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  4. How can climate scientists claim 30% acidification of the ocean due to CO2?
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How can climate scientists claim 30% acidification of the ocean due to CO2?

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Offline Bored chemist

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Re: How can climate scientists claim 30% acidification of the ocean due to CO2?
« Reply #40 on: 12/05/2018 01:10:07 »
Quote from: alancalverd on 11/05/2018 22:52:10
It is the phase relationship between temperature and CO2 that questions the accepted "wisdom" of anthropogenic climate change.
Which is plainly a bit silly.
Whether the CO2 takes a few months to turn up in the sea water isn't the issue here.
The "wisdom" of anthropogenic climate change is based on a number of factors; let us know which you disagree with.

(1) Humans have been burning a lot of fossil fuels in the last hundred years or so.
(2) That generates CO2  which (at least on a scale of centuries) ends up in the atmosphere.
(3) We know this because the excess CO2 in the air  tallies with the  stuff we have added.
(4) The CO2 levels in the air are rising.
(5) The added stuff has an "ancient" carbon dating age- which is consistent with it being from fossil fuel but not with it being from any more recent source.
(6) Additional CO2 in the air  means that more of the Sun's incoming radiation is trapped by the Earth- because that's what physics tells us..
(7) The temperature is rising.

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Offline MarkPawelek (OP)

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Re: How can climate scientists claim 30% acidification of the ocean due to CO2?
« Reply #41 on: 13/05/2018 11:05:39 »
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" In the past 200 years alone, ocean water has become 30 percent more acidic" That's journalism.

No. That is settled science according to the climate Stasi. It is on the NOAA website. The important point I made was NOAA's claim that ocean pH has risen by 30% is junk science. This is why people are laughing at the settled science of climate change. Why so many people voted for Trump.  You can blame it on journalists. I will blame it on the Royal Society. They are the people who wrote to journalists telling them not to criticise official climate science, whom NOAA certainly are.

PS: Redone calculations using the Henderson/Hasselbalch equation is no more favourable to NOAA than my back-of-envelope calculation. Thanks for that.
« Last Edit: 13/05/2018 11:08:15 by MarkPawelek »
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Offline Bored chemist

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Re: How can climate scientists claim 30% acidification of the ocean due to CO2?
« Reply #42 on: 13/05/2018 13:40:55 »
Quote from: MarkPawelek on 13/05/2018 11:05:39
PS: Redone calculations using the Henderson/Hasselbalch equation is no more favourable to NOAA than my back-of-envelope calculation. Thanks for that.
Show your working.
Also, since I already did the calculation, would you like to show where I got it wrong?
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Offline puppypower

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Re: How can climate scientists claim 30% acidification of the ocean due to CO2?
« Reply #43 on: 13/05/2018 14:08:27 »
The 30% increase in acid is an artifact of the logarithmic scale use for pH. The 30% is real, but is being used as an emotional magic trick.

To explain how the tricks works, say we start with a pH of 8. This means we have a H3O+ concentration of 10-8 moles/liter. If we started with a pH of 7, we start with 10-7 moles per liter. This is ten times as much H3O+.

If we added 10-8 moles per liter of extra acid to the beaker that has pH of 8, we get a total of 2 x 10-8 moles per liter or a 100% increase. If we added the 10-8 moles per liter to a pH of 7, we only increase the acid level by 10%. Say we started at pH of 9 or 10-9 moles per liter and add 10-8 moles per liter of acid, that is a 1000% increase. If we add that to a pH of 6, that is now a 1% increase.

The question is what sounds worse; 1%, 10%, 100% or 1000% increase? The bigger percent numbers sound the worse, yet all use the same amount of acid. It is math number  trick designed to take advantage of ignorance of the logarithm scale.

It works similar to the trace elements reported in environmental remediation studies. If we have 1 PPM or 150 PPB of mercury, the 1 part per million is more than 150 parts per billion. However, to some people, 150 sounds worse than 1, if one is not sure what ppb and ppm mean. Not everyone is familiar with the logarithm scale and will take the percent at face value; apples to apples instead of apples to oranges. 

Say we freeze the amount of CO2 emissions to the 2017 level world wide. Say in 2018, the same amount of acid is added to the oceans. Since the pH lowered from 2016 to 2107, the percent change will fall next year. If we wanted to do a magic trick, we can say that by simply freezing the CO2 emission to 2017 levels, we can get the acid level change to  1% in less that 20 years. This looks very promising to the untrained eye.

It is possible, due to the logarithmic scale, to increase the CO2 each year by 1%, and still get the acid percent to fall, since the overall pH will continue to fall and the logarithmic scale will diminished the impact.


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Offline Bored chemist

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Re: How can climate scientists claim 30% acidification of the ocean due to CO2?
« Reply #44 on: 13/05/2018 14:39:19 »
Quote from: puppypower on 13/05/2018 14:08:27
The 30% increase in acid is an artifact of the logarithmic scale use for pH.
If you calculate that actual concentrations of hydrogen ions and extrapolate back you get a change of about 30%.
There is no exaggeration or fakery involved.
The ocean- as measured- has about a quarter to a third more acid in it than it used to.
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Offline alancalverd

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Re: How can climate scientists claim 30% acidification of the ocean due to CO2?
« Reply #45 on: 13/05/2018 23:22:59 »
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The concept of pH was first introduced by the Danish chemist Søren Peder Lauritz Sørensen at the Carlsberg Laboratory in 1909[4] and revised to the modern pH in 1924 to accommodate definitions and measurements in terms of electrochemical cells.

which casts some doubt on the "200 year" claim. Was anyone really titrating Aloha seawater against a standard base in 1818?

Extrapolation over 200 years is clearly a very sound scientific substitute for evidence. The number of cars on UK roads decreased between 2007 and 2009 from 30.2 to 30.1 million, so extrapolating from a straight line best fit clearly demonstrates that there were 40 million cars on UK roads in 1807. That is 4 cars for every person, 80 years before the first car was made! Shock, horror, headlines, we are all doomed.....
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Offline Bored chemist

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Re: How can climate scientists claim 30% acidification of the ocean due to CO2?
« Reply #46 on: 14/05/2018 19:51:35 »
Quote from: alancalverd on 13/05/2018 23:22:59
which casts some doubt on the "200 year" claim. Was anyone really titrating Aloha seawater against a standard base in 1818?
Yes- in a way.
The standard base they used was a saturated solution of calcium carbonate and they observed that when you added seawater no further dissolution of the carbonate took place.
 Had you not realised this when you asked?
The data is reported in the first web page cited in this thread.
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Offline RjMaan

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Re: How can climate scientists claim 30% acidification of the ocean due to CO2?
« Reply #47 on: 24/06/2018 08:46:29 »
Actually, the larger amount of carbon dioxide when reacts with the rain water. I forms Carbonic acid which is the major component of acidification. For exact percentage you can check them on authentic sites like Wikipedia and . [nofollow]
« Last Edit: 23/11/2021 08:52:53 by Colin2B »
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Offline Bored chemist

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Re: How can climate scientists claim 30% acidification of the ocean due to CO2?
« Reply #48 on: 24/06/2018 09:18:55 »
Quote from: RjMaan on 24/06/2018 08:46:29
Actually, the larger amount of carbon dioxide when reacts with the rain water. I forms Carbonic acid which is the major component of acidification.
Actually it doesn't.

Why do you keep posting pointless little bits like this?
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