Burt Rutan - Is Climate Change caused by Mankind?

[DonRotolo]

Burt Rutan, a famous engineer, has used his skills of data analysis to dispute the assertion that Global Warming Climate Change is caused by the activities of mankind. A PDF of his presentation is here.

It makes me want to check his data, 'cause if it's right, he's right.

[Chris is me]

Without watching, why would I listen to an engineer over a climatologist? An interesting argument that doesn't degenerate into ad hominem attacks is always refreshing regardless of view, though.

[DonRotolo]

He covers that in the first few slides.

[Chris is me]

Sorry about the hastiness, then. I'm just used to seeing "John Smith, exeprt apple farmer with a BA in political science, discusses global warming" and I put on my Skeptic Cap. Slide 15 seems a little misleading, (is that all of the greenhouse gases in the entire atmosphere? is the red dot all of the CO2 that has been or ever will be produced by humans? do all greenhouse gases have equal effect on the environment? what abuot methane?)

Is the data on Slide 17 precise enough to work with? I see long, straight lines. I was under the impression that precision was only available over the past 600,000 years or so.

I "know" Slide 21 is an accurate graph, but the data sample may be too small...

Slide 25. A good example of graph fraud. The most "famous" example of the ice core graph (The scissor lift in An Inconvenient Truth) featured no scale change, though...

Other than that, it's a very interesting report and I'm probably being over analytical...

[Mr. Pockets]

I found the article extremely interesting. My only complaint is that no bibliography was attached (I'm going to check the website for that.)

All in all though I think he made several very valid points. Excellent article.

Originally Posted by Chris is me

(...is the red dot all of the CO2 that has been or ever will be produced by humans?...)

Definitely not. Bear in mind that just like water vapor eventually comes down in the form of rain CO2 is constantly being used by plants for photosynthesis (and thus exchanged for oxygen).

[Mr. Pockets]

Much to my dismay there are no bibliographies listed on his website. Shame...I was rather interested is several of his graphs.

[MrForbes]

Thanks for the link Don, very interesting! It finally all makes sense....

[Adama]

If even a small fraction of this is true (and I suspect it is) then I can't see how we can claim to be causing global warming. Though the lack of a bibliography is odd.

[Mr. Pockets]

Really the only thing to make a bibliography for would be the charts, but yeah I found that slightly irritating. I'm actually sending this to several of my friends (if yahoo mail can fit it ) It might make them consider things slightly differently. He undeniably makes some good points.

[Ian Curtis]

I really like listening to Burt Rutan speak because he's so straightforward. My favorite quote is definitely: "The last one; getting hit with very-fast Big Rocks, is the only real threat to make us extinct."

Check out his TED talk as well. While it is not about climate change (it's about Virgin Galactic) it his pretty informative and very watchable.

Rutan's TED talk

[Andy Baker]

We (the FIRST community) should reach out to Burt Rutan. I believe that he attended the FIRST Championships in 1992, serving as a judge. Can anyone else confirm this?

Andy B.

[IKE]

What I like most about Rutan's presentation is that he calls out which group he belongs too and thus his own personal bias. This should be a requirement any time anyone is doing analysis that requires some interpretation. This highlights the dangers of confusing "independent" research with "neutral" or "un-biased" research/analysis.

Michael Crichton has a similar presentation about the use of fear as a political tool.
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I agree with Andy on the reaching out to Rutan. The guy has achieved some amazing engineering feats especially in the field of experimental aircraft.

[LWakefield]

I agree that mankind doesn't cause climate change. A professor at MIT completely disproved that theory. Scientists are biased by money.

CO2 is a lost cause. It would take 33 years to drop the temperature 1 degree Fahrenheit is there was no CO2 emissions. CO2 is such a small volume of green house gases.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by LWakefield

A professor at MIT completely disproved that theory.

Do you a link for the paper, or the name and publisher so I can look it up myself? I'd like to read it.

[artdutra04]

Originally Posted by LWakefield

I agree that mankind doesn't cause climate change. A professor at MIT completely disproved that theory. Scientists are biased by money.

Just remember that bias works both ways. When one side says A, and the other says B, the truth is usually somewhere in the between.

Originally Posted by LWakefield

CO2 is a lost cause. It would take 33 years to drop the temperature 1 degree Fahrenheit is there was no CO2 emissions. CO2 is such a small volume of green house gases.

I'm not going dispute that changing the CO2 levels in the atmosphere would be very difficult at this point, but I recently came across a great Op-Ed piece in the New York Times about the folly of cap-and-trade at slowing CO2 emissions* while promoting a new idea called "fee and dividend".

Carbon taxes in the form of "fee and dividend' are genius: place a tax on carbon, then take 100% of this tax money, divide it equally among all tax-paying Americans, and cut them a rebate check each year. While the carbon tax would increase the price of goods, the rebate check would negate this increase (and if you're "green", you would actually profit off the system). This is lightyears better than "cap and trade", as every American would see direct benefits from living more economically sustainable as it takes all the hidden, negative economic externalities** and directly builds them into the price of goods.

It would have the added benefit of being like a tax cut ("Woohoo! I just got a check for $3000!") while financially encouraging consumers to make greener choices ("do I drive my SUV to the corner store a 1/2 mile away for a gallon of milk, or do I walk there enjoying some fresh air and exercise?"). Businesses would have the incentive to make their products/services more sustainable, because the consumers would demand greener products to try to profit off the carbon tax.

At the same time, people would start walking and biking more (weather permitted) for short trips. This would have the bonus of reducing pollution emissions from cars while actively increasing the physical fitness of America (which with 2/3 of the population overweight, needs a lot of exercise!). Plus, new sidewalks and bike paths are relatively inexpensive to implement quickly in suburbia.

Would this force people out of their cars? Certainly not. It's kind of difficult to go to Ikea or Home Depot and bring anything of appreciable size home on a bike. But what it would do is create a system which which gives people more freedom of choice, as opposed to the current system which all but coerces every citizen to buy a car for any hope of getting from point A to point B.

The carbon fee and dividend is so simple. No carbon markets, no issues of who gets grandfathered in, no massive increases in energy costs with little to directly benefit consumers in the short term, no tax credits or bailouts to maybe encourage companies to maybe fund one green project, no screwing around with heavy and hard to enforce regulations. Since consumer spending makes up about 80% of the economy, just put in a carbon tax+rebate system and its market forces would cause the system to fix itself (by reducing our imported oil and pollution output) from the bottom-up far quicker than any other solution.


* The idea of taxing CO2 is more like an umbrella tax on pollution. Sources which emit large quantities of CO2, such as burning fossil fuels, often release a whole host of other pollutants. These other pollutants, whether its particulates like soot or various chemicals, have been shown time and time again to have direct negative impacts on human health, particularly for children, pregnant woman, and the elderly. By reducing CO2 emissions (such as my switching from fossil fuels to renewable or nuclear energy), you'll also reduce these other pollutants, thus increasing air quality and decreasing health related problems from pollution in a market-driven manner.

** For example, at current traffic volumes every car that drives into Manhattan imposes a cost of $160 in externalities on the economy of New York. Since obviously the tolls on the GW aren't $160, these costs are shouldered ("subsidized" if you will) by other segments of the economy.