Climate models are better now, and there is better data on ocean absorption, which isn't as high as once hoped. The global ecosystem has survived higher CO 2 concentrations in the past, but we don't know how high those concentrations were, how fast the CO 2 concentration rose, and the relationship between CO 2 concentration and global temperature. This rise may not sound large, but it takes far more energy to heat water than it does air. The increase in ocean temperatures represents a huge amount of energy. That energy will go into the melting of polar ice and could potentially increase the number and strength of hurricanes.
Hurricanes represent a transfer of energy from warm tropical waters to temperate zones.
Two recent independent computer models indicate that the rise in ocean temperature is too large to be explained by normal climatic variation and is almost certainly the result of greenhouse gas increases. CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas. Nitrous oxide is a byproduct of fossil fuel burning and denitrification. The rate of denitrification has increased since nitrogen fertilizer began being produced on a large scale.