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It's the ocean

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The skeptic argument...

Many effects may be lagged. One reason is the vast reservoir of heat, CO2 and much else that girdles the earth: the ocean. It takes some time for a surface temperature variation to show up in the amount of heat stored in the ocean (source: Greenie Watch)

What the science says...

Oceans are warming across the globe. In fact, globally oceans are accumulating energy at a rate of 4 x 10²¹ Joules per year - equivalent to 127,000 nuclear plants (which have an average output of 1 gigawatt) pouring their energy directly into the world's oceans. This tells us the planet is in energy imbalance - more energy is coming in than radiating back out to space.

The notion that the ocean is causing global warming is ruled out by the observation that the ocean is warming (Levitus 2005). Internal climate changes such as El Nino and thermohaline variability stem from transfers of heat such as from the ocean to the atmosphere. If the ocean was feeding atmospheric warming, the oceans would be cooling.

Other studies

In fact, ocean observations confirm both global warming and its cause. Barnett 2007 compares observations of ocean temperatures to results from the Parallel Climate Model (PCM) and finds "model-produced signals are indistinguishable from the observations". This suggests "the observed ocean heat-content changes are consistent with those expected from anthropogenic forcing, which broadens the basis for claims that an anthropogenic signal has been detected in the global climate system."

Warming in the pipeline

The other consequence of the warming ocean is it means there is additional "warming in the pipeline". Even if CO2 emissions were to start falling now, we already face further global warming of about another half degree by the end of the 21st century (Meehl 2005).

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Comments

Comments 1 to 7:

GMB at 12:29 PM on 28 December, 2007
"If the ocean was feeding atmospheric warming, the oceans would be cooling."

Thats very weird thinking. The transmission goes like this:

1. Increased solar activity leads to oceanic warming. Leads to more water vapour, leads to atmospheric warming.

2. Increased solar activity leads to less invasion of cosmic rays, leads to less cloud cover, leads to greater oceanic warming, leads to water vapour, leads to atmospheric warming.

3. Increased solar activity, leads to greater momentum in oceanic currents, leads to greater imbedded energy in the oceans via the Stefan-Boltzmann's law.

With regards to point 3. Were there some basic change to the "resistance to circulation". If some change in oceanic currents led to a better circulation or less resistance to circulation then you would expect the oceans to accrue more energy and that would eventually have the side effect of greater average global temperatures.
Quietman at 11:05 AM on 17 May, 2008
John
In keeping with this thread, you may be interested in a paper from Nature: AMO will stop warming until 2020. This seems to coincide with SSC24 as well. I added two links dealing with the AMO, PDO and ENSO cycles in Is Pacific Decadal Oscillation the Smoking Gun? as well as the ENSO related posts in It's volcanoes (or lack thereof)
about the cause of El Nino/La Nina.
Quietman at 04:03 AM on 16 September, 2008
Looking at the maps you will note that the warming occurs along ridge lines. This is NOT coincidental, nor is it caused by AGW but quite the opposite. Refer to comment 13 in the volcano thread linked above.
chris at 20:21 PM on 10 October, 2008
Re #3 Quietman

which maps are you referring to (in relation to your statement about warming on ridge lines)?
Quietman at 04:25 AM on 27 November, 2008
chris
Compare the charts of "hot spots" to a good map of the ocean floor such as Nat. Geo. maps. Also see post 115 in the volcano thread.
Quietman at 10:49 AM on 13 May, 2009
[In 2005 James Hansen, Josh Willis, and Gavin Schmidt of NASA coauthored a significant article (in collaboration with twelve other scientists), on the “Earth’s Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications” (Science, 3 June 2005, 1431-35). This paper affirmed the critical role of ocean heat as a robust metric for AGW. “Confirmation of the planetary energy imbalance,” they maintained, “can be obtained by measuring the heat content of the ocean, which must be the principal reservoir for excess energy” (1432).
...
In 2007 Roger Pielke, Sr. suggested that ocean heat should be used not just to monitor the energy imbalance in the climate system, but as a “litmus test” for falsifying the IPCC’s AGW hypothesis (Pielke, “A Litmus Test…”, climatesci.org, April 4, 2007). Dr. Pielke is a Senior Research Scientist in CIRES (Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences), at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and Professor Emeritus of the Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins. One of the world’s foremost atmospheric scientists, he has published nearly 350 papers in peer-reviewed journals, 50 chapters in books, and co-edited 9 books.]

The Global Warming Hypothesis and Ocean Heat

I think that this was an excellent point.
tallbloke at 00:54 AM on 15 October, 2009
"What the science says...
Oceans are warming across the globe."

This is incorrect, although you might get away with saying they are warming on a six year average, for a little while anyway.

Cazenave et al 2008 concludes that the steric sea level has been falling since 2006.
The ARGO data shows that there has been a recent swift fall in ocean heat content globally. (Oct 2009 prelim data)