A companion article at ArkFab shares my thoughts on peer review in regards to this project and DIY/community/citizen science in general.
At long last, the much-anticipated booklet, “CO2 Trouble: Ocean Acidification, Dr. Everett, and Congressional Science Standards” is available and approved for human consumption! Download and share HERE (or at Scribd HERE).
In this document, I have bundled, updated, and expanded my series of essays debunking the congressional testimony of Dr. John Everett regarding the environmental chemistry of carbon dioxide.
It has been designed to be a fairly short (less than 30 pages, including images, appendicies, etc.) and accessible read. It has been challenging but fun to write; I have had to learn a lot about GIMP, Python, Scribus, social networking, and of course ocean acidification to get to this point.
It was also very useful for me as an opportunity to go back through my earlier remarks and double-check my work. For example, I later realized that the documentation which Dr. Everett provides for his CO2 data in part two is ambiguous: Although the citation for the rate data is referred to as “Recent Global CO2”, the URL provided links to the longer record as measured at Mauna Loa Observatory. This confusion had led me in the past to make incorrect claims about some of the figures he presents. Ultimately it was inconsequential to my argument, but it was frustrating to have to deal with such ambiguities. On the other hand, this led me into comparing the Mauna Loa record with the global record (Appendix B) which was an interesting exercise.
In researching this project, I also came across new phenomena I wasn’t previously aware of. For example, while I was calculating historical rates of CO2 change, I ran though the 1000-year Law Dome record and saw this:
Pre-1750 CO2 rates, based upon the Law Dome ice cores. There appears to be both a clear periodicity and a major perturbation in this record. I wonder why? Clyx for teh Datumz!
Not only does there appear to be a centennial-scale oscillation in the preindustrial CO2 accumulation rate, there is a clear perturbation around 1500-1700. Intriguingly, these dates roughly correspond to the start of the Little Ice Age. In fact, some have pointed to the decline in CO2 as measured by the Law Dome data as evidence for a speculative but intriguing explanation for the LIA: depopulation caused by the Black Death reversed land use trends, causing reforestation of agricultural land and removing carbon from the atmosphere. I am unfamiliar with the oscillation, however – if you know more about it, or would like to help me crunch these numbers more thoroughly, let me know 🙂
Stay tuned for more updates – coming up is an austere, printer-friendly version, a zine version, press information, and more. And be sure to check out the report, which contains unreleased material. Velociraptors figure prominently (really!)
A part of my John Everett series – read more: 0/I – II.0 – II.5 – II.75 – III.0 – III.3 – IV.0 – IV.4 – IV.8 – V – VII – VIII – Full Report
Topologic Oceans 
Scripps paper: Ocean acidification fears overhyped
Thank you for bringing this paper, “High-Frequency Dynamics of Ocean pH: A Multi-Ecosystem Comparison” (available here) to my attention. It presents a lot of complex data and rich discussion. I just finished reading it, and enjoyed it immensely.
I don’t think that it supports the WUWT byline of “Ocean acidification fears overhyped.”
A full discussion would be worthy of a blog article of its own, and I am thinking about writing one. For now, consider this passage, and tell me what you think about its implications:
‘For all the marine habitats described above, one very important consideration is that the extreme range of environmental variability does not necessarily translate to extreme resistance to future OA. Instead, such a range of variation may mean that the organisms resident in tidal, estuarine, and upwelling regions are already operating at the limits of their physiological tolerances (a la the classic tolerance windows of Fox – see [68]). Thus, future acidification, whether it be atmospheric or from other sources, may drive the physiology of these organisms closer to the edges of their tolerance windows. When environmental change is layered upon their present-day range of environmental exposures, they may thereby be pushed to the ‘‘guardrails’’ of their tolerance.’
There is an analogy in part VII of CO2 Trouble that explores this issue some.
Just clarifying that I did not have a melt down. As I explained to you I find other sources more credible and because I am not a science major as you are, I am not equipped to argue the science with you. I prefer to trust the sources I cited to you. That does not mean you are right and I am wrong. Or vice versa. It means I am not about to allow some Marxists who are using flawed and corrupt science declarations to rule the world. That’s all I meant.
Dear Cheryl,
I am afraid that you did indeed have a meltdown. You did give me some of your sources, and I explained to you, with examples and links to back me up, why the sources you rely upon are not very good. You mentioned Junk Science, for example; how appropriate a name for a website that accuses environmentalists of murder by malaria – but quotes a number of malaria deaths larger than the global total over the relevant time period. Anthony Watts allows all manner of nonsense onto his site. Read “The Chaos Theoretic Argument That Undermines Climate Change Modelling” (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/13/the-chaos-theoretic-argument-that-undermines-climate-change-modelling/) and then read my articles on climate modeling and chaos – you’ll see what I mean.
If you don’t understand the science, that’s fine. One of the reasons I run this site is so that people can learn. There are many other sites out there with a similar mission; I highly recommend SkepticalScience.
However, I have to ask: If you don’t understand the science well enough to defend your viewpoint, how can you tell a good source of information from a poor one?
And shouldn’t understanding the science come first, followed by deciding which theories are valid and which are ‘flawed and corrupt science declarations’? You seem to be doing them in the reverse order!
The reply which you deleted also made quite clear why I feel it is meaningful to compare various strains of antiscience, like antievolutionism and climate skupticism. A pity that you deleted it.
Freaking out and deleting comments that challenge you qualifies as a meltdown in my book any day.
Interesting question you pose – – you might want to check out this explanation of the Law Dome anomaly that you note: http://hol.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/06/11/0959683611404578.abstract
Best,
Richard