6 ms·

Burt Rutan on Climate Change: An engineer looks at the evidence

23 points by cpr 15y ago

ajross 15y ago
Rutan is a mechanical engineer who designs airplanes and has achieved some measure of celebrity doing that. I'm not sure how his entry here really improves the debate. He's not an expert on the subject, and is being indirectly presented as one precisely because he's famous. Would people click through the link if it were the aileron design team lead for the A380 writing it instead?
- ajross 15y ago
  And on reading, it gets much worse. Check out this ridiculous straw man from the second slide: "When co2 is greater in the atmosphere, plants need less water to thrive. [...] If you promote a green healthy planet, then you should lobby for a co2-fertilized atmosphere, not a co2-starved atmosphere." Yes, all that those hippies advocating "green" stuff want is more trees. Sigh.
gnaritas 15y ago
Who cares, he's not a Climatologist and his opinion will be necessarily uninformed. You may as well ask him his opinion on the latest heart surgery techniques.
- SomeCallMeTim 15y ago
  I especially like the graph that shows the daily variation in temperature compared to the likely rise in global average temperature, as if that comparison is at all relevant. He also doesn't note that, if we end up with "sea levels hundreds of feet higher and in general, GREEN from pole to pole" that a significant number of the world's cities would need to be moved or surrounded by monumental dikes because of the ~200' rise in sea level that would accompany the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice shelves. BILLIONS of people would be displaced. Oh, and he ignores the sea becoming more acidic, causing the likely extinction of most higher sea life as the food chain collapses. Corals are already on the brink worldwide. At least there will still be jellyfish.
  - ChuckMcM 15y ago
    The sea level rise is one of those things I find is over blown by advocates of the anthropogenic hypothesis and under rated by advocates of either the natural variation hypothesis or the non-variance hypothesis. Given that 75% (to a first approximation) of the surface of the planet is ocean, and that ice that is currently in the ocean is already displacing its mass (so not contributory to sea level rise when it melts), lets do a little math. Using a nominal radius of 4,000 miles for the planet (yes its an ellipsoid I know), and only 75% of the surface area is water, we can compute the surface area of the ocean (approximately) as (4/3*pi*4000^3) * .75 = 201,056,640,000 sq miles. Call is 200 billion square miles. And we can convert 200' of sea level rise into miles by using 200 ft / 5280 ft/mi to get .0378 miles. So the volume of water that would have to flow into the ocean is then: 201,056,640,000 * .0378 = 7,599,940,992 miles^3 of water We know ice is 92% the density of water, so its going to take up 8.7% more volume so 7.6x10^9 miles^3 * 1.0869 is a bit more than 8.25 billion cubic miles of ice. Now Wolfram Alpha [2] puts the area of the North American Continent at 9.461 million mi^2, so this ice we're melting, if it were on the north American continent, would cover it to a depth of 8.25 billion / 9.461 million, yes 873 miles. Way out into orbit. I've looked around on Google Earth and can find no ice structures which poke out of the atmosphere :-). But there is an even simpler way to 'check the facts' here. For every foot of sea level rise, we need to melt 1.0869' * (.75/.25) = 3.4' of ice over all of the land in the world. That doesn't sound too bad until you try to figure out how much of the existing land today supports 100% ice holding (which is to say, water which is, but for temperature, permanently locked into ice so glaciers and the poles and the peaks over 12,000') That number is closer to 1% of the total land mass, and that is only .25% of the earths surface area, yes 300' thick ice in those areas for each foot of sea level rise. Bottom line, given what we know of the ice on our planet, if we melt all of it, we'll be lucky to get 20' of sea rise. 200' is completely out of the question unless a comet hits us that is 100 miles in diameter, at which point all bets are off. [1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=area+of+USA http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=area+of+USA [2] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=area+of+north+america http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=area+of+north+america
    - GiraffeNecktie 15y ago
      Who's talking about 200 ft rises in sea level? There will be devastating consequences to coastal communities and low lying islands with a sea level rise of less than two feet http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090315155112.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090315155112.ht...
- deltaqueue 15y ago
  Skepticism is necessary, but dismissal sounds like a knee-jerk reaction. The reason I, or anyone else for that matter, might be interested in what he (or a non-climatologist) has to say is an attempt at avoiding any hoopla stemming from scientists trying to earn a paycheck. Global climatology is no where near the black and white science that cardiology or electrical engineering is.
  - GiraffeNecktie 15y ago
    Global climatology is, at least, extensively peer reviewed unlike the musings of random people on the internet.
  - bunderbunder 15y ago
    However, it is a very mature branch of science. There remains plenty of room for debate within it, but that debate is the province of educated, informed, sober individuals. It is not the province of people who start using blatantly inflammatory language such as fraud, activist, Scare-with-a-capital-S right out of the gate. That is the province of knee-jerk ideologues and cranks. The main thing people who approach the subject in such a manner have to teach us about the science, is why refereed discussion has become such an integral part of the scientific process.
  - DennisP 15y ago
    It's very easy to earn a paycheck as a climatologist by denying global warming. The oil companies will be thrilled to fund your research. Exxon has done quite a bit of that.
- stevedekorte 15y ago
  But Al Gore is?
  - gnaritas 15y ago
    Al Gore isn't disagreeing with the scientific consensus, he's merely educating the public on what the vast majority scientists are saying. That's completely different that presuming to disagree with the vast majority climate scientists.
pan69 15y ago
If you are interested in this it's worth watching and/or reading "Cool It": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_It_(film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_It_(film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_It:_The_Skeptical_Environmentalist%27s_Guide_to_Global_Warming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_It:_The_Skeptical_Environm... Which is not so much about whether or not climate change is happening but more about the reaction of governments on how to deal with it, i.e. the economics of it all.
DennisP 15y ago
I tried to read this, but it had so many of the standard ill-informed "skeptic" talking points that I gave up. I hoped for better from Rutan. Since many of his claims are the same old baloney, you can find responses to them here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php Or just cut to the chase, with some simple back-of-the-envelope calculation from a physicist: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/recipe-for-climate-change/ http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/recipe-for-clima... From the latter: "The chemistry and physics needed to understand that anthropogenic climate change is an expected phenomenon are not that hard. In fact, it would be difficult to make the case that burning fossil fuels on the scale that we have done should not increase CO2 concentrations by something on the order of 100 ppm total and recently 2 ppm/yr. Likewise, given the observation of increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere and our understanding of the role that CO2 plays in the thermal blanket, it would be hard to argue why the surface temperature should not rise by a few degrees Celsius."

23 points by cpr 15y ago

Rutan is a mechanical engineer who designs airplanes and has achieved some measure of celebrity doing that. I'm not sure how his entry here really improves the debate. He's not an expert on the subject, and is being indirectly presented as one precisely because he's famous. Would people click through the link if it were the aileron design team lead for the A380 writing it instead?

ajross 15y ago
And on reading, it gets much worse. Check out this ridiculous straw man from the second slide: "When co2 is greater in the atmosphere, plants need less water to thrive. [...] If you promote a green healthy planet, then you should lobby for a co2-fertilized atmosphere, not a co2-starved atmosphere." Yes, all that those hippies advocating "green" stuff want is more trees. Sigh.

gnaritas 15y ago

Who cares, he's not a Climatologist and his opinion will be necessarily uninformed. You may as well ask him his opinion on the latest heart surgery techniques.

SomeCallMeTim 15y ago
I especially like the graph that shows the daily variation in temperature compared to the likely rise in global average temperature, as if that comparison is at all relevant. He also doesn't note that, if we end up with "sea levels hundreds of feet higher and in general, GREEN from pole to pole" that a significant number of the world's cities would need to be moved or surrounded by monumental dikes because of the ~200' rise in sea level that would accompany the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice shelves. BILLIONS of people would be displaced. Oh, and he ignores the sea becoming more acidic, causing the likely extinction of most higher sea life as the food chain collapses. Corals are already on the brink worldwide. At least there will still be jellyfish.
- ChuckMcM 15y ago
  The sea level rise is one of those things I find is over blown by advocates of the anthropogenic hypothesis and under rated by advocates of either the natural variation hypothesis or the non-variance hypothesis. Given that 75% (to a first approximation) of the surface of the planet is ocean, and that ice that is currently in the ocean is already displacing its mass (so not contributory to sea level rise when it melts), lets do a little math. Using a nominal radius of 4,000 miles for the planet (yes its an ellipsoid I know), and only 75% of the surface area is water, we can compute the surface area of the ocean (approximately) as (4/3*pi*4000^3) * .75 = 201,056,640,000 sq miles. Call is 200 billion square miles. And we can convert 200' of sea level rise into miles by using 200 ft / 5280 ft/mi to get .0378 miles. So the volume of water that would have to flow into the ocean is then: 201,056,640,000 * .0378 = 7,599,940,992 miles^3 of water We know ice is 92% the density of water, so its going to take up 8.7% more volume so 7.6x10^9 miles^3 * 1.0869 is a bit more than 8.25 billion cubic miles of ice. Now Wolfram Alpha [2] puts the area of the North American Continent at 9.461 million mi^2, so this ice we're melting, if it were on the north American continent, would cover it to a depth of 8.25 billion / 9.461 million, yes 873 miles. Way out into orbit. I've looked around on Google Earth and can find no ice structures which poke out of the atmosphere :-). But there is an even simpler way to 'check the facts' here. For every foot of sea level rise, we need to melt 1.0869' * (.75/.25) = 3.4' of ice over all of the land in the world. That doesn't sound too bad until you try to figure out how much of the existing land today supports 100% ice holding (which is to say, water which is, but for temperature, permanently locked into ice so glaciers and the poles and the peaks over 12,000') That number is closer to 1% of the total land mass, and that is only .25% of the earths surface area, yes 300' thick ice in those areas for each foot of sea level rise. Bottom line, given what we know of the ice on our planet, if we melt all of it, we'll be lucky to get 20' of sea rise. 200' is completely out of the question unless a comet hits us that is 100 miles in diameter, at which point all bets are off. [1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=area+of+USA http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=area+of+USA [2] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=area+of+north+america http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=area+of+north+america
  - GiraffeNecktie 15y ago
    Who's talking about 200 ft rises in sea level? There will be devastating consequences to coastal communities and low lying islands with a sea level rise of less than two feet http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090315155112.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090315155112.ht...
deltaqueue 15y ago
Skepticism is necessary, but dismissal sounds like a knee-jerk reaction. The reason I, or anyone else for that matter, might be interested in what he (or a non-climatologist) has to say is an attempt at avoiding any hoopla stemming from scientists trying to earn a paycheck. Global climatology is no where near the black and white science that cardiology or electrical engineering is.
- GiraffeNecktie 15y ago
  Global climatology is, at least, extensively peer reviewed unlike the musings of random people on the internet.
- bunderbunder 15y ago
  However, it is a very mature branch of science. There remains plenty of room for debate within it, but that debate is the province of educated, informed, sober individuals. It is not the province of people who start using blatantly inflammatory language such as fraud, activist, Scare-with-a-capital-S right out of the gate. That is the province of knee-jerk ideologues and cranks. The main thing people who approach the subject in such a manner have to teach us about the science, is why refereed discussion has become such an integral part of the scientific process.
- DennisP 15y ago
  It's very easy to earn a paycheck as a climatologist by denying global warming. The oil companies will be thrilled to fund your research. Exxon has done quite a bit of that.
stevedekorte 15y ago
But Al Gore is?
- gnaritas 15y ago
  Al Gore isn't disagreeing with the scientific consensus, he's merely educating the public on what the vast majority scientists are saying. That's completely different that presuming to disagree with the vast majority climate scientists.

pan69 15y ago

If you are interested in this it's worth watching and/or reading "Cool It": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_It_(film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_It_(film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_It:_The_Skeptical_Environmentalist%27s_Guide_to_Global_Warming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_It:_The_Skeptical_Environm... Which is not so much about whether or not climate change is happening but more about the reaction of governments on how to deal with it, i.e. the economics of it all.

DennisP 15y ago

I tried to read this, but it had so many of the standard ill-informed "skeptic" talking points that I gave up. I hoped for better from Rutan. Since many of his claims are the same old baloney, you can find responses to them here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php Or just cut to the chase, with some simple back-of-the-envelope calculation from a physicist: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/recipe-for-climate-change/ http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/recipe-for-clima... From the latter: "The chemistry and physics needed to understand that anthropogenic climate change is an expected phenomenon are not that hard. In fact, it would be difficult to make the case that burning fossil fuels on the scale that we have done should not increase CO2 concentrations by something on the order of 100 ppm total and recently 2 ppm/yr. Likewise, given the observation of increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere and our understanding of the role that CO2 plays in the thermal blanket, it would be hard to argue why the surface temperature should not rise by a few degrees Celsius."