The DOE Report on Ocean Acidification
The DOE report, authored by the Climate Working Group (CWG) only has a little to say about ocean acidification, but what it does say is somewhat bizarre, biased, and extremely problematic; it reveals what I consider irresponsible and short-sighted thinking on the part of CWG. Here's perhaps the most significant paragraph on p. 7. While this process is often called “ocean acidification”, that is a misnomer because the oceans are not expected to become acidic; “ocean neutralization” would be more accurate. Even if the water were to turn acidic, it is believed that life in the oceans evolved when the oceans were mildly acidic with pH 6.5 to 7.0 (Krissansen-Totton et al., 2018). On the time scale of thousands of years, boron isotope proxy measurements show that ocean pH was around 7.4 or 7.5 during the last glaciation (up to about 20,000 years ago) increasing to present-day values as the world warmed during deglaciation (Rae et al., 2018).Thus, ocean biota appear to be resilient...