Sunday, October 25, 2015

AGW hysteria

There's talk that the carbon dioxide concentration is changing the ocean's pH.  That seems very unlikely to me.  What is pH, anyway?  It it the negative logarithm of the concentration of hydrogen ion concentration.

A neutral pH is about 7.  This means that the concentration is 1 part in 10 million, since 10 million is 10 to the 7th power, and the log is -7, because it is in the denominator, and is less than 1. ( 1/(10 to the seventh power) or 1E-7)

If you double the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, you don't necessarily move the pH.  The ocean is already quite saturated with the stuff.  You have to prove that the oceans have MORE dissolved carbon dioxide than less.  Or a lower pH.  A lower pH means a more acidic ocean, with more hydrogen concentration than previously.  Have they proven this???

I suspect that they haven't.  You're talking about increases in parts per million in the atmosphere.  The change in pH isn't going to be significant, if there is any at all.

Still, the idea of pushing pollution in the atmosphere in order to stop AGW seems crazy to me, even if I'm wrong about the pH thing.

Update:

Googled the pH of the oceans.  It's 8.1, and is said to have moved .1 pH in the last two centuries.  I'm guessing that with the carbon dioxide already there, increasing it in the atmosphere seems unlikely to move the pH much, if at all.  Note that the pH has moved 25% vs. a doubling of the concentration in the atmosphere.  There is many times more carbon dioxide in the ocean than in the atmosphere.  I recall reading about that when reading about using the ocean's carbon dioxide to make synthetic fuels from seawater.  In other words, even if you double the atmospheric carbon dioxide level, this same amount will hardly budge the amount that's already in the oceans, which is many times more.


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