Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Ian Plimer

Not Enough CO2 in Fossil Fuels to Make Oceans Acidic: A Note from Professor Plimer

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In response to a question concerning the likelihood of our oceans becoming acidic from global warming Ian Plimer, University of Adelaide, has replied:

THE oceans have remained alkaline during the Phanerozoic (last 540 million years) except for a very brief and poorly understood  time 55 million years ago.

Rainwater (pH 5.6) reacts with the most common minerals on Earth (feldspars) to produce clays, this is an acid consuming reaction, alkali and alkaline earths are leached into the oceans (which is why we have saline oceans), silica is redeposited as cements in sediments, the reaction consumes acid and is accelerated by temperature (see below).

In the oceans, there is a buffering reaction between the sea floor basalts and sea water (see below). Sea water has a local and regional variation in pH  (pH 7.8 to 8.3). It should be noted that pH is a log scale and that if we are to create acid oceans, then there is not enough CO2 in fossil fuels to create oceanic acidity because most of the planet’s CO2 is locked up in rocks. 

When we run out of rocks on Earth or plate tectonics ceases, then we will have acid oceans.

In the Precambrian, it is these reactions that rapidly responded to huge changes in climate (-40 deg C to +50 deg C), large sea level changes (+ 600m to -640m) and rapid climate shifts over a few thousand years from ‘snowball’ or ‘slushball’ Earth to very hot conditions  (e.g. Neoproterozoic cap carbonates that formed in water at ~50 deg C lie directly on glacial rocks). During these times, there were rapid changes in oceanic pH and CO2 was removed from the oceans as carbonate. It is from this time onwards (750 Ma) that life started to extract huge amounts of CO2 from the oceans, life has expanded and diversified and this process continues (which is why we have low CO2 today.

The history of CO2 and temperature shows that there is no correlation.

Ask your local warmer:

1. Why was CO2 15 times higher than now in the Ordovician-Silurian glaciation?

2. Why were both methane and CO2 higher than now in the Permian glaciation?

3. Why was CO2 5 times higher than now in the Cretaceous-Jurassic glaciation? 

The process of removing CO2 from the atmosphere via the oceans has led to carbonate deposition (i.e. CO2 sequestration).

The atmosphere once had at least 25 times the current CO2 content, we are living at a time when CO2 is the lowest it has been for billions of years, we continue to remove CO2 via carbonate sedimentation from the oceans and the oceans continue to be buffered by water-rock reactions (as shown by Walker et al. 1981). 

The literature on this subject is large yet the warmers chose to ignore this literature. 

These feldspar and silicate buffering reactions are well understood, there is a huge amount of thermodynamic data on these reactions and they just happened to be omitted from argument by the warmers.

When ocean pH changes, the carbon species responds and in more acid oceans CO2 as a dissolved gas becomes more abundant.

Royer, D. L., Berner, R. A. and Park, J. 2007: Climate sensitivity constrained by CO2 concentrations over the past 420 million years. Nature 446: 530-532.
Bice, K. L., Huber, B. T. and Norris, R. D. 2003: Extreme polar warmth during the Cretaceous greenhouse? Paradox of Turonian ∂18O record at Deep Sea Drilling Project Site 511. Palaeoceanography 18:1-11.
Veizer, J., Godderis, Y. and Francois, L. M. 2000: Evidence for decoupling of atmospheric CO2 and global climate during the Phanerozoic eon. Nature 408: 698-701.
Donnadieu, Y., Pierehumbert, R., Jacob, R. and Fluteau, F. 2006: Cretaceous climate decoupled from CO2 evolution. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 248: 426-437.
Hay, W. W., Wold, C. N., Soeding, E. and Floegel, S. 2001: Evolution of sediment fluxes and ocean salinity. In: Geologic modeling and simulation: sedimentary systems (Eds Merriam, D. F. and Davis, J. C.), Kluwer, 163-167.
Knauth, L. P. 2005: Temperature and salinity history of the Precambrian ocean: implications for the course of microbial evolution. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 219: 53-69.
Rogers, J. J. W. 1996: A history of the continents in the past three billion years. Journal of Geology 104: 91-107.
Velbel, M. A. 1993: Temperature dependence of silicate weathering in nature: How strong a negative feedback on long-term accumulation of atmospheric CO2 and global greenhouse warming? Geology 21:1059-1061
Kump, L. R., Brantley, S. L. and Arthur, M. A. 2000: Chemical weathering, atmospheric CO2 and climate. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 28: 611-667.
Gaillardet, J., Dupré, B., Louvat, P. and Allègre, C. J. 1999:  Global silicate weathering and CO2 consumption rates deduced from the chemistry of large rivers. Chemical Geology 159: 3-30.
Berner, R. A., Lasagna, A. C. and Garrels, R. M. 1983: The carbonate-silicate geochemical cycle and its effect on atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 100 million years. American Journal of Science 283: 641-683.
Raymo, M. E. and Ruddiman, W. F. 1992: Tectonic forcing of late Cenozoic climate. Nature 359: 117-122.
Walker, J. C. B., Hays, P. B. and Kasting, J. F. 1981: A negative feedback mechanism for the long term stabilization of the Earth’s surface temperature. Journal of Geophysical Research 86: 9776-9782.
Berner, R. A. 1980: Global CO2 degassing and the carbon cycle: comment on ‘Cretaceous ocean crust at DSDP sites 417 and 418: carbon uptake from weathering vs loss by magmatic activity.” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 54: 2889.
Schwartzman, D. W. and Volk, T. 1989: Biotic enhancement of weathering and the habitability of Earth. Nature 311: 45-47.
Berner, R. A. 1980: Global CO2 degassing and the carbon cycle: comment on ‘Cretaceous ocean crust at DSDP sites 417 and 418: carbon uptake from weathering vs loss by magmatic activity.” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 54: 2889.
                                                                         CO2 + H2O = H2CO3
                                                                                H2CO3 = H+ + HCO3-
                  2Ca2+ + 2HCO3- + KAl2AlSi3O10(OH)2 + 4H2O = 3Al3+ + K+ + 6SiO2 + 12H2O
                                                      2KAlSi3O8 + 2H+ + H2O = Al2Si2O5(OH)4 + 2K+ + 4SiO2
                                                    2NaAlSi3O8 + 2H+ + H2O = Al2Si2O5(OH)4 + 2K+ + 4SiO2
                                                    CaAl2Si2O8 + 2H+ + H2O = Al2Si2O5(OH)4 + Ca2+
                               KAl2AlSi3O10(OH)2 + 3Si(OH)4 + 10H+ = 3Al3+ + K+ + 6SiO2 + 12H2O
                                                                     CO2 + CaSiO3 = CaCO3 + SiO2
                                                                     CO2 + FeSiO3 = FeCO3 + SiO2
                                                                     CO2 + MgSiO3 = MgCO3 + SiO2

In the oceans, CO2 exists as dissolved gas (1%), HCO3- (93%) and CO32- (8%)

Environmentalism Can’t Replace Religion: A Note from Ian Plimer

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Despite our comfortable materialistic lives, there are many who ask: Is that all? They want a meaning for life and yearn for a spiritual life. Some follow the traditional religions, others embrace paranormal beliefs and many follow a variety of spiritual paths.

A new religion has been invented: Environmentalism. The rise of environmentalism parallels in time and place the decline of Christianity and socialism. This environmental religion is terrified of doubt, scepticism and uncertainty yet claims to be underpinned by science. It is a fundamentalist religion with a fear of nature. It has its own high priests such as Al Gore and a holy writ, such as the IPCC reports. Like many religious followers, few have ever read and understood the holy books from cover to cover.

Like many fundamentalist religions, it attracts believers by announcing apocalyptic calamities unless we change our ways. Its credo is repeated endlessly and a new language has been invented. Logic, contrary data or questioning are not permitted. Heretics are inquisitorially destroyed.

It states that now is the most important time in history and people are told that humanity is facing the greatest crisis in the history of time. We must make great sacrifices. Now. This religion uses thinking out of the Judeo-Christian tradition: If the world has been destroyed, then we humans are to blame.

This new age religion tries to re-mystify the world, a world that its adherents neither experience nor try to understand. The apocalyptic doomsayers promote their new religion with seven second television grabs. A disunity between religion and science is created. The science that derived from the Enlightenment and which bathes in doubt, scepticism and uncertainty is willingly thrown overboard.

Contrary facts are just ignored. Enthusiastic reporting by non-scientists is undertaken. They report new science with alarmist implications yet there is no reporting of contrary information. Non-scientific journalists and public celebrities write polemics that encourage public alarm.

The environmental religion produces widespread fear and a longing for simple all encompassing narratives. It offers an alternative account of a natural world with which adherents have little contact.

Environmentalism embraces a myth of the Fall: the loss of harmony between man and nature caused by our materialistic society. It searches for the lost Eden, which probably never existed. In the ‘good old days’ there was only struggle, starvation and unemployment, not harmony with nature. Environmental evangelism has ritual and language that have substituted substance.

Over historical, archaeological and geological time, there have been thousands of global coolings and global warmings. Global coolings have always depopulated the Earth. We are the first humans ever to fear a warm climate.

Environmentalism exacerbates disease and food shortages and destroys economies. It is a highly flawed religion. Its morality and ethics are questionable.

When the environmentalists recognise the religious aspects of their stance, then real discussion with other scientists becomes possible. Until then, they are just like the creationists who claim that their stance is scientific when their very foundations are religious and dogmatic.

The contradictory religion of environmentalism has given people a purpose in life and, despite ignoring all the contrary science, this religion provides some of the stitches that hold the fabric of society together.

Traditional religious life and practice is experience. Traditional religion tries to make sense of what’s happening to us now and gives us the mechanisms whereby we can have hope for a meaningful life, in spite of its disappointments. Religion gives us the mechanism to cope with failure.

Environmentalism cannot provide for these needs.

This is an edited version of a speech given by Ian Plimer at the IQsquared debate ‘We’d be better off without religion’ on Sydney on August 20, 2008. Ian Plimer is Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at The University of Melbourne and Professor of Mining Geology at The University of Adelaide.