Ocean Acidification

We hear a lot about the acidification of the Oceans due to the rise in CO2. In fact there have been conferences discussing this very "fact."

The Coral Reef Futures 07 Forum was held October 18-19, 2007: Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS) and the University of Queensland was quoted as saying: "There's not much debate about how it happens: put more CO2 into the air above and it dissolves into the oceans."

The 2nd Symposium on the ocean in a high CO2 world, was held at the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco from 6th to 9th October, 2008, attended by 250 scientists from 32 countries .

And upcoming: Goldschmidt Conference. Session 13a: Ocean Acidification: Past, Present and Future
A special session at the 2009 Goldschmidt Conference in Davos, Switzerland (June 21-26).

Now, on the Anthony Watts blog, Steven Goddard posts the facts:

The ocean currently has a pH of 8.1, which is alkaline not acid. In order to become acid, it would have to drop below 7.0. According to Wikipedia “Between 1751 and 1994 surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.179 to 8.104.” At that rate, it will take another 3,500 years for the ocean to become even slightly acid. One also has to wonder how they measured the pH of the ocean to 4 decimal places in 1751, since the idea of pH wasn’t introduced until 1909.