

Burt Rutan on Climate Change: An engineer looks at the evidence - cpr
http://rps3.com/Pages/Burt_Rutan_on_Climate_Change.htm

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ajross
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?

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ajross
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.

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gnaritas
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.

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deltaqueue
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.

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bunderbunder
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.

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DennisP
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>

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-
clima...](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/recipe-for-climate-
change/)

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."

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pan69
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:_The_Skeptical_Environm...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_It:_The_Skeptical_Environmentalist%27s_Guide_to_Global_Warming)

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.

