Carnegie Researchers Say Geotech Can't Cure Ocean Acidification 248
CarnegieScience writes "Plans to stop global warming by 'geoengineering' the planet by putting aerosols in the atmosphere to block sunlight are controversial, to say the least. Scientists are now pointing out that even if it keeps the planet cool, it will do almost nothing to stop another major problem — ocean acidification. The ocean will keep on absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (making carbonic acid) and the water's pH will get too low for corals and other marine life to secrete skeletons. So this is another strike against a quick fix of our climate problems."
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Why don't they use something to up the alkalinity of the ocean, like, crushed coral? Oh, wait...
Re:if i remember well from high school chemistry (Score:5, Insightful)
the ocean is a sort of buffer solution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer_solution [wikipedia.org]
what is major component of this buffer? us. living critters and how they react to an increase in CO2
http://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/SeaWiFS/TEACHERS/CHEMISTRY/ [nasa.gov]
which means the oceans will maintain their pH over a wide range of abuse and this notion of ocean acidification is hysteria
You're probably right. I'm sure what you remember from high school is a good reason to dismiss the Carnegie Melon research team's results.
you must be new here (Score:3, Insightful)
random trolls on slashdot always trump learned academics ;-)
Re:Volcanoes (Score:3, Insightful)
The amount of material eject by volcanoes is minuscule compared to what we put in the air, year after year.
Re:if i remember well from high school chemistry (Score:5, Insightful)
what is major component of this buffer? us. living critters and how they react to an increase in CO2
Wow! Amazing that all of those egghead boffins living in their ivory towers with their hoity-toity "science" missed that one! Thank you so much for pointing it out!
Except for the fact that most ocean life is not primarily constrained by CO2, but nutrients, especially iron. Whoops.
I never ceased to be amazed at people who insist that something must be wrong with the science on a subject when they haven't done even the most rudimentary amount to educate themselves on what the science of the subject actually is. You could at least start by reading the relevant sections of the IPCC technical reports [ucar.edu] to see what actually has been studied and how. I guarantee you, it's way, way more than you ever expected.
There's a reason why people go to college for years to get a degree in these fields. This isn't high school baking-soda-and-vinegar-volcanoes here. It's an incredibly complex science that you need a solid background in. At least spend a week reading peer-reviewed papers on the subject before you put fingers to keyboard. You're coming across like if someone who had never used a computer started talking about how programmers should make every piece of software be run by voice commands in spoken English sentences like "Could you open up the letter to my grandmother and edit out the part where I told her about my chihuahua?", and have the software figure out what you want it to do. You're broadcasting ignorance on the topic like a beacon.
By all means. You first! (Score:1, Insightful)
academic research is cliquish (Score:4, Insightful)
it often follows dire preconceptions and focuses on hysterical predictions in spite of obvious mitigating factors, most notably time scale, that dull real implications. if you sound the alarm bell, you get press and you get funding. if you say something like "more CO2 will increase the pH of the ocean, but at such a tiny amount over such a giant span of time, it doesn't make any sense to worry about it right now" then you won't make the slashdot front page. its "the emperor's new clothes" writ large. good science and good education is being done by climate researchers all over the globe... and also a pretty heavy dose of indoctrination and mythology making
i believe global warming is a real force and we need to do something about it. but i'm hard pressed to worry about corals disappearing in an acid ocean on any time scale that is supposed to mean something
if we are going to mitigate mankind's effects, we need to lose the hysteria
Re:if i remember well from high school chemistry (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure what you remember from high school is a good reason to dismiss the Carnegie Melon research team's results.
I think the important thing to ask is, "Who paid for the study?"
Re:Volcanoes (Score:3, Insightful)
The average quantity of material ejected by volcanoes is small compared to human production, particularly when talking about greenhouse gases, which are long-term agents. Ash is a short-term agent, and volcanoes are well-known to produce their materials in short bursts. They can certainly cause dramatic short-term problems. In terms of greenhouse gas production, though, they are not a large force.
You're just a dick (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't be a fool. There are obvious things that everyone can do to reduce pollution at a personal level.
40% of all car trips go less than 2 miles. Get a bike and use it when it makes sense.
Turn up your AC a few degrees. You'll use less energy.
Get a reusable shopping bag and stop using plastic ones.
It's not perfect, but it's much better than doing nothing. If I can do it, so can nearly everyone. If everyone did, we'd be in less trouble than we are now.
Re:By all means. You first! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What Climate Problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow. Your source is Bob Carter, one of about two dozen (out of the world's several thousand professional climatologists) who is a public skeptic. And actually, he's not really a climatologist; he's a paleonolotist -- but don't let that stop you.
FYI: 1998 was one of the strongest El Nino events in modern history. El Nino raises the atmosphere's temperature by slowing the upwelling of deep, cold water in the eastern pacific. La Nina cools it by just the opposite. It doesn't change the long-term picture, of course; the rate at which water cycles in the ocean has no bearing on how much total heat input there is into the system; ocean waters aren't magically decoupled from the rest of our atmosphere. It's just a source of white noise on top of the blatantly obvious signal [metoffice.gov.uk].
But don't let that stop you deniers from picking it as your starting point.
And, also FYI: only one of the three major global climate databases lists 1998 as the hottest. The other two list 2005 (they were close). But again, don't let that stop you.
Re:if i remember well from high school chemistry (Score:3, Insightful)
I was actually replying to the following idea:
I think the important thing to ask is, "Who paid for the study?"
This sort of reasoning is typically used to throw away useful results without properly analyzing the research. If the source of funding is affecting the results, then a peer-review of that research should turn up discrepancies.
On the other hand, believing an argument based on the authority of the person giving the argument isn't valid logic per se, but for everyday life, and general cases, its usually an effective short-cut. There are not enough hours in the day to properly validate every single claim we come across in every-day lives. However, these sorts of logical short-cuts should not be applied by scientists and policy-makers. These are the exact same people that are often asked to ignore the scientific evidence and give weight to emotional arguments.
For instance, it is one thing for you and I to disregard an oil company's research as "probably invalid." It is altogether entirely different for the scientific community and politicians to do so. They should not disregard the research because of the source.
Re:By all means. You first! (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, wait until you're older to have that one child.
A big part of the problem is also that when you live 80 years and have kids at 20, you have your kids, yourself, your parents at 40, your grandparents at 60, and your great-grandparents at 80 all alive at once.
If you're living to 80 and having kids at 15 each generation, that's your kids, you, your parents at 30, grandparents at 45, great-grandparents at 60, and great-great-grandparents at 75. Maybe even some great-great grandparents.
If, OTOH, you dial that back some and have kids at 30, you have you, your kids, and your parents at 60 and maybe some of your grandparents.
Three to four living generations are a lot more sustainable than six or seven. It's not all about the kids per generation, but also the time between generations.
Re:Al Gore's manbearpig got another one. (Score:3, Insightful)
In the southern hemisphere, a great many. Why do you ask?
Re:What Climate Problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
To be fair to the mas-media they just reprint the lobbyists press-releases because conflict makes a good story and the psuedo-skeptics keep inventing new names for their think tanks but most of them can be tracked back to the Heartland Institute. If you remeber the "tabacco scientists" from the 80's you will recognise some of the names (eg: Fred Singer). They are nothing more than proffesional lobbyists in lab coats. That is not to say there are no arguments about the finer details but the idea our emmission can warm the Earth is now over a century old and the National academies of science first warned the US government that it was happening in the 50's.
Yes peer-review is imperfect but I challenge you to find one paper in a reputable journal such as Science [google.com.au] or Nature [google.com.au] that disputes the much maligned "consesus". As you can see there are nearly 40,000 papers in just those two prestigious journals alone. I realise that's an unfair challenge because it's a daunting task and since the IPCC have already done it I'm pretty sure you won't find anything. I would prefer genuine skeptics (and I think you may be one), read what the editors of (say) Nature think about the problem [nature.com], talk to some IPCC scientists [realclimate.org] and look at thier reports [www.ipcc.ch].
I also agree it's true that it's possible to be paid by a FF company and still do honest science, however I ask you to be skeptical of people such as Carter who disagree with mainstream science, can't get a paper published on the subject and are paid by think tanks because, those traits put the in the same boat as young earth creationists. I also ask genuine skeptics to do a bit of their own geeky mythbusting [youtube.com] before posting psuedo-skeptical drivel to slashdot as anything other than an example of anti-science.
B) The "gap" in opinions exists because one side is driven by lobbyists, the other by science. I agree it's a complex subject and I admit that without some background it can appear to be a simple case of experts who can't agree on basic answers. However that's exactly what the psuedo-skeptics want you to think in order to delay any action that would upset their sponsers. They are a cynical bunch of pricks who know they have lost the science argument, they just want to drag it out as long as it's possible to be paid to do so.
Here [realclimate.org] is just one example of that kind of political dishonesty.
"We're all going to look back 50 years from now and probably laugh at BOTH sides as more or less equally flawed."
In 50yrs I will either by getting a telegram from the Queen or be dead but I think in the next decade the coal industry are in for the same treatment the tabacoo companies recieved in the 90's. What this proponent of emmission control is saying is let's slow down this uncontrolled experiment on our biosphere and carefully examine how we can replace (or clean up) coal and let's do it with a free market based approach such as cap and trade rather than just another useless tax that allows the rich to pump out as much pollution as they can pay for while the rest of us suffer.
Disclaimer: Politically I describe myself as a "fiscally conservative, science based greenie" but I have not been interested enough to vote since 1978. OTOH I have followed the scientific and political arguments over AGW for almost three decades now and became convinced we have a serious problem when the IPCC released their 1997 resports, I have never seen Gore's movie simply because I knew