It's good to see a clear explanation of the acidic/alkaline red herring that is peddled in support of need to save the world.

Another day another anti-science article on OLO:- oh wait this one is really dumb.
"First, contrary to popular ­belief, at 400 parts per million (0.04 per cent), CO2 is lower now in the atmosphere than it has been during most of the 550 million years since modern life forms emerged during the Cambrian period. CO2 was about 10 times higher then than it is today"

Man this would have to be one of the dumbest things I've read. Would the author like to tell us what type of lifeforms were on the planet 550 million years ago. Not even the coral that grows on the reef was around then, no trees , not large life forms hell there wasn't even flowers.

Just goes to show money can't buy me love.

Hold on the ABC's favourite Queensland scientist the one who is on every week banging on about how the seas, rivers, lakes and everything are doomed! I cannot remember his name as he is so bland he sends me to sleep but he does a nice line in anxious concerned looks. This is generally when he is by a lake, river or the sea having a lovely time at our expense.
We really have to rein in these science rent seekers. Just start cutting ABC, CSRIO and attendant funding on the basis they are not doing a job for us but a job on us.
As Paul Keating famously said "Get a job" although in these circumstance it would be more apt.

Partial Pressures negate the outgassing... he knows this but chooses to conveniently not admit it for obscure reason!

When mining booms aren't holding up the boom-bust economy it is government agencies that give our farmers the skill to compete in the world economy.Seeing as farmers are far from being price-makers getting rid of the scientific base behind their success could prove embarrassing to the city-slicker who doesn't understand the function of primary industry.

Cupric Embarrasment - your comment is so clever it doesn't make sense. Isn't the partial outgassing stuff to do with CO2 levels themselves? If so how is it relevant?

Cobber the Hound - it's you who are guilt of poor science, or perhaps simply distortion. The author just points to the Cambrian as a starting point. As he notes coral reef formation is known to have occurred during periods of much higher CO2 concentrations.

However, I don't think anyone, apart from activists, are now suggesting that higher levels of CO2 will be seriously disruptive in themselves. The claim is the rate of change is higher than previous era, and that is disruptive.

I think the operative word here is sometimes! And in isolation! And to maintain an optimized balance or neutral P.H! And in a completely controlled and totally artificial environment, where temperature, O2 and Co2 are maintained at optimum levels, to maintain an essential symbiotic balance!

And clearly, that's just not happening on the reef, which is already half dead or destroyed!

We can all assume the "buried head" position and even create extremely irrelevant asinine comparisons, in order to defend a position; even as our environment traverses through a tipping point from which there's no return!

And think; the hydrocarbons, sweet light crude and or NG, that may reside under OUR reef, in fact produces 4 times less Co2 in common use than that which we import with increasingly rare export dollars; with the only logical or possible outcome; additional/unnecessary harm to the environment/the reef and the economy!

And when it comes to powering our towns, cities and industries, you'd be forgiven for believing we had no option to burn coal/use power supplied by price gouging foreign investors!?

Anyone heard of thorium or biogas; or ceramic fuel cells with the world's best, 80% energy coefficient, which equates to the world's cheapest energy, which then equates to the lowest construction costs for cars ships and submarines; aluminum and or steel making using the direct reduction (lowest carbon creating) method and arc furnaces!

And as a combination that then produces not only the lowest carbon creating steel, but the lowest costing steel into the bargain!

So what do we do? Adopt any of the available alternative and vastly cheaper energy/production options?

No, we try to extrapolate and contrast what we decide to create inside a closed artificial environment, with one subject to all the vagaries of Mother nature, trying with everything in her Armory, to save a planet and a species, we seem hell bent on destroying?

So a few dozen people can become the richest corpses in the graveyard!? You know it makes sense!
Rhrosty.

It shows just how far The Australian has deteriorated when it publishes ignorant articles like this one. Ocean acidification isn't a hypothesis, it's an observed phenomenon. Nobody claimed that all corals and molluscs would be adversely affected; the problem is with the ones where the CaCO3 is in the form of aragonite, which is more soluble than calcite.

To say that buffering will prevent this from happening ignores the important fact that dissolving CaCO3 is part of the buffering process! But buffering does reduce the impact of temperature on the amount of CO2 the sea can absorb (which is in any case far less than temperature's impact on the amount of oxygen and nitrogen it can hold). But temperature greatly affects the solubility of CaCO3.

Where the algae grows it tends to run out of nutrients (such as iron) before it runs out of CO2. So though CO2 is essential, it's not the limiting factor to the growth of algae.

And the accusations of demonizing CO2 are disingenuous. Even if we completely stopped emitting it, there would still be more than enough for nature's requirements. But the amounts we are emitting make it one of the most serious pollutants globally.

Curmudgeon,

Notice he admits to talking theoretically.

I find this great love of "The Reef" everyone professes rather funny. You see most people, particularly city slickers, who have never been there actually love the idea of the reef, not the real thing. Stick them out there for more than a few hours, on an unusually nice calm day, & they hate it.

A mate of mine tried to run a reef hotel. He took a large boat, with overnight accommodation for 25 out to Hardy lagoon, & offered accommodation. Now those tranquil tropical reef lagoons are only tranquil in comparison to how damn rough it is out side of them with the trade winds blowing. Most people wanted off with in a couple of days, & he went off & did something else with his boat.

When I took a couple of hundred people out there for just a 2.5 hour stop, most of them spent most of the time inside the boat, not coral viewing, in the water, or fresh air.

Rhrosty don't be conned mate. The mates still operating up there tell me there is no change in the reef. It is all academic & greeny talk.

I once took the entire board of the marine park authority out to our facility on Hardy Reef. The chair lady, an English professor for god sake, told me our area was being decimated by the crown of thorns. We would have no coral with in a year. I wonder if she ever saw one.

My staff of fishing guides & diver instructors, operating over a 20 mile radius saw 2 starfish a week average, & no more appeared in the next few years.

Repeat what academia tells you mate, & you are mostly telling lies, all in the name of research funding.

I wish I could remember which fool academic, probably another English professor, recently said we must try to eliminate all CO2. The amazing thing is, some people actually believe them.

How sad when the co founder of Greenpeace contradicts the mantra from which the likes of Cobber the hound and co borrowed their opinions, comes out with a contrary opinion that conflicts with their "faith"?

It's like that scene from "The Exorcist" where the head turns through 360 degrees! How does Cobber keep his head attached?

Hasbeen, there are quite a lot of places that I care about despite not wanting to stick around long (and in most cases, not even having been there). Antarctica's the classic example. I don't think caring about more than what you experience is peculiar city slickers, but if those in the sticks don't care then I regard it as a failure on their part.

But I'm glad to hear the starfish weren't so active and I hope it stays that way.

___________________________________________________________________________________

spindoc, Patrick Moore did not actually cofound Greenpeace, though he was a member when Greenpeace became the official name of the organization.

And now, instead of checking his facts, he spouts easily refutable rubbish based on his very poor understanding of the situation, and people like you put blind faith in his being correct. How much worse would things have to get for you to acknowledge he's wrong?

'morning Aiden,

Just quoting from the bio for this author

"Patrick Moore was a co-founder, and leader of Greenpeace for 15 years is now an independent ecologist and environmentalist based in Vancouver, Canada."

If you want to call Patrick Moore a liar, perhaps you should take it up with him and our editor Graham Young?

Only of course if shooting the messenger is more important to you than debating content?

Evening spindoc,

On the contrary, I have alrady pointed out the flaws in Patrick's argument, but YOU have shown evidence of regarding the messenger's credentials as more important than debating content. The claim that he cofounded Greenpeace has been exposed as untrue before. If you want to know the truth about him, I suggest you start by looking on hiis Wikipedia page.

BTW I'm unaware pf the procedure for taking things up with Graham Young. What is it?

Are we living on the same planet?
Hot one minute, cold at the same time.

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/record-seasurface-temperatures-in-pacific-point-to-record-warmth-in-2015-and-2016-20150414-1mjooh.html

and:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=85679&src=nha

And I repeat here on OLO, AGW and Kyoto and IPCC and CSIRO science has not measured and assessed photosynthesis-linked warmth in ocean algae plant matter.

I think climate is being impacted by humans but not due to CO2.

Dear spindoc, Patrick Moore knows the deal with partial pressures yet conveniently doesn't mention them for obscure reason--> maybe he needs to be reminded wikipedia is watching him!!

Hasbeen and others, times have changed and so has health of the GBR and whole ocean. There is dead coral almost everywhere.

Surely debate about the article here should be about what is being said, instead of criticizing the author.

Google: coccolithaphore Bering Sea.
There are thriving blooms of a size unprecedented in known History and coccolithaphore has calcium based shell that is thriving and is not dissolving.

Pinpoints of cloud leading into bigger cloud can even be seen forming during precipitation virtually parallel to a major coccolithaphore algae bloom in the Bering Sea, here:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=40716

Let there be real debate instead of accepting incomplete AGW science blaming CO2. Or the consequences of inaction toward the real cause and impact will continue.

JF Aus, I was under the impression that marine algae had a strong cooling effect due to the DMS they emit into the atmosphere helping clouds to form.

Is that not so?

‘morning Aiden,

I guess there is no kind way to say this, but it seems somehow mandatory for warmers and friends to denigrate those who dare to be contrary to the faith. This is based on Attitudes, Values and Beliefs (AVB’s). It is AVB’s that determine the hostile actions of the warmertariat.

Patrick Moore has somehow fallen from the grace of the warmers and must therefore be closed down, abused and accused?

Just imagine for one moment that you knew that the global renewables industrial index, RENIXX has collapsed, or that all but the EU/UN carbon credits markets had collapsed and the two remaining markets had fallen from $44.55 in 2008, to under $5.00 now, or that the EU had voted to remove renewables subsidies, or that Germany was building twelve new coal fired power stations, nine of which will burn Lignite, or that the EU pays 60% more for fossil fuels than the USA, or that India, Japan, Russia, China, Canada, Australia, NZ, most of Eastern Europe, including Bulgaria, are all building their industrial futures based on coal and gas. Imagine that the world is awash with cheap fossil fuels.

Now lets talk about AVB’s shaping actions. Imagine you are in charge of the academic superannuation portfolios for Universities Australia and have acceded to activist pressure to purge investments in fossil fuels and switch to renewables, or that the ABC, Fairfax, many green NGO’s, Unions and green MP’s have done the same with their super funds. So far so good?

Now fast forward to 2015 and the announcement that Banco Santander, the last of the worlds three biggest renewables investors is departing Australia stating that “the large scale clean energy industry is practically uninvestable” and that clean energy projects in Australia have declined by 90% in the last 12 months.

So Australia’s best and brightest, our so called “intelligentsia” in humanities academia, ABC, Fairfax, Unions and green NGO’s have all been taken to the cleaners on their stupid superannuation decisions. Ooops!

They may be intellectuals but their AVB’s drove their actions, very bad decisions.

Cont’d

Cont’d

When I see ABC presenters, Fairfax journalists and academics trotting out the “science” and spruiking renewables, a warm glow of irony permeates my very being, it manifests as a huge smile of satisfaction. No wonder they get all their academic friends to thump out the CAGW massage, they all got done over, so until and unless they can get renewables pumping again they all have a big black hole in their super investments.

Just like you and your warmer friends, they could have looked outside their self referential networks, they could have done some research, they might have engaged in critical thinking and could have become aware of the real issues referred to here. But their faith driven AVB’s prevented them and they are now paying the price, tough.

You choose to denigrate Patrick Moore and yet the IPCC was run until recently by a former railway engineer and soft porn writer Rajendra Pashuri (look where that got him?). Some might find that amusing, but I guess he was employed to keep the gravy train running eh?

If your science had any merit, all the global infrastructure that was put in place to support Kyoto would still be in place, but wasn’t good so the infrastructure was allowed to rot. Now there isn’t enough energy in the scientific, political or financial systems to turn things around.

It is perhaps convenient to forget, or perhaps you never knew, that a $1 Trillion has been sucked out of the EU economy since 2008 for de-carbonization, all paid for by taxpayers and energy consumers. Every cent went straight to the biggest industrial companies on the planet, rent seekers and climate research grant hunters, yet not one EU nation is on track to meet its targets. Great job boys.

So the next time you feel like denigrating someone who has a different take on your faith, you might stand in front of a mirror and “look into things” a bit more. You never know Aiden, it might prevent you and your CAGW friends from looking like real pratts rather than intelligentsia.

Play nicely.

Spindoc....

I see you still invent your realities and believe in them:)..That's so nice, I hope you get well soon. Humans are changing the planet and you know this...Our own evolutionary directions are and always will be "a rock and a hard place", given all systems must run at all costs...but to slow and show down, gives thinking time to all concerned.

Chemicals that have manifested, not only into your body...but into all life-forms right across the board, seems to be fine....However, the DNA " which is also chemically based" These structures can be forced to create something we may not want....

A hundred years from now....I hope your right.

Play nicely.

Posted by spindoc, Wednesday, 15 April 2015 1:37:46 PM

Tally

Has, I've seen plenty of bleached coral; for which I blame the greens; and their activism that has locked up our most promising hydrocarbon prospects, which then forces us to import as much as 91% of our oil, which in common use produces 4 times as much carbon, than that which lays beneath the reef! Repeat, 4 times as much carbon!

And if some long standing expert prognostications are even half proven, we could be sitting 1+trillion barrels of sweet light crude, and perhaps significantly more NG.

And in common use wherever it replaces heavy sulfur laden crude, from the wellhead to the harvester; our own sweet light crude; which only needs a little chill filtering; produces four time less total Co2! And NG, 40% less again!

Now you'd think if Co2 was causing global warming or played a part in coral bleaching, the real greens would be pleading with the authorities, to use that in preference to that which we import; and at a cost of around 21 billions per. And again pleading that we replace our coal fired power stations with nuclear ones!

21 billion, if kept in our own economy, would do at least 100 billion dollars worth of extra economic work/wealth and job creation right here; and in so doing, generate around an extra 30 billions worth of total tax revenue!; a win/win all round?

Given their history, I believe these nuts and cranks/green activists, just want to end development, and or create a world where a chosen few live in the trees and survive on natures benevolence!

There's nothing wrong with spending a few hours in a dream castles in the clouds, always providing one doesn't take up permanent residence!
Rhrosty.

Rhosty, is there anything you don't blame the greens for?

CO2 is causing global warming which plays a significant part in coral bleaching. But some things just aren't worth the risk. An oil spill on the Great Barrier Reef would be so catastrophic that allowing oil rigs there would be an even greater threat to GBR marine life. And developing the oilfield would ultimately result in more oil being used, but whether it would result in the abandonment of inefficient overseas oilfields is far less certain.

Greens do (nearly) all want to replace our coal fired power stations with something less polluting, but nuclear isn't the only alternative. There's a lot to be said for nuclear power, but its economic benefits over renewables are weak and diminishing. What greens are united on is that cutting safety standards to make nuclear power cheaper is unacceptable, and proving nuclear radiation is less dangerous than originally thought won't change that.

With competent economic management, the jobs and tax revenue would be there wherever our oil comes from, but our dollar would be higher if we produced it ourselves.

Afternoon spindoc,

As I'm a Christian I've become rather desensitised to being on the receiving end of faith based denigration. But I still notice the double standards of those who put blind faith in the ability to significantly raise atmospheric CO2 levels without significantly affecting the climate. That's a view that relies on cherry picked research results, yet you seem to think it's the majority of scientists who work on this, and all those who think the scientists' conclusions are more accurate than those of the Murdoch press, who are stuck in self referential networks and avoiding critical thinking!

"Patrick Moore has somehow fallen from the grace of the warmers and must therefore be closed down, abused and accused?"
CERTAINLY NOT! But Patrick Moore has used his exaggerated environmentalist credentials to advance the view that ocean acidification's not a problem based on arguments that are demonstrably wrong.

Government hostility to renewable energy has harmed investment in it, but investments in fossil fuels have also collapsed in value over the past year.

Is there anything that being a former railway engineer who wrote a romance novel makes someone unqualified for? I never denigrated Patrick Moore based on his background; Any denigration was based on what he said, and did not occur until AFTER I'd pointed out the flaws in his argument.

Your view that the science has no merit because leaders can't agree what to do about it is incredibly naïve. and shows a tremendous overestimation of politicians! A lack of economic understanding is also a great problem. And with hindsight it's clear that Europe would've been much better off adopting a Gillard style carbon tax instead of their badly designed ETS.

Aidan,
Yes that is so, marine algae does lead to cooling, however the growth and warmth occurs first, during photosynthesis and proliferation. Cloud may then form and become so dense that sunlight is reduced and photosynthesis ceases, the algae involved then consuming available oxygen instead of producing it. Similar/same at night.

Where did you gain your impression of the subject? I am seeking all avenues or relevant science or understanding.

"I think climate is being impacted by humans but not due to CO2."

There is always the human effect. The greens are what you might say...The gatekeepers of thought. We will let you pass...but not at the cost of the home you live on.

Balance!....

Tally

"Ask the real experts about ocean acidification, not climate science deniers"

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2015/apr/16/ask-the-real-experts-about-ocean-acidification-not-climate-science-deniers

"So here are a few things you could have learned from the opinion page of the Australian newspaper this week about the Great Barrier Reef and ocean acidification – the phenomenon where extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels makes the oceans more acidic.

* Ocean acidification was “invented” in 2005 by climate scientists because global warming wasn’t bad enough.
* Because corals and shellfish have been around for millions of years they’ll be fine if the ocean keeps soaking up all the extra CO2.
* The oceans have a built-in natural “buffer” that stops the water from swinging around the pH scale (the scale used to measure acid and alkaline states).
* People who keep saltwater aquariums at home sometimes add CO2 to the water to make plants grow – therefore, CO2 is great for the oceans."

There are two things to know about these points.

The first is that they were all made by Canadian climate science denier Patrick Moore, who has not written a single peer-reviewed scientific paper on the subject of ocean acidification (or on anything else in the recent past, as far as I can tell. He got his ecology Ph.D in 1974).

The second thing to know (not surprising when you know the first thing) is that all Moore’s statements are wrong, irrelevant or misleading."

"Moore’s dodgy ‘science’

Just because Moore has no genuine expertise in ocean acidification, that doesn’t necessarily make him wrong.

So let’s dive in to the murky waters of Moore’s unique and twisted take on the science of ocean acidification."

Read article for a point by point take down of Moore's article.