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Fri, Aug 21, 2009

Burt Rutan Joins The Ranks Of Active AGW Skeptics

Rutan's Oshkosh Presentation Observes "CO2 Is Not A Pollutant"

Aviation pioneer and long-time flight test engineer Burt Rutan has begun making a public case against Anthropological Global Warming, or AGW, saying the data does not support a case for global warming, or climate change of any kind, caused by human activity.

In the presentation Rutan made twice at Oshkosh, he says man can measure the past, but cannot create a reliable computer model that will predict global temperatures in the future, and that warm periods are brief, not the natural state of the planet. If anything, he says "Warm periods are good, not bad.  It would be beneficial to have more warming than present."

In the Powerpoint presentation used at Oshkosh (link provided below),and his accompanying notes, Rutan takes what he calls a test pilot and engineer's approach of data analysis to the available data on global warming, and finds it lacking. Some of the problems are very basic. A noted rise in global temperature, he says, corresponds directly with loss of many temperature recording stations abandoned when the Soviet Union collapsed, most of them in very cold climates. And deeper study of the data from ice core samples spanning over 400 thousand years shows brief warm periods, the current 12 thousand years being the most stable over the study, interspersed with lengthy periods of declining temperatures, with the total change between the two being about 12 degrees centigrade.

Rutan does not advocate abandoning alternative energy research, but he says his interest is in "technology, not tree hugging." His home in the desert uses high interior thermal mass and is sheltered by earth berms, making it very energy efficient. It also has "provisions for converting to self-sustaining (house and plug-in hybrid car) via adding wind generator and solar panels when it becomes cost effective to do so," according to the notes he provided.

Rutan notes that the nomenclature change from global warming to climate change came as scientists began to realize that the data didn't add up for AGW. He calls climate change "The worlds safest bet," and says to call climate change a crisis is "silly." Climates change all the time.

Rutan recommends the government drop its Climate Change Crisis and Cap and Trade legislation, saying the only real effect would be to make U.S. businesses less competitive in the global marketplace. He says the best way for money to be spent to protect the planet is research into a planetary defense system against asteroid strikes, "the only real extinction threat the planet has ever had and the only one in which Man can indeed use his intelligence and sweat to successfully defeat."

FMI: http://rps3.com/Pages/Burt_Rutan_on_Climate_Change.htm

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