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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   19850 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026

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I'm not sure is it's talked about in current climate circles, but it's significant in modeling. Models (at least in the 2000s when I learned about this) had a multiplicative factor on climate forcing that was based on a positive reinforcement mechanism from water vapor - in other words, the calculated increase in temperature from CO2 was doubled or tripled because of the assumption of positive reinforcement. Notably, the models did not really model cloud albedo effects, which make water vapor arguably a negative feedback mechanism that stabilizes temperature instead.

Of course, the actual problem was that the models kept all this secret

I basically agree with all of this, except that I don't think the role of water vapor feedback in climate models was secret in the sense that it was completely unavailable and not discussed. Rather, I think it was a secret in the sense that it was not publicized or emphasized. And why would it be? It's embarrassing to admit that your catastrophic predictions are based on what is essentially a fudge factor.

But either way, there are a lot of people out there who think they know a lot about the global warming debate -- even on a scientific level -- who have literally never heard of water vapor feedback or the role it plays in climate models.

PS I agree that it's actually more likely that water vapor is a negative feedback mechanism than a positive feedback mechanism. Not because I am some kind of expert on climate science, but rather due to common sense about complicated systems. If a complicated system has been relatively stable for a while, the default assumption should be that it's dominated by negative feedback. By analogy, you are far more likely to find a large (loose) boulder on the floor of a valley than on the peak of a mountain.

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