The 'Missing Link' of Meteorology's Theory of Storms
by Solving Tornadoes / James McGinn

http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/p...p?f=10&t=16329

We make assumptions, and believe we are right about the assumptions; then we defend our assumptions and try to make someone else wrong.
Don Miguel Ruiz, Author

Sometimes people believe things that are nonsense because they have painted themselves into a corner with their assumptions and believing in nonsense is the only option that remains to save them from appearing to be complete fools. The most stupefying myth in all of meteorology is the myth that steam can persist in our atmosphere. It is universally believed by all meteorologists yet, strangely, not one of them would claim knowledge of a test or experiment to demonstrate its validity. Stranger still, what little empirical evidence we do have decidedly indicates that the notion fails. This notion has evolved into a taboo within the disciplines that study the atmosphere, the primary champions and enforcers of this taboo being meteorologists, most of whom for which the issue is a mute point in that they exclusively work with synoptic charts (cold fronts, warm fronts and such, usually displayed on computer screens) and, therefore, the notion is never applied in the context of their daily duties. Only for a very small subset of meteorologists—those that deal with the severe weather and, even then, only those that deal with the theoretical aspects thereof—does this notion have any real significance. But for these few the effect is intellectually devastating, rendering them feckless, incapable of making any kind of real progress in the discipline. One consequence of this being that the theoretical aspects of the study of severe weather have come to epitomize academic vapidity. And there really isn’t much any of them can do about it in that belief in the concept is a prerequisite for being taken seriously by any of the various stakeholders in the discipline. But at least they don’t look like complete fools.