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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Ocean acidification? See
Are oceans becoming more acidic and is this a threat to marine life?
By Dr J Floor Anthoni
I thought this one was the biggest:
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Russia/TsarBomba.html
Maybe it wasn’t considered a weapon?
I’m also quite certain that any excess of CO2 in the ocean will rapidly be consumed by plants. It works in greenhouses. Add CO2, get more growth.
One of my major gripes about AGW as a thesis is the way that they almost universally confine biological processes to the production of methane. Life does so much more, including sequester CO2 as coal and oil. The oil via algae in shallow seas…
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?
Sorry, in my previous post I meant to quote the last sentence of the original posting but seem to have pressed the wrong button:
“At some point the theorists will have to start paying attention to empirical data.”
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!
Here is a typical scare-your-socks-off article:
huliq.com/11/69071/modest-co2-cutbacks-may-be-too-little-too-late-coral-reefs
Please notice a small understanding of oceanic bio-chemistry is taken, and extrapolated into the future to create fear. It seems to me the larger picture would show all sorts of other bio-chemical reactions are involved, and that the ocean actually is a robust system which gobbles up CO2 with relish.
Often these articles point to “bleaching” as proof that bad things are occurring. However follow-up shows, in every case I’ve been able to check out, that the bleaching is followed by re-growth of coral.
It is possible, using the web, to visit tour guides who lead scuba tours of reefs in Australia and Indonesia, (and probably the Caribbean as well.) When you talk to such people, (who represent the-man-on-the-street in this case,) they either have seen bleached reefs recover, or have never seen a bleached reef and wonder what all the fuss is about.
As far as I have been able to learn, as a layman, the bleaching is usually caused by a short term addition of nutrients to the water the coral lives in. The nutrients favor plankton and algae which compete with coral. The nutrients come from dust drifting down, and the dust originates from distant places. In one case it was iron-rich dust from the sub-Sahara, caused by drought brought on by the warm phase of the AMO. In another case it was caused by a huge forest fire in Indonesia. As soon as the dust is gone the reef recovers. The reefs also have recovered when damage was due to the tsunami in Indonesia, or by careless fishermen. CO2 has not been a proven factor.
The bio-chemistry of the sea and the photo-chemistry of the upper atmosphere are fascinating subjects, and well worth further study, but people who pretend to be authorities on such subjects need to be a bit more humble. We are barely scratching the surface of the wonders involved.
Having been burned once, and seen my trust in the NASA and NOAH temperatures broken, I am shy of giving such people the benefit of the doubt again, when they produce scary articles. It seems they are bailing out of the temperature-scare, and hopping aboard the acid-oceans-scare.
The motto must be: “If you scare and don’t succeed; scare, scare again.”
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.
This link:
http://www.abomb1.org/atmosphr/ustests.html#Castle
lists “Bravo” at 15 Megatons and the largest of the U.S. atmospheric tests.
http://www.abomb1.org/testpix/index.html
has some nice pictures with this one being very nice:
http://www.abomb1.org/images/bakerb.jpg
When you consider that we were popping these puppies off about 6 a year in the 1954 series it does argue for coral being ‘tough stuff’…
Per the water flashing to steam: I think you need to also allow for the intense pressure it was under at the time it was heated. A nuke does kind of raise the pressure right under it when surface detonated. And the rapid arrival of the heating energy as radiation also has the molecules being ‘inertial confined’ during a lot of the heating…
There are manganese nodules and similar mineral deposits all over the ocean floor along with rather massive clay / silt on the bottom (perforated with worm holes). It would take one heck of a lot of ‘acid’ to get past the buffering of the sea bed and all those metal nodules…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manganese_nodule
says 500 Billion Tons…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manganese(II)_carbonate
says it is used as a fertilizer but has low solubility in water. Used in health foods. Yum! 😉
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
Glenn:-)
Forgot to add, when you look at the BBC’s website with its columns on the left hand side denoting topics for reference, when one actually logs on the “Science & Environment” section one notices that the two themes are separated, i.e. Science on the left & Environment on the right (don’t read too much into faction-ism). This suggests to me that the BBC does in fact consider the two as different topics, e.g. Science is science, & Environment is environment, & never should the two be confused, so perhaps they are being impartial after all but people just don’t notice it!
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?
King of Cool wrote: “The reef symposium also recognised that other major issues that would affect the survival of coral reefs were management, overfishing, run-off, development and local community attitudes. These I suspect are the real man made problems that we have to worry about.”
————————————-
I agree. However scientists work on grant money and many marine biologists who are specialising in coral research *may* see CO2 alarmism as a way to secure research grants. I suppose that “run off” alarmism is not as effective for securing a grant.
This is what really annoys me about the whole AGW alarmism. In mis-labelling CO2 as a pollutant, they are masking and taking the spotlight away from REAL pollution and environmental vandalism that is much more urgent than tackling a relatively harmless trace gas which is a very useful plant food.
‘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.
Didn’t a British court find that coral bleaching as a result of AGW was an unsupportable claim?
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.
You know, maybe, given that ‘pee’ breaks down to ammonia, taking a few gazillion tons of fish per year out of the ocean (along with their pee production) might, just maybe, account for some of the measured pH change…
Near Alaska, Mt. Redoubt has punched a hole in it’s glacier and is getting ready to blow… Volcanos heating ice cover… who’d a thunk it…
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.
By the way, what happened to the acid rain scare years ago? Was that “solved” or did we just move on to another more scary scare?
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”
Anytime I see someone say “it is naive”, “it would be naive” or any other variant of such in a purportedly scientific argument I immediately skip to the next response because I know that person has left the realm of arguing on the basis of facts and has entered into the realm of “common sense”. The history of science is repleat with examples of “common sense” that was not.
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.
Thanks Steve for the educational posting — The media used to do stuff like this, but has somehow forgotten how, as they stand in line for their PRAVDA credentials and bailouts.
I believe the correct term for loss of coral reefs, at least locally, is silting. Of course, a hurricane went through our area and what wasn’t silted over was ripped out by wave action. Really was spectacular what Andrew did to the place, not only was the reefs hit hard, but so were the shore line and mangroves, scars which still show to this day. I wonder what the cyclone data was like back then … hmmm.
One of the great features of WUWT is science education — And for that Anthony you are to be commended. After talking to recent graduates of the government public schools, science seems to get completely left out of the education curriculum and replaced with ‘paper or plastic’.
A pet peeve — I’ve often wondered how accurate the instrumentation that measured all these fantasy effects was in ancient times. I would bet that proxies are not accurate at all, and man’s instrumentation, well I doubt it worked for anything but basic measurement, much less was accurate. My guess would be instruments of old are only good in a general ‘ballpark data’ sense.
Lucy Skywalker (02:30:38) :
Thanks for the link to Dr Floor Antonini’s website. Facinating.
I don’t doubt that changes in PH will affect the balance of species, what I haven’t seen is any explanation of how they measured PH to 3 digits in the 18th century?
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.