Further the oceans are melting ice in the arctic, Greenland and Antarctica and, if i remember my cocktail mixology correctly, the melting ice should be cooling the oceans [ice to liquid also embeds energy within each molecule's structure]. Then there's the salinity-density issue-the salinity is dropping because of all the fresh water melting into the seas, the ocean is expanding much faster because of melt water than thermal expansion.
It's a wonder that the ocean is heating at all. We're in a time of low solar output and only a couple decades ago climate science thought we were headed slowly toward the end of the interglacial period [cooling] why aren't we now? Why are the glaciers not advancing instead of retreating [as they in fact are all over the world]? Must be because there's more heat energy in the system than there is naturally forced cooling. Now that energy doesn't get here on the wings of angels or aliens, it isn't coming from solar output as it's been falling the last 60 years, but it is there, we can all see the effects. Ice has no political agenda-the flora and fauna aren't moving cause they're bored-the clouds and i've looked at clouds from both sides now, as Joni Mitchell says, and they too care none for politics.
The science behind greenhouse gases [re-radiative LW] is well established. The earth has heated up [far beyond what it is now] many times in the half million year ice core data. Every time Gaia's feedback loops contain its climb and reverse it-they will this time too, sooner or later. It might be a bit more difficult this time because we rogue primates have become an atmospheric carbon source. During these huge climate swings untold biological-ecological change happens too. Exactly what change is uncertain, but change it will be.That's where The Precautionary Principle enters the calculus.
Who cares if all we focus on is our lifespan's minuscule few moments. But, being a pantheist, i care about all my cousins cause they're me. Maximizing short term consumption, converting the earth's natural resources to money, is short term thinking, sooner or later the resources will dry up and our descendants can't eat money.
Where's the missing heat? Like the banker explained in Capra's 'It's A Wonderful Life', the money [heat in our case] isn't 'in' the bank it's embedded in the world around us.
