Burt Rutan: Anthropogenic Global Warming Is A Farce

I, as well as many others, have been beating the ClimateGate meme to death. It's about time AGW met its long overdue comeuppance. Despite claims by many of the AGW faithful that the fraud committed by the Climactic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia was not major, being that the CRU was only one of many climate research institutes, they have overlooked the fact that the CRU was a major clearinghouse for climate data used by other institutions to generate their climate models. That meant they were using the same 'corrected' data as the CRU, which in turn meant the other models were wrong, too. And one must keep in mind that the CRU data and models were used by the UN IPCC to generate their reports. The fraud committed by the CRU did not affect just the CRU, but any research team or institution using their data to create climate models and the resulting predictions.

As an aside, I came across this presentation about Anthropogenic Global Warming (available here in both PDF and PowerPoint format) given by Burt Rutan at Oshkosh this past summer. (Yes, that Burt Rutan of SpaceShip 1 fame.) For anyone not familiar with Burt Rutan, he is an aeronautical engineer extraordinaire. And as such, he has a considerable amount of experience analyzing test data and putting it in formats easily understood (and reproducible) by just about anyone wishing to spend the time to do so. With that in mind, Burt applied his considerable data analysis skills to the theory of AGW...and totally shreds it. Using readily available data from a number of sources including NOAA, NASA, as well as from global warming advocate sites and organizations, he delves into the data and its presentation to the world.

As he states more than once in a number of ways, it isn't always the amount of data you have that 'proves' a case like AGW as much as how it is presented. In this case he shows how climate data has been manipulated in ways that change the meaning as well as the context in order to sell a theory that is pretty crappy at best. Never mind the data massaging and corrective algorithms applied at the CRU to make it look like we're all doomed because of AGW. He shows how data analysis should be done to show what's really happening and why, regardless of one's personal beliefs one way or the other.

I must remind you that Burt Rutan is not a climate scientist, nor has he studied climatology or meteorology or atmospheric physics. He is an aeronautical engineer and he makes his living designing aircraft and spacecraft. Part of his engineering duties include analysis of flight test data and making sure the analysis is accurate. His job demands accuracy and an elimination of bias because if he gets it wrong people die. This isn't something abstract like AGW. If he fails in his job the aircraft or spacecraft he's designed and built will fail and those on board will die. That gives him great incentive to get it right. And so it is with his analysis of AGW.

Look at his presentation and decide for yourself whether he's on to something or not.