Sunday 30 June 2019

More climate change consensus contradictions

Theory #1;

Ocean acidification is the ongoing decrease in the pH of the Earth's oceans, caused by the uptake of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. Seawater is slightly basic (meaning pH > 7), and ocean acidification involves a shift towards pH-neutral conditions rather than a transition to acidic conditions (pH < 7). An estimated 30–40% of the carbon dioxide from human activity released into the atmosphere dissolves into oceans, rivers and lakes.

Fair enough, the small print explains that oceans are not becoming acidic, but less alkaline, and the actual theory stacks up on a scientific level.

Theory #2:

As the world’s oceans warm, their massive stores of dissolved carbon dioxide may be quick to bubble back out into the atmosphere and amplify the greenhouse effect, according to a new study.

Again, on a scientific level, the theory stacks up; warmer water can hold more dissolved solids (try dissolving sugar in cold water) but less gas (try warming up lemonade).
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But which is it? Will oceans absorb more CO2 (A Bad Thing) or release more CO2 (also A Bad Thing)?

The second article tries to weave its way through the contradiction. The only way to reconcile the contradiction is to believe in a sort of J-curve, at first, oceans will absorb CO2 and then there will be a tipping point and they will release it all again. How quickly..?

Previous studies have suggested that it takes between 400 and 1300 years for this to happen. But now the most precise analysis to date has whittled that figure down.

“We now think the delay is more like 200 years, possibly even less,” says Tas van Ommen from the Australian Antarctic Division, in Hobart, who led the study.


Fair do's. If you are predicting that The End Is Nigh, it is wise to choose a longer time frame before you can be proven to be wrong, but the Alarmists just can't help themselves:

And while more precise than the others, the team’s study also comes with significant uncertainty: plus or minus 200 years, meaning there could actually be no lag time between rising temperatures and gases being released from the atmosphere.

“They’ve nailed it,” says Paul Fraser, a greenhouse gas researcher at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). He adds that despite the uncertainty, “this is a really good data set that they’ve got.”


In which case:

a) there is a tacit admission that global warming leads to increases in CO2 levels, not the other way round. Skeptical Science bends logic to fix the problem - in the past, a small naturally caused temperature increases kick started proceedings and led to higher CO2 levels, which caused further temperature increases. Only this time it was different and a small man-made increases in CO2 levels has kick started things.

b) there won't be any ocean acidification as the oceans will be releasing CO2 faster than they can absorb it. I've searched Skeptical Science and they don't appear to have sneered at this one yet.

3 comments:

Graeme said...

Stay on message.... Everything is worse than ever before. If you don't stay on message, Greta will cry

decnine said...

When I were a lad and studying Chemistry for GCE, any adjustment of pH towards 7.0 was termed 'neutralisation'.

Mark Wadsworth said...

G, indeed.

D, good one, I'd forgotten that.