RollingThunder
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- Mar 22, 2010
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- #41
I have no problem with "NASA datasets". I do have a problem with the lies told by denier cultists who try to mislead and distort the science on that moronic denier cult blog called WattsUpMyButt...or something. You uncritically swallow every lie and bit of twisted pseudo-science that appears on that sinkhole of stupidity and fossil fuel industry sponsored propaganda.while I am impressed with your ability to do a hatchet job, I am confused as to why that has anything to do with why the IPCC is not citing Weather and climate analyses using improved global water vapor observations. I dont see Mims name listed on the paper. why do you have a problem with a NASA dataset? are you just complaining that the IPCC found Mim's credentials were sufficient to become a reviewer? or do you think that the revised NASA dataset shouldnt be used?
Here's a good review of that particular episode of distorted facts and outright lies that you quoted.
'No trend in global water vapor', another WUWT fail
Saturday, 15 December 2012
(excerpts)
Anthony Watts just published a guest post by Forrest M. Mims III with the title: "Another IPCC AR5 reviewer speaks out: no trend in global water vapor". I have no special expertise in this area, but I am privileged being able to read the [original NASA] article that is discussed. This is sufficient to see that the article and its [WUWT] post are two different worlds. First, note that being a "expert reviewer" does not say much. There are over a thousand reviewers, even Anthony Watts himself is an IPCC "expert reviewer". The post discusses a paper by Vonder Haar et al. (2012) on the NASA Water Vapor Project (NVAP) dataset. The main piece of information missing from the post is that this dataset without trend, is only 22 years long. Almost any climatological measurement will not have a statistically significant trend over such a short period, but the story is even weirder. Just as in the misleading post on homogenization of climate data earlier this year, Anthony Watts again proves to have a keen eye in finding the best misinformation. Mims added a list with all the comments of his review. In this list, Watts found this comment: This paper concludes, Therefore, at this time, we can neither prove nor disprove a robust trend in the global water vapor data. Non-specialist readers must be made aware of this finding and that it is at odds with some earlier papers." The complete citation from the Geophysical Research Letters article is: "The results of Figures 1 and 4 have not been subjected to detailed global or regional trend analyses, which will be a topic for a forthcoming paper. Such analyses must account for the changes in satellite sampling discussed in the auxiliary material. Therefore, at this time, we can neither prove nor disprove a robust trend in the global water vapor data." In other words, they cannot say anything about the trend, because they have not even tried to compute it and estimate its uncertainty. Especially estimating the error in the trend will be very difficult as the dataset uses different satellites for different periods of the dataset, which invariably creates jumps in the dataset that should not be mistaken for true climate variability or trends.
The paper is also not at odds with earlier papers. These earlier papers studied longer periods and probably datasets which were more homogeneous and consequently did find a statistically significant trend. There is thus no contradiction. Furthermore the post claims that "Climate modelers assume that water vapor, the principle greenhouse gas, will increase with carbon dioxide". This is wrong or at least misleading: humidity is expected to follow the temperature, in as much as temperature follows carbon dioxide, humidity will indirectly follow carbon dioxide. In one of the comments of Mims, he complains about the line: "Thus water vapour at the surface and through the troposphere has very likely been increasing since the 1970s." in the Second Order Draft of the upcoming IPCC report. And he claims: "This conclusion is contradicted by the 2012 NVAP-M paper discussed in the rows immediately above." However, the NVAP-M dataset started in 1988 and there is thus no contradiction.