So are you saying the sun is more important than CO2 levels?
“Public Fraud based on science”
Nice.
Burt, let’s just call AGW and climate change by the new acronym: “PFBS” or Public Fraud Based Science. Could also be related to PR-BS…but I digress.
The fact that it is all BS makes a ‘four-lettered’ acronym all the more appropriate.
Makes me wonder what these people think they are really doing anyway….since it has been downright crippling to one of the largest food producing economies on the planet through the deliberate misuse of the ESA, CEQA and the EPA. Control of Water, Air and Fuels…
http://www.calwatchdog.com/2012/01/28/bored-ca-billionaire-groups-merge/?
http://www.calwatchdog.com/2012/01/28/will-enviros-bend-on-ceqa-reform/
http://www.calwatchdog.com/2011/11/28/media-warming-to-ab-32-disaster/
Some of the same great minds funded or indirectly supported the 1010.org exploding kids campaign too….’no pressure’ and all that BS. They have been behind, or indirectly supported, what many have described as Environmental Racketeering and Extortion, with the support of their hand picked and appointed minions in key NGOs, Non-profits, and government agencies, to slowly drive Family farms and other ‘environmentally offensive’ businesses, out of business through bureaucratic, environmental, legal, and financial strangulation..
There are people out there who will do or say anything to steal, intimidate/terrorize or get control over others, and use PFBS, federal grants, and the environment as an excuse to do so….and again, you will find many of the same ‘fine minds’ conspiring together to support/obstruct the same causes.
Frankly, I’m surprised that many of them are not already in jail…but then politics and PR has precluded many a criminal from ending up behind bars over the years.
I just wish there were more people with significant resources and insight out there to oppose them head on, and help return this State and Country to some semblance of normal.