How about that, skeptics at NASA?

http://www.ecofactory.com/news/noaa-...warming-012910
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories...atervapor.html

An increase in atmospheric water vapor is responsible for at least a third of the average
temperature increase since the early 1990s, say scientists at the US National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Susan Soloman, the respected climate scientist who lead the
research, says that this finding does not undermine man-made global warming theories. "Not to my
mind it doesn't," she said. Soloman did point out that the research does allude to human emissions
having a much smaller role in climate change than previously thought, and serves as a warning to
climate modelers who "over-interpret the results from a few years one way or another." Despite
Soloman's personally held belief, the NOAA study is expected to give further ammunition to climate
skeptics working to draw public attention to perceived flaws in man-made global warming theories.

Soloman, in interviews with both the Associated Press and The Guardian, declined to comment on the
negative publicity climate science has received recently due to the IPCC Himalaya error and
Climategate, and to what the NOAA water vapor report could mean to skeptics and climate scientists
alike. Soloman did mention that many scientists are now accepting, testing, and sometimes embracing
skeptic research, and that the NOAA report is proof of that. "What I will say, is that this shows
there are climate scientists round the world who are trying very hard to understand and to explain
to people openly and honestly what has happened over the last decade." Soloman co-chaired the last
climate change assessment report prepared by the United Nations IPCC, but did not personally
oversee the controversial Himalayan section.

Soloman said it was not clear if the drier atmosphere, which the NOAA report says is the reason
global warming fell flat over the last decade, is a natural process or came to be due to human
emissions. If the latter is true, carbon dioxide emissions would actually be responsible for a
negative feedback that cancels at least some of the warming it causes by pushing water vapor back
to the surface of the earth and out of the stratosphere, where it acts as a potent greenhouse gas.
According to the report, a 10% decrease in atmospheric water vapor alone was responsible for a 25%
drop in predicted temperature increase.

NASA Confirms Water Vapor Study

NASA researchers and climate scientists around the world have reviewed the NOAA water vapor
research in advance to its recent publication in the journal Science, one of the most respected in
the world. Describing the effect of water vapor on atmospheric temperature as "enormous,"
researcher Andrew Dessler said that "everyone agrees that if you add carbon dioxide to the
atmosphere, then warming will result. The real question is how much warming?" A Texas A&M
researcher working in conjunction with NASA, Dessler pointed out that warmer air can contain
contain higher amounts of water vapor, which could create a runaway positive feedback cycle.

The research, facilitated by a state-of-the-art NASA satellite codenamed AIRS, suggests that water
vapor is responsible for twice the global warming effect of carbon dioxide, both man-made and
naturally occurring. While this theory was has been carried by climate change skeptics for some
time, global warming advocates dismissed them, saying that water vapor in the atmosphere was only a
feedback effect caused by human emissions. NASA scientist Eric Fetzer say that the new study
created models much more accurate to past events than those previously used by climate change
advocates, and proves that "water vapor is the big player in the atmosphere as far as climate is
concerned."