Bishop Hill Science says one thing, scientists another
Jul 3, 2015 BBC Climate: WG2 Anyone would think there was a big climate conference coming up, because the BBC is pumping out the climate propaganda left right and centre. A couple of nights ago we had Kirsty Wark fawning all over Chris Rapley on Newsnight (from 40 mins) and wondering why good people like him weren't making the policy decisions. Today we have Roger Harrabin on ocean acidification (video here).
The samples are chalky white for millions of years from the fossils of tiny shellfish. That's until this dramatic point 55 million years ago [the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum; PETM], when the oceans suddenly got hotter and more acidic and the shellfish disappeared. It took shellfish 160,000 years to recover and scientists say humans are changing the seas ten times faster than at this catastrophic event...
We then get a brief interview with Professor Daniela Schmidt of Bristol University (the recipient, like her colleague Stefan Lewandowsky, of a Royal Society research fellowship). Here's what she had to say:
My children will be alive in 2100. I would like them to be able to swim above a coral reef and enjoy its beauty. I would like them to be able to eat mussels and oysters and crayfish and if we continue to release CO2 at the current rate this is not going to happen.
Golly. Sounds pretty scary eh? Fortunately I was somewhat reassured by this paper in Geology, by the same Professor Schmidt, which discusses the same abiotic zones in the oceans at the time of the PETM. As the paper draws to a close, Prof Schmidt says this:
[Recent] papers highlight the migration of phytoplankton to follow their niche, and suggest that the extreme warmth led to an absence of calcifiers in tropical waters. Intriguingly, though, this abiotic zone appears several tens of thousands of years after the onset of the extreme temperatures and the acidification, is associated with changes in lithology, and follows a gap in the record.
If the abiotic zone appears tens of thousands of years after the temperature rises, I'm wondering why, when interviewed by Roger Harrabin, Professor Schmidt says she is worried about whether her children are going to see coral reefs and eat shellfish. Perhaps the excitement went to her head.
The rest of the paragraph is worth a look too:
This potentially slow response contradicts everything we know about ecosystem response to decadal temperature variability; for example, the North Atlantic Oscillation (Beaugrand et al., 2009; Beaugrand et al., 2002) or the California upwelling system (Chavez et al., 2003; Chavez et al., 1999). Aze et al. explain the abiotic zone by comparing it to the temperature adaptation of modern foraminifers. One would expect, though, that Paleogene foraminifers which evolved in an ∼15 °C warmer environment than today (Huber and Caballero, 2011) were generally adapted to these warmer temperatures. As so often, new papers ask more questions than they answer, such as: why are these abiotic zones not found at other open ocean sites nearer the equator? If the high-end temperatures are reasonable estimates, these might point to physiological limits at which enzymes start denaturalizing. Given the high metabolic rates in response to these high temperatures, the size of the supply of food needed to sustain the organisms is a pressing question and might have played a role in a regional exclusion. More work is needed, though, to move from assessments of past climates to predictive models for policy makers of the impact of future climate change on marine ecosystems, such as the cascading effects of these potential abiotic zones on food webs.
So the abiotic zone (or is it zones?) are not even seen at all tropical locations! Astonishing. There is quite a lot more to this story than the BBC would like you to know, isn't there?
I'm not holding my breath for a correction though: Roger doesn't correct things. The BBC will run with it all day.
Reader Comments (87)
The BBC is accelerating its own destruction by broadcasting material that is clearly not impartial. This extends far beyond their very blatant climate change obsession. They are effectively the broadcast arm of the left wing Guardian.
I say this with great sorrow because I believe that the public would put up with the licence fee if they felt that the BBC was giving a fair deal, even though the changes in technology challenge the concept of the licence fee. The BBC once enjoyed great public support, but they have betrayed this.
It is the arrogance, money squandering, bloated management and biased output of the BBC that people object to. People are beginning to despise the BBC for a number of reasons and that can only lead to their eventual ruin. They have themselves to blame, given their decades long attitude to complaints and criticism. They deserve every painful step of their inevitable decline.
Geological researchers in recent years have discovered a rich grant-funding lode located at the Palaeocene- Eocene Boundary.It used to be a normal stratigraphic boundary, noted in the NW Europe Northern protoAtlantic region as being represented by a widely distributed layer of tuffaceous volcanic ash rich sediments, also providing a useful seismic marker on seismic reflection profiles. It used to be used by working industry geologists to exploit our oil and gas resource in the Central North Sea. It has now been renamed the PETM, and is now used by academic researchers to exploit the largesse of our academic grant funding institutions.
Unfortunately we may not have to wait 10,000 years. The first signs of hypoxic oceans have already appeared in the Pacific.
A plague of oxygen-deprived waters from the deep ocean is creeping up over the continental shelves off the Pacific Northwest and forcing marine species there to relocate or die. Since 2002 tongues of hypoxic, or low-oxygen, waters from deeper areas offshore have slipped into shallower near-shore environments off the Oregon coast, although not close enough to be oxygenated by the waves. The problem stems from oxygen reduction in deep water, a phenomenon that some scientists are observing in oceans worldwide, and that may be related to climate change.
So the same people who couldn't model the atmosphere correctly now claim they can do the oceans and all the chemistry and biology in it.
I know that simple chemistry teaches us that by dissolving carbon dioxide in water you will make the water more acidic but has anyone calculated how many CO2 molecules there are in the atmosphere and how many H20 molecules there are in the oceans and how much the pH of the oceans would change if every single molecule of CO2 in the atmosphere went into solution?
Of course sea water is not pure water, otherwise we could drink it, but I suppose it would greatly simplify the sort of exercise mentioned above if you assumed the oceans did consist of pure water. Would the salt and other substances in sea water have a buffering effect and reduce the impact of CO2 on the pH of the oceans?
Entropic Man, this is the 'first time' this event has been RECORDED as happening, not the first time it has happened. It MAY result from climate change.
This is the high calibre speculative guesswork you rely on for your belief system?
That you even think it is significant enough to mention here, is indicative of desparate barrel scraping, and does you no credit.
No doubt the people who wrote that twaddle got paid for it, so everything is all right, as far as you are concerned
Roy
Perhaps this will help.
It is a discussion of the effect of dissolved CO2 on ocean chemistry.
Golf Charlie
Scientists do not have belief systems. They develop working hypotheses based on the available evidence. This includes recognising that the evidence is never certain. When the evidence changes, so do the hypotheses. We are flexible.
You, on the other hand seem certain that there is no problem, despite the uncertainties.
Certainty without evidence is the mark of a belief system.
I do not have a belief system. You do.
Yes, Roy.
But the earlier questions you asked have to be hedged around with so many confounding factors as to be almost unanswerable here. The bulk of the oceans buffering capacity is vast compared to the atmosphere, and solid carbonate rocks vaster still. Most of the scary stories revolve around the CO2 not being mixed into the oceans very quickly from the top layers (which doesn't help with the "missing heat"-being-mixed-into-the-deep-oceans theory), and how fast many other things happen.
Most life forms actually tend to have a lower pH inside than outside, and would continue to do so even in the worst case scenarios. So it may be beneficial, and not just to photosynthesising organisms. And carbonate-exoskeletons can be formed under these conditions and at acidic pH values in acidic fresh water under bio-chemical control. They don't just sit around waiting for something to happen.
Picking holes in the 'acid-oceans' doom scenarios is like shooting rats in a barrel.
This alone should be enough to strip the BBC of the TV licence fee
Schrodinger's Cat -the BBC and the Guardian have been different cheeks of the same arse for a long time , hence why the Guardian is doing much moaning abut cuts to the BBC . Partly has this means that will be a lot less BBC jobs adverts in the Guardian, who are the number one choice for these. And partly because the revolving door between them, which has seen many cross over , is now a much smaller one .
Its been long time paradox of the Guardian that is very much part of the very 'establishment ' of which it claims to oppose , your much more likley to find that paper on the breakfast tables of the great and often not good than any red top paper the Guardian attacks.
If you could possible take out certain north London post codes , you probable end up with many an empty office at both of them , and a dramatic down turn in the sales figures of 'expensive eco friendly, fair trade , coffee-less coffee ' and a real crash in self righteousness numbers too.
Well, well, EM. You have found yet another supposition based upon limited information that forewarns a coming disaster that all can be blamed on CO2. Have you not noticed how CO2 endangers all the pretty, fluffy things on this planet (and us), and encourages all the horrible, annoying, disease-ridden pesky pests? How can such a gas have such a… err… gas?
As for “ocean acidification”… How much CO2 would be required to reduce the pH of the oceans (presently around 8.1) such that it actually becomes acidic? And please do not plea that it only takes a drop of (pick a tiny number) to cause chaos; much of the oceans already have a wide range of pH values, depending upon the tide, the month, or the season – estuarial waters may actually get below pH 7, yet do you see a dearth of life, there? As the source of much of the CO2 in the atmosphere was claimed to be outgassing from the warming oceans (warmed, of course, by human-produced CO2), can you not see the obvious dissonance in the new claims?
Apart from the atrocious hubris encapsulated in that comment, I am sure that most visiting this site would say, “No, you are not!”Entropic Man, climate scientists develop working hypotheses based on available funding.
Climate scientists said from the outset, that the only possible cause of slight warming was CO2, and Mann's Holy Hockey Stick removed other changes from the historical record in the last 1000 years.
The evidence has been changed, but the hypotheses has not.
You seem certain there is a problem, despite the lack of evidence.
Certainty without evidence is a belief system.
You have a problem, especially if you have chosen a career in science fiction.
The bullshit HIV/AIDS epidemic in spades. Unfortunately our civilisation is retarding at twatterate.
"Anyone would think there was a big climate conference coming up,"
Give all the run up so far, I'd expect it to be held in August, not the end of November. At the rate they're going, they'll either run out of stuff to hype or the public will have learned to ignore it all. Or both. Especially if November is cold.
Ric Werme, please don't forget that it is taxpayer funding that pays for all of this propaganda, to try to convince tax payers that funding all of this rubbish is what tax payers would have voted for, if given a choice.
All of this tax payer funding so far, has just paid for reasons why more taxpayer funding is required. The conclusions are predictably similar, and, by amazing coincedence, predictably wrong.
Meanwhile people keep dying of predictable disease, famine and thirst, which could have been addressed with the money wasted on predictable climate science failure.
Since 1960, when annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions were 7,500 million tons they have risen to 30,000 million tons in 2024 - a rise of 400%
Since 1960 when atmospheric concentration of CO2 was 290 ppm it has risen to 400 ppm - a rise of 42%
Since 1960 when tropospheric temperature was 14.7 deg.C it has risen to 15.3 deg C- a rise of 4.2%
So what?
Bolshevik Brainwashing Corporation. I stopped paying the TV licence fee last year. A friend warned me that, despite watching no terrestrial fee, if prosecuted I could easily be "deemed" to be a dodger, a surreptitious watcher. So I sent the licencing authority a pic of my pliers cutting the co-ax cable. They sent a polite acknowledgement. I used to adore Auntie Beeb and its quality news. No more. Bunch of commies.
[Amended as requested TM]
“estimates for pre-PETM atmospheric CO2 concentrations range from 600 to 2800 parts per million …
starting from these conditions, an increase of 750 to 26,000 ppm of atmospheric CO2 would be required to account for an additional 5°C rise in global temperature …”.
http://www.oocities.org/marie.mitchell@rogers.com/PaleoClimate.html
It appears that the temperature and atmospheric CO2 levels even prior to the PETM were already well above current levels, factors which Harrabin studiously avoids, mentioning only a rate of change; and there’s the further point of the time-resolution of the data.
Harrabin: " . . . scientists say humans are changing the seas ten times faster than at this catastrophic event . . . ."
Doug McNeall: "It took an estimated 20,000 years for the 6 degree warming to happen, rather than, say a couple of centuries".
Firstly, human emissions of CO2 account for about 4Gt annually, accumulating in the atmosphere. The PETM was caused by an increase in CO2 of 2000-3000Gt, so it would take at least 500 years at the current level of emissions to produce a PETM type event - admittedly a blink of an eye in terms of geological time, but a very long time in terms of human society and the advancement of technology.
It has been postulated that this CO2 was derived from an enormous release of methane hydrates beneath an ocean stability zone much thinner than it is today. A research paper released last summer shows that this methane (or atmospheric CO2) release (at least the initial very large pulse) occurred effectively INSTANTANEOUSLY, i.e. over a period very much less than centuries. I quote:
"The single greatest hurdle hindering understanding of the PETM CIE has been uncertainty in the timing of the carbon added to the ocean–atmosphere system: the release schedule greatly affects the amount of 13C-depleted carbon necessary to produce the globally observed CIE at any given isotope composition, due to the differential reaction time of Earth’s exchangeable carbon reservoirs. The second unknown has been the size of the atmospheric response. Our high-resolution stable isotope records from the Marlboro Clay provide constraints for both. We demonstrate that the initial release was rapid, if not instantaneous."
The authors suggest two mechanisms: massive release of methane or massive release of carbon from an extraterrestrial impact. As regards the magnitude of this release the authors say: "Our observations and revised release rate are consistent with an atmospheric perturbation of 3,000-gigatons of carbon (GtC)" - a vastly greater amount of carbon than we are emitting from fossil fuels and occurring over a much shorter timescale.
"Assuming a pre-CIE atmospheric reservoir of 2,000 GtC (with a δ13C of −6‰) (70) and an instantaneous release, a mass balance calculation gives an estimate of the amount of carbon necessary to produce the ∼20‰ atmospheric excursion. No realistic amount of organic carbon (approximately −26‰) can produce a −20‰ atmospheric change (>100,000 GtC is needed). Thermogenic (−40‰) and biogenic methane (−60‰) sources would require 2,900 and 1,200 GtC, respectively, to produce the −20‰ atmospheric excursion. Given the rapidity of the onset, magnitude of the δ13C excursion, and that the observed calcite compensation depth shoaling in deep ocean requires ∼3,000 GtC (3), two mechanisms meet these criteria: large igneous province-produced thermogenic methane (6, 7) and cometary carbon (11, 12). The latter is consistent with the recent discovery of a substantial accumulation of nonbiogenic magnetic nanoparticles in the Marlboro clay, whose origin is best ascribed to impact condensate (71). If released as CO2, this would be consistent with observations of an ∼5 °C global warming, although we note that the radiative effect of a methane release, while short lived, is substantially greater than CO2."
In conclusion, the authors note:
"Finally, the revised timescale for the rate of carbon release at the onset of the PETM limits its usefulness as an analog for our current anthropogenic release."
So why didn't the BBC paraphrase its prognostications of doom and gloom with at least a reference to this paper particularly, but to other research which tends to refute the 'humans could cause another PETM' theory?
Link for above:
http://www.pnas.org/content/110/40/15908.full
@ Entropic man
Thanks for the reference.
Two reasons:
They themselves are neither informed nor competent in science.
They do not speak to informed and competent scientists who are diligent/honest enough to report such caveats.
They won't publish such caveats anyway because they are 'saving the planet' and it contradicts their message.
OK. That's three reasons....etc....etc
michael hart, that you started with 2, but actually explained 3 reasons, just shows that climate science is at least 50% worse than previously thought possible, and this sudden deterioration in science quality, catches even experienced critics unaware.
Unless drastic action is taken to curb funding, large scale casualties are inevitable, and whole University departments are at risk.
Early, early, early in my inquiry into 'global warming' I sensed huge buffering capacity in the ocean. I still sense it, but also sense bio-sequestering and geo-sequestering of CO2, all of somewhat poorly understood magnitudes.
Clearly, long term, vulcanism hasn't kept up with the mostly solar driven processes which inevitably almost irreversibly sequester carbon.
There are a plethora of unknown unknowns in the carbon cycle.
It can't be long before the anthropogenic rejuvenation of the carbon cycle for the benefit of the whole biome will be looked upon as the boon, the benefit, and the blessing that it is. Waiting. Waiting......
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In celebration, both retarded and promising, of the day: BOOM! Sorry about running out on the national security bills.
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Jamie Jessop
The PETM temperature excursion occurred when deep ocean water temperatures had already been riding for 10 million years and continued to rise for a further 6 million years after it. Deep ocean water temperatures were already close to 12 deg. C and when they peaked 6 million years later their temperature had reached the same level as the peak of the PETM. As deep ocean water temperature is now +/- 0 deg.C the preconditions for a repitition of a PETM type excursion do not exist and many millions of years of deep ocean water warming would be required as a precursor.
Paleoclimate Buff
"Deep ocean water temperatures were already close to 12 deg. C and when they peaked 6 million years later their temperature had reached the same level as the peak of the PETM."
I guess you must be talking about the Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum when CO2 levels also increased by several thousand ppm but over a period of roughly half a million years, therefore no major extinction events. Yes, the Eocene was a very different world to that which exists now and drawing sweeping conclusions about future catastrophes based upon comparisons with events in earth's distant past is always going to be fraught with uncertainty - not that you would believe that from Harrabin's reporting.
Jaime Jessop
Yes indeed it was the Early Eocene climatic optimum.
What is interesting is that for the next 15 million years deep ocean water temperatures fell more or less continuously until the start of the Oligocene when there was the onset of permanent Antarctic glaciation, which despite the 9 million year long late Oligocene warming, has remained glaciated to this day.
This decline in temperature occurred despite the elevated level of atmospheric CO2 ascribed to high levels of ocean floor spreading and plate subduction and cited as the cause of the warming to the Paleogene warming. The brief excursion of the PETM is ascribed to a (sudden?) release of methane clathrates. But the decline in CO2 levels seems to have been only briefly reversed after a spike at the time of the Eocene Climatic optimum.
Actually CO2 concentrations had been falling since the end of the Jurassic ( 150 mya) when they were around 2000 ppm, and the rise coincident with the PETM, when CO2 was probably in the range of 1000ppm, only briefly reversed this fall.
So the Paleogene warming and the PETM occurred during a 100 million year long period during which CO2 levels more or less halved. What caused the fall in CO2 and ocean water temperatures remains open to speculation
Paleoclimate Buff,
Thanks for the info. Very interesting.
Off topic, but ..... looking at Grid watch made me laugh.
Has anyone else noticed the 'ammeter'showing grid supply is calibrated in 0-10 for windmills and all the rest is calibrated in 0 - 100 or more.
Thus showing the uninitiated at glancee, a much bigger portion of generation than reality ascribed to the useless windmills.
patrick healy, if wind got near 97% of anything, turbines would fall over, leaving piles of inadequately incinerated toxic waste, in the landscape. Fortunately, whilst we have fossil fuels providing reliable power, no one would notice any drop in actual generating output.
The beauty of scepticism allows an impartial scientist to approach a problem without predisposed bias. He can as a first pass use the logic of Occams Razor.
We are presented with an anomalous episode coinciding with a major extensional crustal rupture in the North Atlantic, and characterised by intense effusive volcanicity involving formation of new ocean floor. The episode is typified by rapid oceanic warming and sudden absence of deepsea benthonic foraminifera, with pelagic species little affected. There are indications of elevated atmospheric CO2 as well.
The confirmation bias in the DNA of todays climate researcher seizes upon atmospheric carbon as the guilty culprit for raising temperatures and wiping out the bottom dwelling forams. Hence they invoke complex chain reactions such as speculative tipping points involving sudden release of carbon from frozen seabed methane hydrates. But what about a massive release of direct geothermal heat? A sudden effusion of new basaltic sea floor introduces a huge direct heat source, akin to switching on the element in the bottom of a giant electric kettle. If you were a benthonic foram, you would do well to leg it out of there as fast as your little unicellular pseudopodia can carry you faced with living on red hot magma and boiling water.
@Pharos good observation
I see @JR elevated your last sentence to The BH Hall of Fame
Is @EM driving the discussion off topic from "abiotic zone " and "absence of calcifiers in tropical waters." to HYPOXIC oceans (areas of sea water with low oxygen)" ?
..when he says "Unfortunately we may not have to wait 10,000 years. The first signs of HYPOXIC oceans have already appeared in the Pacific."
- I know nothing, except I have seen references to hypoxic zones being caused by river run off, eg. Chesapeke Bay has such an area, but has been improving similarly also in the tropic I have heard of such zones near land, but beingf a natural process rather than man made.
Bishop is wrong about one thing "Roger doesn't correct things." ..Yet we have seen Roger make stealth corrections ..like (here) when he called GWPF a "fossil fuel lobby group" in a news story and then later went back and edited the page and made the huge material change of deleting the smear without putting an edit note.
- Poor Roger can't see the difference between writing for BBC newspages or writing for the Greenpeace Blog.
"My children will be alive in 2100. I would like them to be able to swim above a coral reef and enjoy its beauty." prof. Schmidt might know summat about reefs, but her maths is appalling. If her kids are say 5 years old at the moment, in 2100 they will be 90. Dunno about you, but I don't see them "swimming above coral reefs and enjoying its beauty" at that age.