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By Root 853 0

have the additional benefit of drawing down carbon dioxide permanently from the atmosphere.52 In effect, this is simply mimicking the natural weathering process of rocks that stabilizes the carbon cycle over geological timescales, but in a dramatically accelerated form. Given the need to mine, crush, and ship olivine rock, the cost is hard to judge, but it may be low enough to be a commercially competitive form of carbon sequestration, as well as a mitigation strategy for ocean acidification. At this stage, the urgent need is for further study and trials on a small scale to test impacts on the marine environment.

Another possibility is the addition of lime directly into the oceans. The production of lime out of limestone uses energy and releases CO2, but once the resulting powder is added to the oceans almost twice as much carbon dioxide is absorbed, according to the idea’s promoter, Tim Kruger. If concentrated around coral reefs, the process could directly address acidification. By sequestering CO2, it would also be carbon-negative. Kruger estimates that one and a half cubic kilometers of limestone would be needed to draw down a billion tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere.53 Large-scale desert solar thermal plants or nuclear reactors could be used to generate the initial heat energy in a zero-carbon way. As with the olivine idea, I would not see this as an alternative to emissions reduction, but humanity will need to develop technical solutions for removing the additional CO2 that has already accumulated in the atmosphere above the climate change planetary boundary of 350 ppm. No one is suggesting immediate deployment, but carbon-negative solutions that also directly address ocean acidification at a chemical level are surely worthy of additional research and development in order to properly assess their real-world feasibility.

Overall, there needs to be a step-change in the level of attention given to the issue of ocean acidification. So far, only academic conferences have addressed the challenge properly—public knowledge and concern remain extremely low. But, urgent as the situation is, scientists, environmentalists, and others concerned with raising awareness must act carefully and ensure that they do not repeat the mistakes that have stymied global progress on climate change. Appeals to public action must be framed positively and not fall into the trap of sparking a media and political backlash. Sacrifice and austerity are out; competition and innovation are in. The “deniers” are waiting in the wings, and if the wrong triggers are pressed it will only be a matter of time before any constructive debate on mitigating ocean acidification is destroyed by the same politicized trench warfare that has overtaken the debate on climate change.

SKEPTIC TANK

Ocean acidification skeptics are still few and far between, but they do exist. Almost exclusively, they take their cue from the climate debate, simply extending their contrarian stance on global warming into this newly unfolding scientific arena. This straightforward intellectual extrapolation is stated quite explicitly by the British writer Matt Ridley, who writes provocatively in his 2010 book The Rational Optimist that “ocean acidification looks suspiciously like a back-up plan by the environmental pressure groups in case the climate fails to warm.”54 The case against ocean acidification as a valid environmental concern has accordingly been taken up by a growing number of climate-denialist groups and websites, which label it variously as “the next big hoax” or a “scam.” The London-based climate-skeptic think tank the Global Warming Policy Foundation carries frequent contrarian articles on the issue on its website, while luminaries who have made a career out of denying the reality of global warming are now beginning to converge on ocean acidification as being, in the words of the Cato Institute’s Patrick Michaels, “the next hysteria.”55

In scientific terms, the criticisms leveled by Ridley and other ocean acidification skeptics are no more valid than the reasons they