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.
Bob Coats (10:59:54) :
Bill D (10:29:28)
Bill D,
Who are you?
Bob C
Bob–we seem to be on the same wave length. I’m an American biology professor on sabbatical at the Centre for Limnology, Dutch Institute for Ecological Research, Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences. I am setting up a mesocosm lab experiment to start next week, so I will soon be too busy on research to pay so much attention to blog. You can find my publications at Google Scholar, under “W. R. DeMott” Perhaps doing scientific research for the last 30 years, some of which has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, makes me very suspect as a source of information in the aquatic sciences. My current project is supported by the Dutch Academy of Sciences. None of the papers that I’ve published deals with climate change, but I have a manuscript under review on how the food chain of a deep lake changed during 21 years of warmer temperatures and altered thermal stratification regime.
I place a big emphasis on having my undergraduates and graduate students read , discuss and criticize original scientific papers, rather than just reading the condensed and simplified versions found in college text books. As you have probably noted, I have been encouraging readers of this science blog to take the same approach and look at the original science data and papers. Some of my more recent papers published in Limnology and Oceanography are available in PDF format for anyone to read and for everyone to criticize. Unlike many of the people who post on this blog, I feel proud about the accomplishments of American scientists and our standing among scientist from around the world.
Bob–what’s your position/background?
HasItBeen4YearsYet? (20:22:49) :
THIRD OF THREE, TAKE TWO
Reply:[…]
FYI, posts here are moderated, so they don’t show up until approved. ~charles the moderator
Most of the time you make a post, it shows up instantly on your own screen with a line saying it is ~”awaiting moderation”. But every so often that feedback to you simply disappears. Yet the original is still in the ‘in basket’ of the moderator who doesn’t know that you have no feedback. This is a bug in the software somewhere.
So when you post something and it ‘disappears’ just wait. It isn’t some magic sauce in your text deleting things nor moderator error. It’ just the feedback to you that is missing and your posting will show up when the moderator sends it on.
Thankfully, this bug is rare. It’s only hit me two or three times in several months; and once you know what it is, it’s easy to ignore. (I *think* it happens when you cause a refresh of the panel before the ‘awaiting moderation’ feedback shows up in the posting step; i.e. you hit submit, then cause a re-load of the page before the submit does. But that is till speculative on my part.)
Simon Evans (12:25:44) :
What you fail to mention, of course (either conveniently or else because your level of research really is limited to looking things up on Wikipedia) is that the full compensation effect is anticipated only after thousands of years, with the prospect of a recovery process not beginning before 2700. Read the paper, which can readily be sourced from the Wiki reference [29]:-
http://plankt.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/30/2/141
Now this gentlemen, illustrates a few points about the CO2 is bad proponents and the continual mantra of peer-review. Simon here, and you must read his post to get the full effect of the disconnect, is stating something or other about the CCD or carbonate reduction and uses this paper as AGW reference.
What we learn is either:
He didn’t even read the paper, or he hoped no-one else would either, or both.
In the last few years, evidence has accumulated that calcifying organisms are likely to be affected by ocean acidification. Therefore, the production of calcium carbonate will probably decline, although conversely global warming, increasing stratification and sea level rise may also stimulate increases in global calcification. As acidification reaches the deep ocean, it will cause pronounced shallowing of the lysocline depths for calcite and aragonite, leading most probably to an almost complete cessation of deep-sea calcium carbonate burial for some centuries. Here, I briefly review the consequences of these and other changes on future ocean calcium carbonate cycling, and the consequences of this for future climate. Associated climate impacts are not likely to be significant over the next few centuries, but will become increasingly important thereafter. After the carbonate compensation response to acidification has run its course, extra CO2 is expected to be left behind in the atmosphere, protecting against future ice ages.
Now there’s a reference I can really sink my teeth into. :<}
Better practice your critical analysis, there Simon.
HasItBeen4Years said:
If there have been no peer-reviewed papers, then those corals are a myth!
paminator (22:21:45) :
Prof Tim Wootton (Dept. Ecology & Evolution,
“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.
Yes. Or the declining pH is from other causes than CO2 so of course the CO2 change is disconnected from the pH change to some large extent.
Coincidence, Correlation, Causality is the mantra.
There is no causality shown.
There is a broken correlation shown (way off model / predictions).
That says to me that CO2 is most likely a coincidence and that the true driver for ocean pH is elsewhere. Perhaps in the megatons of sulphate, nitrate, etc. that are the real pollutants? Perhaps in the megatons of ammonia no longer produced in the oceans from all the animals we haul out each year?
Who knows. But as long as we are tilting at the windmill of CO2 we will never find out.
Sidebar: Genentech just cut short a lung cancer study because the two drugs being used in combination were so effective it was not moral to continue (with some folks dying from lack of the drugs…) Avastin was one of them, I think. This is Good News! Lung cancer is one of the ‘biggies’. Just heard this on CNBC and will need to look into it more.
Bill D (10:45:49) :
Richard Sharpe–
It will be interesting to learn whether the record hot weather in Australia during the past month will heat the ocean enough to cause further coral bleaching and death. Surely we can study the effect of warm temperature even if we are unsure about the cause or causes. I thought that the topic of this posting was about the effect of ocean acidification and warm temperatures on corals? Scientists studying these problems may have their concerns about the local or global climate, but one does not need to know any about causes to gather lab and field data about effects of these factors on coral survival and growth.”
If you had bothered to check you would see that where the hot weather has been in southern Australia where there are no coral reefs to kill. The weather in north east and north west Australia, where the coral reefs are, has been fairly cool. Sorry, no alarmist threat to corals here.
Bill D,
Can you point us to some measured ocean pH data from the last 20 years? Monterey Bay does not support the contention that pH is declining. Is there other raw data which does? In order to see a 150% increase in acidity over the remainder of the century (as the IPCC has reportedly claimed,) we would need to see greater than 15% increase per decade.
TIA
E.M.Smith (13:10:12) :
Simon Evans (12:25:44) :
“Either your approach to research is to think that a link to Wikipedia’s gloss is good enough or else you have read this paper and chosen to misrepresent it here. Which is it?”
Logic error of false dichotomy.
Hmm. Just possibly. As a matter of fact, though, which anyone can follow up, the Wiki quotation Steven Goddard made makes a total hash of representing the papers it references.
Now, do you think Al Gore was being alarmist in suggesting potential sea-level rises without giving any sense of how long it might be before they could come about? I do.
Do you think, if you look at the papers Wiki references, that S.G’s post was being misleading in suggesting a recovery process without giving any sense of how long it might be before it comes about? I do.
Credibility works both ways. It’s motes and planks, you know. In my opinion, the self-proclaimed ‘sceptics’ will not gain any credibility until they can demonstrate an objectivity that is at least equal to that which they demand (entirely properly) from others. S.G.’s post was misleading. I do not know whether or not he knew that.
Neil Crafter,
The coral reefs in Australia are in the north, where they have been having unusually cool weather this summer.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/temp_maps.cgi?variable=maxanom&area=nat&period=month&time=latest
Neil – sorry I didn’t see that you were quoting someone else and saying the same thing.
Bill D (23:01:37) : only peer reviewed publications really count.
Sorry Bill D, but I must disagree. Peer reviewed publications are a very very important part of the process, but there is much more that ‘really counts’.
I would put truth and accuracy high on that list. I’d add a dose of ‘kitchen science’ as a cross foot sanity check. I’d even hold out that reality is the ultimate ‘peer reviewer’ and an existence proof trumps all other ‘peers’.
Peer reviewed publications are not the be-all and end-all of science, they are at most the gatekeeper on what makes it to widely published and add a tiny bit of quality control (unless you think all peer reviewed papers are guaranteed to be truth…). Nothing more.
Oh, and look at the history of Energy Conversion Devices Corporation for a modern example of a guy doing research in his kitchen and changing what science knew…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_R._Ovshinsky
I lived through the time when all the ‘peers’ were saying he was a fraud, quack and lier and that his claimed effect ‘could not exist’. He was rejected by ‘peer reviewed journals’ then beaten over the head with the fact of that rejection. He was also right. Even when he had demonstrated devices, ‘peers’ accused him of fraud (ignoring the value of existence proofs). Peer review is not the be-all and end-all and is often a large impediment to advance.
I won’t bother trying to cite some peer reviewed science that was wrong; there is just too much of it…
Nothing ever changes. People will always protect their territory.
During Wegener’s lifetime, his theory of continental drift was severely attacked by leading geologists, who viewed him as an outsider meddling in their field.[12]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift
@ur momisugly Richard Sharpe (13:45:49)
“If there have been no peer-reviewed papers, then those corals are a myth!”
How’s NOAA?
A couple of points.
1. A coworker sat on the particle physics panel for a prominent science journal. One of his co-panelists was a VERY prominent scientist who rubber stamped any submission from a source he approved of politically, and rejected most else.
2. REAL science, as opposed to quackery, can take place as easily in a kitchen as in a zillion dollar lab. What matters is the quality of the experimental/test set up, how carefully environmental conditions are monitored, the accuracy (NOT precision) of the measurements/ observations, etc.
The focus on “peer review” and sneering at “kitchen” science is nothing more than a red herring intended to keep us from noticing a “good old boy” peer review network rubber stamping publications, especially the ones based on dodgy science coming from the zillion dollar labs.
Ovshinky’s merry band were of a similar stripe as their big boss. True innovators. Much of the tech revolution owes itself to these folks. Some of them went on to great effect in the realm of CMOS integrated circuits.
Sorry, typo, Ovshinsky.
Bill D (06:14:22) :
Geoff: You state that the temperature has been stable in the Great Barrier Reef and link to graphs that show only small changes.
If you look at the O. Hoegh-Guldburg (1998) paper that I mention above, on page 24 (I think) you can learn that 1998 experienced the warmest SST (sea surface temperatures) in the 95 years of instrumental data at the Great Barrier Reef. You can also learn that 1998 saw the biggest coral bleaching and die off that had been recorded up to that time. This does not look a much of a temperature change, but a one or two degree increase can be enough to cause a coral die-off. Many readers of this blog probably know that 1998 was a very warm year in many places on earth
I think you are missing my point Bill, the NOAA graphs I linked to, clearly show a rise in sea temp at 1998 from the ENSO event, and then came back to the normal flat level (its not increasing overall). The ENSO event is a major bleacher of coral because of the SUDDEN temp change. Its a natural cycle.
There is no point getting lost in the chemical composition discussion….the rate of change is minuscule.
Oh Drat! I’m being forced into an “Appeal to Authority” argument…. I hate appeal to authority… but for things that require a shared standard, like word definitions, we do need some sort of shared authority. Sigh.
Robert S (11:03:35) :
Glenn
Do you think “acidification” means “to make more acidic”? If so, is a ph of 8 acidic or not? Is 8 more acidic than 9? Does a drop from 9 to 8 signify an increase in *acidity*?
No, that’s not what it means. Acidification is the process of becoming acidic. And no, that does not mean it actually has to become acidic.
Will the OED do?
Acidification: The act or process of acidifying: Conversion into an acid.
Acidifying: Forming an acid: That combines so as to form an acid.
Acidify: To make acid or sour. Chem: to convert into an acid by combination with any substance.
At least to the extent that the OED represents usage by the normal people expected to listen to the BBC, turning a pH 8.2 in to a pH8.1 does not form an acid nor a sour stuff and is not properly called ‘acidification’. No acid end point, not acidification. QED via OED 😉
The BBC needs a copy of the OED. If we all chipped in and bought them one, do you think they would read it? (Mine is well used 😉
Your argument of the inaccuracy of the term “ocean acidification” is quite reasonable. Your argument that geological history shows that today’s corals can survive increasing CO2 is not. I recommend reading a bit about the geological history of corals and evolution of today’s coral species (brief summary and links here)
Alan Wilkinson:
You are wrong. Think of it this way:
Coral reefs are built from limestone by the reaction Ca2+ + CO32- == CaCO3, where Ca is calcium. Acidifying the ocean decreases the concentration of CO32- ions, which by le Chatlier’s principal shifts the equilibrium toward the left, tending to dissolve CaCO3. Note that this is a sort of counter-intuitive result, that adding CO2 should make reefs dissolve rather than pushing carbon into making more reefs. It’s all because of those H+ ions.
It took me a while to figure out too.
nvw (12:06:20) :
Surprised nobody has yet mentioned the studies showing sunblock is implicated in coral mortality – the delicious irony of those do-gooder ecotourists trying to save the coral reefs are in fact agents of destruction…
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/01/sunscreens_bleaching.php
Gotta love it! I especially like this bit:
“They experimented on more than half a dozen species from various sites with a range of brands, SPFs and concentrations; in all cases, they found that the sunscreens bleached the corals. By their calculations, close to 10% of all of the world’s reefs could be at risk from the 4,000-6,000 metric tons of sunscreen that wash off on an annual basis.”
Gee, wonder how well sunscreen correlates with warmer weather … might start to explain some of those ‘heat related bleaching’ events 😉
http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/pipermail/coral-list/2009-January/038393.html
Alan Wilkinson:
So, in essence, you’re looking at it like this:
(1) H2CO3 ← K1 → H+ & HCO3- ← K2 → 2H+ & CO3–
And it is correct that if you add CO2, you should have more CO3-.
But you’re missing the is ADDITIONAL reaction of HCO3- H+ & CO3-. The H+ ion is “fungible” in the oceanic chemistry.
Steven Goddard (11:49:13) :
“Allen,
The saturation point of CaCO3 (which controls the ability of sea creatures to precipitate aragonite shells) is a chemical property and has nothing to do with biology.”
Actually, biology can influence precipitation significantly. Most people are thinking of bulk solution chemistry, but biological surfaces have big influences at on local solution chemistry at the molecular level. Two examples:
1. Organisms can excrete or cause a local concentration of ions (e.g. calcium) which causes a local increase in the solubility product of the ionic constituents and can drive precipitation. Not the clearest , but try this ref. as an example:
http://jsedres.sepmonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/75/2/190
2. Organisms can have a direct effect on nucleation – often fortuitously, but in some cases by evolutionary ‘design’. Nucleation is the process by which a crystal (or pure precipitate) begins. Biological surfaces are not smooth at a molecular level, but are like a forest sticking up into the solution. Some molecules, often proteins, bind ions (e.g. Ca2+) ‘nucleation sites’ and help to begin the processes such as shell building.
For example – nucleation in molluscan shell formation: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16413789
Calcium is actually supersaturated in the oceans, yet precipitation does not readily ocurr without these biologicially accelerated processes.
If CO2 in the atmosphere is complicated, there are probably two orders of magnitude of additional complications in the ocean when you add chemistry and biology to the mix.
@HasItBeen4YearsYet? (12:51:41) : CORAL CAN’T SURVIVE EXTREME COLD?
fascinating link. And while we panic over a theoretical maybe someday CO2 issue, that link pointed out very real problems.
from http://www.cdnn.info/news/article/a040813.html
“Biologists undertook their own cruises to get a good look at this marvel. A band more than 13 kilometers long bristled with pale, crisscrossing branches of a stony coral, the ivory tree coral Lophelia pertusa. Some of these corals reach 35 m in height. This thicket ranked as the largest Lophelia reef then known.
“What really got attention in Norway was that [the reef] was being destroyed—well, smashed to smithereens,” says Watling. The scientists’ cameras showed swaths of rubble or just bald ocean floor as a result of fishing fleets dragging weighted nets through the area.
These images of destruction were particularly upsetting because researchers calculated that the Sula Ridge coral structure represents some 8,000 years of growth.”
So next time you are at a “CO2 is Evil Save The Planet” meeting and Orange Roughy is on the menu; well, you will know what the priorities are…
(I like Orange Roughy, but try to order farmed fish when possible and pelagic species when not. Bottom trawls, especially around sea mounts, are horrific destroyers – but out of sight, out of mind…)