Burt Rutan - Is Climate Change caused by Mankind?

Other Chit-Chat
#21

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.

#22

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!

#23

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.

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

ChrisH

#24

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. :wink:

#25

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.

#26

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

#27

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

#28

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

#29

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.

#30

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.

#31

No argument.

Notice I said “Science…” not “Scientists…”

There are plenty of politicians in the field. Usually they control who gets paid.

#32

Not only politicians, but anyone with a bias and lots of money can influence scientists. Scientists backed by big business are just as biased, like in the case of Big Tobacco years back telling us smoking was in no way bad for your health.

The best solution would be to have all science funded anonymously, so the scientists wouldn’t know whether it was government or big business money funding their operations. That way, they can actually do their job without worrying about finding results which clash with the ideology of those who hired them, as I’m sure the real answer (as with most things in life) about climate change is somewhere between “humans have absolutely no impact on climate change” and “humans are the sole reason for global warming”.

#33

It’s a known fact that 79.3% of all statistics are just made up. :rolleyes:

Indeed. This applies beyond aircraft as well. Excellent points all, Chris.

OK, so here’s a good question: How DO we solve the problem of energy independence? Sure, we could come up with a world-changing idea (think 'Mr. Fusion"), but in my experience things usually don’t change dramatically - instead they are changed incrementally.

Example: If every house in the USA changed a single 100W incandescent bulb that was used for 4 hours a day to a Compact Fluorescent, we would save over 34 Gigawatt-hours of electricity A DAY, representing 34 million pounds of coal*.

That’s how we start saving - little steps…

111,162,259 households * (77 W * 4 h/day = 308 Wh) = 3.42 *10^10

*DoE says about 50% of electricity in the USA is from coal. Sites disagree about how much coal is used for a kWh, but using 1 pount per kWh is a reasonable number and it makes the math easier…

#34

This is the most ridiculous oversimplification of the data I’ve ever seen. I agree to your first point to an extent, but when the analysis is this shallow it makes it very hard to agree with.

#35

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.

#36

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.

#37

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.

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.

#38

Artdutra04:
When I first read this yesterday I thought that it was one of the most brilliant things I’d heard all year. In the last few hours though I’ve started to put a bit more thought into it, and there are a few issues with said plan (or at the very least questiion.

1.) How would large corporations be factored into this sort of plan?
Would the pollution of a coal plant be taxed evenly by all of the factory workers?
Or will the owners of the corporation be the sole recipients of the tax?
Did the article specify?

2.) Why would the Federal government go through with this plan as opposed to cap-and-trade? More bluntly put, what would be the advantage of a plan that is totally revenue neutral as opposed to a plan which can be taxed for government revenue? Maybe I just being a bit too cynical here, but I just can’t see this sort of thing passing =\

Here’s a related question (somewhat =P): If the tempertures have been shown to increase drastically by natural means (last ice age to modern day) why is there any belief that this would not be the case nowadays?

#39

I saw one issue right away with the plan: How are you going to figure out the amount of carbon being emitted by each person (factory/family/whatever your measuring unit is)? I know there are ways, but it’s going to be difficult to implement them without protest.

#40

As an Environmental Engineer, I’m always confounded by the apparent futility of these discussions. I feel very strongly that we should all just take a look at our activities and make a consious decision to reduce our impact on the environment. You don’t have to go wild, you don’t have to be a major tree-hugger, just make little choices every day.

Two suggestions for today:

  1. Unplug chargers (think cell phones and iPods) when not in use. Only 5% of the power drawn by a cell phone charger is used to charge the phone. The other 95% is wasted when it is left plugged into the wall.

  2. Cut down on new wrapping paper. Wrap 6 of your holiday gifts in reused material like newspaper. By wrapping 6 gifts with found materials, you will reduce CO2 emissions by a total of 2 lbs and save a few dollars too!

Why bother about a couple of watts or 2 lbs of CO2? Because your watts and my watts will add up! And it’s an attitude thing. If you do a few little things, you start looking for more little things and then bigger things. Those can add up. And then no matter the social-political-scientific mumbo-jumble, you’ll be part of the solution.