And there is a lot of water in the ocean, so if you calculate the amount of energy required to raise the entire ocean temperature by, say, one degree, it is enormous. So we have always treated the ocean as a practically infinite heat sink. Unfortunately, the sea does not warm up uniformly. The hot water tends to collect at the surface, and the depths tend to warm up only gradually, if at all. The ocean heats from the top down, probably because warm water floats on cold, and the cold ocean depths are constantly replenished by sinking ice melt from the poles. But the surface waters are where most of the living things are, and where the sea interacts with the atmosphere.

We have made this miscalculation before. You will recall, that during the Deep Horizon BP oil spill, apologists for the fossil fuel industry (yes, right here on the Zone!) told us how even if every drop of petroleum in the planet was dumped into the sea the actual concentration in every cubic meter of sea water would be negligible, practically unmeasurable. Unfortunately, toxins do not always disperse uniformly, in this case most of them wound up on Gulf beaches and in the deep sea floor near the well heads, devastating local ecosystems.

First order estimates and preliminary calculations can be deliberately misleading, especially when skillfully applied by people with a self-serving financial or ideological agenda.