Okay, from your urging, I
looked up ocean acidification and
found

http://www.whoi.edu/fileserver.do?id=165564&pt=2&p=150429

with Ocean Acidification. They have
a lot of seemingly serious organizations
with their logos at the bottom, e.g.,
NOAA. Of course, nearly all those
organizations (the IAEA is there and
I can't guess why) are in the business
of screaming about CO2 from humans --
so objectivity is in question.

They had their chance, and they
blew it; they just didn't make
a convincing case at all. About
all they really said was that if
I go swimming in the ocean and
exhale into the water, then my
CO2 will make the water more acidic.
I agree. Obviously both true and
trivial.

But that's also right where they blew
it: They never got to how much
CO2 and how much more acidic.
So, in principle nearly everything
they said would also hold for my
case of blowing bubbles at the beach --
literally. They had a chance --
they blew it.

Why? Incompetence or just covering
up that so far the CO2
is nowhere nearly enough to do much
to the oceans anytime soon, and
I don't know which, but in
either case they didn't turn me into
a CO2 and ocean acidification alarmist.

Early on they said that the atmospheric
CO2 makes the surface water more
acidic. I thought, "Sure, but
so darned what?"
It's just the surface water, and there's
a lot more water out there and a lot
of mixing. So, now, the whole ocean,
human CO2 is going to make the whole
ocean a lot more acidic? When? How?
Via how darned much CO2 and how much
more acidic? No answer.

The whole ocean? In another context,
I'd take that as a thigh slapping
joke from Donald
Duck or Bugs Bunny.

Next I think, significantly harmful
CO2 in the ocean? Gotta be kidding
because of sea floor smokers,
volcanoes, e.g., think Hawaii, and
sea floor spreading and associated
volcanic activity from plate
tectonics, e.g., the line from
Iceland south through the central
Atlantic and around much of the
planet.

Next, especially in the top layers of
the ocean are Phytoplankton, that is
plankton that are plants and, thus,
suck up CO2. They mentioned some
means of the oceans getting rid of the CO2
but didn't mention plants. Gads.

My objections are not solid science,
but their PDF didn't address even my
simple, obvious, first-cut points.
So, their PDF fails both the sniff test and
the giggle test.

Maybe their worst was their

"16 Full recovery of the oceans will
require tens to hundreds of millennia.
Over decades to centuries, neither
weathering of continental rocks, deep
ocean mixing, or dissolution of calcium
carbonate minerals in marine sediments can
occur fast enough to reverse OA over the
next two centuries."

The first problem, grade F on the
giggle test, is "hundreds of millennia".
That's hundreds of thousands of years,
just to do something about CO2
since the start of the industrial
revolution? This is from Bugs Bunny?

In hundreds of thousands of years the
oceans would routinely handle the
CO2 from
hundreds of thousands of years of
volcanic activity
but would struggle
with the industrial
output of CO2 from, say, 200 years?
Grade F on the sniff test.

This statement needs at least some
support from actual numerical
estimates of the quantities involved;
just that statement in that PDF
document is at least incompetent
as writing if not science.

Yes, they did mention pH:

"4 Average global surface
ocean pH has already fallen
from a pre-industrial
value of 8.2 to 8.1,
corresponding to an increase
in acidity of about 30%."

Boy, does that scream out for
a reference, some supporting
arguments (e.g., just how
much CO2 would that take, even
if none of it was taken
up by plants), and the significance
of that much change in pH.

Without getting out a chemistry
book, maybe I see how their
change from pH 8.2 to 8.1 is
"an increase
in acidity of about 30%."
Gee, 30%; that sounds big,
dangerous, etc. Wow! 30%!
Gads.

So, 8.2 is not acidic but
basic. pH is essentially
hydrogen ion concentration.
So, in a basic solution, expect
nearly no hydrogen ions. So,
if pH 8.2 has nearly no hydrogen
ions, then 30% more hydrogen
ions to pH 8.1 is 30%
of nearly nothing and, thus,
nearly no change. Sorry, I
have to get up and turn
off my screaming, loud BS
meter that just went off ....

They blew it.

This PDF is from Donald Duck,
Bugs Bunny, Goofy,
The Three Stooges,
Groucho Marx, George Carlin,
NOAA, or all of those?

It that's even roughly the best
argument they can make, then
they added evidence of no
serious problem from
"ocean acidification".

Tell you what: Next time to the
beach, I'll bring a roll of Tums
and drop a few into the ocean.
For what's in the PDF, that should
solve any problem.

For that PDF, there's a much
better explanation than a
significant threat to the oceans:
They want to fit in with the
CO2 alarmists and, thus, get
grant money.

I'm all for good research, but
first they need to learn how
to write. I would not approve
their grant request.

Gotta quit reading this stuff
or unplug my BS meter ....