Source: CO2 Science
Subject Index Summary
Ocean Acidification (Effects on Marine Animals: Shellfish): Will the shells of shellfish dissolve away in a high-CO2 world of the future?
Journal Reviews
Some Facts About Corals and Calcification: … and how they may be impacted by the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 concentration. (more…)
Source: Quadrant
by Ray Evans
Climate: The Counter Consensus by Robert M. Carter
(Stacey International, 2010)
Bob Carter is a member of a small group of Australian scientists (although he was born in the UK and mostly educated in New Zealand) who, having attained a distinguished position in their disciplines (he is a paleo-climatologist), were willing to put their reputations on the line by speaking out against the most extraordinary fraud in the history of Western science: the fantasy that by controlling anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide, mankind can control global temperatures; a miraculous global thermostat.
This fantasy is so bizarre that Jonathan Swift could, using statements from today’s Royal Society without embellishment, write them into his account of the kingdom of Laputa. The citizens of Laputa lived on a cloud and threw rocks at rebellious surface cities beneath them. Using Laputa as a satire on the Royal Society, Swift portrayed the ruin brought about by the attempts by the scientists living in the clouds to impose their will on the helpless people living below them.
Bob Carter’s book is a well written account of the deep corruption of our scientific inheritance which has been central to the spread of this fantasy. It is a fantasy which has spread throughout the intellectual, political and religious elites of the English-speaking world, and which has infected key Australian institutions, notably the CSIRO, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, and virtually all our universities. (more…)
Source: CO2 Science
Foraminifera are amoeboid protists with reticulating pseudopods, i.e., fine strands of cytoplasm that subdivide into branches that merge to form a dynamic network. They are typically less than one mm in size (but can be much larger), and they produce an elaborate calcium carbonate shell called a test, which may have one or more chambers. As for their impact on the undersea marine environment, these widespread calcifying protozoa, acording to Schiebel (2002), are responsible for 32-80% of the global deep-ocean flux of calcite. Therefore, it is important to determine the degree to which various forams — as they are often called — may or may not be harmed by likely future increases in what has come to be known as ocean acidification. 
(more…)
Source: CO2 Science
Coccolithophores are single-celled algae and protists that contain chlorophyll, conduct photosynthesis, and possess special plates or scales known as coccoliths that they produce by the process of calcification. They are found in large numbers throughout the surface euphotic zones of the world’s oceans; and we here review the results of several studies that indicate how they may fare in a CO2-enriched world of the future that is characterized by significantly altered oceanic carbonate chemistry.
Working with two previously untested coccolithophores, Calcidiscus leptoporus and Coccolithus pelagicus, which they describe as “two of the most productive marine calcifying species,” Langer et al. (2006) conducted batch-culture experiments in which they observed (1) a “deterioration of coccolith production above as well as below present-day CO2 concentrations in C. leptoporus [italics added],” and (2) a “lack of a CO2 sensitivity of calcification in C. pelagicus” over an atmospheric CO2 concentration range of 98-915 ppm, both of which observations, in their words, “refute the notion of a linear relationship of calcification with the carbonate ion concentration and carbonate saturation state.” (more…)
Source: CO2 Science
by Craig Idso
Rodolfo-Metalpa et al. (2010) write that “anthropogenic CO2 emitted to the atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans leading to decreases in pH, CO32- concentration, and the related CaCO3 saturation state (O) of seawater,” and that “as a result, coral calcification is expected to decline dramatically in the future, raising widespread concerns about the future of our oceans in a high-CO2 world (e.g. Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2007).”
Investigating the effects of this projected decline, Rodolfo-Metalpa et al. collected three live colonies of Cladocora caespitosa in the Bay of Villefranche (Ligurian Sea, France) at about 25 meters depth in July 2006 plus three other colonies in February 2007. They divided the colonies into fragments and carefully removed single polyps that they attached to PVC plates and randomly assigned to aquariums that were continuously supplied with unfiltered seawater and maintained at ambient or elevated water temperature (T or T + 3°C) in equilibrium with air of ambient or elevated CO2 concentration (400 or 700 ppm), subjecting them to “(1) mid-term perturbations (1 month) in summer and winter conditions of irradiance and temperature, and (2) a long-term perturbation (1 year), mimicking the seasonal changes in temperature and irradiance.” (more…)
Source: CO2 Science
by Craig Idso
In a special issue of Oceanography published in December of 2009, Feely et al. review what we supposedly know about the current pH status of the world’s oceans, as well as what they say we can likely expect by the end of the current century.
Getting right to the crux of the matter, the three researchers write in their abstract that “estimates based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change business-as-usual emission scenarios suggest that atmospheric CO2 levels could approach 800 ppm near the end of the century,” and that “corresponding biogeochemical models for the ocean indicate that surface water pH will drop from a pre-industrial value of about 8.2 to about 7.8 in the IPCC A2 scenario by the end of this century.” And, of course, they warn that, as a result, “the skeletal growth rates of calcium-secreting organisms will be reduced,” ending with the obligatory statement that “if anthropogenic CO2 emissions are not dramatically reduced in the coming decades, there is the potential for direct and profound impacts on our living marine ecosystems.”
Well that’s Feely et al.’s story; but in the very same issue of Oceanography — in the article that appears just before their paper, in fact — NOAA’s Pieter Tans presents a much different take on the subject. (more…)
From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
Dear Enquirer, – Thank you for taking the trouble to write to me. If I may, I shall highlight various passages from your letter in bold face, and then respond to them seriatim in Roman face.
“I am not a climate scientist, and so I can only go by the overwhelming consensus amongst scientists that man-made climate change is occurring and that it poses a grave threat to humanity.” (more…)
From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
The desperation of the climate extremists as global temperatures plummet for the tenth year in a row is growing. Stephen Schneider, professor of environmental biology and “global change” at Stanford University, said today:
Nonsense. Here’s why. (more…)
The research paper, “Acid Test: The Global Challenge of Ocean Acidification,” documents extensive scientific evidence that human emissions of carbon dioxide are not poisoning the oceans to the detriment of marine invertebrates or other marine life. To the contrary, the paper shows that “even a cursory review of the peer-reviewed scientific literature reveals … that the ongoing rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration will actually prove a boon to calcifying marine life.” [emphasis in the original] (more…)
Source: courtesy of http://www.uncoverage.net/2010/01/now-showing-the-new-eco-scary-movie/
During December’s obsession with “Climate-gate,” the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) began revving up publicity for its video on the NEW eco-disaster-in-the-making, “Acid Test: The Global Challenge of Ocean Acidification.”
It is a lushly-produced, lightly-sourced 21-minute presentation, with alto-gushy voice-over by actress Sigourney Weaver, the star of the movies, “Alien” and “Ghostbusters.” It does not say in the credits anywhere that Ms. Weaver has also has a science degree. At one point in the video, Ms. Weaver intones, in twenty years the oceans will be a “sea of weeds.” Someone from Stanford University tells us coral reefs and seashells will be dissolving, in “20 or 30 years.” Someone else turned to the camera and said, (very seriously) she has never seen terapods with such thin shells, EVER. (more…)
by Robert Ferguson
The new SPPI paper can be found here: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/acid_test.html
Reproduced here is the Foreword to the paper.
“OCEAN ACIDIFICATION” – THE EXTREMISTS’ FALLBACK SCARE
First, they called it “global warming”. Then they noticed there had been no warming for 15 years, and cooling for 9, so they hastily renamed it “climate change”. Then they noticed the climate was changing no more than it ever had, so they tried “energy security”, and even named a Congressional Bill after it. Then they noticed that most Western nations already had bountiful energy security, in the form of vast, untapped domestic supplies of oil, gas, coal, or all three, so they switched to “ocean acidification”.
This is the new phantasmagoric for the tired, old scare whipped up by the NRDC and the environmental extremist movement for their own profit at our expense. The world’s corals, they tell us, will be eaten away by the acidified ocean within not more than ten years hence. Shellfish will be no more, their calcified carapaces and exoskeletons dissolved by the carbonic acid caused by our burning of fossil fuels. The oceans will die. Sound familiar?
Yet, as the indefatigable Craig Idso here demonstrates, the scientific consensus – if science were done by consensus at all, which it is not – is that the rising “ocean acidification” scare is just more piffle. (more…)
Source: Courtesy of Master Resource
by Chip Knappenberger
January 6, 2010
As projections of catastrophic climate changes are being beaten down by the far less than catastrophic actual climate response, other calamities that may result from our untoward use of fossil fuels are being offered up for our consideration. Besides the well-worn pitfalls of our failure to achieve energy independence, or to be the first to grasp green technologies, a new problem is being worked into the mix—ocean acidification.
Ocean acidification. Sounds bad doesn’t it. Much worse than say, “the oceans are becoming less basic” which is a more accurate, but less worrisome-sounding description. In either case, it is used to describe the situation in which the oceans absorb an increasing amount of carbon dioxide as the atmospheric partial pressure of CO2 increases. The dissolution of CO2 in the oceans has the net effect of increasing the hydrogen ion concentration which drives the ocean’s pH lower. The pH of the global oceans averages about 8.1 so it is considered a base rather than an acid (acids have pH values less than 7.0) and has perhaps dropped by 0.1pH units (a logarithmic scale) since the Industrial Revolution.
The reason we are being told that this is bad, is that it potentially disrupts some ocean ecosystems, primarily coral reefs and other calcifying organisms. The idea is that a lower pH interferes with the production of shells and/or causes the shells of some organisms to dissolve—leading to thinner, weaker defenses and other detrimental effects increasing the vulnerability of these organisms and jeopardizing the livelihood of other organisms that depend on them leading to a downward spiral of ever-increasing breadth. (more…)
