Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
One of the reasons I lived so much of my life in the tropical South Pacific is because of the diving. Coral reefs are one of the most astounding ecosystems on the planet, boiling over with energy, movement, and color. I’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of hours in the water, both snorkeling and scuba, and most of my time was spent just marveling at the endless variety of the reef creatures large and small.
As a result, I’ve had a long-time interest in the claimed effects that people say increased CO2 will have on the reefs. The addition of CO2 to the air slightly neutralizes the naturally alkaline sea water. [Note that while this is change in pH from increasing CO2 is usually called “acidification” of the ocean, that is just alarmist terminology. Since the additional CO2 is making the ocean more neutral, it cannot be “acidifying” the ocean. At least as the English language is commonly understood, something cannot be both more neutral and more “acid” at the same time.]
For the last five years or so (see the list of my previous posts in the end notes), I’ve been saying that the slight neutralization of the ocean from the ongoing increase in CO2 will make no difference to the coral reefs. In particular, I noted that the pH over coral reefs can change by a full pH point in the course of one tide. I also discussed the fact that coral reefs are often a source of CO2, and thus the reef itself drives down (neutralizes, wrongly known as “acidifies”) the pH of reef water. In my opinion, these facts made it very unlikely that a small neutralization of the ocean would make a significant difference to coral reefs.
Since I’ve been pounding this drum for five years, I was happy today to see an article on Phys.org entitled Increase in acidity may not be harmful to coral reefs after all. It discusses a paywalled paper entitled Shifts in coral reef biogeochemistry and resulting acidification linked to offshore productivity.
The Phys.org article puts it very clearly (emphasis mine):
To better understand what might happen with coral reefs if more carbon dioxide makes its way into the oceans due to an increase of the gas in the atmosphere caused by human emissions, the researchers set up monitoring devices along a coral reef offshore from Bermuda—information from the sensors was monitored for five years (2007 to 2012). The team also had access to data from an ocean chemistry monitoring station approximately 80 kilometers from their study site. The combined data offered a unique perspective on coral activity.
In studying the data, the researchers noticed that spikes of phytoplankton blooms occurred during 2010 and again in 2011—those blooms made their way to the coral reef offering more food than normal for the coral. The coral responded by growing which caused them to pull more alkaline carbonate from the surrounding water, making it more acidic. Eating more also resulted in the corals emitting more carbon dioxide into the water. The result was a big increase in acidity—to levels higher than have been predicted for the future due to human emissions—yet, the coral continued to flourish.
These observations contrast sharply with the prevailing view that an increase in acidity is harmful to coral—leading to death if it goes too far. But the levels seen by the researchers with this new effort suggest that is not the case at all, and therefore muddles theories regarding the impact on the oceans of higher levels of carbon dioxide and warmer temperatures. Another team with Western Australia noted that the results found by this new team appeared to agree with those of a small study they conducted where they put boxes around some coral and piped in carbon dioxide, to no detrimental effect.
Gosh, actual observation of pH at actual reefs … a novel concept indeed in these days of endless modeled “might”s and “could possibly”s …
All I can say is, once more, WUWT leads the way …
My best wishes to you all,
w.
My Usual Request: If you disagree with someone, please quote the exact words you disagree with. Only in this way can we all be clear on exactly what you are objecting to. I can defend my own words. I cannot defend someone else’s interpretation of my words.
Further Reading: Below, in chronological order, are my previous posts on ocean neutralization.
The Electric Oceanic Acid Test 2010-06-19
I’m a long-time ocean devotee. I’ve spent a good chunk of my life on and under the ocean as a commercial and sport fisherman, a surfer, a blue-water sailor, and a commercial and sport diver. So I’m concerned that the new poster-boy of alarmism these days is sea-water “acidification” from…
The Reef Abides 2011-10-25
I love the coral reefs of the planet. In my childhood on a dusty cattle ranch in the Western US, I decorated my mental imaginarium of the world with images of unbelievably colored reefs below white sand beaches, with impossibly shaped fish and strange, brilliant plants. But when I finally…
The Ocean Is Not Getting Acidified 2011-12-27
There’s an interesting study out on the natural pH changes in the ocean. I discussed some of these pH changes a year ago in my post “The Electric Oceanic Acid Test“. Before getting to the new study, let me say a couple of things about pH. The pH scale measures…
The Reef Abides … Or Not 2014-07-06
I’ve written a few times on the question of one of my favorite hangouts on the planet, underwater tropical coral reefs. Don’t know if you’ve ever been down to one, but they are a fairyland of delights, full of hosts of strange and mysterious creatures. I’ve seen them far from…
pH Sampling Density 2014-12-30
A recent post by Anthony Watts highlighted a curious fact. This is that records of some two and a half million oceanic pH samples existed, but weren’t used in testimony before Congress about ocean pH. The post was accompanied by a graph which purported to show a historical variation in ocean…
A Neutral View of Oceanic pH 2015-01-02
Following up on my previous investigations into the oceanic pH dataset, I’ve taken a deeper look at what the 2.5 million pH data points from the oceanographic data can tell us. Let me start with an overview of oceanic pH (the measure of alkalinity/acidity, with neutral being a pH of…
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Let’s be realistic: reefs thrive during WARM CYCLES and suffer during Cold Cycles. Otherwise, reef growth would be enormous during the much longer Ice Ages and that certainly is not the case.
Whilst I am often told that my house in Somerset is below sea level. It is quite certainly not.
However, with access to youtube, my partner and I are able to frequently experience life below the waves.
Apparently life on the bottom of the sea is totally nuts. So we have learned.
Here’s our favourite eco-system – the Lembeh Strait. So called muck diving.
Trying to grasp how such creatures evolved purely on the basis of marginal advantage is a test of the intellect. If God exists then he sure has a great sense of humour!!
Have a look.
Even better – take some mescaline and then have a look!!!
Wait, scrub that suggestion – it’s like being on mescaline, without the mescaline:
Or if you prefer explanatory narration (by a “Brian-Cox-a-like” then see here):
Impressing
” The result was a big increase in acidity—to levels higher than have been predicted for the future due to human emissions—yet, the coral continued to flourish.”
Well, it appears clear that the corals have not read any of the published “Ocean Acidification studies” or they would have done whatever was necessary to avoid actually being studied.
Perhaps the corals are on the payroll of “Big Oil”?
Dunno.
The antarctic certainly appears to be. Who knows what will be “on the payroll of big oil”, next…
Are the oceans not already more-or-less saturated in carbon dioxide? If so, as the oceans warm, carbon dioxide will exsolve from the oceans due to the increase in water temperature, correct? Are not the oceans contributing to atmospheric carbon dioxide even now?
Studying for my chemistry degree titrating a solution to determine its pH and total ionic strength was basic lab work. The accurate term is neutralizing, but when adding an acid it was often called acidifying even by full professors. So using acidifying colloquially in a chem lab is fine. Using acidifying when talking about the environment and seawater this way is an alarmist term bringing up images of dissolving something in concentrated acid.
The water chemistry is much more complicated than CO2 “acidifying” the ocean. The ocean contains roughly 3.5% weight/volume of dissolved solids. Most samples also contain significant amounts of bacteria and plankton.
Measuring pH accurately to less than .1 unit is affected by the contaminants and requires careful work to be reproducible. The other anions(in addition to choride) have resulted in different pH scales because the amount of “free” H+ can be different than the total amount of H+. Nothing in nature is easy to measure!
NAUI 270872, 7/1973. Over the many years, I’ve seen neither sea level rise nor sea habitat destruction among our many dives, spread from The Nubble, Maine, to well off of Tioman Island, South China Sea.
Well then you need to put on the special alarm goggles, that alarmist environmentalists wear.
And then go searching for confirmation of the presumed catastrophe.
It must be somewhere – dammit!!! Look and look. And if you can’t find it then look harder.
And if you still can’t find it then make something up.
yep, and in all my dives, the only reef damage I have seen is from fool tourists walking on them or trying to excessively handle them while diving. The other damage I saw was from a nasty village fishing practice of throwing explosives into the water – those reefs were a mess!
Rapture of the Deep – CO2 poisoning?
jinghis November 11, 2015 at 8:43 am
Actually, as you likely know, Jinghis, “rapture of the deep” is a real phenomenon. It refers to the feeling of intoxication you get on deep dives, and it is a form of mild nitrogen poisoning.
Best to you,
w.
I seem to recall a similar condition can arise when the partial pressure of O2 is too high, limiting scuba diving even with a heliox set up.
I must quibble with your interpretation of the English language. Acidifies (or alkanalizes) are statements of vector. It’s like saying a number is increasing or decreasing. It doesn’t matter whether the increase is from 3 to 4 or from -2 to -1. Both are increases. Neutalizing on the other hand is a statement of absolute value. It means that the value, whether initially positive or negative, is now closer to zero.
In this particular case with CO2 and seawater, “more acidic”, “less basic” and “more neutral” have the same meaning. But if the changes were from pH 8 to 5, that would also be “more acidic” and “less basic” but NOT “more neutral”. “More acidic” and “less basic” are always synonyms. “More neutral” is not.
My comment is not meant to distract from your larger point that the choice of “more acidic” is being deliberately chosen for its inflammatory value. Just that your criticism of that choice as contrary to accepted usage of the English language is a step too far.
Apologies. Typo above. Should be “alkalinizes”.
I agree Mike. I was quite familiar with using more acidic in the same sense as less alkaline, back before all this began. If I tip vinegar into a solution of caustic soda, then I am acidifying it in my view a.k.a. making it more acidic.
Whether the resultant solution is still alkaline, or not.
I think that people are far too pedantic about this. It doesn’t serve skepticism to resort to pedantry.
Especially not when the pedantry is groundless.
Indefatigable, as I said above, in our normal english usage something cannot be both more acidic and more neutral at the same time.
As to your claim that it is groundless pedantry, you are not seeing the difference in the emotional impact of the two statements, viz:
• Increasing CO2 makes the ocean more neutral, and
• Increasing CO2 makes the ocean more acidic.
The use of “acidic” is a misrepresentation of the reality. The ocean is not getting more acidic. It is getting more neutral, and in our normal use of english, it can’t be doing both. And it also plays on the emotions of the reader. Most scientists (including yourself, apparently) are unaware of the hugely negative emotional overtones of the second statement.
w.
Willis, sadly I am aware of the negative overtones associated with “more acidic” in popular conciousness.
And strictly I should say that “I neutralized my caustic soda solution using vinegar.” – assuming that I had stopped tipping before catastrophic acidity occurred.
I do agree with your principle point, that “acidification”, “more acidic” and certainly “more acid” are misleading in the ocean context.
Intentionally so, we can probably assume.
My concern is that this discussion may well be perceived as equivalent to two philosophers arguing over whether night-time is defined by the presence of darkness or the absence of light.
Hopefully along the way, some people will discover that the ocean is surprisingly alkaline and highly buffered.
And maybe some will perceive that the most alarming reports of reduction in alkalinity were local, over-blown or purely speculative.
Your brilliant contribution can only help in this regard.
But I do worry that the problem of the growth in misinformation is now so severe that perhaps we have bigger fish to dissolve. 🙂
Frog
A few realities from my POV.
1. The public suspects something is amiss. Normally, the public follows what science says likes bees to honey. They are resisting. Warmists pawn this off as “it’s a threat too far in the future”. I don’t think so.
The public is beginning to wonder how much is this going to cost them this time.
2. While a worldwide carbon tax would have been nice for the warmists, that’s not what they were really shooting for and they wont get it this time in Paris. They may be able to gangster style get slush fund contributions tot he cause but that’s about it. They want to institutionalize the ability to buy voters in the US. The US is the cherry on the global pie. That’s what they are after. If they can pull that off, they can cement another political cycle. Time to drag the rest of the world along will be in their favor.
The primary disadvantage for the US skeptic is that America has been sculpted thru law and policy into protected classes. Those protected classes are loyal to the Democrats. The unprotected classes are shrinking in number and the voting base for the Republicans is a well.
The strike to heart of the matter is the awakening of the silent majority.
The word needs to get out about how much this is going to cost them, their children and the communities they live in.
Warmists know this is the soft underbelly of their strategy and so they bury the costs in hard to track and feel expenses to the silent majority. Unraveling that cost in black and white terms is crucial to the messaging.
Truly Knute. I see all that you describe.
The problem with that slush fund is that whilst much of it will be embezzled in some pseudo-legitimate manner. A large swathe of it will bring in new people, create new incentives and fund more confirmation bias driven cargo-cult science and more “promotional” efforts.
That’s always the problem. Half the money can be spent on creating phoney incentives and on brainwashing.
I’m in the UK, of course.
I’m pretty sure that we are in a worse situation than the US.
Living here as a skeptic is like existing as one of the last remaining humans in invasion of the body-snatchers.
I meet good, kind and reasonable people who have simply never heard ANY of the skeptical arguments.
Having a “state broadcaster” turned out to be a disaster.
The problem is that even just a few tens of billions in the hands of thieves can fund a great deal more thievery!!
I’m not looking forward to Paris. I suspect that the EU will kick itself squarely in the nuts even if Russia and China only play along with pretend commitments and trickery.
Meanwhile the marketing machine will tell everyone here in the UK that Russia and China have made equivalent commitments. And so we should all officially rejoice at the great victory.
Putin will likely enjoy pretending whilst the EU progresses further down the road to energy insecurity and Gazprom dependence.
We also give shelter to growing protected classes in the UK.
So vast in number that even our political right must pander to their every whim.
I must have become a conservative – because if I had a time machine, then I’d go back, not forward!! 🙂
This happens when climatologists don’t supervise other scientists. Chaos, total chaos!
Wayne Delbeke November 11, 2015 at 10:54 am
I used the CO2 values and the temperature values from the Vostok ice core data, and regressed one against the other. I made the usual assumption that the global temperature change was about half the change at the poles.
w.
Thanks Willis.
Bad language:
“increase of the gas in the atmosphere caused by human emissions”
Implying that other causes of emissions would not make any difference.
Thanks Willis.
In 1998 I spent a few days snorkling and diving at Perhentian Islands in Malaysia. I loved it. Some years later – I was panicked by the propaganda of United Nations. I thought: Ooh my good – my two kids really need to see corals before it is too late.
But then I was exposed to some very incompetent enforcements by the government, based on the global warming theory. I thought – Hmmm – I really need to look into this – and I did – that brought me to various climate blogs. It made me start looking into the IPCC assessment reports – and here I am – more and more aware of the idiocracy by United Nations. I´m not concerned any more – my two kids will see corals – my third kid too – and eventually my grandchilds.
However I´m not sure my grandchilds will see United Nations – at least not in it´s current bloated form – I hope not. Even if there is some effect by CO2 – it is nowhere near hell – war is hell.
“The UN was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell.”
— Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary-General from 1953 to 1961
SoF
I hope you don’t mind me asking a couple of questions about yourself. Your conversion struck me as honest and forthright. A matter of factness to it all.
When “An Inconvenient Truth” came out were you a skeptic by then ?
If not, were you energized by the call to action ?
Did you feel part of a movement ?
I’m asking because I’m trying to gauge the rate at which public consciousness is changing.
Yes, I know this isn’t a statistically significant poll, but I’m following my instinct here.
I don´t mind at all. 🙂
It is hard to remember though. I wanted to give it a try, but is seems like it just ended up in an opinion piece. However.
However – In the mid nineties I marched in a protest against a gas fired power plant. I was influenced by slogans from the green Non Governmental Organizations. It didn´t occur to me that United Nations could possibly mislead. I thought all students in the world were taught about logic and scientific methods, I thought most people try their best to be honest – and I still do- but truth is not readily available to us – that is why logic and the scientific method is so important.
I did not see the film “An inconvenient Truth”. I think I generally try to avoid exposing myself to propaganda – since high school I have been aware of the risk of propaganda – but I am by no means immune to propaganda.
What really made me realize that something was wrong was the misconduct demonstrated in the leaked e-mails (2009).
The skeptical sites has been very important to me, but some sites which really made me see that something is wrong was the sites of the proponents for global warming. Sites like skepticalscience and realclimate.
Not to forget the best source of all – the assessment reports by United Nations – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In particular the contribution from working group I.
I urge everybody to read in the assessment reports. But not without having prepared themselves. Those who have read and understood the first 26 pages of “The logic of scientific discovery” by Karl Popper, and have some technical education, are ready to go. (Karl Popper was the master mind behind the modern scientific method- Commonly known as the Hypotetico – deductive method.)
The Logic of scientific discovery is the straw I cling to:
http://strangebeautiful.com/other-texts/popper-logic-scientific-discovery.pdf
SoF
Really appreciate your answer.
Thanks
One of the places that scientists failed is as a profession is that by and large they didn’t want to bother themselves with risk communication or weren’t good at it … or worst, sold out for the attention and money. It’s tough translating scientific uncertainty to the peoples. I think they are learning though that they have to be better at it, otherwise they will leave themselves open to being abused again.
whoops .. hit sent before editing
but you get the drift
thanks again
It can be called acidification only if chemically pure water is considered more “acidic” than ocean water. If that is the way you think, then OK. I don’t tend to think of chemically pure water in terms of “acidic” or “basic”
I would also suggest that the reason you hear so much alarmism about coral reefs is partly because they are underwater to begin with, so any statements about them are difficult to measure and check.
Alarmist opportunists migrate to such domains because they can say virtually anything, without anyone knowing whether it is even remotely true or not.
Take the following:
1. 9%, 11%, 19% and 50% of the coral reefs have already gone. Take your pick. (Mine is 0%).
2. Sea level rise hurts the reefs because they cant grow fast enough, stationary sea levels hurts them because they are unable to adjust to a slowdown in sea level change, and falling sea levels hurt them because they will be exposed. So any sea level, stationary, rising or falling, is bad for them.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
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Life is fascinating. It seems to always do more than we think it can.
AFAIK, one of the key dangers to coral reefs is…
…sunscreen. Discovered by Japanese scientists a number of years ago.