Now the doomsayers are telling you that the oceans are turning acid from all that nasty carbon dioxide being absorbed into the seas. How frightening! Or perhaps not? According to oceanographers there’s as much chance of the planet’s seas turning acid as there is of Al Gore admitting he lied. So it seems we can trust the ecofascists even less now they’ve started pontificating about other scientific disciplines. In response to the latest environmental hype oceanographers have come out to tell us what the facts actually are and its not good reading for Mr. Gore! It seems that sea life thrives on warmer water and increased carbon dioxide. On June 2nd, 2009 a groundbreaking new research paper was announced by zoologists that indicated that elevated water temperatures and heightened concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) dramatically increases the growth rate of a keystone species of sea star and may well be beneficial to other sea crustaceans. Yes, that’s right–sea-dwelling creatures like a drop of acid in the drink. Crustaceans (e.g. shellfish and coral) survive by making carbonate structures and they do so by turning soluble bicarbonates in the water to carbonates. In basic terms, their way of life causes them to release CO2 into the water. It’s normal, not nasty, say the sea scientists. But hold on, here’s another little fact to debunk the “acid oceans” drivel being hyped by hippy seaweed-huggers. Oceanographers all concur that no amount of CO2 could ever turn the oceans to “acid.” The experts say that seawater acidity (or pH) is alkaline at 8.2. Neutral is 7 while the acidity (pH) of carbonic acid is around 6.5 at saturation STP, [one litre CO2 / litre water]. Not just that, but only about 10% of CO2 turns to acid, the rest is simply dissolved! Zoologists at the University of British Columbia (UBC) researched the impact of ocean acidification on marine invertebrates that don’t have a large calcified skeleton or external shell. What they have found debunks the global warmist doomsayers’ guesstimates about the potential impact of climate change on marine species. In the lab, UBC researchers, led by Rebecca Gooding, manipulated water temperatures and CO2 levels in seawater tanks containing juvenile Purple Ochre Sea Stars, a species found along much of North America’s Pacific Coast. An increase in temperature of just three degrees and doubling of CO2 concentrations enabled the sea stars to grow almost twice as fast as they normally would over a period of ten weeks. “This means the sea stars could potentially reach adulthood in about half the time it would typically take–and consume more mussels, their main diet, at much higher rates,” said Gooding, a PhD student in the Department of Zoology working under the supervision of UBC Assistant Professor Christopher Harley. Oh dear, seems like this could be another dead end for the doomsayers keen on finding ways to tax us all to death to save the planet. At the end of the period, sea stars reared in warmer, more acidic waters weighed 17 grams, compared to control sea stars that weighed an average of only 11 grams. In contrast, older less thorough studies once suggested that an increase in temperature and CO2 levels hindered growth in most species, but that seems to have been a premature conclusion. “This complicates current assumptions. It looks like increased CO2 may not have negative effects on all marine invertebrates, suggesting that predicting the impact of climate change should consider how different organisms respond to changing climatic variables,” said Harley. The Purple Ochre Sea Star is a cold-water species of sea star that can be found anywhere from Alaska to Baja California. It is most commonly found in the North Eastern Pacific. This variety of sea star is considered a keystone species that exerts a disproportionate effect on their ecosystem by preying on other animals. But over here at Climategate.com we always go the extra mile to give you the full story. We’ve found another oceanographic paper, from PNAS July 28, 2009 Vol 106 No:30, entitled “Physical and biogeochemical modulation of ocean acidification in the central North Pacific” by John E. Dorea,1, Roger Lukas, Daniel W. Sadler, Matthew J. Church, and David M. Karl. In this paper the sea experts agree that ocean acidity (pH) is changing at a weazing asthmatic snail’s pace due to CO2. In science parlance that’s delta pH= -0.0019 per year. So you won’t be seeing shoals of floating dead fish in any millennium soon. Why, with such a wealth of sea science to debunk the climate scaries we fell over yet another little oceanographic gem to whet your sceptic appetite with the Spivack, Arthur J.; You, Chen Feng; Smith, H. Jesse paper published in the science journal, ‘Nature’ (London, United Kingdom) (1993), 363(6425), 149-51 CODEN: NATUAS; ISSN: 0028-0836. English. In this study the experts found that the pH of the surface ocean is a sensitive function of its alkalinity. With totally inorganic variables it thus can serve as a very accurate proxy for past ocean pH to yield information about variations in atmospheric CO2. So thanks to the oceanographers we have a new and far more reliable proxy of past climate than given to us by those dodgy tree-ring counters so badly discredited in the recent Climategate scandal. It appears that boron isotopic composition of foraminiferal tests depends on the pH of seawater, and thus serves as the essence of this new and reliable proxy. What the report tells us is that seawater isotopic composition has been constant during the past 21 million years. For most of that period surface ocean pH was only 7.4 ± 0.2, but it then increased to 8.2 ± 0.2 (approx. the present value) at 7.5 million years ago. The newly found numbers are telling us that the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide today is extremely low in broader historical terms. Or to put it another way, oceanographers are proving that the man made global warming theory just doesn’t hold water!
Source John O’Sullivan is a legal advocate and writer who for several years has litigated in government corruption and conspiracy cases in both the US and Britain. Visit his website.