The world’s marine ecosystems risk being severely damaged by ocean acidification unless there are dramatic cuts in CO2 emissions, warn scientists.
The researchers warn that ocean acidification, which they refer to as “the other CO2 problem”, could make most regions of the ocean inhospitable to coral reefs by 2050, if atmospheric CO2 levels continue to increase.
This does indeed sound alarming, until you consider that corals became common in the oceans during the Ordovician Era – nearly 500 million years ago – when atmospheric CO2 levels were about 10X greater than they are today. (One might also note in the graph below that there was an ice age during the late Ordovician and early Silurian with CO2 levels 10X higher than current levels, and the correlation between CO2 and temperature is essentially nil throughout the Phanerozoic.)
Perhaps corals are not so tough as they used to be? In 1954, the US detonated the world’s largest nuclear weapon at Bikini Island in the South Pacific. The bomb was equivalent to 30 billion pounds of TNT, vapourised three islands, and raised water temperatures to 55,000 degrees. Yet half a century of rising CO2 later, the corals at Bikini are thriving. Another drop in pH of 0.075 will likely have less impact on the corals than a thermonuclear blast. The corals might even survive a rise in ocean temperatures of half a degree, since they flourished at times when the earth’s temperature was 10C higher than the present.
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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!
“The ocean currently has a pH of 8.1, which is alkaline not acid. ”
Acidification is the process of becoming acidic, and based on the fact that ocean pH has dropped, we can certainly say that is the case. Just to be clear, the end result of acidification is not necessarily an acidic ocean (which would be very unlikely).
“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.
I suppose a better term would be “debased” — similar to the science that comes from many alarmists!
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.
I second “Robert S”. The tone of indignation is misplaced. Acidification is any decline in pH, no matter how alkaline the final result. That said, the terminology “acidification” draws upon the negative public connotations of something being “acidic” and is primarily used in ecological sciences.
The temperature of large bodies of water is limited to 31degrees C due to the rate of evaporation increasing with temperature. When the Earth was warmer, the tropics remained the same, the rest of the planet heated up.
Use of the term acidification is just more BS terminology like using the term Climate Change when what you’re really talking about is human-caused global warming. It’s use is designed to insinuate the oceans are acidic. If they’re not it’s just lying agitprop. That’s not science. That’s english. Any school kid can figure that one out. In the long run using these BS terms will eventually be among the alarmists biggest mistakes. They’re allowing the average guy to get a peak at the BS their quote unquote science is based on.
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
I am a reef aquarium enthusiast.
I add CO2 in a calcium reactor to provide free calcium carbonate for the corals.
I can tell you for a fact that my corals have never done so well since I began the regular addition of CO2. I actually have corals propagating to the point that I have to remove them and trade with the local fish store.
OK, this is slightly different than the natural environment, but the idea is to mimic the natural carbon cycle. CO2 is a fundamental building block of the marine ecosystem. Think of it a pumping CO2 into a hothouse for tomatoes.
So I would ask the folks that subscribe to the AGW proposition:
What is the ultimate solubility of an acid gas in an infinitely buffered alkaline solution?
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.
More AGW hype and myth making.
@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.
Richard Sharpe (21:45:26) :
” 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.
As I recall from nuke weapons school, ignition temp for hydrogen fusion is around 100 million degrees, so 55K is very likely the water temp some great distance away, unless the water has dissociated. Nearby, I don’t think you’ll find anything but plasma. 🙂
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
To become acidic, the ocean would have to be below pH 7.0. Saying that “acidification” is just the process of moving closer to 7.0 is equivocation. A little word game, like saying you’re being Newyorkized just because you take a couple of steps eastward in Los Angeles. Heck, you haven’t even been Denverized, yet.
pH, by the way, is not an esoteric chemistry concept, it’s just a handy measurement scale, a shorthand, and can be calculated from other measures of acidity.
Soft-shell lobsters…Yummy!
“In order to become acid, it would have to drop below 7.0.”
I agree. The term “acidification” applied to ocean ph was apparently first
applied by global warming advocates. Whoda guessed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification
“Ocean acidification is the name given to the ongoing decrease in the pH of the Earth’s oceans, caused by their uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.[1]”
http://pangea.stanford.edu/research/Oceans/GES205/Caldeira_Science_Anthropogenic%20Carbon%20and%20ocean%20pH.pdf
“When carbon dioxide dissolves in the ocean it lowers the pH, making the ocean more acidic.”
Scientists, gotta love them. No, the oceans are not acidic, and lowering the ph a small amount will not make the oceans “more acidic”. Great PR, though.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:acidic&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title
Define acidic:
“being or containing an acid; of a solution having an excess of hydrogen atoms (having a pH of less than 7) ”
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define%3Amore
Define more:
“More” is the theme from the Italian movie Mondo Cane, from 1962
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.
a google scholar search of
coral+Ph+laboratory+experiment gives me 14000 RECENT hits.
http://scholar.google.de/scholar?q=corals+ph+laboratory+experiment&hl=en&lr=&scoring=r&as_ylo=2004
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?
After considering this “acidification” it occured to me to question whether
other factors could be involved rather than increased co2, if indeed that is the case at all. I know little about the subject, but “red tides”, created by the billions of tons of crap we have dumped into the oceans, manufacture domoic acid, which may cause similar reactions in seawater to calcium and such. Perhaps someone with more knowledge of the chemistry might take an interest.
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.
Steamboat Jack
Thanks for that correction.
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.
Fraizer
Interesting that your corals are enjoying the extra CO2 boost you are giving them. I see that a number of corals form a symbiotic relationship with a particular family of algae and presumably it is the algae that benefit from the increased CO2.
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.