# Acidic OCEANS **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 28, 2015, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acidic-oceans/729206 "2015-08-28T19:56:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Find\_Friends](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@Find\_Friends](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Find_Friends)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acidic-oceans/729206/1 "2015-08-28T19:56:33Z")
Enough people here are “skeptical” re AGW but how about ocean acidificaction? I “believe”! New@ this Tapa. Can someone provide a link? ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acidic-oceans/729206/2 "2015-08-28T20:00:49Z")
Do you have data that you’d care to present? ---
**Author:** ![Find\_Friends](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@Find\_Friends](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Find_Friends)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acidic-oceans/729206/3 "2015-08-28T20:09:52Z")
Sorry must get to a librRy first. What does [Encyclopedia.com](http://Encyclopedia.com) say? ---
**Author:** ![Find\_Friends](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@Find\_Friends](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Find_Friends)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acidic-oceans/729206/4 "2015-08-28T20:12:04Z")
Wiki, ENCARTA, GOOLVL,e, Brittanica? ---
**Author:** ![Find\_Friends](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@Find\_Friends](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Find_Friends)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acidic-oceans/729206/5 "2015-08-28T20:18:22Z")
I …now understand mobile frustration . Will be back within hour. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acidic-oceans/729206/6 "2015-08-28T20:20:00Z")
Well, just because you are a Charter Member, lets check NOAA: (vamos al Noa Noa, Noa noa, noa noa… ([old silly Spanish song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isD6ciS40Xc))) 🙂 > **[Home](https://oceanacidification.noaa.gov/)** > > NOAA's Ocean Acidification Program prepares us for the impacts of ocean acidification through research and interdisciplinary partnerships. > [@](#): > > NOAA OCEAN ACIDIFICATION PROGRAM > > Ocean acidification is occurring because the world’s oceans are absorbing increasing amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide, leading to lower pH and greater acidity. This is literally causing a sea change and threatening the fundamental chemical balance of ocean and coastal waters from pole to pole. > > Ocean acidification refers to a reduction in the pH of the ocean over an extended period, typically decades or longer, which is caused primarily by uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but can also be caused by other chemical additions or subtractions from the ocean. Anthropogenic ocean acidification refers to the component of pH reduction that is caused by human activity.(IPCC: Workshop on Impacts of Ocean Acidification on Marine Biology and Ecosystems). Over the last 250 years, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased from 280 parts per million to over 394 parts per million due to the burning of fossil fuels (e.g., coal, gas, oil) and land use change (for instance, conversion of natural forest into crop production). Ocean acidification has potentially devastating ramifications for all ocean life; from the smallest, single celled algae to the largest whales. ---
**Author:** ![Grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acidic-oceans/729206/7 "2015-08-28T20:27:47Z")
pfft -scientists that study stuff for a long time. What do they _know_? ---
**Author:** ![Find\_Friends](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@Find\_Friends](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Find_Friends)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acidic-oceans/729206/8 "2015-08-28T20:31:07Z")
10 Q very much! ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acidic-oceans/729206/9 "2015-08-28T21:33:29Z")
> [@Grey](#): > > pfft -scientists that study stuff for a long time. What do they _know_? Yeah! I walked into the ocean on my last vacation and my feet didn’t melt off so it can’t be that acidic. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2015, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acidic-oceans/729206/10 "2015-08-29T01:00:56Z")
Carbon dioxide has something of a chemical reaction with water, so it’s more than just all the extra CO[sub]2[/sub] dissolving in the ocean water. A part of this becomes carboxylic acid which releases one H[sup]+[/sup] ion, driving down pH. ---
**Author:** ![Find\_Friends](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@Find\_Friends](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Find_Friends)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2015, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acidic-oceans/729206/11 "2015-08-29T01:35:11Z")
I’m back online in the usual way, at a community center. It may seem that I jumped on a sort of bandwagon just because there is literature out there, but I “believe” all such claims are subject to double-edge research and meaningful debate. In case anyone is wondering about my convictions re AGW, I “believe” it to be true in essentiais, and the only recent tweaking in my mind is that maybe FXMastermind (with others here) has a point about the Earth not responding as predicted. Who was that skeptcal maverick who wondered aloud about sufficient compunction in “everyone” else’s research so he did his own? He concluded that Climate Change. involving overal warming, was indeed caused principally by human indusrty involving tremendous fossil fuel burning. That’s the main reason I “believe” in AGW. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2015, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acidic-oceans/729206/12 "2015-08-29T01:52:51Z")
> [@Find\_Friends](#): > > I’m back online in the usual way, at a community center. > > It may seem that I jumped on a sort of bandwagon just because there is literature out there, but I “believe” all such claims are subject to double-edge research and meaningful debate. > > In case anyone is wondering about my convictions re AGW, I “believe” it to be true in essentiais, and the only recent tweaking in my mind is that maybe FXMastermind (with others here) has a point about the Earth not responding as predicted. As predicted by whom? The evidence is that the contrarian papers that many deniers use have a few things in common: [http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/08/26/3695477/climate-scientists-cant-recreate-bad-science/](http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/08/26/3695477/climate-scientists-cant-recreate-bad-science/) > [@](#): > > The scientific consensus behind man-made global warming is overwhelming: multiple studies have noted a 97 percent consensus among climate scientists that the Earth is warming and human activities are primarily responsible. Scientists are as sure that global warming is real — and driven by human activity — as they are that smoking cigarettes leads to lung cancer. > > But what if all of those scientists are wrong? What if the tiny sliver of scientists that don’t believe global warming is happening, or that human activities are causing it — that two to three percent of climate contrarians — are right? > > That’s the hypothetical question that a new study, authored by Rasmus Benestad, Dana Nuccitelli, Stephan Lewandowsky, Katharine Hayhoe, Hans Olav Hygen, Rob van Dorland, and John Cook, sought to answer. Published last week in the journal Theoretical and Applied Climatology, the study examined 38 recent examples of contrarian climate research — published research that takes a position on anthropogenic climate change but doesn’t attribute it to human activity — and tried to replicate the results of those studies. The studies weren’t selected randomly — according to lead author Rasmus Benestad, the studies selected were highly visible contrarian studies that had all arrived at a different conclusion than consensus climate studies. The question the researchers wanted to know was — why? > [@](#): > > The most common mistake shared by the contrarian studies was cherry picking, in which studies ignored data or contextual information that did not support the study’s ultimate conclusions. In a piece for the Guardian, study co-author Dana Nuccitelli cited one particular contrarian study that supported the idea that moon and solar cycles affect the Earth’s climate. When the group tried to replicate that study’s findings for the paper, they found that the study’s model only worked for the particular 4,000-year cycle that the study looked at. > > “However, for the 6,000 years’ worth of earlier data they threw out, their model couldn’t reproduce the temperature changes,” Nuccitelli wrote. “The authors argued that their model could be used to forecast future climate changes, but there’s no reason to trust a model forecast if it can’t accurately reproduce the past.” > > The researchers also found that a number of the contrarian studies simply ignored the laws of physics. For example, in 2007 and 2010 papers, Ferenc Miskolczi argued that the greenhouse effect had become saturated, a theory that had been disproved in the early 1900s. > > “As we note in the supplementary material to our paper, Miskolczi left out some important known physics in order to revive this century-old myth,” Nuccitelli wrote. > > In other cases, the authors found, researchers would include extra parameters not based in the laws of physics to make a model fit their conclusion. > [@Find\_Friends](#): > > Who was that skeptcal maverick who wondered aloud about sufficient compunction in “everyone” else’s research so he did his own? He concluded that Climate Change. involving overal warming, was indeed caused principally by human indusrty involving tremendous fossil fuel burning. That was Richard Muller. > **[Richard Muller: I Was Wrong on Global Warming](https://thinc.blog/2015/01/09/richard-muller-i-was-wrong-on-global-warming/)** > > Physicist Richard Muller became a hero to the climate denial community a few years ago, after saying some pretty harsh things about climate science, and scientists. He started the Berkeley Earth Su… > [@](#): > > Physicist Richard Muller became a hero to the climate denial community a few years ago, after saying some pretty harsh things about climate science, and scientists. > He started the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project to double check estimates of global warming and, in his mind, answer the criticisms of existing temperature reconstructions. Not surprisingly to the mainstream community, he came up with the same answer as all other groups over the last 40 years. The planet is warming, and the only plausible explanation is increased greenhouse gases. > [@Find\_Friends](#): > > That’s the main reason I “believe” in AGW. That is good, now keep in mind that there are many more reasons, and they do not depend on computer models and a lot of this was discussed for more than a century. As for the earth not warming as predicted: > **[ICYMI - there's no stopping the rise in surface temperature!](https://blog.hotwhopper.com/2015/08/icymi-theres-no-stopping-rise-in.html)** > > Global warming & climate change. Eavesdropping on climate science deniers, their weird pseudo-science and crazy conspiracy theories. > [@](#): > > In case you missed it (ICYMI), a couple of new papers have been published recently, demonstrating that there has not been any “pause” or “hiatus” in surface temperature in recent years. Yes, the rate of increase wasn’t as high as it has been in some other periods. However these papers demonstrate that there was nothing different from what can be expected from a warming trend with interannual variability imposed on it. > Change points of global temperature: Cahill, Rahmstorf and Parnell > > If you’re a fan of [realclimate.org](http://realclimate.org) (the benchmark of world best practice in climate blogs), then you might remember the change point analysis written up there last December, by Stefan Rahmstorf. The article was called “Recent global warming trends: significant or paused or what?” This new work looks to be on the same topic written as a peer-reviewed paper in IOP Science: “Change points of global temperature”. It’s open access so you can read it at your leisure. > As the authors point out (my emphasis): > > > [@](#): > > > > ``` > > While close to 50 papers have already been published on the 'hiatus' or 'pause' (Lewandowsky et al, in press), the important question of **whether** there has been a detectable change in the warming trend (rather than just variability in short-term trends due to stochastic temperature variations) has received little attention. > > > > ``` > > The bottom line is that there was no discontinuity in surface temperature indicating a statistically significant change point in recent years. > [@](#): > > Next time some denier tries to claim that global warming stopped 16 or 18 or 19 or 23 years ago, you can now point them to these two papers 🙂 Or you could tell them that last year was the hottest on record, and this year is shaping up to come close - maybe even beat it. > > Data source: GISS NASA > > There’s not been any “hiatus” in surface temperature. There have probably been some interesting things happening around the world. That’s only to be expected as we enter unchartered territory by rapidly heating up the planet. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2015, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acidic-oceans/729206/13 "2015-08-29T02:42:42Z")
An entire debate in one post … It would be foolish to proceed with fossil fuels without safeguards. These “contrarians” **GIGO** speaks of are seemingly unaware of the profit potential that would come with installing these safeguards. I can’t tell you how pleased I am with how cheap this wind energy is even without government subsidies. AGW or not, ditching this fossil fuel crap is the way to go. ---
**Author:** ![Find\_Friends](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@Find\_Friends](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Find_Friends)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2015, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acidic-oceans/729206/14 "2015-08-29T04:30:38Z")
Okay, GIGO. I’ve been wrong on things so many times over the decades that mayhaps I’ve developed the bad habit of “bending over backwards” to be some extreme version of “open-minded.” And as [Thurber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Thurber) concluded his short story about the recovered alcoholic, you can hurt yourself as much by falling over backward as by falling on your face! \* BTW, thanks for the answer re the formerly skeptcal researcher. * * * - “You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.” - James Thurber from “The Bear Who Let it Alone” > **[The Quotations Page: Quote from James Thurber](http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/588.html)** > > "You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward." ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2015, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acidic-oceans/729206/15 "2015-08-30T07:01:57Z")
As I’ve mentioned before, ocean acidification may end up as a more serious problem than AGW. This is because there may be a relatively inexpensive way to reduce global warming – inject coolants, e.g. sulfate aerosols, into the atmosphere – but there is no easy way to increase ocean pH. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2015, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acidic-oceans/729206/16 "2015-08-30T18:38:46Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > As I’ve mentioned before, ocean acidification may end up as a more serious problem than AGW. This is because there may be a relatively inexpensive way to reduce global warming – inject coolants, e.g. sulfate aerosols, into the atmosphere – but there is no easy way to increase ocean pH. For once I must respectfully disagree with you. The idea of geo-engineering the climate is in the realm of pure speculation and, in my view, dangerous speculation at that – dangerous because it provides the illusion that there may be an easy fix to an urgent problem, and because in the unlikely event that any such schemes were tried, the unintended consequences could be disastrous. You mention sulfate aerosols. To take that example, that would indeed contribute to mitigation of warming, but its also the primary cause of acid rain, something we worked long and hard to clean up. It’s not going to help either ocean acidity or anything else in our environment to have sulphuric acid raining down on us. There is simply no such scheme that is viable, non-polluting, and free of potentially huge unintended consequences. Nor is it clear that such a scheme would solve one of the big problems of unbalanced forcings, climate destabilization. As I see it, ocean acidification is just one symptom of a broad range of problems caused by AGW, and we need to address all of them. The oceans are a large part of our ecosystem, but AGW affects _ **the entirety** _ of our ecosystem. It affects atmosphere and ocean circulation, regional climates, climate stability, food crop viability, biodiversity, extreme weather and damaging storms, pests and disease – it affects everything that life itself depends on, and there’s not much we can do about outside the realm of science fiction except to reduce the greenhouse gases that are the root cause. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2015, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acidic-oceans/729206/17 "2015-08-31T14:58:38Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > The idea of geo-engineering the climate is in the realm of pure speculation and, in my view, dangerous speculation at that – dangerous because it provides the illusion that there may be an easy fix to an urgent problem, and because in the unlikely event that any such schemes were tried, the unintended consequences could be disastrous. You mention sulfate aerosols. To take that example, that would indeed contribute to mitigation of warming, but its also the primary cause of acid rain, something we worked long and hard to clean up. It’s not going to help either ocean acidity or anything else in our environment to have sulphuric acid raining down on us. > > There is simply no such scheme that is viable, non-polluting, and free of potentially huge unintended consequences. Nor is it clear that such a scheme would solve one of the big problems of unbalanced forcings, climate destabilization. > > As I see it, ocean acidification is just one symptom of a broad range of problems caused by AGW, and we need to address all of them. The oceans are a large part of our ecosystem, but AGW affects _ **the entirety** _ of our ecosystem. It affects atmosphere and ocean circulation, regional climates, climate stability, food crop viability, biodiversity, extreme weather and damaging storms, pests and disease – it affects everything that life itself depends on, and there’s not much we can do about outside the realm of science fiction except to reduce the greenhouse gases that are the root cause. I mentioned sulfate aerosols just for an “exisence proof.” I’ll guess there are cost-effective cooling agents with much less chemical effects. But on the whole I’m sure your views are correct. Treat my post as a predictive warning. A few decades from now, when the adverse effects of climate change are undeniable, the same group pimping the deniers today, allied with insurance companies who foresee that millions of houses will need to be replaced, will propose aerosol coolants as a way to reduce temperatures while still continuing the carbon-burning party. I think scientists should be ready to answer them. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAlecCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/67e7ee/32.png) [@SmartAlecCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAlecCat)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2015, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acidic-oceans/729206/18 "2015-08-31T15:43:43Z")
Here’s an authoritative source: [National Climate Assessment](http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/regions/oceans#statement-16745) > [@](#): > > The ocean currently absorbs about a quarter of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere, leading to ocean acidification that will alter marine ecosystems in dramatic yet uncertain ways. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2015, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acidic-oceans/729206/19 "2015-08-31T16:46:52Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > I mentioned sulfate aerosols just for an “exisence proof.” I’ll guess there are cost-effective cooling agents with much less chemical effects. > > But on the whole I’m sure your views are correct. Treat my post as a predictive warning. A few decades from now, when the adverse effects of climate change are undeniable, the same group pimping the deniers today, allied with insurance companies who foresee that millions of houses will need to be replaced, will propose aerosol coolants as a way to reduce temperatures while still continuing the carbon-burning party. > > I think scientists should be ready to answer them. As I pointed in past threads the saddest thing regarding the deniers is that to reliably calculate the amounts needed to do effective geoengineering means that we do have to then consult the experts that work with computer models. A big contradictory item from many deniers is that at the same time they continue to disparage computer modeling when applied to climate projections they seem to think that the same climate scientists that work with models are the beesnees when the time comes to add aerosol particles on purpose if we let the problem fester.