Where to start. FCT is correct that the reason you'll get burned by steel is its high thermal conductivity. However, this ignores the point as to how the thermal energy got there in the first place. The argument that Westwall (and other deniers here) is attempting to make, that the ocean cannot absorb IR radiation because it only penetrates a short distance is completely specious. It penetrates thousands of times further into water than it does into steel and yet - somehow - the steel grows warmer.
Thermal conductivity of selected materials ("the quantity of heat transmitted through a unit thickness of a material - in a direction normal to a surface of unit area - due to a unit temperature gradient under steady state conditions"
Thermal conductivity units is W/(m K) in the SI system and Btu/(hr ft °F) in the Imperial system.
At 25C
Air: 0.024
Carbon steel: 43
Water 0.58
Note that water has 24 times the thermal conductivity of air. That means that a unit of heat energy at the ocean's skin is extremely more likely to be conducted deeper into the water than upward into the air even ignoring the difficulty of crossing the material interface.
This value for conductivity also excludes physical mixing, which is, of course, taking place in ocean water at a near infinitely greater pace than in your slab of carbon steel.
And there is also the difference in specific heat capacity. It requires 4.184 joules of energy to raise the temperature of one gram of water by 1 centigrade degree. The specific heat capacity of air is 1.006 joules to raise one gram by one centigrade degree. Therefore, heat transfer driven by temperature differential is going to tend towards the water, since it can absorb more than four times the energy per temperature change. The water will maintain the differential four times as well as will the air.
And then I would like to address the oft-denier-repeated phrase, "heat rises". First, the phrase is factually incorrect. Heat travels unpreferentially in all directions. The term originates from the effects of buoyancy. All fluids (air, water, etc) experience buoyant effects. Buoyancy is simply the net result of hydrostatic forces versus gravity. Hydrostatic forces, of course, increase with depth. The gradient this creates produces an upward force. If that force is greater than the pull of gravity, the material will attempt to rise. For water, we are of course speaking of the range of 4C up to 100C. For air, there is no point at which the slope changes direction.
The point here, is that the heated and therefore less dense water will tend to come to the surface due to buoyant effects. But that buoyancy comes to a dead end (actually, the net force vector reverses) at the water/air interface. Buoyancy will NOT drive water, or its heat, into the air. The same buoyancy effect takes place in the air. Yet what temperature gradient do we find in the atmosphere? Is the air coldest at the Earth's surface and warmest aloft? No. Why? Mixing and the density gradient. The reason for the temperature gradient we find in the ocean is that it's heat source is above and its temperature vs density properties cause all deep basins to be filled with 4C water. The density gradient in the ocean is trivial compared to what we find in the atmosphere. Thus the heat capacity decreases with increasing altitude and dense, more effectively warmed air, resides at the bottom of its column. There, density-driven convection mixes things about and we get what we find outside our door on any given day.
The ocean DOES absorb energy from IR radiation. Your claims in this regard are completely incorrect.
