WTF?

According to the the IPCC only 2.3% of global warming heats the atmosphere.

Most of it (93.4%) warms the ocean.

In the IPCC 6th assessment report the Global Energy Inventory presents energy increases in zetta joules. That is a 1 with 21 zeros after it.
(1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 J)

From 1971-2018 the oceans have absorbed over 400 ZJ of energy at an exponential growth rate.

Furthermore, "The heat content of the global ocean has increased since at least 1970, and will continue to increase over the 21st century (virtually certain). The associated warming will likely continue until at least 2300, even for low-emissions scenarios, because of the slow circulation of the deep ocean."

Interesting times are ahead.

Dear WTF?,

You ask - are atmospheric and surface air temperatures
poor indicators of climate change?

They may well be. But if they last longer than individual
weather events and persist for longer periods of time
then surely they need to be taken seriously?

Hello Foxy,

Thanks for the response.

There are yearly fluctuations in maximum global temperatures and despite the fact that the tend is upwards many use these fluctuations to argue against the concept of global warming.

The problem as I see it is that it is far too easy to misrepresent this data to the gullible and scientific naive.

The graph of Global Energy Inventory is far less complicated and shows an undeniable almost exponential increase in ocean warming.

I will still be talking about atmospheric temperatures but will certainly direct global warming deniers to the graph on ocean warming.

Dear WTF?,

I admire your persistence and knowledge.

I wish I had your patience. I'm afraid that I'm
finding great disappointment in some of the
reactions on this Forum at times. Still, I guess
we need the challenges. Although, I often do feel
like walking away especially as I think you said
once - people can disapprove all they want - but
the facts don't change.

Although most heat from global warming is taken into the ocean, what happens in the ocean affects the land.

"400 ZJ [zettajoules] of energy "

Ooow, that's a big number.

What's a joule? 0.0002777778 of a watt hour.

ooow, that's a small number.

How big are the oceans? 1,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 cm3.

oooow, that's a big number.

So what's the end result of using indecipherably large and small numbers to convey alarm? Well, best guess is that the oceans have warmed perhaps 0.7c in the past 100 years.

You can't build a scare campaign based on that - hence the big scary numbers.

The fact is we have very little idea what happened in the oceans below 10metres until the recent past when the Argo project was launched. And the Argo project is showing only minor warming at depths and indeed cooling in plenty of locations. You can't build a scare campaign on that, so the IPCC, while mentioning the Argo data, hurries to skip over it.

The problem for alarmists is that the atmosphere isn't warming anywhere near as much as their models say it should and so they decided the difference must be in the oceans. No evidence mind you, just unevidenced assertions.

(In proper science, if your models don't match reality, you ditch the models. In so-called climate science, if your models don't match reality, you keep the models and reinterpret reality).