The talk of oceans heating and polar ice melting due to carbon dioxide is nonscientific for the simple reason that there is not enough heat capacity in air to do that.

The heat capacity (called specific heat) of air is 1.0035 joules per gram per degree centigrade (j/g/C), which is the same as kilojoules per kilogram per degree centigrade (kj/kg/C).

The specific heat for water is 4.1813 j/g/C or 1 calorie/g/C.

The density of air at 15°C and sea level is 1.225 kilogram per cubic meter.

The density of water is 1,000 kilograms/m³. Sea water is slightly more dense, but we will ignore that.

Therefore, a cubic meter of water holds 3401 times as much heat as a cubic meter of air at the same temperature. (4.1813÷1.0035x1,000÷1.225=3401)

This means that to heat a cubic meter of water by 0.2°C from air would require 3401 cubic meter of air losing 0.2°C. If the oceans were heated 0.2°C to a depth of 350 meters (half the depth of ARGO measurements), there would need to be 167 atmospheres of air losing 0.2°C. (350x3401÷5kmx70%=167) (The height of the normal atmosphere is 12-15 km. A rough average is to assume it is all at sea level pressure to a height of 5km. Oceans cover 70% of the earth's surface.) This means 167 times planet earth to do the eating of oceans which is claimed.

There isn't that much air, yet fakes claim the oceans have been heated by 0.2°C due to global warming. It's total contrivance. There isn't anywhere near enough heat in the air to heat the oceans the slightest amount.

In Terms of Temperature Increase in the Oceans

If the atmosphere gave up 0.2°C to the oceans, the amount of heat that it could transfer to the oceans would theoretically create about 0.001°C temperature increase for the top one tenth of the oceans.

The calculations are these: Air has a heat capacity of 1 kj/kg/°C. The density of air is 1.23 kg/m³. The atmosphere has an equivalent of 5 km height at sea level pressure. A one square meter column has 6,150 kj/°C (1x1.23x5,000=6,150). Transferring 0.2°C leaves 1,230 kj available (6,150x0.2=1,230). Water has a heat capacity of 4.18 kj/kg/°C. Its density is 1,000 kg/m³. A column to a depth of 350 m has a capacity of 1.46x10⁶ kj/°C (4.18x1,000x350=1.46x10⁶). Dividing it into the 1,230 kj available leaves 0.001°C temperature increase in the ocean.

Melting Ice

Melting polar ice with air is even more ridiculous, because melting ice requires a lot of heat, called heat of fusion, which is 334 kj/kg. Each cubic meter of ice melted would require 261,000 m³ of air losing 1°C (334,000÷1.28=261,000). (A cubic meter of water or ice are about 1,000 kg. Melting requires 334 kj/kg. Combined, it's 334,000 kj/m³. The specific heat of air is 1kj/kg with a density of 1.28 kg/m³ at 0°C.)

This number can be divided by the height of the atmosphere, which is equivalent to 5km at normal pressure, and it is 52 atmospheres of height above the ice. (261,000÷5,000=52). That's for one meter of ice depth and 1°C of global warming. If the ice is 10 meters thick, 520 atmospheres above it would be required to hold enough heat to melt it.

Of course the air would not circulate well enough at more than a few kilometers of height. What really happens is that the air above polar ice rapidly becomes the same temperature as the ice, and nothing melts. It takes warm ocean currents to melt polar ice. The melting that has been occurring at the North Pole results from warm Pacific Ocean water flowing over the Bering Strait and into the North Pole area.

Ice at the South Pole keeps getting thicker, because it sits over land. Warming ocean currents put more moisture in the air which adds snow inland over Antarctica. Around the edges, a small amount of ice melts due to warming ocean currents. Why ocean currents warm and cool, no one knows, except that ocean temperatures slowly increase between ice ages, and oceans are extremely heterogeneous for temperature.

The glaciers on mountains are totally irrelevant, because they are usually too small. Only the Himalayas are large, and they are not melting, because they are too high to be reached by warm air currents. The low level ice melted shortly after the last ice age. The edges of the mountain glaciers constantly increase and decrease for random reasons. This effect was shown by the "iceman" found in the Alps after some ice melted. He died there about 5,000 years ago. This means there was no ice where he was at about 5,000 years ago, then ice covered over him, and then the ice melted again a few years ago. Such ice melting and reforming has nothing to do with greenhouse gases.

Where does the heat come from?

The latest claim is that 90% of the heat produced by greenhouse gases went into the oceans. This claim is one of the attempts to explain why there has been no detectable change in the average, near-surface temperature over the past 18 years.

Climatologists already took care of all this, and that isn't the result they got. The didn't account for an iota of heat going into the oceans until recently. In fact, when the first ARGO measurements were made, about ten years ago, the result was that the oceans were slightly cooling. So the coldest measurements were thrown out, and the temperature was stable.

Then in 2015, a controversial calculation was made showing that the oceans heated 0.2°C due to global warming, and this is why air temperatures have not been going up as expected. That's more heat than greenhouse gases can account for, as explained above. The past 40 years of climatology supposedly accounted for all heat, and none of it went into heating the oceans. Should not the past 40 years of calculations and measurements be done over? No one is saying a word about it. Contradictions of this sort exist in every point made in climatology, because the subject is totally contrived with no relationship to anything happening in nature. The contradictions are ignored rather than resolved.

The obfuscated methodology was this: The heat produced by carbon dioxide (primary effect) was calculated using the "radiative transfer equations" showing that 3.7 w/m² of energy less than the sun's energy gets trapped in the atmosphere and does not exit into space upon doubling the amount of CO2 in the air. This 3.7 w/m² is translated into a 1°C near-surface temperature increase by applying the Stefan-Boltzmann constant in reverse.

As the atmosphere gets close to doubling the CO2 content, the supposed measurements are getting close to showing the expected 1°C temperature increase, showing the godly precision and wisdom of climatology. None of this accounted for any of the heat going into the oceans.

For secondary effects, something about the oceans was calculated and modeled, but no explanations were published. If the primary effect did nothing to heat the oceans, why would the secondary effects? The models showed a continuous increase, which did not occur over the past 18 years; and then ocean heat was used as the explanation. Since the models showed an increase, while none occurred, the models must not have accounted for ocean heat.

Why was the expected 1°C increase found with such precision, if 90% of the heat was going into the oceans and not accounted for in the analysis of either the primary or secondary effects? The answer is simple: It's impossible to contrive falsehoods without contradictions.

See Icemelt for more numbers.

See Changing Weather for ocean cycles.