WUWT reader Peter Gadiel writes:
After reading of the critique of Sabine’s exclusion of the historical data on ocean acidification I emailed him. I thought his response might be of interest to you at WUWT. He says the earlier data is not of “sufficient quality.”
My question to him:
As a taxpayer who is helping to pay your salary I’d like to know why you are refusing to include all the data on ocean acidification that is available.
Sabine’s response:
Chris Sabine – NOAA Federal
12:31 AM (11 hours ago)
As a public servant that must stick to the rigor of the scientific method and only present data that is of sufficient quality to address the question, I am obliged to report the best evaluation of ocean chemistry changes available. This is what you pay me to do and I am working very hard to give you the best value for your tax dollar every day. I hope you are having a good holiday season.
The question that immediately comes to mind is:
Who determined that the directly measured ocean pH data was not of “sufficient quality” and if it wasn’t, why then did NOAA make the data available on their website as part of other ocean data in their World Ocean Database without a caveat?
My search on NOAA’s NODC database for ocean pH data showed plenty of data and no caveats on use:
So was Sabine’s decision arbitrary and without basis in fact? Inquiring minds want to know.
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Good work, Peter Gadiel
In my view data produced in this fashion is tantamount to fabrication. Science has been corrupted by government in this country.
I think it’s pretty much that way with governments worldwide.
It is entirely possible that the data was not of “sufficient quality”‘ because of equipment failure or some other innocent “whoops” event. Now if that is the case, the ocean pH is, well, unknown.
This post badly needs some clarity.
“using modeled data over real data”
When and where did Sabine use modeled data over real data?
“refusing to include all the data on ocean acidification that is available”
What does that refer to? All I see is a plot where he shows an annual average post-1988. And hydrologist Wallace says, but there were readings taken in various places before 1988.
Well, yes. But did they have the coverage (in any one year) to get a reliable global average? I haven’t seen anyone look at that at all. Now you can compute some sort of average – Wallace has done that. Well, that’s Wallace’s estimate. Sabine is under no obligation to accept it, at least until Wallace explains how he calculated the average, and inbvestigated the adequacy of the global coverage.
Although we do not agree on a lot of points, I totally agree on this point!
Ferdinand
Do you yourself accept oceanic pH data that is “theoretically” derived? I seem to recall your saying so recently with respect to Bermuda and Hawaii, claiming that it is more accurate than direct measurement.
mpainter, if some calculated pH value, based on other, more accurate, measurements is better defined than pH measurements themselves, then there is no reason to not prefer the calculated values over the direct measurements.
In the case of pH, both are used and overlap each other in the past decades (but less in the past before that…). As more accurate (colorimetric) methods are getting in, that can change the future data sampling again to direct measurements.
What one shouldn’t do, but Wallace did, is totally rely on inaccurate historical pH readings by glass electrodes, as these can’t show a trend of -0.1 pH unit over 100+ years in the large latitudinal and seasonal variability.
in the large latitudinal and seasonal variability.
=================
Ah, and here we have it. pH shows large natural variability. yet we are to believe that minute changes in this natural variability are not happening. that what we are seeing must be caused by humans. and we have a model to prove it.
the large natural variability in pH tells us that small changes in pH are entirely possible and nothing to be feared or alarmed about. it is like worrying about a 1 C change in temperature over 100 years, when the daily change in temperature is 10C and the seasonal change is 30C.
Ferdinand,
Your claim that theoretical calcutions are to preferred over measured pH is suspect. How is this theoretical data verified or confirmed if not by measurement? By more theory?
ferdberple,
Yes and here we are at the crux of the matter, because by relying on the right theory one can dispense with all that bothersome “seasonal and latitudinal variation” . Good spot.
Ferdberple, the problem is adequate sampling.
One can average temperature measurements from a lot of fixed stations which measure temperature continuously or at high frequency over years. But one can not average temperatures from one station in winter up in Norway with a few months of data from the midst of Rome in summer and the next year reverse and then insist that the average temperature did drop…
That is what happened with pH sampling of the oceans: too few samples at the same place over all seasons. That was getting better with the start of a few fixed stations in 1985, including better equipment for pH measurements.
mpainter
Your claim that theoretical calculations are to preferred over measured pH is suspect.
The calculations are based on known chemical equilibria of the CO2-bicarbonate-carbonate system in seawater, including salt/borate, pressure and temperature influences. Proven at laboratory scale over 80 years ago…
Here an online calculation:
http://biocycle.atmos.colostate.edu/shiny/carbonate/
You only need two titrations and the temperature to calculate the rest of the parameters…
Of course, one can’t prove or disprove an alternative method with a method of worse performance…
@ur momisugly Nick Stokes & Ferdinand Engelbeen
“Well, that’s Wallace’s estimate. Sabine is under no obligation to accept it, at least until Wallace explains how he …. etc., ”
————–
That was typical rhetoric that one expects to hear from the proponents of CAGW whereby they are always claiming that ….. “you have to provide evidence that my “junk science” claims are wrong before I have to provide evidence that they are correct”.
In other words, ….. you first have to prove that Flying Spaghetti Monsters don’t exist …… before the aforesaid proponents have to prove their claim that a Flying Spaghetti Monster caused ‘the problem’.
Samuel,
Sabine only did show the real, measured/calculated pH data after 1984. That shows a drop of 0.04 pH unit since then. Wallace did show a compilation which shows a drop of 0.3 pH unit since 1984, which is theoretically, chemically and physically impossible (except if there was a 300+ ppmv rise of CO2 in the atmosphere since 1984).
Feely (and Sabine) did show the theoretical decrease in pH since 1850 and till the future, based on CO2 levels in the past and CO2 emissions estimated for the future. He doesn’t need to defend them, as that are calculations based on established carbon chemistry of the oceans. He only should have explicitly said that this were theoretical pH values for the pre-1984 past and past 2014 future.
In contrast, the compilation of Wallace shows impossible variability for the whole period and a large deviation from far more accurate fixed station results since 1984. Thus it is Wallace who should defend his figures…
Ferdinand Engelbeen: December 28, 2014 at 11:37 am
“Feely (and Sabine) did show the theoretical decrease in pH since 1850 and till the future, based on CO2 levels in the past and CO2 emissions estimated for the future.”
———————
Yes, Ferdinand,
But I was conversing with the Flying Spaghetti Monster and he told me those theoretical decreases in pH, ….. the interpolations of past CO2 levels …..and thu guesstimated estimations of future CO2 levels posited by Feely and Sabine were definitely an exaggeration of their percentageations with a 75% error factor.
To me, science is …. black or white ….. and there are no “shades of gray” for one to use to CTA. And I detest half-truths, un-truths and excuses consisting of little more than piffle & tripe verbiage.
So….he cherry picked a high point in pH……..1988…..to show a decline
….just like temp where they cherry picked to show an increase
Should be the first thing you look for……..
Just like Keeling Sr. cherry picked a low value in 1958 to show a CO2 increase?
Or Dr. Spencer cherry picked a high value in 1979 to show a flat temperature?
Did you thunk that up all by yourself?
Just how was it possible for Keeling Sr. to have cherry picked a low value in 1958 ….. given the fact he didn’t have a clue what the 1957 value had been …. or what the 1959 value was going to be?
Samuel, there were lots (900,000) of CO2 measurements in the atmosphere by chemical means before 1958, with results all over the scale, just like the pre-1984 pH values by Wallace. Keeling did make a lot of measurements already in the begin 1950’s, which did show to him that he needed to find a place where there was little CO2 contamination from the environment and that he needed more accurate, maintenance free equipment.
Feely, Bates and Sabine did make a lot of ocean measurements pre-1984 too and compiled a lot of data from research ships, but realized that they needed fixed places to have an impression of the seasonal variability, which is far larger than any theoretical trend.
Ferdinand Engelbeen: December 28, 2014 at 11:50 am
“Keeling did make a lot of measurements already in the begin 1950’s, which did show to him that …….. yada, yada, yada”
———————
But Keeling didn’t interpolate his “stable baseline level of CO2 ppm” back to the year 1880.
Ferdinand, tell me something I don’t already know, to wit:
Excerpted years ago from: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
“A Scandinavian group accordingly set up a network of 15 measuring stations in their countries. Their only finding, however, was a high noise level. Their measurements apparently fluctuated from day to day as different air masses passed through, with differences between stations as high as a factor of two.
Charles David (Dave) Keeling held a different view. As he pursued local measurements of the gas in California, he saw that it might be possible to hunt down and remove the sources of noise. Taking advantage of that, however, would require many costly and exceedingly meticulous measurements, carried out someplace far from disturbances.
Keeling did much better than that with his new instruments. With painstaking series of measurements in the pristine air of Antarctica and high atop the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii, he nailed down precisely a stable baseline level of CO2 in the atmosphere.”
———————
Ferdinand, do you comprehend what “as different air masses passed through” …. actually means?
Samuel:
But Keeling didn’t interpolate his “stable baseline level of CO2 ppm” back to the year 1880.
He could have done that without problems: the CO2 sinks are a linear function of CO2 pressure (ppmv) in the atmosphere and the pCO2 of the oceans, which is a function of its temperature. If you back calculate with the estimates of human emissions, you get about 300 ppmv in 1850…
as different air masses passed through
If the different air masses show different CO2 levels, they can’t be used for “bulk” CO2 measurements, only to estimate local in/out CO2 fluxes. As good as pH measurements at upwelling places make no sense to show a trend in pH, but may of high interest for oyster hatcheries…
Ferdinand Engelbeen: December 29, 2014 at 4:20 pm
“He could have done that without problems: the CO2 sinks are a linear function of CO2 pressure (ppmv) in the atmosphere and the pCO2 of the oceans, which is a function of its temperature. If you back calculate with the estimates of human emissions, you get about 300 ppmv in 1850…”
————————
Ferdinand, that was pure BS with an extra raunchy smell …. as you well should know it was.
First of all, you are mimicking Henry’s Law, which, if I remember correctly, you once told me that Henry’s Law was not applicable to my claim that the seasonal temperature change in the surface waters of the oceans in the Southern Hemisphere was the “driver” of the average 6 ppm bi-yearly cycling of atmospheric CO2 … nor to my claim concerning the average 2 ppm yearly increase in atmospheric CO2.
Are you now agreeing with me, …… or what? Obfuscating maybe?
Secondly, Keeling didn’t have a clue, let alone any estimations, as to what human emissions of CO2 were or was. And iffen the facts be known, neither do you, ESPECIALLY for the pre-1958 emissions. And your post-1958 estimations are probably off by a minimum of 30%.
And thirdly, iffen Keeling had not established his “CO2 baseline” for 1958 then he would not have been able to determine said “average 2 ppm/year increase …. nor the average 6 ppm bi-yearly cycle” in atmospheric CO2 via his measurements for year 1959, 60, 61, 62, etc. DUH, that 2 ppm yearly increase and/or the 6 ppm bi-yearly cycle don’t reveal themselves in individual years, …. but requires multiple sequential years for conformation.
And fourthly, Ferdinand, without that 1958 ppm baseline and that 2/6 ppm/year variance, there is no way in ell anyone could have performed their “reverse mathematic” trick to calculate their REQUIRED estimate of human emissions that were needed to support their claims about CAGW.
They first had to know how many gigatons/year the atmospheric CO2 was increasing ……. before they could estimate how many gigatons/year of CO2 that humans were emitting. Thus they converted said 2 ppm/year to 10 gigatons/year, to establish their estimated baseline for human emissions of CO2. T’was then when they “back calculated” via use of said human emission estimates and their questionable average temperature increases to establish their baseline for atmospheric CO2 in 1880 at 280 ppm.
Then everything jived. Human CO2 emissions increased each year, … atmospheric CO2 ppm increases tracked right behind the human emissions …… and the average temperature increases tracked right behind the atmospheric CO2 ppm increases.
And everything was great in La La Land ……. until “the pause” occurred. T’was then when the average temperatures “jumped track” and stalled out on a siding and is still resting there.
I put Sabine’s responses into a number of computer models and have forecast a future Sabine quote, “We are eliminating all direct observation since it is too hard and too expensive and in the spirit of saving tax payer dollars are only using modeled data. Thank you in advance for your support.”
There is an old saying in industrial process control instrumentation. Close counts in pH and horseshoes. This is a very hard parameter to measure accurately especially in a continuous process application. (can we all agree the earth’s oceans are a continuous process?) Absolute precision in this area is the pursuit of the foolish, Those who massage the data (which will always be questionable) to fit their conclusions forget the first rule of data. You have to take the dogs with the cats.
Why in this day and age, when you have incredible graphics capabilities, do they insist on showing things on mercator style maps? Perhaps its a convenient way to display(and stretch) dodgy data.
All projections distort the map-image in one way or another. The mercator is probably useful, because you can plot lat and longs accurately – that is the whole readon it was invented.
Ralph
the mercator projection preserves compass bearings, which was/is important for navigation. it also preserves longitude, which can be used to measure distance.
the mercator projection does not preserve latitude, which can be a source of error when using it to calculate distance.
actually I have lat long reversed. you use the lat scale to calculate distance.
Sorry, Berp, the Mercator preserves lat and long, which is why you can use it for accurate plotting. The fact that the scale between longitudes changes, is allowed for by using the lattitude scalar markers to calculate the distance.
No 2-dimensional map can preserve all the original features.
I see that some have gotten their shorts in a knot over use of the word “acidification”. but it is simply misplaced pedantry. The phrase “acid rain” for example was coined in 1872 by Robert Angus Smith, even though clean rain, with a pH of about 5.7 is already an acid. If we want to blame someone for an abuse of the english language, I suppose we could blame him. Later, the words “acidify” and “acidification” were used in soil biology, to describe lowering the pH. So, like it or not, it is now an accepted use, and instead of throwing a tanty about it, we should move on to what really matters, which is the bad science surrounding “ocean acidification”.
imprecise language is the difference between science and politics.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
On the WUWT 2014/12/23/touchy-feely-science post this same sort of acid commenting was going on. My comment to Eric Worrall (see his 1st comment at 6:57) derived from having a discussion with my Blueberry plants. They claimed when they said they wanted me to acidify the soil, I had not done so. I put various things in and on the soil. Tough, they said. Either acidify it or we’re leaving. Word games are fine but you cannot fool Blueberry plants.
Acidification does not have a misleading denotation, but it has a misleading connotation. What to do? Put “acidification” inside quotation marks.
‘earlier data is not of “sufficient quality.”‘
So, instead, let us use modelled “data” based on the insufficiency of that early data.
Huh?
Please have a look at the data: Sabine, Bates and Feely only published really measured data after 1985, which are of sufficient quality to show a trend.
They have a model which back calculates the theoretical pH value before 1985 based on basic theories of CO2 buffering in seawater, confirmed by the data after 1985, which is largely in between the large error band of the early measurements.
The model is not based on the older data…
So…just means the basic theories of CO2 buffering in seawater is wrong…which made their hindcasting models wrong…and they cherry picked their start date 1985 to show a decline in pH…just like was done with temps to show an increase starting in 1979
Latitude, as said in a previous comment: that graph shows how unreliable the glass electrode measurements are: the red line are real measurements at a few fixed places, which fit the theory (a drop of 0.04 pH unit), the faint blue line is the moving 10 year average of the glass electrode pH measurements: a drop of 0.3 pH units in about 30 years. No process on earth can do that within the massive buffer capacity of the oceans, even not in the surface alone.
Ferd, extend your magic red line backwards……
They picked a point about 8.12 to show a decrease….that’s about as high as sea water in the ocean can be buffered…it can only go down from there
Latitude. If you go back in time, the CO2 emissions and uptake by the ocean surface would be less and less and near zero around 1850. Feely shows a pH of 8.16 in 1850 with zero extra CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans. See:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/PDF/feel2899/feel2899.pdf
Again, they didn’t pick anything up, they measured a (yearly averaged) pH of 8.12 in 1984. Nothing theoretical, nothing modeled (Fig. 5):
http://www.biogeosciences.net/9/2509/2012/bg-9-2509-2012.pdf
Feely shows a pH of 8.16 in 1850…
Which is not a real measurement……8.12 is your ceiling in the real world…..all Feely did was “if this trend continues”
they measured a (yearly averaged) pH of 8.12 in 1984….
Which is your ceiling for pH……who’s stupid enough to think pH was constant through all of history prior to that….they started at a peak in pH
Latitude,
Seawater carbonate chemistry was established some 80 years ago and still is used up to today without any important change. One can even use that to calculate the pH, etc. during a glacial period (pH: 8.367):
http://biocycle.atmos.colostate.edu/shiny/carbonate/
bullsh……..
pH = buffer = calcium carbonate = CO2 + phyto/cyano
That ain’t chemical…..can’t be calculated by some stupid formula
To paraphrase Feynman: “A scientist is obliged not only to say what was done, but also what was considered to be done and then decided against.” I am willing to wager that Mr. Sabine ran the trends with the data before deciding it was not of “sufficient quality”.
How do you know a trend of -0.1 pH unit over 100 years with glass electrodes accurate to +/- 0.1 pH unit in oceans which changing pH of over 0.5 pH unit for different latitudes and seasons?
Ferdinand,
Excellent question. The answer is that they cannot know the pH trend. It’s not just hard; it’s impossible.
Yet they make assertions that the ocean is ‘acidifying’ — based on computer models that were programmed to produce that outcome.
yet we claim to be able to calculate a 0.7C trend over 100 years, with glass thermometers accurate to +/-0.5C, in an atmosphere with changing temperatures of 150C for different latitude and seasons.
you can’t have it both ways. if the ocean data isn’t good enough, they for sure the thermometer data isn’t good enough.
Sabine’s pH figures represent his hypothesis, observational data, only, can come to confirm its validity.
Sorry boys, but that only is the case for glass electrodes used as sole measurements by Wallace (while there are more accurate calculated values available).
There are better direct measurement techniques available now and used since 1984 at Bermuda and later at Hawaii and other fixed places.
That is what Sabine and Feely published. These short (30 year and less) series fit the theory. If back calculated to 1850, the theoretical data are largely within the high variability of the glass electrode data.
“As a public servant that must stick to the rigor of the scientific method and only present data that is of sufficient quality to address the question, I am obliged to report the best evaluation of ocean chemistry changes available.”
My experience in giving presentations or interacting with management, one must present the entire story including conflicting data or experience when trying to convince an organization to make an investment or to take steps to correct a problem. Failure to present the entire picture ends in the loss of credibility when someone else in the room raises such a question even if the conflicting data can legitimately explained away. Having conflicting or missing information later can be fatal for your career.
Mr Sabine’s omissions of important data without an explanation and he subsequent attitude when caught leaves him in a position that no real scientist will ever trust or believe any of his works.
As a government employee he owes us much more.
Wishing WUWT and everyone here a happy christmas and New year.
Things we always knew-
http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/548516/North-South-poles-not-melting-Dr-Benny-Peiser
Wow! The core of the scientific method is verification of results. His response is the opposite. “Trust me. I’m a scientist. So you don’t need to verify anything. “
Obviously the data was of poor quality. It didn’t match the theory he was trying to prove.
The explanation is so simple, you silly’s.
Any data which show that the Ph of the Oceans is dropping (ie, moving towards the magical 7.0 marker) is of “sufficient quality”.
Any data which do not Support the Narrative are NOT of “sufficient quality”.
That’s really all that there is to it – and note the very nicely planned built in defense – if you, or any scientist, re-analyzes the situation with the missing data, well, he can be discounted because that will just be a shoddy study based on data of “insufficient quality”. They’ve already neutralized any competing opinions before they’ve even been rendered. This isn’t just cherry picking, this cherry is on top of a big pile of whipped cream with chocolate sprinkles!
Here’s how you keep money flowing in your direction:
1) Note acidic trend starting in 1988
2) Even though this is probably cyclic, pH should go down for quite a few more years (Still plenty of years of funding while trend continues)
3) Leave out the data before 1988 and claim that it is not of “sufficient quality”. You could, say, reference some new pH instrument or method that happened to come out around 1988. That way, you technically aren’t telling a lie, even though the pre-1988 data is still accurate enough for your study. If someone asks you why just say “I’m a scientist who studies and believes in global warming! How dare you question me! You must want children/animals/everything to die because you don’t agree with me!”
4) If another scientist questions you answer in vague and nonspecific emails. Don’t give any details
5) If you continue to be asked questions by that scientist and start to get nervous be sure to bring up his imaginary relationship to the Koch brothers
6) Ride trend until it reverses, then move on to another truncated trend curve
7) Repeat steps one through six until you retire on a fat NOAA pension
oops! I meant ‘money’ flowing, of course…
Another example of post-normal climate “science” :
If the data does not fit your theory, the data is “not of sufficient quality.”
Will Sabine admit he knew that including the earlier data would contradict his work and show no “acidification trend”?
He had to know it . Many others too.
Moreover, when he saw the WUWT reaction, here, to the omission why didn’t he offer more of an explanation?
Why would’t someone “working hard for us” provide a more rigorous justification for omitting what contradicts his thesis?
IMO, his apparent pretending as though the earlier data has no impact on his work and that there is nothing more to say is a tell tale sign of wishful thinking from a guy who know’s he’s effectively busted.
Perhaps he is collaborating with others on how to better spin how the earlier data was rotten?
Sabine is taking a legal stance, not a scientific stance. He will seek to justify his fabrication as scientifically and professionally correct, however. Remember, he conned the wife of the John Kerry out of $100 grand and so he cannot correct himself without incurring all sorts of liabilities.
because climate scientists have elevated Peer Review….to final qualification
They can control the peer review process…but not the qualification….so they are trying to eliminate it
Sometimes it helps if one asks politely to explain why they didn’t use the old data. The way you ask it makes a hell of a difference in the kind of answer you may receive. I asked Dr. Tans for the detailed minute measurements of CO2 at Mauna Loa and the calculation methods used. I was promptly served with several days of data, so that I could recalculate the published hourly averages and spread…
In this case, Sabine answered the question: the old (and modern) glass electrode pH data are simply too unreliable to be used for the trend we are looking for. But its seems that that doesn’t satisfy people who call themselves “skeptics”, but are never skeptical if they like the story told, even if it is only a story based on bad data…
If the historical data does not/ cannot reveal “the trend we are looking for”, then one must turn to other means, right Ferdinand? And that other means? Is it theoretical calculations based on sea water chemistry which varies seasonally and latitudinally and which may have the same problems of reliability?
All what Sabine and Feely have done is using the best available data, which show since 1984 that the theoretical trend is right, even in a large variability over the seasons (at Bermuda). They have no proof that the theoretical trend is right for the years before 1984, but (Feely) only indicated a possible trend in the past and future, based on the theory and the fit of the theoretical trend over the past 30 years with real life data.
On the other side we have Wallace, who lumped all available glass electrode pH data together, without any warning for the (lack of) accuracy of the measurement, the place and date of sampling. Without any error bars (which are probably very huge). Even if more calculated pH’s were performed with better accuracy than direct measurements.
The weight of scientific evidence is against Wallace.
He might not be as bad as Phil Jones.
Didn’t Jones just somehow lose historical temp data? ppfftt – gone.
They get exactly the data and results they want from their models, why should they want to use actual real world data ?
Sabine may have done a valuable thing here. He has rejected readings taken from pH meters produced before modern, more accurate technology. If he named his chart “Ocean pH since 1988, but before that we have no idea!” it would represent his opinion.
If temperature specialists said the same thing we would be free of so much nonsense. Yes I am talking to you BESTies. No self-respecting “Scientist” ever publishes any data without error bars, and all scientists know this. Wallace’s chart does not have them either but does show a spread of readings. Clearly accuracy improved sometime around 1960.
But Sabine didn’t name his chart this way. He shows a close correlation between atmospheric CO2, oceanic CO2, and ocean pH. He does this by neglecting decades of data, at least 28 years of which shows good accuracy. For shame, “Cherry Pick of the Year!” New award I just invented.
Concerning the use of the word “acidification” who cares? People who studied enough chemistry to understand the pH scale know what is going on. People who didn’t will react to the scare word “acid.” Can’t be helped, and banging on about it here will not change MSM policies.
Michael, Sabine’s chart shows the years of good data and nothing else. He is not obliged to use data which are certainly not good enough to show any trend as small as the measurement error, let it be the huge sampling error due to latitude and seasonality.
Wallace only used glass electrode pH measurements. I doubt if there was much improvement in that type of measurement over time. But more important, there is no information over sampling places and dates in his compilation, where these two points have an enormous influence on pH…
Engelbeen, are you an apologist? This information has not been presented to show reality. Easy, big fella, just say it, you know it’s true, “Yes he is trying to make a normal situation look dire by taking advantage of a short trend and new sensors.” We all know already.
Come on Michael, I only look where the best data are. I am not interested in alleged motives, neither by Feely and Sabine, nor by Wallace.
Glass electrode pH data don’t perform good enough to show a trend of 0.1 pH unit over hundred en more years and sampling frequency and place is a huge point if pH has a huge seasonal and latitudinal component. Both are underestimated in Wallace’s compilation, as the overlap over the common period 1984-current show.
The CO2 increase in the atmosphere 1984-current is about 55 ppmv, that is as much as the increase between 1850 and 1984. As the exchange with the ocean surface is very fast and the increase in the ocean surface is directly proportional to the increase in the atmosphere, half of the CO2 increase in the ocean surface is in the past decades.
The influence on the pH drop is even more than halve the total drop since 1850, as the buffer capacity gets more exhausted with increasing neutralization.
Thus the shortage of the trend is of no interest here…
It has been claimed that the primary reason why “ocean acidification” due to higher CO2 levels will cause mass-extinctions of the oceanic biospheric in the near future, though it didn’t during past climates (when CO2 levels were 2,000 ppm or more), is because the 20th/21st century increase in CO2 concentration (from 300 ppm to 400 ppm) is “unprecedentedly” rapid. Corals, for example, just can’t handle so fast an increase (100 ppm in 100 years) in CO2 levels. But yet, according to these papers (below), when corals were assessed for response to exponentially increasing concentrations of CO2 (from 285 ppm to 4,568 ppm) over a 4 week period in one study, and from 430 ppm to 3,247 ppm in a 6 month period in another, the authors found that “growth and calcification did not stop in any of the concentrations of pCO2,” and “the life cycle of living assemblages varied markedly during the experimental period, but was largely unaffected by the pCO2 treatments applied.” The authors could therefore conclude that corals “could still survive well in mid-term ocean acidification conditions expected by the end of this century.”
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00338-014-1241-3
This study investigated the response of the gorgonian coral Eunicea fusca to a range of CO2 concentrations from 285 to 4,568 ppm (pH range 8.1–7.1) over a 4-week period. Gorgonian growth and calcification were measured at each level of CO2 as linear extension rate and percent change in buoyant weight and calcein incorporation in individual sclerites, respectively. In general, growth and calcification did not stop in any of the concentrations of pCO2… These results highlight the susceptibility of the gorgonian coral E. fusca to elevated levels of carbon dioxide but suggest that E. fusca could still survive well in mid-term ocean acidification conditions expected by the end of this century, which provides important information on the effects of ocean acidification on the dynamics of coral reef communities.
http://www.biogeosciences.net/11/1581/2014/bg-11-1581-2014.html
Calcifying foraminifera are expected to be endangered by ocean acidification; however, the response of a complete community kept in natural sediment and over multiple generations under controlled laboratory conditions has not been constrained to date. During 6 months of incubation, foraminiferal assemblages were kept and treated in natural sediment with pCO2-enriched seawater of 430, 907, 1865 and 3247 [ppm] μatm pCO2. The fauna was dominated by Ammonia aomoriensis and Elphidium species, whereas agglutinated species were rare. After 6 months of incubation, pore water alkalinity was much higher in comparison to the overlying seawater. Consequently, the saturation state of Ωcalc was much higher in the sediment than in the water column in nearly all pCO2 treatments and remained close to saturation. As a result, the life cycle (population density, growth and reproduction) of living assemblages varied markedly during the experimental period, but was largely unaffected by the [ppm] pCO2 treatments applied.
http://www.nature.com/ismej/journal/v6/n9/full/ismej201219a.html
We found that pH did not have a significant impact on the composition of associated microbial communities in both coral species. In contrast to some earlier studies, we found that corals present at the lower pH sites exhibited only minor physiological changes and no microbial pathogens were detected. Together, these results provide new insights into the impact of ocean acidification on the coral holobiont.
But, how did the formations react to modeled CO2 concentrations?
In modeled concentrations, the formations fell victim to spontaneous combustion—-just like the great forests did in the 1980s due to…um…acid rain.
you will need to throw those observations out, they don’t match model predictions.
“If temperature specialists said the same thing we would be free of so much nonsense. ”
My first thought as well. I would love to see GISS use the same standard of quality in the surface temperature data!
What about BEST?
To quote Mosher: “Raw data is crap data.”
Pretty much all you need to know on that.
The BEST paper, after an extensive PR campaign, ended up being published in a pay-for-play Indian web-based, start up “Science” journal.
I sense there might be some confusion between “modeling” and “statistical constructs,” i.e. “curve fitting” and “data smoothing.” Taking three significant figure raw data +/- 1% uncertainty and mathematically creating five significant figures w/ +/- 0% uncertainty.
“As a public servant that must stick to the rigor of the scientific method and only present data that is of sufficient quality to address the question, I am obliged to report the best evaluation of ocean chemistry changes available.”
LOL! His response was a perfect rendition of a cool-aid bender complete with red mustache and morning sugar hang over. This has to be boiler plate prose lifted right out of talking points. Substitute “ocean chemistry” for any other climate change metric and you have a pat, repeatable, on-message response good for any and all inquiries.
He is “obliged”? That is so rich. What an abuse of the concept of obligation.
Why didn’t he feel obligated to reveal his omissions and subject his rationale for doing so to critiquing?
I’ll suggest he did feel that obligation but dispensed with it in favor of the more useful report without it.
The omission of integrity is the decider.
“[we]only present data that is of sufficient quality to address the question”
And ‘we’ thought up the question of ‘ocean acidification’ so naturally only ‘we’ are qualified enough to determine what is quality data and what aint in order to answer our question stoopids!