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RELATED POSTS ON OCEAN ACIDIFICATION: [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] 

THIS POST IS A CRITICAL REVIEW OF AN ARTICLE IN THE SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE ON OCEAN ACIDIFICATION WITH FOSSIL FUEL EMISSIONS AND ITS IMPACT ON CORAL REEFS DESCRIBED AS “RAPID INCREASE IN OCEAN ACIDITY PUTS CRUSTOSE CORALLINE ALGAE IN A GROWTH PREDICAMENT” [LINK] 

PART-1: WHAT THE ARTICLE SAYS

Ocean acidification is a chemistry experiment with our ocean that will profoundly alter global marine ecosystems as seawater absorbs carbon dioxide from our fossil fuel emissions. This raises ocean acidity and hinders the ability of corals and crustaceans to form the hard skeletons made of calcium carbonate that are essential to their existence. Particularly vulnerable are he slow-growing reef organisms called crustose coralline algae. Laboratory experiments at low pH show its inability to adapt to increasingly acidic oceans. Coralline algae are an essential component of tropical reef systems. They glue the reef together and play an important ecological role but future ocean pH projections will reduce coralline growth rates and that has serious implications for coral reefs. Laboratory experiments simulate what ocean acidification will be like in 2100 if fossil fuel emissions continues at the RCP8.5 scenario. Ocean acidity will have more than doubled since pre-industrial. Past swings in Earth’s climate have resulted in warmer and more acidic seas that were home to healthy coral reefs. But the current rate of change and level of acidity hasn’t been seen in the past 300 million years. The problem is not so much the acidification, but the speed at which it’s happening. We may find different populations of corallines that are more resilient but the change is happening so fast that they won’t be able to adapt. A strong coral bleaching event was recorded in 2017.

PART-2: CRITICAL COMMENTARY

1. The argument put forth, that the observed rise in oceanic inorganic carbon concentration is driven by fossil fuel emissions, derives from the observation that rising oceanic inorganic carbon concentration and falling oceanic pH is observed during a time of fossil fuel emissions. However, this correspondence does not establish causation as the many comical examples of spurious correlations collected by Tyler Vigen clearly show [LINK] . 
2. In related posts it is argued and demonstrated that, at the minimum, detrended correlation and mass balance analyses must be presented to show a causal correspondence between fossil fuel emissions and ocean acidification [LINK] [LINK] . We show in these related posts that these statistical and mass balance tests do not show evidence of causation. They show that (1) there is no evidence that oceanic inorganic carbon concentration is responsive to fossil fuel emissions and that (2) fossil fuel emissions do not contain enough carbon to explain the observed oceanic changes. Thus, no evidence is found in the data that the observed changes in oceanic inorganic carbon can be attributed to fossil fuel emissions. The assumed attribution in the Smithsonian analysis has no basis.
3. In a third related post [LINK] it is shown that fossil fuel emissions are not the only source of carbon that can change oceanic inorganic carbon levels. Much larger sources of carbon in the planet also change ocean chemistry. In particular, it is noted that the crust of the planet where we live and where we have things like atmosphere, climate, oceans, solar energy, and the solar biota that includes fossil fuel emitting humans, is 0.3% of the planet containing 0.2% of the planet’s carbon. The other 99.7% of the planet and 99.8% of the carbon is in the mantle and the core of the earth.
4. In the related post [LINK] it is argued with the relevant data and citations that carbon flows from the mantle to the ocean can acidify the ocean to a much greater extent than fossil fuel emissions could ever do. It is not possible to understand changes in ocean acidity purely in terms of surface phenomena and certainly not in terms of human activity.
5. That a once venerable scientific publication like The Smithsonian would overlook these relevant data to make a climate change case against fossil fuel emissions is more evidence of a tragic pattern in the scientific literature where the scientific method and the principles of objective scientific inquiry are apparently less important than the need to sell a climate change agenda against fossil fuel emissions.
6. Sadly, the Smithsonian is not the only example of this rot in science magazines and in science reporting. It is a trend that is changing once trusted publications into climate whores such that they are no longer seekers of truth but seekers of ways to sell anti fossil fuel activism by scaring people with the imagined horrors of climate change – such as ocean acidification with fossil fuel emissions.

THE OCEAN CAN ACIDIFY ITSELF JUST AS IT HAD DONE IN THE PETM EVENT 55 MILLION YEARS AGO  [LINK]