The IPCC writes in the “leaked” SPM
It is very likely that oceanic uptake of anthropogenic CO2 results in acidification of the ocean. The pH 44 (see 7) of seawater has decreased by 0.1 since the beginning of the industrial era, corresponding to a 45 26% increase in hydrogen ion concentration. {3.8.2; Box 3.2; FAQ 3.2}
later they say:
Earth System Models project a worldwide increase in ocean acidification for all RCP scenarios. The 1 corresponding decrease in surface ocean pH by the end of 21st century is 0.065 (0.06 to 0.07)12 for 2 RCP2.6, 0.145 (0.14 to 0.15) for RCP4.5, 0.203 (0.20 to 0.21) for RCP6.0, and 0.31 (0.30 to 0.32) for 3 RCP8.5 (see Figures SPM.6 and SPM.7). {6.4.4}
Here are the figures cited, SPM6C and SPM7D:
Gosh, just look at all that scary, red, burning, “acid”. What they fail to note is that the oceans still haven’t turned acidic at the end of their model projections. The pH has to be below 7.0, and a drop to 7.75 by 2100 still doesn’t qualify by the way the pH scale works. Note also, like the Richter earthquake scale, the pH scale is logarithmic, not linear, a drop of 1 unit in pH equals a ten-fold increase in acidity. So, there would have to be an acceleration for their model scenarios to become true. Note the normal ranges of for rainwater and streamwater flowing into the oceans are far lower than the model projections:
![184phdiagram[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/184phdiagram1.gif)
Meanwhile, while the IPCC is “virtually certain” a call goes out via the X-prize to design a pH meter actually capable of monitoring the projected change. The X Prize Foundation announced a $2 million competition September 9th to spur innovation in the equipment used to measure “ocean acidification”. Here is the announcement. Note what I highlighted in red.
=============================================================
Overview
The Challenge: Improve Our Understanding of Ocean Acidification
The Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE is a $2 million global competition that challenges teams of engineers, scientists and innovators from all over the world to create pH sensor technology that will affordably, accurately and efficiently measure ocean chemistry from its shallowest waters… to its deepest depths.
There are two prize purses available (teams may compete for, and win, both purses):
A. $1,000,000 Accuracy award – Performance focused ($750,000 First Place, $250,000 Second Place): To the teams that navigate the entire competition to produce the most accurate, stable and precise pH sensors under a variety of tests.
B. $1,000,000 Affordability award – Cost and Use focused ($750,000 First Place, $250,000 Second Place): To the teams that produce the least expensive, easy-to-use, accurate, stable, and precise pH sensors under a variety of tests.
The Need for the Prize
Problem
Our oceans are currently in the midst of a silent crisis. Rising levels of atmospheric carbon are resulting in higher levels of acidity. The potential biological, ecological, biogeochemical and societal implications are staggering. The absorption of human CO2 emissions is already having a profound impact on ocean chemistry, impacting the health of shellfish, fisheries, coral reefs, other ecosystems and our very survival.
The Market Failure
While ocean acidification is well documented in a few temperate ocean waters, little is known in high latitudes, coastal areas and the deep sea, and most current pH sensor technologies are too costly, imprecise, or unstable to allow for sufficient knowledge on the state of ocean acidification.
Solution
Breakthrough sensors are urgently needed for scientists, managers and industry to turn the tide on ocean acidification and begin healing our oceans. A competition to incentivize the creation of these sensors for the study and monitoring of ocean acidification’s impact on marine ecosystems and ocean health will drive industry forward by providing the data needed to take action and produce results.
Impact
Making a broad impact—one that reaches far beyond new sensing technologies—is critical to the success of the prize. It begins with a breakthrough pH sensor that will catalyze our ability to measure—and thus respond to—ocean acidification.
Source: http://oceanhealth.xprize.org/competition-details/overview
==============================================================
In the NBC News story I cited about the announcement there was this:
“It is only in the last decade where scientists have begun to study ocean acidification, so our knowledge is really limited still,” Paul Bunje, a senior director with the X Prize Foundation who is the lead scientist behind the ocean health competition, told NBC News.
“But we do know that we don’t know enough, and we don’t have the tools needed to even begin to measure it sufficiently — much less to begin to respond, to adapt to it, to implement local policies that might allow ocean acidification to be less harmful,” he said.
…
The open ocean is acidifying at about .02 pH units per decade, according to according to Richard Feeley, a marine scientist and leading researcher on ocean acidification at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. “That means that you have to have an instrument that you can rely on to be both precise and accurate for a very, very long period of time, so that you can actually see that signal,” he told NBC News.
So, are the IPCC models based on uncertain measurements and an assumed trend? It sure seems so.
It’s like a bad acid trip.
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Sasha says:
September 25, 2013 at 3:50 pm
Estimates of sea level during two presumed Snowball Earth events, c. 570 & 720 Ma:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgrb.50293/abstract
A preliminary theoretical estimate of the extent to which the ocean surface could have fallen with respect to the continents during the snowball Earth events of the Late Neoproterozoic is made by solving the Sea Level Equation for a spherically symmetric Maxwell Earth. For a 720 Ma (Sturtian) continental configuration, the ice sheet volume in a snowball state is ~750 m sea level equivalent, but ocean surface lowering (relative to the original surface) is ~525 m due to ocean floor rebounding. Because the land is depressed by ice sheets nonuniformly, the continental freeboard (which may be recorded in the sedimentary record) at the edge of the continents varies between 280 and 520 m. For the 570 Ma (Marinoan) continental configuration, ice volumes are ~1013 m in eustatic sea level equivalent in a “soft snowball” event and ~1047 m in a “hard snowball” event. For this more recent of the two major Neoproterozoic glaciations, the inferred freeboard generally ranges from 530 to 890 m with most probable values around 620 m. The thickness of the elastic lithosphere has more influence on the predicted freeboard values than does the viscosity of the mantle, but the influence is still small (~20 m). We therefore find that the expected continental freeboard during a snowball Earth event is broadly consistent with expectations (~500 m) based upon the inferences from Otavi Group sediments.
So let me see if I understand Stokes right …
For thousands of CO2 laboratory measurements taken before 1959, we MUST throw out all of the lab measurements showing very high and very low concentrations (in favor of on-site measurements from Mauna Loa) BECAUSE those lab measurements do not show a steady rise of CO2 due to man that is needed to create the CAGW cause-and-(predicted)-effects.
But, for pH measurements in the ocean, we MUST now start in-sea measurements because only in-sea measurements MIGHT show the needed decrease in pH that is needed to to create the CO2 fears that the CAGW community needs to create their panic.
Right?
Nick Stokes,
That is an interesting widget. Thanks for posting it. Looks like you spent some time putting it together.
Now, if we could convince you to operate within the confines of the Scientific Method, and Occam’s Razor, and the climate Null Hypothesis, I see no reason why you would not experience having the scales fall from your eyes. You would finally understand that everything being observed today can be fully and completely explained by natural variability, and that the “carbon” scare is a grant-fed scam.
You’re about 70% of the way there. Keep trying — and stick with the Scientific Method! If a conjecture like ‘CO2=CAGW’ cannot withstand even mild scrutiny [which it cannot], then there is something wrong in IPCC-land.
I’ve worked in environmental biology for over 30 years, and consulted with big oil & gas, pharma etc. The AGW junk turned me off for years, but there seems to be some valid biological observations to support the hypothesis, particularly as acidification may impact the phytoplankton in the upper layer of the oceans (phototrophic zone). I’m just afraid of what the Al Gores of the world will do with this stuff:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3102388/
Another outrageous and misleading misuse of graphics by the IPCC
CRS, DrPH says:
September 25, 2013 at 4:40 pm
“Ca-free artificial seawater”
..that is not a valid biological observation
CRS, DrPH says:
September 25, 2013 at 4:40 pm
I’ve worked in environmental biology for over 30 years
=====
Then you know that biological processes produce zillions of magnitudes more acid than CO2 ever can, and the ocean would cease to exist without those processes
CRS, DrPH says:
September 25, 2013 at 4:40 pm
Sir, if you believe that warmer oceans threaten coccolithophorids, then kindly please explain why they reached their greatest abundance during the Late Cretaceous, when the seas were so much hotter than now & atmospheric CO2 so much higher in concentration. Their remains in chalk formations give the Cretaceous Period its name.
Thanks!
Ermmm well as to calcium carbonate solubility (another factor here) I would point out that calcium carbonate is less soluble in warmer water. Hence in some of the warmest shallow seas – the Florida Keys we have oolites being formed.
On Cretaceous coccolithophorids:
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/chromista/prymnesiophyta.html
Sediment cores show that Cretaceous maximum tropical SSTs might briefly have been as warm as 42 degrees C, ie 17 degrees warmer than presently, & that they averaged around 37 degrees C. At the same time deep ocean temperatures were as much as 15 to 20 degrees C higher than today.
We’re talking warmer than hot tubs here:
http://phys.org/news10978.html
Goldie says:
September 25, 2013 at 5:57 pm
====
Goldie, you will find this interesting…..
http://sofia.usgs.gov/publications/papers/keys_geohydro/pleistocene.html
When debating this subject with alarmists, they always direct me to the NASA climate change website which states the pH of the ocean, globally, has dropped to 8.1 from 8.2, or a ~30% increase in acidification (Their claim). I point out to the alarmists that that cannot be true, albeit accepted, because ocean pH levels vary greatly day to day, season to season etc etc as well as the fact there isn’t a reliable system to actually, reliably and accurately measure ocean pH levels on a global scale.
Gladly. The issue isn’t overall temperature of the seas, but dissolution of carbon dioxide into the oceans directly. I’m a warming skeptic and recent data proves my belief that many other forcings are in play (thank you, Dr. Svensmark!). Warming has no bearing on my concerns.
However, my training in toxicology gives me the insight that carbon dioxide is a very reactive molecule with proven toxicity at elevated levels….why we don’t let children play with plastic bags.
The real problem isn’t deep in the oceans, nor even at the coral reef depth, but the very uppermost layer of the ocean (euphotic zone), where sunlight is able to penetrate and much of the globe’s photosynthesis occurs.
True, in earlier periods of history, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were higher; however, what concerns me is not the overall concentration of carbon dioxide, but rather, the rateof change. The life forms that utilize aragonite and other forms of calcium are demonstrated to be insensitive to rapidly changing environmental conditions, as are other indicator organisms such as rainbow trout (very sensitive to dissolved oxygen concentrations).
Given a very gradual rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, the organisms I’m concerned about (coccolithophores, pteropods etc.) would adapt; however, they are already demonstrating signs of stress as environmental conditions exceed their historic norms. They just can’t evolve as quickly as they must. Other stressors including persistent organic pollutants deposited from incineration of waste in the US, China etc. add further stress to the biota.
Screw the polar bears, we can live without ’em just fine….if we turn off the bottom of the ocean’s food pyramid and the source of much of our oxygen, we’ll be in a fine kettle of fish. Just sayin’.
CRS, DrPH says:
September 25, 2013 at 7:54 pm
However, my training in toxicology gives me the insight that carbon dioxide is a very reactive molecule with proven toxicity at elevated levels….why we don’t let children play with plastic bags.
The real problem isn’t deep in the oceans, nor even at the coral reef depth, but the very uppermost layer of the ocean (euphotic zone), where sunlight is able to penetrate and much of the globe’s photosynthesis occurs.
True, in earlier periods of history, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were higher; however, what concerns me is not the overall concentration of carbon dioxide, but rather, the rate of change. The life forms that utilize aragonite and other forms of calcium are demonstrated to be insensitive to rapidly changing environmental conditions, as are other indicator organisms such as rainbow trout (very sensitive to dissolved oxygen concentrations).
Given a very gradual rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, the organisms I’m concerned about (coccolithophores, pteropods etc.) would adapt; however, they are already demonstrating signs of stress as environmental conditions exceed their historic norms. They just can’t evolve as quickly as they must. Other stressors including persistent organic pollutants deposited from incineration of waste in the US, China etc. add further stress to the biota.
Screw the polar bears, we can live without ‘em just fine….if we turn off the bottom of the ocean’s food pyramid and the source of much of our oxygen, we’ll be in a fine kettle of fish. Just sayin’.
—————————
Please specify the signs of stress you suppose that organisms so different as coccolithophores & pteropods (by which I assume you mean sea butterflies) are already demonstrating.
Again I ask, if coccolithophores flourished under CO2 concentrations several times higher than now, why will they suffer should levels merely climb from 400 to 600 ppm in a century? Rate of change in CO2 has no demonstrable effect. Their short generation time makes adaptation & if need be evolution no problem. This has been shown experimentally:
http://www.examiner.com/article/coccolithophores-beat-climate-change-predictions
Please state what specific damage sea butterflies are currently suffering. I’ve seen “studies” finding negative effects when subjecting them to preposterous pH & carbonate levels supposed to occur by 2100, but the numbers are ridiculous.
Also please show evidence to the effect that “life forms that utilize aragonite and other forms of calcium are demonstrated to be insensitive to rapidly changing environmental conditions”. I admit to not understanding this statement. If they’re insensitive, what’s the problem? Nautilus shells are aragonite & they survived the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K/T) mass extinction event. Ammonites survived the Big One, the Permian-Triassic mass extinction event, only to succumb to the K/T.
Your mention of oxygen & rainbow trout & pollution not related to “climate change” in this context I find mystifyingly off topic.
Thank you for making my point. The problem of oceanic acidification has nothing whatsoever to do with changing of the planet’s temperature in either direction. It is strictly a pollution issue. People try to tie climate change and acidification together, but they are separate phenomena. I happen to doubt climate change, but believe that acidification is real.
Yes, children, substances like carbon dioxide can be pollutants in high enough concentration. As a former consultant to the world’s largest industrial gases company, I helped to spearhead the use of carbon dioxide as a replacement for sulfuric acid in wastewater treatment. It is fantastic and much safer for the workers; however, too much CO2 causes inhibition of the treatment organisms. Straightforward aquatic chemistry, one of the most basic examples of toxicity I can cite.
I mentioned rainbow trout as these are commonly used organisms to test for toxicity or stressful conditions in fresh water…the “canary in the mine shaft” as it were. They are extremely sensitive to very small changes in dissolved oxygen levels, which is why they are found only in narrow environmental habitats, unlike common carp, who really don’t care as much (they gulp air at the surface, fun to watch). Other organisms used to test for aquatic toxicity include Ceriodaphnia dubia, common bluegill, and mayfly larvae. We are turning marine organisms such as coccolithophores and pteropods into indicator organism on a massive scale. You haven’t heard anyone else talk about the problem in this manner….the Hockey Team only wants to talk about temperature, period.
http://www.dep.wv.gov/pio/documents/comments/2010-03-30%20article%20echols2009mayfly.pdf
Mankind has gone down this path before, and we don’t usually change our ways until the signs of toxicity from our emissions is profound. The technology to abate carbon dioxide emissions is approaching marketability, including conversion of CO2 into liquid fuels (very exciting). The stuff has economic value, soon nations will be fighting over it.
Since acidification can’t be measured effectively, whence the presumption it is occurring? Truly “begs the question”.
CRS, DrPH says:
September 25, 2013 at 9:35 pm
If you imagine that atmospheric CO2 at 400 ppmv is a toxic pollutant on Earth, you’re only going to provoke laughter here. I’m still waiting for you to provide evidence for present or probably future damage to marine algae or sea butterflies from CO2 levels.
CO2 has been thousands of ppmv in the fairly recent geological past, with beneficial results.
I still don’t get why you mention rainbow trout & salmon, the optimum environmental requirements for which I’m well acquainted. If you’re trying to sell CO2 as a toxic pollutant with deleterious environmental effects at any level under 1000 ppmv (actual greenhouse concentration), you’re going to have to provide some actual evidence.
Not toxic in the atmosphere, but at the air/water interface of the ocean, where it forms carbonic acid and causes the most inhibition.
Everything you need to know is here: http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/oceanacidification/
Unfortunately, the media are too stupid to understand complex ecotoxicology, and Mann et. al. have hogged all the glory with scare-stories about Artic sea ice death spirals etc.
Don’t forget, it’s additive….acidification combined with atmospheric deposition of complex organics from Chinese industry (primarily) drives the cycle towards toxicity. Go to school.
The implicit claim that glass electrode pH meters are inadequate for measuring ocean pH appears to be rubbish. Such meters, so long as operated according to the acceptable parameters (proper buffers, temperature corrections) give generally a .02 pH unit accuracy. That’s more than accurate enough for measuring ocean pH. Such meters are already in wide-spread use in many industries that must adapt to high ionic strength waters. Perhaps the X prize sponsors can send me a check for pointing out to them that the very thing they seek is already in widespread and inexpensive use. I will also share with them the vast hidden trove of ocean pH data that has been omitted from the record to date: 80 years of ocean pH measurements, no less. See http://www.abeqas.com/mwApics/Wallace20thCenturyOcean_pH.pdf.
REPLY: get one of those to operate autonomously in the ocean, without the need for maintenance, cleaning, and regular calibration, and you’ll actually have something of substance to present – Anthony
Nothing in your link supports any of the ludicrous claims you’ve made.
You, child, need to go to school & learn the basics of scientific inquiry.
Follow The Water,
Thank you for posting your wild-eyed alarmist link, which contains easily deconstructed hyperbole like this:
Global warming is increasing ocean temperatures and raising sea levels… [actually: no] New scientific research shows that our oceans are beginning to face yet another threat due to global warming-related emissions – their basic chemistry is changing because of the uptake of carbon dioxide released by human activities… Ocean acidification and climate change are both effects of excessive carbon dumping into the atmosphere… At present, ocean chemistry is changing at least 100 times more rapidly than it has changed during the 650,000 years preceding our industrial era… if current carbon dioxide emission trends continue, computer models show that the ocean will continue to undergo acidification, to an extent and at rates that have not occurred for tens of millions of years.
That link should generate some grant loot, no? But it is simply scary nonsense: Oceans can easily buffer the relatively minuscule changes in atmospheric CO2.
It should also be pointed out that since there are almost no error bars presented, the charts are obviously model-based — as the authors even admit.
There is one exception, which does have error bars. However, the text there says: The trend of historic ocean pH is flat, if not slightly weighted towards alkalinization.
You do understand what “flat” means, don’t you? Do you understand that the weighting shows a trend toward alkanization, rather than acidification? It means that there has been no ‘acidification’. Thus, your belief in ocean acidification is debunked by your own link.
Links like the one posted might fly — at your typical anti-science alarmist blogs. But not here at the internet’s “Best Science” site, where scare stories like that stand out like a Kenyan in the middle of Red China.
Neither you, nor anyone else, knows nearly enough about the subject to make a serious determination at this point. We have very little historical pH records from the various oceans, and what we do have is sparse. The claim is made that oceans are warming — which would result in the outgasing of CO2, thereby moving the pH away from ‘acidification’. How do you explain that contradiction? Has Henry’s Law been repealed?
Really, you can’t even get your stories straight. No wonder the alarmist crowd has already lost the debate. You don’t operate on facts, science, or measurements; you base your alarmism entirely on emotion.
You know it’s politics and not science when “acidification” is used to describe something slightly less alkaline.
RACookPE1978 says:
September 25, 2013 at 4:25 pm
For thousands of CO2 laboratory measurements taken before 1959, we MUST throw out all of the lab measurements showing very high and very low concentrations (in favor of on-site measurements from Mauna Loa) BECAUSE those lab measurements do not show a steady rise of CO2
No, these measurements are thrown out, because they are taken at places which show a huge diurnal CO2 level like in the middle of towns, forests, inbetween and under leaves of growing crops, etc. You don’t take temperature measurements (historical or not) taken on a parking lot or in the neighbourhood of an AC outlet as representing local area temperatures. Therefore many of the historical CO2 measurements can’t be used as they were taken in “contaminated” places. See the local CO2 data from Linden/Giessen, semi-rural, on a few summer days (with nightly inversion), the same place where the historical data show much higher values (and a lot of variability) around 1942:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/giessen_background.jpg
All raw data without any filtering out of outliers.
Only the historical measurements taken over the oceans, deserts and coastal with wind from the seaside have some value, just like that is the case today. These historical data are around what the ice cores show for the same average gas age.
milodonharlani says:
September 25, 2013 at 4:03 pm
Thank you for that.
The extent and duration of “snowball Earth” and what CO2 had to do with it is still uncertain, and I notice this was published last month so thanks for pointing it out.
Ferdinand says:
“You don’t take temperature measurements (historical or not) taken on a parking lot or in the neighbourhood of an AC outlet as representing local area temperatures.”
Ferdinand, my friend, they do that all the time.