A very slightly less basic ocean

It really does not have the same headline click-bait qualities as ‘Ocean Acidification’ now, does it?  Acidification is defined in the Cambridge Dictionary as ‘the process of becoming an acid or the act of making something become an acid.’ Remember that definition as you read on:

As the stretch of years with no statistically significant global warming lengthens, environmentalists scratch their heads and ask, “Well, if we can’t scare people with global warming, what can we use?”

And one of their stock answers has become, “Ocean acidification!”

Acid, you know? Nasty stuff! That’s what very bad people throw in the faces of good people they don’t like. It disfigures them for life. How terrible!

Except, no. Really strong acids can do that. Battery acid, for instance. But blue plums, grapes, pomegranates, blueberries, and pineapples are all acidic (their pH ranging from 2 to 4; on the pH scale of 0 to 14, acid is anything under 7, and basic is anything over 7).

The pH has to be under 7 before something is acid or becomes an acid.  Our oceans are a long way off that.

And the claim that our CO2 emissions are “acidifying” the world’s oceans is balderdash. They’ve lowered average ocean pH by about a tenth of a point—from about 8.2 before the Industrial Revolution to about 8.1 now. And ocean pH varies regionally by about 0.3, and in tide pools by nearly 2 full points day versus night (because marine plants do more photosynthesis in the daytime than at night).

So the oceans remain today, as they have been throughout geologic history—including at times when atmospheric CO2 concentration was 5 to 10 times what it is today—basic, not acidic.

But average global oceanic pH has fallen! It’s fallen from about 8.2 to about 8.1! That’s the problem! That’s what’s going to kill off the corals, which will kill off fish life, which will starve billions of us! We must DO something, NOW!

No.

As Australian geologist Cliff Ollier explains, ” Marine life flourishes where CO2 is abundant.” He quotes Professor Walter Stark, a specialist on the subject, as saying, “coral reefs are thriving at pH levels well below the most alarming projections.”

So, there you go. There’s a quick-and-simple primer on the “ocean acidification” that isn’t acidification.

Cornwall Alliance

But ‘a very slightly less basic ocean’ is simply not scary enough for the doom monger Greens and their NGO enablers like Greenpeace.