Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I’m a long-time ocean devotee. I’ve spent a good chunk of my life on and under the ocean as a commercial and sport fisherman, a surfer, a blue-water sailor, and a commercial and sport diver. So I’m concerned that the new poster-boy of alarmism these days is sea-water “acidification” from CO2 dissolving into the ocean. Heck, even the name “acidification” is alarmist, because sea water is not acid, nor will it every be. What we are seeing is a slight reduction in how alkaline the sea water is.
There is a recent and interesting study in GRL by Byrne et al., entitled “Direct observations of basin-wide acidification of the North Pacific Ocean“. This study reports on the change in ocean alkalinity over a 15 year period (1991-2006) along a transect of the North Pacific from Hawaii to Alaska. (A “transect” is a path along which one measures some variable or variables.) Here is the path of the transect:
Figure 1. Path (transect) used for the measurement of the change in oceanic alkalinity.
I love researching climate, because there’s always so much to learn. Here’s what I learned from the Byrne et al. paper.
The first thing that I learned is that when you go from the tropics (Hawaii) to the North Pacific (Alaska), the water becomes less and less alkaline. Who knew? So even without any CO2, if you want to experience “acidification” of the ocean water, just go from Hawaii to Alaska … you didn’t notice the change from the “acidification”? You didn’t have your toenails dissolved by the increased acidity?
Well, the sea creatures didn’t notice either. They flourish in both the more alkaline Hawaiian waters and the less alkaline Alaskan waters. So let’s take a look at how large the change is along the transect.
Changes in alkalinity/acidity are measured in units called “pH”. A neutral solution has a pH of 7.0. Above a pH of 7.0, the solution is alkaline. A solution with a pH less than 7.0 is acidic. pH is a logarithmic scale, so a solution with a pH of 9.0 is ten times as alkaline as a solution with a pH of 8.0.
Figure 2 shows the measured pH along the transect. The full size graphic is here.
Figure 2. Measured ocean pH from the surface down to the ocean bottom along the transect shown in Figure 1.
The second thing I learned from the study is that the pH of the ocean is very different in different locations. As one goes from Hawaii to Alaska the pH slowly decreases along the transect, dropping from 8.05 all the way down to 7.65. This is a change in pH of almost half a unit. And everywhere along the transect, the water at depth is much less alkaline, with a minimum value of about 7.25.
The third thing I learned from the study is how little humans have changed the pH of the ocean. Figure 3 shows their graph of the anthropogenic pH changes along the transect. The full-sized graphic is here:
Figure 3. Anthropogenic changes in the pH, from the surface to 1,000 metres depth, over 15 years (1991-2006)
The area of the greatest anthropogenic change over the fifteen years of the study, as one might imagine, is at the surface. The maximum anthropogenic change over the entire transect was -0.03 pH in fifteen years. The average anthropogenic change over the top 150 metre depth was -0.023. From there down to 800 metres the average anthropogenic change was -0.011 in fifteen years.
This means that for the top 800 metres of the ocean, where the majority of the oceanic life exists, the human induced change in pH was -0.013 over 15 years. This was also about the amount of pH change in the waters around Hawaii.
Now, remember that the difference in pH between the surface water in Hawaii and Alaskan is 0.50 pH units. That means that at the current rate of change, the surface water in Hawaii will be as alkaline as the current Alaskan surface water in … well … um … lessee, divide by eleventeen, carry the quadratic residual … I get a figure of 566 years.
But of course, that is assuming that there would not be any mixing of the water during that half-millennium. The ocean is a huge place, containing a vast amount of carbon. The atmosphere contains about 750 gigatonnes of carbon in the form of CO2. The ocean contains about fifty times that amount. It is slowly mixed by wind, wave, and currents. As a result, the human carbon contribution will not stay in the upper layers as shown in the graphs above. It will be mixed into the deeper layers. Some will go into the sediments. Some will precipitate out of solution. So even in 500 years, Hawaiian waters are very unlikely to have the alkalinity of Alaskan waters.
The final thing I learned from this study is that creatures in the ocean live happily in a wide range of alkalinities, from a high of over 8.0 down to almost neutral. As a result, the idea that a slight change in alkalinity will somehow knock the ocean dead doesn’t make any sense. By geological standards, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is currently quite low. It has been several times higher in the past, with the inevitable changes in the oceanic pH … and despite that, the life in the ocean continued to flourish.
My conclusion? To mis-quote Mark Twain, “The reports of the ocean’s death have been greatly exaggerated.”
[UPDATE] Several people have asked how I know that their method for separating the amount of anthropogenic warming from the total warming is correct. I do not know if it is correct. I have assumed it is for the purposes of this discussion, to show that even if they are correct, the amount is so small and the effect would be so slow as to be meaningless.
[UPDATE] WUWT regular Smokey pointed us to a very interesting dataset. It shows the monthly changes in pH at the inlet pipe to the world famous Monterey Bay Aquarium in central California. I used to fish commercially for squid just offshore of the aquarium, it is a lovely sight at night. Figure 4 shows the pH record for the inlet water.
Figure 4. pH measurements at the inlet pipe to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Inlet depth is 50′ (15 metres). Light yellow lines show standard error of each month’s measurements, indicating a wide spread of pH values in each month. Red interval at the top right shows the theoretical pH change which the Byrne et al. paper says would have occurred over the time period of the dataset. Photo shows kids at the Aquarium looking at the fish. Photo source.
There are several conclusions from this. First, the sea creatures in the Monterey Bay can easily withstand a change in pH of 0.5 in the course of a single month. Second, the Byrne estimate of the theoretical change from anthropogenic CO2 over the period (red interval, upper right corner) is so tiny as to be totally lost in the noise.
This ability to withstand changes in the pH is also visible in the coral atolls. It is not widely recognized that the pH of the sea water is affected by the net production of carbon by the life processes of the coral reefs. This makes the water on the reef less alkaline (more acidic) than the surrounding ocean water. Obviously, all of the lagoon life thrives in that more acidic water.
In addition, because of the combination of the production of carbon by the reef and the changes in the amount of water entering the lagoon with the tides, the pH of the water can change quite rapidly. For example, in a study done in Shiraho Reef, the pH of the water inside the reef changes in 12 hours by one full pH unit (7.8 to 8.8). This represents about a thousand years worth of the theoretical anthropogenic change estimated from the Byrne et al. paper …
The sea is a complex, buffered environment in which the pH is changing constantly. The life there is able to live and thrive despite rapidly large variations in pH. I’m sorry, but I see no reason to be concerned about possible theoretical damage from a possible theoretical change in oceanic pH from increasing CO2.
[UPDATE] I got to thinking about the “deep scattering layer”. This is a layer of marine life that during the day is at a depth of about a thousand meters. But every night, in the largest migration by mass on the planet, they rise up to about 300 meters, feed at night, and descend with the dawn back to the depths.
Looking at Figure 1, this means they are experiencing a change in pH of about 0.4 pH units in a single day … and alarmists want us to be terrified of a change of 0.002 pH units in a year. Get real.
[snip] – off topic
So where now? Desperation, ocean acidification.
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“Heck, even the name “acidification” is alarmist, because sea water is not acid, nor will it every be. What we are seeing is a slight reduction in how alkaline the sea water is.”
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Sea water is not acid? Good Lord, I’m glad someone told me.
Indeed, a drop of arsenic in a bucket of water does not make it a bucket of arsenic.
A warmer ocean holds less CO2. Ocean’s with less CO2 become more acidic, not acid.
[Reply How can something become “more acidic” when it is not acidic to start with ? Dissolved carbon dioxide forms carbonic acid. How does less Co2 in the ocean make the ocean less alkaline? Just asking. RT – Mod]
Regarding the Reply:
“Ed MacAulay says:
June 19, 2010 at 6:44 pm
Now what if a subsea volcano or vent was slowly releasing gases and other materials?. Would it release sulfates, carbon dioxide or other pH modifiers? How would one separate that background level from the anthropogenic?”
Ed,
I can’t supply a link, but I recall reading about scientists studying the life thriving around a deep-sea vent. While studying some giant clams they noted a strange liquid oozing front a crack near the vent. Upon investigation, it turned out to be CO2, which is liquid under the extreme pressures of deep sea environments (as it is under the pressure inside a CO2 fire extinguisher.)
Apparently the liquid CO2 did not form puddles on the sea bottom, but rapidly dissolved into the water. It had no apparent effect on the nearby deep-sea vent life forms. I have no idea what the Ph of the water was.
Does anyone know more about this subject?
Quotes from this blog post are in bold and my responses follow.
Heck, even the name “acidification” is alarmist, because sea water is not acid, nor will it every be. What we are seeing is a slight reduction in how alkaline the sea water is.
Acidification is the act of adding an acid to a solution, it has nothing to do with whether the solution is acidic or basic (i.e., basic, neutral, and acidic solutions can all be acidified by adding an acid to them). CO2 in water forms carbonic acid, so adding CO2 to the ocean is, well, ocean acidification. It’s not alarmist, it’s simply grammar.
Likewise, cooling refers to a reduction in temperature. It doesn’t matter if the thing that is cooling was ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ to begin with, the reduction in temperature is, by definition, cooling. Addition of an acid to solution is, by definition, acidification.
I’ve seen this quibble come up a few times lately, and why people bother to argue about it is a little beyond me. I mean, it’s as though we were having a discussion about the effects of overfishing and habitat destruction on stocks of sea horses around the world and a major complaint is that sea horses aren’t really horses. Really? Is that really worth complaining about?
The first thing that I learned is that when you go from the tropics (Hawaii) to the North Pacific (Alaska), the water becomes less and less alkaline. Who knew? So even without any CO2, if you want to experience “acidification” of the ocean water, just go from Hawaii to Alaska …
The reduction in pH from the Subtropical North Pacific to Northern Pacific driven almost entirely by increased CO2 concentration in the water. Changes in total alkalinity (more on this below)/salinity also have a small influence (i.e., Subtropical gyres have lower rainfall and thus higher salinity and total alkalinity than adjacent regions; total alkalinity increases with depth due to dissolution of carbonate minerals).
This phenomenon is a result of oceanic circulation patterns, not simply as a result of latitude. The oldest (water mass age = time since it was in contact with the atmosphere) oceanic water upwells in the North Pacific. The older a water mass is the more organic material tends to be remineralized in it, and the higher the concentration of dissolved CO2. Hence dissolved CO2 is at about the highest concentration for any major oceanic water mass. By contrast, deep water forms in the North Atlantic. Similar transects through the Atlantic show little change in pH with latitude (nothing like the big decrease you see with increased latitude in the Pacific). pH decreases with depth because rates of photosynthesis (i.e., CO2 assimilation) decrease rapidly with depth (negligible below a few hundred meters) whereas rates of respiration (i.e., CO2 production) change more slowly. As a results, dissolved CO2 conc. increases with depth.
To be clear: pH decreases due to increased CO2 concentration. The latitudinal pattern in the Pacific is driven by oceanic circulation while the depth pattern is driven by spatial patterns of photosynthesis and respiration.
See, for example, Chemical Oceanography by Millero for a basic introduction to the patterns and driving forces.
you didn’t notice the change from the “acidification”?
The ecosystems change radically between the Subtropical and Northern Pacific as well as with depth at any given site. There are many, many environmental differences among these areas that drive these changes, the change in pH being one.
You didn’t have your toenails dissolved by the increased acidity?
Uh, straw man… Downing a tablet of uranium won’t dissolve anyone’s toenails either, therefore it is unimportant???
Well, the sea creatures didn’t notice either. They flourish in both the more alkaline Hawaiian waters and the less alkaline Alaskan waters.
Some species live near Hawaii while almost entirely different species live near Alaska, therefore the latitudinal/depth related pH structure is irrelevant? That’s like saying that since some archaea grow well near 90 C while ice fish live their lives at -1.8 C temperature is irrelevant to marine organisms. That’s just, well, silly.
Changes in alkalinity/acidity are measured in units called “pH”. A neutral solution has a pH of 7.0. Above a pH of 7.0, the solution is alkaline. A solution with a pH less than 7.0 is acidic. pH is a logarithmic scale, so a solution with a pH of 9.0 is ten times as alkaline as a solution with a pH of 8.0.
I wouldn’t be picky about terminology here, but since you incorrectly do so above, I suppose we’ll really strive for precision of language.
Alkalinity (usually discussed, measured, and expressed as total alkalinity) is a property of sea water and is equivalent to the acid neutralizing capacity. See Chemical Oceanography by Millero for brief introduction to the meaning of “alkalinity” in oceanography. The term you want here, referring to how alkaline a sample is is “basicity”. The addition of CO2 to sea water has no effect on the alkalinity, but does lower the pH, therefore reducing the basicity (and increasing acidity). pH is way of expressing H+ activity (or concentration, depending on the scale—concentration on the seawater scale) and is unitless.
pH is neutral where the activity of H+ equals the activity of OH-. Neutral pH is not inherently 7.0, but rather depends on significantly on temperature, pressure, and ionic strength. That is, neutral pH is 7.00 in completely pure water @ur momisugly 25 C and 1 atm. Neutral pH in average seawater (S = 35 ppt, TA = 2300 ueq/kg) at a temp of 25 C and 1 atm is nearer 6.9. Exactly where the pH is neutral isn’t particularly meaningful though, it’s just a point of reference. For instance, a change in pH from 6.95 to 0.95 would have major effects chemistry/biology. A change from 7.01 to 6.99 (assuming 7.00 is neutral) would have much less of an effect, even though in the first case the solution was acidic the entire time whereas in the second the solution went form basic to acidic.
The third thing I learned from the study is how little humans have changed the pH of the ocean. Figure 3 shows their graph of the anthropogenic pH changes along the transect. The full-sized graphic is here:
The area of the greatest anthropogenic change over the fifteen years of the study, as one might imagine, is at the surface. The maximum anthropogenic change over the entire transect was -0.03 pH in fifteen years. The average anthropogenic change over the top 150 metre depth was -0.023. From there down to 800 metres the average anthropogenic change was -0.011 in fifteen years.
This means that for the top 800 metres of the ocean, where the majority of the oceanic life exists, the human induced change in pH was -0.013 over 15 years. This was also about the amount of pH change in the waters around Hawaii.
This is exactly what you’d expect though. The CO2 is coming in from the atmosphere, so the change at the surface is larger right now, since it takes time to mix surface water down through the ocean (turnover on the order of ~1000 yrs). The ~25 uatm increase in atmospheric CO2 over these 50 yrs (~353 to 378 uatm) should give you a -0.024 change in pH surface sea water (at equilibrium w/ atmosphere), all else equal. Sure enough, that’s what the data show. The change from the preindustrial atmospheric CO2 (280 uatm) to today (390 uatm) yields a pH change of -0.11.
As you note above, since pH is measured on a logarithmic scale a small change in pH represents a comparatively large change in H+ activity/concentration. A -0.024 unit change represents a 5.7% increase in H+; a -0.11 change represents a 29% increase in H+. These changes certainly can and do impact chemistry, and likely at least some aspects of biology. Even so, if all we were talking about was a -0.024 change in pH, no one would care. That’s really not that big a deal, I think almost anyone would agree. A -0.11 change is a much bigger deal, and a >-0.4 change (>250% H+ increase), which is what we’ll get near the end of century on our current CO2 emissions trajectory, is much more substantial. A 6% increase in H+ probably isn’t anything to worry about if that’s all there will be, but a >250% increase in H+ (and the litany of other chemical changes it induces) is much more substantial. How biology reacts to this looks to be very complex, based on the work done so far, but there are a lot of data that suggest that this reduction in pH will cause many negative consequences for human society (a discussion in itself).
Now, remember that the difference in pH between the surface water in Hawaii and Alaskan is 0.50 pH units. That means that at the current rate of change, the surface water in Hawaii will be as alkaline as the current Alaskan surface water in … well … um … lessee, divide by eleventeen, carry the quadratic resdual … I get a figure of 566 years.
Why on Earth would you assume that the rate of change will be constant? The magnitude of the pH change resulting from the addition of CO2 to sea water depends on 1) the quantity of CO2 added and 2) the buffer intensity of the sea water (which depends, effectively, on starting pH). The rate that human activity is releasing CO2 to the atmosphere is increasing, and has been increasing more-or-less exponentially over the last century. To maintain the rate of pH decrease constant would require us to substantially reign in the rate of growth in CO2 emissions, something that doesn’t seem to be happening too fast, and something it seems like most of the folks here would be opposed to. We’re currently on track to see close to 0.50 unit pH reduction in surface waters by the end of the century (relative to the preindustrial, so a 0.4 reduction relative to today). That would reduce the surface pH to ~7.65 near Hawaii and ~7.25 near Alaska in 2100. That would be a pretty big change indeed. Also, a small point, but as mentioned above, the difference between mean surface pH of 8.05 (near Hawaii) and the minimum surface value of 7.65 (near Alaska) is 0.4, not 0.5 units.
But of course, that is assuming that there would not be any mixing of the water during that half-millennium.
No, all of the values above assume that there WILL be mixing. If there were no mixing then the reduction in surface ocean pH would be much larger than those I’ve mentioned above.
The ocean is a huge place, containing a vast amount of carbon. The atmosphere contains about 750 gigatonnes of carbon in the form of CO2. The ocean contains about fifty times that amount.
No, the ocean contains about fifty times as much dissolved inorganic carbon, but most of it is HCO3- (~92%) and CO3= (~7%). Little of the DIC in the ocean is CO2 (~1%). The ocean and atmosphere dynamically and substantially influence each other, no doubt about that. A perturbation in one yields a perturbation in the other.
It is slowly mixed by wind, wave, and currents. As a result, the human carbon contribution will not stay in the upper layers as shown in the graphs above. It will be mixed into the deeper layers.
But, that’s exactly what IS shown in these figures. The anthropogenic CO2 input is at the surface, but is slowly being mixed down into the ocean via normal circulation. Since the turnover time for the ocean is on the order of 1000 yrs and most of the CO2 input will occur in a century or two (or maybe three) the changes are larger and occur sooner at the surface, and slowly mix down.
Some will go into the sediments. Some will precipitate out of solution.
Adding CO2 to sea water shifts the equilibrium away from aragonite/calcite precipitation, reducing rates of sedimentation. Over the very long term (tens of thousands of years) most of the CO2 input will be removed via weathering of silicates. This is very important over the next 100,000 yrs, for example, but is pretty much irrelevant in our lifetime, our kids’, our grandkids’, etc.
So even in 500 years, Hawaiian waters are very unlikely to have the alkalinity of Alaskan waters.
As above, CO2 addition to sea water doesn’t directly affect alkalinity whatsoever. It reduces pH though. On our current trajectory, Hawaiian surface ocean pH will probably be near the current minimum surface ocean pH, that near Alaska. Alaskan waters would have a pH substantially lower than any current surface water pH. Again, the effects of these changes on biology requires another discussion, but suffice to say (for sake of not making this too terribly long) there are a lot of data that demonstrate that is likely to be a very big deal indeed.
The final thing I learned from this study is that creatures in the ocean live happily in a wide range of alkalinities, from a high of over 8.0 down to almost neutral.
You mean pH, not alkalinity. Like above, observing that there is *something* alive over a wide pH range and suggesting that pH is not an important factor in structuring the ocean is just silly. There are archaea doing well at 90 C and ice fish thriving at -1.8 C. Change those temperatures much and they’re both toast.
As a result, the idea that a slight change in alkalinity will somehow knock the ocean dead doesn’t make any sense.
Again, you mean pH, not alkalinity. This is a straw man though—no one is saying that a small change in pH will ‘knock the ocean dead.’ A big decrease in pH, like what we are going to see this century without a substantial change in behavior, has been shown to have a variety of negative effects on a variety of organisms.
By geological standards, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is currently quite low. It has been several times higher in the past, with the inevitable changes in the oceanic pH … and despite that, the life in the ocean continued to flourish.
First, atmospheric CO2 is only one of the components that determines sea water pH. Total alkalinity is also critically important, and it has almost certainly been a fair amount higher in the pas as well. Ocean pH has certainly been lower in the geologic past, but pH is but one of many factors that was significantly different and that affected, for instance, biomineralization. At the times when CO2 was substantially higher in the geologic past, so was calcium concentration and likely total alkalinity as well. It’s easy to produce carbonate minerals in those conditions, must as it is easy today. However, when you combine low pH with (geologically) low calcium and alkalinity, which would be the situation as silicate weather catches up over tens of thousands of years, it’s not so easy to produce and preserve carbonate minerals.
We also cannot measure physiological processes in organisms that lived 50, 100, 500 million years ago. They lived in an ocean with a lower pH than ours, and it’s likely that their physiology adapted over evolutionary time to those conditions. We can’t much for certain because, well, they’re all extinct, and have been for millions of years. What we can do is measure the responses of modern organisms to the conditions they are likely to be seeing in a few decades. When we do that we see that, in fact, many organisms do very poorly indeed in this low pH brave new ocean.
Best,
Chris
CO2 says:
June 20, 2010 at 1:50 am
Sea water is not acid? Good Lord, I’m glad someone told me.
Indeed, a drop of arsenic in a bucket of water does not make it a bucket of arsenic.
A warmer ocean holds less CO2. Ocean’s with less CO2 become more acidic, not acid.
Reply How can something become “more acidic” when it is not acidic to start with?
Dissolved carbon dioxide forms carbonic acid. How does less Co2 in the ocean make the ocean less alkaline?
Just asking. RT – Mod
And now I’m out of moderator mode I’d just like to add that you’d think someone posting under the name CO2 would get this rght!
Sheesh!
I noticed the charts are attributed to a group I’ve been trying to keep an eye on for the last 3 months. CLIVAR.
CLIVAR is Climate Variability and Predictability. A World Climate Research Programme of INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL FOR SCIENCE.
INTERGOVERNMENTAL OCEANOGRAPHIC COMMISSION,
and WORLD METEOROLOGICAL ORGANIZATION.
Their website is HERE
From their handbook…
They are well funded, with a number of ships and aircraft at their disposal. I came across CLIVAR whilst taking part in the Citizens Audit Project.
The CLIVAR objectives immediately reminded me of the Kevin Trenberth article “More Knowledge Less Certainty” in Nature Reports Climate Change Published online: 21 January 2010 | doi:10.1038/climate.2010.06 HERE where he states
My immediate thoughts were, “wow, imagine if this lot fluked just one El Nino, or a drought somewhere, you can see the headlines now,
Some of the usual suspects are with the CLIVAR programme, Meehl, Karoly, Briffa, Mann, P Jones, Neville Nichols. NOAA, CSIRO, NCAR, UEA, HADLEY, UK MET BoM etc etc
Chris says:
June 20, 2010 at 2:15 am
Again, the effects of these changes on biology requires another discussion, but suffice to say (for sake of not making this too terribly long) there are a lot of data that demonstrate that is likely to be a very big deal indeed.
Chris, do feel free to post links to studies on this or any of the other points you addressed. It’s more useful than general arm waving. Just type in the web address, no need for code tags.
Thanks
They are starting up a new institution now in Norway to study “ocean acidification”.
Its gonna cost us millions upon millions. The socialist mr. Solheim is behind it.
So there is a political pressure. Its gonna replace the Globull Warning scare,
because they can see that this scare is running out of steam.
So prepare for a lot of Globull Acidification Scare (GAS) in the future.
It will originate from these new institutions.
They have a budget, you see. And they will have lead authors in the new UN panel.
And they will approve their own reports.
It will be thousands of pages.And thousands of scientists will be behind it.
Just wait and see.
It will be in school-books shortly.
Amazing how different compounds interact with water and pressure and temperature.
When doing any studying on water itself, it is very complex as it can hold trace elements as well as have the capacity to saturate with soluable compounds, yet repel other compounds.
We also cannot measure physiological processes in organisms that lived 50, 100, 500 million years ago. They lived in an ocean with a lower pH than ours, and it’s likely that their physiology adapted over evolutionary time to those conditions. We can’t much for certain because, well, they’re all extinct, and have been for millions of years. What we can do is measure the responses of modern organisms to the conditions they are likely to be seeing in a few decades. When we do that we see that, in fact, many organisms do very poorly indeed in this low pH brave new ocean.
Oh dear eg Hendricks and Rickaby
Abstract. An urgent question for future climate, in light of
increased burning of fossil fuels, is the temperature sensitivity
of the climate system to atmospheric carbon dioxide
(pCO2). To date, no direct proxy for past levels of pCO2 exists
beyond the reach of the polar ice core records. We propose
a new methodology for placing a constraint on pCO2
over the Cenozoic based on the physiological plasticity of
extant coccolithophores. Specifically, our premise is that the
contrasting calcification tolerance1 of various extant species
of coccolithophore to raised pCO2 reflects an “evolutionary
memory” of past atmospheric composition. The different
times of evolution of certain morphospecies allows an upper
constraint of past pCO2 to be placed on Cenozoic timeslices.
Further, our hypothesis has implications for the response of
marine calcifiers to ocean acidification. Geologically “ancient”
species, which have survived large changes in ocean
chemistry, are likely more resilient to predicted acidification.
….Coupling of calcification
with species-specific Rubisco specificity provides
a tangible means to preserve the CO2/O2 composition at the
time of origin of photosynthetic phyla (Giordano et al., 2005;
Tcherkez et al., 2006). The preservation of calcification ability
at high pCO2 in C. pelagicus may occur through genetic
redundancy (Wagner, 1999), or variance in genetic expression
whilst the adaptation of E. huxleyi and C. leptoporus to
the modern low pCO2 niche could be associated with gene
inactivation of pathways associated with high pCO2 (Hittinger
et al., 2004). The high proportion of duplicate genes
within plant and algae genomes is indicative of a high rate
of retention of duplicate genes (Lynch and Connery, 2000).
Gene duplications contribute to the establishment of new
gene functions, and may underlie the origin of evolutionary
novelty. Duplicate genes can exist stably in a partially redundant
state over a protracted evolutionary period (Moore
and Purugganan, 2005). A half-life to silencing and loss of
a plant gene duplicate is estimated at 23.4 million years such
that remnant duplicate genes, which can be reactivated by
environmental conditions to encode calcification within coccolithophores
under “ancestral” conditions representative of
60 Ma, appears reasonable…..
….an advantage over the now prosperous E. huxleyi, as the carbonate
system of the ocean reverses towards the acidity of the
past. C. pelagicus has weathered large and abrupt changes in
conditions in the geological past, e.g. the Palaeocene-Eocene
thermal maximum (Gibbs et al., 2006), with no apparent impact
on physiology, but the adaptive strategies of newcomer
E. huxleyi may differ significantly, potentially leading to future
non-calcifying descendants.
Bad, bad news for those that wish the world will go under;
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/06/global-average-sea-surface-temperatures-continue-their-plunge/
Oh dear, oh dear.
They can even see a correlation between cloud cover and reflected radiation.
Oh no! Its a negative feedback at work!
The dark heat is reflected into space. Good grief. Bad, bad news.
I wonder when the Mob is going to move in and take over this science racket?
Chris says:
June 20, 2010 at 2:15 am
Great post, I made a start on something similar, but you’ve done it far, far better and saved me a lot of research, many thanks. This is a red herring, a desperate diversion from the evolving situation in the arctic. I’m awaiting the results from the last Catlin survey.
kwik says:
June 20, 2010 at 3:16 am
” Its gonna replace the Globull Warning scare,
because they can see that this scare is running out of steam.
So prepare for a lot of Globull Acidification Scare (GAS) in the future.
It will originate from these new institutions.”
—————-
The sceptical arguments are the ones running out of steam; this global warming conspiracy is ranging wider and wider, including biology and chemistry. How do you imagine that thousands of scientists can form a conspiracy? Usually a conspiracy works best with the fewest number of conspirators; like 2.
CO2 says:
June 20, 2010 at 1:50 am
Sea water is not acid? Good Lord, I’m glad someone told me.
Indeed, a drop of arsenic in a bucket of water does not make it a bucket of arsenic.
A warmer ocean holds less CO2. Ocean’s with less CO2 become more acidic, not acid.
Reply How can something become “more acidic” when it is not acidic to start with?
Dissolved carbon dioxide forms carbonic acid. How does less Co2 in the ocean make the ocean less alkaline?
Just asking. RT – Mod
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Please read; Chris says: June 20, 2010 at 2:15 am, quite informative.
Don’t confuse acidic with alkaline.
————————
And now I’m out of moderator mode I’d just like to add that you’d think someone posting under the name CO2 would get this rght!
Sheesh!
——————-
Have you read the post? Now I pose the reverse question, Sheesh!
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Docattheautopsy. 6.40pm.
nice one.
“CO2 says:
[…]
How do you imagine that thousands of scientists can form a conspiracy? Usually a conspiracy works best with the fewest number of conspirators; like 2.”
You’re right there; ClimateGate has proven that their attempts to conspire get blown sooner or later. Of course it was also proof that they did conspire.
John Silver says:
June 20, 2010 at 3:50 am
I wonder when the Mob is going to move in and take over this science racket?
From reports I’ve seen the Mafia already has near dominance of “Green Energy” in the EU. Like Willie Sutton, they know where the money is.
John Silver says:
June 20, 2010 at 3:50 am
I wonder when the Mob is going to move in and take over this science racket?
They did dude! Called themselves the IPCC.
CO2 says:
June 20, 2010 at 4:21 am
CO2 says:
June 20, 2010 at 1:50 am
Sea water is not acid? Good Lord, I’m glad someone told me.
Indeed, a drop of arsenic in a bucket of water does not make it a bucket of arsenic.
A warmer ocean holds less CO2. Ocean’s with less CO2 become more acidic, not acid.
Reply How can something become “more acidic” when it is not acidic to start with?
Dissolved carbon dioxide forms carbonic acid. How does less Co2 in the ocean make the ocean less alkaline?
Just asking. RT – Mod
Please read; Chris says: June 20, 2010 at 2:15 am, quite informative.
Don’t confuse acidic with alkaline.
And now I’m out of moderator mode I’d just like to add that you’d think someone posting under the name CO2 would get this rght!
Sheesh!
Have you read the post? Now I pose the reverse question, Sheesh!
Heh, some people don’t know when to stop digging and simply admit they got it wrong.
Yes Mr “CO2”, Chris’ use of acidification is grammatically correct, However your assertion that “Ocean’s with less CO2 become more acidic” is not. It’s wrong on two counts.
1) if the ocean is not acidic to begin with (it isn’t) , then it can’t become “more acidic”, only less alkaline. It can undergo a process of acidification however, as Chris said.
2) (And you didn’t try to address this one, presumably because you know you’ve been caught with your pants round your ankles) Co2 dissolved in water forms an acid. Yet you state that “A warmer ocean holds less CO2. Ocean’s with less CO2 become more acidic”.
So to repeat my question: How does removing an acid forming compound from the ocean make the ocean “more acidic”(sic).
Now I pose the reverse question
Well you’ve got everything else back to front, so why not?
CO2 says:
June 20, 2010 at 4:02 am
The sceptical arguments are the ones running out of steam; this global warming conspiracy is ranging wider and wider, including biology and chemistry. How do you imagine that thousands of scientists can form a conspiracy? Usually a conspiracy works best with the fewest number of conspirators; like 2.
You have no idea of how much surpressed science and non-peer reviewed science that is already out there. The peer review process that the current science is using to keep government grants into each others hands, supresses good science as who is an expert in unknown field of study? Science has yet to even look at the mechanical aspects of this planet and solar system. Our basic scientific LAWS just do not stand up against time and basic measurements of distance.
Just say the word “ROTATION” and a fog goes over knowledgable people.
Willis, another thought on this paper. Rainwater has a pH that ranges from 4.5 – 5.5. It seems to me that the entire variation measured in the paper (particularly the changes in pH near the surface) could be caused by small changes in precipitation rates along the chosen transect, between the two sampling times. In other words, natural variability in local ocean pH, driven partly by precipitation dynamics over monthly, annual and decadal timescales, is being woefully under-sampled in this study.
DirkH says:
June 20, 2010 at 4:33 am
“CO2 says:
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Conspiracy is an assumption made by the desperate having no proof, it’s rarely proven. By its nature a conspiracy is secret. Give me an idea as to how you you imagine the thousands of scientists to conspire. Do they have a rather large meeting place? Three independent investigations have cleared the East Anglia CRU. Advise me what proof you have of a conspiracy other than repeating a conspiracy throw away.
kwik says:
June 20, 2010 at 3:35 am
How I wish that Roy Spencer is right, for the sake of the world, but how I recognise my own wishful thinking. This man is a discredited voice and yes, I have studied all his claims.
One of my favorite sites [after WUWT, of course] has linked to this article today.
“CO2 says:
[…]
“Three independent investigations have cleared the East Anglia CRU. Advise me what proof you have of a conspiracy other than repeating a conspiracy throw away.”
Read the ClimateGate e-mails. They conspired to put a journal out of business, for instance, and they conspired to skew the peer review process. I mean, why do i talk to you. You sound like the Black Knight; you simply ignore things that happen. That won’t help the warmist movement one bit. A movement led by a crazy nutter like Hansen, how would one ever expect such people to be in touch with reality in the first place.
BTW who are “the thousands of scientists ” and why do you carry that silly number around with you as if it means something? Are you that easily impressed? Where do you have that number from?