This letter to Dr. Richard A. Feely of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environment Laboratory Carbon Program in Seattle, WA was sent by Chuck F. Wiese on Wednesday. Chuck also asked me to post it on WUWT but I wanted to see if NOAA would fix the error on the web page first. It is now Saturday, and they haven’t, so I think a public notice is appropriate. I suppose I’m not surprised though, since Dr. Feely lists “Nobel Peace Prize (co-shared with Al Gore and other members of IPCC) – 2007” on his web page. I suppose anyone who lists Al Gore along with the gross errors he makes, such as his laughably non-reproducible “high school physics” of CO2, would not bother to correct their own gross errors. – Anthony
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Dear Dr. Feely:
I exchanged e-mails with you a while back over a story that ran in the Oregonian on April 12, 2012. It was about “ocean acidification” that was supposedly killing off what would otherwise be healthy oyster harvests here in the Northwest, The story can be found here:
An OSU researcher who gave the story to the Oregonian, Alan Barton, had incorrectly asserted that the ocean pH had risen 30% because of human CO2 emissions and gave that as the reason the oyster harvests had been suffering. And he qualified that statement by stating that the ocean pH had moved .1 unit towards acidity over the last century.
But as you know, the equation for the pH of an aqueous solution is logarithmic and defined as pH = -log[ H+ ] . As you also know, there are 14 orders of magnitude that define the pH scale from zero to fourteen units as per this equation. So a movement of .1 units towards acidity cannot equal a 30% increase in acidity as claimed in this article. It is actually .1/14 or only 7/10ths of 1%. In order for there to be the increase cited, the researchers solved it for the hydrogen ion concentration and computed that change instead and called it the change in acidity. So if we moved .1 units towards acidity from the alkaline 8.2 to 8.1 oceans and compared the change, we have [delta H+] = 8 E-9/6 E-9 = 1.33 or a 33% increase in the hydrogen ion concentration, not an increase of 33% in the pH. None the less, that is how the story was reported and it is wrong.
Since the natural variation of ocean pH can be up to 5% in either direction, I am speculating that in order to make the story seem legitimate, a gross exaggeration of fact was needed to sell it and hence the switch and bait tactic was used with the pH equation.
You agreed with me in my premise that hydrogen ion concentration makes up the pH but it is not defined by that number because the number of ions in an aqueous solution of water are very large. That was the whole idea behind creating a logarithmic scale with the 14 orders of magnitude to define it. I reported this to the Oregonian readership and thought the issue was settled. But then I found this:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/What+is+Ocean+Acidification%3F
In this explanation offered by NOAA, of which you are a senior scientist, we are back to the trickery of claiming the ocean acidity has increased by 30%. Are you aware of this NOAA information page? It needs an immediate correction. The ocean pH has been changing everywhere within natural variations. There is no provable decrease that can be identified with atmospheric CO2 that is related to human activity. Does Jane Lubchenco understand this? She has made numerous and completely false assertions that the up welling ocean water off of the Northwest coasts ( that will be on the rise because of the switch to cold phase PDO in 2007 that will run thirty years and likely decrease the pH additionally ) is attributable to human caused climate change. There is absolutely no proof of this and as far as meteorologists can tell, the mid and north Pacific Hadley cell summer circulation has intensified on schedule and is behaving perfectly normally in the cold phase of this ocean cycle. Either you or Lubchenco need to correct this page. It is misleading the public.
Sincerely,
Chuck F. Wiese
Meteorologist
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It’s even more complicated than that, because there are buffers involved.
BTW, the original reason for the logarithmic scale isn’t to take into account the wide range of concentrations, it’s because the electrochemical potential of a pH probe is logarithmic; i.e. the millivolts from a probe are directly proportional to pH. It was an easy way to measure without converting the other way.
Does Jane Lubchenco understand this?
She understands that she could announce the Pacific will turn into hydrogen sulfide in 30 years and not a single Letter-to-the-Editor would ever see print.
Mass fraud. Science’s version of Wall Street and the City Of London. Go LONG on piano wire.
Absolutely correct, Chuck. Their lazy attitude towards correct science displays a tendency all too familiar.
It is being assumed by these people that the ocean obeys the second law of thermodynamics, it does not because of surface tension. You can not heat water from above on this planet which may be why the oceans are still here. If surface tension stops heat what chance has a co2 molecule of passing through. As far as I can make out the only thing that penetrates the oceanic surface tension is the sun’s rays. Because of surface tension AGW can not exist.
I don’t think that Chuck is incorrect in this instance. The pH scale is open-ended, not limited to the range 1.0 to 14.0. That is not a huge error in itself, but the fact that the ocean is buffered amplifies the significance of the 30% increase of hydrogen ion concentration, not diminishes it. This is a large change in acidity, contrary to claims made here.
Please be careful to distinguish between hydrogen ion concentrations and pH. While these are interconvertible, they are not identical.
If your speed where to increase from 50 mph to 100 mph, the logarithm (base 10) of your speed double from about 1.7 to 2.0, roughly an 18 percent increase. I think a judge would be very unimpressed by your argument that you were only faster by 0.3 log units.
IPad auto-corrupt is the Bane of us all.
This is rather funny. If there is one thing farmers and ranchers know how to do, it’s measure pH. Some things need soil less alkaline, some things need soil that is very sweet, and some things need soil that stays in the middle of neutral. But we are talking small movements one way or the other. pH that changes by 30% towards acidic would be…crazy!!!! You would have dead fish floating on the water for heaven’s sake. And just plain ol’ flat-earth rednecks would know this! How embarrassing.
If she wants to get ahold o’ me, I’ll aks my neighbor Bubba if’n he could walk her through the process of pH measurement. Ya know, we git these kits down at the Grain Growers fer next to nothin so I’m sure he would do it fer ya.
Things like this go to the heart of credibility. Uncorrected errors damage the reputation of the parent and wall as the credited author. It goes way beyond this though. There is a huge move in Canada to make sure only PR people speak for any Federal organization. The present control freak Prime Minister does everyone a great disservice by attempting to control the message. Foolishness like this are the result of such an approach. People who have few if any clues about things such as physics and chemistry create or miss the error specifically if it supports their bias. It is simply another form of the big lie. Niccoló Machiavelli, would be proud.
Chem Prof, how large? In pH terms please, not in hydrogen ion terms.
The oceans are infinitely buffered. That is why rainwater (<5.2 pH) can continuously fall on the surface of the ocean all day long with no change in the ocean's pH — not even on the surface of the ocean — because, it mixes so quickly and thoroughly (in fact, the pH of the ocean actually decreases the deeper you go). Any a move toward a lower pH would simply cause CaCO3 to dissolve and bring the pH right back up.
"Ocean pH is not governed by physico-chemical rules. Marine organisms control their calcium carbonate properties organically behind membranes. Increased CO2, in any case, evolves from sea water because of inverse solubility. CO2 dissolves in cold water and bubbles out of warm water. That's why CO2 trails natural warming," ~Dr. Francis T. Manns
and,
"Objective scientists realize that coral, foraminifera and shellfish have deep mechanism that have evolved over 100s of millions of years as CO2 has fluctuated far wider than we see in the atmosphere today. Google Ernst-Georg Beck for a synoptic paper on 180 years of CO2 measurements in the atmosphere, some by Nobel Prize-winning chemists. The UN IPCC has cooked the books. CO2 was as high as 400 ppm on 1940 before the recent cooling period," Manns wrote. (Ibid.)
I sent the following to the person in charge of the NOAA website:
“Dear Mr. Greely,
I just read the article “What is Ocean Acidification”. It contains a gross error in the change of pH of the ocean. A pH change of .1 corresponds to a change in hydrogen ion concentration of ..007%. Acidity, in chemical terms, refers to a pH of less than 7. So a correct description of what has happened is that “the ocean has become .007% less basic”, not “30% more acidic”.
The section on Pteropods shows a meaningless experiment. The pteropods don’t exist in a sterile solution of water at pH 8.0. The oceans include millions of tons of carbonate salts and are in contact with millions of tons more. A more realistic experiment would be to put a lump of limestone(calcium carbonate) in the beaker too.
The section on the mis-named ocean acidification is overblown too. A recent study by the Scripps Institute says: “They found that in some places, such as Antarctica and the Line Islands of the south Pacific, the range of pH variance is much more limited than in areas of the California coast subject to large vertical movements of water known as upwellings. In some of their study areas, they found that the decrease in seawater pH being caused by greenhouse gas emissions is still within the bounds of natural pH fluctuation. Some areas already experience daily acidity levels that scientists had expected would only be reached at the end of the 21st Century.”
Such a wide variation in ocean pH indicates mainly that we don’t know very much about how or why it changes, the reason for the new Scripps study.
Articles like this should be based on sound science and not inflated speculations. Hopefully in the future the rhetoric will be tone down to a level that is more in line with established facts”
I don’t expect the article to be re-written though.
The original article is correct. A decrease in pH by 0.1 pH units corresponds to a 25.6% increase in relative hydrogen ion concentration, roughly 30 percent to one significant figure.
Sorry mods tips and notes slow.
Climate Wars
H/t Marc Morano
Absolutely incredulous.
A pH of 8.2 = 0.00000000630957 mol/L H+ ion.
A pH of 8.1 = 0.00000000794328 mol/L H+ ion.
pH H+ mol/L
0 1
1 0.1
2 0.01
3 0.001
4 0.0001
5 0.00001
6 0.000001
7 0.0000001
8 0.00000001
9 0.000000001
10 0.0000000001
11 0.00000000001
12 0.000000000001
13 0.0000000000001
14 0.00000000000001
BTW: pH is not strickly from 0 to 14, you can have negative pH, for example, a 66 degree Baume (~93%) sulfuric acid’s H+ concentration is way higher than 1 mol/L hence has a negative pH.
@ur momisugly Chem prof (yea, right): Where do you “prof” (cough, cough) “chem”? I’d like to send a link to your department head.
I must be very stupid but if Chem Prof is right and ocean pH is currently around 8.1 then for it to become acidic the relative hydrogen ion concentration would have to increase by about 280%.
How would this be possible and at what point would the sea consist entirely of hydrogen ions?
Sorry if I’m letting my scientific ignorance hang out but I suspect that the “denizens of the deep” would be struggling to tell the difference between pH of 8.2 and a pH of 8.1.
On the other hand I would have thought that a 25.6% increase in just about any component part of the sea would have been evident to even the dimmest of sea creatures.
A pH of 8.2 = 0.00000000630957 mol/L H+ ion.
A pH of 8.1 = 0.00000000794328 mol/L H+ ion.
0.00000000794328 / 0.00000000630957 = 1.2589 -> a 26% increase – roughly 30%
.1 log increase in always roughly 26%
.3 log increase/decease doubles / halves (+100% / -50%)
[ decibels are also on a log scale (10 times the log of sound) a 3dB increase or decrease is a doubling / halving ]
I got onto a real computer and compiled, corrected, and amplified my comments. Here they are, more or less in order:
I don’t think that Chuck is correct in this instance. The pH scale is open-ended, not limited to the range 1.0 to 14.0. That is not a huge error in itself, but the fact that the ocean is buffered amplifies the significance of the 30% increase of hydrogen ion concentration, not diminishes it. This is a large change in acidity, contrary to claims made here.
Please be careful to distinguish between hydrogen ion concentrations and pH. While these are inter-convertible, they are not identical.
If your speed were to increase from 50 mph to 100 mph, the logarithm (base 10) of your speed would increase from about 1.7 to 2.0, roughly an 18 percent increase. I think a judge would be very unimpressed by your argument that you were only faster by 0.3 log units, and would certainly disagree with any assertion that your speed had increased by merely 18%.
The original article is correct. A decrease in pH by 0.1 pH units corresponds to a 25.6% increase in relative [ and I emphasize RELATIVE] hydrogen ion concentration, roughly 30 percent to one significant figure.
I have no idea what John West’s complaint is.
I think Chem Prof is correct. pH is logarithmic to base 10.
10^0.1 = 1.259
This could loosely be described as a 30% increase.
John West, I’m not sure why you’re having a go at Chem Prof.
794328 / 630957 = 1.259
Chuck F. Wiese
If “acidity” is understood as the hydrogen ion concentration, then a 0.1 pH unit decrease change in pH from 8.2 to 8.1 is an increase in hydrogen ion concentration from 6.3096 E^-9 to 7.9433 E^-9, or 1.2589. pH is the negative log (base 10) of the hydrogen ion concentration a (sub H^+).
i.e., a 26% (25.89%) increase, not a 30% increase in hydrogen ion concentration.
(PS from a chemistry point of view, I don’t see a problem understanding “acidity” as hydrogen ion concentration.)
The greater issue is people do not understand that to become “acid”, the ocean acidity would have to increase 15,850%.
Far more importantly, is the importance of “chemical buffers” in the Ocean that will effectively prevent the ocean from becoming “acidic”.
See Tom Segalstad’s web site http://www.co2web.info/
especially 4. Chemical Laws for Distribution of CO2 in Nature
Please concentrate on correcting the statement to include something like:
“Chemical buffers in the ocean will prevent it from becoming acidic.”
I hate chemistry, but I agree with Chem Prof here in support of the 30% claim. Acid strength is ultimately just a measure of how fully dissociated the acid is in water. As far as I can tell the accepted definition goes from a min(max?) of 0 pH (or 100% dissociated) to a limit arbitrarily close to no dissociation (infinite pH). Since pH is logarithmic, a 30% increase in the hydrogen ion concentration only gives rise to a 0.1 shift in the pH scale, but the solution is 30% more acidic.
What’s misleading in the NOAA posting is just how small a 30% increase really is as compared to the natural variations of ocean acidity. If pH can change by +/- .5 daily –and I’m no expert on fluctuations of ocean acidity, so please correct me– then I think Chem Prof should reconsider what he defines as “large.”
As an aside, has anyone bothered to calculate just what the ocean pH should be assuming that all of the CO2 we emit goes into solution and the ocean is perfectly mixed? Is the 0.1pH mean shift consistent with that?
Great care has to be taken about claims in PH changes.
I bet $5 this letter gets DR Feely touchy.
Chem Prof: 30% increase in a very low H+ concentration is like the interest on one lefta (100th of a dracma). To increase acidity form 8.2 to 8.1 in volves an increase in [H+] of about 25%. To increase it from 8.2 to 7 involves an increase in [H+] of 1600%. To increase pH from 8.2 to 1.0 requires an increase in [H+] of… wait for it good doctor… 1584893200%. If you still think your 30% increase is significant, you should turn in your doctorate – egad who are these people teaching our children. I certainly wouldn’t call myself “Chem Prof” if you don’t understand pH. Indeed divide your 30 by this figure to get an idea of how insignificant it is.