Burt Rutan - climate change skeptic

Very cool -- Rutan is an Engineers Engineer and very intelligent. He took a look at the arguments for Anthropogenic Global Warming and did not like what he saw. From Anthony Watts at Watts Up With That:

Burt Rutan: engineer, aviation/space pioneer, and now, active climate skeptic
Recently after some conversations with a former chemical engineer who provided me with some insight, I�ve come to the conclusion that many engineers have difficulty with many of the premises of AGW theory because in their �this has to work or people die� world of exacting standards, the AGW argument doesn�t hold up well by their standards of performance.

Today I was surprised to learn that one of the foremost and world famous engineers on the planet, Burt Rutan, has become an active climate skeptic. You may be familiar with some of Rutan�s work through his company, Scaled Composites.

Thanks to WUWT reader Dale Knutsen, I was provided a PowerPoint file recently by email presented by Mr. Rutan at the Oshkosh fly-in convention on July 29th, 2009 and again on August 1st, 2009. It has also now been posted online by an associate of Mr. Rutan�s.

There were a number of familiar things in the PowerPoint, including data plots from one of the USHCN stations I personally surveyed and highlighted, Santa Rosa, NM. Rutan had an interest in it because of the GISS adjustment to the data. For him, the whole argument is about the data. He says about his presentation in slide #3:

Not a Climatologist�s study; more from the view of a flight test guy who has spent a lifetime in data analysis/interpretation.

In the notes of his PowerPoint on slide #3, Rutan tells us why he thinks this way(emphasis mine):

My study is NOT as a climatologist, but from a completely different prospective in which I am an expert.

Complex data from disparate sources can be processed and presented in very different ways, and to �prove� many different theories.

For decades, as a professional experimental test engineer, I have analyzed experimental data and watched others massage and present data. I became a cynic; My conclusion � �if someone is aggressively selling a technical product who�s merits are dependant on complex experimental data, he is likely lying�. That is true whether the product is an airplane or a Carbon Credit.

The PowerPoint is here. A PDF conversion is here. Well worth your time to look at the 33 slides. I will be printing them out and keeping them at the store as the data is clearly and simply presented and makes a devastating case for climate as usual and for CO2 being a red herring.