CO2 and ocean acidification

[Ben D]

At the request of some Ausfish members I have started a thread to see how many members understand the relationship between atmospheric CO2 and ocean pH, and how this is independent of the global warming debate. The only aspects the two issues share is the sources of the CO2 are the same for both. Personally I have no opinion on whether the recent warming trend is anthropogenic or not, but know there have been large temperature swings over geological time periods in the past, so we should plan ahead for sea level rise in case it occurs, gear up for more barra around Brisbane in the future and be done with it......

But it is a chemistry certainty that acidification of the ocean will have to occur if atmospheric CO2 is increased. This is because the ocean is the sink, and CO2 + H2O = carbonic acid. Average ocean pH has already dropped from the pre industrial 8.25-8.3 to approx 8.1 pH units, a well established statistic. Doesn’t seem like much , but pH is a logarithmic scale, so that’s actually quite a drop already. The change is not uniform however, with the pH drop generally being more evident at higher latitudes. The problem is organisms that calcify their skeletons (particularly planktonic larvae) tend not to make it through if they are reared in water with lower pH. The ocean pH has been stable for so long, it is likely that they will find it hard to adapt. This could cause real problems lower in the food chain for some plankton, molluscs and the like, as well as for corals and anything else that needs CO3+ ions for skeletons etc. Hard to tell the extent of what might happen, so its all one big global experiment.

For those who have fish tanks, they will know you get pH drop if you put lots of fish in a small tank with no water exchange. Why ? because the fish produce CO2 via respiration. Simply water chemistry folks.

Does everyone agree that this is very different to a warming/cooling debate ?

[tunaticer]

It is an interesting topic I have read about quite a few times before.
Varied ideas on ecology changes and survival rates are also interesting.
I take the view that regardless of mankinds influence in this CO2 increase, it will have a very small contribution to the impacts that will arrive.

Every single heavily active volcano delivers massive releases of CO2 into the air that far surpass man's delivery per year hundreds of times over. Volcanoes have been creating this cycle of acidity and alkalinity since the world began, life has struggled and flourished in all of its levels, life forms die out at either end of the spectrum and that is nature. No doubt there will be periods to come that will wipe out mankind as it has done with life forms in the past.

The fact that the sea levels will rise is extremely trivial if you want to look at it from a nature point of view. Australia did have a massive inland sea in the past so it will be nothing new to nature, to humans living here it will be. Still entirely trivial.

There is no right or wrong and we are simply the current inhabitants living our lives in the environment we know. Who knows, an entire plate on the earths crust could invert creating unknown extinction. Anything is possible.

[deepfried]

Does everyone agree that this is very different to a warming/cooling debate ?

Would have a clue really but i have the popcorn out for this thread. Thanks for the thread and it will be interesting to see the scientific responses.

[GB61]

[QUOTE]Every single heavily active volcano delivers massive releases of CO2 into the air that far surpass man's delivery per year hundreds of times over. http://http://www.newscientist.com/a...to-matter.html

[deepfried]

[quote=GB61;1278510]

Every single heavily active volcano delivers massive releases of CO2 into the air that far surpass man's delivery per year hundreds of times over. http://http://www.newscientist.com/a...to-matter.html

Did you read that link at all ? or am i not getting what you mean with your post. I read a heading that said "volcanic misunderstanding".

Edit : now i get your post i just didnt read the one before yours. The quote bit on your post didnt come out right and i misread your post thinking that you used that link to prove that volcano line. Sorry

[Lovey80]

After all these years of thinking it was the ammonia/nitrite/nitrate from fish "waste" that caused the PH drop. Learn something new every day!

[PhilIN]

Greetings Ben

I understand your CO2 + H20 discussion when related to a bathtub, even a swimming pool.

However what I don't understand is how global decisions can be inferred purely on localised testing. As I see it they are testing the GBR and saying that acidification is real and occurring ... it may well be at a LOCAL level, surely not on a global level?

The variables I see, in no particular order:

The sheer variability of the world's oceans from arctic oceans to tropical oceans to antarctic oceans .... I find it very hard to believe that the ocean has a UNIFORM Ph.

Further on the previous point ... the sheer variability in the vertical depth of the oceans, with the massive difference in temperature, amount of light and so on penetrating to these depths..... again I find it hard to belive there is a UNIFORMITY in this.

Further to GB61's comment re volcanoes. There are far more volcanoes releasing the CO2 submersed than above ground .. a far more efficient method I would thought of converting CO2 + H2O to H2CO3 (carbonic acid).

HOWEVER Carbonic acid is only a WEAK acid compared to say sulphuric acid which is produced when we go to the same volcano emitting rotten egg gas (think Rotorua) added to water gives sulphuric. .. a FAR more potent acidifier.

So at some point these 'claims' of acidification MUST be averages or medians of test sites surely??

I do NOT believe in the concept that if Australia dropped its CO2 emissions to 0% then Australia would be saved from 'climate change' ... this is some sort of bizarre furphy spread by the Greens as far as I see.

By 2030 the population of India/China and Indonesia will have increased by 600million, Australia's will have increased by 4 million, in a country the size of China.

1. Australia's emissions will increase by 80 million tonnes (20 tonnes/head)
Chiina/India/ Indonesia will increase by AT LEAST 1,200 million tonnes (2 tonnes per head and rising rapidly).
So let's destroy OUR industry with a carbon tax.

2. Over 40 years I have travelled extensively in sub-Saharan Africa and India. Does anyone contemplate a MAJOR physical threat from population expansion in these countries plus China AND Indonesia (remember Sukarno anyone??). I hope that peoiple do NOT make the mistake of thinking all these countries have jungle bunny armed forces ... Libya alone is twice as big as Australia's.

3. I REALLY hope for my grandkids sake that the armed forces are NOT run down to save Australia from Climate Change

[Ben D]

This looks a reasonably objective take on the subject from Scientific American

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...ing-ocean-life

As you can see, the process is by no means uniform, but the underlying chemistry is pretty well established. Ocean turnover will dictate the rate of uptake in different regions, but it seems the poles are showing it first, so maybe krill are the ones to look at for early signs. Extent of the likely changes ? Only time will tell. But if you have ever seen what reduced pH does to larval oysters, and even adult oyster shells, its a bit of a worry.

PhilIN, I take it you are not necessarily denying the reality of the chemistry, but mainly touching on the reality of the politics of the response. That is where the two subjects (acidification and warming) meet. This shows its on the political side where people seem to get acidification and warming mixed up. The science of the acidification is well established and emperically based.

I think hanging out for a large volcanic eruption to try to point the finger back to nature might be stretching it, as large volcanic eruptions tend to have other undesirable effects that we wouldn't really want either.

[PinHead]

Greetings Ben

I understand your CO2 + H20 discussion when related to a bathtub, even a swimming pool.

However what I don't understand is how global decisions can be inferred purely on localised testing. As I see it they are testing the GBR and saying that acidification is real and occurring ... it may well be at a LOCAL level, surely not on a global level?

The variables I see, in no particular order:

The sheer variability of the world's oceans from arctic oceans to tropical oceans to antarctic oceans .... I find it very hard to believe that the ocean has a UNIFORM Ph.

Further on the previous point ... the sheer variability in the vertical depth of the oceans, with the massive difference in temperature, amount of light and so on penetrating to these depths..... again I find it hard to belive there is a UNIFORMITY in this.

Further to GB61's comment re volcanoes. There are far more volcanoes releasing the CO2 submersed than above ground .. a far more efficient method I would thought of converting CO2 + H2O to H2CO3 (carbonic acid).

HOWEVER Carbonic acid is only a WEAK acid compared to say sulphuric acid which is produced when we go to the same volcano emitting rotten egg gas (think Rotorua) added to water gives sulphuric. .. a FAR more potent acidifier.

So at some point these 'claims' of acidification MUST be averages or medians of test sites surely??

I do NOT believe in the concept that if Australia dropped its CO2 emissions to 0% then Australia would be saved from 'climate change' ... this is some sort of bizarre furphy spread by the Greens as far as I see.

By 2030 the population of India/China and Indonesia will have increased by 600million, Australia's will have increased by 4 million, in a country the size of China.

1. Australia's emissions will increase by 80 million tonnes (20 tonnes/head)
Chiina/India/ Indonesia will increase by AT LEAST 1,200 million tonnes (2 tonnes per head and rising rapidly).
So let's destroy OUR industry with a carbon tax.

2. Over 40 years I have travelled extensively in sub-Saharan Africa and India. Does anyone contemplate a MAJOR physical threat from population expansion in these countries plus China AND Indonesia (remember Sukarno anyone??). I hope that peoiple do NOT make the mistake of thinking all these countries have jungle bunny armed forces ... Libya alone is twice as big as Australia's.

3. I REALLY hope for my grandkids sake that the armed forces are NOT run down to save Australia from Climate Change

I was with you until point 2..what does the armed forces have to do with acidification.

[PADDLES]

So what's your take on it all Ben?

Given that the science is undisputed and that CO2 reacts and causes ph to lower in sea water, maybe at varying levels both vertically and horizontally. Will a reduction in CO2 emmissions by humans make a measurable difference to ocean acidification given that there are emmissions of CO2 made naturally.

I understand fully your desire to seperate this effect from any global warming debate. Once explained, the two become totally different issues. But as you say, politically the two become one when it comes to the game of playing people's emotions.

[Ben D]

The scientific american link was pretty objective until the bottom of page 4, where the reporter declared some crap about marine protected areas being able to help

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...an-life&page=4

What rubbish. Another example of sound science being undermined on the political side of things when time comes to doing something about something.

Paddles, while it is correct that clathrates and volcanoes can emit huge quantities of CO2, a risk analysis would suggest that these big events are very rare. Even just 1 million years is a long time to wait for them on a human scale. To me it seems that stabilisation of atmospheric CO2 would stabilise the pH drop fairly rapidly. That is the good thing about chemistry, it responds to rules.

Benefits for carrying on business as usual will have to be weighed up against costs to the ocean environment for letting pH drop below 8 within the next century, and it will be indsidious things, like lack of planktonic feed and habitat loss, that will do the damage to fish stocks, fish being relatively robust to pH change themselves. As a fisher, I think it would be nice not to let the pH drop much further, but for the reasons outlined by PhilIN, I don't have much hope that will occur.

[TimiBoy]

Average ocean pH has already dropped from the pre industrial 8.25-8.3 to approx 8.1 pH units, a well established statistic.

I would really like to see the source(s) of this statistic. Given seasonal and geographic variations of 0.5 or even more in some areas on the scale are the norm, how anyone has been able to reliably establish the "Global Average pH..." well, pardon me for being skeptical about that claim.

The tonnage of CO2 in the atmosphere vs the tonnage in the ocean. About 3,000 gigatonnes (3.6 * 10^15 kg) in the atmosphere, and around 50 times that in the ocean. So if we increase the atmospheric amount of CO2 by 100%, and Man is responsible for 3.4% of that annual production, we will potentially increase the ocean's CO2 content by 2%, and Man's proportion of that Ocean increase would be 0.068% - if atmospheric CO2 doubles. That is not enough to produce a statistically significant change in pH - if atmospheric CO2 doubles. So I really want to see the source(s) of the claim...

Quite a lot of research has been done into the impact of reduced pH on various creatures. Some don't do so well, some do really well (but you never hear about those, do you?) Corals and most other Sea Creatures' Families were evolving around 500 million years ago when atmospheric CO2 was 5 times or more what it is now and doing really, really well; the Oceans were a little more acidic then, too. Life doing what life does.

The grim reality for all those Scientists grubbing up grants to study this, and all those Governments using it to extend control over us and rip our pay packets away, and all those Authors writing books designed to scare us to death and fleece what remains of our pay packets is that Nature is responsible for the vast majority of CO2 production, and Nature is therefore driving the vast majority of any decrease in Ocean pH, and Nature is a very, very naughty Lady, needing to be taxed, regulated, and beaten over the head with a stick until she realises it is Man who controls the Planet, not the other way around.

/sarc off.

Does everyone agree that this is very different to a warming/cooling debate ?

It's not a warming/cooling debate. It's about power and money - and isn't the debate over and the Science settled? It's really good at scaring the pants off people, selling newspapers, and generating research grants, and dreaming up great excuses to make Government bigger, more onerous, and more wasteful.

Tim

[Ben D]

I see some people can come to strong conclusions without reading, and understanding, the evidence first.
http://www.int-res.com/articles/theme/m373p249.pdf
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/48/18848.full.pdf+html
http://dx.doi.org/10.1180%2Fminmag.2008.072.1.359
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v407/n6802/full/407364a0.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v454/n7200/full/nature07051.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v437/n7059/full/nature04095.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/320/5874/336
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/277/1693/2553
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/about-antarctica/fact-files/climate-change/ocean-acidification-and-the-southern-ocean
We see reductions in seawater pH within a few hours of adding CO2 to the air above it, or putting large numbers of fish into it. I can vouch that water is a sink for CO2. Get some pH test kits and a bottle of industrial CO2 and do your own experiments if you need to. The weather is good today, I thought everyone would be out fishing , I'm trying to get a report due today away to free up some time for an evening session on some tuna.

[FNQCairns]

I find it unique that in this day and age of simple litmus tests and pool water testing kits that the people using this modern technological understanding that at the same time they take for granted all pertinent measurement's more than 80 odd years old are not made trough peer reviewed solid scientific processes through technology as the tool but made made through extrapolation (guesses)....extrapolation that still to this day receives the same treatment as historically CGAW always did in outcome probability.

It seems today that after being beat back time again with science the newest alter that life on earth hinges on is positive feedback loops.

It's interesting that climate data 20 years ago was widely understood to easily be up to 3deg c out in any data set, yet today they smooth that over or quite frankly ignore those outliers that do not suit the deigned outcome.

Once in the water co2 comes in contact with a multitude of other ions and cation exchnge, super deep depth's and also the human impact of false cult like belife systems in co2 lifecyle.

Seriously first to find that tiny catastrophic Gemstone within the mountain of opinionated Garbage science, one need to start tunneling right from the edge, there is no short cut, shortcuts make for poor assumptions.

It's simple temperature is the driver of co2 levels, the ocean is the 700-850 year lag maintainer of the original cyclic temperature increase when the driver disappears (temperature decreases) the oceans lag 700+ again pulling co2 with it, the resolution of todays sensor technology proves this beyond any doubt...been accepted for near 10 years now, killed off CAGW dead and then AGW now CC is on it's last legs .....co2 is insignificant in anything catastrophic or even basic we engender....be far more worried for humanity and nature because of rogue asteroids IMHO, i am!

[TimiBoy]

I see some people haven't yet realised that their tendency to patronise doesn't help their credibility...

And sorry I've disappointed you by not going fishing. I'm going away early tomorrow, so I have work to do to prepare.

I'm also reading. I do a lot of that, too. I'd really appreciate relevant quotes from these papers, as I'm a busy man, but the first yields some items of interest, almost immediately, and I quote:

"We argue that it is unclear as to how, and to what extent, ocean acidification will influence calcium carbonate calcification and dissolution, and affect changes in community structure of present-day coral reefs."

I'll translate: "We have no idea what this means." Then

"CO2 gas influx and efflux between oceans and atmosphere are large terms in the overall oceanic carbon budget, with substantial errors"

Again, let me translate: "We have no real idea whether acidification is truly occurring." Then,

the scientific community has observed an estimated decrease of 0.1 pH units in the surface ocean in the last 100 yr

Um, where's is the 0.15-0.2 you claim is generally accepted? Not by Atkinson and Cuet, it would seem. And given Anthropogenic CO2 has really only ramped up since 1976 (allegedly), what happened in the 65 years before that? What was driving it up? And the paper states it's an estimate. So we can estimate the past, but we are certain of the future? Right. I'd better get some of these people to advise my Stockbroker, I'm gonna be rich...

Of course so much "Science" these days relies on dreadfully incomplete knowledge. This first paper claims pH will fall another 0.3 to 0.4 units in the next 100 years. Based on what? MODELS. Incomplete models, which do not yet even marginally understand the intricacies of chemical and biological buffers in the Ocean, or the dissipation of surface CO2 into the depths. They make more assumptions and use more "mays mights and coulds" than I'd have thought possible until recently. This is not proof. It is guesswork, and it is historically, every time, in every genre, proven wrong. Man is very poor at making predictions. Very poor indeed. Indeed using "Scenarios" had made him worse. Nothing has changed with this stuff.

Of course another issue you've just run up the pole is Nature Magazine. It's notoriously difficult to get through Pal (sorry Peer) Review at Nature (or anywhere else) if you don't conform to "The World's going to hell because of Man" mantra. Confirmation Bias.

Of course if atmospheric CO2 increases, it will be felt at the surface first. None of these "proofs" (I'm making a prediction here as I haven't read them all yet) discuss the fact that much of this CO2 will be carried downward by currents, and an equilibrium will be reached a lot earlier (as in CO2 will stop increasing at the surface) as CO2 "laden" water is carried down.

All I have time for right now. Sigh.

Tim