Burt Rutan on Schooling the Rogues

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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Erinome

January 29, 2012 5:18 pm

Bob B says:
Why do climate scientists shy away from devising testable, scenarios fir their models?
They do not:
“Climate Models and their Evaluation,” IPCC 4AR WG1 Ch8 (2007)
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch8.html

Smokey

January 29, 2012 5:21 pm

‘a physicist’ says:
“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.’ ”
You know nothing of skepticism. Skeptics are never certain about anything. And that CO2 used to be in the atmosphere, all of it, so being a worry-wart is pointless. There is no evidence that CO2 ever caused global warming. It was always the result of warming, never the cause.
As usual ‘a physicist’ mixes up his facts. The sun was, in fact, about 25% – 30% dimmer in the past. But that was ≈3 billion years ago. Just over a half billion years ago – a completely different time frame – the sun was about as bright as it is now, and CO2 was about sixteen times higher.
The truth is that we don’t know nearly all the factors that cause global temperatures to change. But we do know that assigning CO2 as the primary cause has no empirical, testable evidence supporting it. But ‘a physicist’ is willing to bet the farm on the Precautionary Principle, with no supporting evidence, and only based on: “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.”
“All that CO2” has been in the atmosphere already. And it never caused runaway global warming, or any global warming as far as we can tell. It was the result of global warming. And the net result of the current ≈40% increase in CO2 has been the greening of the planet, nothing more. Scaring yourself with “What ifs” is pointless and anti-science. Provide testable facts showing global harm from the increase in that tiny trace gas, and I will sit up straight and pay attention. So far, there are no such facts.

Bernard J.

January 29, 2012 5:25 pm

Erm, shouldn’t that read:

I see [snip] William M. Connolley [snip] is commenting in WattsUpWithThat.

[REPLY: It wasn’t THAT offensive, but we’d prefer commenters engage Dr. Connolley rather than call him names and risk making him cry. -REP]

Smokey

January 29, 2012 5:31 pm

Bernard J.,
In America, truth is an absolute defense.☺

KevinK

January 29, 2012 5:35 pm

Ironically enough, the FLAW in the GHE HYPOTHESIS is actually more of an accounting error than a science error. When the energy returns to the surface from the “GHG” you cannot ADD it to the energy arriving from the Sun to produce an alleged “energy budget”. The energy returning from the “GHG” has already travelled once through the system leaving cooling (at the previous location it departed from) in its wake. So we have sequential warming/cooling/warming/cooling…. events occurring from ONE bundle of energy that came from the Sun. So one bundle of energy from the Sun simply warms the surface multiple sequential times, since these warming events are followed by equivalent cooling events and are separated by finite time delays YOU CANNOT ADD THEM TOGETHER and get a correct result. Doing so is the equivalent of creating energy, which you must admit violates the First Law.
One of the clues to this accounting error is the use of the terms; “Net Energy Gain” and “Extra Energy” as used in the climate science community.
In the engineering community we use the predicted observation of “extra energy” as a RED FLAG to tell us our analysis is wrong.
Engineers that routinely calculate “Net Energy Gains” either get fired or promoted into management.
Regarding why the Earth is at the average temperature it is, I have yet to hear any one explanation that makes complete sense. But knowledge always expands and we will likely know why sometime. Although from a practical sense it seems to make very little difference.
But it most definitely is not the result of the GHE.
The GHE appears to cause some energy to travel through the system (bouncing as it where) between the gases and the surface all the while dissipating energy to Space via radiation. The end result is a slight delay to the energy as it travels from the Sun to the Earth through the Atmosphere to the Universe.
The “missing heat” is currently travelling as a spherical IR wavefront that is “X+d” light years away from the surface. In this equation X represents the elapsed time since the sunlight arrived (i.e. 100 years for sunlight from 1912) and d represents the slight delay from the GHE and likely averages about 5 milliseconds. “d” is actually a statistical distribution which will of course have a different specific value for each photon travelling through the system. Some will bounce many times and take longer to exit, while others may not bounce at all and thus exit directly to space.
Cheers, Kevin.

Babsy

January 29, 2012 5:42 pm

Erinome says:
January 29, 2012 at 5:07 pm
“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.”
Even if there was? Then you don’t know for sure, do you?

A physicist

January 29, 2012 5:54 pm

Smokey says: Skeptics are never certain about anything … the net result of the current ≈40% increase in CO2 has been the greening of the planet, nothing more.

Smokey, those two beliefs don’t seem all that skeptical to me … heck, they don’t even seem self-consistent.
Maybe “climate-change skepticsm” should be renamed “climate-change super-optimism”?
That would make more logical sense.

aaron

January 29, 2012 5:55 pm

Edim, It depends on how much could be being outgassed and why. If we had a good idea how much CO2 variance is due to plants, we could figure how much variation is due to seasonal temperature change each year.
Perhaps plotting annual variance of CO2 level against temperature anomaly (or maybe daily global CO2 and daily global temperature–not anomaly) might show something.

Amino Acids in Meteorites

January 29, 2012 5:58 pm

Erinome
The earth is not warming It has been in a cooling trend for 10,000 years. It has been warmer on earth in the past than it is now. It was much warmer 1000 years ago than now. Manmade global warming advocates continue to come up with the same arguments that have been shown to be wrong over and over. Yet they continue to act like they are true.
There still is not scientific proof that ‘manmade’ global warming is really happening.

Amino Acids in Meteorites

January 29, 2012 6:08 pm

Bernard J. says:
January 29, 2012 at 5:25 pm
“Erm, shouldn’t that read:
I see [snip] William M. Connolley [snip] is commenting in WattsUpWithThat.”
.
No, it shouldn’t because neither one is name calling. William M. Connolley is a green activist. Why would you want to hide that from people? And he has been called The Butcher of Wikipedia for his continual altering of Wikipedia pages and violation of Wikipedia rules. Why should that also be hidden from the public? Why would you not want people to know that?
I can see how moderators here would consider The Butcher of Wikipedia name calling. I can see their point.
Still, the public should know who he is just as they should know who Burt Rutan is.
Do you find fault with Al Gore because he is a lifetime politician who got poor grades in math and science in college? Would that disqualify him from being “manmade” global warming advocate?

aaron

January 29, 2012 6:14 pm

Test, mod please delete if this it does not line up right.
Year over year change in smoothed anomaly.

Number of years smoothed.
8	7	6	5	4	3	2	Year
						0.058	1981
					-0.026	-0.094	1982
				0.040	0.017	0.022	1983
			-0.026	-0.060	-0.082	-0.026	1984
		-0.028	-0.055	-0.071	-0.030	-0.164	1985
	-0.006	-0.026	-0.032	0.008	-0.068	0.043	1986
0.024	0.012	0.013	0.054	0.008	0.108	0.180	1987
0.006	0.006	0.040	0.000	0.073	0.109	0.103	1988
-0.018	0.007	-0.031	0.021	0.035	0.006	-0.110	1989
0.031	0.001	0.050	0.067	0.053	-0.008	0.004	1990
0.002	0.044	0.057	0.044	-0.005	0.005	0.101	1991
0.006	0.012	-0.007	-0.056	-0.061	-0.020	-0.127	1992
0.018	0.003	-0.036	-0.037	0.001	-0.064	-0.100	1993
0.021	-0.010	-0.006	0.030	-0.012	-0.018	0.104	1994
0.008	0.013	0.047	0.017	0.020	0.113	0.139	1995
-0.002	0.024	-0.005	-0.007	0.057	0.055	0.010	1996
0.028	0.004	0.004	0.056	0.055	0.025	-0.029	1997
0.060	0.067	0.122	0.134	0.131	0.130	0.252	1998
0.003	0.040	0.037	0.015	-0.014	0.019	0.001	1999
0.034	0.030	0.011	-0.014	0.011	-0.004	-0.230	2000
0.045	0.031	0.014	0.040	0.036	-0.102	0.071	2001
0.036	0.022	0.045	0.043	-0.059	0.071	0.113	2002
0.021	0.040	0.037	-0.045	0.055	0.078	0.040	2003
0.020	0.015	-0.057	0.021	0.029	-0.012	-0.054	2004
0.029	-0.031	0.039	0.049	0.022	0.006	0.005	2005
-0.040	0.018	0.024	-0.003	-0.021	-0.031	0.012	2006
0.020	0.024	0.003	-0.011	-0.016	0.018	-0.037	2007
-0.005	-0.028	-0.044	-0.055	-0.039	-0.094	-0.091	2008
-0.002	-0.013	-0.016	0.004	-0.027	-0.002	-0.018	2009
0.020	0.022	0.045	0.028	0.061	0.072	0.213	2010
-0.022	-0.009	-0.031	-0.017	-0.029	0.032	-0.040	2011

16	15	14	13	12	11	10	9
						-0.003	-0.015	1989
					0.015	0.006	0.006	1990
				0.015	0.006	0.006	0.028	1991
			-0.007	-0.016	-0.018	-0.001	-0.027	1992
		-0.002	-0.010	-0.012	0.005	-0.018	0.012	1993
	0.008	0.001	0.000	0.017	-0.003	0.025	0.032	1994
0.016	0.010	0.010	0.025	0.008	0.035	0.042	0.033	1995
0.002	0.002	0.016	-0.001	0.023	0.028	0.019	-0.006	1996
0.005	0.018	0.003	0.025	0.030	0.022	0.000	0.004	1997
0.045	0.032	0.055	0.062	0.057	0.041	0.048	0.074	1998
0.002	0.022	0.026	0.019	0.000	0.003	0.022	0.003	1999
0.020	0.023	0.016	-0.001	0.002	0.019	0.002	0.001	2000
0.032	0.026	0.010	0.014	0.030	0.016	0.016	0.047	2001
0.028	0.014	0.018	0.034	0.020	0.021	0.050	0.048	2002
0.014	0.017	0.032	0.019	0.020	0.046	0.044	0.033	2003
0.009	0.022	0.010	0.010	0.032	0.030	0.018	0.005	2004
0.028	0.017	0.018	0.039	0.038	0.028	0.017	0.032	2005
0.010	0.010	0.029	0.027	0.017	0.007	0.019	0.014	2006
0.011	0.029	0.027	0.018	0.008	0.019	0.016	-0.032	2007
0.014	0.011	0.002	-0.008	0.000	-0.005	-0.050	-0.006	2008
0.022	0.013	0.005	0.014	0.010	-0.029	0.012	0.015	2009
0.028	0.021	0.031	0.029	-0.006	0.034	0.039	0.026	2010
-0.001	0.007	0.003	-0.031	0.004	0.005	-0.010	-0.019	2011

JohnWho

January 29, 2012 6:21 pm

A physicist says:
January 29, 2012 at 4:39 pm
RobW says: 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.
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.
Ah, so (1) it is the sun that is the primary driver and (2) heavy moisture over the southern states kept them from burning up.
Yep, that makes sense to me.

aaron

January 29, 2012 6:25 pm

Note, the significant negative changes before are in the years following El Chicon and Pinatubo. What were the major eruptions that happened in the past decade?/sarcasm

Erinome

January 29, 2012 6:27 pm

Babsy says:
Even if there was? Then you don’t know for sure, do you?
Yes, we do know for sure. My point, which I thought was obvious, was that even if the box were transparent to radiation and ~ 1 m^3 it is far too small of a volume to see the effects of the GH effect — you need a large atmosphere ~ 10s-100s km.

Robert in Calgary

January 29, 2012 6:27 pm

Say Bernard J.
I believe a censor fiend like Connolley better be prepared to get some “stick” returned to him.
If Mr. Connolley had his way, this site would be wiped from existence.

Smokey

January 29, 2012 6:36 pm

Erinome,
So forget a cubic meter box. Make it a hundred cubic meters. And instead of 5,000 ppm CO2, make it all CO2. That gives you twenty thousand times more accuracy.
After two weeks time what will be the temperature inside the container? After one month? One year? It’s pure CO2, remember. Better stand back, in case the container bursts into flames.

Bob B

January 29, 2012 6:37 pm

Erinome—OK at what point , what test, will you consider the current GCM’s falsified?
Most likely after Januart the 2001-2012 will fall outside the 95% confidence interval.

Erinome

January 29, 2012 6:46 pm

Smokey says:
There is no evidence that CO2 ever caused global warming. It was always the result of warming, never the cause.
Then explain the PETM.

R. Gates

January 29, 2012 6:52 pm

Robert Phelan said:
“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”
____
No apologies necessary. I think perhaps we’ve both learned something from the exchange which is (or should be) the whole point.

Smokey

January 29, 2012 6:55 pm

“Then explain the PETM.”
That’s your argument?? OK: CO2 has risen ten times as fast now as during the PETM, and no runaway global warming is happening. Therefore, CO2 wasn’t the cause of the PETM.
Your turn: explain why the climate null hypothesis has never been falsified. And explain what the temperature in the box will be in a year.

Erinome

January 29, 2012 6:59 pm

So Bob, then you acknowledge that modelers do not shy away from testing their models?
Bob B says:
Erinome—OK at what point , what test, will you consider the current GCM’s falsified?
Which one? There are almost 2 dozen.
And which economic scenario should be assumed, and over what time period, starting when?
What should be done about factors that all modelers admit are imperfectly modeled, such as clouds and aerosol effects?
How should the chaos inherent in any nonlinear system (and nonlinear model) be accounted for?
Finally, how much error is tolerable, and over what time period (and why)?
Do you recall the Hansen paper that Willis referenced several weeks ago? It says this:
“…Climate sensitivity, the eventual global temperature change per unit forcing, is known with good accuracy from Earth’s paleoclimate history. However, two fundamental uncertainties limit our ability to predict global temperature change on decadal time scales.
“First, although climate forcing by human-made greenhouse gases (GHGs) is known accurately, climate forcing caused by changing human-made aerosols is practically unmeasured. Aerosols are fine particles suspended in the air, such as dust, sulfates, and black soot…. Aerosol climate forcing is complex, because aerosols both reflect solar radiation to space (a cooling effect) and absorb solar radiation (a warming effect). In addition, atmospheric aerosols can alter cloud cover and cloud properties. Therefore, precise composition-specific measurements of aerosols and their effects on clouds are needed to assess the aerosol role in climate change.
“Second, the rate at which Earth’s surface temperature approaches a new equilibrium in response to a climate forcing depends on how efficiently heat perturbations are mixed into the deeper ocean. Ocean mixing is complex and not necessarily simulated well by climate models. Empirical data on ocean heat uptake are improving rapidly, but still suffer limitations.”
— James Hansen et al, “Earth’s Energy Imbalance and Implications,” 2011,
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110415_EnergyImbalancePaper.pdf (pg 1-2).

Babsy

January 29, 2012 7:02 pm

Erinome says:
January 29, 2012 at 6:27 pm
Yes, we do know for sure. My point, which I thought was obvious, was that even if the box were transparent to radiation and ~ 1 m^3 it is far too small of a volume to see the effects of the GH effect — you need a large atmosphere ~ 10s-100s km.
Really? It’s the CO2 that causes the air to warm, right? You’re familiar with a bomb calorimeter, right? If so, why not take an air sample at -20F, shoot some CO2 into it and see how long it takes for it to warm up? That is what we’re being told by the climate scientists, yes? Increased CO2 in the atmosphere causes warming of said atmosphere?

Erinome

January 29, 2012 7:14 pm

Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
The earth is not warming It has been in a cooling trend for 10,000 years….
So we’re now cooler than the LIA?
Than 1950? Than 1979?
It was much warmer 1000 years ago than now.
How much?

Erinome

January 29, 2012 7:19 pm

Babsy says:
You’re familiar with a bomb calorimeter, right? If so, why not take an air sample at -20F, shoot some CO2 into it and see how long it takes for it to warm up?
If you are asking this you clearly don’t understand the basis of the greenhouse effect, which depends on the interaction of radiation and GHGs. There is no such solar radiation in the calorimeter. And even if there were, the volume of gas is too small to see an appreciable effect.

dbstealey

January 29, 2012 7:24 pm

Erinome wiggles and wiggles like a slippery eel, and never gives a straight answer.

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