Oceans not warming. âEvening Newsâ took a different tack, airing a story about oyster farming and complaints that climate change is ruining a manâs business. But in Ben Tracyâs story, which mentioned the IPCCâs latest report, he said that oceans have absorbed much of the heat caused by CO2 and that ocean temperatures have risen only slightly. Then he made a claim that Principal Research Scientist Dr. Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama in Huntsville called âtotally misleading and irresponsible.â âHad all that heat gone into the atmosphere, air temperatures could have risen by more than 200 degrees [showed 212 degrees onscreen],â Tracy warned. Spencer told the MRCâs Business and Media Institute, âThe oceans have warmed by an average of less than 0.1 deg. C (only the SURFACE by about 0.5 deg.) since the 1950s, and since that is so much water mass, the absorbed heat equivalent to 0.1 deg. IF RELEASED ALL AT ONCE IN THE ATMOSPHERE [it] would, indeed, be hundreds of degrees. But this is physically impossible. It is a meaningless statistic. The heat actually had to go through the atmosphere before it reached the ocean.â
This chart is accurate. The heat content of the oceans includes both volume and temperature. It is perhaps the best single indicator of the heating of the earth. 94% of the earth's heat is in the oceans.