In most all of the climate models, the warming effect from feedback is actually much larger than the warming effect from CO2 alone. That is why I have said for years that it is a waste of time to debate “greenhouse gas theory” as the real theory that matters to the proposition that climate sensitivity to CO2 is high is the theory that Earth’s temperature system is dominated by strong positive feedback. And the largest feedback in climate models tends to be water vapor feedback, despite the fact that even the IPCC admits that such feedback is poorly understood. To this end:

In a third paper, accepted for publication by the Journal of Theoretical and Applied Climatology, three scientists – two Australians and one American, revisit data on upper-atmospheric humidity. The three are Garth Paltridge, Albert Arking and Michael Pook, and they have found that, contrary to climate model predictions, water vapour in the upper atmosphere is acting as a brake on global warming.

Established climate models assume constant humidity at all levels in the atmosphere as the temperature rises. But, using data from weather balloons accumulated over 35 years, these researchers find this is not so. At the lower levels, it is higher than expected, dropping below normal at the higher altitudes.

This, they say, implies that “long-term water vapour feedback is negative – that it would reduce rather than amplify the response of the climate system to external forcing such as that from increasing atmospheric CO2.” This, in one fell swoop, challenges the central premise of the warmists that, once CO2 reaches a certain level, we experience runaway global warming.