The fishes and the coral live happily in the CO2 bubble plume

Guest post by David Archibald

Willis Eschenbach’s post on lab work on coral response to elevated carbon dioxide levels, and The Reef Abides, leads to a large scale, natural experiment in Papua New Guinea. There are several places at the eastern end of that country where carbon dioxide is continuously bubbling up through healthy looking coral reef, with fish swimming around and all that that implies.

Coral Reef at Dobu Island with carbon dioxide bubbling through it (photo: Bob Halstead)

What that implies is that ocean acidification is no threat at all. If the most delicate, fragile, iconic ecosystem of them all can handle flat-out saturation with carbon dioxide, what is there to worry about?

That lack of a threat is a threat to a human institution though – the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) based in Townsville, north Queensland run by Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg.

To quote Walter Starck (http://www.bairdmaritime.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6171:png-coral-reefs-and-the-bubble-bath&catid=99:walter-starcks-blog&Itemid=123) – “A never ending litany of purported environmental threats to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has maintained a generous flow of funding for several generations of researchers. The “reef salvation” industry now brings about US$91 million annually into the local economy in North Queensland.

Although none of these threats has ever become manifest as a serious impact and all of the millions of dollars in research has never found any effective solution for anything, the charade never seems to lose credibility or support. The popular threat of the moment is ocean acidification from increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide.”

So AIMS mounted an expedition to Papua New Guinea to examine the large scale, natural experiment that was a threat to their livelihood. They reported in Nature (http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v1/n3/pdf/nclimate1122.pdf?WT.ec_id=NCLIMATE-201106) that while the reefs they examined looked healthy, they didn’t like them. The threat has been averted for the moment, but maintaining funding requires constant vigilance.

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To lend credence to David Archibald’s post, here’s a story on Bob Halstead’s diving website.

THE SHELL GAME

By Bob Halstead

According to Wikipedia “The Shell Game is portrayed as a gambling game, but in reality, when a wager for money is made, it is a confidence trick used to perpetrate fraud”.

The shell game has been of particular interest to me after reading a scientific letter “Volcanic carbon dioxide vents show ecosystem effects of ocean acidification” published in Nature a couple of years ago. Since then there has been a deluge of alarmist warnings on “Ocean Acidification” – including one in the Feb/March issue of Dive Pacific from an organization called the “International Union for the Conservation of Nature” – but no actual reefs destroyed by it, of course.

The letter was illustrated by photographs of eroded shells and predictably concluded that this was due to ocean acidification, caused by too much atmospheric CO2 which Al Gore tells us is caused by bad humans burning fossil fuels to survive and prosper (as he did), instead of buying carbon credits from him and becoming poor.

The reason for my scepticism was my own well-publicised underwater observations at Dobu Island in Milne Bay where CO2 vents bubble through a thriving coral reef. Just maybe, I thought, these people do not a have a clue what they are writing about. So when they approached me to see if they could dive Dobu I said of course, but that I was not interested in cherry picking data to conform to any conspiracy to promote Anthropogenic Global Warming. Interestingly I never heard back from them.

Now we have the astonishing “Climategate” scandal revealing a huge scientific fraud producing the dodgy evidence used by the IPCC and environmental activists to predict Global Apocalypse, and a Copenhagen Treaty more designed to foster World Government than combat pollution. I originally wrote this before the Copenhagen conference so had no idea what a total fiasco and lie-fest it turned out to be.

But I have real news!!

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute has, on 1st December 2009, issued a press release titled “In CO2-rich Environment, Some Ocean Dwellers Increase Shell Production”. Here is some of what it says:-

“In a striking finding that raises new questions about carbon dioxide’s (CO2) impact on marine life, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists report that some shell-building creatures—such as crabs, shrimp and lobsters—unexpectedly build more shell when exposed to ocean acidification caused by elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2).

Because excess CO2 dissolves in the ocean—causing it to “acidify” —researchers have been concerned about the ability of certain organisms to maintain the strength of their shells. Carbon dioxide is known to trigger a process that reduces the abundance of carbonate ions in seawater—one of the primary materials that marine organisms use to build their calcium carbonate shells and skeletons.

The concern is that this process will trigger a weakening and decline in the shells of some species and, in the long term, upset the balance of the ocean ecosystem.

But in a study published in the Dec. 1 issue of Geology, a team led by former WHOI postdoctoral researcher Justin B. Ries found that seven of the 18 shelled species they observed actually built more shell when exposed to varying levels of increased acidification. This may be because the total amount of dissolved inorganic carbon available to them is actually increased when the ocean becomes more acidic, even though the concentration of carbonate ions is decreased.

“Most likely the organisms that responded positively were somehow able to manipulate…dissolved inorganic carbon in the fluid from which they precipitated their skeleton in a way that was beneficial to them,” said Ries, now an assistant professor in marine sciences at the University of North Carolina. “They were somehow able to manipulate CO2…to build their skeletons.”

“We were surprised that some organisms didn’t behave in the way we expected under elevated CO2,” said Anne L. Cohen, a research specialist at WHOI and one of the study’s co-authors. “What was really interesting was that some of the creatures, the coral, the hard clam and the lobster, for example, didn’t seem to care about CO2 until it was higher than about 1,000 parts per million [ppm].” Current atmospheric CO2 levels are about 380 ppm, she said.”

NOTE “the coral” in the previous paragraph. There is more to the news release, and it ends up by saying:-

Since the industrial revolution, Ries noted, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased from 280 to nearly 400 ppm. Climate models predict levels of 600 ppm in 100 years, and 900 ppm in 200 years.

“The oceans absorb much of the CO2 that we release to the atmosphere,” Ries says.  However, he warns that this natural buffer may ultimately come at a great cost.

“It’s hard to predict the overall net effect on benthic marine ecosystems,” he says. “In the short term, I would guess that the net effect will be negative. In the long term, ecosystems could re-stabilize at a new steady state.

“The bottom line is that we really need to bring down CO2 levels in the atmosphere.”

Having studied Climategate it is not difficult to work out how this amazing and welcome press release actually got published instead of being censored or trivialised, as so many other inconvenient anti-AGW scientific papers and observations have been.

The last line is the key (…we really need to bring down CO2 levels in the atmosphere.”). This inclusion was designed to appease the alarmist fanatics, and enable the paper – which is a staggering departure from the usual AGW propaganda – to be published. Brilliant.

Look out! Woods Hole has found a way of beating the Shell Game.

Feb 2010

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David Archibald sent another report to me last year by Walter Starck in PDF form, titled: Observations on Growth of Reef Corals and Sea Grass Around Shallow Water Geothermal Vents in Papua New Guinea

He has similar photos not only of Coral and CO2 bubbling up, but of sea grass patches.

Dobu I. corals aerated by bubbling CO2

One of the numerous smaller bubble streams coming up through lush beds of Thalassia.

He writes:

On 14 February 2010 we visited two geothermal areas in the D’Entrecasteaux Islands, Milne Bay Province, PNG. One is located near the north end of Normanby Island about 30 m S.E. of the outer end of the wharf at the village of Esa’Ala. The other is a well known dive site known as the “Bubble Bath”. It is located about 20 m offshore near the mid-north coast of Dobu Island, an extinct volcano.

At Esa’Ala the area of bubble venting is scattered along the inner edge of a fringing reef which is about 10 -15 m in width. The outside edge slopes steeply into deep water and the inside edge is bordered by grass beds (Thalassia sp.) on silty bottom of mixed reef and volcanic sediments. The bubbling is near continuous small trickles at numerous points scattered amid both grass and coral areas in water depths of 3 – 5 m. The location is sheltered from prevailing wind and wave action.

Both coral and plant growth were unusually luxuriant. In the grass beds small juvenile rabbitfish (Siganus sp.) are abundant feeding on the epiphytic algae growing on the grass blades.

…

The pH of water samples was measured using a Pacific Aquatech PH-013 High Accuracy Portable pH Meter with a resolution of 0.01 pH. It was calibrated with buffered solutions at pH 6.864 and pH 4.003 immediately before measuring the samples. The Esa’Ala sample was taken immediately adjacent to a Porites coral and about 10 cm from a small bubble stream. The pH was 7.96. A sample from next to a Porites coral at the “Bubble Bath” measured 7.74. This was also about 10 cm from a somewgat larger bubble stream and about 12 m from the main gas vent. A sample next to the main vent measured 6.54. A sample from the open ocean just outside Egum Atoll about 100 Km N.E. of Dobu read 8.23 which is near typical for open ocean in this region.

It seems that coral reefs are thriving at pH levels well below the most alarming projections for 2100. The biggest threat we face isn’t to Barrier Reef tourism. The whole modern economy is founded on cheap abundant energy. High energy liquid fuel is essential to all mobile heavy machinery. Trucks, tractors, trains, ships, planes and earth moving equipment cannot be run on sunbeams and summer breezes. The International Energy Agency along with virtually all oil industry analyst groups now recognise that future global oil supplies are likely to be increasingly tight and more expensive.

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Read the full report with more photos here (PDF) Walter Starck on coral and other marine life