Atmospheric and ocean warming (Howard Hayden)

There's a bunch of idiocy floating around about oceans.

True, the heat capacity of the oceans is huge. True, a large change in the heat content of the oceans results is a minuscule change in temperature. True, Hewlett-Packard invented a thermometer sensitive to 0.001 ÂşC many decades ago, and one may presume that even better instruments are available now.

That said, "climate change" (nee global warming) supposedly results from CO2 in the *atmosphere*, which results in increasing temperatures in the *atmosphere*. Now, if the *oceans* are warming because of CO2 in the *atmosphere*, where is the record that the *atmosphere* warmed *first*? Or, how can the excess heat "hide in the *oceans*" without first appearing in the *atmosphere*? Presumably, since the surface is about 80% oceanic, sunlight at the surface can increase (say, by diminution of cloud cover), and thereby increase the sea surface temperature down to about 10 meters. That process, of course, has nothing to do with CO2.

The presumed global-warming process involves increased absorption of IR from the surface with the eventual release of IR back to the surface. That IR is absorbed within millimeters of the ocean’s surface. How does that excess heat unerringly get to the deep?

More truisms: In order to obtain the heat content of the oceans, it is necessary to know the temperature everywhere. With adequate sampling, you can obtain a reasonably good value for the heat content (with respect to some arbitrary temperature, presumably ÂşC.).

You can also measure the distance to the moon to a fraction of a percent. But if you decide to measure the distance from your feet to the moon and from your head to the moon, you might, by subtraction, find out that you are negative 40 meters tall. Differences, and changes always involve subtraction, and that is an especially difficult task with minuscule differences in huge quantities.

In order to see a *change* in the heat content, it is necessary to add up the positive and negative changes everywhere in the ocean, and the overall change is minuscule. No matter how accurately you can measure the temperature at some given place, that information does not tell you the temperature elsewhere. As the ocean currents move, water from unmeasured places moves to places where you have thermometers. It is arrogant beyond belief to pretend to get the right answer.

Howard "Cork" Hayden corkhayden@comcast.net NEW! Energy: A Textbook, $25 at www.energyadvocate.com and www.valeslake.com Consensus is the enemy of science