Ocean Acidification Theory, challenged

Craig Idso of "The Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI)"  argues the rising “ocean acidification theory” is
piffle.

"Our harmless emissions of trifling quantities of carbon dioxide cannot possibly acidify the
oceans. Paper after paper after learned paper in the peer-reviewed literature makes that quite
plain."

Why can’t rising atmospheric CO2 acidify the oceans?

First, because it has not done so before. During the Cambrian era, 550 million years ago, there was 20 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere as there is today: yet that is when the calcite corals first achieved algal symbiosis. During the Jurassic era, 175 million years ago, there was
again 20 times as much CO2 as there is today: yet that is when the delicate aragonite corals first
came into being.

Secondly, ocean acidification, as a notion, suffers from the same problem of scale as “global warming”. Just as the doubling of CO2 concentration expected this century will scarcely change global mean surface temperature because there is so little CO2 in the atmosphere in the first
place, so it will scarcely change the acid-base balance of the ocean, because there is already 70 times as much CO2 in solution in the oceans as there is in the atmosphere. Even if all of the additional CO2 we emit were to end up not in the atmosphere (where it might in theory cause a 4
very little warming) but in the ocean (where it would cause none), the quantity of CO2 in the oceans would rise by little more than 1%, a trivial and entirely harmless change.

Thirdly, to imagine that CO2 causes “ocean acidification” is to ignore the elementary chemistry of bicarbonate ions. Quantitatively, CO2 is only the seventh-largest of the substances in the oceans that could in theory alter the acid-base balance, so that in any event its effect on that balance would be minuscule. Qualitatively, however, CO2 is different from all the other substances in that it acts as the buffering mechanism for all of them, so that it does not itself alter the acid-base balance of the oceans at all.

Fourthly, as Professor Ian Plimer points out in his excellent book Heaven and Earth (Quartet, London, 2009), the oceans slosh around over vast acreages of rock, and rocks are pronouncedly alkaline. Seen in a geological perspective, therefore, acidification of the oceans is impossible."

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