I agree. Do go to that web-site and read it. Make note of the sources that are provided. To what do they refer? Is there any peer-reviewed material there? Are the arguments substantive ones, or are they just semantic?

Just like Nick says, do your own research.

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Absolutely not! People who have no background in the science shouldn't "do their own research", or they're just going to end up parroting the exact same bogus talking points that someone else who had no background in the subject made up. What do you think people go to college for years for to get a PhD in climatology or oceanography are doing all that time -- weaving baskets? They're learning about the intricacies of this incredibly complex science. And if you don't? If you've never read a peer-reviewed paper on the subject to save your life? You screw up like the author of that post.

"The ocean currently has a pH of 8.1"

No, it doesn't. The ocean doesn't "have a pH" of anything. The pH of the ocean varies depending on where in the ocean you are, from 7.9 to 8.3. It *averages* 8.1.

" At that rate, it will take another 3,500 years for the ocean to become even slightly acid"

TODO

"One also has to wonder how they measured the pH of the ocean to 4 decimal places in 1751, since the idea of pH wasn’t introduced until 1909."

One doesn't "have to wonder" anything. If you'd actually read the research on the topic before spouting off, such as Ridgewell 2001, Sabine et al., 2004b and Raven et al., 2005, you'd know that there are several methods utilized -- calculation from trapped air in antarctic and greenland ice cores, ice from said cores, deposition patterns in carbonate sediments, and so forth. For ancient oceans, there are various approaches, such as boron isotopic analysis (Pearson and Palmer, 2000). Your "gotcha" just makes you look like an idiot.

"This does indeed sound alarming, until you consider that corals became common in the oceans during the Ordovician Era – nearly 500 million years ago – when atmospheric CO2 levels were about 10X greater than they are today."

Again, had the author even a rudimentary understanding of the topic, the issue with ocean acidification (actually, ocean *surface* acidification) is the *rate* of the CO2 increase. We are experiencing the fastest CO2 rise in history since the PETM, and possibly even faster than that. Our CO2 rise is about a hundred times the fastest in recent geologic history -- the end of the last ice age. There is a tremendous, virtually limitless pH "buffer" in the oceans the form of carbonate sediments. A limited amount of carbonate ions exist in the ocean, and react with the carbonic acid from CO2 to form bicarbonate ions, taking free H+ out of the system, but also taking carbonate ions out of the system. As the ocean cycles into deep water, carbonate minerals are dissolved, restoring the carbonate ion concentration. So long as changes in CO2 occur at a slow pace, the surface acidity does not appreciably increase and carbonate ions remain abundant. However, if CO2 levels increase rapidly, most of the available carbonate ions on the surface are taken out of solution, increasing pH and decreasing available carbonate ions for marine organisms. Refreshing that from ocean sediments occurs in a blink of an eye, geologically, but that's still many thousands of years.

As per studies, such as Caldeira and Wickett, 2003, the oceans have not differed in average pH more than 0.6 below present in at least the past three hundred million years. And this *includes* the PETM, which saw widespread death in the planet's oceans, widely credited to the corresponding acidification from that time's rapid CO2 spike. Perhaps the only time worse than what we're seeing now in terms of acidification is the eruption of the Siberian Traps, which wiped out most life on the planet.


"and the correlation between CO2 and temperature is essentially nil throughout the Phanerozoic"

The planet was an entirely different place hundreds of millions of years ago. The entire biological and atmospheric systems were structured differently. It's like saying that there was a correlation between amputating wounded limbs and reducing gangrene in the 1800s, so we should amputate all wounded limbs today.

CO2, on human time scales is a forcing factor. It persists for thousands of years. On geological timescales, however, it is feedback. Thousands of years is a blink of an eye when it comes to the planet's history. Instead, on geological timescales, CO2 acts as feedback to other, more dominant forcing factors -- on the scale of hundreds of thousands of years Milankovitch cycles, for example, while on longer scales, long-term solar changes, major albedo, atmospheric, and surface geography changes.

Ignoring all of the other differences and acting like there are only two factors to temperature is just ridiculous. You think the carboniferous's 35% oxygen had no effect on the climate? You think the neoproterozoic mass glaciation had no effect on the Earth's albedo? I mean, seriously.

"Perhaps corals are not so tough as they used to be? "

Anyone who's ever raised a reef tank can tell you that corals are nightmarishly sensitive to having their conditions remain just perfect.

"The bomb was equivalent to 30 billion pounds of TNT, vapourised three islands, and raised water temperatures to 55,000 degrees."

*Above* the ocean. Hydrogen bombs aren't even detonated in the ground -- they're detonated way up in the air, to create the maximum radius high intensity blast wave. 20 feet underwater is a completely different story. And that's not affecting the carbonate concentration, so it's a complete red herring.

The world has experienced massive coral dieoffs on an unprecidented scale. Even a brief temperature spike out of the ordinary can bleach and kill an entire reef. Corals are remarkably sensitive.

We don't even have to conduct this acidification experiment on our own; there are places where it is being conducted by nature -- shallow subsea volcanic vents that emit only CO2 (they're rare -- most also emit other gasses or are too deep) into a point source area (so they're not affecting global ocean carbonate uptake). The effects are astounding -- there are no corals anywhere near the vents, unlike the surrounding areas. Mollusks that have traveled to close to the vents have been observed to have the colors disappearing right off their shells as the outer layers dissolve off. This, at the CO2 levels forecast for later this century.

This is not baking soda volcanoes, people! This is an incredibly complex scientific field, and a two-day read-someones-blog day camp isn't going to bring you up to speed. It's just going to convince you that the blog author knows what they're talking about when they're completely and utterly ignorant.

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Bleh, just realized that I submitted too soon. Oh well -- it should be obvious from the rest of the post where that "TODO" was going.

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