By David Evans

There has been a change in direction by global warming alarmists, as shown by “Synthesis Report - Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges & Decisions,” published in Copenhagen and released in June.

In that report, those claiming there is a human-induced global warming crisis have abandoned air temperature as a measure of global climate and switched to ocean temperature.

The change in focus from air temperature to ocean temperature was predictable given the sustained decline in global air temperature over recent years.

The new report claims ocean temperatures are rising, and fast.

This is rubbish, but it will take time to inform the public and politicians that it is rubbish. With the U.S. climate bill and the Copenhagen meeting of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change coming up, proponents of carbon dioxide restrictions need only to make the public believe these fables for a few months.

New Claims to Refute

All the public education the climate realists have accomplished regarding air temperatures will have to start all over regarding ocean temperatures. Here are some key points to be made:

* Ocean temperatures can be measured adequately only by the Argo buoy network. Argo buoys dive down to 700m, recording temperatures, then come up and radio back the results. There are 3,000 of them floating around all the world’s oceans.

* The Argo buoys have been operational only since the end of 2003. Before that, ocean temperatures were gathered by various methods - usually collected by ships in popular commercial shipping lanes - that lacked uniformity, sufficient geographical coverage, and the ability to measure temperature much beneath the surface. The Argo buoy system has added uniformity and greater reliability to ocean temperature measurements.

* According to Argo temperature measurements, the world’s oceans have shown a slight cooling since Argo became operational in 2003. In sharp contrast to model predicted heat build-up

* The Argo data contradict claims humans are causing rapid global warming, because ocean temperatures are not rising as fast as predicted by global warming alarmists. Read more here.

Icecap Note: to enable them to make the case the oceans are warming, NOAA chose to remove satellite input into their global ocean estimation and not make any attempt to operationally use Argo data in the process. This resulted in a jump of 0.2C or more and ‘a new ocean warmth record’ in July. ARGO tells us this is another example of NOAA’s inexplicable decision to corrupt data to suport political agendas.