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

What Climate Problem?

[jayme0227]

I'm still using my will to suppress your evidence that global warming is a problem.

Re:What Climate Problem?

[Rei]

As I understand it, methane is a bigger problem them CO2

You understand wrong. It is a large problem, but CO2 is larger by over threefold.

They tell us to not fart anymore.

Who, your roomate? Certainly not the scientific community. Most animal-based methane emissions come from ruminants. And not from "farting", but "belching" (the initial breakdown occurs in the rumen, and the bolus moves back and forth between the mouth and the rumen). "Farting" isn't even the second leading cause of ruminant methane emissions -- that goes to manure decomposition.

Livestock-sourced methane is only one significant anthropogenic component. Others include rice agriculture, peatland/wetlands development, the oil and gas industry, landfills, and biomass burning. Other significant human-sourced methane emissions, including ruminant raising, are nearly double those of natural emissions. Ruminants may be the largest single anthropogenic component, but they're less than a sixth of total human-sourced methane emissions.

And yet, when those monster Apatosaurus, including the popular, but obsolete synonym Brontosaurus roamed the earth. I dare say one herd/tribe/pod produced a much methane as all the cattle that currently populate the earth.

Little is known that could lead one to draw any conclusions about the large sauropods in terms of methane emissions. They weren't ruminants, although they did eat large quantities of plant matter. We don't know their herd size, and haven't even conclusively shown that herding behavior was significant for them. And more importantly, we don't know their total worldwide population. However, as large herbivores, one thing can be certain: they didn't have a particularly high global population density. It just wouldn't support them.

There are approximately 1 trillion cattle worldwide. This is just cattle -- not counting other ruminants. These average about 1.5 tons at adulthood. An adult apatosaurus is estimated to weigh about 30 tons. If we assume a weight equivalence, that's the equivalent of 50 billion apatosaurus. It is extremely unlikely that there were that many apatosaurus -- or even total sauropods. We support this much cattle mass cattle via modern intensive agriculture and research.

Furthermore, your notion is based on a premise -- that either the atmosphere is static or it's always changing harmlessly. But that's not the reality. The atmosphere has changed dramatically over history. Generally these changes are very slow; that's not a problem. It's when changes are rapid that there are problems. The last atmospheric change similar to what we're forcing nowadays was the PETM (Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum). The causes are still unknown, but one thing is known: over the course of hundreds or thousands of years (the blink of an eye by geologic standards), there was a CO2 and heat spike. This triggered a methane spike, which amplified the heat spike. The total warming input was approximately what we'll have locked in to if we continue the "business as usual" scenario through 2100. The results were dramatic and catastrophic. Entire ocean currents shifted. The climates of regions across the planet dramatically altered. Forests became plains became deserts became forests. The ocean became acidic, and most of the world's corals and carbonate-shelled plankton died, causing a massive upheaval in the oceanic food chains. The planet was left such a changed place that we give it a different name -- the Eocene.

Now, my question to you is this: do you really want to create the Anthropocene?

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.

Re:What Climate Problem?

[Rei]

Why can't my car use it?

Not a dumb question at all! :) You brought up one of the biggest misunderstandings of physics that is the basis for innumerable perpetual motion/free energy scams: the concept of heat as energy.

Yes, heat *is* energy. But you can't harvest it directly; you can only harvest heat from differences in temperature. Why? Entropy. A hot material is more "disordered" than a cold material. Hence, you harvest energy from heat alone, sure, you wouldn't be violating enthalpy, but you would be violating entropy. Entropy must always increase. Now, if you have a hot reservoir and a cold reservoir, you can harvest some energy from heat, so long as you increase the entropy of the cold reservoir more than the hot reservoir lost.

If this law of the universe didn't exist, perpetual motion would be possible. Picture a closed system where you have a "heat harvester" that produces electricity without a cold reservoir, surrounded by a working fluid. It then runs some electrical appliance. The waste heat from the electrical appliance goes back into the working fluid, where it's harnessed again to make more electricity by the "heat harvester". Ad infinitum. Perpetual motion. And entropy forbids it.

Idea

[jimbobborg]

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

Re:Idea

[TnkMkr]

Wait... I have a better idea, lets engineer some sort of biological creature that will live off collecting the
carbon from our atmosphere and sequesting it into some sort of solid state. We should engineer it to be solar powered and
should be deployable over the entire surface of the earth.

Don't worry, I'm sure technology will save us by developing this totaly new and radical solution.

straw man argument

[Captain Kirk]

Geo-engineering may make people think that we can carry on as now with no sacrifices. This article tries to re-inject a sense of fear. Its like saying "OK so the vacuum cleaner is good at cleaning the floor. But does it paint the garage? No? Well back to cleaning the floor with a mop then"

Surely we deserve a more rational debate? Sacrifices are needed but sophistry will not persuade anyone.

Re:straw man argument

[Yvanhoe]

In the climate change debate, there are no places for sanity anymore. For years scientists have tried to warn politicians that *maybe* we ought to be *careful* about some *possible* consequences of our wastes and pollution. Every one dismissed them. Then, for right or wrong (I think for right but who knows), comes the IPCC and Al Gore. They put the scientific argument in the closet, took a deep breath and shouted PAAAAAANIIIIIICC ! And finally got some politicians to take actions. In the 70s you were a irresponsible hippy if you studied sea level rises or the downfall of biodiversity, now you are a irresponsible lackey of oil interest if you examine the various cataclysmic claims and propose to refine a model in the way that seems to minimize the IPCC conclusions.

Big financial and political interests have now come into play, rational public debate is out.

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:Volcanoes

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing you thought of that - you should probably send them an email right away! You discovered the missing forcing that will keep our planet cool and our oceans pH balanced! Turns out that in all this freaking out about climate change, nobody who was even somewhat competent got involved at all.

Re:Volcanoes

[Rei]

Do these climate models take into account the fact that Volcanoes erupt from time to time, spewings tons of ash into the atmosphere, which reflects sunlight, and thereby cools the earth?

Yes. And it's not the ash that primarily reflects the sunlight; it's the SOx. And the cooling is only temporary. And volcanoes also emit CO2. But a small fraction as much as humans release.

And yes, volcanic ash is acidic.

I have the answer.

[yttrstein]

http://image52.webshots.com/152/1/14/3/518111403JQgFmi_ph.jpg

Re:Stop driving or die

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see anyone, even the ones hollering about global warming, ceasing transportation activities that involve burning stuff and releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere

Well, the ones that DO get dismissed as dirty hippies, and then you stop looking at them.

Global experiments with us as guinea pigs

[RichMan]

Ok, the whole solution of Geo-engineering is a WTF moment.

We did not understand the global bio-sphere to begin with so we are in the Global-Environment change state. Now we propose attacking the symptoms without a full understanding of the dynamics.

It is like we have are playing russian roulette here and we don't know how many chambers are loaded.

Look at most attempts to "fix" environmental problems by introducing others. The bio-sphere is just way more interconnected than we can account for.

The best solution is to reduce our foot-print as rapidly as we can. And make sure it stays that way.

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.

Pffft! Who are you going to believe?

[StefanJ]

Micheal Crichton, whose best-selling techno-thriller disproved global warming hysteria with copious footnotes . . . or so called "scientists" working for a "university" producing "peer reviewed research?"

I tell you, these "facts" and "evidence" are trouble.

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:academic research is cliquish

[Rei]

if you sound the alarm bell, you get press and you get funding.

Just the opposite. Any scientist willing to deny global warming has an automatic lucrative job lined up for them in the oil, gas, and coal industries. Period. And extensive press coverage to boot. There are about two dozen (out of the world's several thousand professional climatologists) who deny global warming. They get almost as much coverage as the rest of them combined.

You don't make a name for yourself in the scientific community by simply repeating what others have said; you make a name for yourself by saying the opposite. And frankly, I'm sick and tired of every scientist in the world being accused of caring more about grants than funding, and the notion that the world's peer-review processes are a giant conspiracy.

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

Read about the PETM. It's happened before. We're doing it again.

And again, it doesn't matter what you *believe*; it matters what peer-reviewed science says. It's not a matter of belief. It's a matter of empirical data. We have models, field data, lab data, and historical data all saying the exact same thing about ocean acidification. You can deny it until you're blue in the face, but that won't change the facts.

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:if i remember well from high school chemistry

[Red Flayer]

Hey, why not go back and re-examine your textbooks from high school chemistry? It seems you slept through the second part of that lecture.

Remember the lab where you had to determine the concentration of a buffer in solution that had pH-sensitive dyes in it?

And how you could pipette huge amounts of an acid (or base) into the solution without a notable change in pH? But then you add one more drop and *presto* your solution was now purple (or orange, etc)? And with each drop added after that, there was no buffering effect?

Buffer systems in the ocean are like that, though more complex.