Climate Letter #321

Data that best reveals the path of global warming. “Global warming” and “climate change” supposedly have about the same meaning, but not everyone sees things that way. The alternative is to think of global warming in terms of the Earth’s complete near-surface energy system, defined to include changes in the total heat content of the oceans. This is all explained very well, along with the practical consequences, in this post:

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There is a link within the post that takes you to the main source of ocean data, from NOAA, which is updated quarterly. This provides access to 14 separate charts that break the details. Here is that link:
The clear message is that the total heat content of the oceans, which vastly outweigh the lower atmosphere in heat capacity, has been rising consistently for almost fifty years, and lately seems to be accelerating rather than slowing or pausing. In other words, the temperature trends we associate with climate change have only a little in common with the trends displayed by the broader definition of global warming. Moreover, the data analysis shows that change in heat content near the surface of the oceans is less than the degree of change in deeper ocean levels—where heat just seems to disappear, but not really.
It turns out that, for any one year, climate change is kind of an accident, depending on the current status of the processes that carry heat from the surface to the deeper parts of the ocean. These are not well understood, and certainly not easily predictable. That means the climate change debate is never really going to get settled, while global warming should not even be a matter caught up in debate, unless someone has doubts about how the temperatures at depth are being measured.
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Saudi leadership in low-cost solar energy. Another Giles Parkinson report from Abu Dhabi, about a major electric power company with huge ambitions. The numbers, unsubsidized, are fully competitive with natural gas generation, even in Saudi Arabia of all places.
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Signs of difficulty for long-term sequestering of CO2. This study, which makes no claim to be the last word, raises questions about the usefulness of CCS technology as a pathway to burning coal in a way that is environmentally safe.
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Advanced energy technology. This involves a novel approach to artificial photosynthesis. Apparently there has been some progress worth reporting by this group. “If we succeed, it could mean we’re well on our way towards a continuous, environmentally-friendly, and cost-effective storage form of solar energy.” Good luck to them.
Carl

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