Australian Politics Forum

Patrick Moore at 06:09 AM on 25 February, 2015

Above you state: "The Southern Hemisphere and its oceans warmed first, starting about 18,000 years ago. As the Southern Ocean warms, the solubility of CO2 in water falls. This causes the oceans to give up more CO2, releasing it into the atmosphere."

How does this jibe with the ocean acidification narrative which postulates that in a warmer world with a higher CO2 atmosphere the ocean will absorb more CO2 and become acidic?

Response: (from one of the Moderators of Skeptical Science)
[DB] Your question on ocean acidification is dealt with in the 18-part 'OA is NOT OK' series, written by subject matter experts in that field, as summarized in Parts 1:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Mackie_OA_not_OK_part_19.html

And Part 2:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Mackie_OA_not_OK_part_20.html

If you have questions, place them on the appropriate thread and the subject matter experts will respond to them.

[PS] Its about equilibrium - outgassing from warm ocean is something for centuries in future. The above links give the details.

michael sweet at 06:46 AM on 26 February, 2015 (Another response, this time from another contributor)
Patrick,

You ask about how during the ice ages the ocean could outgas CO2 while warming but now it is absorbing CO2 while the temperature increases. You can calculate the solubility of CO2 using the formula here if you want more accuracy.

The issue here is that on the "skeptical" blogs they do not consider the magnitude of processes. They presume that any effect that seems to minimize the AGW problem is the dominate one.

According to figure 1 in the OP, the CO2 changes from about 190 ppm to about 280 ppm during an ice age. This is a change of about 90 ppm. The global temperature change is about 6C during the same time. Thus the CO2 changes about 15 ppm for each 1C change in temperature.

For AGW we have changed the CO2 from about 270 to 400 or about 130 ppm of CO2. The temperature has risen about .8C so far. We might expect ocean outgasing to decrease CO2 concentration in the ocean by the equivalent of about 10 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere. (the deep ocean has not come to equilibrium. This explaination is a rough estimate)

According to Henry's law, the solubility of CO2 is directly proportional to pressure of CO2. The increase in pressure has increased the solubility of CO2 about 130 ppm which is over 10 times as much as the solubility of CO2 has decreased from the increase in temperature.

The ocean acidification narrative is correct because the increase in solubility from pressure increase is so much greater than the decrease in solubility from temperature. The situation was different during the ice ages because the change was slow and the difference in CO2 concentration was smaller.

As the moderator points out, the increase of temperature may cause major problems in the future as the deep ocean heats up. After enough temperature rise the ocean will not accept any more CO2 (the temperature affect increases as the temperature increases). Then the CO2 in the atmosphere will rise more rapidly. The surface few hundred meters will stay acidic in any case. The rapid change in acidity is difficult for ecosystems to adapt to.

This calculation is old news to people who have researched the facts about AGW. Your posts would come across better if you asked questions about what you want to learn instead of suggesting that scientists have made major errors.

source: comments, http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?p=10&t=470&&a=7

gee I wonder why the planet has been warming so rapidly over the past 7 or 8 decades?

I hope the earth's ecological and climate systems are not detrimentally affected by this concerning trend.

I hope the children of future generations don't suffer and pay dearly for the consequences of our actions.

gee lucky there arent any children hatters on this chat forum.

We're just time-wasters! Come home, drink wine and forget why we had kids.. it's a learned helplessness!

It's almost fair enough that we say, "Oh, it's a regulated markets thing and therefore it's the governments problem" Yes, but in representative-democracy that means we are being represented by our non-voiced opinion directly and indirectly through our consumer choice and so forth. Sure there is some opinion from some of the masses- like here on this online forum- but obviously not enough to call it an opinion from the masses.

<slurp slurp!!>

..as I was saying: the witches wand of hollywood has us- collectively- by the balls i.e. it takes leadership to address any issue.

The cheap-wine-and-a-three-day-growth attitude is coming home to roost as people compete for the good life brought by an unrestrained concept called Jevons Paradox- the economy as we know it is built on inefficiency and the lucky resource-filled countries subsidising against natural diminishing returns!

I know: let's build more roads :o :o :o Then we can build more suburbs and import more consumers for developers to weave their little bit of consuming mojo and we shall all dance the happy dance of Jevons happy dream unconstrained and keep those planet accountants happy who happen to make hollywood hollywood :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o ::)

BatteriesNotIncluded wrote on Mar 25^th, 2015 at 1:59pm:

i.e. (if you haven't guessed my mode of transmission by now!) "Is not Hollywood just the encouragement of Jevons Paradox 8-) ?!!?"

Australian Politics Forum
http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl Member Run Boards >> Environment >> Paging Patrick Moore,.. paging Patrick Moore,... http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1427195630 Message started by Copper-toned-stunt on Mar 24^th, 2015 at 9:13pm