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An attack on my book that gets it wrong

Update: now that I have seen the five
scientists’ comments, I find that remarkably they support and
vindicate each one of my factual statements. I have posted a
detailed analysis in 
a separate blog post
.

Here’s a letter I just sent to New Scientist:

In her misleading article about my book,
among other errors Liz Else wrongly states that I `failed to
recognize that there is more to the health of corals than the
amount of bicarbonate in the sea’. Yet I clearly state in my book:
`take coral reefs, which are suffering horribly from pollution,
silt, nutrient runoff and fishing’. After doing the interview, Else
asked me for proof of a statement in my book that `Even with
tripled bicarbonate concentrations, corals show a continuing
increase in both photosynthesis and calcification.’ Presumably this
was because her unnamed `experts’ had challenged this statement. I
was happy to supply her with the following extract from Craig
Idso’s book (`CO2, global warming and coral reefs’), which I cited
in my book, and with the reference it cites (Herfort et al 2008.
Journal of Phycology 44: 91-98): `This work reveals that additions
of HCO3- to synthetic seawater continue to increase the
calcification rate of Porites porites until the bicarbonate
concentration exceeded three times that of seawater…Similar
experiments on Acropora species showed that calcification and
photosynthetic rates in these corals were enhanced to an even
greater extent, with calcification continuing to increase above a
quadrupling of the HCO3- concentration and photosynthesis
saturating at triple the concentration of seawater’. I am sorry
that instead of quoting this exchange between us, Else chose to
fall back on unsubstantiated accusations of `misconceptions,
selective reporting and failure to see the significance of
historical changes in ocean acidity’. I took the trouble to back up
my claims; she should have done so for her accusations.

I will write more about ocean acidity soon. It’s shocking how
few people realise that raising seawater acidity with carbonic acid
has very different effects from raising it with hydrochloric
acid.

 

By Matt Ridley | Tagged:  rational-optimist