A Public Service Announcement

There are times when some comment is so wrong no bunny wastes any time explaining to the hard of learning why it is wrong, and this, as bunnies in the US are learning, is a mistake and, of course, this lets the foolish person claim that they are the discoverers of revelation, which can be annoying.  Twitter, of course, is an annoyance amplifier and as ATTP is finding out, vigilance against inanity is a never ending fight.

Eli is a creature of good will and habits, so he had let one Dr. Mark Imisides an industrial chemist rattle on and on, but everybunny has limits and the well stuffed Dr. Imisides** finally reached Eli's.  Thus this public service announcement which may be tweeted at the well stuffed Dr. Imisides when needed.  To pick a point where to start, let Eli pick this one

@Gavin_Cawley @theresphysics @wsscherk @jim_hunt FYI greenhouse warming can't heat the ocean. Here's my calculations https://t.co/7hpvh1PGfW

— Dr Mark Imisides (@DrMarkImisides) February 6, 2017

Imisides is quite impressed by this argument, which simply calculates the heat content of the oceans vs. the heat content of the atmosphere and concludes

That is, if we wanted to heat the entire ocean by 1˚C, and wanted to do it by heating the air above it, we’d have to heat the air to about 4,000˚C hotter than the water.

The well stuffed Dr. Imisides of course, is confusing heat content with heat flow, which, to be truthful is a common mistake, but there is something about Dr. Imisides' attitude that withdraws the milk of bunny kindness from Eli's furry breast, sort of the Pielke effect as it were.

Allow Eli to state the obvious.  Energy flows in from the sun.  Most of it is absorbed in the oceans, cause the oceans are most of the surface, and increasing at that.  Energy flows out through the atmosphere.  That means that the energy flow in must be balanced by the energy flow out or the whole ball would melt and all of that energy passes through the atmosphere, because, at no place on Earth does the land or sea touch space.  The only way off planet for energy is by radiation to space.

Since the energy lost from the surface of the oceans passes through the atmosphere and is radiated to space, the energy FLOW must be balanced and absent some change in the atmosphere such as increased greenhouse gases, atmospheric temperatures will not change.

True, if you increased the rate at which the sun heated the oceans they would warm, but we know by direct measurement that that is not happening.  We also know that the heat content of the oceans is increasing and the oceans are warming.  If solar irradiation is NOT increasing, and we KNOW it is not, Eli points out that

heating the ocean requires limiting the net rate at which it loses heat.  That's what increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere does.

 So to return to Twitter with an analogy for Mom

@DrMarkImisides @theresphysics @Gavin_Cawley @wsscherk @jim_hunt Because you confuse heat content with heat flow. Typical nonsense. 1/4

— eli rabett (@EthonRaptor) February 7, 2017

@DrMarkImisides @theresphysics @Gavin_Cawley @wsscherk @jim_hunt But if you pinch it, the amt in cup does not decrease. 3/4

— eli rabett (@EthonRaptor) February 7, 2017

@DrMarkImisides @theresphysics @Gavin_Cawley @wsscherk @jim_hunt Atm is channel(straw) through which the heat from oceans flows to space 5/5

— eli rabett (@EthonRaptor) February 7, 2017

However, Eli would not be Eli were he not to pass comment on other Dr. Mark Imisides bon mots.  For example

And another problem is that air sits on top of water – how would hot air heat deep into the ocean? Even if the surface warmed, the warm water would just sit on top of the cold water.

Well, yeah, Mark.  The ocean IS stratified, and the exchange between the deep ocean and the surface does take a long time, like a thousand years and occurs at places where there is upwelling driven by thermohaline circulation.  You could look it up

** A long time ago a friendly analytiker once described to Eli the final ceremony after a certain class of chemists passes their oral exam, that the candidate stands at attention and the examiner stuffs his shirt.