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
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Pat Moffett,
I was going to say something similar: there is no way to tell if CO2 rose as fast in the geologic past, so Painter is just winging it. But there is real world evidence showing that current CO2 levels are extremely low: click
The biosphere is starved of CO2. More CO2 is entirely beneficial, and since there is no global harm resulting from the increase in that trace gas, it follows that CO2 is harmless. Thus, I invite Mr Painter to try and falsify my hypothesis…
At current and projected levels, CO2 is harmless and beneficial
…using the scientific method.
alcheson says:
December 28, 2011 at 7:30 pm
Phil says :For an atmosphere containing 350 ppm CO2 in equilibrium with water you get the following composition:
pCO2 3.5 × 10−4 (atm)
pH 5.65
[CO2] 1.18 × 10−5
[H2CO3] 2.00 × 10−8
[HCO3−] 2.23 × 10−6
[CO32−] 5.60 × 10−11
Phil, as with most warmists, you ignore the real system and present an strawman argument. The real system has 10000+ gigatons of undissolved CaCO3 available.This is not listed in your water composition.
That’s rich coming from the poster of a strawman example of freshwater solution (not ocean) in which 100,000 times more CO2 is added than the present equilibrium composition and 100x more calcium ions added. So you ignored the real system and posted your strawman instead, then anyone who points out the flaws in your argument is ignoring the real system!
Of course if you were right the aragonite shells would dissolve anyway, oops!
Nick Stokes says:
December 29, 2011 at 12:29 pm
Ged says: December 29, 2011 at 11:50 am
“When CO2 dissolves into water, it soaks up hydrogen ions and forms carbonate/bicarbonate. “
I’d love to see a balanced equation for that.
So would i! Of course Nick what actually happens is:
CO2 + H2O ⇋ H2CO3
The hydration equilibrium constant at 25 °C, Kh, is 1.70×10−3:
H2CO3 ⇋ HCO3^− + H^+ : K = 2.5×10−4
HCO3^− ⇋ CO3^2− + H^+ : K = 4.69×10−11
Far from soaking up it actually creates hydrogen ions!
Smokey,
Rob is blowing more smoke than a deep sea vent!
While the relatively mild volcanic activity we currently experience is not a major CO2 atmospheric contributor I would be hard pressed to believe as an example the rate of change wasn’t higher when Pangea broke apart forming the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province. Or given the fact that the Eocene saw CO2 perhaps 3-5X higher than today that at no time was the rate greater. And for someone to claim with great bluster that we can see time scales in the geologic record at the 100 year level is just well- you know.
What Rob doesn’t have a feel for are the “walls” that Stephen Jay Gould used to talk about. Our current CO2 levels (and T) are so close to the minima that the most likely direction is up. And somehow we are to believe that life is optimized at a CO2 point a mere 170 ppm from the point where plant life begins to seriously collapse? Perhaps Richard Farina said it best- “Been down so long it looks like up to me.”
Phil says: “Of course if you were right the aragonite shells would dissolve anyway, oops!”
FYI: The photos in the link below show what happens to a pteropod’s shell when placed in sea water with pH 7.84. The shell slowly dissolves after 45 days.
http://www.eoearth.org/files/173101_173200/173161/pteropodpics1_med.jpg
Gee Phil, I guess they do dissolve, imagine that. even at pH’s found at various times of the day and locations throughout today’s oceans.
One of the main reasons live critters shells are just fine is because they have a protective coating.
oeman50 says: December 28, 2011 at 10:08 am re other gases venting
Agreed, fundamental chemistry requirement to characterize the gases.
Per Phil and Johanna:
“However, the crustaceans mentioned don’t form their shells from calcium carbonate but chitin which is a totally different material, basically a sugar polymer, so no surprise that they aren’t negatively impacted by a change in pH.”
Maybe someone can teach an old dog something here. Do these chitin-covered creatures create their chitin shell from the carbon in the water or from the food that they eat?
I do know that salmon meat is colored based upon the food source. For those salmon that eat more squid (less chitin), their meat is less pink and most often a marbled quality.
Do land arthropods’ carapace determined by atmospheric carbon or by the food that they eat? Or am I confusing things here?
alcheson says:
“Gee Phil, I guess they do dissolve, imagine that. even at pH’s found at various times of the day and locations throughout today’s oceans.
One of the main reasons live critters shells are just fine is because they have a protective coating.”
Not just protective coating– there is a complex mixture of proteins and polysaccharides that actually promote aragonite formation in mollusks. Shell making is not a simple physical chemistry – it is more properly bio-mineralization that we are not even close to understanding yet. The bio-minerals of the shell are quite different than inorganic crystals- to the point of contravening thermodynamic stability (some bizarre stuff here but beyond this post). Phil should explain why acidic proteins are involved in the living shell’s biomineraliztion of calcium. Things are never so simple as some would like to believe.
And Phil’s link to dissolving shells? Well yes they’re dead. Most corpses “dissolve” once their dead.
captainfish says,
“Maybe someone can teach an old dog something here. Do these chitin-covered creatures create their chitin shell from the carbon in the water or from the food that they eat?”
This is a chicken or the egg question because what they eat is in the water- calcium and carbon. And being filter feeders we could argue all day whether its from the water or their feeding. (A mature oyster may filter over 30 gal of water a day straining it or food) Molluscs secrete a complex set of proteins and polysaccharides that basically (trying to be simple) triggers the formation of calcium crystals (forming the cement of the shell). This most often happens depending on the life stage in a sealed enclosure in that flexible rubbery area at the edge of the shell. Shell growth comes from within the mollusk.
Kiwi I thought described it nicely earlier saying the proteins formed the steel superstructure and the calcium carbonate was the poured cement. But you can look at as these proteins force the cement form.
Looking at this I did a bad job of explaining – but best I can do without lots more detail.
I’ve talked about oysters in this post- when you consider that they filter upwards of 30 gallons each you can begin to appreciate what billions of them once did to our estuaries. It is thought they once filtered the entire contents of Chesapeake Bay every 3 days – removing the algae as food in the process. As a result of disease and reef destruction it now takes more than a year for the few remaining oysters to do the same thing. EPA amazingly says the algae growth we see now is the result of too much nitrogen not too few oysters and NOAA doesn’t care about the disease and the reef loss that have crashed their population 99%- they’re concerned what ocean acidification might do to them in a hundred years. And we as taxpayer get to pay and pay- god forbid we should fix the problem because what would happen to EPA jobs. Aughhhhhh!
Thank you Pat Moffitt,
but I was asking about the chitin-based carapace bearing creatures referenced in the article. Were they not suggesting that they analyzed the lobsters to determine the possible detrimental effect of higher CO2.
““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].” ”
My questions are,
1) “Isn’t the lobster a chitin-bearing carapace creature who creates its shell from its food source?
2) What do they mean by “didn’t seem to care”?
3) How did they measure the “feelings” of the lobster and clams in a reef?
4) How did they conduct a study when the atmospheric CO2 was over 1,000ppm?
5) What, if any, were the impacts upon the ocean when the atmospheric CO2 was over 1,000ppm?
Thank you.
Jos Hagelaars says:
“In surface seawater dissolution of CaCO3 will not occur ( omega > 1, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification#Calcification ), so they are correct to keep the Total Alkalinity constant.”
Sounds like you are wanting to have it both ways. On the one hand, you appear to be claiming that more CO2 will loweri the pH which will result in dissolution of the shells of sea criters and the destruction of reefs and on the other hand dissolution of non-living sources of CaCO3 will not occur.
Lets look at TA shall we?
AT = [HCO3-]T + 2[CO3−2]T + [B(OH)4−]T + [OH−]T − [H+]
AT = 1830 + 2*270 + 100 + 10 − 0.01 (~current TA of the ocean)
AT = 2480 μmol.kg−soln-1
Lets look at what happens to TA when:
Simple Addition of CO2 (in absence of sources of CaCO3)
The addition (or removal) of CO2 to a solution does not change the alkalinity. This is because the net reaction produces the same number of equivalents of positively contributing species (H+) as negative contributing species (HCO3- and/or CO32-).
At neutral pH values:
CO2 + H2O → HCO3− + H+
At high pH values:
CO2 + H2O → CO32- + 2H+
Addition of CO2 (in presence of calcium carbonate):
Addition of CO2 to a solution in contact with solid carbonate minerals in groundwater or seawater The dissolution of carbonate rock has a strong influence on the alkalinity. This is because carbonate rock is composed of CaCO3 and its dissociation will add Ca+2 and CO3−2 into solution. Ca+2 will not influence alkalinity, but CO3−2 will increase alkalinity by 2 units.
So it seems only by choosing to pretend that addition of CO2 has no effect on non-liviing sources of CaCO3 dissolution rates can make the claim that TA remains constant with addition of CO2.
The really sad thing is that we KNOW what causes coral bleaching. And it isn’t CO2. A large number of things are known to do it (many of them real pollutants), but one of the most evil is that all those folks going to study that coral and CO2 “toxicity” are likely to be slathering on bottles of sunscreen while on the boat. That sunscreen is DEMONSTRATED to cause coral bleaching even at astoundingly low concentrations.
It’s all the buffoons diving on the reefs to “study and save them” that are killing them, and all the millions of gallons of sunscreen being washed out to see from the beaches…
http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info%3Adoi%2F10.1289%2Fehp.10966
we kick off the viruses in some of the symbionts and the coral spit them out. Neat trick, huh…
Just do a web search on “Sunscreen coral bleaching”…
Pat Moffitt – “You keep alleging I’ve misrepresented my CV – not a good idea.
Let me refresh your memory form the other WUWT thread.
You wrote: “So supposedly we know to a hundredth of a pH unit the impacts of changing CO2 but we don’t know whether or not the ocean are a sink or a source”
So you don’t understand Dalton’s Law of partial pressure, or Henry’s Law. The fundamentals are a mystery to you.
In response to my comment about silicate and carbonate weathering, you wrote: “Hundreds of thousands of years- Do you just make this stuff up or what? And exactly how much CO2 is needed to “overload the system’?”
So decades of peer-reviewed literature on these processes you have no idea about. Still not encouraging. Do think magic stops atmospheric CO2 from inexorably drifting up or down?
You also wrote: “One piece of the environmental engineering, laboratory and services business I built -since you accuse me of appeals to authority- was an aquatic bio-assay lab where we raised all our own marine test organisms”
That was your appeal to authority. You don’t understand the fundamentals and yet are quick to dismiss the work of actual experts – that which stands up to scrutiny in the peer-reviewed literature.
Of course you could redeem yourself in the eyes of non-sychophantic readers and explain to everyone how the silicate and carbonate processes actually work, and why, using Dalton’s law of partial pressure and Henry’s Law, you don’t expect the oceans to be a carbon sink.
Might bet is you’ll shuffle out some new diversion, to shift attention away from your lack of knowledge on these topics, but we’ll see…..
Pat Moffitt says:
December 29, 2011 at 8:07 pm
captainfish says,
“Maybe someone can teach an old dog something here. Do these chitin-covered creatures create their chitin shell from the carbon in the water or from the food that they eat?”
This is a chicken or the egg question because what they eat is in the water- calcium and carbon. And being filter feeders we could argue all day whether its from the water or their feeding. (A mature oyster may filter over 30 gal of water a day straining it or food) Molluscs secrete a complex set of proteins and polysaccharides that basically (trying to be simple) triggers the formation of calcium crystals (forming the cement of the shell). This most often happens depending on the life stage in a sealed enclosure in that flexible rubbery area at the edge of the shell. Shell growth comes from within the mollusk.
——————————————————————–
Correct me if I am wrong, but I am under the impression that chitin is the stuff that makes up the ‘shells’ of crustaceans, the ‘tongues’ of molluscs and the beaks of cephalopods like squid. It is quite different from the stuff that makes up the shells of shellfish, being a flexible organic polymer.
It is also common in land based creepy crawlies such as the skins of cicadas and the joints of caterpillars.
Since crustaceans and squid are not filter feeders, I think you may have got your wires crossed, Pat. That’s why I found the whole exercise so laughable – a lobster’s chitin coat has nothing in common with an oyster shell except that they are both called ‘shells’ in common parlance.
As I pointed out in my earlier post, there are sound reasons why one is eaten and the other is used for landscaping.
Pat Moffitt says:
December 29, 2011 at 4:22 pm
Rob-
You are unbelievable- are you seriously claiming an ability to differentiate the rate of change in CO2 on a decade or even century time scale going back 300 million years? The chuckles keep coming.
You keep alleging I’ve misrepresented my CV – not a good idea.
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Same with me too, but we should go easy on the poor kid. He’s only just discovered that the Big Leagues exist ….
….. and Lysenkoism ain’t what it used to be.
@alcheson December 29, 2011 at 8:31 pm
Please read the wikipedia link. In sea surface water the omega is larger than 1 so no dissolution of CaCO3 will occur there and therefore the total alkalinity will remain constant. As a consequence of adding CO2 to the atmosphere the pH of sea surface water will drop, which is affirmed by measurements. See the link I gave you before.
Jos Hagelaars,
If I recall that was a site off Hawaii and the pH drop was 0.04units. Do you really trust data with a trend this small? And I can think of many other reasons besides 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.”
Do researchers never look into aquarium equipment catalogs?
http://www.drsfostersmith.com/pic/article.cfm?aid=425
“Care to point me to a peer-reviewed paper on ocean acidification by Willis then?”
Why does peer-review matter so much to you? Evaluate the science, not the approval of the bandwagon.
“Could you please refrain from using Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldbergs name as I tend to bash my head against a brick wall whenever I hear it. The number of times this lunatic has predicted the demise of the Great Barrier Reef is beyond counting, and still he is regarded as an expert.”
Those predicting disaster are never for lack of an audience, nor does their credibility suffer nearly as much as it deserves.
As a sycophant of cartoonist John Cook’s Pseudo-Skeptical Pseudo-Science blog, Rob Painting accuses others of his own logical fallacy of Appeal to Authority, which he himself continuously relies upon in place of the scientific method.
In fact, Painting’s endlessly referenced “authority” consists of a small clique of gatekeepers that control the thoroughly corrupted climate pal review system. The documentation is found throughout the unrefuted Climategate emails, in which the Mann/Jones clique repeatedly conspires to threaten and replace journal reviewers and Boards. In many cases their threats were effective.
The climate journal/pal review system has degraded into Lysenkoism. Painter’s increasingly desperate appeal to that corrupted ‘authority’ has nothing to do with science or the scientific method, and everything to do with the propaganda necessary to keep the grant gravy train on track.
Notice that the climate alarmist crowd always trumpets issues which cannot be quantified, such as the unsupportable claim that the oceans are becoming “acidified”, or the sensitivity of global temperatures to ΔCO2. Whenever an issue arises that can be decisively quantified, the outcome always favors scientific skeptics. Therefore, propagandists like Painter limit themselves to trumpeting vague conjectures; opinions that cannot withstand the scientific method. That is not science, that is advocacy.
Excellent post.
As any visitor to this site knows, the organisms in the marine environment have evolved over a period of hundreds of millions of years, including major excursions in the earth’s environment, and major changes of CO2 level in the biosphere.
Corals are a good case in point, They have evolved to survive, and we do not begin to know the limits of their adaptive possibilities.
There seems to be a widespread (mis)understanding that simple inorganic chemistry applies to biological processes for deposition of calcareous skeletal material, It doesnt, because in the majority of cases the “skeleton” is actively deposited, or directed, in closed biological homeostatic systems, and closed compartments, not in the “open seawater”. Biological materials (e.g.proteins, mucopolysaccharides) are intimately associated with the deposited crystals, affecting their “solubility”.
For a clear and readable explanation of the basic scientific principles, I refer the reader to Westbroek, P. 1991 Life as a Geological Force, Norton, N.Y.
So, the a priori suggestion that marine organisms will be adversely affected by current or “even” higher levels of CO2 is weighed in the balance (and found wanting?) by real, observation-based, science,
Thank goodness for that…..
David Mayhew
johanna says:
Pat Moffitt
“Correct me if I am wrong, but I am under the impression that chitin is the stuff that makes up the ‘shells’ of crustaceans, the ‘tongues’ of molluscs and the beaks of cephalopods like squid. It is quite different from the stuff that makes up the shells of shellfish, being a flexible organic polymer”
I was trying to keep it simple and as I said I failed to explain adequately. Chitin is not only found in the radula of the mollusk but is also a key component as an example in the shell’s nacre. Chitin synsthase plays a key role in the mineralization of shell biogenesis. And yes the shells of shell fish and crustaceans are different- but chitin is in both- and knowing this too oversimplified again think of the difference as the type of matrix it forms with CaCO3. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16513115
http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/107632704322791646
Rob Painting
I do hope you keep posting because you do more to destroy the credibility of ocean acidification advocacy than anything I could hope to accomplish. Backing off you 300 million year CO2 claim?
You wrote: “So supposedly we know to a hundredth of a pH unit the impacts of changing CO2 but we don’t know whether or not the ocean are a sink or a source”
Answer this Rob are all the oceans at every location at all times a sink? Or is it more properly thought when we add up all the marine areas that are outgassing and the areas where they are acting as a sink we come up with a net sink value?
Many areas like the Southern Oceans display complex interannual fluxes as demonstrated by the Southern Annular Mode. So when we see areas bouncing back and forth from source to sink as the result of changing circulation patterns and zonal winds. I’m left with more than a modest amount of skeptism about small pH changes. (And if you had experience with the analytical abilities and sampling constraints for measuring pH at a finer scale than 0.1 unit in a marine environment you’ld be laughing as well)
We started your education with the upwellings off Oregon and the impacts on oyster spat. These upwelling events given their high pCO2 must by Henry’s law be outgassing events-no? Your limited understanding of the ocean’s complexity constrains you to see the various ocean carbon pumps as a one way exchange with the atmosphere. And perhaps why you make such silly comments like your Dalton and Henry’s Law
You like to cite papers showing CO2 impact on shallow and near shore waters. Here I’m calling absolute BS. There is no clear evidence that shallow marine waters are in any way controlled by the small current changes in atmospheric CO2 nor can anyone measure a pH trend in the hundreths of a pH unit. Willis showed the picture of a coral reef outgassing CO2- so stuff that in your Henry’s Law pipe and smoke it. You clearly have no clue about near shore sediment exchanges (if you understood acidity you would pay far more attention to the sulfur cycles in these locales or even the N impact on alkalinity) Nor do you appreciate the influence of growndwater, terrestrial organic acids, primary productivity effects etc on coastal environments in near shore waters. So when you throw out “peer reviewed” papers you clearly do not understand using some ecosytem response in a near shore water- I just have to chuckle.
So decades of peer-reviewed literature on these processes you have no idea about. Still not encouraging. Do think magic stops atmospheric CO2 from inexorably drifting up or down?
I can only answer – “decades of peer review literature” about which you are clueless. (Perhaps why you use the Pfister paper to support your atmospheric CO2 alarm when Phister said the exact opposite.)
You don’t understand the fundamentals and yet are quick to dismiss the work of actual experts – that which stands up to scrutiny in the peer-reviewed literature.
Rob- expert has a legal definition- and according to the courts I am an expert witness. Are you?
So you don’t understand Dalton’s Law of partial pressure, or Henry’s Law. The fundamentals area mystery to you.
You caught me- I’ve been trying to hide the fact that I didn’t know basic chemistry for years from EPA while being the responsible signatory manager for my laboratory. You are really dense if you think you can bluff your way through this. Also served on Presidential Commission, Congressional testimony on coastal marine impacts, international boards etc before retiring in disgust over what has happened to environmental sciences. But the fact that a Police academy grad and others like you now speak for the “science”- is the reason I’ve decided to un-retire.
Of course you could redeem yourself in the eyes of non-sychophantic readers and explain to everyone how the silicate and carbonate processes actually work, and why, using Dalton’s law of partial pressure and Henry’s Law, you don’t expect the oceans to be a carbon sink.
I could Rob- but its clear you would not understand it. Oh- Rob –you really think you can debate eco-system silica dynamics? I always am looking for someone to discuss this with as it is one of my interests especially as its deficiency relates to the proliferation of nano-pico phytoplankton.
Rob Painting
I do hope you keep posting because you do more to destroy the credibility of ocean acidification advocacy than anything I could hope to accomplish. Backing off you 300 million year CO2 claim?
You wrote: “So supposedly we know to a hundredth of a pH unit the impacts of changing CO2 but we don’t know whether or not the ocean are a sink or a source”
Answer this Rob are all the oceans at every location at all times a sink? Or is it more properly thought when we add up all the marine areas that are outgassing and the areas where they are acting as a sink we come up with a net sink value?
Many areas like the Southern Oceans display complex interannual fluxes as demonstrated by the Southern Annular Mode. So when we see areas bouncing back and forth from source to sink as the result of changing circulation patterns and zonal winds. I’m left with more than a modest amount of skeptism about small pH changes. (And if you had experience with the analytical abilities and sampling constraints for measuring pH at a finer scale than 0.1 unit in a marine environment you’ld be laughing as well)
We started your education with the upwellings off Oregon and the impacts on oyster spat. These upwelling events given their high pCO2 must by Henry’s law be outgassing events-no? Your limited understanding of the ocean’s complexity constrains you to see the various ocean carbon pumps as a one way exchange with the atmosphere. And perhaps why you make such silly comments like your Dalton and Henry’s Law
You like to cite papers showing CO2 impact on shallow and near shore waters. Here I’m calling absolute BS. There is no clear evidence that shallow marine waters are in any way controlled by the small current changes in atmospheric CO2 nor can anyone measure a pH trend in the hundreths of a pH unit. Willis showed the picture of a coral reef outgassing CO2- so stuff that in your Henry’s Law pipe and smoke it. You clearly have no clue about near shore sediment exchanges (if you understood acidity you would pay far more attention to the sulfur cycles in these locales or even the N impact on alkalinity) Nor do you appreciate the influence of growndwater, terrestrial organic acids, primary productivity effects etc on coastal environments in near shore waters. So when you throw out “peer reviewed” papers you clearly do not understand using some ecosytem response in a near shore water- I just have to chuckle.
You Say- “So decades of peer-reviewed literature on these processes you have no idea about. Still not encouraging. Do think magic stops atmospheric CO2 from inexorably drifting up or down?”I can only answer – “decades of peer review literature” about which you are clueless. (Perhaps why you use the Pfister paper to support your atmospheric CO2 alarm when Phister said the exact opposite.)
You Say “You don’t understand the fundamentals and yet are quick to dismiss the work of actual experts – that which stands up to scrutiny in the peer-reviewed literature.”Rob- expert has a legal definition- and according to the courts I am an expert witness. Are you?
You Say “So you don’t understand Dalton’s Law of partial pressure, or Henry’s Law. The fundamentals are a mystery to you.”You caught me- I’ve been trying to hide the fact that I didn’t know basic chemistry for years from EPA while being the responsible signatory manager for my laboratory. You are really dense if you think you can bluff your way through this. Also served on Presidential Commission, Congressional testimony on coastal marine impacts, international boards etc before retiring in disgust over what has happened to environmental sciences. But the fact that a Police academy grad and others like you now speak for the “science”- is the reason I’ve decided to un-retire.
You Say- “Of course you could redeem yourself in the eyes of non-sychophantic readers and explain to everyone how the silicate and carbonate processes actually work, and why, using Dalton’s law of partial pressure and Henry’s Law, you don’t expect the oceans to be a carbon sink.”I could Rob- but its clear you would not understand it. Oh- Rob –you really think you can debate eco-system silica dynamics? I always am looking for someone to discuss this with as it is one of my interests especially as its deficiency relates to the proliferation of nano-pico phytoplankton.
d.mayhew says:
” It doesnt, because in the majority of cases the “skeleton” is actively deposited, or directed, in closed biological homeostatic systems, and closed compartments, not in the “open seawater”.
You are absolutely correct and causes me to bang my head when I hear people try to describe this process using simple physical chemistry and ignore the fact these creature are creating encapsulated “micro-environments” in which these processes unfold.