Carnegie Researchers Say Geotech Can't Cure Ocean Acidification

CarnegieScience writes "Plans to stop global warming by 'geoengineering' the planet by putting aerosols in the atmosphere to block sunlight are controversial, to say the least. Scientists are now pointing out that even if it keeps the planet cool, it will do almost nothing to stop another major problem — ocean acidification. The ocean will keep on absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (making carbonic acid) and the water's pH will get too low for corals and other marine life to secrete skeletons. So this is another strike against a quick fix of our climate problems."

Comments

Idea

[jimbobborg]

Why don't they use something to up the alkalinity of the ocean, like, crushed coral? Oh, wait...

Re:if i remember well from high school chemistry

[DoofusOfDeath]

the ocean is a sort of buffer solution

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer_solution

what is major component of this buffer? us. living critters and how they react to an increase in CO2

http://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/SeaWiFS/TEACHERS/CHEMISTRY/

which means the oceans will maintain their pH over a wide range of abuse and this notion of ocean acidification is hysteria

You're probably right. I'm sure what you remember from high school is a good reason to dismiss the Carnegie Melon research team's results.

Re:if i remember well from high school chemistry

[Rei]

what is major component of this buffer? us. living critters and how they react to an increase in CO2

Wow! Amazing that all of those egghead boffins living in their ivory towers with their hoity-toity "science" missed that one! Thank you so much for pointing it out!

Except for the fact that most ocean life is not primarily constrained by CO2, but nutrients, especially iron. Whoops.

I never ceased to be amazed at people who insist that something must be wrong with the science on a subject when they haven't done even the most rudimentary amount to educate themselves on what the science of the subject actually is. You could at least start by reading the relevant sections of the IPCC technical reports to see what actually has been studied and how. I guarantee you, it's way, way more than you ever expected.

There's a reason why people go to college for years to get a degree in these fields. This isn't high school baking-soda-and-vinegar-volcanoes here. It's an incredibly complex science that you need a solid background in. At least spend a week reading peer-reviewed papers on the subject before you put fingers to keyboard. You're coming across like if someone who had never used a computer started talking about how programmers should make every piece of software be run by voice commands in spoken English sentences like "Could you open up the letter to my grandmother and edit out the part where I told her about my chihuahua?", and have the software figure out what you want it to do. You're broadcasting ignorance on the topic like a beacon.

academic research is cliquish

[circletimessquare]

it often follows dire preconceptions and focuses on hysterical predictions in spite of obvious mitigating factors, most notably time scale, that dull real implications. if you sound the alarm bell, you get press and you get funding. if you say something like "more CO2 will increase the pH of the ocean, but at such a tiny amount over such a giant span of time, it doesn't make any sense to worry about it right now" then you won't make the slashdot front page. its "the emperor's new clothes" writ large. good science and good education is being done by climate researchers all over the globe... and also a pretty heavy dose of indoctrination and mythology making

i believe global warming is a real force and we need to do something about it. but i'm hard pressed to worry about corals disappearing in an acid ocean on any time scale that is supposed to mean something

if we are going to mitigate mankind's effects, we need to lose the hysteria

Re:if i remember well from high school chemistry

[ArcherB]

I'm sure what you remember from high school is a good reason to dismiss the Carnegie Melon research team's results.

I think the important thing to ask is, "Who paid for the study?"

Re:What Climate Problem?

[Rei]

Wow. Your source is Bob Carter, one of about two dozen (out of the world's several thousand professional climatologists) who is a public skeptic. And actually, he's not really a climatologist; he's a paleonolotist -- but don't let that stop you.

FYI: 1998 was one of the strongest El Nino events in modern history. El Nino raises the atmosphere's temperature by slowing the upwelling of deep, cold water in the eastern pacific. La Nina cools it by just the opposite. It doesn't change the long-term picture, of course; the rate at which water cycles in the ocean has no bearing on how much total heat input there is into the system; ocean waters aren't magically decoupled from the rest of our atmosphere. It's just a source of white noise on top of the blatantly obvious signal.

But don't let that stop you deniers from picking it as your starting point.

And, also FYI: only one of the three major global climate databases lists 1998 as the hottest. The other two list 2005 (they were close). But again, don't let that stop you.