ClimateGate news

Friday, January 8, 2010

Ocean Acidification: the next frontier

With the credibility of global warming and climate change falling faster than our recent temperatures, alarmists are scrambling to find new reasons to convince us to limit CO2.

The Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) – a DC think tank – has produced a science-based critique of a recent film produced by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The SPPI paper is entitled Acid Test: The Global Challenge of Ocean Acidification – A New Propaganda Film by the National Resources Defense Council Fails the Acid Test of Real World Data.

In late 2009, NRDC released a short 21-minute film entitled Acid Test: The Global Challenge of Ocean Acidification. Featuring Sigourney Weaver as its narrator, the film highlights the views of a handful of scientists, a commercial fisherman, and two employees of the NRDC, as they discuss what they claim is a megadisaster-in-the-making for Earth's marine life.

The villain of the story is industrial man, who has "altered the course of nature" by releasing large quantities of carbon dioxide or CO2 into the air via the burning of the coal, gas and oil that has historically fueled the engines of modern society. Once emitted into the atmosphere, a portion of that CO2 dissolves into the surface of the world’s oceans, where subsequent chemical reactions, according to the NRCD, are lowering the pH status of their waters. This phenomenon, they theorize, is reducing marine calcification rates; and if left unchecked, they claim it will become so corrosive that it "will cause sea shells to dissolve" and drive coral reefs to extinction "within 20 to 30 years."

“Typically, the NRDC chose to present an extreme one-sided, propagandized view of ocean acidification in their film,” says SPPI president, Robert Ferguson. “The part of the story that they clearly don't want the public and policy makers to know was just released in our newest review of the peer-reviewed scientific literature,” added Ferguson.
h/t: wooeb news

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