Just on first principles. Ignoring any effect on the mantle. Ignoring melting. Ignoring changes to the atmosphere in the way of air pressure or changes. Ignoring loss of liquid water to the atmosphere through higher water vapour levels.

I read an estimate of the joules held by the atmosphere as 10 to the power of 22 joules. Don’t know how close that is.

For the ocean to expand by 1 centimetre there would be some joules going into the increase in temperature and some joules going into the physical expansion. Or you could think of it that way.

So has anyone tried to figure out how many joules that would take?

The studies I’ve seen try and attribute sea level increase to “global warming” and its not clear they talk a great deal about joules in this regard.

Here’s the best graph I can find and its from our own CSIRO. I perceive an “OUT” for the former alarmist who is fast enough on his feet.

Supposing you were to make the wild conjecture that the best measure of joules accumulated in the system, when considering the short-term as well as time-scales relevant to human history is SEA LEVEL HEIGHT.

Its not such a bad conjecture that this simple measure might be even better than the system of buoys they have got going out there. For one thing you have more of a chance of estimating ancient data with this simpler measure. And for another thing temperature measurements aren’t going to be enough. Because a lot of latent energy ought to be tied up in thermal expansion. On top of that there is a great amount of latent energy of melting. Also the buoys don’t go down all the way.

So its not an implausible conjecture but we need the empirical evidence for or against this idea. Or whatever the data tells us.

Now check out the graph. See how the black line peaks and falls every year. This is definitely in line with the earth moving closer to and further away from the sun. We therefore want to see what the delay is. The most energy will have accumulated not on the day when we are closest to the sun. But some time after that. Just as the day is warmer usually at 2.00pm than it is at noon.

So researchers ought to be trying to figure out what the delay is here. The delay between theoretical peaks in total joules in the system and the peak in sea level. Nonetheless one would think that the expansion would react pretty quickly.

Now from a pure atmospheric temperature point of view we see that the warmest year was 1998. And from measurements of imbedded energy in the oceans (I don’t know if they are corrected for thermal expansion and melted ice) we see the peak coming around late 2003 I think. And a pretty weak drop-off but then they’ve corrected this at least twice and I haven’t seen a good updated set of graphs for this.

But here’s a good excuse you alarmists can put together for taking too long to come onto the side of righteousness and I’ll give it to you for free.

And that excuse is that you were using the sea level as your ultimate metric of cumulative warming. That way you can say “How can you blame me? Look when my favoured metric turned down? It didn’t so much as flatten until 2006-2007 and I didn’t have the 2008 data. There wasn’t even a trend established.”

There you are. You better run with it and try to avoid the mass-sackings that I hope will come to pass. I hope none of you avoid the axe but there you are. You ought to move quickly.

I just wish I knew where to find good graphs about this. Whether the sea level rise flattened between about 1400 and 1750. Flattened or dropped. Not knowing one way or another I’d suspect that it dropped.

Or whether sea level responds quickly to outsized solar energy punching into the ocean, quite apart from any background melting going on.

Taking both melting and sea-water expansion into account, sea level might be a really good proxy for cumulative joules in the climate system.

With this avalanche of indecisive studies clogging things up you cannot seem to find out what you really want to know.

Get this straight, boy bogan, the transect from the tenable to the untenable is a continuum and the gradients are essentially proportionate. Unless, of course, you have an imagination that has been subject to chemical modification.

The unambiguous conclusion is that any sea level rise projection that is above 1 metre for the century is approaching the very limits of the tenable.

Damn that is just so interesting. Some checking might lead to the conclusion that extra solar activity could lead to sea expansion as THE FIRST AND QUICKEST reaction as opposed to the apparent build-up in joules in the upper oceans.

That could be totally wrong but one ought to be tracking down exactly why the expansion is there.

Like in economics you might think that monetary expansion would lead right away to consumer price inflation. But usually it tends to spill into trade deficits and investment asset inflation first.

So its important to figure out how these extra joules manifest themselves right away.

Does anyone have the records of how the oceans have gone after solar activity peaks and forbush events?

Or in relation to the yearly cycle of the planet getting closer to and further away from the sun?

If we saw a sea-saw of ocean levels in relation to the earth getting close to the sun and if the rise preceded the rise in air temperature… and same again in response to forbush events that could tell us something.