Don’t laugh, that’s what the Geological Society of America is pushing these days to describe the “ocean acidification problem”…from their press release:
Earth on Acid: The Present & Future of Global Acidification
GSA Annual Meeting & Exposition, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, 4–7 November 2012
Boulder, CO, USA – Climate change and extreme weather events grab the headlines, but there is another, lesser known, global change underway on land, in the seas, and in the air: acidification.
It turns out that combustion of fossil fuels, smelting of ores, mining of coal and metal ores, and application of nitrogen fertilizer to soils are all driving down the pH of the air, water, and the soil at rates far faster than Earth’s natural systems can buffer, posing threats to both land and sea life.
“It’s a bigger picture than most of us know,” says Janet Herman of the Department of Environmental Sciences at University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
Herman and her colleague, Karen Rice of the USGS, discovered that despite the fact that they worked on different kinds of acidification in the environment, they were not well informed about the matter beyond their own specialties. So they have done an extensive review of science papers about all kinds of environmental acidification and are presenting their work in a poster session on Tuesday, 6 Nov., at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA) in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.
Acidification is both a local and global problem, since it can be as close as a nearby stream contaminated by mine tailings or as far-reaching as the world’s oceans, which are becoming more acidic as sea water absorbs higher concentrations of carbon dioxide that humans dump into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.
Coal gives a double whammy by being the biggest contributor of anthropogenic carbon dioxide to the global atmosphere as well as creating regional acidification. Coal burning is famous for creating acid rain, which had dramatic environmental impacts on forests, streams, and lakes in eastern North America and Europe and led to major policy changes.
“It’s not at all clear that other regions are considering such policy restrictions to be important,” Herman says, regarding places where population growth is expected to increase acidifying activities.
Normally, acids in the environment are buffered by alkaline compounds released by the weathering of minerals in rocks. The problem today, according to Herman, is that the rate of acidification by human activities has outstripped the weathering rate and buffering capacity of the planet.
In their work, Herman and Rice look at the population projections by country over the next four decades to see where the increased industrialization and agriculture will likely lead to new acidification hot spots. Their hope is that by doing this people can anticipate the problem and plan to mitigate the harmful environmental effects, says Herman.
WHAT: Acidification of Earth: An Assessment across Mechanisms and Scales
WHEN: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesday, 6 Nov.
WHERE: Booth #67, Charlotte Convention Center: Hall B
ABSTRACT: https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2012AM/finalprogram/abstract_207495.htm
Source: http://www.geosociety.org/news/pr/12-89.htm
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First acid trip I got was at age 0 days. Mum enjoyed a coffee just before I was born!
Sheesh! If it’s not one damn scare, it’s another! When will these “climate hypochondriacs” [h/t Eduardo Zorita] who persist in indulging their “carbon fetish” [h/t Matt Ridley] ever learn, eh?!
The atmosphere that passes through an aquarium aeration-pump is the same atmosphere that is in contact with the world’s oceans. If a fish tank in a pet shop doesn’t become acidic due to atmospheric CO2 then why would anyone believe that the oceans will?
m h
The atmosphere that passes through an aquarium aeration-pump is the same atmosphere that is in contact with the world’s oceans. If a fish tank in a pet shop doesn’t become acidic due to atmospheric CO2 then why would anyone believe that the oceans will?
False analogy leading to a rhetorical blind alley.
Aquarists target (and maintain by active management) different pH levels because they (and ichthyologists) know that different species thrive at different acidity levels. There is a swag of recent research which shows (a) there is a much wider spread of natural acidity levels in the oceans than previously expected, (b) that different species thrive in different pH levels and (c) that changing pH will have some deleterious and some beneficial impacts on existing assemblages. (d) there is also evidence that if the changes happen slowly enough assemblages will change in composition over time.
The usual ecological principle would be that slow-breeding species with highly circumscribed niches are those which are most likely to go extinct as a result of changes in pH.
The biggest unknowns are whether there are threshold pHs which will trigger wholesale systemic breakdown in food chains based on shelled sea creatures at the bottom of ocean food chains.
BTW, the biggest pH problem in aquaria is not the impact of CO2 bubbling through the water column. It is the chemical impact of fish excreta and decomposing fish food if care is not taken. If the aquarium water gets too bad you change the water – something that we will not be able to do with the oceans should they go pear-shaped because of reduced pH.
I must enter, once again, a repeated protest against calling neutralization by the name of “acidification”. The seas are not becoming more acidic. They are becoming more neutral.
I understand that “oceanic neutralization” doesn’t have the same zing, but that’s the reality. The ocean is gradually becoming more and more neutral. Another way to describe it is that the ocean is becoming less alkaline.
Now, it’s not widely realized that alkalinity is much more damaging than acidity. Someone upthread described bathing in Japan in very acid waters. These waters had a pH of 1.5, far below neutral (pH 7.0).
But a substance of the correspondingly extreme alkalinity, say lye, pH 13, far above neutral, is what is used to dissolve bodies. It is extremely caustic to all kinds of flesh. The naturally alkaline nature of sea water is mildly deleterious to living tissue, which is one reason that many fish and other ocean creatures have a protective layer of mucus surrounding their bodies.
As a result, this is more than a theoretical or semantical distinction. A more neutral ocean, to the extent that it happens, is not necessarily either good or bad … I greatly doubt, however, that a slightly more neutral ocean will be catastrophic.
Let me shamelessly tout my post, “The Electric Oceanic Acid Test”, regarding the question of variations in oceanic pH.
w
“… the world’s oceans, which are becoming more acidic….”
Statements like this make the writer seem like a pathetic babbling idiot who knows nothing about science.
Neutral PH is 7.0, the oceans on average are 8.1 [highly alkaline], and even CAGW supporters agree that a doubling of CO2 could reduce this to 7.9. The oceans are not acidic, so they can not become ‘more acidic’, they can only become ‘less alkaline’.
I remember this blog featuring a paper saying that as sea life uses bicarbonate rather than carbonate for shell/skeleton building a reduction in alkalinity would increase their numbers, as is found. This seems a good example of a feedback loop.
One can see why they are so keen to propagate the idea of CAGW – they have to keep the money rolling in for as long as possible as on the evidence of the scientific skills shown they are unlikely to find employment elsewhere.
w
As a result, this is more than a theoretical or semantical distinction. A more neutral ocean, to the extent that it happens, is not necessarily either good or bad … I greatly doubt, however, that a slightly more neutral ocean will be catastrophic.
As ever it is a risk management issue.
‘Greatly doubt…’ is essentially meaningless in scientific terms. To make this statement with any credibility, you would have to be sure that there are no systemic threshold levels in oceanic pH, particularly at the low end of the food chain.
Two points I stopped giving papers at GSA in the late 80’s because the time allocation was so limited you simply couldn’t say anything. I went to posters and the are on your CV. Second little of this is new we have all heard it before. It is not without some credibility. I dispute the idea that nature can not buffer these effects. Perhaps is not always, on a local level, able to buffer to the extent the authors would like. Hey press releases are how you get attention to yourself, your cause or your need for grant funding.
Nov 2012: Reason Magazine: Ronald Bailey: The Paradox of Energy Efficiency
Why greener technology doesn’t translate into reduced energy consumption
In another recent study, reported in the July 2012 issue of the journal Sustainability, Graham Palmer, technical director of an Australian heating and cooling company, looked at trends in space heating efficiency during the last 50 years in Melbourne. Modern houses are up to 10 times more energy efficient, Palmer found, yet Australians are collectively using just as much energy to heat their homes as they did a half-century ago. Why? New houses are much bigger, people heat larger areas for longer, and fewer people live in each dwelling. Of course, modern Australians are much more comfortable in the winter than their grandparents were.
Similarly, a 2006 study commissioned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that homes in Phoenix, Arizona, that qualify for the EPA’s Energy Star designation use 12 percent more energy than homes that don’t…
This energy “rebound effect” has important implications for efforts to restrain climate change through conservation. Various studies have suggested that improvements in efficiency could reduce energy consumption enough to cut global carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 25 percent during the next four decades. But this is a highly controversial area of scholarship…
The money saved from driving a fuel-efficient car, for example, may now be spent on flying to a Caribbean beach vacation…
The upshot of all these studies is that energy efficiency mandates probably will fall far short of expectations for mitigating man-made global warming. “Instead of imposing energy efficiency mandates,” Michaels concludes, “energy policy should embrace market prices and disruptive innovations to guide energy to its most valuable uses.” After all, the point of improved energy efficiency is not to forgo the use of power but to boost its productivity as a way to provide people with more of the goods and services they want.
http://reason.com/archives/2012/10/31/the-paradox-of-energy-efficiency
There now, see what they’ve gone and done! they’ve just gone and woke Willis Eschenbach up. I’m not putting him back into his cage this time, 🙂
How have you been Willis, hope you’re well mate..
Sorry 🙂 mods lol
The complex buffer comprising seawater does not respond to CO2 the way distilled water does. There is no evidence of acidification outside of the normal variation and little or no evidence that elevated CO2 is bad for marine life. In fact, seawater pH can rise radically during daytime as photosynthesis is an alkalizing process. Bays and estuaries can get up to above pH 10, when 8 is normal. So, what’s the problem?
As CO2 is the beginning of an extended equilibrium going from CO2 to carbonic acid to bicarbonate to carbonate to calcium carbonate, more CO2 will facilitate calcium carbonate deposition. Furthermore, the protons (H+’s) released by carbonic acid cannot effect its own equilibrium. Only an outside source of protons can do that. There is no way that this “acidification” can harm calcium carbonate using organisms.
In some cases one species may benefit more than others from rises in CO2 but that only means the less benefitted species will live and survive in more marginal regions as many species do now or at any particular time and conditions. We mist remember that the planet spends the vast majority of its time at much higher CO2 concentrations and in recent times 90% of its time in glaciation.
The ingenuous idea that the organisms cannot handle any pH change is to underestimate the resilience of life. Cells maintain their own environment against a wide range of concentrations. To think that they cannot handle the effects of more CO2 plant food is to pretend artificial stupidity just to prove the point.
‘Howskepticalment’ needs to read the WUWT archives. He is far from being up to speed on the ocean pH discussion. Willis Eschenbach’s articles regarding ocean pH would help Howskepticalment immensely, since he really doesn’t understand the subject at this point.
Start reading the archives, Howskepticalment. Your education awaits.
Pat
Interesting post
“Instead of imposing energy efficiency mandates,” Michaels concludes, “energy policy should embrace market prices and disruptive innovations to guide energy to its most valuable uses.”
I support the use of the market. But the market approach needs to acknowledge that the consequences of CO2 emissions represent market failure. This could be addressed by ensuring that consequences are priced into market mechanisms – something that is extremely difficult to do and probably the main reason why our once-only trial with the future of the planet will continue along current trajectories.
higly7
The ingenuous idea that the organisms cannot handle any pH change is to underestimate the resilience of life.
I assume that you mean ‘disigenous’ but that is by-the-by.
This is a restatement of two general principles:
(1) all organisms have a range within various environmental parameters within which they will survive
(2) all organisms have the potential to evolve.
No-one has argued against these principles. As such your argument consists of two strawmen.
The issue at hand is not the general, but the particular levels of various parameters. Simple assertions that everything will be OK are just that.
Howskepticalment says:
I support the use of the market.” [*ahem*: As If.] “But the market approach needs to acknowledge that the consequences of CO2 emissions represent market failure. This could be addressed by ensuring that consequences are priced into market mechanisms – something that is extremely difficult to do and probably the main reason why our once-only trial with the future of the planet will continue along current trajectories.
What a bunch of pseudo-science hokum. There is no “trajectory”. There is nothing happening now that has not happened repeatedly in the past, and to a much greater degree. That alarmist nonsense is pure globaloney, flogged by those who stand to personally benefit from their self-serving climate scares.
There is no empirical evidence showing that the rise in [completely harmles and beneficial] CO2, from only three molecules in 10,000 to only four molecules in 10,000, has any effect on temperature. That is scientifically baseless climate alarmism, and it is anti-science. Either provide solid empirical evidence showing that the rise in CO2 is causing global harm or damage, or admit that you have zero scientific evidence.
Pat@8:04
Ah, Jevon’s Paradox at work:
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Jevons_paradox
Why bother have moderators?
Why should there be moderators?
[Reply: And your point is… ?]
Having been a freshwater aquarium hobbiest for many years [up to 125 gallon tanks], and having used CO2 enrichment apparatus, I can state two things for certain: first, plant growth exploded with the injected CO2! And second: the aquarium pH did not change at all when massive amounts of CO2 were added.
Draw your own conclusions.
Natural range for oceans pH is 7.8 to 8.4 which is alkaline and oceans are lined with Calcium Carbonate lime sea floors. Undersea vents discharge high temperature, high pressure CO2 and SOx gases which are immediately liquified under 4F temp and 150 atmos pressure. These now liquid gases keep the ocean saturated with Carbonic and Sulfuric acid feedstock and constant atmospheric outgasing. There is no reverse absorption of these gases from the tiny amounts humans add to the atomosphere, other than as rainwater absorption. Forest fires release more Sulfur than petroluem or scrubbed coal combustion. More misplaced hysteria.
D Böehm
November 6, 2012 at 9:23 pm
Having been a freshwater aquarium hobbiest for many years [up to 125 gallon tanks], and having used CO2 enrichment apparatus, I can state two things for certain: first, plant growth exploded with the injected CO2! And second: the aquarium pH did not change at all when massive amounts of CO2 were added.
Draw your own conclusions.
###
I have put together many extreme aquariums ( up to 700 gallon). I once put together a 10L Rio Meta (Colombia) feeder stream bio-type tank. I maintained the PH at around 4.0 – 4.5 without CO2 injection, all natural (fungus == CO2). My biggest problem was keeping the plants pruned so that they did not over take the thing.
Howskepticalment: Got something for you. Ever hear of the so called PETM? CO2 levels were 4-5 times those of today, yet life flourished in the seas and on land, even more so than today. So where is this “ocean acidification” that you are pushing, with its attendant destruction of life? There was none, because it is all science fiction and do you dare affirm your belief in such rubbish?
Andrewmharding says
I thought that the solubility of a gas decreased with a rise in temperature (the opposite of a solid!). So, AGW is making the planet including the oceans warmer, therefore less CO2 is soluble, therefore a decrease in carbonic acid, with a consequent increase in pH.
Is my science wrong, or is the warmists case of having your cake and eating it, still prevalent?
———-
Not wrong. The pH increase will depend on how much CO2 is absorbed. That depends on TWO(2) things.
1. Amount of CO2 in the air — gone up a lot
2. Temperature of the water — gone up a little
Obviously a lot wins over a little.
P.S.
1. The global CO2 net flux is into the oceans. This is a measurement.
2. The ocean pH is rising. This is a measurement.
And by the way, what does a farmer have to do with a paddock?