Burt Rutan - Is Climate Change caused by Mankind?

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by Don Rotolo

I also agree, but I wouldn't know how to start. Suggestions anyone?

The X Prize people may be able to help as well. Peter Diamandis the CEO of the X Prize Foundation has pictures from Atlanta last year on Picassa, so I assume he was there. Given the X Prize's mission, I imagine he would be very receptive to the idea and probably has Burt's number kicking around somewhere. Speaking of which, Dr. Diamandis is equally qualified to speak in Atlanta. You can follow him on Twitter.

[EDIT] A took a look at the X Prize board, and coincidentally Dean Kamen is a trustee. Actually, they're all pretty interesting people...

[Swan217]

You know your presentation is a complete worthless waste of electrons when your argument that "the Global Climate Change facts are wrong due to using biased materials, manipulating statistics, ad hominum attacks and timeline cropping" is supported by using debunked biased materials, manipulated statistics, ad hominum attacks and timeline manipulation.

He begins with citing "panics" that were "proved" to be false. Oh yeah? By whom? DDT in large doses is a known carcinogen and thins eggshells in avians. The only reason it's being used in Africa now is because there, the benefits of LIMITED use by far greatly offsets the "mild" side effects.
Y2K, acid rain, and nuclear wars WERE serious issues at one time, and delegitimizing them as panics is shamefully ignoring the important lessons that were learned by preventing them. The fact that we're STILL cleaning up Iron Mountain should also preclude that one from being on the list. By trying to inflate his "long" list of panics (without even explaining them), he calls into question the rest of his "facts." He also shows his stripes by forgetting to mention the "OMG, Communism!!!" irrational panic of the 1950's and the "OMG Socialism!!!!" "OMG Muslims!!!!" "OMG Gays!!!" panics of today.

Originally Posted by EricH

I also like that he actually states his bias. Everyone has one, but nobody has the guts to 1) admit that they have one and 2) tell you what it is.

I've never heard of a climatologist that didn't have the guts to admit that they're a climatologist. And Al Gore is certainly not afraid of admitting his biases on the subject.

I, for one, am in the "none of the above eight" category. My bias is "Those who are sick of a small minority of 'those trying to profit from making the world a worse place to live in' attacking 'those trying to profit from making the world a better place to live in' for trying to make a profit from making the world a better place to live in." It's pure projection.

Originally Posted by Burt Rutan

You can prove ANY point if you mix and match data and present it in a way to hide the truth.

I can do statistical data on stuff I have no idea what I'm talking about, and manage to prove whatever I want with it too. I can statistically prove that the amount of stuff Burt Rutan doesn't know about the global climate perfectly correlates with the rising sea level over the last 50 years. I can prove it using tables from the crazy right-wing Heritage Foundation too!

And when he makes crazy claims such as that MSNBC, the Democratic party and the Republic party are all too Socialist?!?!?! You REALLY have to question where his head is. Because clearly it's not too focused on reality. After all:

Originally Posted by Stephen Colbert

reality has a well known liberal bias

Burt needs to stick to his day job of being a world renowned excellent engineer and quit his crazy right winger night job.

The thing is, the Global Climate Change argument has done its job - it's made people focus on the world around us and what (if anything) we can do with it. With the climate information we now are concentrating on, maybe now we can figure out how to bring rain back to California, now that the polar icecap melting (which Burt mentions nothing about) has drawn the North American jetstream North. And it's already done it's job when the "socialist" state of California forced industry in LA to be cleaner and the "socialist big bad government" forced the auto industry to make their cars cleaner, solving the "horrific" problem that Burt claims that "Technology solved"

Frankly, I also think that carbon credits and a lot of "solutions" are just people trying to make a buck. All I know is that I'd rather pay $10000 for a solar panel that lasts 10 years now then pay $10000 for 10 years worth of coal that cost 100 miners their lives. Burt Rutan would probably call that "socialist" too, but I doubt that he nor any other right wing Climate Change Denier actually understands what that term means.

[Travis Hoffman]

Originally Posted by Don Rotolo

...I just want to point out that conserving energy and saving the environment and all the other Green stuff that's so popular is NOT necessarily a bad idea! We should be looking for alternative energy sources, ways of reducing pollution, and being kinder to our environment. We just need to avoid destroying the economy with unnecessary actions and mandates.

Can we staple this statement to people's foreheads worldwide? Using recycled paper and staples, and biodegradable ink, of course....

[IKE]

Originally Posted by Dan Swando

Burt Rutan would probably call that "socialist" too, but I doubt that he nor any other right wing Climate Change Denier actually understands what that term means.

Just a gentle reminder, there are lots of different views out there/here (not just right and left). There are liberals, conservatives, liberatarians, communists, socialists, fascists, authoritarians, anarchists, ..... Political idealogies are a lot like going into an icecream shop. There are a lot of fans of chocolate and vanilla, but there are also tutti-frutti through Rocky Road. Plus you can mix and match. Point being there are a lot of different wingers (passionate people) in the world. Why there is even a group that think they can bring about social change by playing with robots. Silly people. Don't they know that robots will someday take over the planet?

[BrendanB]

Just to say here, but climate change happens everyday. Its called weather. Climate change is basically weather changing. It's now come into play as "global warming is ending" and now we are entering into "global cooling". I heard the phrase first used at UNH's commencement this spring and my brother's graduating class started chuckling when the speaker said, "Hurricane katrina was the unfortunate result of climate change which we suv-driving humans caused." So far "global warming" hasn't been linked to the weather.

EDIT: After reading what Molten said, I just wanted to go on the record of saying that my post is not meant to be a I'm right and you are wrong. These are just what I have read and learned on this subject. Just wanted to say that at least one person would take it as a desire for an argument.

carry on.

[Molten]

Originally Posted by Dan Swando

All I know is that I'd rather pay $10000 for a solar panel that lasts 10 years now then pay $10000 for 10 years worth of coal that cost 100 miners their lives.

Honestly, this is the part that kind of struck me as a complete exaggeration. First off, coal mining does not kill the miners if done safely. It is the choice of some companies to ignore these guidelines to increase profit. Don't blame the mineral for the companies' greed. Secondly, is $10000 worth of coal really the equivalent energy to a solar panel running for 10 years? I think you could get alot more energy per dollar out of coal. Feel free to prove me wrong, but I think if solar panels were cheaper, we'd have switched to them already. Honestly, one day they probably will be cheaper. Just not yet.

Note to all: Please watch the tone with which you post. This is a heated topic and so far we've done a good job keeping things civil. Feel free to post thoughts, I'd just rather this thread not get closed. I'd like to read many CD goers' opinions on the topic.

[DonRotolo]

I don't entirely disagree with Dan, but I'm not sure he got my point, which is (paraphrased) Yes, the climate is changing, but is it caused by Mankind's activity or not? I think "the climate is changing" has been well-established in science.

While his response is passionate - and I respect his views - in many people's minds any obvious misstatement of fact tends to nullify the entire argument by degrading the perceived validity of the other arguments. (Read that carefully) This is not to attack his views, but his methodology of expressing them.

I do appreciate everyone's restraint on this hot-button topic, and I am sincerely fascinated by these opinions. Keep 'em coming!

[ChrisH]

Originally Posted by Don Rotolo

I don't entirely disagree with Dan, but I'm not sure he got my point, which is (paraphrased) Yes, the climate is changing, but is it caused by Mankind's activity or not? I think "the climate is changing" has been well-established in science.

While his response is passionate - and I respect his views - in many people's minds any obvious misstatement of fact tends to nullify the entire argument by degrading the perceived validity of the other arguments. (Read that carefully) This is not to attack his views, but his methodology of expressing them.

I do appreciate everyone's restraint on this hot-button topic, and I am sincerely fascinated by these opinions. Keep 'em coming!

I am suprised that nobody yet has brought up "Climategate", an established fact that has been spreading on the Web since last week. Basically somebody "hacked" the e-mail of a prominent Climatology lab in England. The e-mails the hacker released show quite plainly that these vaunted researchers were "cooking the books" when the numbers "did not come out right".

These were not isolated incidents of some lowly grad student either. Thousands of pages of dicussion on how to deal with "problems in the data" between department heads and full professors. The Insitute involved has acknowledged the e-mails as being apparently genuine. They are looking to prosecute the hacker/leaker/informant, but they have not denied the e-mails say what they say.

Oh, and these were also the guys doing the "peer reviews" for all that peer reviewed literature out there. So easy to give a bad review (and inhibit publication) of any paper that disagrees with your findings. Convienient no?

More is coming out all the time as people sift through the documents that have been made available. But it looks as if the basic statistical data used to "confirm" Anthropogenic Global Warming has been cherry picked and in some cases altered.

Normally I wouldn't link to one of the admitedly right leaning websites I visit, but the whole thing is too big to quote here and it is pertinent to the discussion.

This is a good place to start. I am sure you can find other links if you look.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art..._in_99280.html

One more thing to remember, just because it is not on your evening news, does not mean it did not happen.

ChrisH

[artdutra04]

I think the worst problem is both side's complete rejection of anything proposed by the other side. Take for example, energy independence. Why should we be sending over half a million dollars every minute overseas, often to nations which we politically strongly disagree with, when we can create enough energy here at home to satisfy our needs? Having energy independence would provide a lot of Americans good paying jobs that can't be outsourced.

There are many paths to accomplish this. The best solutions are clean energy, as regardless of whether you believe humans are the reason for climate change, burning fossil fuels release pollution. And pollution and poor air quality has been shown time and time again to have numerous adverse health effects on the human body, particularly on children, pregnant woman, and the elderly. These results aren't anywhere near as controversial as global warming.

So for clean energy, we need both more nuclear and more renewable (wind, solar, geothermal, hydro). Nuclear technology, despite all the fear-mongering, is safe. The worst accident in American nuclear history, Three Mile Island, which involved a partial meltdown of one of the reactor cores, has yet to be linked to a single death or case of cancer because the reactor's safety features worked. The only reason Chernobyl was so bad was because Soviet safety standards were nowhere near as safe as American ones, and at the time of the disaster the Soviets had disabled the backup coolant system to "run experiments" in the reactor.

Add onto that a comprehensive plan for storing spent fuel rods at Yucca Mountain and recent developments such as the sodium-cooled fast reactor, (which have the potential run off "depleted" uranium, thus reducing the amount of spent fuel rods we have to dispose of), and the future of nuclear power is glowing.

At the same time, renewable energy sources, like wind turbines, aren't some work of the devil sent to destroy American capitalism. Last year, a wind turbine was erected in Worcester, MA (a city of 175,000), where I go to college. It's certainly big, and can be seen from much of the city but I really can't see why people would have problems with it. It's pretty quiet, and it spins at slightly less than one rotation per second. It's actually kind of peaceful watching it.

Several ski resorts in the state, first Jiminy Peak and now Wachusett Mountain, have recently installed their own wind turbines. Jiminy Peak expects their turbine to generate up to 2/3 of the power needed to run their resort during the winter months (remember: snowmaking uses an enormous amount of electricity), and break even only 3 years into its 25 year lifespan.

Then there is micro-scale wind turbines, such as these that can be installed on the rooftops of existing buildings. After all, the wind is already blowing, why not generate electricity from it?

Then there are really simple and cheap things, such as painting rooftops white or planting grass/plants on them, that would work just as well as other more costly attempts to reduce the greenhouse effect of cities or reduce the rainwater runoff that floods sewer systems and causes many to discharge raw sewage into rivers during storms.

// I really need to stop myself and my fascination in new technology saving mankind from all our problems before I write enough to fill a novel. This is one of the reasons why I believe Walt Disney is probably one of the best people of the 20th century, in that his internal optimism in the human ability to invent our way out of problems and his drive to achieve those goals was unparalleled by most. If only he had lived a few more years to see the original plan for EPCOT Center to completion, we may all have been riding monorails at 300 mph by now instead of deciding how to slice up a measly $8B in federal stimulus grants to high speed rail projects among the requested $100+B from the states.

[EricH]

I don't disagree with clean energy, especially if it's cheap. As a matter of fact, my school just installed a wind/solar research station on a nearby hill, with plans to eventually make the data collected on power production available online, realtime. I'm actually doing a group report right now on clean energy options. (And I did a group persuasive speech AND a group ethics presentation on the alternative-energy topic last semester...)

I also happen to disagree with human-caused global warming. Climate change, sure, I'll buy it, whether it's going up or down. It's been doing that for quite some time now (exactly how long is another debate). But that humans cause it? What exactly brought the earth out of the last ice age? That part is kind of debatable, depending on which evidence you choose to believe/ignore.

It's quite possible to see eye-to-eye on one facet of a problem, yet disagree on another facet. This is why sometimes you have to say, "let's agree to disagree", and move on.


Dan, I don't know of anyone that doesn't have the guts to admit what his job is. What that person's bias is, especially in the media, which is actively involved in spreading the global whatever-they're-calling-it-these-days message, is quite something else from his job. And, to some extent, I'm in your bias. I just happen to think that a different group of people is in each general category.

Oh, and I was wanting to use this quote from Mark Twain a day or two ago, so I'll use it here: "There are lies, d---d lies, and statistics." Cut out (or add, your choice) X amount of data, and you'll be able to prove just about anything statistically. Doesn't necessarily mean that it's true, though.

And to second the note about "tone": You choose words that are easily perceived as inflammatory/attacking, you get the reaction generally associated with that perception. Let's try to avoid that to keep this discussion open, as it is a worthwhile one.

[ChrisH]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

I really need to stop myself and my fascination in new technology saving mankind from all our problems before I write enough to fill a novel.

A very wise man once told me, "You never solve a problem, you merely exchange it for a different one that is hopefully easier to live with"

As Mr Rotolo said earlier, conservation of energy and finding new sources of energy are good things and should be pursued merely because they are good things. As an Engineer, I like things that are efficient and elegant. But let's attack the proper problem. Bert Rutan has some compelling arguments and they are backed up by these more recent revelations of messing with the data.

When I was developing information on the structural capabilities of new materials. Occasionally we would be tempted to throw out the results of a test coupon because it would lower the strength value we would later use in designing parts. Before we could do so, we would have to explain to our customer exactly why that particular coupon was not "typical". Maybe there was a machine malfunction or it had been dropped or nicked or did not meet the tolerances for that test. If we could not, that data point was used in our calculations and rightly so. Even if we could disallow a particular test, it stayed in the record and the reason for elimination noted. You don't design airplanes on what you wish the material properties to be, nor on what the vendor (who has an obvious vested interest) says they are. People die that way.

But apparently some people have decided that we collectively will make policy decisions affecting billions of people based on data they fudged to make it look the way they wanted. With that approach I can pretty much guarantee that any solution they come up with will be harder to live with than the problem they set out to solve.

ChrisH

[ScottM]

2 observations...

1. Can engineers evaluate any kind of data? Here's some more anecdotal evidence. When I came down with an extremely rare neurological syndrome, I did some research and made my own diagnosis. When I finally saw a Neurologist, he and I disagreed on the diagnosis (he was close). I did some more research, even going as far as reading medical journals. When I gave him the results showing that my diagnosis was correct, he immediately referred me to another Neurologist. The point here is that engineers can in fact research and effectively evaluate data outside of their specialties.

2. Climate data shows that the earth was warmer 1000 years ago than it is today. It was cooler 500 years ago. It also shows that the earth warmed from 1900 to 1945, cooled from 1945 to 1965, and has been warming since then. Applying Occam's razor, global warming is not caused by people, but by...drum roll please..the Sun.

Scott

[MrForbes]

Science generally eventually finds the correct answer....unless inhibited by politicians....

[ebarker]

At one time at Kell HS incoming students had as the following summer reading this book:

In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made By Norman F. Cantor

In the Wake of the Plague

An interesting book on how climate change molded history.

A side story is a discussion on how modern common English property law came into being.

Yes - the book does relate to the discussion.

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by squirrel

Science generally eventually finds the correct answer....unless inhibited by politicians....

Science frequently finds the correct answer, but sometimes you have to wait for all the current scientists to retire to find it. Assuming the objectivity of scientists and engineers is just another way to make mistakes. Good scientists face reality and change their world-views based on facts, but this isn't always how it works. Everyone should read "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas Kuhn. He shows that major paradigm shifts in science only occur when the current generation of scientists dies and new ones replace them. Anyone who has ever worked on a university campus would also have cause to question the objectivity of the scientific world. Scientists and engineers are humans, and subject to all the irrational personality traits of our species. It's popular on CD to smugly denigrate politicians, but during my brief stint working at a university it was plain to me that the interpersonal relationship among professors pretty much mirrors that of 9-year-olds. I don't see much evidence that scientists have any more integrity than anyone else in the world.

I assume that the truth of global warming will come out in one way or another. If anthropogenic global warming is really a problem, whether we figure it out today or in five years really won't make much difference. It took us thousands of years of population growth and two hundred years of industrial revolution to get here and we won't fix it in one presidential administration. I'm all in favor of letting the current brouhaha settle out and then addressing a problem that is clear, well-understood, and obvious. Right now, global warming strikes me as much more of a political bludgeon (both on the green "the only thing we need is to let 5 billion people die" side, and the "nuke the whales now" position) than scientific truth. The "truth" value of the current science is buried in the noise of the public posturing (both in the governmental and scientific worlds).

And lastly, Rutan is not the only one taking pot shots at climatologists for rigging data. I don't have time to look for it now, but I read a similar essay by a meteorologist. I didn't understand a large part of what I read -- who knew dendrochronology could turn out to be so important? -- but it was pretty interesting.