From the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies James Cook University
“Evil twin” threatens world’s oceans, scientists warn
The rise in human emissions of carbon dioxide is driving fundamental and dangerous changes in the chemistry and ecosystems of the world’s oceans, international marine scientists warned today.
“Ocean conditions are already more extreme than those experienced by marine organisms and ecosystems for millions of years,” the researchers say in the latest issue of the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution (TREE).
“This emphasises the urgent need to adopt policies that drastically reduce CO2 emissions.”
Ocean acidification, which the researchers call the ‘evil twin of global warming’, is caused when the CO2 emitted by human activity, mainly burning fossil fuels, dissolves into the oceans. It is happening independently of, but in combination with, global warming.
“Evidence gathered by scientists around the world over the last few years suggests that ocean acidification could represent an equal – or perhaps even greater threat – to the biology of our planet than global warming,” co-author Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and The University of Queensland says.
More than 30% of the CO2 released from burning fossil fuels, cement production, deforestation and other human activities goes straight into the oceans, turning them gradually more acidic.
“The resulting acidification will impact many forms of sea life, especially organisms whose shells or skeletons are made from calcium carbonate, like corals and shellfish. It may interfere with the reproduction of plankton species which are a vital part of the food web on which fish and all other sea life depend,” he adds.
The scientists say there is now persuasive evidence that mass extinctions in past Earth history, like the “Great Dying” of 251 million years ago and another wipeout 55 million years ago, were accompanied by ocean acidification, which may have delivered the deathblow to many species that were unable to cope with it.
“These past periods can serve as great lessons of what we can expect in the future, if we continue to push the acidity the ocean even further” said lead author, Dr. Carles Pelejero, from ICREA and the Marine Science Institute of CSIC in Barcelona, Spain.
“Given the impacts we see in the fossil record, there is no question about the need to immediately reduce the rate at which we are emitting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” he said further.
“Today, the surface waters of the oceans have already acidified by an average of 0.1 pH units from pre-industrial levels, and we are seeing signs of its impact even in the deep oceans”, said co-author Dr. Eva Calvo, from the Marine Science Institute of CSIC in Barcelona, Spain.
“Future acidification depends on how much CO2 humans emit from here on – but by the year 2100 various projections indicate that the oceans will have acidified by a further 0.3 to 0.4 pH units, which is more than many organisms like corals can stand”, Prof. Hoegh-Guldberg says.
“This will create conditions not seen on Earth for at least 40 million years”.
“These changes are taking place at rates as much as 100 times faster than they ever have over the last tens of millions of years” Prof. Hoegh-Guldberg says.
Under such circumstances “Conditions are likely to become very hostile for calcifying species in the north Atlantic and Pacific over the next decade and in the Southern Ocean over the next few decades,” the researchers warn.
Besides directly impacting on the fishing industry and its contribution to the human food supply at a time when global food demand is doubling, a major die-off in the oceans would affect birds and many land species and change the biology of Earth as a whole profoundly, Prof. Hoegh-Guldberg adds.
Palaeo-perspectives on ocean acidification by Carles Pelejero, Eva Calvo and Ove Hoegh-Guldberg is published in the latest issue of the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution (TREE), number 1232.
“Today, the surface waters of the oceans have already acidified by an average of 0.1 pH units from pre-industrial levels, and we are seeing signs of its impact even in the deep oceans”
If ocean pH can vary in a given spot, and over a single day, as much as 20 times the reported drop of 0.1 units since “pre-industrial times,” then:
1. How is it possible to measure the average pH of the oceans, globally, and all the way back to pre-industrial times, with an accuracy of 0.1 units? Where is the database for such measurements? What are they based on?
2. Assuming they could measure it, how can they tell such a small variation is the cause of all those things?
@ur momisugly David L. Hagen (11:26:21) :”See http://www.CO2web.info
Web-info about CO2 and the “Greenhouse Effect” Doom; by Tom V. Segalstad”
That has got to be the most difficult-to-read paper I have ever come across. It reads like a Google translation from Norwegian! It appears to contain a lot of important information but judging by the sloppy English, I doubt it.
Aha! this explains the lack of fresh water shelled animals..Oh no wait.
Even a basic course in Ocean chemistry gives the lie to this rediculous claim.
If this is what the pseudo-science is resuced to it is sad indeed.
Ed Murphy (08:57:07) :
(…)
Undersea volcano threatens southern Italy
http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/world/6999229/undersea-volcano-threatens-southern-italy-report/
(…)
There, see what happened The Mediterranean got acidified from the man-made CO2 and it weakened the volcano walls.
Send in the grant money! Prepare the legislation! We have concrete proof of an ecological catastrophe that needs to be averted right now. It is so urgent, first we will solve the problem, then the science can catch up and verify how large a problem it really was!
The implicit fallacy in all these horror tales of ocean’s “acidifying” is that the PH of seawater is accurately represented by a single value and has been relatively constant over time. The truth is that the PH varies dramatically over very short time spans, 0.2-0.3 based on TOD, over a full point annually, over 1.5 in less than a decade [Wootton, Pfister&Forester 2008 PNAS]. The average value also has, like virtually every natural phenomenon ever observed, its own pattern of cyclicity. The changes noted in PH in recent times may be an indication that something unusual is happening, but are at this point well within the bounds of natural variability.
I liked it better in the old days when the “precautionary principle” meant that, if you wanted to call yourself a scientist, you didn’t engage in wild leaps of logic far beyond the evidence you had at hand.
James F. Evans (11:57:32) :
“If ocean “acidification” is so easily knocked-down as the comments, here, have readily accomplished, what is its purpose?”
Availability Cascade—-simple marketing
R. Gates (11:21:22) : “Hey AGW skeptics…no need to worry about ocean acidification…”
Wow I can’t believe it. A sentence fragment authored by R. Gates that I actually agree with!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
The people producing this report clearly so not understand the complex chemistry of the ocean. There are many processes at work which keep the pH alkaline, even with the addition of extra CO2.
Of more concern to the effects human activity have on ocean life are the amount of noxious and other waste products produced by industry and agriculture. Why is action not being taken to solve this obvious problem?
Follow the money…
Philip T. Downman (11:18:44) :
But wait! Do the Seven Seas really contain pure, distilled water? Isn’t there a lot of conjugated salt ions there, buffering out tiny amoutnts of CO2?
There are *ladies* who read here, sirrah!
We’ve posted a number of times on this subject, linking to actual research. Multiple peer-researched studies indicate a far less alarmist, catastrophic outcome compared to this study.
The acidification postings:
http://www.c3headlines.com/are-oceans-becoming-acidic/
plus related coral reef postings,
http://www.c3headlines.com/are-coral-reefs-dying/
What we must remember about Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and The University of Queensland and his colleagues is that they have a very sweet gig going.
They get to play with boats, go scuba diving and snorkelling, stay on small islands, drink beer and have barbeques all at the expense of the Australian taxpayer while doing no real work.
It is apparent they will say anything to keep this sweet scam going.
The geoengineering solution, of course, is to add tons of Tums. In fact, the same ships adding all the tiny bubbles to the water to increase the albedo could also be dumping Tums in the water at the same time. Two climate birds with one stone. Think of the job creation, too.
Absolutely nowhere in the quoted text does it say exactly what happens to marine life with this pH change, nor does it quote any (non-corrupted) peer-reviewed reproducible experiments or empirical evidence of cause.
Sounds a lot like the regular AGW hoo-hah.
Typical of our new age scientists, they miss the obvious point that ocean acidification was the result of some catastrophic event and not the cause.
The 251 million years ago extinction is thought to have been an impact event but there is a strong case for a geothermal cause. It is thought to have occurred in the ocean where the highest level of extinctions occurred but terrestrial life suffered greatly.
The Paleocene/Eocene boundary, 55.8 million years ago also saw an extinction event that doesn’t appear to be related to the The K-T mass extinction. The Chicxulub Asteroid Impact happened in shallow water and close to land, It’s effect was different from the 251 million year and 55.8 million year extinctions perhaps because the ocean shock wave was shallow and much of the debris was ejected into the air. It still led to mass extinctions but the pattern was different, seemingly spread over land and ocean.
The Paleocene/Eocene boundary extinctions event, 55.8 million years ago is a very strange occurrence. It only lasted 20,000 years but seems to have been two events caused by the same phenomena and called Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum.
All things point to a massive sub oceananic erruption that blasted muck and filthy steam into the ocean and atmosphere. This may have led to lower troposphere warming but it was short lived as the crud soon rained out but led to turbid ocean surface water that blocked light from penetrating to at depth ocean life. It also increased ocean heat absorption at upper levels.
This along with settling particles over the dead ocean floor life systems, led to decay and carbon dioxide and methane production increased along with anoxic acidic conditions. As the water cleared, light could penetrate deeper and kelps and other sea flora began to redress the balance. Eventually the ocean recovered, carbon dioxide levels fell and the PH of the ocean and oxygen levels returned to normal for that era.
In Australia this whole issue is 110% politics there is absolutely no Science involved. My experience is that there are few scientist of any worth there. Usually the good ones go to the US and the lousy ones from the US go there. For example Tim Flannery (one who stayed, who is not a weathermen but I think a biologist) won Australian of the year for saying that Australia would dry up completely! Its been the wettest year in Qld for years all dams a 100% full LOL. Its basically full of EPA type scientist don’t believe the hype….
Whenever a “scientific” paper uses “suggests” in the first paragraph, I read no further and trash can it. It’s a simple test. Either they can prove it does, or shut up!
I know I’m probably a bit of a dunce for not understanding the fundamentals of C02 dissolving in the oceans but can someone please explain how the oceans can be both (a) Warming at supposedly alarming levels AND (b) absorbing more C02? When I did “O level” Chemistry 30 years ago I was taught that dissolved gasses are liberated by liquids as they are heated….surely for C02 to be absorbed by the oceans they must be cooling – or the oceans are warming and must be liberating C02…..My head hurts!
Steve Goddard
Juraj V
Corals and shellfish did indeed evolve – the opposite of extinction – and they thrived and spread widely, during the Cambrian-Ordovician, with atmospheric CO2 8-20 x higher than today.
‘Are these people utterly insane?’
They are utterly ignorant, utterly cynical and secure in their Australian tax-funded jobs.
This was entirely predictable. Once the wheels started coming of the CO2-AGW link, there had to be another hare running to keep the scam going. Saw this one coming, see my posts of just over a year ago, March 19, 2009:
This one is the introduction:
http://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2009/03/19/ocean-acidification-scam/
The sequel has more meat, and lots of references:
http://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2009/03/19/toxic-seawater-fraud/
The Royal Society published a position paper about this in 2005 “Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide”, full of nonsense – as usual. Some points in error dealt with in the ‘toxic seawater fraud’ post.
MartinGAtkins (14:43:43) :
The Permian was most likely the basalt floods from the Siberian Traps
The science of marine biology is next in line to be marginalized by the (self snip) busybodies. Maybe the Marine Biologists will see what has happened to the credibility of Climatoologists, and nip this nonsense in the bud.
Naahhhhh…. the money’s too good… as long as it lasts.
Ove Hoegh-Guldberg hasn’t had a single one of his dire predictions come true.
I’m not about to start worrying about his latest.
I’m not going to comment on the subject of ocean acidifaction, except to say that outside of the cloistered world of WUWT is a pretty well accepted fact.
Reading down the comments absolutely no-one who reads this site apparently wants to believe it. Very few of you are scientists or really have any idea what you are talking about, yet you are all quite comfortable in confidently dismissing ocean acidification, siting for “proof” such things as the mating habits of frogs in your swimming pools!
Just when did America stop educating its population in science?
save the sharks said:
R. Gates (11:21:22) : “Hey AGW skeptics…no need to worry about ocean acidification…”
Wow I can’t believe it. A sentence fragment authored by R. Gates that I actually agree with!
______
But not the Fox New part? C’mon, isn’t this one big package deal?
“Robert T (15:50:07) : Your comment is awaiting moderation”
That was a waste of effort then…