

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Ocean Acidification ? - The Sea is Alkaline You Dumbos!

"Ocean acidification" is the new poster child of the Global Warming alarmists and an array of researchers have collected their non-BigOil millions from the taxpayer and gone forth to do research to find some sort of data to justify their pre-determined result!

For the un-initiated sea water varies naturally between a pH of 7.4 and 8.5 with an average of 8.1compared to a neutral pH of 7. Below a pH level of 7 a solution becomes acid. Of course if you take a limited tank and flush Co2 through it a first year chemistry or engineering student will tell you that some carbonic acid will be formed - but will then break down almost immediately. How flushing CO2 madly through seawater equates to the sea being in contact with   air which has microscopic amounts of CO2 of  .03% (or 3 parts in ten thousand ) mystifies me but that is what the Global Change Institute is doing -  mind you they will be having a lovely tax-payer funded time on the Great Barrier Reef in the process!
ON AN idyllic coral atoll just a two-hour boat ride from Queensland's Gladstone Harbour, out past the endless line of tankers queued to load coal for export, a half-dozen scientists work frantically against the tide.

Their objective? To explore the consequences of rising atmospheric carbon - which evidence overwhelmingly attributes to the burning of coal and other fossil fuels - on the delicate chemistry of the reef and the creatures living there.
The project team, led by David Kline, a young scientist from the University of Queensland's Global Change Institute, is completing tests on a new underwater laboratory that will expose living corals on the Great Barrier Reef to the more acidic conditions forecast for oceans by the end of the century.

 According to to the  Wiki The extra dissolved carbon dioxide has caused the ocean's average surface pH to shift by about 0.1 unit from pre-industrial levels - this is in spite of  all the CO2 spewing out of those power stations keeping us warm and toasty in winter.
Now Blind Freddie can see that with a  pH of 8.1 ,a natural pH variation of 1.1 and a pH change of only .1 in the last century the sea will never turn acid and that the change attributed to AGW is negligible compared to the natural variation and all the wee sea beasties will not be dissolved in an acid bath of mankind's making!
Now we have claims from Warmists that the financial cost to Australia of failing to take action against acidified oceans may be worse than both world wars combined.
Alarmed with the gravity of this threat I thought we would need a secret weapon to blitzkreig this deadly carbonic acid that was going to be worse than the Kaiser and Hitler combined.
After much Big Oil funded research I found that the US Department of Energy supplied the answer ! The secret weapon causing rapid breakdown of carbonic acid is , wait for it, WATER. Yes, carbonic acid breaks down rapidly in water and claims it is irreversible are utter hogwash.
We will have to wait for the next big scare as this one is a non-event!


  1. Dear Sir,

    I quite agree with you.

    The supposedly happening "ocean acidification" from CO2 is the greatest misunderstanding in the whole CO2-debate debacle.

    After soaking up atmospheric CO2 for billions (not millions) of years, how come the oceans are (still) alkaline?

    The answer is: because of CO2!

    While CO2 dissolves in water to carbonic acid, the photosynthesis process (together with a variety of minerals) converts it to alkaline algal cell material.

    In other words: CO2 in the atmosphere is vital to life in the oceans!

    Sincerely yours,
    Klaus Kaiser

  2. I don't suppose either of you have a masters in marine biology conservation? No? Didn't think so.

    You stated : ...with a pH of 8.1 ,a natural pH variation of 1.1 and a pH change of only .1 in the last century the sea will never turn acid...

    A pH change of 0.1 is EXTREMLEY high, the ocean doesn't have to turn into acid for it to harm marine life. The pH scale works much like the scale used to measure the power of an earthquake.
    A decrease of a tenth of a unit is equal to an increase of 26% in acidity.

    Please get your facts together before blabbing your idiot thoughts to the public .

    Thanks .

    Nicole Lyghts

  3. This argument is like saying that ice cannot get warmer bc ice is cold- The concern isn't that the oceans are going from alkaline to acid, but that they are becoming more acidic.

  4. 'A pH change of 0.1 is EXTREMLEY high...'

    Compared to what?

  5. As so often happens, people love getting all excited about the pro's and con's of the technical minutiae and in the process miss the main point being made by this site's commentator.
    In this instance, the main point is the rush of the climate change extremist to find themselves another cause to justify the continuation of access to grant funding for needless research, which as this blog rightly points out, is simply designed to support pre-existing alarmist conclusions that have a nice ring of fear to them and have more to do marketing and public relations than science.