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From the “global warming and ocean acidification will kill everything, forever” and the “nature always finds a way” department comes this inconvenient truth.Back From The Dead: Giant Coral Reef That ‘Died’ In 2003 Teeming With Life Again In 2003, researchers declared Coral Castles dead. On the floor of a remote island lagoon halfway between Hawaii and Fiji, the giant reef site had been devastated by unusually warm water. Its remains looked like a pile of drab dinner plates tossed into the sea. Research dives in 2009 and 2012 had shown little improvement in the coral colonies.Then in 2015, a team of...

Guest Post by Willis EschenbachFollowing up on my previous investigations into the oceanic pH dataset, I’ve taken a deeper look at what the 2.5 million pH data points from the oceanographic data can tell us. Let me start with an overview of oceanic pH (the measure of alkalinity/acidity, with neutral being a pH of 7.0). Many people think that the ocean has only one pH  everywhere. Other people think that the oceanic pH is different in different places, but is constant over time. Neither view is correct.First, here is a view of a transect of the north Pacific ocean...

Co-authored James Doogue and JoNovaEmpirical data withheld by key scientists shows that since 1910 ocean pH levels have not decreased in our oceans as carbon dioxide levels increased. Overall the trend is messy but more up than down, becoming less acidic. So much for those terrifying oceans of acid that were coming our way.What happened to those graphs? Scientists have had pH meters and measurements of the oceans for one hundred years. But experts decided that computer simulations in 2014 were better at measuring the pH in 1910 than the pH meters were. The red line (below) is the models...

A startling discovery by a graduate student has uncovered what looks like a fraud remarkably parallel to the infamous “Hockey stick” graph of Michael Mann that purported to show global temperatures skyrocketing when atmospheric CO2 rose, but only did so because “hide the decline” was the operating principle in selecting data. For those who have not been keeping up with the alarmist follies, alleged ocean acidification has joined and supplemented the rapidly-fading alleged global warming threat as an urgent reason to stop emitting CO2, and hand money and power over to regulators who would control the production of energy, the...

There goes another scare campaign.Until recently we had very little data about real time changes in ocean pH around the world. Finally autonomous sensors placed in a variety of ecosystems “from tropical to polar, open-ocean to coastal, kelp forest to coral reef” give us the information we needed.It turns out that far from being a stable pH, spots all over the world are constantly changing. One spot in the ocean varied by an astonishing 1.4 pH units regularly. All our human emissions are projected by models to change the world’s oceans by about 0.3 pH units over the next 90...

We already know that pH varies naturally across the oceans of the world. In some sites, it varies more in a single day than global oceans are likely to face in a century. But cold water corals live in deep water, are slow growing, and hard to study.Six years ago, experts in cold water corals were telling us how they would be likely to fall victim to ocean acidification first, and that they believed this for good reasons but with little experimental data. But about a year ago data came out (by one of those same experts) showing that rather...

Enlarge Image Evidence of the dire condition of coral reefs around the world is being presented in abundance at the 12th International Coral Reef Symposium that got underway yesterday in Cairns, Australia. And scientists are calling for action to stop the losses: More than 2500 marine researchers and managers at the conference and around the world have signed a Consensus Statement on Climate Change and Coral Reefs that calls on "all governments to ensure the future of coral reefs, through global action to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and via improved local protection of...

Foreboding. Animation of changes in ocean acidification over time in the California Current System. The left side shows the depth of aragonite saturation, and the right side shows the surface ocean pH. Courtesy of Nicolas Gruber and Claudine Hauri More Science News Videos Humanity's use of fossil fuels sends 35 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. That has already begun to change the fundamental chemistry of the world's oceans, steadily making them more acidic. Now, a new high resolution computer model reveals that over the next 4 decades, rising ocean acidity will likely have...

There goes another scare campaign.Until recently we had very little data about real time changes in ocean pH around the world. Finally autonomous sensors placed in a variety of ecosystems “from tropical to polar, open-ocean to coastal, kelp forest to coral reef” give us the information we needed.It turns out that far from being a stable pH, spots all over the world are constantly changing. One spot in the ocean varied by an astonishing 1.4 pH units regularly. All our human emissions are projected by models to change the world’s oceans by about 0.3 pH units over the next 90...

Guest post by David ArchibaldWillis Eschenbach’s post on lab work on coral response to elevated carbon dioxide levels, and The Reef Abides, leads to a large scale, natural experiment in Papua New Guinea. There are several places at the eastern end of that country where carbon dioxide is continuously bubbling up through healthy looking coral reef, with fish swimming around and all that that implies.Coral Reef at Dobu Island with carbon dioxide bubbling through it (photo: Bob Halstead)What that implies is that ocean acidification is no threat at all. If the most delicate, fragile, iconic ecosystem of them all can...

Guest Post by Willis EschenbachThere’s an interesting study out on the natural pH changes in the ocean. I discussed some of these pH changes a year ago in my post “The Electric Oceanic Acid Test“. Before getting to the new study, let me say a couple of things about pH.The pH scale measures from zero to fourteen. Seven is neutral, because it is the pH of pure water. Below seven is acidic. Above seven is basic. This is somewhat inaccurately but commonly called “alkaline”. Milk is slightly acidic. Baking soda is slightly basic (alkaline).Figure 1. pH scale, along with some...

Guest Post by David MiddletonIntroductionAs global warming morphs into climate change and global climate disruption and anthropogenic CO2 emissions give way to stochastic variability, clouds, the Sun, cosmic rays and our oceans as the primary drivers of climate change, environmental extremists are raising a new CO2-driven ecological disaster scenario to hysterical levels: Ocean acidification. Claims have been made that oceanic pH levels have declined from ~8.2 to ~8.1 since the mid-1700′s. This pH decline (acidification) has been attributed to anthropogenic CO2 emissions – This should come as no surprise because the pH estimates are largely derived from atmospheric CO2 concentrations (Orr et al.,...

Jellyfish are taking over the oceans: Population surge as rising acidity of world’s seas kills predators Britain’s beaches could soon be inundated with records numbers of jellyfish, marine experts warned today.Scientists say the number of jellyfish are on the rise thanks to the increasing acidity of the world’s oceans.The warning comes in a new report into ocean acidification – an often overlooked side effect of burning fossil fuel.Studies have shown that higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doesn’t just trigger climate change but can make the oceans more acid.Since the start of the industrial revolution, acidity levels of...

EPA to let states address rising ocean acidity By GENE JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer Gene Johnson, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 22 mins ago SEATTLE – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says it will consider ways the states can address rising levels of carbon dioxide in oceans. The agency on Thursday settled a lawsuit filed last year by the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco. The problem stems from oceans absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and results in the rising acidity of the water. It seriously threatens shellfish and other marine life. The lawsuit accused the EPA...

As the world struggles to reach an agreement on global warming, the UK Environment Secretary said pollution is having a particularly damaging effect on the two thirds of the world covered by oceans. He explained that carbon dioxide is being absorbed at a faster rate than at any time in the previous 21 million years, causing ocean acidification. The process dissolves the shells and skeletons of key marine life and is in danger of destroying whole ecosystems. “Why should we worry about this?” he asked “Because there is marine life that is affected by that change. In particular animals and...

EPA agrees to study acidic seas; move adds to regulation momentum The Obama administration took another step toward regulating carbon dioxide, issuing a notice Tuesday that the Environmental Protection Agency will review whether those emissions should fall under the Clean Water Act. The EPA earlier this year determined that C02 should be regulated under the Clean Air Act due to its impact on temperatures. But Tuesday's notice — soliciting scientific data as to what extent seas are made more acidic by C02 — could extend regulation out to U.S. waters. The notice was in response to a petition filed by...

As the atmosphere's CO2 content continues to rise, the pH of the world's oceans is expected to decline, driving a phenomenon described by climate alarmists as ocean acidification, to which they are already ascribing a host of imminent catastrophic consequences. Writing in the introduction to a special "theme section" of the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series, however, Vézina and Hoegh-Guldberg (2008) state that "without an understanding of how such a slow and continuous decline in pH is likely to affect ocean ecosystems, we may miss important aspects of this global ocean pH change," and that "to compound this uncertainty, recent...