How to Prove if Skeptics or Climate Alarmists Are Wrong
(left) A healthy ocean snail has a transparent shell with smoothly contoured ridges. (right) A shell exposed to more acidic, corrosive waters is cloudy, ragged, and pockmarked with ‘kinks’ and weak spots. Photos courtesy Nina Bednarsek, NOAA PMEL.
The above graphic comes from the NOAA Website. The graphic is accompanied by the following text:
Carbon dioxide also dissolves into the ocean like the fizz in a can of soda. It reacts with water molecules, producing carbonic acid and lowering the ocean’s pH. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the pH of the ocean’s surface waters has dropped from 8.21 to 8.10. This drop in pH is called ocean acidification.
A drop of 0.1 may not seem like a lot, but the pH scale is logarithmic; a 1-unit drop in pH means a tenfold increase in acidity. A change of 0.1 means a roughly 30% increase in acidity. Increasing acidity interferes with the ability of marine life to extract calcium from the water to build their shells and skeletons.
Pteropods first appeared during the Paleozoic Era, and thrived during the Mesozoic and Cenozoic Era.
As the following graphic demonstrates, Pteropods have not only survived but thrived and evolved during periods with much much much higher atmospheric CO2 levels. In fact, our current level of CO2 at 407 ppm barely registers on the geological scale and represents a CO2 drought on a historical basis.
I would also challenge the claim the atmospheric CO2 can dramatically alter the pH of the oceans. As stated:
A drop of 0.1 may not seem like a lot, but the pH scale is logarithmic; a 1-unit drop in pH means a tenfold increase in acidity. A change of 0.1 means a roughly 30% increase in acidity
Changes in atmospheric CO2 are measured in % changes or ppm changes, not X^10 changes. It would take vast amounts of atmospheric CO2 to dramatically alter the oceans’ pH, and as the graphic above demonstrates, sea life not only survived but thrived during periods of much higher CO2 levels.
Both of the two above claims can easily be tested:
Scott Pruitt at the EPA should demand the study done by Nina Bednarsek, NOAA PMEL is reproduced with the atmospheric CO2 level required to alter the pH of the water published for all to see. My bet is that this is just more Climate Sophistry being used as Propaganda for NOAA and NASA GISS, and there is no real science behind it, just alarming false claims.
Tests Needed:
- What level of atmospheric CO2 harms Pteropods shells (BTW, this one smells a lot like Rachel Carlson’s Egg Experiment)
- What level of atmospheric CO2 is required to alter the ocean pH, or even the pH of a gallon of water by 0.1.
Those experiments can be run in a High School lab, so Congress should demand they be run before another dollar is spent on this nonsense.
NOAA’s graphic clearly implies that an increase from 350 ppm to 407 ppm, a 16% increase, or 57 ppm, can change the vast ocean’s pH by about 0.1. I simply don’t believe it, and I bet the numbers won’t add up. As the following graphic demonstrates, the oceans are near the least acidic/most basic level of the past 300 million years. The geologic CO2 chart above and the geologic ocean acidification chart below don’t show small changes in CO2 causing large changes in ocean pH. CO2 over the past 150 million years fell from near 2,500 ppm to a low of around 250 ppm, a 10x change, and pH changed by 0.6. Are we to believe a small change of 60 ppm can change the pH of the oceans by 1/6th the total change of the past 150 million years?
Lastly, the pH of the blood ranges from 7.35 to 7.45, which is more acidic than the oceans…by far. Blood doesn’t dissolve bone, nor does it dissolve the shells of pteropods. Climate Sophists don’t seem to understand that CO2 is the molecule of life, and is integral to any living system. Living systems evolve to accommodate CO2. Without CO2 there is no life.
Read more at co2islife.wordpress.com
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Al Shelton
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CO2 is life, please send this to Pruitt.
Trump seems to have stopped draining the swamp.
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Squidly
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Indeed! … I knew the entire “ocean acidification” claim was bullshit from the first time I heard it. What they claim is completely impossible (just like the “greenhouse effect”).
The Trump administration needs to have these facts clearly presented to them, if they haven’t already, and should be pressured to act accordingly (ie: shut it all down).
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Squidly
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Great article!!
FYI, just the top 3 meters of ocean contain more CO2 than all of the atmosphere above it. The average depth of our oceans is over 4 kilometers! … you could dissolve all of the CO2 in our atmosphere into our oceans and you would find it very difficult to even measure a change in pH. Our atmosphere contains only a very tiny fraction of CO2 by comparison to our oceans. Our oceans drive atmospheric CO2 concentrations, not the other way around.
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Kruz
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Ur rant here makes u look like u dont understand it neither. If you did u would not have to write so long comments about it… but I guess this is the problem in most of todays “climate science”, its full of broken egos who want to be “right” and not to honestly look for the truth. How is it possible “science” is saying this and then the opposite? We have been on this earth for a long time, we should already have some understanding but seems like some just want to complicate things with their “superiour knowledge”
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Bryan Costie
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Thanks for sharing it…
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jerry krause
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Hi Readers,
“Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the pH of the ocean’s surface waters has dropped from 8.21 to 8.10. This drop in pH is called ocean acidification.”
When I read something like this a question immediately pops into my mind: How many samples of ocean water’s pH had been measured at the start of the Industrial Revolution? And even today, how many samples of pH measurements have been averaged? And maybe more important, who pretends to measure the pH of a solution to a hundredth of a pH unit?
I really do not know about the actual measurement of pH at this time so I am not qualified to claim how precisely this measurement can now be done.
But I am familiar with the measurement of air temperature and know that NOAA data (SURFRAD and USCRN projects) clearly establish that air temperatures can change from minute to minute by tenths of a degree, if not a degree over a period of ten minutes or so. But I read average air temperatures for a year reported to a hundredth, or even a thousandth, of a degree. This fundamentally is nonsense.
Have a good day, Jerry
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