Musings of the Technical Bard

Recently, I’ve stumbled onto a few bad science columns and articles in major science publications, Discover and Scientific American.

To start, Lawrence Krauss, a respectable physicist, starts delving into ocean chemistry and climate when he brings forth the notion that increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere will decrease the pH of the ocean, making it acidic and preventing the formation of calcium carbonate shells in shelled animals and coral reefs.  The problem is, that isn’t good science.  That is taking a simple concept (i.e. dissolving CO2 in water makes carbonic acid) and applying it to the very large and very complex chemical system that is the ocean.  It has been shown that increasing acid species (like CO2) in the ocean cannot drive the pH very far because the CO2 in the water will react with minerals in the sea floor, forming salts – in fact, on page 17 of the same issue of Scientific American is a short article on storing CO2 by reacting it with the basalt underlying the ocean…   Ian Plimer has explained the ocean chemistry issue very clearly previously, showing the Dr. Krauss is misleading the public in his column.  Further, recent studies have shown that increasing CO2 in the oceans actually increases shell development in some species…  A good question for Dr. Krauss would be “How did the oceans stay alkaline during the Jurassic-Cretaceous period when atmospheric CO2 levels were 5 times the current value?”

In Discover, they have interviews with Judith Curry and Michael Mann about the impact and importance of ClimateGate.  Judith Curry makes a very eye-opening statement to a question:

Q. Are you saying that the scientific community, through the IPCC, is asking the world to restructure its entire mode of producing and consuming energy and yet hasn’t done a scientific uncertainty analysis?

A. Yes.

Egads – why the hell should we act if we don’t know whether the uncertainty overwhelms the supposed effect?

Michael Mann tells us:

We’ve reached a point now … where we’ve got climate scientists, who understand the physics of climate and how that translates to uncertainties, working hand in hand with economists who will run the projected impacts through a cost-benefit analysis.  The way it plays out is that the small probability of extremely bad things happening incurs huge potential costs, and you want to hedge against those potential catastrophic costs.  So when you taken uncertainty into account, it actually leads to the decision that we should taken action more quickly.

Of course, Dr. Mann makes us rely on faith that (1) climate scientists really do understand the climate, and (2) that economists are hard scientists who can accurately predict the future.  Considering how well economists and their ilk did over the past 5 years, I would have to question that one…

And I won’t waste my time with Jeffrey Sachs monologue, which sounds like a desperate plea to act while at the same time avoiding any comment on the fact that the science is clearly unsettled.