I haven’t seen any graphs inconsistent with a 50+ year progressive increase in ocean heat content, associated with the warming of about 0.6 C after 1950.
Is that different from the 50 years that went before.
the First Law tells us it can’t be due to an internal fluctuation..
Unless there is a natural cycle in cloud cover reflecting/admitting light, or some other mechanism not yet well studied.
You haven’t really discussed how the Hurst exponent could be used in the manner of Ludecke et al to distinguish between forced trends and internal fluctuations while remaining consistent with the principles of thermodynamics.
My discussion was simple: it does not provide any information relevant to the distinction that you want.
I believe that your basic frustration stems from your unwillingness to accept that there might be important mechanisms (cloud cover, hydrolic cycle) that are not well enough known to justify precise mathematical/physical claims. Let me repeat something that Doc Martyn wrote above: If you are within 10% of reality, you have done very well indeed. The idea that one could estimate an increase of 4 w/m2 from a background of 240 w/m2 is patent nonsense.
For whatever reason, you have decided everything unknown is too tiny to matter.
Hence my earlier dialogue:
Fred: mercury expands as it warms.
Matt: that thermometer is not accurate enough for clinical use.
Matt, you frustrate me. Why can’t understand that mercury expands when it warms. To do otherwise would be to violate the laws of thermodynamics. It’s pure physics. You shouldn’t criticize physics when you know so little of it. And on and on.
Well, what can I say? The thermometer is still not accurate enough for clinical use. It is, in fact, so inaccurate that you can not even tell by using it whether the fever is increasing or decreasing.
I have had these discussions before;
Biologist: here is how the drug works, etc, much detail.
Matt: the control group and the active treatment group are nearly the same.
Biologist: you don’t understand because you don’t know how the drug works, how it is absorbed and metabolized, how it stimulates the production of xyz-esteratse, and down-regulates the uvw-binding site.
Matt: what can I tell you? The symptoms are the same in both groups. There is no evidence that the drug works in the target population. No evidence at all, just random variation in the symptoms in the two groups. We can’t sell it because it doesn’t work.