Again.

Ocean acidification, although high up the agenda for climate scientists and marine conservation groups, is by no means as important in the minds of the public and policymakers as the climate change that increased atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels will also bring. . .

If some advanced form of carbon capture and storage were available, removing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere could be as straightforward as having a bit of a tidy-up and hiding away all the unwanted rubbish out of harm’s way. But ocean acidification means that would be like trying to vacuum up pet hair (or carbon dioxide) from the living room when it had actually integrated itself into the fabric of the carpet (or dissolved into the ocean) and begun to harm the carpet’s ecosystems.

Nonsense. The oceans are filled with plants that eat carbon dioxide. It doesn't merely accumulate, in fact plant life flourishes as ocean PH drops.

It is misleading to even call it ocean acidification since ocean water today is somewhat alkaline, at PH 8.1 on a scale of 14 where PH 7 is neutral, down from 8.2 at the start of the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago.

So why does acidification cause problems for ocean-dwellers? Many marine organisms use carbonate shells to protect themselves and a lowering of the water’s pH makes those shells more likely to dissolve and harder to form. Since pre-industrial times, the average surface ocean pH has gone down by around 0.1 units, while lab studies have shown that a decrease in seawater pH of 0.2 to 0.3 units can stop or slow calcification in marine organisms such as corals, foraminifera and calcareous plankton.

Other, better research shows that the increase in dissolved CO2 in ocean water increases photosynthesis, and so plankton growth, and also increases the levels of bicarbonate ions, the building material for the carbonate disks of coccolithophores, single-cell, carbonate-encased algae that are a major link in the ocean food chain.

The simpler experiments of the past added acid to ocean water and the researchers said yep, life is harder when the water is less alkaline. The better experiments were more realistic, increasing CO2 concentrations as well as reducing alkalinity. Even better experiments would make more realistic adjustments and do it slowly over time. When this has been done for land based tests it was found that plants and soil life adapted and flourished. It is the sudden, unbalanced alteration of test environments that give the bizarre results in less rigorous experiments by politicized researchers looking to confirm their biases. It's grantsmanship more than science.

So the team is calling for more experimental data and field observations of how calcification rates respond to elevated carbon dioxide, and how well different groups of organisms can adapt. “The key is to understand the response of the functional groups that drive marine biogeochemical cycles,”

Better journalists would provide context that helps understand what the researchers are trying to do with the partial and exaggerated accounts. They want to scare the public, and so politicians, and so funding agencies into giving them more money. But journalists want blood in the water just as much as the grant seekers do since that raises revenue for them too.

I've come to understand that quality journalism is not possible since that would reduce revenues and limit careers. Journalism is merely a form of entertainment, more often like horror movies than not, and so it is filled with gratuitous violence, nudity and sex. I'm OK with the nudity and sex, but could do with less horror.