Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Warmer weather and higher CO2 levels apparently makes it more difficult for pond scum to grow.
Key Biological Mechanism is Disrupted by Ocean Acidification
Inability of phytoplankton to acquire iron imperils marine ecosystems
Mar 14, 2018
A team led by scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego and the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) has demonstrated that the excess carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere through the combustion of fossil fuels interferes with the health of phytoplankton which form the base of marine food webs.
Phytoplankton are microscopic plants whose growth in ocean surface waters supports ocean food webs and global marine fisheries. They are also key agents in the long-term removal of carbon dioxide (CO2)
As reported in the March 14 edition of Nature, the team shows that a mechanism widely used by phytoplankton to acquire iron has a requirement for carbonate ions. Rising concentrations of atmospheric CO2 are acidifying the ocean and decreasing carbonate, and the team shows how this loss of carbonate affects the ability of phytoplankton to obtain enough of the nutrient iron for growth. Ocean acidification is poised to decrease the concentration of sea surface carbonate ions 50 percent by the end of this century.
…
“Ultimately our study reveals the possibility of a ‘feedback mechanism’ operating in parts of the ocean where iron already constrains the growth of phytoplankton,” said Jeff McQuaid, lead author of the study who made the discoveries as a PhD student at Scripps Oceanography. “In these regions, high concentrations of atmospheric CO2 could decrease phytoplankton growth, restricting the ability of the ocean to absorb CO2 and thus leading to ever higher concentrations of CO2 accumulating in the atmosphere.”
“Studies investigating the effects of high CO2 on phytoplankton growth have shown mixed results to date. In some cases, certain phytoplankton seem to benefit from high CO2,”added Andrew E. Allen, a biologist with a joint appointment at Scripps and JCVI who is senior author and initiator of the study. “Most of these studies, however, have been conducted under high-iron conditions. Our study uncovers a widespread cellular mechanism that suggests high CO2 might be particularly problematic for phytoplankton growth in low-iron regions of the ocean.”
…
Read more: https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/key-biological-mechanism-disrupted-ocean-acidification
The abstract of the study;
Carbonate-sensitive phytotransferrin controls high-affinity iron uptake in diatoms
Jeffrey B. McQuaid, Adam B. Kustka, Miroslav Oborník, Aleš Horák, John P. McCrow, Bogumil J. Karas, Hong Zheng, Theodor Kindeberg, Andreas J. Andersson, Katherine A. Barbeau & Andrew E. Allen
In vast areas of the ocean, the scarcity of iron controls the growth and productivity of phytoplankton. Although most dissolved iron in the marine environment is complexed with organic molecules, picomolar amounts of labile inorganic iron species (labile iron) are maintained within the euphotic zone and serve as an important source of iron for eukaryotic phytoplankton and particularly for diatoms. Genome-enabled studies of labile iron utilization by diatoms have previously revealed novel iron-responsive transcripts, including the ferric iron-concentrating protein ISIP2A8, but the mechanism behind the acquisition of picomolar labile iron remains unknown. Here we show that ISIP2A is a phytotransferrin that independently and convergently evolved carbonate ion-coordinated ferric iron binding. Deletion of ISIP2A disrupts high-affinity iron uptake in the diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum, and uptake is restored by complementation with human transferrin. ISIP2A is internalized by endocytosis, and manipulation of the seawater carbonic acid system reveals a second-order dependence on the concentrations of labile iron and carbonate ions. In P. tricornutum, the synergistic interaction of labile iron and carbonate ions occurs at environmentally relevant concentrations, revealing that carbonate availability co-limits iron uptake. Phytotransferrin sequences have a broad taxonomic distribution and are abundant in marine environmental genomic datasets, suggesting that acidification-driven declines in the concentration of seawater carbonate ions will have a negative effect on this globally important eukaryotic iron acquisition mechanism.
Read more (paywalled): https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25982
I’m skeptical of this claim that slightly warmer temperatures would inhibit plant growth to such an extent it would significantly impact the ability of ocean plankton to absorb CO2.
My large salt water pool hits a maximum temperature of around 80F (27C) in Summer, warmer than most seawater. I’ve never noticed warmer temperatures inhibiting the growth of microscopic plants – peak Summer where I live is a continuous battle to stop the pool turning green.
Why don’t these people look at the paleoclimate record for more clues as to how sensitive the biosphere really is to increased CO2? According to Berner (1998-2001) atmospheric CO2 levels were > 1000 ppm , with correspondingly higher temperatures, for most of the last 250 my, during which time the fossil record shows robust land- and marine-based life forms, including coral reefs. Rapid changes in CO2 too high for life forms to adapt? Check out the CO2 and temperatures spikes of the PETM and other associated hyperthermals. Studies of these episodes should be undertaken as at least an independent line of evidence to test the model-based conclusions.
BECAUSE THE BIOSPHERE IS NOT THE SAME! It would mean absolutely NOTHING! Organisms evolve. Really! It’s true!
Yet forced toxic conditions in a mismanaged aquarium are valid?
Must be a gaia religion thing.
Pitiful.
Why pick on plankton to show how transformational CO2 can be? Or from other research, CO2 and the greeting of the globe with land plants?
What about humans?
Where are all the papers about CO2 altering US?
I offer the observation that our grandchildren have had disproportionately large teeth growth since the 1950s increase of CO2.
Now, design a hard, tight, error-free experiment to investigate this hypothesis.
Mods, it might make an entertaining post to invite submissions. Might show who knows how science works.
These “scientists” merely found what they wanted to find. “Ocean acidification” is the fall-back “science” for Warmunist pseudoscientists. Warming hasn’t really panned out for them as the Pause put the kibosh on that, and the “scary weather” ruse is already wearing thin. They are desperate to keep the CAGW gravy train trundling along for at least a little while longer, hopefully until 2020, when (they hope) Trump gets voted out and someone more of the Warmunist persuasion gets back in.
‘makes it more difficult for pond scum to grow. ‘ I don’t think so. Most governments have increased in size by adding climate change departments, climate change ministries etc.
By this logic I’ve been doing it wrong when putting plants I’m growing in a warmer place to get them started and increase growth and productivity.
It’s about as sensible as telling the time by having it written on a piece of paper!
James Bull
Bull manure. Stromatalites are still around. Ian Malcolm is a fictional character but his quote is spot on, “Life finds a way”..this is yet another missing piece of the GCMs. They fail to account for the adaptability of life. And the simpler the life form, the more durable it is. Except insects, they are far too specialized.
RE: “Except insects, they are far too specialized.”
Don’t be so quick to count out insects, Keith During a 30 year career in agricultural pest control I witnessed many rapid adaptations in many insect species. The LD50 (lethal dose for 50% of the population) for several once popular insecticides increased in some cases by 400% essentially making the product useless for pest control. In particular I recall being told that 2 different types of product were “immune to evolutionary adaptation by insects.” The first was Chlordimeform, which killed insect eggs by fuming action, thus it was claimed they could never develop resistance to it since it killed them in the egg stage. But they did. Each generation laying more resistant eggs requiring ever higher doses of the product to be effective until it became uneconomic to use. The second was the use of pheromones to interrupt their breeding. A PhD in biology told me specifically that “this was the answer” since we were interrupting breeding before they could develop resistance. But they did as the females began altering their scent slightly and still managed to attract males. (I knew a few girls in high school like that too…)
The situation with harmful insect control with pesticides is very similar to that of pathogen control with antibiotics. Life adapts as fast or faster than the chemists can devise new chemicals.
The extracts shown here indicate that it a drop in carbonates, not increased temperature that is the problem.
Of course these critters survived quite nicely back when CO2 levels were 5000 to 7000 ppm, so the small increase we are seeing is not likely to bother them.
These people have a twisted view of the fragility of life. What they don’t seem to know is how insatiable life is. All life (even microscopic photo plankton) is desperate to survive and will 99% of the time, find a way. And don’t forget natural selection, even if the plankton did have a more difficult time, natural selection would solve the problem very rapidly.
From what Nick Stokes says above, that this claim is not about warming, but rather about limited iron in the oceans and this from the internet:
“Anthropogenic coal fly ash (FA) aerosol may represent a significant source of bioavailable iron in the open ocean.”
Leads to the conclusion that we should increase the number of coal fired power plants.
You might have a point there. Another important source of iron is windblown dust, so the CO2-caused greening of the deserts may well have a negative effect on ocean productivity.
Where do I apply for a grant?
Iron availability in oceans requires sulfate ion. Yes, carbonate also works but it is slow.
This is why carbon dioxide in the atmosphere dropped after Pinatubo eruption.
Sulfur emissions from coal also helps. But US coal plants no longer emit..since the 1980s.
Remember the paper by a world expert that explained how ocean research studies are badly done? This is another one and one that gets redone every couple of years. Here are things wrong with the type of linear thinking regarding such a crisis (notice the crises are always ‘poised” to begin):
1) Seawater is naturally buffered -resists pH change through complex interaction of carbonic acid dissociation and dissolved CO2.
2) A drop in pH increases solubility of both lime and iron which are abundant along shorelines, in sediments carried to sea by rivers, volcanic rocks, dust from deserts like the Sahara, sub-sea volcanic and hydrothermal vents on the seafloor – white and black smokers (white ones are largely calcium carbonate), meteoric dust constantly raining down…
3) The creatures themselves alter the pH around themselves to facilitate availability and use of calcium carbonate and iron. The euphemism for this in these types of papers is “how plankton fix the lime and iron from seawater is imperfectly known”.
4) A major “tell” in these papers is they choose a particular species to yammer on and leave 1one to believe they are talking about all plankton. Diatoms have silica (‘quartz’) hard parts and not calcium carbonate!
5) These papers have a big taboo, a name which cannot be mentioned. The White Cliffs of Dover. This enormous Cretaceous limestone formation is …entirely composed of coccolithiphores -the skeletons of billions of tonnes of plankton formed when CO2 was 10 times today’s abundance in the atmosphere. QED. You will never have to concern yourself with this silly scare.
6. When you read the paper they note that phytoplankton have an alternative and much larger source of iron, i e organically bound iron, though the uptake is slower.
Actuall (as often) there isn’t much wrong with the actual paper. The problem is the overwrought press-release and the ensuing further exaggeration and dumbing down by the MSM.
More fake-science & what/who your and my tax-dollars are funding. Just an endless parade of absurd scare-mongering & direct evidence that no REAL effects of CAGW can be found.
And one more thing. It appears they assume a carbonate consumed is irreplaceable. This is far from the truth. There are massive stores of carbonate in the ocean that will dissolve more carbonate into the ocean as it is used, in accordance with the equilibria. This is a tempest in a teapot.
Yes, a few back-of-the-envelop calculations comparing glocal CO2 emissions to the amount of exposed solid carbonate in the Great Barrier Reef alone show it to be just a drop in a bucket. And that’s before one considers theoceans supersaturation of Aragonite in solution.
Thus the more sensible alarmists actually admit that ‘dissolving coral reefs’ will always remain fictional. They concentrate instead on the vulnerability of free-floating polyps in the ocean, suggesting that their ability to re-colonize will be reduced after natural events like El Ninos that cause coral bleaching.
it would be so EASY to verify or disprove this claim… an Actual Experiment…
set up 4 stations that are environmentally controllable for CO2 and temperature
3 runs – 1.5 years to do-
get some plankton somehow- get 5 large ~200+ gallon aquariums/tanks, put the same amount of phyloplankton (thalassiosira rotula strain) each tank.
put one tank in each station -all rooms each run to be 10c/15c/20c respectively
station 1 “control” current conditions- normal air composition – record the co2 levels hourly for all stations to ensure quality control.
station 2 “low” conditions. control the co2 to be @ur momisugly 250 ppm
station 3 “medium” conditions, control the co2 to be @ur momisugly 600ppm
station 4 “high” conditions, control the co2 to be @ur momisugly1000ppm
monitor growth of said plankton for 6 months….record result clean tanks, restart at new temp.
publish paper “phyloplankton growth in sea water at various carbon dioxide levels & temperatures”
wait, they have done that for TEMPERATURE already….http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0063091
looking at that particular strain, it THRIVES at temps 15 & 20c-now we just have to see how the growth is affected by CO2 at those temps.
It might be easy to run THAT experiment, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the research reported.
They’re “forgetting something”, I think. multiplicative adaptation. I’m a professional winemaker, and we use this little beast yeast to convert fruit-sugars to alcohol (and CO₂). You know, fermentation.
Having performed hundreds of experiments aside from the main winery needs, I’ve determined (easily validating Ameral’s 1950s results) that a wee bit of yeast in a absolutely sterile starting culture will multiply and multiply over and over, rendering the whole aliquot “fermented” in almost finite time. Doesn’t matter whether one adds 1 ppt or 3 ppt. (parts per thousand).
What does matter is the temperature and micronutrient load of the starting culture. A lot. Huge is temperature… 35° C will be 5× faster than 25°C, all in all. Doubling nutrients tho’ determines more whether the fermentation “completes cleanly” or not. Deactivated yeasties tend to hold onto their micronutrients, limiting the ability of the remaining active ones to complete fermentation. We call that “stuck fermentation”. Can be a problem.
But the main point is that a soup of biota definitely adapts to the change of nutrients, energy sources, temperature and byproduct load quite remarkably, under significant variation in conditions.
At the beginning, a grape must may be up to 30% (by weight) fermentable sugars. By the end, it is near-zero. It might have parts per thousand of nutrients like nitrogen, selenium, cobalt, manganese. At the end, most of the minerals may well be undetectable. LIMIT draw down. But remember, a gram (say) of starter yeast in a 1,000ℓ test bâhtch might produce over 5,000 g of daughter cells. Sometimes more. That’s a huge amount of “adaption to the giant sugar opportunity”.
I can only imagine that in the bug-eat-bug world of the ocean, the biota is nominally primed to take off to any degree that the limit-function of available nutrients and food sources allows. At all times. If the ever so slightly warming ocean and the ever so slightly decreasingly alkaline sea water are mildly inhibitory to nominal phytoplankton metabolic function, with the increase of CO₂, I am certain that they’ll just multiply more quickly, or die off more slowly in response. If the limit is IRON, then no tiny amount of warming/acidification is going to change that relationship. IRON will.
Hence – to sound like an old saw – why I am a super-advocate of open-ocean experiments in iron fertilization of largish tracts of the sea. Seriously. Let’s at least try a few 100 km² plots, say “one per named ocean basin” or something. Try ’em out. Put a few billion into it. See how it fares. There won’t be even a scintilla of a chance for a “big kaboom”. If the first pilots point to issues that look detrimental, STOP. Gradually in the next few years the ecosystem(s) of the pelagic zone will eat up the excess iron, and SINK it. Along with gigatons of CO₂.
Anyway, off my soapbox.
GoatGuy
GG
From the little bit I got from hanging around ancient and mostly now deceased plankton research types I suspect you are right. From the lots of papers I have read on the not really dead Louisiana ‘Dead Zone,’ it is claimed to be caused by phytoplankton that may be limited by N, P, or Si (lots of iron in the mud) and what about others like vitamin B12. I think they need to check the pH there. A fundamental ecological theorem is that limiting factors change. This interesting one suggests iron dust stimulates blue-greens (still their color) that produce nitrogen that stimulates dinoflagellate red tide blooms. Now we wouldn’t want to stimulate red tides would we? Actually you can study a lot of fish that way and chase off the tourists. The responsible blue-green is tropical.
Walsh, J. J. And K. A. Steidinger. 2001. Saharan dust and Florida red tides: the cyanophyte connection. J. Geophys. Res. 106(C6):11597-11612.
It’s an abstract. It’s meant to summarize the research, not detail the area of ocean where iron is limiting – that’s just putting the research in context. Unless you’ve read the paper, you don’t know if they discussed temperature or not.
i read recently that in the supposed iron and hence phytoplankton deficient areas of ocean it turned out there was plenty phytoplanton, they were just much smaller “micro” phytoplankton.nature abhors a vacuum ,she will always find something to fill it with.
I’m bad at chemistry and get confused. I understand that colder water holds more CO2 so colder water at higher latitude is lower pH.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1029/2009GL040999/asset/image_n/grl26570-fig-0001.png?v=1&s=a0b2ad6e478c7c7c6c06691ff77e580818c0b11d
But then I look at chlorophyll detected from space showing that the lower pH water is generally more productive – https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=4097
So from the above I can’t see how anyone can say lower pH is bad for marine plant life in general.
Getting more specific with phytoplankton and iron there’s a page at NASA that appears to fly in the face of the above study on the basis of fluorescence detection which also shows lower pH waters at higher latitudes doing just fine. https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/modis_fluorescence.html
But it says “More fluorescence is emitted when waters are low in key nutrients such as iron. ” and “For instance, the amount of fluorescence increases when phytoplankton are under stress from a lack of iron, a critical nutrient in seawater. When the water is iron-poor, phytoplankton emit more solar energy as fluorescence than when iron is sufficient.” showing this map:
And then it shows a map of iron:
.. which shows some areas of glaring exception to their assertion of iron being a key determinant of lower fluorescence such as due south of India at the equator being relatively high in iron but also high fluorescence.
Am I reading something wrong? It appears that iron is a factor but not a critical one for phytoplankton or marine plants in general in the cooler lower pH waters that can hold more CO2. I can only conclude that a higher concentration of CO2 will benefit the warmer lower latitude waters based on the above observations.
Dunno – hard to tell from the tiny map (and I don’t know what the colors mean on the iron map), but it looks to me like a pretty good negative correlation, even if there is a little overlap.. Wonder when the fluoro image was taken.
Interesting article, thanks for posting it.
Totally skipped the first part, got hung up on the second. The pH alone won’t necessarily make a difference, it’s the interaction of pH with other factors. One might generally say that all else being equal, low pH is likely to affect phytoplankton, but how low is “too low” will depend on the species. Or you could say that in some circumstances a pH of X will be a problem for Y species, but in other circumstances it will be fine.
That is why pH and plankton might not match. But why the difference in the satellite images, even if measuring different wavelengths? That’s interesting.
I find it remarkable indeed how many people here are so much smarter than the people who did the research. Amazing how you all know so much – and without even reading the paper! All you need is a very, very basic idea of chemistry (and no knowledge of plankton biology) to figure out how stupid scientists are. Wish I were omniscient like that!
But then, it’s easy, isn’t it? Any scientist who studies anything that could be considered a negative effect of AGW is wrong (and probably a socialist), and anyone who says science by the consensus is stupid/corrupt/fake is correct, even if they have no evidence, no better hypothesis, are unqualified to judge and have ties to Big Oil. The only reason one might have to think is to make up excuses to reject science.
What evidence can you present that science by consensus is valid?
Explain to us how the truth could actually be influenced by how many people know it or believe it?
The evidence is in plain sight: Very few scientists will tell you the sun revolves around the earth. A few might tell you the Earth is 8000 years old, but not many.
Paul P.: “Very few scientists will tell you the sun revolves around the earth. ”
That doesn’t address my question at all. What would address it is for you to answer the question, if many scientists told us that the sun revolves around the earth – would that make it true? (I’ll answer it for you .. NO!)
I claim that consensus does not establish the truth. Given that scientific truths exist before anyone even discovers them, the number of people who know them obviously has no bearing on their existence. How am I wrong?
That’s the point – there is no evidence that will convince people who have already made up their minds. They just throw it out, as so many have done here. The consensus isn’t the point, that was just a term to differentiate scientists who believe AGW theory and think it’s a problem from those who don’t for whatever reason. (I never know what to call the different groups)
The truth is not influenced by how many people believe it. However, if thousands of scientists all over the world work for decades on a particular body of research and over time reach a decisive agreement about part of it, to me it seems likely to be true. That’s the way science works. They don’t agree about every bit of it, and that’s how science works, too. It’s also good that not everyone agrees even on the basics since that means research comes under extra scrutiny.
That said, the scrutiny it receives around here is not always appropriate. Usually people are “primed,” as they say in psychology, to know what to think by little comments Eric and others make, normally ridiculing something. Then it’s all too easy to join the crowd, affirm one’s preconceptions, restate one’s beliefs, and find that whatever research has been posted is either stupid or proves that “consensus” climate science is wrong, in which case it’s excellent. This is hyperbole and a broad generalization; I don’t mean to offend anyone, I’m just stating my observation. It’s the same on AGW sites, too, I assume. It would be nice if people everywhere recognized the limits of their knowledge before dismissing that of others. I’m not always good at it myself, but I’m trying to get better.
I have many reasons for believing in AGW. The consensus is one of them, but not the most important.
Original Mike M====== it addresses your question exactly. It is the LACK of scientists that profess the sun revolves around the earth that makes “consensus” a valid point. As time goes on, and the number of anti-AGW scientist dwindle, the voices going against the current consensus view will fade into oblivion .
C. Paul Pierett “It is the LACK of scientists that profess the sun revolves around the earth that makes “consensus” a valid point. ”
My point survives again by examination of the reverse condition – Would a LACK of scientists professing that the earth revolves around the sun make the consensus that the sun revolves around the earth true?
That is exactly what Galileo faced when he publicly challenged the Aristotelian consensus model enforced by a POLITICAL body. He was ridiculed and worse by an endless stream of mental midgets but he stood his ground on the basis of scientific reasoning right up until that political body threatened to kill him unless he admitted that he was wrong. He escaped death by pronouncing that the consensus was correct, that the sun revolves around the earth but that did not change the truth.
Truth and scientific facts are immalleable, they exist ABSOLUTELY independent of human thought let alone belief. Gravity existed before Newton, atoms existed before Leucippus, microbes existed before Marcus Terentius Varro, and the earth was orbiting the sun long before Copernicus or Galileo. It still is by the way and not because the consensus evaporated. Climate will likewise continue to change well after your CAGW consensus has been fully evaporated by the intense heat of ever increasing amounts of contrary evidence.
It’s just a matter of time….
Original Mike M
” Given that scientific truths exist before anyone even discovers them, the number of people who know them obviously has no bearing on their existence. How am I wrong?”
OK, that’s a good start. Now, say the truth is a frog and you have 100 herpetologists come along to look at it and tell you if it’s a frog or a lizard. If 97% told you it was a frog, who would you believe?
Or is it impossible to make it strictly an issue of science, without getting all kinds of political ideology mixed in and making assumptions about how corrupt/dumb scientists are these days?
Given that scientific truths exist before anyone even discovers them, the POLITICS of people who know them obviously has no bearing on their existence. How am I wrong?
Kristi Silber
You are wrong because that (fake news/fake science!) “97%” charade of scientists are paid by the bureaucrats and politicians who are setting up the university and laboratory and computer money to CREATE the “facts” that are put together to CREATE the CAGW story. Don’t follow the “story line”? No degree, no grants, no hires, no publications, no tenure, no research money. The politics of their CAGW story IS their existence and their career. You do realize that the myth of your “97% of scientists believe in global warming” is a politicized story of false “science” by selecting 75 “proper” answers from 2 questions of 5 questions asked of 13,500 members – of who, 7500 answered. That you believe it, that you cite it as evidence shows only your lack of understanding of the issue.
RACookPE1978
Please provide us with a link to a peer reviewed scientific study that falsifies the 97% claim. Thank you in advance. Is there one that shows it at 92%, or 87% or 73% ?
75 replies to two questions (of the five asked on the survey) were selected from the top 77 government-funded “scientists” as ranked by the by the authors of the survey from the 7500 total who replied. Ranking was based on the number of papers each “scientist” was credited with authoring. Methodology is IN the paper creating the 97% belief.
By the way, we have never been told what the other three questions were.
The two known question are (paraphrasing slightly):
“Has the earth warmed in recent years?
Is human activity responsible for some of that warming? ”
And, by the way, I too would answer “Yes!” to both questions.
Your personal opinion of a published study does not invalidate it. I asked you for an alternative study that falsifies the one that claims 97%. Please post a link to a study that shows something less than 97%, like maybe 87% or 53%. It is my understanding that the original study showing 97% has not yet been retracted.
The ORIGINAL STUDY listed their methodology: Why would another study be “published” to discredit the crown jewel of the CAGW industry’s propaganda piece?
75/77 is 97% after all. And, by the way, I do agree with both questions asked: It’s just that the propaganda standing in front of the lies is what must be exposed.
My “opinion” is irrelevant: The “facts” of climate science are not affected by the retraction, or promotion, of a false story created to serve the government’s agenda.
RACookPE1978, you need another study to falsify the ORIGINAL one. Don’t you understand how science works? Let me give you a clue. Blog posts, and comments attached to them don’t carry weight in the world of science.
In other words RACook, show me the DATA in a peer reviewed published study that falsifies the original 97% claim.
..
Thank you in advance.
C Paul,
Obviously you have not been paying attention to this debate or you would be aware of the multitude of articles, critiques and yes, peer reviewed studies refuting the alleged 97% consensus. In case you missed it here is a short list of references:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/12/19/97-articles-refuting-the-97-consensus-on-global-warming/
If you continue to deny the obvious we will know that you need no facts to support your beliefs, and hence you will be dismissed as a person who has nothing of value to contribute to the debate.
visits from two skeptical science denizens in one post , deary me.c.paul might be the last alarmist to ever use the 97% study in an argument on here. surely must be the last person to learn it was a bogus claim and scientifically proven to be so.
Kristi Silber
A good example to illustrate how a consensus can be wrong is luminiferous aether theory which was accepted science up until 1887 when it was possible to devise an experiment to prove or disprove it. The majority accepted it as true but then the Michelson–Morley experiment disproved it. It took another 20 to 30 years to eradicate aether from radiative physics likely only because of stubborn pride.
A huge difference between that consensus and the current CAGW consensus is that it isn’t just a matter of pride, CAGW is indeed far more a matter of politics than science. With aether theory there was no catastrophic doom associated with believing it or not believing it. There was no massive federal funding to pay people to “study” it and then dig in their heels trying to defend its existence in order to retain their careers. There were no politicians hitching their elections to it or attempting to steer global economics because of it.
“OK, that’s a good start. Now, say the truth is a frog ….”
I believe you are trying to say that there is consensus of scientists agreeing on a given genome for this or that species – fine. Per your example we now have DNA testing to examine relative zoological relationships. Before that was possible there were all kinds of disagreements on the subject. Therefore the emergence of strong experimental PROOF led to a much stronger consensus; it is a perfect example of a consensus driven by an actual scientific basis. If someone disagrees now they are burdened with having to disprove DNA testing (or whatever, I’m no biologist).
In stark contrast there is no “DNA test” (yet) to use to slam your CAGW theory anymore than scientists had one to disprove Lysenko. He didn’t believe in genetics and Stalin imprisoned biologists who did. There was an instant consensus in the USSR that genetic theory was false, a consensus based not on science but on fear.
Wiki – “Lysenko compared his opponents in biology to the peasants who still resisted the Soviet government’s collectivization strategy, saying that by opposing his theories the traditional geneticists were setting themselves against Marxism.”
Sounds familiar doesn’t it? The only major difference with CAGW is that its basis includes a lot of money in addition to intimidation and ridicule of those who refuse to accept it without proof. (count me as one who is unafraid of moronic twits like Sheldon “Uncle Joe” Whitehouse who wants to throw me in jail.)
You have no proof that getting warmer is bad and no evidence that it was bad in past periods of warmth.
You have no proof that more CO2 is bad and no evidence that past periods of higher CO2 were harmful.
You have no proof that ECS of CO2 is significantly large and no evidence it was ever a significant factor “controlling” earth’s temperature in the past.
Without the above CAGW is indeed Lysenkoism – purely political and devoid of evidence.
Did the evidence for luminiferous ether accrue over decades, with thousands of scientists studying it?
Lysenko was easily disproved. What does that have to do with anything? He wasn’t even a scientist. It was under Stalin. There’re no analogy there.
” The only major difference with CAGW is that its basis includes a lot of money in addition to intimidation and ridicule of those who refuse to accept it without proof. ”
Money? How about the world’s biggest corporation and what it has to lose. There are billion dollar industries that don’t want to lose their profits to renewable energy. You don’t think they’re in this game?
“I believe you are trying to say that there is consensus of scientists agreeing on a given genome for this or that species – fine. ”
No, my point has nothing to do with DNA, my point is about scientific consensus. If there are 100 equally-trained scientists and 97% say one thing and 3% say another, and the 97% make complete sense to me while the arguments from the 3% don’t hold water, I’m going with the 97%.
Politics has come to play a role in the debate over anthropogenic climate change, but it shouldn’t. There is absolutely no reason to bring politics into an assessment of science. There are relatively few “consensus” scientists who are vocal advocates, far fewer who actively lobby, very unlike the contrarian scientists. It’s not a good sample size, but at the one round of congressional testimony on climate change I’ve seen there were three contrarians and Michael Mann, who spent most of the time whining about his persecution. Most scientists stay out of politics because they aren’t supposed to and don’t want to be biased.
It’s the results that should play a role in the public arena. Unless someone can prove otherwise there is no reason to interpret climate science in any way except at face value. No one has yet shown why it shouldn’t be. Deniers seem to want so badly to think it’s corrupt that many will sooner believe 8 independent investigations into “climategate” were also corrupt than admit they’ve been manipulated.. .Some think any adjustment to data is fraud when without the adjustment the data would not represent reality. Many think the models are useless. The main thread running through all these accusations is ignorance. Ignorance of what scientists do and who they are, and ignorance of the practice of climate science (particularly modeling) itself. They know enough to discredit them and not enough to realize the assumptions they make when they do so..
I trust the scientific community not so much because I think scientists are infallible but because so much of the profession is focused on eliminating bias, and because the diverse teams of scientists and the replication of so many datasets, experiments and models, even if none is perfect, together are trustworthy..
Kristi Silber
Follow the money. The real “money” is the 1.3 trillion in carbon taxes that are NOT being fed to the (democrats pushing global warming hysteria) in the federal and state governments, the 13 trillion in carbon future trading being denied the global bankers and investors, and the 90 billion in CAGW “science” budgets spent FOR those “scientists” travel, laboratories, campuses, computer programs and hardware, and salaries, retirement budgets, and – most important of all: POWER.
the “companies” you blindly accuse are providing life-services and energy to the world’s 6 billion innocents who cannot live without fossil fuels. And NO – they do NOT provide money to the skeptics who are fighting your deadly propaganda.
I don’t like the 97% figure because it is too precise, but I gues it’s easier than saying, “over 95%” or whatever.
“The consensus that humans are causing recent global warming is shared by 90%–100% of publishing climate scientists according to six independent studies by co-authors of this paper. Those results are consistent with the 97% consensus reported by Cook et al (Environ. Res. Lett. 8 024024) based on 11 944 abstracts of research papers, of which 4014 took a position on the cause of recent global warming. A survey of authors of those papers (N = 2412 papers) also supported a 97% consensus. Tol (2016 Environ. Res. Lett. 11 048001) comes to a different conclusion using results from surveys of non-experts such as economic geologists and a self-selected group of those who reject the consensus. ”
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048002/meta
RACookPE1978 – Your claims are without evidence. They are simply assumptions and have no place in a scientific discussion. Of course, you’re free to have them, but making such assumptions will bring you no closer to truth…
“It’s just that the propaganda standing in front of the lies is what must be exposed.”
If you are concerned about propaganda, you should look at the propaganda planned, funded and implemented by FF that has been spread for decades in order to discredit AGW. Exxon alone has spent millions on it. See climatefiles.com
Here’s an excerpt from one example, with some of the people and entities involved (http://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/1998-global-climate-science-communications-team-action-plan/):
“Members who contributed to the development of the plan are A. Adams, John Adams Associates; Candace Crandall, Science and Environmental Policy Project:; David Rothbard, Committee For A Constructive Tornorrow: Jeffrey Salmon. The Marshall Institute; Lee Garrigan, Environmental Issues Council: Lynn Bouchey and Myron Ebell,’ Frontiers of Freedom: Peter Cleary. Americans for Tax Reform: Randy Randol, Exxon Corp; Robert Gehri. The Southern Company; Sharon Kneiss, Chevron Corp: Steve Miiloy, The of Sound Science: Coalition: and Joseph American Petroleum lnstitute.”
One step of the campaign is to “Identify, recruit and train a team of five independent scientists to participate in media outreach.” Who were those five?
Eric you need to use a solar ionizer in your pool…..use one for the first time last year and not an ounce of problems the algae all year……also used about 1/3 rd the amount of chlorine.
The role of CO2 in ocean acidification is exaggerated. In the link https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/key-biological-mechanism-disrupted-ocean-acidification
is stated: “One consequence of acidification is a nearly one-to-one reduction in the concentration of carbonate ions for every molecule of CO2 that dissolved in the ocean”.
This assertion may be refuted not only by logical reasoning as AtheoK (March 16, 2:43 pm) did, but also by calculation.
Only a small part of dissolved CO2 can be converted to carbonic acid: CO2 + H2O ↔ H2CO3, and a small part of H2CO3 produces hydrogen ions according to: H2CO3 H+ + HCO3- . The values of constants of these equilibrium reactions for NaCl solution (close to the ionic strength of seawater) are given by R.Soli and R.Byrne (2002):
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248288054_Carbon_Dioxide_System_Hydration_and_Dehydration_Kinetics_and_the_Equilibrium_CO2H2CO3_Ratio_in_Aqueous_NaCl_Solution
Ratio of CO2/H2CO3 at 15oC is 840, so 1 mole of dissolved CO2 produces only 1.19 mmole H2CO3. Dissociation constant of H2CO3 is given by equation: log Ka = -0.994 -610.5/T. At T = 288K, Ka = 0.00077. Concentration of H+ ions can be calculated from:
x2 = 1.19 * 0.00077, so x =[H+] = [HCO3-] = 0.03 mmole. So, 100 000 molecules of dissolved CO2 produce only 3 hydrogen ions that can convert carbonate ion to bicarbonate.
Sorry, second chemical equation should be written as: H2CO3 H+ + HCO3-. In the last math equation x^2 (x squared).
That assumes a limitless supply of carbonate, no?. The problem is the oceans are losing their buffering capacity, which is why pH is decreasing.
I am not sure this has not been mentioned but here is a link to another study published in Nature ( also behind a paywall but the abstract is there). It paints a different story. The following is from https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09950