arctic ice increases 60%

Every feedback system has hysteresis. Governors have droop. The changes that have occurred that we are talking about are minuscule. What the alarmist are saying, as they always say is that if this trend continues then blah, blah blah. But it won't continue because of the sea's virtually unlimited buffering capacity due to the formation (by precipitation) and dissolution of carbonate rock. It's just basic chemistry.

In fact there was a young boy in a middle school science fair a couple of years ago that gained his 15 minutes of fame by saying we could stop oceanic acidification by simply pouring in thousands of tons of chalk we could get from mines. Scientists were on the news saying how great the idea was and that it might just work

Trouble is, there are already untold billions of tons of calcium carbonate on the ocean floor. It's already a stable equilibrium. It can't get too acidic because of the carbonate rock that's already there and because CO2 precipitates out as carbonate.

The natural world is dominated by such stable equilibrium states dominated by negative feedbacks. If it weren't would not the climate have gone off the rails when atmospheric CO2 levels were 10X or 20X what they are today? Yet it did not.

Jimbo

 

I think I'm starting to understand why you can't be bothered providing references for your many assertions.

 

How do human CO2 emissions compare to natural CO2 emissions? | SKEPTICAL SCIENCE

 

The Acid Ocean – the Other Problem with CO2 Emission | REALCLIMATE

 

The 26 Gt is a complete fabrication. Been debunked several times. It came up in the 'Big Thread' and I cooked it then so it is but a zombie now. We actually have accurate tabulations for all significant anthropogenic Co2 releases since yr 1750 over at CDIAC. If you get all your info from alarmist websites and blogs you will never learn anything or have have anything of real merit to post here.

The Mauna Loa number shows 15Gt variations happen all the time. Sometimes the variations are 40 or 50Gt in natural CO2. The various fluxes, both biotic and abiotic do not meet in a committee or study the numbers to see what the sources are doing, they just react as they always have, taking up that 'extra' carbon just as they have always done without the knowledge or the ability to know or care about where that 'extra' CO2 came from. It's a stable equilibrium.

The "highest CO2 concentration in 800, 000 years" is also complete balderdash. More fairy tales. All slain in the big thread. All now re-appearing as zombies (A bad idea never really dies; look at socialism ) Thank god there were scientists interested enough way back that figured out how to measure atmospheric CO2 concentration in yr 1800. They show a spike of several decades at around 450-500ppm in the early 19th century. The spike shows up in the ice cores too but is regularly thrown out as "non-conforming data" . Really, that's what so-called scientists are doing with that bit of data. And they completely ignore the direct measurements in the computer modeling and assessment reports. And this passes for 'science'. You'd think they'd regard that data set as a treasure trove for the calibration of proxies if nothing else. If it agreed with the AGW narrative you can bet it would be.

See "180 Years of Atmospheric CO2 Gas Analysis by Chemical Methods" by Ernst Georg-Beck.

The funny part is that some people seem to think I've never seen this crap before! OK, is been 2 or 3 years since I've seen it but I saw, and debunked it WAY before you saw it. I think I could actually argue your case better than you can. I won't do that because it would be intellectually dishonest. But I'm far better informed on all the little details and know better than to simply C & P the top link on a Google search on the subject. That won't work here.

Jimbo

 

Ok, but most of the calcium carbonate on the ocean floor would be from things like diatoms, etc. This includes most carbonate rock (limestone, etc). To make that stuff, the diatoms and other critters are reliant on an ocean that wont dissolve calcium carbonate. If the pH gets low enough to start dissolving calcium carbonate, said critters are in trouble.

So, even though the dissolution of existing calcium carbonate would buffer the pH drop, critters would still be living in an ocean which would make it difficult for them to make the calcium carbonate shells they need. That's the real problem, and it is already being observed (not modelled) in places.

When was that, exactly?

 

I'm just doing a bit of checking around. I doubt the PBL would qualify as an "alarmist" website, since it's "the national institute for strategic policy analysis in the fields of environment, nature and spatial planning". Seems pretty legit to me, anyway.

The thing is, they have a nice graph of anthro CO2 emissions from 1990 to 2012, inclusive. According to them, it looks like we've been averaging around 27 or so gigatonnes for the period in question, which current levels up around 35.

That's a rather large difference from the 8.3 in 2007, which you told me was the highest figure ever. How do you account for the difference?

 

From another big thread a few years back:

September 16, 2009 at 1:14 pm · Reply

Rod,

I would direct your attention to the work of Prof. Tom V Segalstad of the Univ. of Norway at Oslo. The carbon cycle, CO2 residence time and isotopic signature studies are his area of special expertise. The ‘simple’ answer to the question of where the ‘extra’ CO2 is coming from is “the oceans”, on account of the fact that they are warming up, and have been doing so since the earth has been emerging from the “Little Ice Age”. And yet in an apparent contradiction, that is also the place where any ‘excess’ CO2 goes. So how can the oceans be both an emitter and net sink for CO2? The answer lies in the idea of an “equilibrium concentration”.

First, let’s look at the ocean/atmosphere ‘system’ and see how this idea works. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is always at an equilibrium with the CO2 dissolved in the ocean. The amount of CO2 which can exist dissolved in the oceans is dependent on the temperature of the ocean. A cold ocean can dissolve more CO2 than a warm ocean. As the ocean warms, it can contain less dissolved CO2. At 25C, the ocean can contain approximately 50X the CO2 concentration as the atmosphere can. Or from the other point of view, at this temperature, the atmosphere always contains 1/50 the concentration of the ocean. This is the “Equilibrium Concentration” of atmospheric/oceanic CO2, and remains fairly constant at a given temperature.

And yet, the oceans never stop absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere, even as they warm. But then why does CO2 not build up in the oceans? The warmers assert that it does, and raise another bogey man in the idea of “Ocean Acidification” But this idea ignores another very important equilibrium concentration that exists in the oceans between dissolved CO2 and carbonate rocks. Any ‘excess’ CO2 absorbed by the oceans is very quickly precipitated out of solution, and through a sequence of chemical reactions becomes calcium carbonate. This becomes the ‘final’ resting place for excess atmospheric/oceanic CO2, NOT the liquid oceans as the warmers assert, and is why the oceans cannot acidify; they have virtually INFINITE buffering capacity.

So atmospheric CO2 exists in an equilibrium concentration with CO2 dissolved in the ocean, which in turn exists in an equilibrium concentration with carbonate rocks in the ocean. The temperature of the ocean determines the solubility ratio between atmosphere and ocean as well as the solubility/precipitate threshold for the carbonate minerals. The oceans still respond to the perturbations to the ocean/atmosphere equilibrium state(expressed as a partial vapor pressure) by absorbing CO2, but the ‘excess’ is quickly precipitated out of solution as CACO3 instead of remaining dissolved.

As the ocean warms and the equilibrium concentration of CO2 air/ocean changes, so also does the threshold of vapor pressure which forces the oceans to uptake ‘extra’ atmospheric CO2, thus the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere increases, even while the oceans are absorbing ‘some’ of the extra CO2. I put the word some in quote because to use this term here, it makes it sound as though the oceans are ‘struggling’ to uptake more CO2 and those human additions are the reason atmospheric CO2 is increasing. Actually, the amount that they are uptaking even in a warmed state is stupendously huge; it’s just that the ‘threshold’ point of concentration in the atmosphere has changed with the increase in temperature, which ‘allows’ the atmosphere to contain more CO2. Any CO2 emitted to the atmosphere, be it by volcanoes, forest fires or human industry in excess of the new equilibrium concentration is still absorbed and quickly precipitated out.

This is not some new revelation; the basic science of this oceanic chemistry has been known for over 50 years, as has been the case with the short residence time for atmospheric CO2. You can even read about these CO2/CACO3 reactions on Wikipedia, not exactly the skeptic’s best friend, right here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_carbonate#With_varying_CO2_pressure

This is just another of many examples of how the AGW alarmists are replacing good science with junk science.

 

Hey Jimbo, I just checked the CDIAC site, as recommended by you. Found a handy link in their FAQ: Why do some estimates of CO2 emissions seem to be about 3 1/2 times as large as others?

It turns out that their figures which you refer to are for carbon alone, not for CO2.

So, if you found a figure of 8.3 Gt on their graphs, that would equate to 30.5 Gt of CO₂. In other words, a figure more in keeping with other people's claims of the actual CO₂ emission levels. It seems you might have been confused by the different units being used.

 

This same study came up in the big thread and was debunked for the following reasons:

Nobody says the ratio isn't moving; I fully acknowledge that it is because we have added and are continuing to add fossil carbon to the atmosphere. But just 'movement' of the ratios is not enough to support the "all or nearly all" claim. This paper sets out in its abstract that it will prove the point, but then when you get into the actual numbers, the point is NOT proven. He can't attribute all recent CO2 rise or even close to all on fossil fuels. Given his numbers he can only prove that the present atmosphere is like 5% fossil-sourced carbon rather than the > 20% needed to support the "all or nearly all" attribution.

From my recollections, so maybe not perfectly accurate:

The virgin (pre-industrial) atmosphere's carbon signature: 7.0 0/00 pdb

100% fossil carbon's signature: 24.0 0/00 pdb

The atmosphere's signature if 20% fossil carbon: 11.0 0/00 pdb

The present atmosphere's ACTUAL MEASURED signature: 7.8 0/00 pdb

Nice try though. 2 points for effort.

Jimbo

 

Got it.

Jimbo

 

Ok, but that page links to this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification

And that one says this:

Not that argumentum ad wikipedia is necessarily the way to settle all questions, but if you're happy to use a specific section of one of their pages, it seems reasonable to also read the page it links to.

 

I get it. The oceans pH does change a little bit. It always has. It oscillates between certain values but never goes beyond them. The AGW alarmists are raising the specter (bogeyman) that somehow it will this time. So why did this not happen when the atmospheric CO2 was at 10x present or 20X present? The mud cores from the ocean's floor show that it did not. Why did this not happen in the early 19th century when CO2 was around 450-500ppm for several decades?

Jimbo

 

Ok, so does this mean actual anthropogenic CO2 emissions are 3.67 times higher than you thought they were?

 

As I understand it, the real issue is not what the ultimate limits on ocean pH might be (whatever they are). It how actual pH is going to affect critters that need to make their own calcium carbonate.

Since there is evidence, from current real life studies looking at current real life critters, that said critters are already having problems making their shells, I'd say we have a problem. In fact, I'm not sure how it can be said to not be a problem.