There’s the truth, then there’s the whole truth.
From a climate expert at NOAA, the study of ocean acidification is so young “they don’t have any data sets that show a direct effect of OA on population health” and they can’t name any place in the world that is definitely affected by it.
Steve Milloy at Junkscience.com FOI’d emails among NOAA scientists discussing a NY times op-ed draft.The editor was serving up an apocalyse:
…and he wanted all the dirt:
Can the authors give us more specific, descriptive images about how acidification has already affected the oceans?
Tony Thomas writes that Dr Shallin Busch, who works for NOAA’s Ocean Acidification Program discussed the draft of the article with fellow scientist Ms Applebaum. She warns that they can’t say that OA (Ocean Acidification) was definitely a problem anywhere at the moment:
Unfortunately, I can’t provide this information to you because it doesn’t exist. As I said in my last email, currently there are NO areas of the world that are severely degraded because of OA or even areas that we know are definitely affected by OA right now. If you want to use this type of language, you could write about the CO2 vent sites in Italy or Polynesia as examples of things to come. Sorry that I can’t be more helpful on this!
Busch admits that ocean acidification studies are immature, and the evidence is not there “yet”:
2) I think it is really important to resist the NYT editor’s impulse to say that OA is wreaking all sorts of havoc RIGHT NOW, because for ecological systems, we don’t yet have the evidence to say that. OA is a problem today because it is changing ocean chemistry so quickly. The vast majority of the biological impacts of OA will only occur under projected future chemistry conditions. Also, the study of the biological impacts of OA is so young that we don’t have any data sets that show a direct effect of OA on population health or trajectory. Best, Shallin..[4]
It’s good that Busch is trying to make the article more accurate, but when she does public Q and A’s on ocean acidification she doesn’t say things quite the same way:
NF: What is the single most important thing for people to know about ocean acidification?
SB: That ocean acidification is a problem for today, not just for the future. We know from earth’s history and from experiments that we’re doing in the lab that many marine species are sensitive to changes in ocean chemistry. So, acidification is a problem for marine ecosystems. We can take that a step further and say, well, why should we care about marine ecosystems? First of all, many societies value biodiversity. Furthermore, acidification’s potential effects on marine ecosystems are an economic concern. Acidification may impact fisheries and the jobs and revenue that depend on fisheries. This may raise food security issues. Ocean acidification is an environmental problem, it’s a potential economic issue, and it’s a potential food security issue. And it’s all those things today, not some distant day in the future.
Busch is probably speaking only her honest convictions, but we need more from scientists. It’s not enough to be technically correct, we need scientists who convey what we don’t know, what the present state is, and provide the uncertainties in the same terms, no matter who the audience is.
If scientists think headlines are gratuitous and exaggerated, they need to say so publicly. If editors are not publicly shamed for the hype, they will keep doing it.
Art Robinson discussed the special kind of honesty required for science:
At Caltech, in the 1950s and 1960s, intellectual honesty was rigorously taught – by example. There were no courses in this. The student was simply surrounded by people who always approached their work with complete honesty. Dishonesty in any action meant immediate expulsion from the campus by one’s peers. Sadly, this is no longer the case at Caltech today.
When a true scientist makes a statement to his nonscientist fellow citizens, he speaks only the truth as he perceives it and as it has been verified – not by hypothesis or by computer simulations, but by actual experiments and observations. Moreover, he strives to simultaneously express all of the weaknesses his statement may have as a result of the always limited data available and the ever present chance that his hypothetical interpretation of that data may be in error.
What was science is now grantmanship:
Gradually, over the next two generations, the private capital that had heretofore funded science, endowed scientific institutions and provided the intellectual freedom that is crucially important to successful scientific enquiry was seized through taxation and part of it was then passed to scientists in government “grants” and contracts.
Grantsmanship gradually became the most important “scientific” skill, and the amount of grant money a scientist commands is now, in most institutions, the most important parameter that determines his advancement. The new “scientist” rushes from meeting to meeting, furiously writes grant proposals, and strives to obtain news coverage of his latest “discoveries,” while leaving the actual research to technicians and students.
If scientists were telling the whole truth all the time, they wouldn’t mind if the public saw more of their emails.
Steve Malloy @ Junk Science notes:
“. . the New York Times initially rejected the op-ed for its U.S. print edition and web site, the e-mails show.”
Probably because it wasn’t dark and gloomy enough.
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If all climate scientists gave the whole truth most would be out of a job. The only way to climb up the greasy academic pole is to say something more far-fetched than anybody else, as providing balanced alternative perspectives is verboten.
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The problem lies in the scope of the statement being made.
If we consider a pipe that is releasing acidic waste into the sea, then that will impact the viability of molluscs in the immediate region. That is generally excepted, and is the reason for most western jurisdictions to impose controls on the disposal of waste.
So in specific situations the scientists are telling the truth. They have studied outflow of acidic waste into inshore environments, and it does kill shellfish.
The journalists then extrapolate that to the whole ocean, on the basis that, “any additional acid, anywhere, must make the oceans more acidic over time. It stands to reason.”
No, it does not. It is a lot more complex than that, and that is why scientists with integrity will refuse to answer leading questions that are destined for inclusion op-ed drafts.
It is not scientists who are the bad guys in this scenario, it is the journo’s.
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“it is not the scientists who are the bad guys….”
Rereke, yes it is! The e-mails show that they knew that their work was being distorted and they acquiesced (submitted).
I do not cast blame, for the cost of resistance is severe and I am not myself free of such subservient actions in my past. Now that I am beyond penalty it is easier to take the moral high ground but this illustrates that the extent of the corruption of science to the service of ideology has not reduced since the death of Lysenko. The saving grace is that when the global warming narrative no longer serves the political imperative (pretty soon I think), it will vanish faster than a Cheshire Cat and all its fellow travellers with it. Do not judge too harshly the small players.
Galileo often crops up on this (and many other ) blogs.
I am reminded of the last scene of Bertolt Brecht’s play when
the great man acquiesces to the inquisition;
Follower: ” unhappy is the land that has no heros”
Galileo; ” No – unhappy is the land that has need of heros”
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I bet no scientist yet has attempted and released a paper regarding this experiment:
Put some eggshell (calcium carbonate) into a bottle of soda water (no ocean could ever reach that level of saturation) and leave it for a month, maybe a year. The shell won’t magically dissolve.
And therein endeth the lesson for CAGWists.
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Well…. unfortunately it will dissolve. Its obvious you haven’t actually tried it.
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It might dissolve. Have you tried it? I will try it tomorrow.
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You need to screw the top back on to stop the CO2 escaping and will take some time but it does dissolve.
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I’ve tried it. No effect.
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And you must be right….right?
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If you do it with coke or other fizzy drinks it’ll dissolve because they add food acid.
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Never mind what we’re talking about here isn’t what the general public thinks of when they hear that word “acid”. Rain water and fresh water are considered “acidic”. And actually, the oceans are never expected to become acidic.
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A real life genuine bona fide scientist uses the term ‘Ocean Acidification’ in all seriousness.
It’s worse than anyone thought!
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Indeed it’s a lot worse than most people think. Far too many scientists have been getting away with anti-science enormously funded by taxpayer monies all over the world. I expect one day this whole global warming saga will be written down in history as by far the biggest scam of all time. I do hope a lot of scientists end up in prison. Many can swap stories with Bernard Madoff.
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The Australian Academy of Science’s Q&A on Climate Change 2010 makes two bald references to CO2 making the oceans more ‘acidic’ (p10 and 14).
The AAS updated version (2015) repeats one of the assertions and ramps the scare up further:
“Absorption of CO2 into the oceans causes “ocean acidification” impeding the shell formation of organisms such as corals and causing coral deterioration or death.”p25. This statement is referenced to a 2007 paper by Hoegh-Guldberg.
“Acidification” gets a further scare mention on p31:
“The other possible intervention would be to reduce Earth’s net absorption of sunlight, for example by generating a stratospheric aerosol layer or placing shields in space. While this could offset the surface warming caused by increasing greenhouse gases, it would do nothing to stop ocean acidification, would need to be maintained in perpetuity, and would carry multiple risks…”
This material is tailored for school students. The 2010 version, as I recall, got to approx 1m students. As the last quote above suggests, the AAS is almost doing self-parody.
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Really, all it lacks is any current evidence? A ‘future problem’?
Ocean Acidification is an outrageous lie and now admitted implicitly not to be true. It lacks any evidence or any likelihood. This is near criminal nonsense. Why doesn’t the NOAA just say it is not true instead of waffle like a ‘future problem’. What sort of sophistry is that?
So why is becoming at worst slightly more neutral described as acidification? Where is the prediction of the ocean’s acid pH as there is no problem today? Why is no one saying all the seas are alkali and even if all the CO2 in the air disappeared into the oceans today, they could not become alkali.
The public are led to believe without any proof that the 50% increase in CO2 in the last hundred years comes wholly from fossil fuel combustion. That is not true either. So whatever the cause, we can do nothing about it. Worse, if most of this increase comes from the warming oceans in the first place and not fossil fuels and 98% of all gaseous CO2 is already dissolved in the oceans, how can the pH change? Who said fish and shellfish cannot cope? Where is there any evidence at all?
Why are no physical chemists saying that in the immense alkali oceans buffered by countless trillions of tons of limestone, there is no possibility of the seas ever becoming acid. For example, former salaried Australian Climate Commissioner and now Climate Council member Dr Will Stephan has a PhD in industrial chemistry but would rather talk about fields like global warming, atmospheric physics and meteorology, not his field of chemistry. Why? I wrote to him and he knows the extra CO2 is not ancient CO2 as it all has modern C14 levels where ancient fossil fuels have none but he deferred to the useless IPCC reports which claim an 80 year half life for CO2.
Ocean acidification is a science lie. Man made CO2 increase is also demonstrably wrong, at most 2% of CO2 is fossil fuel generated. The IPCC avoid reality by arguing that massive amounts of CO2 at depth in the ocean cannot play a part in the equilibrium because deep currents do not mix quickly. Really? CO2 is a gas, not water. The UN demand that the first world, only 1/7th of the world’s population pay international penalties for CO2 level change has no basis in science. This will not affect CO2 but they argue ‘historic’ reponsibility. It is all made up.
This is a complete crock. Why NOAA scientists say ‘ocean acidification’ is a ‘future problem’ is such obvious deceit. If a 50% change has not turned the seas acid, why would another 50% make any difference?
Finally would someone please explain how CO2 produces Climate Changes and Extreme Events when it cannot even change the temperature. No one even bothers to explain their science anymore. Future problem? Facts would be nice. There is no real science in any of this but it was never about real science was it? It is about political power and money and an orchestrated attack on the economies of first world countries.
You have to say it is working. Australia is being economically devastated by Green anarchy supported by the fifth column ABC and their PM.
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Sorry, Prof. Will Steffen. American chemist.
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Feeling a bit tense this morning, TdeF! I know how you feel. Good comment and I echo it.
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By the way, I think you meant “could not become more acidic” in para 2.
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If Global temperatures were actually rising, and more CO2 was off-gassing from the warmer oceans wouldn’t the pH become more alkaline?
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Yes.Good point. However a 50% increase in atmosphere CO2 is only a 1% reduction in ocean CO2 concentration and a tiny change on the pH log scale.
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In fact The pH would increase by 0.004 so from say 8.4 to 8.404. When you consider also that there is a varying profile for CO2 in the water with depth, temperature and compression and this across a planet, such a small variation would be impossible to spot in the pH. It would be better to directly measure the CO2 concentration but creating an average from pole to pole and at depth would be equally difficult. The problem is that our CO2 in our biosphere is near insignificant, except for us because without it we would die quickly, as would all living things.
I am also intrigued that it seems half the O2 replacement is done with CO2 capture by phytoplankton on the ocean. These feed the krill and in turn the whales etc. So this is half the active biosphere but I have not seen the ocean surface added into people’s models for a massive CO2 sink at least as big as all land based sinks. Then atmospheric scientists seem to think the atmosphere is a self contained system, biologically and chemically but CO2 is all about biology and biochemistry even though it is a tiny 0.04% of the total.
What is crazy about this pH argument is that after stating that CO2 stays in the air forever, thousands of years, the warmists are now arguing that increased CO2 is quickly going into the (surface) water and decreasing pH. Which way do they want it? So does their pH go up or down? I do not know as it is all contradictory. All their new physical science is upside down. They need to check Henry’s Law. This pH nonsense is just another Flannery type brain bubble. To have a department to study something which is not happening is an expensive joke.
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With the massive buffering of billions of years of carbonate build-up, and massive basalt that bounds the oceans, the oceans will be inherently stable at around pH 8 for as long as the Earth exists.
A huge amount of somewhat acidic water pours into the oceans from rivers and rainfall all the time, yet the pH remains around 8.
Anyone who thinks that a tiny change in atmospheric CO2 will have even the slightest effect is a stark, raving dingbat.
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“… acidic water pours into the oceans from rivers …
You did not mention, but could have, that Crustaceans do live in such water.
I’ve no specific knowledge – just reporting something I read.
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Estuaries are often less alkaline than the oceans.
As we all know, they are PRIME areas for oysters.
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Patrick Moore explains more that slightly lower alkalinity can actually be BENEFICIAL to sea crustaceans. (toward the end iirc)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bJjBo5ICMc
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There have been claims that oyster farming on the US west coast has been affected by upwelling, CO2 saturated waters from the depths.
Ref http://e360.yale.edu/feature/northwest_oyster_die-offs_show_ocean_acidification_has_arrived/2466/
If the is true, I don’t know why it did not rise up in Ms. Applebaum’s mind. My take at the time it was reported is that the solubility of CO2 greatly increases with temperature at the ocean depths and overcomes any increase of CO2 overpressure of a few PPM in the atmosphere.
But what do I know, I just eat the oysters.
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Good point TdeF, but also there is that old problem of the IPCC apparently ‘knowing what preindustrial levels of CO2 where and then using this fictitious figure as the basis to follow on with unproven conjecture about ‘man-made’ CO2.
As recounted here there is every reason to doubt the ‘science’ behind the assumption that CO2 levels are rising unnaturally and that oceans are being affected in detrimental ways. And I wholly concur with this comment from ‘Stumpy’…
Also see http://www.lenntech.com/composition-seawater.htm for the sea water chemistry variation, and Wikipedia’s explanation of the chemistry of carbonic acid.
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tomo, I have written a lot on #3. This is answered. The answer is no.
What you would love to do is tag all the fossil fuel CO2 with radioactive tracers. Then you could be absolutely sure. Like medical tracers.
In fact this was done, in reverse. C14 is created by cosmic rays continually and decays with a half life of 5400 years. So all living things have a trace of their CO2. This gives us radio carbon dating and you can date the CO2.
Ancient fossil fuels have no C14 at all, having been dead plants for millions of years. So you have a direct, radioactive measure of #3. Simply if the 50% increase was fossil fuel, the level of C14 in the air would be 2/3 of normal. It isn’t. As founder Dr Suess noted in the 1950s, the difference is 2%. This is the real Suess effect, not the corrupted version in Wikipedia where they talk about C13.
I have written to people like our Climate Commissioner Dr Will Steffen, an American chemist. He just pushed his answer back to the IPCC statements. However I am absolutely sure that the CO2 in the air has almost no industrial CO2 in it, against everyone’s popular belief and the concession of even most sceptics who accept it and argue that CO2 does not produce warming. Not a single person has rejected this hard science proof. ABC science for example said I did not understand radiation.
Further and irrelevantly, we even know where the C14 went and precisely how fast with a half life of 14 years thanks to the atom bomb blasts in the 1960s which doubled C14 suddenly. Everything is known and man made Global Warming is absolutely disproved, but no one seems to care, not even scientists who want to talk about their own special area of proof.
If there is no fossil fuel CO2 in the air, AGW is finished before anyone even talks about whether CO2 produces warming.
Ocean acidification is another absurd idea, a transparent lie as the oceans are alkali. Why don’t CSIRO scientists protest this? Why as Pat has shown do they host an international conference on Ocean Acidification in Hobart and ask for papers? Am I missing something here? Can the world be completely mad? We have always known the answer to #3, since the 1950s.
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To be clearer, the answer to #3 is that the proportion of fossil fuel CO2 in the air is less than 2% of all CO2 in the air. The anthropogenic contribution to the 50% increase of CO2 is under 4%. Mankind is not at all responsible for the 50% increase in CO2 in the last hundred years.
Of course it raises the obvious question, from where did the extra CO2 come? I think everyone can answer that now.
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TdeF,
This all works only if the Hawaii data set is a true and meaningful measurement and that the belief (and not much else) that C14 and C13 are good indicators of natural and man-made carbon.
From my link —
[my emphasis]
To restate, I admire your tenacity and your conviction in this matter but I am yet to be convinced that modern methods of measuring atmospheric CO2 are any better than chemical methods of the past. What modern methods hide is the large short-term variation that were so commented on with older past methods of atmospheric analysis. That is to say Keeling’s method hides the true, natural variation in atmospheric CO2.
Also I find it a ridiculous notion that CO2 levels from ice-core are good indicators of past CO2 levels when it is well known that organic matter and living microbe exist within the samples. Also on C13/C14 ratio we have this paper puts the data into a different context;
[my emphasis]
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Tomo. Thanks. An quotes and very interesting links. A quick observation shows a few degrees of variation was quite normal in Europe at least.
Two things. I have noted a continuing attempt to conflate C14 with C13. C13 analysis is very tricky and uncertain, depending on the tiny biological uptake differences of the two common isotopes (C12 99% and C13 1%) which differ only because they are very slightly different in weight. (44 vs 45 amu). Otherwise they are chemically identical. C14 is very different, one in a trillion and unstable. Perfect for dating human objects up to say 20,000 years.
As I mentioned, C13 analysis is also strangely included as the Suess effect in Wikipedia, but I doubt Dr Suess would put his name to it as his invention was radio carbon dating, which is in principle exact science. I have yet to decide whether this is deliberate obfuscation or not, but it looks like it. Why else trade an absolute measure of fossil CO2 for a complex and uncertain analysis of a tiny variation?
So the second, I note they use the 1/e figure of 16 years, not the half life of 1/2 of 14 years. Even so, it is clear that the IPCC official figure of 80 years is utter rubbish and I could find no source for it. In fact the IPCC are very vague on everything to do with CO2 vanishing. The odd consequence is that all Greenhouse gases are scaled to CO2 for their lifetime. So if CO2 is 1/4 of the lifetime in the atmosphere, billions in taxes may have to be refunded.
The bomb test C14 graph is called the ‘silver lining’ as such an amazing test could not have been imagined, to instantly double (not 10x) world C14O2 and see what happens over time. C14 cannot be destroyed, it must go somewhere but it is all gone now, 60 years later (only 1/2^4=1/16th left). In fact all CO2 from the 1960s and earlier is gone now, mixed with the other 98% in the oceans. You can forget the 150 years of the industrial revolution. WW2 and earlier CO2 has totally vanished.
In the bomb graph you can see a perfect single sink at e-kt and the half life and the return to the ancient levels, not 33% below. This all breaks the Bern model completely. There is no ambiguity and no debate. Man made CO2 levels is busted. The oceans are huge.
Not knowing much about ice cores and noting the very thin layers, I might suggest Ice cores suffer from fine data loss through diffusion of CO2 peaks between thin layers, averaging what could have been large peaks because of the freezing point of CO2 at -78C and the summer/winter cycle even in Antarctica. Critically when formed, the ice must be near the surface so peaks might be initially degraded over summer winter cycles until buried deeper. The implication of this is that if CO2 had moved violently, we would not see it, just long term movement over thousands of years, hiding what we might be seeing today as a sudden 100 year 50% change could be quite common, but invisible in the records. So the argument that relatively sudden 50% CO2 variations are unprecedented is not necessarily true because we cannot see them with the poor time resolution.
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More proof of residence time here: The Embarrassing Bomb-Test-Curve
Why all the fuss about carbon? It only stays in the atmosphere for 10 years.
http://blackjay.net/?p=262
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Tomo
Just the statment..
the belief (and not much else) that C14 and C13 are good indicators of natural and man-made carbon.
As I have said, C13 starts at 1% of total CO2. Then you look for tiny biological uptake differences, so differences maybe of billionths or lower. So the statement is not unreasonable for C13.
And not much else?
However I have to totally disagree with respect to C14. C14 is the perfect indicator of man made CO2 vs Fossil CO2. The C14/C12 ratio can be measured to high precision and it cannot be created by chemistry or industry or cars or anything else. It is only created by cosmic rays, short of a nuclear explosion and the constant rate of creation is very good for accurately dating biological artifacts.
So if you have a sample of CO2, you can tell instantly how old it is. Leave today’s CO2 in a jar for 5,400 years and half the C14 will be gone. Leave it in the ground for millions of years and there is none left. So if world C14 levels are near normal, as they are today, the aerial CO2 is all new CO2, not ancient. This is not enthusiasm but fact. Feel free to disagree.
Now you have to ask, if the C14 is gone, where can it go to so completely vanish as it cannot be destroyed. There is only one place, the biggest CO2 sink on the planet. It would be very interesting to date the CO2 at depth in the oceans, to see if we could prove the mixing of recent CO2 with deep ocean CO2. That would destroy the IPCC argument by more hard evidence, where I have used logic and observation.
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“This pH nonsense is just another Flannery type brain bubble”
As the Tony Thomas article shows, they don’t really care about accuracy, it’s the headline they want. Until 2014, when a Guardian article had to be altered, Flannery was still writing that CO2 produced Carbolic Acid in the Oceans. The links are in the Quadrant article. It’s even stated in one of his published books. But hey what does it matter, it says “acid” doesn’t it?
The previous head of NOAA, Jane Lubchenco, had a video on the NOAA website, showing that if you put a piece of chalk into a flask of vinegar it starts to fizz and dissolve, implying that this is what happens in sea water. It is criminal deception from a public official, but does it get challenged by other scientists?
Nah, just getting the message out there.
Lubchenco is a long time colleague and friend of Obama’s science advisor John Holdren, so these messages then get repeated by the new saviour of the planet.
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Carbolic acid? Very funny. Then Flannery knows no chemistry, mathematics, physics, computing beyond high school in the 1970s and his school marks were only good enough to get into an English course at Latrobe, which at least allowed him to get a degree in his native language. You have to admire that he could parlay that into a science PhD though. That has allowed him to pose as a technology expert, offering advice on investing in Hot Rocks for example, as the technology was ‘relatively straightforward’. The Australian government alone lost $93million on that one. Still Australian of the year, Chief Climate Commissioner. The only prize he missed was the Nobel prize for peace, won by fellow English graduate Al Gore. Was a single one of his predictions right, even by accident?
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I see where you’re coming from but no, it doesn’t work that way. That said the ocean has a huge buffer compared to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
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Senior Chemistry classes were taught, – hopefully they still are, – the mechanism of buffer solutions and the Law of Chemical Equilibrium.
Oceans, which are mega buffer solutions, function according to the Law of Chemical Equilibrium.
Imagine the scenario of the chemistry teacher, who after teaching these facts then says to the students ” now you’ll learn how our seas and oceans are turning into deadened, watery wastes due to anthropogenic carbon loadings”.
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“they could not become alkali” — acid.
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Universities used to be funded by the governments. They were higher education institutes specifically for gifted students who could make more significant contributions to society with their superior intellect.
I think two things happened; One, business management was on the lookout for degreed students who could both bolster the business image, and do a superior job. This made it very attractive for young people to try to get through collage. And two, the collages were costing government more and more each year, so the government cut the direct funding and told them to become self funded. Paying foreign students seems to be the most popular funding method in Australia, perhaps grant submission in the states is theirs.
And as for the general public looking at their emails. It is a shame that we have come to this at all. The only reason we now want to look at their emails is because it’s the only avenue we have of finding the truth behind their words, what they really think of their own work, as we can no longer trust their science or their own words.
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Yes, in Australia Universities are largely government funded, which is unusual and changing. However universities around the world might have been approved initially by governments, kings and princes, but they were historically funded by public donations, bequests, funds raised and fees and modeled on the monasteries and students still graduate in monks hoods. So I would not blame business for the corruption of science to suit extremist communist agendas. Greenpeace in particular is a science free zone and according to founder Dr Patrick Moore‘Greenpeace has made itself the sworn enemy of all life on Earth’. AGW is contradicted by the facts in every prediction, so it is wrong.
If you have to allocate blame, blame your local MP, Liberal or Labor. Both now support this and soon both will support an ETS. Your opinion does not count. They want Green votes.
What is unusual about the Science of Global Warming is that it is entirely political, as you can tell by the people who push it, always on the extreme left of politics.
As I wrote above, Ocean Acidification is an evidence free zone, a transparent deceit based on similar unproven and unlikely logic to CO2 driven warming. Vast numbers of real scientists like the late Dr Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb, objected strongly to AGW but the closed workshop of self appointed Climate experts defend their fantasies. Global Warming/Climate Change is a closed Union workshop where 97% of scientists who push this as true agree with each other. What Cook really proved is that 2/3 of all authors in the field refuse to express an opinion on man made CO2 increases. He argues this means they agree ‘implicitly’. It is far more likely they do not dare disagree.
Other real and qualified and essential scientists are completely excluded and those insiders who dare disagree are ostracised, defunded, fired and expelled, like Dr Murry Selby. No debate is permitted.
So ‘The science is in’ and Robert Mugabe and Tim Flannery and Al Gore and Christiana Figueres totally agree. Too bad for them there is no warming at all, but it hardly matters when you are enjoying the limelight in Paris.
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You’ve missed the points I was trying to make TdeF. I was talking from a historical perspective “how did we get here”. You’re talking of the more recent extravagances of Climate Science and money/funding in general.
When I started my engineering assoc.dip. Universities were still free for students. ie; fully funded by the government. Soon after they introduced an administration fee, then a per subject cost (hec’s). This cost per subject is a partial offset of the actual cost, but they must also get more funding from anywhere they can. This change in university funding is, I believe, the principle change in honesty in science. Now it’s funding at any cost (morality/honesty be damned).
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In Australia, the Whitlam introduced ‘free’ education was introduced and cost nothing, as 80% of people were on merit based scholarships, the Commonwealth Scholarship but heralded an incredible explosion in degrees and costs. This was the beginning of a huge University business and often the complete demise of trade training, from boilermaking to nursing and of course, the TAFE. Courses are either missing or a degree course now. There is probably a PhD in the philosophy of boilermaking available but Melbourne Engineering could not find a welding teacher and it has been twenty three years since Medicine students had to pass anatomy.
As for zero cost, we all had to live and work to pay the Union Fees, which the government refused to pay as they were part of compulsory Unionism. Generally you received nothing for all this money, which was ultimately rorted, like all Union money.
I recently attended the RMIT graduation for an institution which has 70,000 students! Even Melbourne University now has 40,000 against the 14,000 in pre Whitlam days. Melbourne’s population has increased only 50% in the time, but the Universities have grown x4 and the number has more than doubled, so student numbers are x10! I suspect many of the quasi trade courses are a cover for opportunism, migration and even criminal activity. These costs have exploded by factors in the last few years under Labor.
The number of fringe and higher and multiple degrees has exploded. I am not clear on the value of all the PhDs. There were so many there was no time to even read out the citations as 8,000 people graduated on the same night including over 100 PhDs.
Who pays for all this? How useful are these degrees because the costs are huge. Are people doing anything but University degrees. What used to be a certificate or diploma has become a degree. I even saw a PhD based on a survey of Halal distribution in Australia?
It might be research but it was not invention.
Is this all on HECS?
Even so, the old core degrees are still there. There is no excuse for fake science. Dishonesty is not an old concept but it could become entrenched in our institutions where funding becomes dependent on politics and AGW and Ocean Acidification are political science. So was the rejection of warmist Bjorn Lomborg’s consensus centre. Even Germaine Greer is not welcome now as she is seen as anti transgender. Now that is worrying but funny.
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Two points then. Firstly, how can standards be maintained? Who examines the examiners? Who sets the curricula?
Then HECS simply means more borrowing from the government which borrows $1Bn a week overseas at present, one third just to pay interest on previous borrowings and government tertiary education costs, especially with fringe college costs are exploding by billions a year, factors per decade. It is out of control.
I think the problem you are talking about is much more serious than just a potential dependence on government largesse and the politicising of everything from history to science. Universities like to pretend they are real businesses now and one of our biggest exports is education, but again, who pays for all this? Not only research standards must fall. Education standards must plummet.
With falling iron ore and coal prices, education may well become simply a mass migration scheme, funded by borrowings.
You get the feeling that no one is in charge at a Tertiary level. Malcolm says nothing and our new Treasurer is making Wayne Swan look frugal. We need our hard nosed economist PM back, not this merchant banker.
50
This is the point I’m making, yes. And education standard drop in response to getting numbers through the door. More numbers through = more money. If they make it too difficult people complain or drop out.
I don’t believe they have any oversight now, they are a body unto themselves. They set their own standards and adhere poorly to them. Which would also explain why their ethics and standards comity that review and approve new research have no impact on ethics or reprisals for failure of said ethics. It’s all pretend.
40
collages were costing more? Pricey posies?
00
Don’t mussels and cockels and corals use dissolved carbon dioxide in seawater to form calcium carbonate, which is a basic compound (limestone)?
220
There was a major article on page 16 of the Australian newspaper this weekend ‘Fight Spreads to a Wider Environment’, featuring views and quotes from the Wilderness society’s campaign manager Lyndon Schneiders.
This outfit started in Tasmania in the days of the Franklin Dam fight and has now organized itself with a presence in other Australian states too. Now they are talking about ocean acidification by projects such as the adani coal mine and BP oil well drilling in Bass Straight. The article reports that this group’s challenge to Adani’s Carmichael coal mine in Queensland is a “an indicator of things to come.” It argues that the mine will acidify waters around the Great Barrier Reef because the exported coal will be burnt causing “climate pollution”
It is amazing just how threateningly patronizing and potentially damaging to this country the language outlining the intended actions of this green group and others like it has presented in this article. Very different to the days when groups like these were ostensively just protecting forests.
“If you want to get to a position where you have a net zero carbon world, that is going to require almost a new-deal type of change in planning and thinking and economic stimulus to make that happen.” says Schneiders.
I thought the Wilderness Society’s main act was to save forests. I have nothing against this, but how are forests going to exist in “a net zero carbon world” for heavens sake? Last time I checked all plants and trees can’t exist without CO2 or was I imagining this?
It then continues with the following rant……
“The political class isn’t thinking that far ahead yet but they need to be putting in place policy that will make that (a net zero carbon world) possible now.”
In other words they want government to create this “net zero carbon world” at the taxpayers’ expense. Would we be paying for our own doom? Have they really thought this through or has their dogma overcome their ability to reason? Then the rant descends into basic threat or else talk……
“We are not at the stage yet in the public debate where there is no fossil fuels forever, but what the industry is being told (by the likes of them) behind closed doors is that unless there is some sort of progress on this stuff it will transform into that quite quickly.”
“This is something the hard heads in Treasury and the business community haven’t quite got their head around in some respects.” says Schneiders.
So the fossil fuel industry is being threatened in secret to close down or else.
How patronizing and how alarming! How important do these guys think they are? More important than they would be without the press to push their unsubstantiated ideas and demands unfortunately. The journalist who wrote this story was obviously trying to make this guy sound very cogent and influential. The fight against the Adani coal mine in Queensland was presented as if their efforts to stop this mine were a war being raged against coal as society’s worst enemy…….all emotion, no substance. Have these characters thought about the fact that half of the state of Queensland’s income is generated from coal? This state already has the highest debt in Australia due to mismanagement by ‘progressives’. It seems they want to finish the job and bankrupt Queensland completely.
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The Wilderness Society was initiated by Dr. Brown and the first campaign was to stop the flooding of Lake Pedder in SW. Tasmania, formerly a small lake surrounded by button-grass plains and a couple of scenic Mt. ranges. Prior to the construction of roads for the electricity project, it was only visited by a few itinerant bush walkers on there way to Port Davey, and in the summertime by pilots who used the beach if the water had receded sufficiently; some years the water levels did not allow this.
Having stopped the second stage of the Gordon R. scheme with the help of the new Hawke government, it then moved into “saving” the forests. This has been pretty succesful politically due in part to the limited vision of both government and industry managers. The locking-up of the forests to save them is really an oxymoron since eucalypts require both light and freedom from competing vegetation to regenerate. The saving event for the eucalypt forests of S. Australia will be the catastrophic summer fires which occur irregularly due to high fuel loads and hot conditions. e.g. Victoria, 1939, 1997, Tasmania 1936, 1938 and 1967 and many other times.
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It is long past time these green NGOs get called out for what they are….ANTI-HUMAN!
For centuries man has developed his environment, improved health and longevity and created abundance of life’s essentials…food, water and shelter. And, in the space of five decades a movement arises that tries to turn those exact same developments against humans. Now, it is bad to develop resources, it is bad to dam rivers for tomorrows use, it is bad to exploit wilderness( in Australia this is the biggest joke…there is no wilderness! The aborigines have been terraforming the landscape for possibly fifty thousand years!) it is bad to urbanise, it is bad to be human plain and simple!
The green movement must die in order that man may survive!
251
Quote for future generations “We had to kill environmentalism to save it.”
60
Nearly every river or stream that has flowed into the oceans over billions and billions of years has been on the “acid” side of neutral…
….yet the oceans remain steadfastly around a pH of 8.
170
Interesting article..
http://www.dailywire.com/news/2071/most-comprehensive-assault-global-warming-ever-mike-van-biezen
40
“Knowing that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that .” Then he considers the information as a data analysis expert.
However consider his opening statement.
“our industrialized world is adding a large amount of it to the atmosphere on a yearly basis”
This is the premise conceded by almost everyone. It is also wrong because the CO2 in the atmosphere is only 2% of the total. Few people, even few scientists understand physical chemistry and the essential concept of equilibrium. Warmists in particular for twenty years just ignored the ocean and thought our atmosphere is a self contained, isolated system separate from the ocean. Anyone who has waited for a summer storm knows otherwise. Water is the generator and controller of all weather.
The comment shows a common ignorance of physical gaseous equilibrium. The vast oceans dominate gases on our planet and 98% of all CO2 is in the ocean, 50x as much as in the air. The simple idea that you can unilaterally alter an equilibrium, that the atmosphere is just a bucket with no holes is wrong. The IPCC rely on this ignorance and do nothing to correct it.
In fact man cannot change CO2 levels and anyway our output of CO2 is pitiful compared to the quantities in play between the oceans and the air. The amount of CO2 in the air is determined by only one factor, ocean surface temperature according to Henry’s law.
It is quite absurd that warmists like Flannery now claim CO2 has somehow exclusively heated the oceans and not the far more obvious conclusion that slight warming of the ocean surface has released CO2. 2/3 of the planet is covered by cool water, so how this crazy science works with Greenhouse gases is just not explained. However it is political science, not real science. First world countries need to be punished. Malcolm needs his ETS.
262
Please clarify – CO2 in the atmosphere is only 2% of the total.
I thought it was 0.04%
Thanks
40
TdeF means that of the total free CO2 on the planet, only 2% is in the atmosphere.
80
Then why didn’t he say that? Oh, wait. He did.
40
I’d like to see a few of these quotes. By what mechanism do they propose that CO2 warms the oceans, particularly since the heat has somehow miraculously by-passed the surface layers and is now hiding somewhere below what Argos buoys can measure?
101
TdeF,
The IPCC and the UN has not the talent to correct itself, if it had that talent then today it would not be the atrocious, amoral organ it has become.
50
Not paying attention Andy.
Jo covered that article on 28 Dec 2015.
20
I was away on 28th-1st 🙂
21
Just looking again at the carefully crafted quote..
1. Unfortunately. Why?
2. I can’t provide this information to you because it doesn’t exist. Does this mean there is no problem or just no information?
3. currently there are NO areas of the world that are severely degraded because of OA . Does this mean there is no degradation or no OA? The CAPS are from the quote.
4. or even areas that we know are definitely affected by OA right now. This means there is no area affected by Ocean Acidification. Even the escape word ‘definitely’ does not change this clear meaning.
To so summarize, I would love to help you and it is unfortunate that I cannot because there is NO place affected by Ocean Acidification because it does not exist yet but we are hoping. The ‘unfortunately’ says it all from NOAA. They really want this to be true.
282
Nothing seems to make the climate catastrophists happier than when something happens and to which they can wishfully pin the moniker ‘climate change’. I’m sure that the recent bushfires and ongoing floods are ’cause célèbre’ for the Greens, validating their beliefs in climate change.
150
And why is it that greenies get so damn upset when you show them it’s not so bad after all? I’m starting to think they have a psychological condition where they need to believe the world is dying.
50
They need to believe their beliefs and lifestyle choice; is the correct one.
10
‘They really want this to be true.’
Yep, they are a sorry lot.
Its easy to verify this is a scam, when CO2 was much higher in the past no acidification happened.
200
TdeF; your posts point to the fundamental issue that both “global warming” and “ocean acidification” are both meaningless concepts used to promote an ideological mantra exploiting the fear of the unknown. The “pH of the oceans” has no more physical meaning than the “average global temperature”, indeed, the pH is in part a function of temperature and is a continuous variable across the globe.
There isn’t even enough data on oceanic pH for it to be as malleable as the surface temperature records. As you say, no one with even basic chemistry can give any credence to the
idea but many do. The principle is – that which is not known can be anything, therefore I can believe what I wish thus cementing the identity of the “science” as indistinguishable from religion.
70
I think it’s possible to read a little bit too much into some bits of that mail.
I regularly receive requests for data and/or analyses, some of which either haven’t been done, or just don’t exist. I use almost the same sentence – …Unfortunately, I can’t provide this information to you because… blah blah blah
Do I really think it’s unfortunate? Well, yes, sometimes, because I do wish I had what they wanted (or wished that they would be both patient, and willing to pay for the analyses to be done), but other times, it’s matter of being polite in response to a ridiculous request from a technically challenged individual (usually from sales & marketing)…
20
Whilst the media capitalizes on the term “acidification” to sound scary, in a technical sense it is correct. You acidify a solution by increasing the hydrogen ion concentration by say adding an acid. This lowers the pH but technically there is no implication that the solution is brought to less than 7 ie.that it actually becomes an acid. The lay misinterpretation is played to the full by the media and the scientists are remiss for letting it happen.
30
The arrogance and haughtiness of so- called climate scientists is beyond belief.I personally think that many do not have the conviction to explain or defend their position.So you have reputable chaps like Karoly spouting alarmism based on projections – not bothering to explain the mechanisms behind this issue as well as avoiding debate.
111
David Karoly did his first degree in Applied Mathematics at Monash, not Physics or Chemistry and went onto the UK to complete a PhD in Meteorology. However his strength is computer modelling of science, not science as such.
This shows the danger with the deliberate isolation of self appointed specialist Climate Scientists. They cannot act in isolation.
There is no expectation that Karoly has any expertise in Physical Chemistry or spectral absorption or oceanography or a hundred other important disciplines. He is expert in computer modelling of the atmosphere in that he has done this for forty years. This does not means he is right and does means his computer models are right. Clearly the world’s computer models of climate which all predict total correlation between CO2 and temperature are wrong. However as Dr Murry Selby found, himself an aerospace engineer turned atmospheric dynamicist for his PhD, you get fired if you disagree and you are not invited to join organizations like the Climate Commission or Climate Council or advise the ABC as an expert on global warming or in fact climates.
However you would have to think Karoly has far more authority to speak on atmospheric modelling than dead Kangaroo expert Tim Flannery or industrial Chemist Will Steffen. I have yet to see how they connect increased CO2 to increased ‘extreme events’. We are just told this stuff and expected to believe it, even when the facts flatly contradict their predictions. No temperature change in 19 years now.
211
Sorry, does NOT mean his computer models are right.
In fact I find it amazing that scientists are happy to be wrong? When your model does not predict correctly, you are wrong, not the data. The incredible attempt by the BOM and others to adjust the data to suit the prediction is quite beyond my comprehension. It does raise serious questions of dishonesty even beyond the science field. Are we to believe the universal upward adjusting of recent land temperatures and lowering and omission of old temperatures is just accidental? What happened to our Federation drought? The worst drought in Australianj history and it is as if it never happened simply because the BOM chose to start afresh in 1909, ignoring half a century of good State data even from the same Stevenson screens? A real government would insist this data was added to the record.
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Ironic isn’t it ? Man has lost contact with nature- and with it common- sense.I wonder what Clancy of the Overflow – gone a drovin’ and we don’t know we he are – would have thought about all this nonsense.Point being,it’s rare to find people- even in rural areas that have that intimate contact with nature and that inbuilt bulls…. Indicator.Our ABC from Ultimo.No thanks!
90
Great White sharks are increasingly being sighted as far north as Southern Queensland waters on the East coast of Australia. There was a fatal attack by one confirmed at Ballina near Byron Bay in Northern NSW about a year ago. This species is from colder waters, so the ocean temperature this far north must be getting cooler to attract these sharks that have generally not been sighted in these regions before. On the ABC/SBS news last night they blamed the increase in shark attacks on “ocean warming” caused by “global warming”, the usual baseless rant. However you see a lot more wet suits being warn by surfers around Byron Bay these days because in reality the ocean water is simply in a word “colder”.
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Thanks for the anecdotal evidence, here is some more.
‘Gold Coast fishing stalwart Paul Burt said the baitfish were more than likely pilchards moving up the coast following cooler nutrient-rich currents.
‘He said the school attracted larger fish including sharks.’
Gold Coast Bulletin / July 2015
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Yes, very interesting. And those prevailing Coral Sea breezes we’ve been getting for the last six weeks have been pretty brisk and a bit on the chilling side. And the night temperatures for the whole of December have been down, quite chilly for this time of year, very unlike the usual Dec weather in this part of the world. I’m not joking, have had to put on a sweater to go out at night. Just waiting for them to announce it was the “hottest December on record” though.
220
It has been relatively cool throughout the south east, a cool wet summer in this monstrous el nino year is hard to fathom.
In regard to the baitfish.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-06/marine-eddies/6598452
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Bingo! The announcement was on television news in recent days, December 2015 hottest on record.
I wonder what the January announcement will be as here in Coonabarabran NSW the forecast is maximum 22C and it feels cooler, and there has been heavy rain and showers for three days so far.
90
RSS Global has 2015 in THIRD place in the satellite record.
I haven’t got the UAH December data yet, but it will also be in 3rd place
For Australia, on a “year to end of November” basis, UAH has 2015 in 13th place.
The mess that is GISS and its stablemates, where “estimated” data makes up nearly 50%, and is then smeared across huge areas to create spurious warming trends, and sea data is massively adjusted as well…… is TOTALLY UNRELIABLE for anything except AGW propaganda.
102
Ha Ha it had to happen. Don’t worry January will be the hottest January ever too, guaranteed.
100
Possibly, but once the current strong El Nino subsides, there will be a very different story.
50
according to the war mists and their BOMs that is……….just to clarify my previous remark
70
Again ….. not where I live! (Belmont, NSW). Infact, 2015 was cooler than 2013.
Summary for December 2015
Temperature (°C):
Mean (1 minute) 22.1
Mean (min+max) 22.5
Mean Minimum 17.5
Mean Maximum 27.4
Minimum 12.6 day 31
Maximum 38.4 day 11
Highest Minimum 26.2 day 20
Lowest Maximum 19.5 day 22
Summary for December 2014
Temperature (°C):
Mean (1 minute) 23.0
Mean (min+max) 24.2
Mean Minimum 18.8
Mean Maximum 29.6
Minimum 13.9 day 13
Maximum 38.3 day 03
Highest Minimum 22.4 day 16
Lowest Maximum 23.7 day 27
Summary for December 2013
Temperature (°C):
Mean (1 minute) 22.9
Mean (min+max) 23.2
Mean Minimum 17.7
Mean Maximum 28.7
Minimum 12.2 day 06
Maximum 39.6 day 20
Highest Minimum 25.5 day 09
Lowest Maximum 21.8 day 24
Disclaimer: Temps recorded are from my own PWS. They have not been submitted to BoM for ‘verification’.
20
Still waiting for UAH for December,
But on a “year to end of November” basis.. 2015 for Australia is in 13th place.
And isn’t this current weather absolutely CRAP !!! (I’m in Newy, too)
20
ps.. for those not in Newy… Its persisting it down and has been most of the day. 🙁
20
+80mm since 9:00am …. and no sign of easing up till at least lunch time tomorrow.
+165mm since Sunday.
20
Not looking forward to walking up the backyard tomorrow morning to empty the rain-gauge. Backyard is currently under water and clay-based. Might have to duck up to Bunnings and invest in some ‘wellies’.
20
Know what amazes me Andy? BoM, NOAA, NASA (GISS), BEST and I think CRU rely on Williamtown for their Newcastle ‘data’ and not Nobby’s. As you know, Williamtown is located inland from Newy (~20k’s) and at an airport, (from memory, Aust’s 2nd largest RAAF base and also a commercial airport) which has data from only 1943 (I think).
Nobby’s on the other hand, has data from ~1864 (?), (BoM says data before 1910 is ‘unreliable’), has hardly moved, and up until a couple of years ago was part of BoM’s HQ network.
10
Just put on the snorkel, googles & flippers and swam up the backyard …. 175mm!! The highest daily rain since I started measuring in 2013.
261mm in the past 3 days!
00
Oops, that of coarse should be ‘goggles’.
Just heard on Sky Weather, highest January rainfall on record for Newy.
00
Two points
1. Check out
http://sabolscience.blogspot.com.au/2015/08/a-deeper-look-at-top-10-el-ninos-since.html
and compare 1957-58 with the current years pattern at
http://weather.gc.ca/saisons/animation_e.html?id=year&bc=sea
1957-58 was not a drought area in my part of western Qld.
2. December wasn’t super hot (summer after all). We’ve landed under almost 5 inches of rain in the last few days (about a third of the annual totals for each of the last two years) and had the wood heater burning all day 2nd Jan.
The family now doubt less my telling of similar fires on Xmas Day in the past.
70
Scott has done a terrific job putting all that together and I agree the cool pool to the east of Australia is indicative of the present pattern.
Theoretically we should be able to get a good grip on what’s coming over the next few months.
10
We need to be mindful that the 1957-58 El Nino was not followed by a La Nina.
http://ggweather.com/enso/years.htm
Also this type of Nino had no discernible impact on London winters, until the big freeze of the early 1960s with ENSO in a slumber.
00
The Klimatariat will illustrate the science in real time.
http://www.bom.gov.au/oceanography/forecasts/idyoc14.shtml?region=14&forecast=1
‘…sharks that have generally not been sighted in these regions before.’
They are still after baitfish of some kind.
31
two false statements don’t make a correct one.
326
It does appear the system is working normally for this time of year.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/orthographic=-203.71,-30.95,3000/loc=149.939,-32.798
30
Yesterday the Queensland department of primary industries released figures of sharks captured under its shark control program last year. There were 113 bull sharks, 287 tiger sharks and 11 great white sharks netted in drumlines at 85 beaches between the Gold Coast and Cairns. Great whites only represented about 3% of the entire catch but were a much higher and significant percentage of the Gold Coast catch as the majority of the 11 whites caught were off Gold Coast beaches in the south of the state.
With the fact that it is estimated that the entire population of great whites in Australian waters is about 10,000, these figures obviously point to the fact that the species is more at home in much colder waters in the Southern Ocean along to the south of Australia, along with seals, penguins and sea lions rather than in the comparatively warmer waters off Queensland.
However this evidence adds weight to the observation that the species is starting to arrive in higher numbers in southern Queensland. This certainly supports views that if these colder water sharks are immigrating to this area in numbers, the ocean off Queensland is certainly not going through a warming phase as claimed by those who are pushing sea warming and acidification in relation to the Great Barrier Reef.
90
“Dr Shallin Busch, who works for NOAA’s Ocean Acidification Program discussed the draft of the article with fellow scientist Ms Applebaum.”
When you work for NOAA’s Ocean Acidification Program, you can hardly say the whole thing is (unfortunately) a pile of steaming bat’s droppings. Similarly with those employed by the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. You can hardly say there is none.
The question is why these groups were set up in the first place? What Ocean Acidification? Surely someone would have to find some serious Ocean Acidification before they set up a whole group to investigate a phenomenon which according to Dr Busch does not exist?
This is like a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, with no tea.
190
Or with a different sort of “tea.”
40
This was probably my favourite piece of extreme wacko carbon dioxide alarmism from 2015 and it will take some beating in this new year. I mean, it’s terrible and all of that but for the true connoisseur of pure wingnuttery it is just sublime! Sincerest congratulations to all concerned for such a spectacular effort 🙂
100
Eta: it makes highly plausible the follow-up article “Their Deadened, Oxygen-Deficient Brains”.
80
I don’t understand where you see a contradiction between the email and the Q&A answer. The email says :
You say that she does not say the same thing, but she says exactly the same thing.
117
What contradiction? I cannot see any mention even of the word contradiction in anything.
The statement says there is no known impact anywhere.
The second is a generality about the potential damage of acid seas, when and if the seas become acid, which they will not. Otherwise we are talking about more neutral, not more acid.
Back on 2), the argument is that atmospheric CO2 has increased 50% over a hundred years. This has been a slow and steady change.
“However ocean chemistry is changing so quickly.”. What?
Then why do we have to wait for “future chemistry conditions” or examine areas around CO2 vents? What is going to happen in the next few years which has not happened in the last hundred?
Besides, who said fish cannot adapt to slightly changed conditions.
Sea water is weakly alkaline. Without salt, you can drink it happily, which is why we have spent $100Bn on largely useless and unused desalination plants in Australia. Adding a little carbonic acid will make it less alkaline, not acid.
181
TdeF:
there are indications that in the past that the oceans MAY have become acidic, notably the Permian and KPg (formerly KT) extinctions. I say may as there is no actual evidence, although the decline in size of (carbonate) skeleton forming protozoans is indicative of this happening. Both mass extinctions occurred at times of massive volcanic eruptions, the Siberian and Deccan traps.
The latter occurred over hundreds of thousands of years or more and covered an area (including underwater area) equivalent to one third of Europe, with lava flows up to 2.7 km. thick. Compare that with recent Etna outbursts.
There is no evidence of CO2 being directly responsible but “climate science” says that the asteroid caused massive forest fires which resulted in a spike of CO2 which made the oceans acidic. BS as the resulting low oxygen level would have eliminated the surviving animal species. Against that is the observation that the gradual deterioration began hundreds of thousands of years before the impact, also that the iridium level was rising (volcanoes are a source as well as asteroids).
While volcanoes can release CO2 (contrary to claims by certain “AGW scientists”) they can release H2S and sulphur oxides, both of which are strong acids, far stronger than CO2, and IF the oceans went acidic, then in my opinion they are far more likely causes.
You must bear in mind that most scientists are specialists, going from school to Uni to further specialisation. Their’s is a constrained view. If the only tool you have is a hammer….. so they twist things to try and make them fit their limited view.
My favourite story is the USA scientist who went to India in the 1970’s. He was an expert in filament winding for the aerospace industry (think high tech. computer controlled [even then] high strength items, esp. fuel tanks – specialised reinforcement, resins, equipment with high temperature curing for optimum strength for such as pressurised fuel tanks).
He arrived at a poor coastal village lacking clean water – available some kilometres away in the hills – and boats for fishing, and very poor housing. You and I would have tackled the boat supply with the standard lay-up inside a mould, but he knew nothing of this. Instead with the aid of some truck axles and a (plaster? think long sausage shape) mould driven by a pulley and ox trudging in circles, he coated the mould with cheap resin and sisal fibres. Instead of a controlled curing oven, the substitute was aluminium foil coated cardboard ‘mirrors’ to concentrate sunlight. Once cured the moulding was slit in 2 horizontally yielding 2 crude but usable canoes. Result: much more fish for the village diet.
Readers will, I’m sure, see that this idea could be adapted to produce chutes to bring clean water downhill to the village, and (one ended versions) would mean tanks to hold water etc. I think he ended up making hut parts. The village blossomed with better food, water, hygiene and housing. I think he was awarded a medal by the Indian Government.
60
The original very acid Black Sea is still there, filled with H2S, about 100 metres down. You can still see the original shoreline of what is thought to be Noah’s flood. From the air you can see the furrows where the split created the Bosphorous and the huge waterfall carved out the sea bottom as the Meditteranean/Marmara crashed into the area, adding ten cubic miles a day. The original sulphur loaded black sea sometimes is stirred by storms and kills all the fish.
So acid seas can exist but this CO2 story is about carbonic acid, a very weak acid. As the atmospheric CO2 has only gone up 50% in 100 years, I do not understand the panic? This appears to be a derivative scare, like Polar Bears and Arctic sea ice. I have yet to read an explanation of how this one was supposed to work, but to form groups to study something normally takes more than just a crazy idea that if atmospheric CO2 goes up 50%, ocean CO2 must also go up 50%. The alarmist warmists simply have no idea of ocean physical chemistry and have to come up with something since the world is not warming at all. I guess if someone said the sky was falling, NASA would form a committee too.
91
“The alarmist warmists simply have no idea of ocean physical chemistry”
Agree whole heartedly, but they also do not look at the overall picture because they are fixated on “man made disaster coming”. Everything that happens has to be squeezed into that idea.
91
this reminds me of another MSM mantra, claiming sea level rise will doom waterside properties. yet I heard a lengthy segment on gentrification on ABC radio last week with a real estate guy and multiple times he & the ABC host boasted how there’s always/still is a premium on waterside properties! go figure.
the ultimate goal of all this alarmism continues to be the raiding of retirement funds:
2 Jan: UK Independent: Tom Bawden: Climate change targets ‘have huge implications for UK pensioners’
Pension funds urge Britain’s biggest carbon polluters to come clean over financial crisis that lies ahead
A ???legally binding agreement struck by world leaders in Paris last month, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions dramatically, has huge implications for pensioners, who have billions of pounds invested in “carbon-intensive” companies.
Analysts say that more than three-quarters of the world’s known coal, oil and gas reserves will have to stay in the ground if the planet is to have any chance of meeting the target to limit global warming to between 1.5C and 2C…
Yet many “carbon-intensive” companies are behaving as though it is “business as usual”, when they should be telling investors what the dangers are and how they are dealing with them. This approach is completely untenable, say pension funds and law firms, now that the Paris agreement has removed any doubt that companies could carry on as normal.
“Business as usual is not an option for very carbon-intensive companies,” said Stephanie Maier, the head of responsible strategy and research at Aviva, the insurance giant that manages £267bn of investments. She also speaks for the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, a coalition of 120 financial institutions managing nearly £10trn of funds in nine countries…
***Britain’s pensioners are also being asked to help themselves by putting pressure on their pension fund managers to find out just how exposed the country’s biggest companies are to climate change…
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/climate-change-targets-have-huge-implications-for-uk-pensioners-a6794161.html
***those with retirement funds need to do the opposite of what the MSM CAGW gatekeepers keep suggesting. they should write to their fund managers and demand they DO NOT invest any of their monies in any CAGW-related adVENTURE.
80
It’s almost ten years now that Al Gore predicted we will all fry in ten years time……
112
Maybe they could name a couple places on earth where the ocean water is below 7 on the pH scale as long as they are calling it acidification. Most of the ocean is above 8 on the pH scale, it is therefore alkaline to my knowledge…
111
btw Renewables giant, Abengoa, was not a great investment:
3 Jan: InsiderTradingReport: Company Shares of Abengoa, S.A. Drops by -16.88%
Abengoa, S.A. has lost 16.88% during the past week and dropped 43.11% in the last 4 weeks…
Abengoa SA has dropped 72.41% during the last 3-month period . Year-to-Date the stock performance stands at -92.85%…
Institutional Investors own 9.49% of Abengoa, S.A. shares.
http://www.insidertradingreport.org/company-shares-of-abengoa-s-a-nasdaqabgb-drops-by-16-88/6211175/
30
From a different section of science, medical in this case but the same old, same old problems as we are seeing in the interactions between climate science and media reporting .
Sensationalism in the Media: When Scientists and Journalists May Be Complicit Collaborators
DAVID F. RANSOHOFF, MD
Department of Medicine and Robert
Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars
&
Conclusion
Then again as we are talking climate alarmist science and the role of complicit funding seeking climate scientists and sensation seeking editors and journalists, as has been said very often about climate alarmist science, any demand for some form of oversight, [ by whom ? ] to bring some sanity back into the roles of science and the media, then Porcine aviation is far more likely to be seen than to see any semblance of rationality and honesty creeping back into climate alarmist science and the its running dogs in the sensationalist seeking media .
110
Pity about NOAA scientists’ ignorance of any occurrence of damage by ocean assification, but right on cue, good old Dr Karl comes to the rescue in today’s SMH:
So,there you have it, the oceans are well on their way to catastrophic assification. Dr Karl’s models say so!
141
“Ocean pH has dropped by 0.1 since the Industrial revolution.”
BS !
There is NO WAY that they could know the pH of the oceans NOW to any degree of accuracy……
…. and certainly not before the industrial revolution.
Models can predict whatever the modeller want them to.. doesn’t mean they hold any relationship to reality..
We know the temperature models don’t go near reality, and with FAR less information, there is no reason to believe that ocean pH models, almost certainly based on the similar erroneous assumptions, should be any better.
And someone should tell this fool that CO2 is needed to make calcium carbonate.
222
Even if Dr Karl’s numbers were right 8.2 -0.4 = 7.8 which would still be quite alkaline, not acid. There is also a major problem if all the CO2 goes into the ocean instead of hanging around because it then would not be in the air causing Global Warming. You cannot have it both ways Dr Karl. This is all without the massive buffering from limestone. Dr Karl should know about buffered solutions.
151
Dr Karl has forgotten any resemblance of real science he might once have had.
He now propagandises for the highest bidder, often ignoring anything to do with science and reality.
161
Andy, so true. But it is sad that this is always, in some way or another, done on taxpayer money.
51
Dr Karl needs to flog his book.
Anyway I’m going with Jim Steele, a guest post at wuwt.
‘So where are the oceans headed? If history repeats itself, declining solar insolation will result in less upwelling, lower productivity, a reduced biological pump and higher pH. Or perhaps higher levels of atmospheric CO2 will increase productivity as observed in several experiments, or perhaps rising CO2 will cause a deleterious decline in pH?
‘The ubiquitous uncertainties from the current undersampling of oceans allows anyone to “find experimental support for their favorite theory no matter what the theory they claimed.” But I can say for sure, I would not trust any predictions that failed to account for changes in upwelling and the various responses of the biological pump.’
71
The original paper of ocean off Hawai found a drop of 0.03 pH units (annual variation at least 0.3 units.
The extrapolated back to pre-industrial times ~1760AD – by ASSUMING that CO2 causes acidification. Then from the CO2 levels at start of year and end of year and the 0.03 units change they extrapolated back 250 years approx. and came up with the 0.1 unit drop. In other words The ASSUMED CO2 affected the ocean, made the model on this basis and came up with the result built into the model. They haven’t proved anything.
Bear in mind – pH meters date from 1910 Beckmann and were certainly not accurate to 0.03 units even in the 1980’s.
The difficulty of getting an accurate reading e.g. query sampling method, container construction etc.
The CO2 concentration in 1760 could have varied.
The error in measuring the pH, the seasonal variations, etc.
I was most UNIMPRESSED by this peer-reviewed paper.
81
Graeme
A bit rough but then so is the subject
”
Why do climate scientists write dissertations on washroom walls?
For the…*ahem*…peer reviews.
Dec 22, 2015 at 2:51 AM | Unregistered Commenter Al in Cranbrook”
(http://bishophill.squarespace.com/discussion/post/2563294?currentPage=5)
21
I stand corrected, the Beckman pH meter was invented in 1934.
Hard to see how reliable ‘measurements’ from 1760 are.
00
I’m not a practicing chemist (Uni chemistry is lost in the mists of time) but I fail to see how a drop in pH (assuming it can be measured to this accuracy) has anything to do with the AMOUNT of CaCO3 in the oceans. Am I incorrect?
00
This is a good presentation on ocean “acidification” (other than the absence of showing some slides at the end) by Dr. Patrick Moore:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bJjBo5ICMc
10
Global Warming destroys grammar.
“Gradually, over the next two generations, the private capital that had heretofore funded science, endowed scientific institutions …”
That third comma should not be there.
The phrase “the private capital that had heretofore funded science” is a subject clause. (It is made up of a noun phrase and a defining relative clause.) There rule in both British/Australian and American English is “no comma after a subject clause”.
31
“The rule”, not “there rule”. Damned predictive software.
I know it as Phil’s Law: Every post correcting a grammar or spelling error shall itself contain a grammar or spelling error of equal or greater severity.
90
The concept of PH was invented in about 1915 and the first method of measurement in about 1925. Before that, the only method they now could have is some sort of proxy. That could not possibly determine ocean PH to better than +/- 0.1 which would have to be the case to make such a claim of ocean PH changing by 0.1. It is obviously just an output from models.
121
Yes
The gap between empirical observations/measurements and hypothetical, scary “what-ifs” grows daily
The MSM refuses to say this. Again, Noble Cause Corruption shows its’ desperately ugly face
110
highco2-iv.org: 4th International Symposium on the Ocean in a High-CO2 World
3 – 6 May 2016, Hotel Grand Chancellor, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
SPONSORS, SPEAKERS, ETC
http://www.highco2-iv.org/
IAEA: Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre
3rd Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network (GOA-ON) Science Workshop, 8-10 May 2016, Hobart, Australia
The 3rd Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network (GOA-ON) Science Workshop workshop will be held in Hobart, Australia, following the 4th International Symposium on the Oceans in a High CO2 World (3-6 May 2016).
Venue: CSIRO Marine Laboratories, Hobart, Australia. The venue is a few minutes walk from the Symposium meeting place and hotels.
Who should attend: The meeting is open. Students, early career through senior researchers, policy makers and program managers are encouraged to attend.
https://www.iaea.org/ocean-acidification/page.php?page=2249
click on “Socio-economics workshops” (left sidebar) to get IAEA’s page on “Economics of ocean acidification: bridging the gap between ocean acidification impacts and economic valuation”
40
Pat, amazing. The CSIRO conference has plenary speakers who seem experts in CO2 in the ocean even in paleoentology and they all talk about ocean acidification as if it was real, but how can it be real when the oceans are alkali and will always be alkali? Maybe they are on a different planet or ocean ‘acidification’ is simply the latest umbrella for funding and travel? While I have great respect for the CSIRO Marine department in Hobart who do real and valuable work, to have a whole international conference in something which is not happening seems insane, but that’s our CSIRO, the people who also studied cloud seeding for 50 years and tried to invent an automatic sheep shearing machine for the same amount of time. Being wrong never stopped their funding.
61
TdeF –
I think of CSIRO as just one of many institutions (plus the MSM) tasked with providing the CAGW narrative, whatever it happens to be at any particular time.
erecting the financial artchitecture based on that narrative is then the job of the pollies & their select business cronies, including a good number of former pollies/civil servants & CSIRO types who figure they can make a buck out of CAGW.
41
In the couple of following quoted extracts from both NASA’s Earth Observatory site and the University of New Hampshire site it is wise to remember that all the figures quoted in those extracts are guesstimates based on very, very few direct measurements by scientists. The scale of the global atmosphere and crustal gas exchanges are so large that it precludes directly measuring reliable data from even a small number of sources.
Plus of course the usual CO2 modelling complete with all the inbuilt unintended and intended biases according to the beliefs of the modeller groups from which a strong suspicion is emerging that climate alarmist science now appears to have reached the point where the data is being adjusted to fit the model’s outputs.
Selected quotes below;
——————-
NASA Earth Observatory
The Slow Carbon Cycle
[ more ]
———————-
[ quoted ]
University of New Hampshire
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE GLOBAL CARBON CYCLE
Carbon: the building block of life. You may have heard this phrase, but have you fully considered what it really means? All living things are made of elements, the most abundant of which are, oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorous.
Of these, carbon is the best at joining with other elements to form compounds necessary for life, such as sugars, starches, fats, and proteins. Together, all these forms of carbon account for approximately half of the total dry mass of living things.
Carbon is also present in the Earth’s atmosphere, soils, oceans, and crust.
When viewing the Earth as a system, these components can be referred to as carbon pools (sometimes also called stocks or reservoirs) because they act as storage houses for large amounts of carbon.
Any movement of carbon between these reservoirs is called a flux. In any integrated system, fluxes connect reservoirs together to create cycles and feedbacks.
&
POOLS, FLUXES AND A WORD ABOUT UNITS
The following section is a brief overview of some of the important pools and fluxes in the global carbon cycle (and note that, in our discussion, we will use the terms pool, stock and reservoir interchangeably).
But first, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the numbers and units scientists often deal with. Because the quantities of carbon in the Earth’s major carbon pools can be quite large, it is inconvenient to use familiar units such as pounds or kilograms.
Instead, we use other units, such as Petagrams, that are better suited for expressing large numbers.
For example, a Petagram (Pg), also known as a Gigaton (Gt), is equal to one quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000 or 10/15) grams!
Because there are a thousand grams in a kilogram, and a thousand kilograms in a tonne (also known as a metric ton), we can see that a Petagram is
equal to a trillion (1,000,000,000,000) kilograms or a billion (1,000,000,000) tonnes.
For those who prefer pounds, knowing that one kilogram is equal to 2.205 pounds tells us that one Petagram equals about 2.2 trillion pounds.
In all cases, expressing this as 1 Pg is much simpler than working with that many zeros.
Now we will consider carbon stored on Earth in four main reservoirs.
CARBON POOLS
Depending on our goals, the Earth’s carbon pools can be grouped into any number of different categories. Here, we will consider four categories that have the greatest relevance to the overall carbon cycle. Keep in mind that any of these pools could be further divided into a number of subcategories, as we will occasionally discuss.
The Earth’s Crust:
The largest amount of carbon on Earth is stored in sedimentary rocks within the planet’s crust. These are rocks produced either by the hardening of mud (containing organic matter) into shale over geological time, or by the collection of calcium carbonate particles, from the shells and skeletons of marine organisms, into limestone and other carbon containing sedimentary rocks.
Together all sedimentary rocks on Earth store 100,000,000 PgC (Petagrams of carbon).
Recalling that 1 Pg is is equal to a trillion kilograms and over two trillion pounds, this is clearly a large mass of carbon!
Another 4,000 PgC is stored in the Earth’s crust as hydrocarbons formed over millions of years from ancient living organisms under intense temperature and pressure. These hydrocarbons are commonly known as fossil fuels.
Oceans:
The Earth’s oceans contain 38,000 PgC, most of which is in the form of dissolved inorganic carbon stored at great depths where it resides for long periods of time.
A much smaller amount of carbon, approximately 1,000 Pg, is located near the ocean surface.
This carbon is exchanged rapidly with the atmosphere through both physical processes, such as CO2 gas dissolving into the water, and biological processes, such as the growth, death and decay of plankton.
Although most of this surface carbon cycles rapidly, some of it can also be transferred by sinking to the deep ocean pool where it can be stored for a much longer time.
Atmosphere:
The atmosphere contains approximately 750 PgC, most of which is in the form of CO2, with much smaller amounts of methane (CH4) and various other compounds. Although this is considerably less carbon than that contained in the oceans or crust, carbon in the atmosphere is of vital importance because of its influence on the greenhouse effect and climate.
The relatively small size of the atmospheric C pool also makes it more sensitive to disruptions caused by an increase in sources or sinks of C from the Earth’s other pools.
In fact, the present-day value of 750 PgC is substantially higher than that which occurred before the onset of fossil fuel combustion and deforestation.
Before these activities began, the atmosphere contained approximately 560 PgC and this value is believed to be the normal upper limit for the Earth under natural conditions. [ Edit; purely an assumption by the writer as paleo CO2 proxy evidence points to atmospheric CO2 reaching and perhaps passing at least 2000 ppm at various times in past eons ]
In the context of global pools and fluxes, the increase that has occurred in the past several centuries is the result of C fluxes to the atmosphere from the crust (fossil fuels) and terrestrial ecosystems (via deforestation and other forms of land clearing).
Terrestrial Ecosystems:
Terrestrial ecosystems contain carbon in the form of plants, animals, soils and microorganisms (bacteria and fungi). Of these, plants and soils are by far the largest and, when dealing with the entire globe, the smaller pools are often ignored.
Unlike the Earth’s crust and oceans, most of the carbon in terrestrial ecosystems exists in organic forms. In this context, the term “organic” refers to compounds produced by living things, including leaves, wood, roots, dead plant material and the brown organic matter in soils (which is the decomposed
remains of formerly living tissues).
Plants exchange carbon with the atmosphere relatively rapidly through photosynthesis, in which CO2 is absorbed and converted into new plant tissues, and
respiration, where some fraction of the previously captured CO2 is released back to the atmosphere as a product of metabolism.
Of the various kinds of tissues produced by plants, woody stems such as those produced by trees have the greatest ability to store large amounts of carbon,
because wood is dense and trees can be large.
Collectively, the Earth’s plants store approximately 560 PgC, with the wood in trees being the largest fraction.
The total amount of carbon in the world’s soils is estimated to be 1500 PgC.
Measuring soil carbon can be challenging, but a few basic assumptions can make estimating it much easier.
First, the most prevalent form of carbon in the soil is organic carbon derived f
rom dead plant materials and microorganisms.
Second, as soil depth increases the abundance of organic carbon decreases. Standard soil measurements are typically only taken to 1m in depth. [ edit ; correct! ]
In most cases, this captures the dominant fraction of carbon in soils, although some environments have very deep soils where this rule doesn’t apply.
Most of the carbon in soils enters in the form of dead plant matter that is broken down by microorganisms during decay.
The decay process also releases carbon back to the atmosphere because the metabolism of these microorganisms eventually breaks most of the organic matter all the way down to CO2.
[ and etc ! ]
71
ROM
Closer to home
The link at
http://www.beefcentral.com/news/tough-tree-laws-not-backed-by-evidence-senior-ecologist/
Get on to your local politician and tell him you want to know how to get in line for your share of the payout!
And there is some more background on the tupperware question in comments in that item at notricks
20
LOL! This will upset a few AGW cultists and hangers-on. 🙂
http://notrickszone.com/2016/01/03/new-paper-by-renowned-sea-level-expert-nils-axel-morner-calls-agw-a-new-religion-built-on-false-premises/#sthash.4gfkfK1E.dpbs
51
Here is 20 Underwater Wonders of Our Blue Planet (earthtripper.com)
Can you see the acidification?
“Over 70% of the earth’s surface is covered by water and this huge area contains some of the most amazing wonders on the planet.
Shockingly, huge portions of the world’s oceans have yet to be discovered …”
“The hydrothermal vents were discovered to the east of the Galapagos Islands, some 2,400 metres below the surface.
The vents were formed due to two tectonic plates diverging, causing sea water to shoot out at incredible speeds and high temperatures (around 400 degrees centigrade).
Before the deep sea vents were discovered, it was thought that life couldn’t exist at such depths, due to the lack of sunlight.”
30
o/t
typical cute renewables story the MSM feeds the CAGW followers:
2 Jan: NYT: Max Bearak: Electrifying India, With the Sun and Small Loans
The idea behind Selco, and other companies like it, is to create a business model that will help some of the 1.2 billion people in the world who don’t have electricity to leapfrog the coal-dependent grid straight to renewable energy sources…
Selco systems typically include a small panel connected to a battery that stores enough power to run one or more lights, phone chargers and, with higher wattage options, some small appliances. Since its inception in 1995, Selco India has sold 318,400 solar home systems, and has provided power systems to almost 10,000 schools, hospitals and other institutions, almost all in Karnataka…
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/business/energy-environment/electrifying-india-with-the-sun-and-small-loans.html?_r=0
***truth is it’s business for the very same folks the CAGW followers (including Max Keiser & Stacey Herbert) claim to detest:
30 Dec: BusinessStandardIndia: T E Narasimhan: Can SunEdison pull off its India plans?
Pashupathy Gopalan, who heads SunEdison’s Asia-Pacific operations, says India is a key market and the company will invest $2 billion in India over the next three years. The government has set a 175 GW renewable energy target by 2022 and India will need $100 billion investment to generate 100 GW of solar energy…
“We have had a phenomenal journey in India so far, emerging as one of the largest renewable energy developers in the country. We will continue to contribute to India’s renewable energy story in a meaningful way,” says Gopalan…
Also in August, a $1 billion clean-power fund through Goldman Sachs and a number of banks was announced for SunEdison…
Typically, SunEdison sells 10 per cent of its international portfolio on average.
***Some of the major investors include Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and First Reserve. It is trying to adopt this concept for India…
http://wap.business-standard.com/article/companies/can-sunedison-pull-off-its-india-plans-115123000947_1.html
Goldman Sachs has huge investments in India’s ReNew Power, and plenty of representation on the Board:
ReNew Power India – Board of Directors
Ankur Sahu, Director
Ankur is co-head of Goldman Sachs’ Merchant Banking Division (MBD) in Asia Pacific. Prior to MBD, Ankur has served in various leadership positions within Goldman Sachs in the Investment Banking Group and has worked across various locations, including San Francisco and Tokyo…
Harsh Nanda, Director
Harsh is a executive director in Goldman Sachs’ Merchant Banking Division (MBD) in India…Previously, Harsh was in the healthcare group of the Investment Banking Division at Goldman Sachs in New York…
Sumit Sen, Director
Prior to joining PIA in 2011, he spent 7 years with Goldman Sachs Investment Banking Division in India including 2 years in Bangalore where he helped build GS’ investment banking business…
http://renewpower.in/about-renew/board-of-directors
40
Acids. I was interested in San Pelligrino mineral water, my favorite carbonated water. It has a pH of 5.6 which is slightly acid on the log scale, 7 being neutral. Below 7 is acid, above alkali. Chalk and cheese. For some reason we are worried about fish surviving in neutral water. Now shellfish and coral are a different matter. The water has to be alkali or all the world’s limestone would dissolve. However this is also why the world’s sea water can never be acid, it is a buffered solution.
Anyway quoting from South East Water .. ”pH is a measurement of the acidic or alkaline nature of the water. The ideal pH of drinking water is between 6.5 and 8.5. At this pH corrosion and scaling on pipes and fittings is prevented. When water spends a long time in cement mains or tanks the pH can increase and a pH value up to 9.2 for drinking water is still considered acceptable. A significant proportion of Melbourne’s mains and tanks are cement lined.
The Australian Drinking Water Guidelines suggest a pH between 6.5 and 9.2″
However for the sake of the coral, we want Alkali, over 7 then. In our Reservoirs in Melbourne then Ph is
source Cardinia Greenvale Silvan Winneke Tarago Yan Yean
pH (units) 7.0-7.4 7.0-7.2 7.0-7.6 7.0-7.3 7.0-7.3 7.0-7.3
but the pH goes up substantially in the concrete piping as water is being delivered.
So the world’s oceans are 8.4, alkali. Take out the salt and the oceans are fresh drinking water, according to our own Guidelines.
So what’s acidification again? It seems to be a fantasy of the warmists who simultaneously argue that CO2 in the air increases 50% and so does CO2 in the water, which is 400x as massive and so dilutes by 400 and the increase is only .11%. Anyway you look at it, it is hard to justify this ‘acidification’ scare.
This is acidification from CO2 only. Rivers are often acid and can present a problem where they meet the sea. That is nothing to do with CO2 and global warming and climate change. Surely scientists would not deliberately mix all this up just to get funding?
81
Floods and heavy rain in Qld, UK, USA, South America, Uruguay, Philippines.
A lot of energy being released from the system by the current El Nino.
The following La Nina could be quite strong.
Buy blankets !!!!
40
Add Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina to that list.
30
My 2 cents on w Qld temperatures at 12.11.3
10
‘A lot of energy being released from the system by the current El Nino.’
Not sure about that, I’ll need a link.
The Klimatariat will take the opportunity to call all these floods ‘positive feedback’.
31
As an Australian, the thing I find most concerning is this paragraph:
That bit about the Great Barrier Reef is part of a single paragraph on the subject of Ocean Acidification. So how do we reconcile it with the paragraph in the FOI that reads:
I’m indebted to the Bishop Hill Blog for drawing this discrepancy to my attention.
I checked for articles on this decline, and found
Those figures add to 100%, leaving 0% as the contribution of Ocean Acidification. I cannot account for that discrepancy. If I had that sort of result in financial accounts, I’d be calling in the auditors right now. And the police.
161
Howdy Jo & David –
Ocean acidification article out of the Quadrant. Interesting timing. Cheers –
http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2016/01/fishy-science-ocean-acidification/
30
Latest book and documentary.
‘The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPzpPXuASY8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPzpPXuASY8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO08Hhjes_0
http://www.drtimball.com
81
Jo
Delingpole in public on the wider area of climate panic
“1001 Reasons Why Global Warming Is So Totally Over In 2016”
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/01/04/1001-reasons-why-global-warming-is-so-totally-over-in-2016/
61
In yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald, the celebrity scientist (and notable GW scaremonger) Dr Karl Kruszelnicki wrote an article “Can we save the Great Barrier Reef?” which lead with “The Great Barrier Reef has lost half of its coral in the 27 years between 1985 and 2012. If the trend, which is actually increasing in pace, continues, it will lose half of what is left by the year 2022.” This, he claims, is because ocean pH has dropped by 0.1 since the Industrial Revolution.
I find this claim of 50% loss just staggering and had expected at least some response in today’s letters, but nothing there.
So where does this figure come from? Does it have any credibility or did he drum it up to add weight to his article?
60
The usual dark hole?
40
Somebody else here posted this:
“Tropical cyclones, coral predation by crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS), and coral bleaching (caused by warm water, a very common occurrence and from which corals recover quickly) accounted for 48%, 42%, and 10% of the respective estimated losses”
Those figures come to 100% with no mention of “ocean acidification”.
http://www.pnas.org/content/109/44/17995
50
Someone should tell Dr Karl that humans can do a lot better than that. After all we have now lost ALL the people who were alive between 1890 – 95. (PS I am very fortunate to have cruised and snorkelled different sections of the GBR for 2 weekly periods each year since 2003. It is remarkably resilient and what is “lost” to natural events usually recovers quite rapidly.)
60
Bill
Like a few other things Dr Karl doesn’t want to be told this
10
A Starfish-Killing, Artificially Intelligent Robot Is Set to Patrol the Great Barrier Reef (scientificamerican)
COTSbot, developed by robotics researchers at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, could help slow the starfish’s invasion.
Artificially intelligent, it correctly identified its target 99.4 percent of the time in laboratory tests.
“It’s now so good it even ignores our 3-D-printed decoys and targets only live starfish,” Queensland’s Matthew Dunbabin says.
The latest report from Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority places the venomous invertebrates alongside climate change and human activity as a significant threat to the reef, which lost half its coral cover between 1985 and 2012.
30
Great invention but it does raise question of the rise of the machines, intelligent and lethal and autonomous drones in the water now targeting unwelcome lifeforms in the oceans. Why not let nature sort this out as it has done for billions of years? Where are Azimov’s three rules? That 0.6% is also a worry.
61
Don’t tell me there is a bigger threat to the Great Barrier Reef than man made Global Warming? Maybe Barack Obama can fund this project so that his grandchildren can enjoy the reef?
51
I too find this automated robot very disturbing. Such a clinical no-mercy killing machine, efficient in it’s thoroughness, gives me no comfort. It’s cane toads all over again.
20
UNESCO was forced to admit months ago that the Great Barrier Reef is in good health. But they couldn’t help themselves and added that it will still need careful monitoring.
I understand that the present GBR is the seventh.
30
Probably Off Topic, but related, in that it deals with private individuals looking for public money, and then trying to justify what they have done.
There was an article on last night’s 7.30, (link here) about 2 researchers.
Press the play button on the video at the ABC article, and listen carefully to what is said from the 37 second mark, and it only needs to be for 25 seconds or so to get the general idea.
They hatched a plan for an adventure to camp and fish in The Kimberley.
Got their funding etc etc, and off they went, 9 Months no less.
While they were there, they fluked it, and discovered a number of new fish species. Even while discovering them, along they way, they also ate some these new species.
Blah blah blah!
New Science blah blah.
After the story, my good lady wife mentioned that all this was based on ….. an excuse for an adventure, and that she hoped they were made to pay back all the money they got.
My response to that was that they will probably end up having much more money thrown at them.
You really wonder just how much funding is based on ….. just trying it on.
You know the drill. Mention Climate Change/Global Warming in the application and you have a better chance, and even here, one of them actually does mention Climate Change, and extinction, etc.
You see pieces like this and you just shake your head sometimes.
(Aside) They even come from America to apply for Australian Funding here.
Tony.
70
Nothing quite as bad as the Science grant pointed out by Andrew Bolt. $23.5Million for studying depression in Italy in the middle ages. When threatened with loss of this grant, the head attacked Tony Abbott saying he would have ‘blood on his hands’ if he touched it. Now who do you interview to ask about depression in 1260? Climate Change depression will be the next science grant application area and cash compensation for depression or stress from finding out you were wrong.
30
The oceans are turning more acidic and all the little fishes will die because they can not evolve fast enough.
To which I say coelecanths.
50
I must say TdeF; your in the zone today. Great stuff in every post!
40
I agree Dave in the States!
60
Erl Happ starts up his new blog.
https://reality348.wordpress.com/2015/12/29/3-how-the-earth-warms-and-cools-naturally/
10
Nice to see Erl Happ is back online logically clarifying interpretations of measured climate parameters.
00
Interesting find by SG.
https://i1.wp.com/realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/2016-01-04-17-05-54.png
The 2001 IPCC reports shows a 20 year hiatus from 1980-2000 (now disappeared due to settle science, of course)
Now, since there has been no warming for the last 18 years, that means NO WARMING right back to 1980 !!!!
20
And UAH pretty much matches that top graph
http://s19.postimg.org/kwu22mwc3/UAH1980_2000.jpg
Note.. I do correct the error of assumed continuity on SG’s site.
30
OT:
Oh Karl, I am but a fool, I thought it wasn’t warming, but you showed me that’s not cool
Top Climate Science of 2015
10
Here is an interesting titbit from Wikipedia:
So, if you wanted, you could make it appear that the oceans have decreased in pH simply by choosing a different scale.
Also, doesn’t pH change with temperature anyway?
40
Every day I religiously go to the beach and my red litmus paper is still turning blue.
50
Amazingly this humiliating revelation about ZERO ‘OA’ impacts appears to have passed the BBC and Guardian by. Who’d have thought that, eh?
50
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/the-holocene-context-for-anthropogenic-global-warming-2/
The Holocene Cooling disaster. Cooler than previous interglacials, and going into terminal decline!
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Not a fan of the ABC, but being forced to pay for them I occasionally check out their offerings. It appears the “all the science is settled” argument requires yet another adjustment. The appropriately named Professor Grant Bigg announces the discovery of a negative feedback mechanism in the way the earth regulates its temperature:-
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-12/giant-icebergs-absorb-carbon/7083766
I love this line:- “But while that might have an impact on greenhouse gas emissions, it will do nothing to slow sea level rise.”
I was always amused at the claim that temperature regulation on this planet was an inherently unstable system where rising temperature cause CO2 to be released from the oceans which thus caused more temperature rise etc etc. Such a set up would go catastrophic the moment a butterfly sneezed.
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This is very easy to prove false. I grew up in aquatic and terrestrial atmospheric chemistry in my mother and father’s exotic fish pets and plant shop and started out my life getting allowance by working with adjustments to these atmospheres and the chemistry of water.
All you do is figure out how much mankind’s CO2 load yearly is, and scale down a marine aquarium to try to change the pH with the fractions of CO2 claimed.
When the government employees of this world stamped their feet and told you all, you aren’t scientists, they lied to you. You can replicate ANY claim with an experiment,
which is why James Hansen never put CO2 into a kiln, and why those who say the sky will get hot if you use fire, claim there is no experiment to check their work.
Everyone who properly follows thermodynamic iterative process and methodologically clean work is a practicing scientist.
If you don’t think so, you hand a thermometer to a climatologist and tell him predict which direction it will go for you.
Then you can show him how easy that really is, and he can exclaim that – you’re not a climatologist.
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I was going to resit the temptation to say anything on this thread. Its message is so crystal clear. But finally I have to say, we told you so!
BB
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