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Reply With QuoteIt is misleading and alarmist to say that the oceans are becoming "more acidic". They are not acidic at all so they can't be getting more acidic. Seawater is, of course, alkaline. They may be becoming slightly less alkaline.
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Governor
Ocean acidification worst in 300 million years, study finds - CSMonitor.com
The oceans are becoming more acidic faster than they have in the past 300 million years, a period that includes four mass extinctions, researchers have found.
Then, as is happening now, increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere warmed the planet and made the oceans more acidic. These changes are associated with major shifts in climate and mass extinctions.
But while past increases in the atmosphere's carbon dioxide levels resulted from volcanoes and other natural causes, today that spike is due to human activities, the scientists note.
"What we're doing today really stands out," lead researcher Bärbel Hönisch, a paleoceanographer at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said in a news release. "We know that life during past ocean acidification events was not wiped out — new species evolved to replace those that died off. But if industrial carbon emissions continue at the current pace, we may lose organisms we care about — coral reefs, oysters, salmon." [Humans Causing 6th Mass Extinction]
As the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases, oceans absorb that carbon dioxide, which turns into a carbon acid. As a result the pH — a measure of acidity — drops, meaning the water has become more acidic. This dissolves the carbonates needed by some organisms, like corals, oysters or the tiny snails salmon eat.
In their review, published Thursday (March 1) in the journal Science, Hönisch and colleagues found the closest modern parallel about 56 millions ago in what is called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, when atmospheric carbon concentrations doubled, pushing up global temperatures. Extinctions in the deep sea accompanied this shift. (The PETM occurred about 9 million years after the dinosaurs went extinct.)
But, now, the ocean is acidifying at least 10 times faster than it did 56 million years ago, according to Hönisch.
First of all: This is a report by real scientists. If anybody here wants to contest the report, please put togeather a study and submit it to a scientific journal for peer review.
Second: Rush Limbaugh is not a scientist
There is no question that that right wing ideologues will attack these scientists but at some point we should really listen to the scientists. The right now acknowledges that global warming is happening and instead of denying it, they have shifted to arguing about the cause. This particular study seems like it is specifically about how the PH of the ocean is changed by the level of C02 in the atmosphere. I know that there have been several here in this forum that have agreed with the right wing plank that C02 does not cause a problem and the atmosphere can absorb it with no problem.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Member
It is misleading and alarmist to say that the oceans are becoming "more acidic". They are not acidic at all so they can't be getting more acidic. Seawater is, of course, alkaline. They may be becoming slightly less alkaline.
Secretary of Defense
That statement makes no sense at all. If the ocean went from an average pH of 8.25 to 8.14, it is still alkaline but it did indeed become more acidic which is exactly the same as "less alkaline".
Ocean acidification - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Change in sea water acidity pH caused by human created CO2 between the 1700s and the 1990s
Last edited by Formaldehyde; 03-02-2012 at 03:51 PM.
Florida is the Mecca of rednecks. No offense to Mecca. Stephen Colbert
Governor
Originally Posted by Brexx
You are hitting on two separate issues. On the "acidic" issue, it would be "less basic" but that refers more to the direction you are coming from. The change is towards being acidic and from the lay perspective, it probably is easier to understand "more acidic" as oposed to "less basic".
As far as your claim that it might only be "slightly" less acidic, or whatever term you choose, that is where you differ from the scientists. They do not consider it to be "slight". You are welcome to put your view out for peer review but in the meantime I am going to defer to the scientists' opinion unless they are proven wrong by other scientists.
Secretary of Defense
They mean exactly the same thing. Ask any chemist, or anybody who understands high school chemistry for that matter.
Last edited by Formaldehyde; 03-02-2012 at 04:24 PM.
Florida is the Mecca of rednecks. No offense to Mecca. Stephen Colbert
Secretary of Defense
The question I would have is this.
How do they know there have been 4 Mass extinctions? What are the criteria this is based on?
Tieing this to Co2 which some scientists claim is more of a response rather than a precursor to warming. Additionally the issue that AGW is still not settled should be considered.
The oceans going more acidic or less alkaline which ever way you want to say it could be cyclic and considering there are many factors in geology of the world that would affect this as well.
I think there are many questions left unanswered in that article. The other thing that I see when I follow the link and do some googling is that this paper/article is not yet peer reviewed which means that they might have some numbers off.
My guns wont be illegal, they will only be undocumented.
I am male, white, straight, Christian, Conservative how else can I offend you today.
Governor
Right. There are always more questions to be answered. Sometimes the only way we can answer those questions beyond any doubt whatsoever is to do an experiment. In this case we are doing an experiment with the environment by releasing C02 in to the atmpsphere. I guess maybe if the oceans develops huge dead spots and there is a huge die-off of marine life, then we could haved a more definite answer. All we can do at this point is wait and see. Of course no matter what happens, there will always be questions.
Secretary of State
The linked article says this: "In their review, published Thursday (March 1) in the journal Science, Hönisch and colleagues found the closest modern parallel about 56 millions ago in what is called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, when atmospheric carbon concentrations doubled..."
The Journal Science is not only peer reviewed, it's "one of the world's top scientific journals."
Joint Chiefs of Staff Member
As I said, it is misleading and alarmist to describe "less alkaline" as "more acidic".That statement makes no sense at all. If the ocean went from an average pH of 8.25 to 8.14, it is still alkaline but it did indeed become more acidic which is exactly the same as "less alkaline".
Ocean acidification - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The oceans are not fucking acidic. Any kid knows that. So how can they be " more acidic"?
Its alarmist language that anybody should be able to recognize.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Member
If the public can't understand "less basic" what do you think they are going to make of "more acidic"?
Its alarmist language and it is a lie. The oceans are not even acidic let alone "more acidic".
Governor
You already said that and it was explained. Lets forget about the grammar for a moment and focus on the actual discussion; Do you have a non-cyrptic opinion about the study or the scientist's opinions?
President
Or about a 40% increase in acidity, if you want to call that "slight".
the ph scale is logarithmic.
U.S. Senator
I'm on the right and I don't believe that the vast majority of the warming that we've had in the last 60 or so years is from the extra CO2 put in the air from humans.
And then of course, there is "the cause," a phrase that one can find spoken a few times in the climategate 2.0 emails. What exactly is "the cause?"
Regarding this study and in particular, the article you quoted, I don't think you caught the misleading sentence from it. Here it is:
Do you know what that tells me? It tells me that the rate of increase of acidity is occurring faster. However, the amount of CO2 that we are putting in the air combined with the natural sources of CO2 is way less than past levels. For example, the following picture from a PNAS peer reviewed paper shows that about 300 million years ago, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was about 4x as higher as today:The oceans are becoming more acidic faster than they have in the past 300 million years, a period that includes four mass extinctions, researchers have found.
source:
Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels for the last 500 million years
And this graph of past CO2 is the most conservative (i.e., it shows the lowest amount of CO2 in the past history of the world) one I have found. The other few graphs I have seen of past CO2 levels show it over 10x higher.
One other comment on this graph above. When CO2 levels were high, temps were low and when CO2 levels were low, temps were high. Click on the source link I provided and read it for yourself.
Finally, that graph shows that the current levels, when compared to the past 500 million years, is abnormally low. And to my knowledge, there were no cases of runaway warming tipping the world over the precipice during those 500 million years.
Kramer
“We should never be more vigilant than at the moment a new dogma is being installed. … The left has been swept along, entranced by the allure of weather as revolutionary agent, naïvely conceiving of global warming as a crisis that will force radical social changes on capitalism.”
TheNation, June 7, 2007
Secretary of State
Denialism in its most blatant form.
Meanwhile, turning to related topics...
A new study conducted by NASA finds that Arctic ice is melting at a rate far faster than previously expected, increasing the rate of release of a number of deadly chemicals.
The study, published and conducted by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, finds the oldest and thickest arctic sea ice is disappearing faster than younger and thinner ice at the edges, leading to the release of certain chemicals.
The average thickness of the arctic sea ice cover is declining because it is rapidly losing its thick component, the multiyear ice,” said NASA scientists in a statement. “At the same time, the surface temperature in the arctic is going up, which results in a shorter ice-forming season.
NASA officials found that the extent of perennial ice, ice that has survived at least one summer, is shrinking at a rate of 12.2 percent per decade, while its area is declining at a rate of 13.5 percent per decade. The rate of melt is the highest yet recorded by NASA.
[...]
The study was funded by NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the International Polar Year Program, Environment Canada, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada, the European Space Agency, the State of Bremen, the German Aerospace Center, and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites.
Secretary of State
The two are highly correlated.
Not CO2 and warming, although that's highly correlated too.
No, I'm talking about being "on the right" and "don't believe" in global warming.
Highly correlated.
The GOP. The anti-science party.
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