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
@Chem Prof
There’s technically right and there’s actually right. Humans use a range of scales for good reasons, and it is important to use the relevant ones for those reasons.
pH is (negative) log because that is how organisms perceive acidity. They don’t perceive it in a linear scale, so it shouldn’t be quoted in one. No-one, but no-one talks about acidity other than via pH.
As a Chemical Professor – cough! – you will be aware that there is a p[OH] measure too. So why not quote the alarming story that – oh noes! – hydroxide concentration in the oceans has fallen by 80%. I would hope you would see how stupid it was to use it, regardless of being technically true.
Scientists should be above misleading statistics in order to add scare value. The end effect is not that they persuade, but that their statements come to be read in the same way we read politicians’ statements. Scientists have a measure of acidity that they should use, not play hocus-pocus with whichever number does their propaganda job better.
The argument about ocean acidification is absolutely stupid if all the co2 in the world were added to the oceans it would still be above the ph of pure water. It would still be on the side of alkaline and not acid. Of course we would all be dead for there would be no plants and no food and as we ourselves are carbon based we would all end up looking like the brains of warmists.
Chem Prof, your arguments (be they hydrogen ion concentration change or pH change) make no difference whatsoever. The change discovered is within the natural variability, IE the null hypothesis, which still stands. When natural variability is buried by the supposed anthropogenic CO2-pH mechanism, post again.
The sky is not falling just because a walnut hits your head.
Once again the “ocean acidification” canard is resurrected by grant-seeking science charlatans and global warming alarmists. The problem is that in measuring ocean pH, the error bars are larger than the imagined change. Statistically, there is no change in pH.
WUWT readers have argued and won this point here many times over the past couple of years. “Ocean acidification” is simply one more baseless facet of the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming scare. For a review of how thoroughly “ocean acidification” has been debunked, see these links:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/10/ocean-acidification-chicken-of-the-sea-little-strikes-again
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/24/chicken-little-of-the-sea-visits-station-aloha
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/28/the-fishes-and-the-coral-live-happily-in-the-co2-bubble-plume
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/27/the-ocean-is-not-getting-acidified
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/25/the-reef-abides
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/19/the-electric-oceanic-acid-test
Shell fish don’t have a problem with acid water anyway:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/clams-do-fine-in-acid-water/
Fresh water clams are an existence proof that acid water ( up to 4.x pH) does not harm them
I wonder what the NOAA response will be, if any. WUWT had a story about this in 2010. The multi-national organisation, Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans, POGO, issued a press release in 2010 stating:
“The ocean surface is 30 percent more acidic today than it was in 1800, much of that increase occurring in the last 50 years…
“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.”
Please send $15 billion plus $5 billion per year.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/01/scientists-plead-for-15-billion-ocean-acidification-monitoring-system/
http://www.ocean-partners.org/about-pogo/partners
POGO are busy little bees. Over the next year they have scheduled about 36 meetings and workshops in places like India, China, Brazil, Usa, Hawaii, France, Japan, Australia and ….er…. Hull in the UK.
http://www.ocean-partners.org/meetings-and-workshops
The researchers admit that the alkalinity decreases when cold water from massive upwellings move into the oyster growing areas. It is well known that there are numerous active underwater volcanos and black smokers along the coast that emit CO2 and SO2. The San Juan Plate is nearby and active. These sources may well account for virtually all of the reduced alkalinity.
Moreover, it is well know that Pacific oysters are intolerant to relatively small decreases in water temperature. A few degrees below the norm means death to oysters and their ability to reproduce. When water warms, the oysters begin to grow again. I have observed this phenomenon several times while cruising along the British Columbia coast and visiting well known prolific oyster growing warm water fiords. Oysters come and go when water temperatures vary by a few degrees F.
The researchers make no mention of the influence of reduced water temperature on oyster viability, which can falsify the hypothesis. Moreover, they appear to have ignored the impact from underwater activities that put massive amounts of CO2 and SO2 into the water. These acid making gases may well be the primary cause of reduced alkalinity and also falsifies their hypothesis.
My layman’s understudying of scientific method is that those advancing a hypothesis have the burden of proving it, and disclosing and disproving contradictory facts, data and research. I suspect the cost of analyzing and quantifying sources of absorbed CO2 in sea water may be enormous, that is assuming that it is feasible.
Mike Jackson says:
June 30, 2012 at 10:03 am
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.
Presumably the CO2 concentration went up from 280 ppm in 1750 to 390 ppm today or about 39%. If you were in a room where the CO2 was 280 ppm and then went into a room where the CO2 was 390 ppm, do you think you would notice? Now as for the pH discussion here, any change of 0.1 in the pH changes the hydrogen ion concentration by 26%, but there is a world of a difference between a change of pH from 1.1 to 1.0 versus from 8.2 to 8.1. 26% of peanuts is still peanuts.
Pamela Gray says:
June 30, 2012 at 1:39 pm
Pamela, you’re the poster child for my previous comment.
Gary Pearse says:
June 30, 2012 at 10:45 am
“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.”
Chem Prof’s 30% increase is reminiscent of our long lost friend R. Gates who was fond of crowing about a “40% increase of CO2”. Technically correct but as many pointed out to him, a 40% increase of squat is still squat. Anytime I see percentages being used my skeptic alarm goes off loud and clear.
The reason the change in pH is meaningless in this situation is that in a pure system where only H+ is considered to be driving pH, the change is one gram of hydrogen ions in one billion liters of water. So if things have now become dangerous at the part per trillion level of change life should hve been wiped out billions of years ago.
Rather, it’s a Machiavellian attempt to deceive with a technically correct obfuscation. The average reader will think that we’re 7/10ths of the way to an acid ocean.
“A truth that’s told with bad intent / Beats any lie you can invent”
If this were an ad that employed this deception, liberals would be screaming about it.
Oops, make that “… that we’re 3/10ths of the way …”
Chem Prof misses the point, it’s NOAA’s carefully chosen misleading words that can leave many readers with a misunderstanding.
NOAA states: “Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the pH of surface ocean waters has fallen by 0.1 pH units.”
To many readers, the pH scale is a meaningless scientific figure, so a science writer is expected to interpret this pH figure into a figure or statement of impact that the reader can understand.
Here is NOAA’s follow up sentence which, to the general public reader, is in the form of an interpretive impact explanation: “Since the pH scale, like the Richter scale is logarithmic, this change represents approximately a 30 percent increase in acidity.”
To many non-scientific readers this implies a hugely significant increase in environmental impacts – 30% more acidic ! NOAA compound the misleading nature of this statement by not making it clear that this is a reference to a percentage change in hydrogen ion concentrations.
NOAA don’t need to use the misleading acidity figure – their follow-up paragraphs (under the heading “The Biological Impacts”) are adequate for explaining the claimed impacts.
The whole sea water PH measurement story is a false numbers game.
Anytime someone states a percentage number, your first question should always be a percentage of what?
Geez, it’s a 30% increase! Oh, and just what constitutes a 100% totality? Assuming that 100% is the whole enchilada, the absolute total sum. In my mind and in the minds of many people, 30% is a change of magnitude almost 1/3 of the total.
But but, says the alarmists, our 30% number is relative. It represents a percentage change from a ridiculously low number to another ridiculously low number so the ‘relative’ change looms very large.
What? Says the the questioners (us) just what is that percentage as a total of the whole? On a scale from 0 – 14 the percentage change from 8.1 to 8.2 or versus-visa is truly trivial. So is trying to relate ph measurement to the richter scale. Ion changes per liter of water just don’t relate to 700 km of faulted continental crust slipping slipping meters. Yeah yeah, it’s all relative.
Wow, I just bought some super magnets. I bought the 4.5mm size. They’re 28.5% bigger than the 3.5mm magnets! I’m just overwhelmed by the massive increase in magnet power! /sarc
As popularized by Mark Twain and others: “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.” Someone should bring Darrell Huff’s 1954 book, “How to Lie with Statistics” out of mothballs, and update it with all the ‘scientific’ examples that are currently rife in the arena of AGW scaremongering.
Chem Prof says:
June 30, 2012 at 9:42 am
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.
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The article kind of sounds like they were using the scariest sounding way to report the number. “30%” sounds much bigger than “0.1”.
Pretty common trick if you’re trying to influence rather than simply report.
I don’t know the actual numbers here but when they try to demonize insurance companies they report their profits grew by, say, $10,000,000,000. If they are not out to demonize then they report their profits grew by, say, 1%. The honest thing would be to report both.
So it seems that it’s just more lazy scientists at work. The global Ph is not the problem. It’s a local problem that might take some research and effort to work out. Unfortunately the oyster farmers succumbed to temptation, went to the worst possible place for accurate information, and got the party line…..global warming. They’ll get no sympathy from me.
Larry Butler says:
June 30, 2012 at 10:53 am
Will tiny variations in Ph matter in a Pacific now Japan’s nuclear waste dump with hundreds of trillions of bequerels of the most toxic radioactive metals on the planet trickling down through the water column, Pacific-wide? 100% of the Blue Fin Tuna off San Diego have Cesium 137 in them. Ph won’t matter…at all.
Why is the news blackout so total of this disaster? It’s criminal.
You do not appear to have been paying attention during your Nucleonics class in engineering school and have gotten yourself unnecessarily excited.
Lets look at the radiation released at Fukushima: 13,600 TBq of Cesium-137. There was some Iodine-131 and some Cesium-140 released as well but this has half-lifed itself out of significance. The ocean volume is 1386000000 cubic kilometers. Dividing the released radiation by the ocean volume: 13,600 TBq/1386000000 km3 = .0000098 Bq m-3. For comparison, the ocean background radiation is 2-3 Bq/m-3 for Brazil and 35.2 Bq m-3 for the Baltic Sea. The radiation from Fukushima isn’t just insignificant – it is barely measurable.
The ICRP in 1928 adopted the linear no-threshold model for radiation and there is no conclusive science evidence that it is a valid model. There is a lot of evidence that it is not. Normal background radiation is 2 mS (milliSieverts) per year – 15% is produced by your own body. This is a global average, the rate varies by location: the US background rate is 3.6 mS/yr, the Australian rate is 2.4 mS/yr, and the rate for Ramsar, Iran(whose residents have an abnormally low cancer rate) 260mSv . The radiation level for optimum health is 120-200 mSv (milliSievert) annually (hormesis hypothesis). The radiation level has to reach 2 Sieverts/year before cancer mortality is as high as the death rate from normal background radiation. Allowing radiation levels up to 2 Sv/yr will save lives.
The reason that there is no news is there is no disaster. The lost of equipment, power (due to damaged equipment) and contamination of the nearby land does get reported. What is really amazing is the TEPCO (Japanese) staff bravely dealt with reactors that had gone uncooled for 24 hours.and managed to contain them. I doubt American staffs would have done as well.
I’ve experienced a 100% increase of Labatt Blue content in my body since I started reading this comment thread. Incidentally, I was so intrigued by the scientific discussion that I neglected my second open bottle for a while. Otherwise I’d have been tempted to go to the source one more time and my mathematical models suggest that I would have suffered a catastrophic 200% volume increase.
I have three problems with the statement about a “30% increase in pH”. First, we have no observations saying it has changed that much, just claims without actual data to support them.
Second, applying percentages to logarithmic scales doesn’t work. The scales are logarithmic for a reason.
Third, and more to the point, they have not provided the critical context. Suppose we use pH. The pH according to the article has changed by 0.1 pH units. To give a sense of how big a deal that is, here’s a graph of the pH of the intake water at the Monterrey Aquarium:
SOURCE
Looking at that, should we be concerned about a claimed change since 1750 of 0.1 pH units?
I say even if it were real it’s lost in the noise, it changes much more than that in a couple weeks in Monterrey.
Now, let’s provide some context for the changes in Monterrey in percentage terms. In a few weeks, the water there goes from a pH of 7.7 to a ph of 8.2. According to the method used in the article and approved of by the “chem prof”, that’s a change of about 316% in a few weeks … and we’re supposed to be upset by a claimed (not observed but claimed) increase of 30% in 250 years?
Really?
That’s why context is crucial, whether you measure in pH units as you should, or in percentages as makes no sense … either way you need context.
w.
I’m not going to sit here and point out the stupidity of using percentages on a PH scale but it got me thinking can anyone think of a valid use of percentages in pure science (You know science applied to real world data and measurements and not pulled out your ear to prove your worth your grant), or is it just used by bankers to push up and down the price of the stock markets and bonds, etc or stats guys to keep themselves in jobs (Mr McIntyre has changed my mind on stats guys though)?
As usual Willis, you put it so well.
J. Philip Peterson says:
June 30, 2012 at 12:44 pm
Steven Kopits says:
June 30, 2012 at 12:25 pm
“No posting on the record heat, storms?”
Same reason for no posting of record cold in other parts of the world such as New Zealand, the South Pole, and Finland – it’s weather.
Same reason for not posting of “the coldest and wettest April to June in at least 100 years” in UK.
We are, officially, still in a drought!!!!!!!!
“””””…….Bill Tuttle says:
June 30, 2012 at 8:36 am
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……”””””
Jane Lubchenko did a famous (reported here) demonstration (experiment) to show that corals can grow in ordinary (fresh) tap water, including presumably its chlorination, and dental fluoridation, if you simply dye the water blue with an ordinary “laboratory blue dye”.
You chemistry whizzes (I ain’t one) can explain why you go around dyeing things blue with “ordinary laboratory blue dyes”.
Back in school when I was actually forced to do some chem experiments, we used some gunk called phenolpthalene; or words to that effect, to determine the pH of some solution or other, similar to litmus paper I guess, but we never deliberately dyed anything blue to grow corals in it.
Then friend Jane chilled the hell out of the blue tap water with dry ice to show that corals won’t grow in cold tap water. As I recall the cold tap water went yellow; which I assume explains why sometimes snow is yellow and they don’t recommend eating yellow snow; evidently it kills corals too.
Jane never did her experiment with ordinary ocean water that corals DO grow in. Like why didn’t she just import some Aussie ocean water from the Great Barrier Reef, where corals grow. Toss her “ordinary laboratory blue dye” in there, and then toss some dry ice in to chill it, to see if the corals could survive. If the hcilled GBR ocean water doesn’t go yellow when you chill it, then maybe the corals won’t dye (that’s die).