AUSTRALIA’S Minister for Climate Change, Penny Wong, recently suggested that most of the global warming since 1960, about 85 percent, has happened in the oceans and that change in ocean heat content is thus the most appropriate measure of global warming.
In my previous post, working from first principles, I determined a discrepancy of 9:1 in the rate of warming from Australian government data relative to IPCC findings. In reviewing these calculations I now realise I made a significant error. I had wrongly assumed that the claimed positive feedback from water vapour was proportional to the carbon dioxide concentration. This is not correct, the claimed positive feedback is proportional to the temperature rise and that change does make a difference to the calculations and needs to be corrected. The revised calculations still show a paradox although only about 3:1.

Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.