Ocean Acidification and Corals

This has always seemed intuitively impossible to acidify the oceans, given how salty they are. How could CO2 possible overcome all that salt? But then nothing seems above the vast powers of this wonder molecule!

“One also has to wonder how they measured the pH of the ocean to 4 decimal places in 1751, since the idea of pH wasn’t introduced until 1909.”
It’s observations like this that will continue to make some of us without PhD’s skeptical of the thought process utilized by some of the leading climate scientists. Similarly, when you look at the surfacestations project and realize that the measurement of global surface temperatures has an inherent flaw, it does not make immediate sense to talk about minor temperature changes over the past 30 years–even if the math says its statistically significant.

The bomb was equivalent to 30 billion pounds of TNT, vapourised three islands, and raised water temperatures to 55,000 degrees.

I suspect that it did not raise the water temperature to 55,000 degrees. That might have been the temperature at the center of the explosion, but I suspect that the water nearby flashed into steam …
Can you clarify?
I am also lead to believe that the current corrals and the ones before the KT event (I believe) were different, one being rugose corals and the other not. I might have the boundary wrong, though.
Perhaps some words should be said to indicate why corals back then are expected to have behaved the same as those of today in the presence of greater levels of carbonic acid or whatever in the seas, or that similar buffering was possible.

Neil,
Salt (NaCl) does not have an effect on maintaining the pH in this case. There may be other chemicals that would help to maintain the pH above 7.0 (i.e. basic, the opposite of acid). The effect of chemicals resisting a change in pH is called “buffering” and it would take someone more knowledgeable to know if sea water is a buffered solution.
CO2 dissolved in water makes a very weak acid called carbonic acid. It is so weak that we can drink it in soda pop. However, it does have an effect that we can see. Over zillions of years, CO2 dissolves in rainwater and that water with the weak acid percolates through limestone deposits. The weak acid slowly dissolves the limestone and creates caves. But it does take zillions of years.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack

Robert S and Jon,
One of the most important tools of AGW fear promotion is to wring out of the statistical noise some numerical value indistinguishable from the noise, and then declare that numerical value is an established fact of grave implications.
There is not one shred of evidence that the AGW claim about acidification is true.
And since the oceans are strongly basic, and the alleged change, even if true, is so trivial, the use of the term ‘acidification’ is not one used to describe a process but rather to elicit acceptance of claims about AGW.
Additionally, please feel free to refer to any credible studies at all that show in the laboratory that a change in Ph of .04 in a marine tank of coral will have any effect at all on the coral. In fact a google of coral+Ph+lab yields no listing of any experimental results.
This pattern is true of basically every tenet of AGW dogma.

@Robert S (21:27:59) :
FYI, the natural ocean pH varies from about 8.1 to about 8.4 depending on a multitude of factors. I try to maintain my reef tank at 8.3 but that varies with temperature and lighting on a diurnal basis.
It is extremely difficult to measure pH IN THE LABORATORY with a precision of better than +/- 0.1.
Make no mistake. Corral reefs are in trouble. Largely from pesticide and fertilizer runoff as well as sewage sludge. CO2 is the least of their problems.

The coral are making a comeback after the tsunami. How is this possible with the acidification of the oceans?
http://www.physorg.com/news149768973.html

Soft-shell lobsters…Yummy!

At some point the theorists will have to start paying attention to empirical data.
You sure? It didn’t stop them from proclaiming unprecedented ice melt even though they find whole villages and 3000 year old tree stumps under the glaciers. I wondered if you would pick up on the bikini island bombs, didn’t bother those ever so delicate corals much at all.

First they claim an apocalypse is looming due to AGW.
But when self-evident cooling occurs they blur AGW to vague “climate change” Any climate evolution defying total climate stasis is the result of capitalist evil.
Of course, by definition, the climate is always changing and the concept of an optimum climate stasis is an idiotically impossible oxymoron.
Now that more and more people are becoming aware of the dual idiocy of a tautology “climate change” and its implied oxymoronic corollary of a “stationary climate” we are being prepared to move on to the next FUD, the acidification of the oceans.
Remarkably, the dire threats keep shifting, but the boogie man remains the same. And so does the collectivist socio-economic policy solutions.
What’s wrong with this picture?

Hunter,
I’d like to take a moderate approach. Absolutism makes me uncomfortable. e.g., Klaus claiming that there is no global warming–none. That’s a sloppy step too far.
The second part of the post is good, but the bit about ridiculing the conjunction of “acidification” with a basic ocean pH is a step too far.
Skeptics need to have higher standards for themselves and their claims.

The BBC article was titled “Acid Oceans.” They are not acidic, rather they are alkaline.
The 55,000 degrees number is from the Science Daily article linked to in that paragraph. The radiative heat from even a small fission device (like at Hiroshima) was enough to instantly vaporize people miles away from ground zero. A thermonuclear weapon like at Bikini releases thousands of times more energy.
Why would anyone expect corals to be so much more sensitive to CO2 than in the past? The argument that is often made is that the lower pH from rising CO2 softens the aragonite in shellfish and coral. Yet we know that atmospheric CO2 levels were much higher when corals and many species of shellfish appeared in the oceans. The physical properties of aragonite have not changed.
The onus needs to be on the people making the claims that a few more ppm CO2 will kill the corals – not the other way around.

The BBC title is “ACID oceans ‘need urgent action‘”.
So the BBC get it wrong, like always, in recent history.

As an ex-chemist I confidently assert that acidification means becoming acid, not staying alkaline. It’s misuse in this context is simple propaganda, not science. Apologists for propagandists have a lost cause.
I’ve also seen chemical claptrap spouted in this context by biologists along the lines that acidification caused by higher CO2 levels reduces carbonate ion availability for calcification for shell, coral formation etc. Complete nonsense. There is no way adding CO2 to water ever reduces carbonate ion concentrations.

“The BBC title is “ACID oceans ‘need urgent action‘”.
So the BBC get it wrong, like always, in recent history.”
Or maybe they are just playing along and turned the title into the joke that was the article. Acidification means to *make* acidic. You’ll notice they report “The researchers warn” and “they refer to”, not that the BBC is warning about ocean acidification.

So they have (questionable) data over 243 years, what about to those years from 1994, i am missing the those 15 years, what did happen in that time?
Accoording to this it will take almost 5 centuries from 1751 to somewhere halfway the 23rd century for the PH to drop from 8.179 to 8.029. The sky is falling it seems? NOT.

Hey there Watters,
I saw this headline in the BBC headlines a few hours ago and was checking it for signs of lunacy. I should have known that WUWT (or allied sites) would have done the analysis for me already.
Well anyway, thought I’d post a link to some related data for discussion. Here’s a NOAA-funded study of ocean pH, comparing observations done in 1991 and 2006.
http://www.marine.usf.edu/PDFs-and-DOCs/publications/Sherwood-AGU2006.pdf
Now, on the one hand, they also report pH has in fact decreased by almost the same amount that was predicted by atmospheric CO2 models.
On the other hand, what I find unscientific about it (aside from it being a poster and not a journal paper) is that it says in Fig 11 at the bottom right corner that they have graphed the “delta-pH signal from anthropogenic CO2”. That is plainly false. They have measured a drop in pH. There is nothing about this study that disproves all alternative influences on pH aside from CO2. Plus there is nothing about this study that tells where the CO2 came from, let alone that it is from human activity.
Personally I think that since CO2 has a higher solubility in warmer water than cooler water, and since the satellite measurements (MMU) of the SST have definitely shown (via e.g. CRU) the surface warmed between 1991 and 2006, this would mean the ocean would have sucked in more CO2 even if atmospheric CO2 concentration had stayed the same between 1991 and 2006. All they’ve done is build a million dollar thermometer – not an AGW fingerprint detective.
If anyone else wants to check it out and give a different opinion on the significance of this result, I would like to hear it.
See ya,
– Andrew McRae.

Here in England the BBC is now recognised as being nothing more than a Socialist organisation which backs the Labour Government’s socialist agenda whilst being financed by a legally enforceable tax on the general populace (the TV ‘licence’ fee).
Have a look at the newspaper article linked.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/4413474/BBC-abandons-impartiality-on-warming.html

Steven,
I would caution you about comparing modern day corals with corals extant in the Ordivician. The most common Ordivician corals belonged to the orders Rugosa and Tabulata while todays most common corals belong to the order Scleractinia. Sort of an apples and oranges kind of thing. Also the Rugosa and Tabulata became extinct at the end of the Permian whereas the first appearance of the Scleractinia in the fossil record is not until later in the mid-Triassic.
I also wonder where they collect the samples to measure the ocean’s pH. Do they take samples from near surface which are likely to have slightly lower pHs due to contamination from rainfall. Or do they take samples from deeper water.
It is my opinion that if they want to find out if the ocean is becoming less alkaline or more acidic they should be monitoring changes in depth of the lysocline and CCD (Carbonate Compensation Depth). The lysocline occurs where dissolution of CaCO3 increases significantly due to higher pressures and lower temperatures. The CCD is the depth at which the rate of dissolution of CaCO3 exceeds the rate of supply of calcium carbonate from calcareous pelagic organisms like foraminifera. Below the depth of the CCD no CaCO3 is present on the ocean floors. According to the Glossary of Geology the CCD in the Pacific Ocean occurs between 4000 and 5000m and in the Atlantic Ocean it is somewhat shallower. It also occurs at shallower depths in high latitudes than it does in tropical latitudes.

To have 55 000 degree temperatures for water, you must have impossibly high pressures, which is of course impossible in an open container (the ocean), except for some cubic meters of water.
This kind of numbers is exagerated and sensationalistic.

The fixation of carbon by oceanic animals is responsible for all the limestone in the world, is it not, from the white cliffs of Dover to Mt. Everest. I speculate that taken in total there is a lot more carbon in limestone than in fossil fuels. And a lot more annual fixation of carbon in the oceans than on land. Furthermore, terrestrial biomass is prone to combustion and de-sequesterization of the carbon, whereas in the oceans the calcium carbonate sinks and remains intact for eons.
Unless it is uplifted by plate tectonics, or is thermonuclearized, and even then marine critters replace it shortly thereafter.
Is any of that in the climate models??????

There were quite a few test there, apparently.

This seems to be the key point in all global warming arguments. The warmists persistently ignore the growing mass of data showing that no matter how much they may wish that CO2 is demolishing the planet, there simply isn’t any evidence for it.
How on earth can we skeptics ever win the day when faced with religious zeal? No matter how much evidence is produced, the environmentalists still seem to have the world’s media and politicians in their pocket. That’s what I find most frustrating about the whole global warming argument. I try not to despair, but I’m at a loss as to how we can make the world sit up and take notice of the evidence. Any thoughts?

Fraizer:-)
When I was a young engineer (many moons ago) in 1991-2, I worked on the structural design of a bunch of underground sewage treatment pump houses/chambers in Negril, Jamaica. (Sadly I never got to go there on site due to being made redundant in the recession of that period). They desperately needed the treatment plants to boost tourism & to protect the surrounding coral reefs from degradation from pumping raw untreated sewage into the seas! There was no mention in the report of this coral reef degradation being caused by CO2 in the atmosphere despite that being a regular call from the alarmist camps!
Glenn;-)
I suggest then that the BBC reporting is maybe covering its rear for the possibility of greater cooling, & the world (sorry that should be rich western democracies) realising they’re being conned big time. One Adolf Hitler said in his book ‘the mass of the people are more likely to believe a big lie than a small one!’. If one thinks about it logically this is perfectly true, something that is so huge & incredible must be true! Most people I know over 40 have similar views to myself, perhaps there is a hidden tactic of waiting for all us old fogies over 40 to pop our clogs then the circle will be complete! Millionaire socialist (the very worst kind) Maurice Strong has made his position very clear, the people should be controlled, especially the western democracies. I find this kind of propaganda repulsive, the rich & famous are frequently seen using their popularity & clout to highlight social/environmental issues that require the necessary raising of taxes for everyone, when they are themselves wealthy beyond most peoples needs & wants or even desires, yet they will happily employ the skills of accountants to ensue they pay as little as possible!

After been studying the Global Warming movement and the bad science it is based on I have come to realize that the problem is not only limited to Global Warming but it goes much deeper and it now affects most disciplines of natural science.
Most scientists in these disciplines are disciples of what I call Apocalyptic Environmentalism of which the Global Warming Movement is just a part, although an important one.
This religion has its roots in the belief in a very fragile and delicate ecological balance. If this balance is changed, especially if this is caused by human activity, then the system will crash. In other words, if humans continue to industrialize, soon the birds will start falling from the sky, plants will start to dye and the only fish left in the oceans will soon by jellyfish.
Of course in reality the natural world is very adaptable and have adopted through evolution to at times very sudden and rapid change. The only stable thing in nature is change.
So we have today an army of researcher who look for trends, extrapolate these trends, then conclude that they will be catastrophic and then blame humans for the trends. This are then picked up by MSM as part of its tabloidisation. And because people and politicians respond to fears and are scientific ignorant they believe in it.
We are now in a period of cooling and eventually the global warming scare will die. How long that will take I don’t know, but when it dies, then I expect that they will push the ocean acidification scare to the max.

There have been many references to the bias of the BBC on this thread. Today, Christopher Booker’s column in the Sunday Telegraph, highlights many more.
I realise this is slightly off topic but worth a visit to:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/4413474/BBC-abandons-impartiality-on-warming.html

I have a stupid question regarding acidification and the sensitivity of modern coral vs. those 500 million years old. When Mt. Pinatubo blew in the ’90s it released massive amounts of sulfur dioxide in a short period of time. I could see how there could have been localized areas of the ocean where there was actual acidification for a period of time. What happened to the coral reefs in the areas that became more acidic, albeit for a brief period?

‘Acidification’ is simply the correct word for a negative shift in pH, as others have pointed out, the corals that became widespread in the Ordovician period, the Rugose and Tabulate, are now extinct- as a brief visit to wiki would have uncovered, so this point is actually evidence against the argument that the current species are robust against acidification.
If the corals are so tough, then why have we lost about a fifth of the reefs since 1950? While initially the main causes were overfishing and pollution, in recent decades it has been mass bleaching events, triggered by warmer waters that present the main threat – Coral bleaching occurs when coral is stressed, the coral expels the colourful symbiotic unicellular algae leaving it with a whitened bleached out appearance. I’ve seen a bleached reef first and hand and it is a sobering sight. Bleaching is not necesarily a death sentence, if the cause of stress is removed then the coral can regenerate quite quickly.
In one single year – 1998 16% of the coral was functionally destroyed, and the overall rate of loss is faster than that of the rainforests. In the future acidification by the CO2 enriched atmosphere may damage considerably the ability of corals to form hard structures.
The 2008 GCRMN annual status summary had
The condition of coral reefs in most regions of the world has progressively declined during the past 3 to 4 decades. Initial damage was largely caused by human activities, such as over- and destructive fishing, inappropriate coastal developments and land-use causing sedimentation and nutrient pollution, and outbreaks of coral and fish diseases and predators such as the crown-of-thorns starfish; all of which might have been exacerbated by human activities. However, since the first recognised mass bleaching event in 1982/83, there has been growing concern about the influence of climate on coral reefs. Unfortunately, these concerns have been vindicated by the increasing frequency and intensity of mass coral bleaching events, particularly in 1998 when approximately 16% of the world’s reefs were functionally destroyed, in 2002 when reefs across the western Pacific were affected, and in 2005 when severe bleaching and coral disease caused up to 50% mortality in many areas of the Caribbean. Caribbean reefs were also subjected to 26 named storms, including 13 hurricanes in 2005. There is also growing recognition that increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2 threaten the structural integrity of reefs by reducing the rate of calcification in corals.
Coincidentally the four-yearly International Coral Reef Symposium was held this year. The Outcomes communiqué contains the stark sentence ‘The canary in the coral-coal mine is dead, but we still have time to save the miners’ and the assembled experts felt the need to issue a ‘Call to Action’ : .2008 is a critical time for coral reefs. At the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium held in July, midway in the International Year of the Reef, over 3000 experts from 75 countries assembled to face some hard truths: coral reefs are teetering on the edge of survival and it is our fault. High levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have produced a lethal combination of hotter and less alkaline seawater. Pervasive overfishing, pollution, coastal development, and physical damage further undermine reef health, and consequently, that of the people and ecosystems depending upon them … Only by taking bold and urgent steps now can we hope to ensure that reefs will survive to enrich life on earth, as they have for millions of years before us. By failing to act we risk bequeathing an impoverished ocean to our children and future generations.
For those with a serious interest and a sub to Science here is a literature review, containing this plot of CO2, temp and pH from the Vostok ice cores. And the 2005 Royal Society report on the topic is here. (Large pdf).
JP.

Here is just one gobbley-gook statement from the Royal Society paper –
“Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide” –
http://royalsociety.org/displaypagedoc.asp?id=13314
used by many as evidence of ocean acidification.
“These additions of CO2 to the deep oceans cause its pH to decrease as the deep waters transit from the North Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.”
How, exactly, do deep waters transit from the North Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean? I know that deep waters might transit from the SOUTH Atlantic to the Pacific. It is also possible for water to transit from the Arctic Ocean (considered by some to be an arm of the Atlantic); however, the Bering Strait is shallow – so there could be no deep water transit.

Frasier:
Unfortunately, adding CO2 to dissolve limestone is quite different from adding CO2 to oceans over decades, which lowers pH and makes it difficult for calcifying organisms like corals and molluscs to take calcium out of solution. This seems to be just the opposite of the results which you observed in your aquaria with corals. Presumably, if you lowered the pH of your aquarium this would have had a negative effect on your corals. This is what many scientific experiments are showing–that corals are sensitve to small decreases in pH and this results in lower Ca uptake.
To examine this in a scientific experiment, you going to need replicate aquaria and you are going to need to measure and control pH and calcium in solution. You can then measure coral growth and, perhaps, Ca uptake by the corals. If you had 9 aquaria, you could have 3 replicate controls and two levels of pH change with three resplicates of each. You could then compare your results with any number of published scientific studies.
If you study is published, then we could compare your results with those of other studies. To get your paper published you would need to read up on the literature so that your study could be placed in the context of studies already published.
Scientists rely on studies published in scientific journals rather than anecdotes published on blogs. Scientific debates occur in scientific journals. When scientists start a new line of research, this often involves reading a few hundred published articles. This helps provide an understanding of what is known and what is still controversial or unstudied.

So the headline should read; “Less Basic Oceans ‘Need Urgent Action‘”, in lieu of “Acid Oceans ‘Need Urgent Action‘”.
Alternatively, “Less Basic Oceans are Fun to Study, but Urgent Government Funding Action is Needed”

People don’t like change. They see it as a threat – always bad. Ecologists are guilty of this too, and we as a species find it all too easy to forget that our brief human lifespan is but a blink of a eye in terms of natural global change (as frequently discussed here!), species’ evolution and population shifts.
After a previous post on this subject I came across a very good presentation (I will try to find it again) on the subject of the decline in corals (Great Barrier Reef region) due to increased temperature, and one thing that struck me was that the future may bring a reverse of the decline, or a population shift as species from other (warmer) areas move in. A future “snapshot” study would conclude that these corals were part of the natural population. Also, once again (cf. CO2) how do we distinguish natural change from human cause and effect? Ecological alarmists always assume change is caused by man and is bad.
Regarding pH measurement:
“One also has to wonder how they measured the pH of the ocean to 4 decimal places in 1751, since the idea of pH wasn’t introduced until 1909.”
One thing 18th and 19thC scientists were good at was measurement – detailed, accurate measurement. In fact many were obsessed by accuracy. The term and concept (pH) was only putting a name and number to what was already being measured by wet chemistry. Colour changing indicators of acidity/alkalinity had been known for a long time; some of these have very defined colour change end-points.
Using large volumes and weak acids increases accuracy – under such conditions pH titrations to 2 decimal places requires care but is not difficult. One assumes that four decimal place accuracy comes from a calculated average of many measurements.

Lucy Skywalker (02:30:38) :
Thanks for the link to Dr Floor Antonini’s website. Facinating.

My understanding of the scientific literature on coral reefs matches well with the comments of John Philip above. If coral reefs were only affected by pollution and overfishing, this would not be such a serious problem, since reefs far from human populations would be largely uneffected. For example, reefs near Florida might be at risk but the Great Barrier Reef of Australia would be relatively safe. Again, unfortunately, coral bleaching and death is occuring far from coastlines with significant local human impact.
Coral bleaching in recent years has mainly been associated with ocean heating events. The optimal temperature for corals is unfortunately, less that 2oC below the lethal temperature. Temperatures too hot cause loss of the symbiotic algae that contributes most of the energy that most corals use. When the bleaching becomes long term, the corals die. Many studies show direct plots between warming events and bleaching events over large expanses of coral reefs.
My readings suggest that the decreases in ocean pH are just becoming important corals and will become a more serious problem over the coming decades. This effect of CO2 on ocean pH is a relatively new finding that was not well known among scientists until recently.

OT:
I had no idea that sea level rise was causing so many problems:
“As sea levels rise and world weather patterns worsen, flooding has become a major cause of rice crop loss. Scientists estimate 4 million tons of rice are lost every year because of flooding. That’s enough rice to feed 30 million people.”
From CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/01/29/waterproof.rice/index.html
Amazing how they manage to insert little snipits like that…
So is it the flooding?…or the sea level rise?…how much of each?
JimB

Here is a famous picture from Hiroshima of the shadow of a person and ladder burned onto a wall, which was undamaged from the shock wave.
http://history.independence.co.jp/ww2/raid/h02.jpg
It had to have been quite far away from ground zero, and had to have received huge amounts of radiative heat.
My belief is that nuclear proliferation in the Middle East is far more dangerous than a few tens of PPM of extra CO2, but apparently that is not in tune with the current thinking of the best minds in Washington, London and Brussels.

This is only “Climate Change” marketing, it is not about any scientific reasoning whatsoever. It is just a political issue. Fortunately nature does not follow our wishes. They will not succeed in changing the laws of nature.
Every chemical compound reaches an equilibrium state, say an end state, the one for CO2 is calcium carbonate (chalk, marble,etc.)
For sure, some day, in the future, our grandchildrens, will find AGW´rs bones in a phosphates field….

Smokey – I guess you have in mind the Dimmock vs ‘Inconvenient Truth’ court case [point 9]. The judge actually found that attribution of bleaching solely to GW was unsupportable. Its particularly hard to understand the judicial thought processes on this one as the movie makes exactly the same point.
I am not sure that a law court is the optimal forum to determine the merit of a scientific argument: apparently the judge agreed: It was essential to appreciate that the hearing before me did not relate to an analysis of the scientific questions

The losses of coral reefs worldwide over the last 30 years or so are attributed to “coral bleaching” which means that corals lose their algal symbionts and then die. Google Scholar lists over 15,000 hits on the key words “coral bleaching” and the first two articles are available free as PDF’s. These articles show that the bleaching events are linked to “warming events.” That is, high peak ocean surface temperatures. Of course, the corals don’t care about the warming events are human-caused or “natural.” If the ocean temperatures stay the same or continue to warm, most or all of the world’s coral reefs will die off in the current century. If the oceans cool, the coral reefs should be able to recover unless acidification (decline in pH) causes them to die off.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=coral+bleaching&hl=en&lr=&btnG=Search
Anyone interested in debating or discussing the decline in coral reefs should read at least a few of these articles.

Neil Crafter (23:13:31) : “The use of the term “acidification” is scary to the average punter. The effect is to make the oceans very slightly less alkaline, but that term does not have the right scare factor for the AGW scarists. ”
You are absolutely correct. While “acidification” may be technically correct, I believe is was a conscious effort to scare the average joe. I believe if you ask most people on the street they will tell you that first thing the word “acid” brings to mind is flesh disolving liquids that kill everything.
I also believe the average joe thinks higher PH means more acidic. This is probably due to usually referring to things as more/less acidic and rarely referring to them as more/less basic; therefore they then make the incorrect conclusion that the words “more acidic” equate to “more PH”.

I haven’t read all the comments yet and may not have time, but I wanted to suggest that perhaps loss of coral reefs might be due to excess nitrogen and sedimentation, and even disease rather than CO2.
I mean Occam’s Razor and all that.
Mark

John Philip
Firstly, acidification is only one way to describe it, neutralization is more correct and reduced alkalinity is yet another way – equally worrying to any ocean researchers. Acidification is simply the scary way – and my discussion with the author of that Wikipedia article (as JG17) proved beyond all doubt that the use of the word acidification was entirely a political decision, not a scientific one. When I requested the addition of the comment in the article about the sea still actually being alkaline – as per the pH scale we all learnt in high school chemistry, one of his return comments was:
“it’s unclear exactly who would feel misled other than someone who hasn’t a basic grasp of chemistry.”
Well clearly the BBC reporter didn’t have that necessary basic grasp of chemistry. And reporters inform the general public. He was quite simply misinformed and it wasn’t by accident but by design. Acid sea, factually incorrect as it is, is design to shock and the word “acidification” led him to incorrectly believe that the sea was acid. It’s pure propaganda.
I’d like to see the study that says bleaching is caused by acidity. Traditionally bleaching is caused by excess alkalinity. So acidity is not necessarily the first thing you might think about wrt bleaching. It could be fertilizer runoff to mention just one rather more likely candidate.
The reference to the Caribbean is good as far as it goes, but they completely fail to mention that the coral in Cuba is utterly pristine – as reported several times in National Geographic, latterly by the late Peter Benchley. Why pristine? Mostly because Castro doesn’t allow fishing boats there, plus some basic environmental protection measures. So the case against CO2 in the Caribbean falls apart completely when you consider Cuba. A mere error of omission? Unlikely because every marine biologist knows about Cuba’s coral, so it is almost certainly another deliberately political misrepresentation for propaganda purposes – likely in order to encourage funding.
So why is it important to be factually correct and precise with respect to the evidence against CO2 or acidification “stress” if the main aim is to get funding to improve things? Well, as others have said, there are very good reasons to worry about the real causes of ocean degradation, and they are usually human in cause too; fishing, runoff etc. Yet how do we begin to stop this pollution of the seas, which is most certainly far more dastardly and imminent than some imaginary “stress” caused by CO2, if those polluters are allowed and even encouraged to shift the blame to CO2 and then continue happily polluting?

Consider the difference between a petroleum geologist and a climate researcher.
The geologist remotely studies the subsurface sometimes for years, then decides to ask his company to drill a multi-million dollar well. If he is wrong, he may well lose his job and reputation.
On the other hand, it is well understood that some research “scientists” need only come up with an alarming story, and they will get front page coverage on many of the world’s newspapers and in the halls of Congress and Parliament. Journalists and politicians want an alarming story. The truth behind it is secondary or often even unacceptable.
Has Lewis Pugh made it to the North Pole yet?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7588329.stm

Thanks for the link Lucy Skywalker, fascinating real science.

Unpolluted rainwater falling in the ocean has a pH of about 5.2, which is about one thousand times as acidic as seawater. Acid rain has been measured at about one million times as acidic as seawater. Every raindrop that hits the ocean makes it less alkaline.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain
Perhaps Parliament should legislate an end to rainfall in the oceans, to reduce “ocean acidification?”

Chemistry was always my weak link. I have tried reading reams of science review – including the Royal Society report, and just now, Floor Anthoni, and I am still confused!
Warming ocean waters release carbon dioxide and become more acid? Cooling oceans absorb carbon dioxide and…..?
Hence – solar induced 20th century global warming warms the oceans, with great spatial and depth variation, and there is outgassing and rising carbon dioxide levels BUT the current rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide is apparently clearly due to fossil fuels (c-14 already decayed) and not ocean outgassing (c-14 not decayed? but the deep water has been enriched from the sediments which may have long lost their c-14???)
I am more than somewhat confused. And I do recommend Floor Anthoni for his refreshing approach – even if it will take me a month to study and understand!

Out of curiosity, I consulted my reliable Websters Unabridged Dictionary, which was published in 1989, before the ball got rolling on the “acidification” of the oceans issue. It defines “acidify”, the verb form, and “acidification” the noun form as: “to make or become acid; convert into an acid.”
It’s pretty clear to me that the term became applied to a slight reduction in alkalinity to elicit a fear reaction. Why don’t we say the ocean is becoming less caustic? 😉
It’s sad how WIkipedia has been corrupted, and can only be trusted on non-controversial matters.

RobJM, so you know Biology 101? Heard of Liebig’s Law of the Minimum?
Algae will take oxygen, the part that is missing in the oceanic dead zones, but they need other nutrients too, so doubt your envisioned scheme has a long lasting life, anywhere in the living world.

I made a comment a few weeks ago about the fallacious use of ‘acidification’. CO2 and its magical effects are just silly. Warm water holds less CO2, so unless there is some other source for acid, the oceans must be cooling to become less alkaline. The equilibrium of dissolved CO2 in the oceans, maxiumum levels, were reached long before we crawled out of the swamps. There is a lot more going on in our world than CO2, it needs a lot less attention than it is getting so we can tackle real problems.

Jennifer Marohasy points to Craig Idso’s article on coral responses to CO2.
It is worthwhile reading what some real-world investigative research has shown as opposed to a bunch of armchair theorizing.

Jeff L says:

4) Back one more time to John Philip (04:51:14) : – which says bleaching events are associated with warming events – such as the 1998 El Nino. We know that CO2 solubility decreases with increasing temperature – so a warming event would decrease the disolved CO2 in the area of warming – so we are having dying / bleaching events in water with LESS CO2 (and in theory higher PH). Again, the data always says more CO2 is better – at least when it comes to coral. The data appears to be not permissive of arguing the opposite.

Yes. This is one very solid demonstration that alarmist are unwilling to think through the consequences of their claims and that they are solely interested in scaring people for political reasons.
Let me set this out in words of one syllable for you AGWers.
Higher CO2 is supposed to lead to higher temperatures, including ocean temperatures! However, higher water temperatures lead to lower levels of dissolved CO2 and thus higher Ph in the oceans, that is, lower acidification and corals should thrive, by your assumption.
This would seem to be a major fail on the part of the hysterical.

Jeff L –
pH is a logarithmic scale, so the math is a little more involved than finding a ratio. At the same time, I agree this is much ado about nothing, and the original article is terrible reporting.

Most of these comments are just ignorant bloviating, reflecting a complete lack of understanding of basic geochemistry and oceanography. Go to the literature and do some reading, before you shoot your mouth off! Two good places to start are:
1. Hoegh-Guldberg, et al. 2007. Coral reefs under rapid climate change and ocean acidification. Science 318:1737-1472.
2. De’ath et al. 2009. Declining coral calcification in the Great Barrier Reef. Science 323:116-119.
These papers will lead you other good ones. If you can’t find them for free on line, then get thee to a library (remember what a library is?)

Steven Goddard asked “Has Lewis Pugh made it to the North Pole yet?”
According to Wikipedia … “The expedition coincided with some scientists predicting that the North Pole could be free of sea-ice for the first time this summer[1]; however, Pugh was forced to abandon his planned 745-mile trip about 500 miles from the North Pole due to ice.”
Back on topic, can anyone direct me to a data base of actual ph measurements over time? Thanks in advance for assistance.

Jeff:
One problem with your analysis is the assumption that a pH of 7 has signficance for aquatic life. Currently living coral species will be long gone before a pH of 7.0 is reached.
Howevery, you need to read research by chemical oceanographers to be sure that your conclusions about debunking ocean acidification are valid. Compare your reasoning with a few dozen articles written by experts in ocean chemistry before you assume that they are wrong. I am not an expert in this field, but I have better trust in people who have published peer reviewed papers on the topic.

Bill D asks an interesting question:

Do you assume that medical science, for example is equally unreliable?

H pylori?
Anyhow, please connect the dots for us. So, increasing acidification has been proven to be bad for corals by sound scientific work … all well and good.
Increasing human-produced atmospheric CO2 is supposed to lead to increased atmospheric temperatures, which lead to increased sea-surface temperatures and temperatures of the seas where corals live, which is supposed to do what to the levels of CO2 in the ocean and thus the level of pH of the ocean?
Help me understand what is going on here. I like to understand all the causal chains. Perhaps I have one of the links wrong.

I don’t know why my post on this doesn’t appear above, but here’s the link again, with some additional info…
CO2 measurements in the ocean…
http://www.mgac.nsysu.edu.tw/ctchen/Publications/A/64.pdf
(note – (1) the pH values decrease with ocean depth (2) the pH values are much lower than those given by the BBC, even though they were made earlier than the BBC “report.” [surface pH of 7.916 to 7.945, and at 10 meters pH measured at from 8.183 to 8.184])
Here some of the same authors take measurements at different locations with the same result that pH decreases with ocean depth…
http://www.mgac.nsysu.edu.tw/ctchen/Publications/A/95.pdf
(Note that here the data show surface pH varying from about 8.25 to a little about 8.35, seemingly dependent on location, and that in this case the pH they observe is HIGHER than the BBC’s [8.104 to 8.179])
Conclusion – pH is a lot more variable than the warmers want you to believe, and that being afraid of a drop in some global average (a meaningless concept) by a tiny fraction of that value, and well within a much larger range, is not only not scientific, it’s just plain dumb; the BBC’s information is Bubkas.

Bill D
Unfortunately, the rate of acidification of the world’s oceans is about 100X faster than in the past… This means that the coral species that now present will have difficulty surviving. … However, it is naive to think that the animals that currently occupy the world’s oceans are the same ones that occurred millions of years ago when the world’s atmospheric CO2 was higher… Animals (including corals) may have difficulty adapting to the rapid acidification …
—-
Fraizer (22:11:28) :
I can tell you for a fact that my corals have never done so well since I began the regular addition of CO2.
———-
When I see a post like this from Bill D AFTER the post from Fraizer – I have to conclude that one’s intuition carries more weight than facts. Maybe I’m naive, but facts carry more weight with me. Do I have that wrong, Bill?

I said, “the pH values are much lower than those given by the BBC, even though they were made earlier than the BBC “report.” [surface pH of 7.916 to 7.945, and at 10 meters pH measured at from 8.183 to 8.184])”
Sorry, I just realized that’s confusing.
**the higher values for 10 meters were at a different location from the surface measurements.
**those values at 10 meters were higher in that case than the BBC’s, not lower as MOST of the other data on that site were.

Yes, and this is the real problem with being able to blame all environmental problems on CO2s contribution to global warming. It is that governments have a convenient reason to look away from finding the real source of the problem and the people buying the politicians, i.e., big business, are happy to have AGW as the main focus of our environmental efforts.

“Natural variability” includes things like asteroid impacts, volcanoes, tsunamis, floods, droughts, ice ages, etc. Those who cling to the idea that nature is naturally “stable” are deluding themselves.
A key point of this piece is to point out the gap between the theorists and the observational record. One of my favourite Michael Crichton lines was from Jurassic Park – “life will find a way.” Clearly the corals have recovered exceptionally well at Bikini despite all the “thousands of papers” which predict they should have done otherwise. I have been near a few nuclear blasts, and I can assure you that they produce more rapid changes to the environment than CO2 increasing by 0.00009 concentration.
Good thing no scientists have yet been allowed to dump chemicals in the ocean to stop global warming. Who knows how much damage that will do?
Maybe people can write a few thousand more papers to convince the Bikini corals that they are supposed to be dead?

Chen-Tung A. chen, is a very prolific investigator. I don’t know enough to critique his work yet, but he’s got lots of data, and his methods do seem ok on superficial reading. Also, he seems to also have milking the AGW funding cow down to an art.
In this paper he has info on pH which also shows it’s variability. (see esp., figs 3 and 10)
http://www.mgac.nsysu.edu.tw/ctchen/Publications/A/86.pdf

Robert Rust says:

When I see a post like this from Bill D AFTER the post from Fraizer – I have to conclude that one’s intuition carries more weight than facts. Maybe I’m naive, but facts carry more weight with me. Do I have that wrong, Bill?

Unfortunately, we don’t know the state of Fraizer’s aquariums before he started adding CO2. It is an interesting data point, but to make it science would involve …
Of course, those guys who got the Nobel in Medicine for the discovery of H Pylori and their association with peptic ulcers got their start by listening to interesting real-world observations, or so I am lead to believe.

Richard Sharpe (10:00:02) :
Marcus’ comment about Henry’s law is the simplest way to look at CO2 equilibrium between the atmosphere and water. You can be sure that oceanographers are also considering effects of wind mixing and other factors. As Marcus points out, the effect of the increase in atmospheric CO2 in increasing CO2 in the ocean is much greater than the effect of water warming in reducing CO2 solubility
Scientist doing experiments and obsevations on the effects of pH and temperature on corals donot need to consider why the oceans are warmer, only that in the last 20+ years the increases in peak temperatures are too high for corals. However, if you want make predictions about the future, you need to know whether water temperature will continue to rise and if humans will continue to use large amounts of fossil fuels.
The oceans have been a major sink for carbon over the ages. For example, many studies have looked at how fecal pellets of copepods carry undigested carbon to deep sediments. There are hundreds of studies by oceanographers on how carbon and many other elements are transported from the upper mixed layers of the ocean to deep waters. In general, however, a lot of the carbon dioxide adsorped into the ocean is recycled in the upper layers even after it is taken up in photosynthesis. Deposing of carbon usually requires the transport of particulate matter to deep waters. Most algae sink too slowly to fall into deeper waters before decomposing. Diatoms have higher sinking rates and are therefore an exception. Some planktonic protists also have limestone skeletons and enter the sediments when they die.
Although this is not my field, I am aware of sessions of oceangraphy meetings that considered silica depletion (Si is required by diatoms) to be an important factor in determining the oceans effect as a carbon sink over past millenia and in the present as well. Over the last 20 + years thousands of studies have been published that are increasing our understanding of carbon cycling in the oceans and its potential effect on climate, past, present and future. Modeling studies are only a part of this effort.
The story of H. pilori is a classic in science. Scientists did not believe that this bacterium was an important cause of stomach ulcers until its discoverer published convincing results. When scientist think that they may have a new discovery, they work very hard to collect data and conduct experiments that will be convincing to other scientists. When you make a significant discovery and/or find a new test of an hypothesis, this is a good chance to write a convincing and successful grant proposal.

Smokey:
Having two reef aquariums in my home, I must agree with Fraizer.
A buffer is the combination of an acid with a base, and that is called a salt. When a salt is in solution, the introduction of a very weak acid it neutalized by the buffer.
Last year, someone was debating with me on this same subject, so I had us both perform the exact same experiment.
We each setup two 1 liter test bottles and place 1 cm of Argonite in the bottom of these test containers.
Aquarium salt was then mixed to a specific gravity of 1.023 and placed into our test and control bottles.
To generate CO2, another bottle was created with aquarium tubing attached to its top. Each day, 1 tbs of baking soda and 1 cup of white vinegar was placed into the CO2 generation bottles and the gases were bubbled into the saltwater test bottle.
Each day, prior to the introduction of the CO2, Aquarium pH test strips were used to test the water in each of the test bottles.
For three months, my buddy and I conducted this experiment. He was absolutly convinced the the CO2 would acidify the saltwater.
I knew better!
Was this a perfectly controlled experiment?
No, but it got the point across to my buddy about the effect of a buffer (salt) in the solution.

I think this article implies that Coral is too stupid to evolve. Its kind of like people worrying about people from Bangledesh drowning when the mythical rise in Oceans occur. That too implies that the people from bangledesh who now cope with tides that rise and fall 15 feet are too stupid to deal with a few inches of ocean rise in 100 years.
In reality, the article proves that the BBC are too stupid to evolve and are incapable of dealing with facts and new information.

There are a lot of “expert” opinions here implying that coral bleaching is due to AGW. I prefer to listen to a real expert who tested that hypothesis in his reef aquariums.
Category Error. The acidification (or de-alkalinisation) is a concern because it will make it harder for calcifying organisms to make hard structures. This requires seawater to be supersaturated with calcium and carbonate ions to ensure that once formed the CaCO3 does not dissolve. Lower pH reduces the carbonate saturation of the seawater, making calcification harder and also weakening any structures that have been formed. Feely et al found that a doubling of CO2 will reduce calcification by between 5-25% depending on species.
Coral Bleaching, on the other hand, in this context, is either a consequence of heat stress, or is made worse by heat stress.
Hypothesis testing is at the core of good science, of course, but you have to test the right hypothesis! It would be interesting to know of the pH if the aquarium was measured; however to test the global warming / bleaching hypothesis an experiment would have to be devised that increased the water temperature gradually to simulate the rise in SSTs over recent decades with occaional spikes of 2-3C to simulate El Nino events. Not an experiment I would recommend to someone who cares about the welfare of their aquarium …

Here’s my last point for this post.
I think that Frazier’s observation on how corals in his aquarium responded to CO2 AND calcium carbonate addition is a nice anecdotal observation. This is not be compared to the opinions of experts or to theory. Rather, as I scientist, I look to published articles where scientists used buffers, included controls, included replication and statistical analysis, measured coral growth and survival quantitatively, wrote up their methods, results and conclusions in detail, displayed data in graphs and tables, placed their study in the context of 20-50 other cited studies and subjected their work to review and criticism by experts. These studies show strong negative effects of decreased pH on corals while Frazier did not even measure effect of his additions on pH. I hope that everyone can agree that the published scientific papers are more convincing than Frazier’s observation. Google Scholar is relatively new, free search engine and makes it easier for scientists and especially, for people without paid subscriptions to other search engines to access the scientific literature. I hope that some of you, including Frazier, check read some scientific articles on effects of pH and temperature on corals.

Here is a good coral reef GIS resource, which shows overfishing and coastal development as being the primary sources of risk to coral reefs. I don’t see any mention of CO2 on the site.
http://reefgis.reefbase.org/default.aspx?wms=RGRRRCAR&bbox=-103.808693265072,25.8935666327375,-93.7331787563456,35.2426724764468&layers=Bathymetry,Countries,ReefOverfishing,Bathymetry

Adolfo Giurfa (08:25:05) :
Though, as i said before, this is not about science but just marketing, it is useful to underline that for CO2 to increase its amount in sea water it needs a cooler sea water, then they have to choose between global warming, as they say, as a consequence of CO2 increase in the atmosphere, with warmer seas and less CO2 in the sea water, or colder seas with more dissolved CO2 in it.

Exactly.
Or else perhaps to escape this choice, the AGW scientists should tell us what atmospheric CO2 concentration it is which then effectively overcomes – by virtue of simple “mass action” – the decreased solubility of CO2 in warming water so that dissolved CO2 actually increases in this warming water, producing increased concentrations of Hydrogen ions [“acidity”].
So that then the World can have both acidifying Oceans, and warming Oceans and Atmosphere at the same time, as a result of atmospheric CO2.
CO2 + H2O H2CO3[Carbonic Acid] H[“acidity”] + HCO3[Bicarbonate]

In Fraizer’s aquaria, were there control tanks, to which no CO2 was added? Did he measure water temperature, nutrient (N&P) concentrations, salinity, etc. Were the grazer and fish populations the same in the treatment and control tanks? Did he measure pH and CO2 concentration in the water? Were there any replications? If the answer to any of these questions is NO, then it was not an experiment, and cannot be used to falsify a hypothesis, though his observations might be used to formulate a hypothesis. It’s the difference between science and messing around.

CO2 + H2O H2CO3[Carbonic Acid] H[“acidity”] + HCO3[Bicarbonate]
Sorry, my symbols between sides of the equations didn’t translate above:
CO2 + H2O = H2CO3[Carbonic Acid] = H[“acidity”] + HCO3[Bicarbonate]
the “=” is not correct, either, but so far it’s the best I can do.

Mea culpa – erratum !
Sorry folks after thinking it through and then reading up a little more I should point out that I have erred.
The Carbonate/Bicarbonate buffering reaction I alluded to does in fact occur and is vital to retaining the health of the sea. The reaction is slightly different to the one described. The CO2 dissolves and forms Carbonic Acid, that Carbonic Acid reacts with Calcium Carbonate to form Calcium Bicarbonate.
As these two push and pull against each other the pH naturally varies between 7.5 and 8.5, right now it’s at about 8.2.
The alarmists are ringing the alarm bells because of an assumption that the mixing between upper layers of the ocean and the lower layers is thought to be a slow process taking up to 300 years. This would allow the CO2 to concentrate in the upper layers to the point where it overcomes the buffering and depresses the pH.
Here’s a link to a paper by Mr. G.E. Marsh, Argonne National Laboratory (retd) that discusses the above
http://www.gemarsh.com/wp-content/uploads/SEAWATER%20pH%20&%20ANTHRO%20CO2%20V2.pdf
There is no evidence that this long cycle time is true, it’s an assumption, there is evidence that the contrary is true i.e. the mixing is a lot faster than the alarmist assume that it is. e.g. Tritium from Nuclear testing in the Pacific in the 1950’s and 60’s has already shown up in the deep waters of the North Atlantic.

Thanks, that is something that everyone who has attempted to grow a coral reef in a private aquarium soon learns.
I am not sure how you get the 7.5 to 8.5 variability, but at least you understood the basic concepts.
Later;
“The Carbonate/Bicarbonate buffering reaction I alluded to does in fact occur and is vital to retaining the health of the sea. The reaction is slightly different to the one described. The CO2 dissolves and forms Carbonic Acid, that Carbonic Acid reacts with Calcium Carbonate to form Calcium Bicarbonate.
As these two push and pull against each other the pH naturally varies between 7.5 and 8.5, right now it’s at about 8.2.”

John Philip,
The article did not say that Bikini corals were thriving in the past, but are now succumbing to CO2. What it did say is that the corals are thriving now.
“it was incredible, huge matrices of branching Porites coral (up to 8 meters high) had established, creating thriving coral reef habitat. Throughout other parts of the lagoon it was awesome to see coral cover as high as 80 per cent and large tree-like branching coral formations with trunks 30cm thick. It was fascinating I’ve never seen corals growing like trees outside of the Marshall Islands. ” “The healthy condition of the coral at Bikini atoll today is proof of their resilience and ability to bounce back from massive disturbances”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080415101021.htm

Garacka (13:11:58) :
Is “Bleaching” being used in a technical sense to mean exposure to more alkaline conditions or is it being used in a non-technical sense to refer to whitening?
If the 1st definition, than it means the oceans are becoming more basic as the surface waters warm and the corals are bleached.
If the 2nd definition, then something is happening to the Oceans and the corals are ejecting their algae and therefore whitening.
Bleaching is clearly used in the sense of whitening due to loss of the dinoflagellate algae. Death of the corals is due to a loss of the symbiotic algae as a source of nutrition. If the high temperature is short in duration, corals can sometimes recover from bleaching. However, bleaching kills the algae on a time scale of weeks.
The coral reefs have experienced fluctuations of 2oC in the past, but not from such a high starting point.
Someone in a past posting talked about pollution problems being an alternative explanation for bleaching events in the Great Barrier Reef. Was this just a “made up” idea? This vast area is not near sources of pollution. Can you provide a source of information on pollution problems?

Sreve Huntwork
The 7.5 to 8.5 natural variability of ocean pH is demonstrated on page 10, Figure A 2 of the link.
http://www.gemarsh.com/wp-content/uploads/SEAWATER%20pH%20&%20ANTHRO%20CO2%20V2.pdf

Steve Goddard’s post is helpful in putting ocean acidification in perspective, but remember that pH reflects the logarithm of the ion concentration – it is not a linear scale. So, when Goddard writes
“Between 1751 and 1994 surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.179 to 8.104.” At that rate, it will take another 3,500 years for the ocean to become even slightly acid
Then if “rate” means that acidic substances (presumably cabonic acid from atmospheric CO2) are added at a constant rate per unit time, a much faster response in numerical pH per unit time will occur as one approaches nearer and nearer to neutrality. So, technically, it would not take 3,500 years to reach pH 7.0. Also, most of the change may have happened more recently than 1751, and taking a 250+ year time scale for the pH trend will underestimate the current rate of change if the change occurred mostly in recent decades.
I am not sure if this affects the overall argument. To assess the risk, one would have to know what are the pH tolerances of modern corals in our current oceans. I dare say there has been work on this, does anyone know of relevant publications? What happened at Bikini is not relevant, because once the bomb tests stopped, in a few yearsconditions presumably became similar enough to conditions prior to the tests that coral could grow back. The same is true when reefs are damaged by hurricanes, etc. – they eventually recover. But if the water becomes too cold/too hot/ too acid/too alkaline or in any other way toxic for them, and stays that way – that’s a different matter.
John G.

Ye gods man, do you guys get anything right before you criticize, comment and disparage? I’ll keep submitting comments here until you decide to actually publish them.
1) “Acidification” refers to the lowering of pH, not whether the liquid is an acid or alkili. Acidity refers to the concentration of hydrogen ions in the liquid, of which pH is a logarithmic measure. So a decline in pH indicates an increase in the acidic properties of the liquid, regardless of what the actual pH number is. The ocean is a tremendous buffer, and pH should generally change only on geological timescales, as indeed we know it has. The fact that we have been able to measure a decrease in modern instrumental time is very disturbing.
2) The decrease is driven by the increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. When CO2, which is very soluble, dissolves in seawater, it undergoes a series of chemical dissociations, first to form carbonic acid, then free bicarbonate ions, and finally carbonate ions. As the ocean becomes more saturated with CO2, this equilibrium is being shifted so that solid carbonate salts become more soluble. The most common biologically produced carbonate is calcium carbonate, one form of which is used by corals for the construction of their skeletons. Therein lies the reasons to worry about the corals as atmospheric CO2 concentration rises.
3) There is a lot that we don’t know about the potential impact of this issue. It will definitely be detrimental for a lot of organisms, and not only because of the attack on their skeletons, but also because the increase in CO2 in the water often causes hypercapnia; think of this as strangulation underwater.
4) Some organisms might benefit, and there is some experimental evidence to support this now. However, before we celebrate this, I’ve noted that the reports of these organisms generally involve species that are currently minor ecological components. If they rise to more dominant ecological roles, we’ll see a shift in community/ecosystem compositions and functioning. Whether these changes will be bad, neutral, or beneficial to other species, as well as human economic dependencies, is a wide open question. Be concerned gentlemen.
5) To the coral aquarium enthusiast who claimed that his corals have never done better since adding CO2 to his water, I’ll point out simply that he is making it easier for the corals to mineralize their carbonate skeletons. His aquarium water is definitely not at a saturation point. If he’s interested, keep ramping up the CO2 concentration, and see what happens. Science at home.

And one more point. Corals from the Ordovician were in no way comparable to modern corals. They were evolutionary distinct. Those reef builders were rugose corals. Today’s scleractinian corals evolved from a separate evolutionary lineage probably no earlier than the Triassic.

Sorry, HTML tags wrecked my equations. Trying again:

John Philip (12:01:09) : The acidification (or de-alkalinisation) is a concern because it will make it harder for calcifying organisms to make hard structures. This requires seawater to be supersaturated with calcium and carbonate ions to ensure that once formed the CaCO3 does not dissolve. Lower pH reduces the carbonate saturation of the seawater, making calcification harder and also weakening any structures that have been formed. Feely et al found that a doubling of CO2 will reduce calcification by between 5-25% depending on species.

This is a misrepresentation of the basic chemistry.
There are two aqueous dissociation constants involved:
(1) H2CO3 ← K1 → H+ & HCO3- ← K2 → 2H+ & CO3–
as well as the solubility reaction involving Henry’s Law at the surface:
(2) H20 + CO2 ← Ks → H2CO3
Adding more CO2 to the sea whether by increasing atmospheric CO2 or by cooling the water which modifies Ks can only drive equation 1 to the right, increasing the amount of CO3– in the water.
Likewise, increasing the amount of CO3– in the water (by dissolving Calcium Carbonate can only drive equation (1) to the left (incidentally making the water more alkaline.)
In this scenario the only way the ocean can be made more acidic without also increasing carbonate concentrations is to remove the carbonate by forming more shells and coral, not less.
So the alarmists are actually complaining that the increased coral and shell productivity over the last two centuries is going to slow down because of the decreased alkalinity it has caused. That is the real message of Feeny et al., in basic chemistry stripped of its spin.

Tim Clark (12:19:04) :
If you really think that Hoegh-Guldberg and his co-authors have got carbonate chemistry wrong, but you have it right, then you should write a letter to the editors of Science Magazine, correcting their mistake(s). I will be watching for it, but not holding my breath.

John Game,
Good point about the 3500 years to neutral. The number isn’t terribly meaningful though because of the buffering effects of limestone in the oceans. As pH decreases, more CaCO3 dissolves, tending to drive the pH back up. It would be simple enough to dump powdered CaCO3 into the oceans to keep the pH up, if people are worried about it. Remember that shellfish appeared in the oceans when atmospheric CO2 levels were much higher than the present.
As far as the bomb effect goes, of course it is important. The fact that the ecosystem has recovered from completely annihilated and highly radioactive in just 55 years, indicates a tremendous resiliency.

Well teenagers drink carbonic acid by the gallon and it doesn’t seem to bother them
So just where has it been tried out; growing Corals in acid that is.
I would think that as ocean surface waters became warmer, that the surface waters would hold less CO2, and the process of driving the CO2 to deeper cooler waters would accelerate.
You don’t find a lot of people diving on the coral reefs in the southern ocean. Corals can migrate and find the conditions they prefer, and mostly they seem to prefer warmer waters. I don’t know whether they pick the water based on its pH or whether they find the food chain to their liking in warmer waters.

arrrrggg
I’ll try this in two sections because it’s not appearing at all…
ONE OF TWO
CORALS WERE MEANT TO BLEACH? (another link for you, MikeT)
@E.M.Smith (18:09:27)
I looked for that yesterday, and found a few things which weren’t as clear as I wanted, but I think that line is definitely worth pursuing. My guess is that there isn’t much on it, and that if the environment proved the warmers’ points there would be, so the absence, while not proof they are wrong, is highly suggestive.

APPARENTLY THIS ONE’S THE PROBLEM…
TWO OF THREE, NOW
@pablo an ex pat
Indian Ocean winter pH range is about 7.87 to 8.23 (0.35 pH units!) over the Temperature Range of about 0.2 to 0.3 DegC.
http://www.mgac.nsysu.edu.tw/ctchen/Publications/A/58.pdf

Steven,
“Remember that shellfish appeared in the oceans when atmospheric CO2 levels were much higher than the present.”
Are they the same shellfish as today’s shellfish?
“As far as the bomb effect goes, of course it is important. The fact that the ecosystem has recovered from completely annihilated and highly radioactive in just 55 years, indicates a tremendous resiliency.”
A human being can survive a heavy car crash and recover completely after a certain amount of time. If however after the car crash the car drops into a river, the human being will not recover. Of course an ecosystem can survive a thermonuclear explosion when after that conditions return to normal. But the whole point is that there’s possibly a shift that is affecting those conditions. If the ocean pH reaches a certain threshold and you set off a thermonuclear bomb in an area where there is a lot of coral, the coral will NOT recover.
I don’t know much about the science, but this is just plain common sense.
“What I am saying is that corals and other shellfish have thrived at much higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations. ”
I’ll ask you again: Did these corals and other shellfish in the distant past have to cope with a rate of change that is a hundred times bigger than natural variability? If so, how did they do? You probably know this as you must have done some extensive research for your article.
“The point being that the relationship between atmospheric CO2 and ocean pH is apparently not so simple as some might have us believe.”
If this is the case then why is your article so incredibly simplistic? You’re not addressing the real issue at all, ie rate of change. You’re just beating about the bush because you don’t want CO2 to be linked to any possible adverse effects. This is misleading and I’m not really sure if you’re doing it on purpose or not. I would say you’re too smart not too notice the fallacies of your argument.

Neven asks:

I’ll ask you again: Did these corals and other shellfish in the distant past have to cope with a rate of change that is a hundred times bigger than natural variability?

Please define natural variability?
Please also tell us what you are concerned with? Acidification? Temperature Increases?

Bill D (14:33:58) :
“Neutralization can either mean adding base to an acidic solution or adding acid to a basic solution. Solutions can approach a neutral (pH = 7.0) from above 7 or above 7. “Neutralization is clearly ambiguous–it does not say whether a solution is becoming more acidic or more basic. It’s like saying the “weather is gettin more moderate.” That doesn’t even tell us if it is cooling from being hot or warming from being cold.”
And if acidification only means to move more acidic, then a ph from 3 to 2 would also be acidification, yet the word itself would be ambiguous in that it not tell us if the ph were moving from base to acid. “The acidification of the oceans” could then mean that the oceans are already highly acidic. Oops, I used the word acidic.
One poster thinks the word clearly means simply to move the ph down, and claims that is some acknowledged or understood usage in science or a particular branch of science, leaving us to accept or reject his word for it.
Another poster argues that the word is used because no single word can express a reduction in alkalinity, as if using one word for a scientific process is ever an issue.
I may have omitted other arguments for why “acidification” should not be thought of as propaganda but rather as correct terminology or grammar, but none are convincing. And even less convincing when considering what often accompanies the word, “becoming more acidic”, which is clearly wrong. The oceans are not acidic. I have researched the definition at some length, and not found the word to be used to describe changes in alkalinity. You are welcome to do the same and return your results.
I’d think it safe to say that the general public regards the word acidification as “to make acidic”, or “acid”.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/acidification
“the process of becoming acid or being converted into an acid”
http://www.answers.com/topic/acidification-chemistry
“(chemistry) Addition of an acid to a solution until the pH falls below 7”
http://www.chemistry-dictionary.com/definition/acidification.html
“This process happens when compounds like ammonia, nitrogen oxides and sulphur dioxides are converted in a chemical reaction into acidic substances. ”
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/acidification
“The act or process of making something sour (acidifying), or changing into an acid.The act or process of making something sour (acidifying), or changing into an acid.”

Prof Tim Wootton (Dept. Ecology & Evolution,
The University of Chicago ) has a website at-
http://pondside.uchicago.edu/ecol-evol/faculty/Wootton/pH.htm
He recently hit the MSM with data on ph reductions at one site off Washington’s coast. From his website, here is what he says about the global pH database upon which pH trends critically depend;
“Hence, predictions have been made that ocean pH will decline with increasing atmospheric CO2 emissions, and that this decline will be sufficient to disrupt major physiological processes such as calcification. While the physics of this reaction are well known, there are surprisingly few published data of measurements of pH change in the ocean through time. Furthermore, although laboratory studies demonstrate that many calcifying organisms perform poorly in acidified water, extrapolating these results to predict the response in complex ecosystems is difficult.”
The database is, shall we say, sparse.
As to changes in ocean pH of 0.1 being alarming;
“Since 2000, we have been monitoring physical ocean conditions, including ocean pH, at our main study site in the northeastern Pacific Ocean: Tatoosh Island, Washington, USA. We use a submersible data logger to record water conditions at 1/2 hour intervals, yielding a dataset of very high temporal resolution (>40,000 datapoints total and growing) to explore changes in pH through time.
In contrast to the widely-held notion that the ocean is well buffered, our pH data exhibit a surprising degree of systematic variability through time. Even over the course of a day, pH typically varies by 0.24 units, a consequence of the uptake and production of CO2 through photosynthesis and respiration. Hence biological processes, which are often left out of models of ocean pH, can have strong effects.”
A graph at his site indicates daily thru seasonal variations at this one location at Tatoosh Island, WA shows variations from 7.4 to 8.9 pH. It would seem particularly specious to claim a teleconnection from this site to the other 99.99999999% of the world’s oceans as to what global ocean pH is today. How about a hundred years ago? A thousand?
As to our understanding of what impacts multiyear trends in ocean pH measured in shallow waters at Tatoosh Island;
“Over the entire span of the data, ocean pH is clearly declining as atmospheric CO2 increases, but at a rate an order of magnitude faster than predicted by current physical models.”
Sounds like we yet more worthless models.
We need much more measured data, and much less catastrophism.

If we exclude all of modern science that is funded by grants then almost no science remains. We might as well say that science can only be done by people who are not paid to be scientists and we can also exclude anyone with an advanced degree who is actually working in his or her field of expertise.
Oceanographers, for example, often need ship time, which costs a lot of grant money. Almost all scientists need modern equipment, a large part of which is purchased from grants. The days when science was done by aristocrats from wealthy families using their own money is long gone. Doing pure theory does not require much equipment, but theoreticians, like Einstein, who started doing science on the side while working in a patent office, are also very rare. A big chunk of grant money goes to training students, including undergraduates and graduate students as well as postdocs. Without grants, the training of young scientists comes to halt.
Opinions have no basis in science. The opinions of experts, politicians and the public do not matter for scientific debates, only peer reviewed publications really count. (Of course opinions matter a lot in politics and policy decisions).
Some people on this blog seem to think that scientific articles are “opinions.” This is completely false. Articles in scientific journals are the presentation and analysis of data, observations, experiments and models. Sometimes journal articles also present new theory. Exaggerated claims or misrepresentation of cited articles is a cause for the rejection of a submitted manuscript. This is why the writing in scientific articles is very cautious and precise and why sections should not be quoted out of context.
I completely agree that the media, environmentalists and politicians often simplify, dramatize and exaggerate scientific results and conclusions. This is why you should read the original scientific studies described in scientific journals. Review articles that weigh the evidence of the publications of a field of research without presenting new data are also useful, especially when you don’t have the time to read all of the original studies or when you want to decide which of the original studies to read.