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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aaron,
“CO2 rise is likely mostly anthropogenic, but it’s not a sure thing. If what would be caused by outgassing is lower than human emissions, the level of non-human CO2 would not increase since the equilibrium state would be reached without outgassing.”
The net CO2 flux into the atmosphere is positive, no doubt about it. The net annual CO2 flux equals the annual atmospheric CO2 change. It’s the sum of anthropogenic emissions and net natural flux (into atmosphere). So, you’re right that the equilibrium state is reached without net outgasing because there’s more than enough anthropogenic input (the overflow goes into oceans) to reach the equilibrium. However, the CO2 rise can still be caused 100% by the warming climatic factors, in spite of no net ocean outgasing. We simply emit more than what would be caused by outgasing, so in total oceans don’t have to outgas to reach the equilibrium – they will even absorb any extra CO2 it’s not needed for the equilibrium.
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 9:11 am
All this reveals is that you do not have a clue what a rigorously formulated physical hypothesis looks like.
cui bono says:
January 29, 2012 at 10:30 am
Meanwhile all other factors can be ignored – “First, the models are horrible at predicting natural variability, as that is not their function.” Hey, but never mind, everything else is just noise…
Although the ‘noise’ can drown the ‘signal’, not just for years, but perhaps for decades?
______
The relationship between noise and signal is a complex one, and made all the more difficult when you are at or near crossover points when what was previously noise is becoming the dominant signal and visa-versa. The ultimate signal is Milankovitch, and now it appears that we have a interesting period of time when signal and noise is a bit confounded (at least to the casual observer) but not to closer study. Somewhere between 10 and 20 years appears to now be the maximum period in which natural variability can mask the forcing from CO2.
nomnom,
Connolley lies. You apparently have him confused with me. And you are no different than Connolley. Your comments are simply baseless opinion. Here is a chart of atmospheric CO2 as measured at Mauna Loa. Connolley is either ignorant or lying when he claims that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is accelerating. I don’t think Connolley is ignorant. But he is certainly a propagandist, and propagandists lie. Why are you carrying his water for him? It should also be noted that more CO2 is beneficial, not harmful. CO2 has been up to twenty times higher in the geologic past, when life thrived. The biosphere is currently starved of CO2, so the recent rise is beneficial.
Next, Beck’s data does not go back 400,000 years, it goes back to the 19th century. I am not arguing with Burt Rutan, I am pointing out your obfuscation. Furthermore, I cited a peer reviewed paper and charts verifying the fact that CO2 follows temperature, thus contradicting Connolley’s deceptive propaganda. Anyone capable of reading charts can see the fact that CO2 is a functtion of temperature; an effect, not a cause. It is obvious even when the x-axis covers hundreds of millennia.
Next, CO2 may cause some minor and beneficial warming. But there is no empirical, testable evidence showing the percentage, if any, of human-caused temperature change. CO2=AGW is simply an unproven conjecture. It may turn out to be eventually proven, or it may be falsified. But as of now it is a conjecture. I happen to think that CO2 causes some minor warming. I also think that warming is entirely beneficial, and that the increase in CO2 is completely harmless. The planet is in agreement that CO2 is harmless and beneficial, and that Authority trumps your belief system.
Finally, you accused me of lying by citing my statement: “Connolley can get away with his lies on Wikipedia. But not here on the internet’s Best Science site.” Show where anything in that statement is untrue. Connolley is a global warming propagandist who mendaciously alters thousands of comments on Wikipedia to conform to his alarmist agenda, therefore he is ipso facto dishonest; he does not allow legitimate contrary views. And WUWT has won the Weblog Awards for Best Science site, twice running. Therefore, my statement stands in its entirety, and you are bearing false witness.
R. Gates so how come we did not cook when C02 was much higher as most doom sayers predict for our future unless we send them money?
R. Gates says: January 29, 2012 at 9:11 am
Here’s a bit of a mind experiment to show how climate models can be “wrong” in the sense of not being 100% accurate, but still useful, and it even tells you why.
Which most of us understand. But here’s the counter problem: You don’t know you have a functional model until it has been tested against reality.
We’ve only got one ‘drop of water’, and it hit the side of the glass instead of the bottom – which was the prediction.
The pre-Copernicans had models as well – and they had more predictive skill that we’ve seen out of
the current crop of climate models. The entire raft of climate models are mostly ‘validated’ by hindcasting. That is, exactly like the pre-Copernicans, they fiddle with parameters whose actual value isn’t quite completely quantified until their model matches history. (Although Hansen/GISS is doing the reverse, which should be putting people in jail.)
That isn’t validation though. Actual validation comes from -actual- forecasting. The best validated models we have so far aren’t -completely- wrong. That isn’t a strong endorsement.
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 10:40 am
“The relationship between noise and signal is a complex one, and made all the more difficult when you are at or near crossover points when what was previously noise is becoming the dominant signal and visa-versa.”
Can you explicate the terminology of “noise and signal” in a way that is useful to physical scientists? Or do we all have to buy into some ersatz statistical magic before we can use the terminology correctly?
I think it is great that so-called “warmists” are here. It allows for direct question/answers. definitely a plus is any debate about complex issues.
So in keeping I ask Mr (Dr., so dont know which) Connelly and R. Gates the following question.
It is well recognized that the CO2 content of the atmosphere was 6-9 times higher in the distant past. Therefore please explain how a small by comparison rise over the past few decades can cause run-away global warming when levels 6-9 times higher did not?
“The Watermelons and Strawberries are past their prime and their perfume is turning to stench, soon they will be compost” pg
‘a physicist’ says:
“…James Hansen was lead author of the earliest, best-regarded, and most-cited nonskeptical articles…”
Yes, Hansen is a non-skeptic. Thank you for acknowledging that pertinent fact.
The only honest scientists are skeptics. That is also a pertinent fact. If you’re not a scientific skeptic, you are a true believer. Hansen’s wild-eyed statements and actions show conclusively that he is a true believer, not an honest scientist. Hansen is the polar opposite of the rational Prof Richard Lindzen.
And your endlessly repeated claim that Hansen’s predictions were accurate do not make those claims correct. They are not. Hansen’s predictions have turned out to be wrong. All of them. The claim that they were accurate is a classic example of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy: shoot holes in a barn door, then draw a bullseye around them. That’s what GISS does. They regularly “adjust” the past temperature record to show that Hansen got it right. He didn’t.
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 10:26 am
______
You’d probably have to go back to the mid-Pliocence or Early Pliocene (more than 3 million years ago) to find CO2 levels as high as they are today. Humans were of course very primative in that time frame and were not affecting CO2 levels.
***
The time period above that you are using has only happened in the last 1/1000th of Earths history. Has not CO2 been significantly higher at times over a much more longer period of history? Is it intellectually honest to quote an extremely condensed period of time in Earth’s history to evaluate the natural fluctuation in CO2 levels?
Every time we burn a bit of fossil fuel, we are simply putting the carbon back where it came from originally.
It is time to stop sequestering carbon, SET IT FREE!
jlc says:
January 29, 2012 at 7:41 am
richard verney says:
January 29, 2012 at 8:42 am
Your underlying method is sound and I value your decency but I’ve been had too many times to disregard obvious signs. We must test facts and ideas wherever they come from—especially if they disagree with ours—but we don’t have to give comfort to dishonest brokers.
JLC, you may have missed that William M. Connolley did provide a link to his handle. It leads to “Tweaking the Wackos”. That includes you, I think.
Good things come from experience and much experience comes from bad things. Listen to what Anthony says about Connolley. It comes from experience.
William M. Connolley says:
January 29, 2012 at 8:06 am
Oh heavens, let him post it. Anyone who likes Go can’t be a complete jerk even though his name links to something shows him to be nearly a complete jerk. Heck, Anthony lists Skeptical Science (with a warning).
OTOH, I figure I’ve read enough Connolley-tainted stuff at Wilipedia that I don’t think I need the pure form. I might do the Go problem, though.
“Smokey says:
January 29, 2012 at 10:43 am
nomnom,
Connolley lies. You apparently have him confused with me. And you are no different than Connolley. Your comments are simply baseless opinion. Here is a chart of atmospheric CO2 as measured at Mauna Loa.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/CO2%20MaunaLoa%20Last12months-previous12monthsGrowthRateSince1958.gif
Connolley is either ignorant or lying when he claims that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is accelerating.”
Your graph shows that CO2 rise is accelerating. Your graph is of the annual growth rate of CO2 and it shows that is increasing. That’s an acceleration.
I think I see what happened here. Most people who go looking for a graph of Mauna Loa CO2 will come up with a graph like this:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/mlo/programs/coop/scripps/img/img_scripps_co2_record.gif
But you managed to find a graph depicting the annual growth rate of Mauna Loa CO2. That takes some effort because they are far rarer. So here’s my hypothesis:
You went through a bunch of Keeling Curve graphs but ignored them because you were looking for a line not a curve (confirmation bias). You eventually stumbled on one that looked like a straight line, it’s just you didn’t realize it was actually depicting acceleration.
Am I right?
Leave it to a bona-fide rocket scientist to put the warmists back in their place.
Good On him. I had the pleasure of shaking his hand once.
“Macro Contrarian (@JackHBarnes) says:
January 29, 2012 at 10:58 am
R. Gates says:
January 29, 2012 at 10:26 am
______
You’d probably have to go back to the mid-Pliocence or Early Pliocene (more than 3 million years ago) to find CO2 levels as high as they are today. Humans were of course very primative in that time frame and were not affecting CO2 levels.
***
The time period above that you are using has only happened in the last 1/1000th of Earths history. Has not CO2 been significantly higher at times over a much more longer period of history? Is it intellectually honest to quote an extremely condensed period of time in Earth’s history to evaluate the natural fluctuation in CO2 levels?”
There are 30,000 centuries in 3 million years. What are the chances that the only century in those set of 30,000 to see CO2 jump to 390ppm happened to be the only century in which humans emitted more than enough CO2 to explain the rise?
R. Gates says:
Isn’t it true that before Keeling et al
The 19th century averages of CO2 were approximately 350 ppm?
Rutan definitely handed the alarmists their heads. Like all good engineers, he makes sure the data is pure of bias and aligns with reality. In his field, you cannot afford to be even minutely wrong.
I also should note that applauding the correlation between CO2 and temp over the very period they required correlation (1960’s to late 1990’s) is a bit of a joke. Correlation with your primary calibration period is sort of a no brainer.
In case people are interested, I have posted on another rocky theory of ‘Climate Science’. I am finding it less and less likely that El Nino is an artifact of climate. I think climate perturbations from El Nino are secondary effects of geological, volcanic activity.
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/18003
Who wrote this?
“A more philosophically nuanced recognition that there are different categories of truth (historical, scientific, mathematical, theological, etc.), just as there are different genres of literature (history, story, metaphor, poetry, etc.), would not diminish the force of his detailed arguments.”
In other words, don’t ask for credit as a kick in the fork often offends.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming–Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html
> > Time you hoist you flag on the mast
> I did that a while back [snip]
No dangerous links eh? Don’t want to scare the horses. ‘Nuff ssaid.
> When you layer your models you lose the entire 3-dimensional movement in the atmosphere. That alone makes them pretty much useless. Not only that, but I’ve also heard the models are hydrostatic
No the GCMs permit 3-d movement, of course. Most (but not all) are indeed hydrostatic. HadCM3 was HadGEM isn’t,if I recall correctly. It marginally improves the dynamics but nothing to worry about for the level of detail we have here.
> human CO2 emissions are only around 3% of the total
Of course. We already know that. But what matters are the fluxes, i.e. emissions minus drawdown. Natural emissions are large, but then so is the drawdown; this has to be true, because pre-industrially, they balanced. Human emissions are large compared to the net natural flux, which is why CO2 is increasing.
> the CO2 lag behind temperature can be clearly seen on a chart of the past 400,000 years
Of course it can’t be seen on that chart! The claimed lag is ~500 years. That chart covers 400 kyr in 400 pixels, so each pixel is 1000 years. Hence, you can’t see anything less than 1000 years.
> How did CO2 level reach 5x-9x the current levels historically
I don’t think they have “historically”, in the sense of within-the-historic record. You have to go back about 100 Myr, and even then the variation is uncertain. See pics and text in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere#Past_variation
> William Connelly – Your policies and practices are despicable
You (and your like) are long on words but short on evidence. And spelling.
> Here is a chart of atmospheric CO2 as measured at Mauna Loa. Connolley is either ignorant or lying when he claims that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is accelerating
That isn’t a chart of CO2; it is a chart of the rate of change from year to year. And as you see, it goes u, from ~1 ppm/yr at the start to ~2 ppm/yr at the end. Which is to say, the rate of increase is increasing, which is to say the actual CO2 value is accelerating.
> come we did not cook when C02 was much higher
Because that was more than 50 Myr ago. We weren’t around.
> Therefore please explain how a small by comparison rise over the past few decades can cause run-away global warming
It won’t cause run-away warming; that forms no part of the std IPCC picture which I subscribe to. I had a link to “what I think about GW” that would have made this clear, but your mod didn’t like it so it was snipped. CO2 changes in the deep geological past > 50 Myr ago aren’t all that well established; try looking at the wiki CO2 pic I linked to, which shows that estimates vary wildly. If you want times when everyone agrees CO2 was high, you have to go back more than 300 Myr, when the continents were in different places.
Smokey says:
January 29, 2012 at 10:54 am
What gets lost in the discussion is that there is a long term warming trend. It did NOT start in 1973 as some would have you believe.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1900/to:2012/plot/gistemp/from:1900/to:2012/trend:1.0
The trend is actually longer in duration, but I don’t want to confuse some with climate rather than weather.
Smokey, although I enjoy the vigor of your posts, it is easy to check that the above assertion is dead-wrong.
As anyone can verify for themselves, in their 1981 article “Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide” (Science, 1981), James Hansen and his colleagues painted two specific bulls-eyes:
(1) “Opening of the fabled Northwest Passage” (see Hansen’s abstract), and
(2) Hockey-stick warming of the the earth’s temperature (Figures 6 and 7).
Thirty-two years later, the opening of the Northwest Passage for commercial shipping the last three years in-a-row, and the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) “hockey-stick” (to cite one “hockey-stick” among many), have verified the strong 1981 predictions of Hansen and his colleagues.
To the best of my knowledge (and I would be pleased to be corrected!), skeptics like Rutan / Lindzen / the WSJ-16 cannot cite any similarly long-term predictive successes.
Elevator Summary: James Hansen and his colleagues have predictively “hit more bulls-eyes” than skeptics like Rutan / Lindzen / the WSJ-16.
R Gates said:
“Fortunately, we have a verifiable prediction of future underlying warming that should show itself easily when the natural variability aligns once more with greenhouse gas forcing.”
For give my unlearned skepticism …..Are you saying that “the broken clock will be accurate when the time comes”?
Seems that way.
Gates says:
“You’d probably have to go back to the mid-Pliocence or Early Pliocene (more than 3 million years ago) to find CO2 levels as high as they are today. Humans were of course very primative in that time frame and were not affecting CO2 levels. ”
I guess you meant “primitive” but do you really believe there were humans on Earth 3 million years ago? I have to assume you were making a joke, the alternative is embarrassing. The surprising thing is that you did not check this factoid with your WikiWanka bible http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human