Climate science is a tough job. Unlike laboratory science you can not repeat experiments to see if you made a mistake. You are dependent on history, current data, and models to predict the future.
There is a lot of history out there and what you look at is a judgement call limited by time and resources.
Current data is also tricky for you only have that data you decided to collect from the places you decided to look.
Making models is a real tricky business and can lead to fiction very easily.
Given all that we are forced to acknowledge that we keep getting surprises and none of them are good. Foe example we now have this study published in Nature Climate Change : World's oceans warming at increasingly faster rate, new study finds
The world’s oceans are warming at a quickening rate, with the past 20 years accounting for half of the increase in ocean heat content that has occurred since pre-industrial times, a new study has found.
US scientists discovered that much of the extra heat in the ocean is buried deep underwater, with 35% of the additional warmth found at depths below 700 meters. This means far more heat is present in the far reaches of the ocean than 20 years ago, when it contained just 20% of the extra heat produced from the release of greenhouse gases since the industrial revolution.
The findings open up lots of new questions:
“The findings are concerning. It’s clear evidence that the oceans are taking the brunt of the greenhouse gases and are accumulating a lot of heat. As for the ecological implications, that’s hard to say. There is a lot of life in the deep oceans and there’s lots we don’t know about the impact upon that life.”
And they make old ones more disturbing:
An analysis of more than 620 studies last year found that the food chains of the world’s oceans are at risk of collapse due to climate change, overfishing and localized pollution.
We keep learning. Maybe someday people will actually become concerned enough to do the very drastic things we need to do right now. Meanwhile, the system grinds on, we occupy ourselves with electoral politics and related fantasies, and things get worse at an accelerating pace.