Friday
Oct242014
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Here we go again
Oct 24, 2014 Ocean pH With the bit between his teeth this morning at about 6.40am BBC Radio 4 Today, Harrabin was busy anthropomorphising sea urchins as he interviewed a marine biologist callled Kerry Lewis, about the "acidifying of the oceans" due to that pernicious CO2. She moderated her position somewhat by saying the pH was "slightly down" but still inaccurately referred to the water as being more acidic.
"This little chap" -[a sea urchin], according to RH "is going to suffer" and he's going to require more energy to make a shell in future.
Perhaps this little chap could have a little solar panel or small wind turbine attached to him somewhere?
Reader Comments (59)
stewgreen, I missed your comment - shows how long it tool to write the last comment, as your comment wasn't there when I started...
The number I quoted was for water vapour, not water (ie. not including clouds) - see Kiehl 1997 (pdf)
@Raff "what did @stewgreen mean by water"
If you apply empathy you'll guess he was referring to "water vapour"
- If you have evidence, show me where in that report or another where your "overall effect is only somewhat over twice that of CO2" figure was used..please open up a new discussion thread and tell us
PS about alarmist websites : it is my experience that they routinely sanitize the comments ..it becomes not worth participating cos they just get angry and refuse to post comments that don't agree with them under the slightest pretext ie when the comment had no bad language, nor namecalling etc.
excuses are "you commented on our moderating policy and that is not allowed here", "you linked to a 'denialist' website", "You are a troll, leading the topic off topic" (when all you did is reply to their question)
Back to sea urchins.
The Harrabin piece on the BBC website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-29746880) quotes Dr Ceri Lewis of Exeter Univ whose research suggests damage in particular to sea urchins caused by a form of copper poisoning set in train by the 'expected' lower ocean pH at the end of the century, itself projected to be caused by higher atmospheric CO2.
An observation, circumstantial I know... in the cretaceous (~100m years ago), temperatures were warm, CO2 levels were high (1000-2000ppm) but in the marine deposits laid down (now called chalk), fossil sea urchins (genus Micraster, Echinocorys, Conulus etc.) are almost ridiculously common. Spend an hour walking across arable chalkland and you'll pick up several.
Plenty of counter-arguments, I'm sure, but interesting nonetheless.
RH is a disgrace to the BBC and the profession of science journalists. He is a thru' and thru' alarmist activist. Remember his involvement with the 28gatemeeting in 2006. This set the tone for the BBC's biased & alarmist reporting ever since. He is straight out of the Monbiot, Porritt & Juniper school of B$. He should be booted out.
Remember how intolerant most organisms are to pH changes unless specially adapted. Your viable pH range is +/- 0.5 units.
The average sceptic has a blood pH tightly constrained between 7.35 and 7.50. Outside that range you get headaches, tiredness and tremors as your nervous system malfunctions. If blood pH reaches 6.8 or 7.8 you die.
EM - fascinating! Also irrelevant is the fact that if you plunge most alarmists into any water (regardless of ph) then they will all die within a couple of minutes.
Johnbuk
Typical sceptic. No sense of humour.
"Little chaps"? Ha. They are very capable survivors, and only cute from a safe distance.
Chinese people like to eat sea urchins, which is an excellent idea, IMO.
I trod on one at the seashore as a child, and the memory of the pain (including that involved in getting the spines out of my foot) still makes me wince. "Excruciating" comes to mind, and I was a pretty tough kid who was always getting bumps and scrapes, which I mostly ignored.
More seriously, the local ph variations in seawater are much greater than those the alarmists froth about. Estuarine waters, mangrove swamps etc are often significantly less alkaline (because of decaying plant matter) than adjacent fresh seawater, and they teem with life, including crabs and shellfish. Indeed, these places are spawning grounds for many species of fish and other critters.
They are just making stuff up, once again.
Exactly, johanna. This particular scare story only continues to be recycled because they think the A-word is a good way to frighten people with something a bit 'chemical'.