Via Eurekalert, from the NGO Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans (POGO), a press release that says, “panic! please send money”. Here’s the punch line:
The Foundation says the average level of pH at the ocean surface has dropped from 8.2 to 8.1 units, “rendering the oceans more acidic than they have been for 20 million years,”
Note that any pH lower than 7.0 is considered “acidic”. Distilled (pure) water has a pH of 7.0. Right now the ocean with a pH of 8.1 is considered “basic”.
Even more interesting is this map below from WikiMedia showing the change in global ocean pH over the last two hundred years. The map information says:
Estimated change in annual mean sea surface pH between the pre-industrial period (1700s) and the present day (1990s). Δ pH here is in standard pH units. Calculated from fields of dissolved inorganic carbon and alkalinity from the Global Ocean Data Analysis Project climatology and temperature and salinity from the World Ocean Atlas (2005) climatology using Richard Zeebe’s csys package . It is plotted here using a Mollweide projection (using MATLAB and the M_Map package). Note that the GLODAP climatology is missing data in certain oceanic provinces including the Arctic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea, the Mediterranean Sea and the Malay Archipelago.
So, with accuracy like this, and such small pH changes obviously measurable, and the pH not yet anywhere near acidic, why do we need a global $15 billion pH measurement system again? It seems all they need is a few places covered to infill some data.
Here’s the press release:
Speed installation of system to monitor vital signs of global ocean, scientists urge
‘It is past time to get serious about measuring what’s happening to the seas around us’
The ocean surface is 30 percent more acidic today than it was in 1800, much of that increase occurring in the last 50 years – a rising trend that could both harm coral reefs and profoundly impact tiny shelled plankton at the base of the ocean food web, scientists warn.
Despite the seriousness of such changes to the ocean, however, the world has yet to deploy a complete suite of available tools to monitor rising acidification and other ocean conditions that have a fundamental impact on life throughout the planet.
Marine life patterns, water temperature, sea level, and polar ice cover join acidity and other variables in a list of ocean characteristics that can and should be tracked continuously through the expanded deployment of existing technologies in a permanent, integrated global monitoring system, scientists say.
Caption: A mooring with a suite of ocean acidification and other environmental sensors at Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef is the latest tool in an expanding global network of ocean measurements, informing scientists of changes in ocean chemistry.
Credit: Dr. Bronte Tilbrook, CSIRO, Australia
The Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans (POGO), representing 38 major oceanographic institutions from 21 countries and leading a global consortium called Oceans United, will urge government officials and ministers meeting in Beijing Nov. 3-5 to help complete an integrated global ocean observation system by target date 2015.
It would be the marine component of a Global Earth Observation System of Systems under discussion in Beijing by some 71 member nations of the intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations.
The cost to create an adequate monitoring system has been estimated at $10 billion to $15 billion in assets, with $5 billion in annual operating costs.
Some 600 scientists with expertise in all facets of the oceans developed an authoritative vision of characteristics to monitor at a 2009 conference on ocean observations, (www.oceanobs09.net).
Furthermore, as documented in the forthcoming proceedings of the 2009 conference (to be published shortly by the European Space Agency), the value of such information to the world’s financial interests and to human security would dwarf the investment required.
“Although the US and European Union governments have recently signaled support, international cooperation is desperately needed to complete a global ocean observation system that could continuously collect, synthesize and interpret data critical to a wide variety of human needs,” says Dr. Kiyoshi Suyehiro, Chairman of POGO.
“Most ocean experts believe the future ocean will be saltier, hotter, more acidic, and less diverse,” states Jesse Ausubel, a founder of POGO and of the recently completed Census of Marine Life. “It is past time to get serious about measuring what’s happening to the seas around us.”
The risks posed by ocean acidification exemplify the many good reasons to act urgently.
Caption: Scientists explore on and beneath polar ice. Their aircraft remotely sense animals through properties of scattered light. Marine animals themselves carry tags that store records of their travels and dives and communicate with satellites. Fish carry tags that revealed their migration past acoustic listening lines. Sounds that echoed back to ships portray schools of fish assembling, swimming, and commuting up and down. Standardized frames and structures dropped near shores and on reefs provide information for comparing diversity and abundance. Manned and unmanned undersea vehicles plus divers photograph sea floors and cliffs. Deep submersibles sniff and videotape smoking seafloor vents. And nets and dredges catch specimens, shallow and deep, for closest study.
Credit: E. Paul Oberlander / Census of Marine Life
POGO-affiliated scientists at the UK-based Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science recently published a world atlas charting the distribution of the subset of plankton species that grow shells at some point in their life cycles. Not only are these shelled plankton fundamental to the ocean’s food web, they also play a major role in planetary climate regulation and oxygen production. Highly acidic sea water inhibits the growth of plankton shells.
The Foundation says the average level of pH at the ocean surface has dropped from 8.2 to 8.1 units, “rendering the oceans more acidic than they have been for 20 million years,” with expectations of continuing acidification due to high concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Because colder water retains more carbon dioxide, the acidity of surface waters may increase fastest at Earth’s high latitudes where the zooplankton known as pteropods are particularly abundant. Pteropods (see links to images below) are colorful, free-swimming pelagic sea snails and sea slugs on which many animals higher in the food chain depend. Scientists caution that the overall global marine impact of rising carbon dioxide is unclear because warming of the oceans associated with rising greenhouse gases in the air could in turn lead to lower retention of carbon dioxide at lower latitudes and to potential countervailing effects.
Says Foundation Director Dr. Peter Burkill: “Ocean acidification could have a devastating effect on calcifying organisms, and perhaps marine ecosystems as a whole, and we need global monitoring to provide timely information on trends and fluxes from the tropics to the poles. Threatened are tiny life forms that help the oceans absorb an estimated 50 gigatonnes of carbon from Earth’s atmosphere annually, about the same as all plants and trees on land. Humanity has a vital interest in authoritative information about ocean conditions and a global network of observations is urgently needed.”
Ocean conditions that require monitoring can be divided into three categories:
- Chemical – including pollution, levels of oxygen, and rising acidity;
- Physical / Geological – including sound, tide and sea levels, as well as sudden wave energy and bottom pressure changes that could provide precious minutes of warning before a tsunami; and
- Biological – including shifts in marine species diversity, distribution, biomass and ecosystem function due to changing water conditions.
Benefits of the comprehensive ocean system envisioned include:
- Improved short-term and seasonal forecasts to mitigate the harm caused by drought, or by severe storms, cyclones, hurricanes and monsoons, such as those that recently put one-fifth of Pakistan temporarily underwater and left 21 million people homeless or injured. International lenders estimate the damage to Pakistan’s infrastructure, agriculture and other sectors at $9.5 billion. Improved weather forecasting would also enhance the safety of the fishing and shipping industries, and offshore operations such as wind farms and oil drilling. Sea surface temperature is a key factor in the intensity and location of severe weather events;
- Early identification of pollution-induced eutrophication that spawns algal blooms responsible for health problems in humans and marine species, and harm to aquaculture operations;
- Timely alerts of changes in distributions of marine life that would allow identification of areas needing protective commercial re-zoning, and of immigration by invasive species;
P Wilson says:
November 1, 2010 at 3:20 pm
eadler says:
November 1, 2010 at 1:57 pm
“for fear of going over this topic again – even the royal society in the UK leave out the crucial calculations and formulae on this matter to prove ocean acidification- here’s a link instead:
http://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/global/acid2.htm”
It isn’t clear to me what argument you are making. The author of the website, J Floor Anthoni is some kind of amateur scientist with a PhD in computer science. He seems to have amassed a large number of extracts from articles by other amateurs who blog about climate science.
The first thing that I read was his discussion of CO2. His convoluted discussion of how the observed increase in CO2 in the atmosphere came about is total nonsense, and all of the details are a diversion. The fact is that after being stable for centuries, the industrial age kicked off an increase in CO2, stored in the atmosphere, that is about one half the amount of CO2 emitted due to human activity. So the natural environment has been absorbing the CO2 emitted due to human activity, which is known accurately. Contrary to what Anthoni implies in his website, it is clear that human emissions are responsible for the increase in CO2 that has been observed in the atmosphere.
I didn’t get to his calculations on acidification because it is clear from his discussion of CO2, that it is not worth my time to read further on a fishing expedition. If you have a point to make about ocean pH, please state what it is.
DesertYote says:
November 1, 2010 at 4:30 pm
eadler
November 1, 2010 at 3:12 pm
“I was right. You are dense. I hate to break it to you but, some of the posters here actually do know something about the subject. All you know is propaganda. BTW, I use to go out on boats taking PH measurements. I dislike marine ecology because it is so friggin stable and boring. That is why I switched my interest to fresh water. And guess what, green one, acid rain was an overblown myth too!”
So the sulfate and nitrate pollution was not responsible for sterilization of lakes in the high country of the northeast and the disappearance of fish, and the killing of spruce trees , which I have observed with my own eyes? It is all in my imagination and an overblown myth.
This is just crazy. $15B to measure the pH of oceans based on an inaccurate ‘adjusted’ fantasy global average value… Please.
As others have rightly pointed out there are far cheaper ways of improving coverage and accuracy. They should be looking at those first and get the logic behind the need to act solid first. Any government or agency that even thinks of entertaining signing any monies away to this before confidence on the current measurements is improved really needs to wake up and smell the coffee of reality..
This needs nipping in the bud before it gets any traction.
If they can measure acidity from 20 million years ago with complete accuracy using currently available equipment, why do they need $15 billion worth of new equipment.
Steve Oregon says:
November 1, 2010 at 10:31 am
“Why do lefties buy every alarm farce their academia progressives gin up?
The ocean acidification tale can be revealed by any half wit simpleton and a google.
Just Google ocean acidification fraud:
And go look at Lubchenco’s absurd demonstration.
Too stupid
“The Moniker Osteoporosis of the sea””
The problems with Lubchenco’s presentation are not evident to me. You need to make some kind of argument to convince me that there is something wrong with it. The fact that you scoff at it may convince the cheerleaders on this site, but it doesn’t represent a reasoned argument.
The presentation makes sense. The map shows that acidification is especially intense in the northern oceans, which are the coolest and will therefore absorb the most CO2. This has proceeded to a point where recent measurements have shown that CO2 concentrations have increased sufficiently to slow down the absorption of CO2 by the southern oceans. The 26% increase in acidification is in line with the percentage of increase in CO2 in the atmosphere from 280 to 390ppM.
keith says:
November 1, 2010 at 4:47 pm
This is just crazy. $15B to measure the pH of oceans based on an inaccurate ‘adjusted’ fantasy global average value… Please.
As others have rightly pointed out there are far cheaper ways of improving coverage and accuracy. They should be looking at those first and get the logic behind the need to act solid first. Any government or agency that even thinks of entertaining signing any monies away to this before confidence on the current measurements is improved really needs to wake up and smell the coffee of reality..
This needs nipping in the bud before it gets any traction.
Get a grip man. Despite the misconceptions that have been propagated by so many posters on this web site, the $15B is requested for a comprehensive observation program of the worlds oceans, not simply to make more measurements of pH.
If you had read the news article that was posted at the end of Anthony’s commentary you would have seen this:
“Ocean conditions that require monitoring can be divided into three categories:
* Chemical – including pollution, levels of oxygen, and rising acidity;
* Physical / Geological – including sound, tide and sea levels, as well as sudden wave energy and bottom pressure changes that could provide precious minutes of warning before a tsunami; and
* Biological – including shifts in marine species diversity, distribution, biomass and ecosystem function due to changing water conditions.
Benefits of the comprehensive ocean system envisioned include:
* Improved short-term and seasonal forecasts to mitigate the harm caused by drought, or by severe storms, cyclones, hurricanes and monsoons, such as those that recently put one-fifth of Pakistan temporarily underwater and left 21 million people homeless or injured. International lenders estimate the damage to Pakistan’s infrastructure, agriculture and other sectors at $9.5 billion. Improved weather forecasting would also enhance the safety of the fishing and shipping industries, and offshore operations such as wind farms and oil drilling. Sea surface temperature is a key factor in the intensity and location of severe weather events;
* Early identification of pollution-induced eutrophication that spawns algal blooms responsible for health problems in humans and marine species, and harm to aquaculture operations;
* Timely alerts of changes in distributions of marine life that would allow identification of areas needing protective commercial re-zoning, and of immigration by invasive species;”
Since Anthony himself appears not to have noticed this, it is understandable that most his followers would have missed it. This kind of mistake shows how a biased mind can cause one to miss key facts involved in an issue. Why am I the only one who caught this problem out of the scores of posters on this site?
It doesn’t seem like $15B is an outlandish some when you look at the variety of phenomena that the system is proposed to look at.
Important distinction:
Madison elaborated on the restrictive interpretation prior to the ratification of the Constitution.
Hamilton elaborated on the expansive interpretation after the ratification when he was Treasury Secretary.
If someone is trying to get you to sign a contract and they make a written assurance of something before you sign and then renege on that assurance after you’ve signed that contract, you have been defrauded.
Yes, and your observation of such fraud makes you the target of scorn as a “fringe racist right-wing radical” by the people and MainStream Media (MSM) decrying the obstructionism and smearing the reputations of strict Constitutional constructionists. Welcome to the club.
@eadler
“So the sulfate and nitrate pollution was not responsible for sterilization of lakes in the high country of the northeast and the disappearance of fish, and the killing of spruce trees , which I have observed with my own eyes? It is all in my imagination and an overblown myth.”
No, not a myth, acid rain is also a natural phenomenon that has been happening for thousands of years.
@wikipedia
eadler says:
November 1, 2010 at 1:57 pm
It seems that the overwhelming majority of posters here are so intent on bashing scientists, that they don’t even bother to understand any of the basic facts before they start posting. So many minds here are driven by avoiding cognitive dissonance, that facts don’t seem to matter.
eadler says:
November 1, 2010 at 4:45 pm
So the sulfate and nitrate pollution was not responsible for sterilization of lakes in the high country of the northeast and the disappearance of fish, and the killing of spruce trees , which I have observed with my own eyes? It is all in my imagination and an overblown myth.
———————————-
Congratulations Eadler, you are doing a fine job showing the control freakery you guys love so much. You sound so frustrated that you can’t control every comment that’s made on here to be to your liking in terms of subject matter. I’m guessing you’re not gonna like this one either.
You know what though – there are moderators on here who read every comment and it’s not your blog. So why don’t you you go look in a mirror and ask yourself why you want to control people to write comments that deal with the subject matter you want them to – on someone else’s blog ?? We comment however the **** we want to dude, as long as it’s within Anthony’s rules.
I too saw dead fish, chemically disgusting rivers and other pollution where I grew up. The problems were solved directly by head-on action, and now salmon spawn again via those rivers. The problems were not solved by global moron science, promoted by control freak politicians with a fake planet-saving agenda.
I am a scientist with over 200 peer-reviewed publications, and I am embarrassed by the pathetic standard of “science” in the climatology field, not to mention the elitist cover-up. The fact that many non-scientists on here heap sh*t on scientists in general is the backlash that we (if you are a scientist) are going to have to live with because of it.
eadler says:
November 1, 2010 at 4:37 pm
“If you have a point to make about ocean pH, please state what it is.”
the fact that it is alkaline, always will be and will continue to be so, thus rendering all this alarmism about acidification of the oceans about as useful as a fart. Its impertinent.
Its just an alternative to the c02 scare, when it falls flat on its face.
eadler says:
November 1, 2010 at 5:06 pm
“The map shows that acidification is especially intense in the northern oceans, which are the coolest and will therefore absorb the most CO2. ”
Acidification begins at 7, as you know.
please demonstrate with relevant examples where this is the case in the northern oceans
The “30 percent more acidic” phrase is very popular. It turns up tens of thousands of hits on Google.
This got me thinking of a novel counter-PR strategy. (But I’m no chemist, and it’s been a while since I dealt with pH at school. So correct me if the following musings are off.)
I understand that the pH of KoolAid is supposed to be around 3.
So 5 full pH units below 8 would mean that (based on its concentration of H+ ions) KoolAid is 100,000 TIMES more “acidic” than ocean water. No?
That sounds big. But there is a way to make it sound a lot bigger.
Each factor of 10 carries a 1,000 percent increase, right?
So we can legitimately say that Kool Aid is 1,000,000,000,000,000 PERCENT more acidic than ocean water.
In the US, this should be read as:
KOOL AID IS ONE THOUSAND TRILLION PERCENT MORE ACIDIC THAN OCEAN WATER.
I propose this as an appropriate answer to put the”30% more acidic” mantra in context.
Why are the KoolAid addicts so concerned about 30%, and so relaxed when happily imbibing a thousand trillion percent more “acidic” substances than ocean water?
There is no concern of man, either real or imagined, which cannot be manipulated for profit.
Philincalifornia, care to provide your list of 200 peer-reviewed publications?
John Day says:
November 1, 2010 at 5:46 pm
“@eadler
“So the sulfate and nitrate pollution was not responsible for sterilization of lakes in the high country of the northeast and the disappearance of fish, and the killing of spruce trees , which I have observed with my own eyes? It is all in my imagination and an overblown myth.”
No, not a myth, acid rain is also a natural phenomenon that has been happening for thousands of years.
@wikipedia
Natural phenomena
The principal natural phenomena that contribute acid-producing gases to the atmosphere are emissions from volcanoes. Thus, for example, fumaroles from Laguna Caliente crater of Poás Volcano create extremely acid rain and fog with acidity 2 of pH, clearing an area of any vegetation and frequently causing irritation to the eyes and lungs of inhabitants in nearby settlements[21]. Acid-producing gasses are created also by biological processes that occur on the land, in wetlands, and in the oceans. The major biological source of sulfur containing compounds is dimethyl sulfide.
Nitric acid in rainwater is an important source of fixed nitrogen for plant life, and is also produced by electrical activity in the atmosphere such as lightning.
Acidic deposits have been detected in glacial ice thousands of years old in remote parts of the globe.[12]”
Your comment is simply inapplicable to the case of acid rain in the northeastern US.
No doubt volcanoes may be natural sources of acid rain, but there are no volcanic sources anywhere near the Adirondacks of NY State, and the Green Mts. of Vermont which saw the disappearance of trout in mountain lakes, and the death of high altitude spruce trees due to acid rain. There are however plenty of coal burning power plants upwind from the Northeast, in the midwest, which were the documented sources of acid rain.
http://www.adirondackcouncil.org/acrapub.pdf
P Wilson says:
November 1, 2010 at 7:03 pm
“eadler says:
November 1, 2010 at 4:37 pm
“If you have a point to make about ocean pH, please state what it is.”
the fact that it is alkaline, always will be and will continue to be so, thus rendering all this alarmism about acidification of the oceans about as useful as a fart. Its impertinent.
Its just an alternative to the c02 scare, when it falls flat on its face.”
The word acidification in this context clearly means to make the hydrogen ion concentration greater. It does not necessarily mean to make the pH actually become less than 7. This will have an effect on the viability of shellfish and other organisms that evolved to take advantage of oceans with a lower concentration of Hydrogen ions than the concentration we will get if CO2 emissions continue on their present course.
Your misinterpretation of the use of acidification does not make your argument correct.
eadler says To Desert Yote:
November 1, 2010 at 4:45 pm
At the risk of letting the thread go OT, mountain top spruce had an alternate concern – the claim was that winter winds would stress and break root hairs, leaving the tree in poor condition to take up water the next summer.
I started looking at the understory in areas with some taller spruce in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, and in areas where the tall trees were dead or dying, the shorter spruce in the understory were doing fine.
I don’t fish, so I have no first hand experience with that, and haven’t really followed the acid rain story since TV met were reporting the pH of significant rainfalls.
Francisco says:
November 1, 2010 at 7:25 pm
KOOL AID IS ONE THOUSAND TRILLION PERCENT MORE ACIDIC THAN OCEAN WATER.
===================
On second thought, it looks like I was triple jumping zeros in too much of a happy rush, and so I ended up with 11 zeros too many. The above should be:
KOOL AID IS TEN MILLION PERCENT MORE ACIDIC THAN OCEAN WATER.
Still pretty scary compared with 30%
Francisco says:
November 1, 2010 at 7:25 pm
“The “30 percent more acidic” phrase is very popular. It turns up tens of thousands of hits on Google.
This got me thinking of a novel counter-PR strategy. (But I’m no chemist, and it’s been a while since I dealt with pH at school. So correct me if the following musings are off.)
I understand that the pH of KoolAid is supposed to be around 3.
So 5 full pH units below 8 would mean that (based on its concentration of H+ ions) KoolAid is 100,000 TIMES more “acidic” than ocean water. No?
That sounds big. But there is a way to make it sound a lot bigger.
Each factor of 10 carries a 1,000 percent increase, right?
So we can legitimately say that Kool Aid is 1,000,000,000,000,000 PERCENT more acidic than ocean water.
In the US, this should be read as:
KOOL AID IS ONE THOUSAND TRILLION PERCENT MORE ACIDIC THAN OCEAN WATER.
I propose this as an appropriate answer to put the”30% more acidic” mantra in context.
Why are the KoolAid addicts so concerned about 30%, and so relaxed when happily imbibing a thousand trillion percent more “acidic” substances than ocean water?”
I guess you are trying to be funny.
Why stop at Kool Aid? Why not say, what is so bad a bout a pH of 1 or 2, which is what we all have in our stomachs? How could that be harmful to sea life? If you believe that, you are clearly ignorant.
How about trying to put some chalk dust in Kool Aid and leave there to see if it will dissolve. It probably will. This is what would happen to corals over time if they were put in Kool Aid.
Francisco says:
November 1, 2010 at 7:25 pm
No. percent is just 1/100ths of something. The root is cent, which traces back to 100. 1/100 of a dollar is one cent, the Roman numeral for 100 is C, etc.
No. Only 10,000,000 percent _as_ acidic, 9,999,900 percent _more_ acidic.
Please don’t shout, please don’t shout nonsense.
eadler says:
November 1, 2010 at 7:53 pm
Actually, calling a subject the “acidification of the oceans” when they are as benign to life in all their alkalinity is grosser than the claim of aerial c02 causing global warming.
It is simply incorrect and only has one context: How acid are the oceans.
Well they are clearly not, and are not becoming more so.
there isn’t enough c02 in the atmosphere to cause any such problem, and neither was there in the past when oceans absorbed much more co2 than they do now. Which is a dilemma, as it is pretended that the carbon sinks are not absorbing c02 as they should, since it stays in the atmosphere. When oceans did absorb large amounts of c02, there was no acidification or extinction of marine life. Its simply impossible.
to take up an aforementioned post, a ph of 5 has 1,000 times as many H+ ions as seawater for a given volume, Fresh water has 100 times as many -so it isn’t anything to do with acidity whatsoever pertaining to oceans.
The VITAL factor is salinity – we wouldnt expect marine life to live in freshwater, so if any cause of concern with oceans needs to be studied, it is salinity/freshwater equilibrium.
PhilinCalifornia says:
November 1, 2010 at 5:53 pm
“eadler says:
November 1, 2010 at 1:57 pm
It seems that the overwhelming majority of posters here are so intent on bashing scientists, that they don’t even bother to understand any of the basic facts before they start posting. So many minds here are driven by avoiding cognitive dissonance, that facts don’t seem to matter.
eadler says:
November 1, 2010 at 4:45 pm
So the sulfate and nitrate pollution was not responsible for sterilization of lakes in the high country of the northeast and the disappearance of fish, and the killing of spruce trees , which I have observed with my own eyes? It is all in my imagination and an overblown myth.
———————————-
Congratulations Eadler, you are doing a fine job showing the control freakery you guys love so much. You sound so frustrated that you can’t control every comment that’s made on here to be to your liking in terms of subject matter. I’m guessing you’re not gonna like this one either.
You know what though – there are moderators on here who read every comment and it’s not your blog. So why don’t you you go look in a mirror and ask yourself why you want to control people to write comments that deal with the subject matter you want them to – on someone else’s blog ?? We comment however the **** we want to dude, as long as it’s within Anthony’s rules.”
Phil,
I also can comment however I want. Why should the comments section be one sided?
If people don’t want to be called on their mistakes, they should be more careful. If they are misinforming others, why shouldn’t they be corrected?
I stick to the issues. Many posters on this thread, even Anthony himself, object to spending $15B to make better measurements of acidification. I would object to spending this amount also.
The point I am making, and it needs to be made, is that the request for $15B is for a comprehensive system to monitor all aspects of ocean phenomena, not just pH. So a lot of people are getting their knickers all twisted up for no reason.
There is a lot of misinformation propagated by bloggers and posters who don’t know what they are talking about. I think it is healthy to have a little give and take. If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.
drewski says:
November 1, 2010 at 7:41 pm
Philincalifornia, care to provide your list of 200 peer-reviewed publications?
——————————-
Naaah, not really, but I might if you promise me you don’t pilot a black helicopter.
Ph.D. age 23 in 1978 in carbon chemistry. 14 papers in PNAS, 4 in Nature (how embarrassing is that ?) and 7 in Science. Then another 50 or 80 in more specialist and better journals. Lots of data analysis over the years, including data regulated by the FDA. Major consultancies with entities requiring scientific due diligence for multi 10 million dollar investments. Major ability to rapidly identify the fraud that is the global warming hoax, and its illegitimate Goebbelsian offspring.
How about you ??
eadler says:
November 1, 2010 at 8:17 pm
PhilinCalifornia says:
November 1, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Phil,
I also can comment however I want. Why should the comments section be one sided?
If people don’t want to be called on their mistakes, they should be more careful. If they are misinforming others, why shouldn’t they be corrected?
I stick to the issues. Many posters on this thread, even Anthony himself, object to spending $15B to make better measurements of acidification. I would object to spending this amount also.
The point I am making, and it needs to be made, is that the request for $15B is for a comprehensive system to monitor all aspects of ocean phenomena, not just pH. So a lot of people are getting their knickers all twisted up for no reason.
There is a lot of misinformation propagated by bloggers and posters who don’t know what they are talking about. I think it is healthy to have a little give and take. If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.
———————–
Absolutely agree. Post whatever you want. Correct people. Don’t be an elitist control freak though. Just educate them.
It appears to be one-sided here, because the sheeple (and educated or pseudo-educated people who should know better) come on here blabbing about what they heard in the MSM and they get their asses handed to them.
Al Gore, former Vice-President of the USA, alleged President of the USA almost, would get his ass handed to him big time on here, obviously. So, at least you have more bollox than him posting here.
eadler,
If you need an explaination of the problem with Lubchenco’s demonstration you’re lacking too much common sense to bother.
But try this Lubchenco video with the same demonstration towards the end and the comment section I plucked the quotes below from.
http://www.youtube.com/comment_servlet?all_comments=1&v=dFqu6DpQlO4
These are quotes from the comments in the video link :
“This lady is a liar. The pH of the ocean is 8 and has been 8 for hundreds of years. She is adding far more CO2 into the tap water (pH of 7) than is possible in nature – also, if she waited then almost all of it would’ve simply outgassed from the water – that’s why she has to rush and do it right away since you can see the CO2 bubbling out of the water – it can’t hold it at that room temps.
Also, corals evolved when CO2 was FAR higher than it currently is – .
Sorry, but as good as for vegetation, corals and shellfish need CO2 and not only survived much higher CO2 levels in the (far) past, but produced thicker and more abundant shells. The white cliffs of Dover (UK) are remnants of the 10-12 times higher CO2 levels (and higher temperatures) during the Cretaceous time period.
This a shame! Dr. Lubchenco either has not the slightest knowledge of (ocean) chemistry, or she is simply lying.
She “forgets” that seawater is not fresh water. Seawater has an enormous buffer capacity to widthstand large changes in pH and it is alkaline, not neutral. Fish, corals and coccoliths trive under much higher CO2 levels of te atmosphere. Most of the carbonate deposits we see today are from the Cretaceous when CO2 levels were 10-12 times higher than today. This is pure misleading.
Well, that is the lie! Of course if you add extreme quantities of CO2 or a strong acid (like acetic acid in demo 2), you ultimately reach low pH’s and the solution will become acid. But that is practically impossible for seawater, even if you burn all known reserves of oil and coal. But please, don’t believe me on my words, just ask anybody with a chemistry background who knows what a buffer solution does…
Her PHD is not in oceanography–no wonder she doesn’t understand the ocean’s chemistry–but I would at least expect her to understand what a PH value is.
Since the ocean is alkaline and can never be acidic, “ocean acidification” is a lie.
“Slightly reduced alkaline level” wasn’t as scary as “ocean acidification,” and even that is ridiculous because the maximum reduced alkaline level that could be caused by CO2 by 2050 is less than the margin of error of the alkaline level measurement.
She also doesn’t say that where CO2 in the ocean is slightly higher, phytoplankton bloom along with all other life, including whales.
Acidification: to make or become acid; convert into an acid.
PH value of 7 is neutral, lower than 7 is acidic, higher is alkakine. The ocean’s PH is over 8.
Isn’t there a law against lying to congress?
Dr. Lubchenko should be arrested.
To take such great risk of doing something so despicable and illegal, there must be a lot at stake for her–perhaps a job in a major corporation exploiting the carbon credits markets when she leaves NOAA?”