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.
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Why is the pH lower at depth?
Probably more a factor of water temperature as warmer water contains more dissolved salt so cooler water at greater depths and in northern latitudes tends to be less alkaline.
Thanks Willis for some interesting data and insight
One could almost guess that CO2 is more soluble in colder water; maybe you should do some research on that.
Several people have mentioned the surface CO2 “mixing” with the deeper water. I’m sue it happens; but no need to even invoke “mixing”.
As weak as my chemistry is, I still understand from solid state Physics how diffusion driven by a concentration graient, works. When you have people dancing in a bunch on the ballroom floor, and there’s an open space; the dancers naturally gravitate towards the empty space. Well in the ballroom case, that simply moves the empty space to somewhere else; but in an ocean situation, if you have CO2 dissolving in warmer surface water per Henry’s law; and you have a temperature relapse rate with depth (for while); it is perfectly natural for that higher concentration CO2 at the surface to move under diffusion to the colder deeper water where it is even more soluble.
So the ocean temperature relapse rate is a natural pumping mechanism that actually drives CO2 from the surface to the deep er waters. You don’t even have to invoke convection (mixing); pure concentration gradient driven diffusion, aided by the temperature decline forms a powerful pump to deplete the surface layers of CO2 and drive it deeper.
Now if the surface temperatures should rise; we would expect outgassing from the surface to put more CO2 in the atmosphere; BUT1 if the surface layers are somewhat depleted by diffusion, then there isn’t a whole host of CO2 available to supply that outgassing.
I think that is why a general warming doesn’t result in an immediate CO2 increase in the atmosphere; because the CO2 excess has been moved to deeper waters; and it is going to take actual water circulation to bring that reservoir of CO2 back to where it can be exchanged with the atmosphere.
The process seems to me to be somewhat analagous (but different) from the charge depletion that occurs at a semiconductor junction interface to form a depletion region at the interface.
So the data you show Willis, just doesn’t surprise me at all. In fact it is kind of comforting to see that Mother Gaia seems to like to follow the rules, and move her CO2 around the way ity was intended.
And when you see the 18 ppm P-P annual cycle in the Atmospheric Arctic CO2 abundance, compared to 6 ppm at Mauna Loa, and about a negative 1 ppm (out of phase) cycle at the south pole; it seems like everything just fits into place.
I had to laugh at Jane Lubchenko’s big public demonstration of ocean acidification, that she performed on camera.
Seems that Jane (I think she’s an oceanographer) took some “ordinary tap water” and dyed it with “an ordinary laboratory blue dye” ( I think the brand name of the dye was “phenolphthalene”; I prefer the “Litm,us” brand myself); and she then chilled the ordinary tap water with about a pound or two of dry ice, that she dumped into the water; and the ordinary laboratory blue dye turned into an ordinary laboratory yellow dye, therby proving that corals and shell fish can thrive in ordinary tap water with its chlorine and fluoride etc, so long as you dye it blue with an ordinary laboratory blue dye; but if you chill it and paint it yellow instead, then the corals presumably won’t grow in ordinary tap water.
Way to go Jane; some experimentalist you are. So why didn’t you start with some “ordinary oceanic sea water” say from the Great barrier reef for example; where it is believed that corals and shellfish can grow; and then try dyeing that blue with your ordinary laboratory blue dye; why didn’t you do that Jane ??
I think we are all concerned about pollution of the oceans; and the rape of the fisheries, and other abuses; but the natural uptake of CO2 by the oceans is not one of the top things on my list of oceanic concerns.
CO2 Says
I should have added, “Because of other factors”, a warmer ocean…
Ocean acidity is not only a simple function of CO2 disolving in water, it involves the bio-mass from Phyto-plankton and Zooplankton down, which sequester CO2 drawing on the disolved CO2 carrying it to both the deep waters and the ocean floor. This is referred to as the solubility pump and the biological pump. This bio-mass of Phytoplankton and Zooplankton, residing close to the surface, is threatened by the warming of colder oceans, resulting in less absorbtion of CO2, increasing the disolved CO2 level, hence acidity. The whole issue is far more complex than a discussion about Ph, acidity and alkaline. While a warmer ocean may absorb less CO2, the CO2 level will still increase if the rate of sequestration drops disproportionally.
There are 3 pumps eg
Volk and Hoffert [1985] define an ocean carbon pump
as ‘‘a process that depletes the ocean surface of dissolved
inorganic carbon (DIC) relative to the deep-water DIC.’’
They recognized three such pumps: the soft-tissue pump, the
carbonate pump and the solubility pump. While the first two
are biological, the third is a response to solubility differences
of CO2 in warm and cold water
The soft pump raises significant constraints to a number of spurious arguments eg Marinov et al 2008
[1] We use both theory and ocean biogeochemistry models to examine the role of the
soft-tissue biological pump in controlling atmospheric CO2. We demonstrate that
atmospheric CO2 can be simply related to the amount of inorganic carbon stored in the ocean by the soft-tissue pump, which we term (OCSsoft). OCSsoft is linearly related to the inventory of remineralized nutrient, which in turn is just the total nutrient inventory minus the preformed nutrient inventory. In a system where total nutrient is conserved, atmospheric CO2 can thus be simply related to the global inventory of preformed nutrient. Previous model simulations have explored how changes in the surface concentration of nutrients in deepwater formation regions change the global preformed nutrient inventory. We show that changes in physical forcing such as winds, vertical mixing, and lateral mixing can shift the balance of deepwater formation between the North Atlantic (where preformed nutrients are low) and the Southern Ocean (where they are high). Such changes in physical forcing can thus drive large changes in atmospheric CO2, even with minimal changes in surface nutrient concentration. If Southern Ocean deepwater formation strengthens, the preformed nutrient inventory and thus atmospheric CO2 increase. An important consequence of these new insights is that the relationship between surface nutrient concentrations, biological export production, and atmospheric CO2 is more complex than previously predicted. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we show that OCSsoft can increase and atmospheric CO2 decrease, while surface nutrients show minimal change and export production decreases.
toho (June 20, 2010 at 8:40 am)
Thanks for that. Kind of confirmed my suspicions.
It did occur to me too that the even the act of filtering, heating and pumping the water into (large) aquarium tanks could cause pH changes of the magnitude decribed in the post (simply because the natural variation that is so “worrying” is so small).
I come back to several earlier comments. The claims of this paper are dependent on new spectrophotometric technology claiming some remarkable field precision for pH measurement -the patents of the method and instrument being those of the author of the paper in question. Given the precision and accuracy of conventional equipment no such claims for a CO2 signature could be made- as the claims do not rise above instrument and method noise.)
This is important for a number of reasons but my biggest concern is that it implies no historical pH data set can be used to argue with conclusions made by spectrophotometric measurements. Will we also see “adjustments” of the historical pH records– it certainly worked for temperature?
CO2 says:
June 20, 2010 at 3:51 am
And the sad part is, you appear to mean that seriously about the Catlin survey …
And a “desperate diversion” from the Arctic? Dude, I write about what interests me. I have written about the Arctic many times, and likely will again. I’m not trying to divert anyone from anything, it’s all fascinating learning opportunities for me.
For example, my guess is that you didn’t know that the Monterey Bay water changed pH so fast, or that there was a large difference between Hawaiian and Alaskan water. I’m a reformed cowboy, not a sophisticate, so I can say “I was surprised by …” or “I learned a lot from …”
You ought to try it, it’s kinda fun to learn new things.
chris y says:
June 20, 2010 at 5:19 am
Yeah, I was wondering that as well … but like I said, I accepted their conclusions purely for the sake of the discussion, to show that even if true they were trivially small.
Dave Springer says:
June 20, 2010 at 6:54 am
I do not jump to conclusions much. I have accepted the authors’ claims at face value for the sake of argument only. I don’t know if they are right or wrong in their measurements and their assumptions.
That’s its denotation, but its connotation is that it’s turning into lemon juice. I suggest putting the word inside quotation marks, as a signal that it mustn’t be taken as meaning “becoming sour (acid).” Or, better, how about “ocean neutralization”? The denotation isn’t as precise, but the connotation isn’t misleading. The trade-off is worth it.
Grammar and usage have many subsurface booby-traps (exceptions, and exceptions to the exceptions), counter-intuitive rules, and nuances. It can get quite tricky. Incidentally, a very readable and concentrated book on such matters is Woe Is I, available here:
http://www.amazon.com/Woe-Grammarphobes-Guide-Better-English/dp/1594488908/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277064463&sr=1-1
The correct jargon is as follows:
a) When you add an acid to a substance, it is “acidulation.” Acidulation is commonly used in refinery wastewater treatment to crack oil/water emulsions. We typically use concentrated sulfuric acid for this.
b) When a liquid becomes more acidic via natural or deliberate process, it is “acidification.” The first phase of Dr. Sam Ghosh’s split-phase anaerobic treatment system is called the “acidification” step, as the facultative microbes are converting short-chain organic molecules into various acids (primarily acetic).
I think the absolutely accurate term would be “oceanic acidification.”
Ocean ventilation is essential to understanding near surface pH. Chris has posted in response to Willis that ocean circulation is on the order of ~ 1000 years. The ocean acidification models agree and as such do not assume any mixing of surface water in their calculation of the 100 year surface pH projections. So is this correct?
Just read an interesting caution by a retired Argonne employee Gerald Marsh “Seawater pH and Anthropogenic CO2”. http://www.gemarsh.com/…/SEAWATER%20pH%20&%20ANTHRO%20CO2%20V2.pdf He cites a study byJenkins and Smethie, Jr. who used tritium (A bomb test residue) to look at ocean ventilation time scales. Tritium has mixed down some 500 to 1000meters in the Atlantic subtropics, 1500 to 2000 m off New England (south of Gulf stream)
and north of the Gulf Stream extension is at the ocean floor!!! They also found tritium off Bermuda had descended a thousand meters in a decade (1970s to 80s)
Byrne et al. seems to allow for minimal mixing (approx 0.01ph units) based on a slow down in recent ocean mixing -which in turn is based on a MODEL. If there was mixing one could not ascribe anything to CO2 as the pH differential is almost 0.7 units in the top 1000m along their transect.
So ocean mixing seems to be occurring much more than allowed for in the acidification models. Any bets on how much grant money will be available to validate the respiration and ventilation rate assumptions made in the ocean acidification models?
DirkH says:
June 20, 2010 at 6:13 am
“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?”
=====
It is interesting to note that no less a luminary than Mike “the idea of climate change is so plastic” Hulme has recently “debunked” a variant of the “thousands of scientists” consensus myth:
Honey, I shrunk the consensus!
PAEH says:
June 20, 2010 at 8:37 am
Phil. says:
June 19, 2010 at 10:33 pm
flyfisher says:
June 19, 2010 at 8:53 pm
One other thing to consider: what is the standard error of their equipment? I’d be astounded if their measurement device was accurate below 0.01 pH Units.
Perhaps you should have read the paper (specifically Data and Methods):
“Measurement precision on both transects was on the order of ±0.001″
Phil,
give up now, you obviously have no knowledge of what you are demanding that everyone else accepts without question.
pH CANNOT be measured to 0.001 units. The buffer solutions used to calibrate electrodes are only accurate to +/- 0.1 pH units, and that is recognized in international standards.
If you look at the sentence you pulled from that paper, it would seem to refer to location, i.e. longitude and latitude
No you’re wrong again, you should have taken my advice and read the paper! I’ve included the whole paragraph which makes it clear that it is pH measurement that is being described. Also note that it’s a spectrophotometric method that’s used not an electrode method.
“2. Data and Methods
[5] Precise spectrophotometric procedures for seawater pH measurement were developed between 1985 and 1993 [Robert-Baldo et al., 1985; Clayton and Byrne, 1993], and the first successful application on an ocean expedition occurred in March 1991 (WOCE P16N; 750 pH samples) along a cruise transect between Oahu, Hawaii, and Kodiak, Alaska (Figure 1). This transect was reoccupied in March 2006 (CLIVAR/CO2 Repeat Hydrography Program P16N; 1356 pH samples). Both datasets, obtained at 25°C and reported on the total hydrogen ion concentration scale (pHT = −log[H+]T), are available from the CLIVAR & Carbon Hydrographic Data Office (CCHDO, http://cchdo.ucsd.edu/pacific.html). The spectrophotometric method [Clayton and Byrne, 1993] relies on molecular properties of the pH indicator meta-cresol purple. A small amount of dye ([mCP] ~ 3 μM) was added to each sample, and absorbance was measured at 434 and 578 nm and at a non-absorbing wavelength, against a reference solution of pure seawater. Directly measured pH, pHm, was then calculated from absorbance ratios. These data were collected before the practice of purifying indicators was adopted, so a correction for mCP impurities was applied to the 2006 pH data: 0.001 units at pH 7.4, increasing to 0.005 at pH 8.1 [Yao et al., 2007]. Measurement precision on both transects was on the order of ±0.001 (somewhat smaller than the annual pH change expected for seawater in equilibrium with the atmosphere).”
Why is a decrease in alkalinity called “acidification”? I suggest it’s because “debasement” already has a definition, and it would sound really weird in this context.
Jimbo!
You earlier asked for Essenbach or anyone better qualified than you to look at something.
[~SNIP~ Deliberately insulting someone who devotes a lot of time writing popular articles for the readers of this site didn’t get by this moderator. ~dbs]
Phil:
How about the precision of ventilation and respiration rates that are required to define the AGW signature? Do you think we know these well enough to claim an AGW pH decline of a few hundredths a pH unit?
Here is a good test– lets give the authors on some future cruise along the same transect- alkalinity, salinity, temperature, DOC, and air CO2 etc and have them predict before sampling the pH within the limits ascribed by their paper to AGW CO2. Basically their paper is saying they know what the ocean pH is supposed to be. I say prove it!
Your update re what organisms can cope with doesn’t answer it. Yes, in their current environments they are subjected to a range of pHs and they cope with that. But acidification (sorry, reduced alkalinity) shifts the mean, so most likely it shifts the extremes correspondingly. Furthermore, they might be able to cope with transient excursions outside their comfort range but not a sustained shift.
Wrt predictions, both your numbers and the ones I referred you to (e.g. http://web.archive.org/web/20080625100559/http://www.ipsl.jussieu.fr/~jomce/acidification/paper/Orr_OnlineNature04095.pdf) are calculations, assuming a model, and based on observations. Their model and calculations are the far more impressively detailed, but yours use more recent data. I eagerly await a peer-reviewed published paper based on these latest numbers.
flyfisher wrote:
> One other thing to consider: what is the standard error of their
> equipment? I’d be astounded if their measurement device was
> accurate below 0.01 pH Units.
If you’d read the paper you’d find out: “Measurement precision on both transects was on the order of ±0.001 (somewhat smaller than the annual pH change expected for seawater in equilibrium with the atmosphere).” (paragraph 5)
DerekB
How about before we go spending a whole bunch of money on what flora and fauna can or cannot survive we make sure we understand this is a real issue.
But how do we get a peer reviewed study without grants and who is going to fund anything that may challenge ocean acidification?
The last time we studied acidification was the 80’s which culminated in the Acid Rain study -NAPAP. The interim report was not up to alarmist standards so the the head of NAPAP was forced to step down. The new head of NAPAP was forced to promise Congress that they would not find that acid rain wasn’t as bad as claimed. They couldn’t so- EPA refused to release the report. The lead scientist ED Krug went on 60 minutes to speak against these actions- EPA slandered and blacklisted him as a result.
I lost trust in this system a long time ago.
Derek B,
Your link is broken, so I’ll accept what you’ve written above. I should point out that the Monterey Bay Aquarium takes actual pH measurements at the inlet. The aquarium pumps in ocean water from well out in the bay and runs it through the tank and back out again, so it is not a calculated model. Those are real world pH measurements.
I used to raise tropical fish for many years in community tanks up to 125 gallons. Different fish species prefer different pH, and the preference range is wide, from about 6.5 – 8.5.
Despite that wide range, my fish all thrived in a pH of 7 – 7.5. Why? Because pH is probably the least important water parameter. Temperature, salinity, nitrates, nitrites, etc., all have a much bigger effect on fish. I’ve never had a reef [saltwater] aquarium, but I suspect that pH is likewise much less critical than other factors. Maybe someone with reef tank experience could comment. Reef tanks use live sand and corals, so it might be a different situation wrt pH.
Interesting that the alkilinity follows the temperature record (SST), this and the drop in alkalinity towards cooler climes shows that the sea is cycling c02 quite rapidly. In 1998 when we had a sudden El Nino spurt of warming, we sea the co2 growth rate at Mauna Loa increase, and at the same time sea alkalinity increases – this supports that part of the rise in co2 being observed is from the sea. Also as the sea cools, it begins to absorb co2 and the alkilinity decreases. All interesting stuff.
Once again, we here the precision of 0.001. And yet…
“These data were collected before the practice of purifying indicators was adopted, so a correction for mCP impurities was applied to the 2006 pH data: 0.001 units at pH 7.4, increasing to 0.005 at pH 8.1 [Yao et al., 2007]. ”
So the corrections are greater than the precision?
It would be nice if the paper actually gave details on how the precision was determined, with perhaps some sample data showing the spread.
I return to the paper I linked to, which was published later than the papers that this paper cites in the methods section, and reports a cruise-to-cruise 1 sigma of 0.0032 pH units.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/19/the-electric-oceanic-acid-test/#comment-413320
John M- And I don’t think the problems with the “early” indicators allowed so simple a correction. There were issues with impurities on a batch to batch basis.
Study involving CO2 being vented by a “white smoker” at a deep-sea rift into the local ecosystem.
http://www.oar.noaa.gov/researchmatters/pdf/NRMp20LowRes_CO2vents.pdf
This seems a good area to gain actual facts about CO2 and “acidification.” Have these fellows been funded so they can do further studies? Or is funding denied because they might discover acidification is not a great threat?
Fraizer says:
June 19, 2010 at 7:33 pm
A couple of questions for our alarmist friends:
1) What is the ultimate carrying capacity of an infinitely buffered alkaline solution for an acid gas?
2) Where does limestone come from?
———————
No fair. You should at least give us the answers upside down at the bottom.