Weeks after the National Science Foundation released a report
about the connection between increases in atmospheric carbon
dioxide and the acidity of the oceans, doomsayers continue to
prophesy that global warming will kill the coral reefs off our
picturesque Florida coast.
The NSF study, released with two other federal research entities
and entitled “Impacts of Ocean Acidification on Coral Reefs,”
landed with a thud, and it is remarkable how the press has received
it. Writers have editorialized about it, literally with one voice,
without any critical fact-checking. In a July 11 editorial, the
editors of the Cincinnati Post wrote, “This report is a
fraction of the available evidence indicating anthropogenic climate
change….The evidence is clear and convincing. The global-warming
critics are neither.” On July 12, the Albuquerque Tribune,
in its own in-house editorial, printed the same words (without
attribution).
It could have done something more original and scrutinized the
NSF report. There’s a major problem with it, right at the
beginning. Its first paragraph states correctly that, as a result
of the burning of fossil fuel and other activities, atmospheric
carbon dioxide concentration is rising. From there, however, the
report loses its way. “Rates of increase,” it says, “have risen
from 0.25% [per year] in the 1960s to 0.75% [per year] in the last
five years.”
Really? The standard reference for atmospheric carbon dioxide
concentration is that registered at Mauna Loa Observatory,
beginning in 1958. The average rate of change in the 1960s was
0.30% per year, and in the last five years, it was 0.55%. This last
value is not statistically distinguishable from the average rate
for the past 25 years. The real change from the 1960s to the last
five years is 0.25% per year, while the NSF-sponsored report gives
it as twice that.
The precise figure is important, because the rate of increase of
atmospheric carbon dioxide is directly related to the amount of
warming it creates and to changes in the acidity of the oceans;
computer models using a carbon dioxide increase rate twice that
which is observed show twice as much warming. And that is precisely
what has occurred: there are now four separate, taxpayer-supported
reports “intercomparing” the dozens of climate models for global
warming that have evolved in recent years. Each one uses a carbon
dioxide increase of 1% per year, or twice the real rate. Ever
wonder why they predict so much warming?
It gets better (worse). The coral report then states that “The
current atmospheric CO2 concentration…is expected to continue to
rise by about 1% [per year] over the next few decades.”
“Continue”? The average increase for the last decade was 0.49
per year, for the decade before that was 0.42%, and for the decade
before that was 0.43%. Again, about half of what the report expects
to “continue.”
The current concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is
about 380 parts per million. Before we industrialized — back when
life expectancy was in the 40s — the concentration was about
280.
Fewer than 100 million years ago, or 400 million years
after corals first arose, the carbon dioxide concentration
was a bit less than 3,000 ppm. Around 175 million years ago it was
pushing 6,000. If there was that much more carbon dioxide around,
the oceans would have been that much more acidic, which would have
killed the corals. And yet they lived.
How does the report take this problem into account? It balances
the increase in acidification that these concentrations of carbon
dioxide would bring about with some countervailing change in its
opposite, alkalinity. So the report speculates that “ocean
alkalinities could have been higher during periods with
high CO2 levels.” (Emphasis added.)
Then there’s the problem of identifying a definite decline in
corals. The report says that it is “difficult” to find this effect,
and that “on average” it does not exist, because the rates of coral
growth are controlled by many other factors that are apparently
obscuring their decline.
How on earth did all of this make it through peer review? Or do
we no longer care enough to get the facts right before expressing
opinions under the mantle of scientific authority?
To many editorialists, when it comes to global warming, facts
don’t matter. But here are a few: corals have been around for half
a billion years, on a planet that was much, much warmer, had much
more carbon dioxide in its atmosphere, got hit by an asteroid or
two, experienced ice ages and is now in the midst of a slight
warming trend. You can bet that they’ll be around a long time after
humans have come to the end of the evolutionary road.
