New Scientist and David Wasdell

The New Scientist recently published an article based on the work of one David Wasdell of the Meridian Programme, who claims that the IPCC AR4 SPM has ignored the effects of water vapour – though not in the same way Lindzen would normally do. No, this is a leftist attack saying the IPCC doesn’t go far enough and is controlled by business interests.

I don’t know New Scientists’ vetting processes, but I’m not sure that I’d let the work of a psychotherapist and founder of the Urban Church inform an article on climate physics.

His articles have the distinct smell of psuedoscience (Beyerstein, 1995), and his work on water vapour feedback is just outright wrong.

The methodology is also similar to that described by Jodi Dean in her analysis of the “9/11 Truth” movement as a psychotic discourse. That this new mode of attack of the IPCC is gaining ground, has worrying implications for leftist politics, to say the least.

Update:

Gavin Schmidt (RealClimate/NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies) had this to say via email on the New Scientist article:

There is work that needs to be done on the general point, but this specific critique [by Wasdell] is worthless. There is nothing there [in the IPCC AR4 Summary for Policy Makers] that isn’t justified on the grounds of clarity.