Is heat energy? How does one measure that energy?
I'm not a scientist but have a little background in a lot of different topics - it seems that many here are jumping all over one of the most solid sets of statements in the article....
A good way to think of the difference between temperature and heat content is the difference between water vapor and air. Hot air, of the same temperature that will burn you, is much less dangerous than steam which has more heat content. In the global warming context, measuring heat content of many disparate materials in the air is extremely difficult, much less modeling them. Clouds can reflect energy, store energy and dissipate energy and do so in ways that are easy to know...sun heat oceans forms clouds, clouds move and generate rain, eventually going back to oceans or being locked up in the earth.
Measuring that phemonenon and describing it accurately enough to make predictions...ask a “climatologist” for their predictive window, and they will say hundreds of years...ask a mathetician for their model limits given the accuracy of the data for a period time...satellite data accuracy ...say 70 years and the model may be predictable for 1/4 of that. We spend much more money modelling stock market trends and still have major surprises.
Climate science is settled science. In other words, they want your money, and hope they can convince people by repetition and taxation. It really is not successful by any measure of prediction in the past. But chicken little is a successful taxation strategy.
DK