The Truth About Ocean Acidification Perhaps you’ve heard that we’re turning the oceans acid because of our burning of oil and coal and natural gas, which produces carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) pollution. And because of this we are jeopardizing the wellbeing of corals and oysters and the other ocean biota. We are frequently reminded on mainstream media of this condition. Their alarm is backed up by authoritative sources like the U.S. National Climate Assessment who state “The oceans are currently absorbing about a quarter of the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere annually and are becoming more acid as a result, leading to concerns about intensifying impacts on marine ecosystems.” “Impacts” are presumed to be negative. We are reminded that every good lie contains an element of truth. It is true that the oceans absorb about 25% of annual CO2 emissions (95.7% from natural sources). It is not true that the oceans are becoming “more acid”; the oceans are firmly basic and would remain so even if atmospheric CO2 quadrupled from today’s 430 ppm(parts per million or 0.043% of the air). We refer to the pH scale where 7.0 is neutral, less than 7.0 is acid, and more than 7.0 is basic. The average ocean pH is about 8.1, i.e., firmly basic. A doubling of the amount of CO2 in the air to 860 ppm would reduce the average pH of the ocean to 7.9, still firmly basic and likely beneficial to ocean biota. A short chemistry lesion: ocean water absorbs CO2, combining to form carbonic acid, a weak acid that tends to lower the pH of the ocean. But the oceans are highly alkaline because of dissolved minerals and thus resist any significant change in pH. This is called buffering. The carbonic acid converts into over 90% bicarbonate ions that are the basis of shell formation. That slight decrease in pH to 7.9 actually slightly increases the bicarbonate content, enhancing shell/skeleton formation. This change is comparable to daily pH changes in biologically productive surface waters due to photosynthetic fixation of carbon during the day and respiration at night. The concentrations of ions and molecules inside aquatic creatures are under active biological control and nearly independent of the concentrations in surrounding water. Calcium carbonate shell material in the bodies of mollusks, corals and other aquatic life are protected by self-generated organic coatings and are little affected by the properties of the surrounding water. Modern calcifying corals and many other shelled creatures emerged during the Triassic period some 240 million years ago, when the air contained over 1,200 ppm CO2, three times that of today. Shelled animals including corals and mollusks internalized their physiology, optimizing pH and the calcification process to be highly independent of the surrounding ocean pH. So how are we explaining the alarming “ocean acidification” misinformation from the media and government sources to our children? Simple answer: we are not. If your child’s 8 th -grade teacher was using the Texas State Board of Education’s approved Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt (HMH) Teacher’s Guide and the accompanying experiment in the HMH Student Activity Guide, they would see a lab that covers a blatantly deceptive experiment purported to demonstrate destructive ocean acidification from higher levels of atmospheric CO2. It uses distilled water or tap water to misrepresent buffered sea water, and thus produces the desired alarming change from neutral (pH~7) to acid (pH much less than 6.7). The concept of buffering is ignored. HMH concludes “The ocean acts as a carbon sink in the carbon cycle, absorbing atmospheric carbon and storing it in an aqueous solution in the seawater, which can lead to the effect of ocean acidification. Ocean acidification has a negative effect on many marine species, especially those that make hard shells. In more acidic water, it is more difficult for these organisms to build shells, and the water can even cause shells to begin to dissolve.” [emphasis added.] Reproducing their experiment, adding a sample of sea water at 8.1 pH, results is a decrease of pH to 7.4, i.e. a basicity still within the range for optimum calcification. And we measured the experiment’s CO2 concentration to be over 5,000 ppm that produced that lower 7.4 pH, i.e., well above any realistic level possible from our burning of fossil fuels. Other Texas SBOE-approved instructional material either repeats concern for ocean acidification or ignores the issue, leaving students subject to alarming claims by the media and suggestions of harmful impacts from “acidification” by government agencies. A simple solution would be to include the concept of ocean buffering in eighth grade and high school TEKS science standards. Buffering matters. Teach it. This article was written by Martin Cornell. To see a summary of other work by Martin, (Or to donate to my campaign!) please go to my website. barbaradenson4texas.com/

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