Source:  Washington Times

http://www.amazon.com/CO2-Global-Warming-Coral-Reefs/dp/0971484589/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1356024440&sr=8-1&keywords=craig+idso

by Steve Gorham

On December 5, the PBS News Hour showed a segment titled “Endangered Coral Reefs Die as Ocean Temperatures Rise and Water Turns Acidic,” with Hari Sreenivasan reporting. The story discussed the recent loss of Florida coral reefs and the possible impact on recreation and tourism if reef degradation continues. But PBS wrongly told viewers that reef degradation was due to warmer ocean temperatures and “ocean acidification,” both allegedly caused by human carbon dioxide emissions. Sreenivasan concluded with, “Time that maybe is running out for coral reefs in Florida and elsewhere.”

Scientists, environmental groups, and the United Nations promote the fear of ocean acidification. According to claims, man-made emissions of carbon dioxide are absorbed by the oceans and converted into carbonic acid, thereby changing the chemical balance of the oceans. The basic concept of acidification is correct, but hugely exaggerated. (more…)

Source:  CO2 Science

http://www.european-marine-life.org/30/paracentrotus-lividus.php

In the intriguing report of their study of the early development of the Mediterranean sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus, Martin et al. (2011) write that “although embryos and larvae are well prepared for environmental changes (Hamdoun and Epel, 2007), it is widely accepted that early life-history stages are more sensitive than adults to ocean acidification.” However, they say that this too-rapidly-accepted belief has typically been derived from comparisons made between organisms raised in seawater of current ambient pH and CO2-lowered pH “at one time point and may be partially explained by a delay in the development classically observed under low pH conditions,” citing the work of Portner et al. (2010). (more…)

Source:  CO2 Science

Reference
Landes, A. and Zimmer, M. 2012. Acidification and warming affect both a calcifying predator and prey, but not their interaction. Marine Ecology Progress Series 450: 1-10.

Background
The authors write that “both ocean warming and acidification have been demonstrated to affect the growth, performance and reproductive success of calcifying invertebrates.” However, they say that “relatively little is known regarding how such environmental change may affect interspecific interactions.” (more…)

Source:  CO2 Science

http://tbsecosystemsold.wikispaces.com/Coral+Reefs

Reference
Thresher, R.E., Tilbrook, B., Fallon, S., Wilson, N.C. and Adkins, J. 2011. Effects of chronic low carbonate saturation levels on the distribution, growth and skeletal chemistry of deep-sea corals and other seamount megabenthos. Marine Ecology Progress Series 442: 87-99.

Background
The authors write that “ocean acidification has been predicted to reduce the ability of marine organisms to produce carbonate skeletons, threatening their long-term viability and severely impacting marine ecosystems,” noting in this regard that “corals, as ecosystem engineers, have been identified as particularly vulnerable.” However, they state that “these predictions are based primarily on modeling studies and short-term laboratory exposure to low-carbonate conditions.” And they therefore logically add that “their relevance to long-term exposure in the field and the potential for ecological or evolutionary adjustment are uncertain.” (more…)

Source:  CCR

Reference
Franke, A. and Clemmesen, C. 2011. Effect of ocean acidification on early life stages of Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus L.). Biogeosciences 8: 3697-3707.

According to Franke and Clemmesen (2011), “since the recruitment of fish seems to be determined during the early life stages (Koester et al., 2003; Houde, 2008), knowledge of the factors influencing growth and survival rates of these stages are of great importance in fisheries science.” And they add, in this regard, that “early life history stages even of the more tolerant taxa are assumed to be most susceptible to ocean acidification (Raven et al., 2005; Melzner et al., 2009).” But is this latter assumption correct? (more…)

Source:  CCR

In introducing their study, Findlay et al. (2011) write that “calcifying marine organisms such as molluscs and foraminifera, crustaceans, echinoderms, corals and coccolithophores are predicted to be most vulnerable to decreasing oceanic pH (ocean acidification).” They also, however, say there is a possibility for “increased or maintained calcification under high carbon dioxide conditions,” and they go on to experimentally demonstrate the reality of this phenomenon in different types of calcifying marine animals. More specifically, working with five different calcifying organisms – two gastropods (the limpet Patella vulgata and the periwinkle Littorina littorea), a bivalve mussel (Mytilus edulis), one crustacean (the cirripede Semibalanus balanoides) and one echinoderm (the brittlestar Amphiura filiformis) – Findlay et al. say they “measured either the calcium (Ca²⁺) concentration in the calcified structures or shell morphological parameters as a proxy for a net change in calcium carbonate in live individuals exposed to lowered pH,” where the lower pH of the seawater employed was created by the bubbling of CO₂into header tanks. So what did they find? (more…)

http://www.weforanimals.com/free-pictures/sea/sea-1.htm

Source:  CCR

Stumpp et al. (2011a) evaluated the impacts of elevated seawater pCO₂ (1264 ppm vs. 375 ppm) on the early development of, and the larval metabolic and feeding rates of, a model marine organism: Strongylocentrotus purpuratus, commonly known as the purple sea urchin. This was done via a protocol where growth and development were assessed daily, for a period of three weeks, in terms of total body length, body rod length, postoral rod length and posterolateral rod length, as well as mortality and feeding and metabolic rates. So what did their research show? (more…)

Source:  CCR

According to Landes and Zimmer (2012), “both ocean warming and acidification have been demonstrated to affect the growth, performance and reproductive success of calcifying invertebrates.” However, they say that “relatively little is known regarding how such environmental change may affect interspecific interactions.” (more…)

Source: NIPCC

Reference
Schram, J.B., McClintock, J.B., Angus, R.A and Lawrence, J.M. 2011. Regenerative capacity and biochemical composition of the sea star Luidia clathrata (Say) (Echinodermata: Asteroidea) under conditions of near-future ocean acidification. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 407: 266-274

According to Schram et al. (2011), “echinoderms produce their skeletal components from magnesium-rich calcite, a form of calcite that is even more vulnerable to ocean acidification than aragonite (Andersson et al., 2008; Gayathri et al., 2007),” and, therefore, they say that “an understanding of the prospective impacts of ocean acidification on internal skeletal structures of echinoderms is important, as the presence of an internal skeletal structure is unique in comparison to the majority of invertebrates studied to date in ocean acidification research.” The four researchers thus proceded to conduct their own experiment to add to that knowledge. (more…)

Source:  WSJ

[SPPI Note:  More in-depth papers on this issue can be found at the SPPI website:

C02 Science’s Ocean Acidification Database

Quantifying the Effects of Ocean Acidification on Marine Organisms

Effects of Ocean Acidification on Marine Ecosystems

Answers to a Fisherman’s Testimony about Ocean Acidification

EPA’s Role in Protecting Ocean Health Should Focus on the “Here-and-Now” Threats

See also CO2 Science website for reviewed papers on the topic 

“Once again, therefore, we have another situation where the doom-and-gloom prognostications of the world’s climate alarmists have been made without regard to the full spectrum of important phenomena that come to bear upon the issue in question, and where the conclusions they reach are found to be far more uncertain and much less extreme than what they portray them to be. Thus, it can be appreciated that the climate-alarmist horror stories of impending extinctions of earth’s marine calcifying organisms due to a CO2-induced decrease in seawater pH are merely that:stories, without any basis in fact.”

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WSJ text beings here:

Coral reefs around the world are suffering badly from overfishing and various forms of pollution. Yet many experts argue that the greatest threat to them is the acidification of the oceans from the dissolving of man-made carbon dioxide emissions.

The effect of acidification, according to J.E.N. Veron, an Australian coral scientist, will be “nothing less than catastrophic…. What were once thriving coral gardens that supported the greatest biodiversity of the marine realm will become red-black bacterial slime, and they will stay that way.” (more…)

by Ben Pile

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…

World’s oceans in ‘shocking’ decline

Warns Richard Black at the BBC.

The oceans are in a worse state than previously suspected, according to an expert panel of scientists.

In a new report, they warn that ocean life is “at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history”.

They conclude that issues such as over-fishing, pollution and climate change are acting together in ways that have not previously been recognised.

The impacts, they say, are already affecting humanity.

The panel was convened by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), and brought together experts from different disciplines, including coral reef ecologists, toxicologists, and fisheries scientists.

Call me a cynic, but I no longer take claims about ‘expert panel of scientists’ at face value. Sadly, Richard Black of the BBC does. (more…)

Source:  Numbers of the Month

Numbers watch

by John Brignell

The way to bring down a modern state is to attack its energy, manufacturing and transport systems, hence the dam busters and the bombing of German railways and factories during the Second World War. Nowadays, however, developed nations are under attack from the Enemy Within, the neo-Marxist Greenies. Greenpeace, which in its inchoate form was a fairly straight environmental campaigning group, was soon taken over by political extremists and after its conversion to an apocalyptic vision lost original members such as Patrick Moore; but over time this has also happened to other mainstream parties. The UK is the world basket case in this respect (witness the passing without comment of the destructive carbon tax, which is being strongly resisted in other western countries) and almost the entire British political class have become true believers. Nevertheless, countries far apart in both distance and character, such as Australia and Germany , are manoeuvred relentlessly by their green parliamentary minorities in the direction of economic suicide. (more…)

Source:  CO2 Science

by Craig and Sherwood Idso

Special Issue
This week we announce the release of our newest major report, Carbon Dioxide and Earth’s Future: Pursuing the Prudent Path. Based on the voluminous periodic reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the ongoing rise in the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration has come to be viewed as a monumental danger — not only to human society, but to the world of nature as well. But are the horrific “doomsday scenarios” promulgated by the climate alarmists as set-in-stone as the public is led to believe? Do we really know all of the complex and interacting processes that should be included in the models upon which these scenarios are based? And can we properly reduce those processes into manageable computer code so as to produce reliable forecasts 50 or 100 years into the future? At present, the only way to properly answer these questions is to compare climate model projections with real-world observations. Theory is one thing, but empirical reality is quite another. The former may or may not be correct, but the latter is always right. As such, the only truly objective method to evaluate climate model projections is by comparing them with real-world data. (more…)

Source:  Wattsup

NGO pleads for $15 billion “ocean acidification” monitoring system

Via Eurekalert, from the NGO Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans (POGO), a press release that says, “panic! please send money”. Here’s the punch line:

The Foundation says the average level of pH at the ocean surface has dropped from 8.2 to 8.1 units, “rendering the oceans more acidic than they have been for 20 million years,”

Note that any pH lower than 7.0 is considered “acidic”. Distilled (pure) water has a pH of 7.0. Right now the ocean with a pH of 8.1 is considered “basic”. (more…)

Source: http://www.co2science.org/data/acidification/acidification.php

Results and Conclusions
In what follows, we present several graphics that help one better discern the major message and sub-messages of the data contained in our Ocean Acidification Database. These figures will be updated periodically, as the number of records in the database grows and as time permits us to redo the various analyses upon which the figures are based.

We begin by plotting in Figure 1 the percent changes in all five of the major life characteristics included in this study (calcification, metabolism, growth, fertility and survival) as functions of experimentally-orchestrated declines in seawater pH from the presently prevailing value, where each entry in our Ocean Acidification Database is represented by its own individual data point. (more…)