pHony Alarmism – Watts Up With That?

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

For a while now scientists have been raising the alarm about the effect of increasing atmospheric CO2 on the pH of the ocean. pH is a measure of whether something is acidic (pH below 7), alkaline, also called basic (pH above 7) or neutral (pH of 7). The ocean is slightly alkaline, and rainwater is slightly acidic. Here are some examples.

What’s happening is that the ocean is moving slightly toward neutral. However, “ocean neutralization” doesn’t sound alarming enough, so they’re falsely labeling it “ocean acidification”. Here are some quotes.

“Generally, shelled animals—including mussels, clams, urchins and starfish—are going to have trouble building their shells in more acidic water, just like the corals. Mussels and oysters are expected to grow less shell by 25 percent and 10 percent respectively by the end of the century… oyster larvae fail to even begin growing their shells.”

Ocean Acidification, Smithsonian Museum

“After exposing them to a range of acidity levels, UC Davis scientists found that under high CO₂, or more acidic, conditions, the foraminifera had trouble building their shells and making spines, an important feature of their shells. They also showed signs of physiological stress, reducing their metabolism and slowing their respiration to undetectable levels.”

Tiny Shells Indicate Big Changes to Global Carbon Cycle, UC Davis

“Like a piece of chalk dissolving in vinegar, marine life with hard shells is in danger of being dissolved by increasing acidity in the oceans. Ocean acidity is rising as sea water absorbs more carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere from power plants and automobiles. The higher acidity threatens marine life, including corals and shellfish, which may become extinct later this century from the chemical effects of carbon dioxide, even if the planet warms less than expected.”

Regardless of global warming, rising CO2 levels threaten marine life, University of Illinois

YIKES! EVERYONE PANIC!

I got to thinking about this, and I thought … wait a minute. There have been hard-shelled animals in the ocean since the end of the Cambrian Explosion about 485 million years ago. Say what?

Now, there’s a new study out in Science Magazine (paywalled, of course) that contains estimates of both atmospheric CO2 and oceanic pH since 485 million years ago. 485 million years ago is roughly the end of what’s called the “Cambrian Explosion Of Life”, a time when a huge number of life forms emerged on the earth.

Here’s their estimate of CO2 levels since the Cambrian Explosion.

Figure 1. Title says it all. I’ve added the modern increase at the recent end of the graph.

You might ask, “If the study is paywalled, how did you get the data”. Well, their Supplementary Online Information isn’t paywalled, and it contains this graphic.

Figure 2. Panel B, Figure S10, op. cit.

Note that the CO2 levels are shown on a log scale to visually minimize the size of the actual changes … but I digress. Sadly, they didn’t include a table of the data. So I had to digitize it. Takes a while, but I’m a patient man.

Figure 3. Digitization of the graph shown in Figure 2.

Looking back at Figure 1, the most remarkable features are the large and rapid drop in CO2 levels starting around 470 million years before the present (Ma BP), and the somewhat slower but almost as large rise starting around 430 Ma BP.

The 470 Ma BP drop is generally attributed to enhanced silicate weathering of the mountains by early land plants, and reduced volcanic CO₂ input. And the increase is generally attributed to reduced mountain weathering due to glaciation, along with an increase in volcanic CO₂ emission. Are those actually the causes? Unknown. The Late Ordovician glaciation only covered about 13%-14% of the land area, compared to about 25% of the land area during the most recent glaciation. So that part of the explanation seems unlikely, but what do I know?

In any case, the study also has a graph of the pH of the ocean over the same period of time. How accurate is it? Also unknown. Presumably, however, it’s currently our best estimate of the variations of oceanic pH over 485 million years. Again I digitized the data. Here’s that graph.

Figure 4. Again, title says it all.

Now, there are several noteworthy points in this graph. First, at no time in the past 485 million years has the ocean been acidic. It has always been alkaline (basic), with a pH always greater than 7 (neutral pH).

Second, over that entire time, there has been a huge variety and profusion of shelled animals living in the ocean, apparently unbothered by the variations in alkalinity.

Third, in the upper right of Figure 4 is a tiny vertical line with horizontal “whiskers” at the top and bottom. It shows the modern change in pH since 1850, the change that has all the megabrains calling the Climate 911 hotline to report an emergency … color me unimpressed. We’ve run the oceanic pH experiment over the last half billion years. Shelled creatures didn’t disappear.

TL;DR version? Life has flourished, both above and below the surface of the sea, through periods when atmospheric CO2 has varied up to almost ten times the current level. As a result, the myriad of alarmist claims that increasing CO2 is some kind of death sentence for life either on the land or in the ocean all run aground on a reef of hard facts.

Don’t believe me about pH and creatures with shells? Ask the chambered nautilus, a lovely cephalopod with a hard shell. I once saw a school of them while scuba diving, and I have the shell of one that I picked up years ago on a beach on one of the outer islands in Fiji.

It’s one of the most ancient creatures in the sea, and it has existed in a virtually unchanged form for half a billion years … funny how the changes in oceanic pH didn’t disturb it one bit.

Best to all on a sunny afternoon,

w.

Yeah, you’ve heard it before … when you comment, please quote the exact words you are discussing. I can defend my words; I choose them carefully. I cannot defend your understanding of my words.

My Other Analyses Of the Ocean Neutralization Question:

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