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A new and unique year-long study of the pH level of the worlds polar oceans shows a marked difference between Arctic and Antarctic conditions.

The study showed that the Arctic ocean, for a variety of reasons, was far more vulnerable to climate change and acidification from the added C02 in the atmosphere as a result of burning of fossil fuels.

Helmuth Thomas is a professor at Dalhousie University’s Department of Oceanography in Halifax on Canada’s east coast. He is also hold the Canada Research Chair for Marine bio-geochemistry.

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The study  (published in Science Reports) was carried out by Dr Thomas and oceanography doctoral graduate Elizabeth Shadwick.

Dr Thomas noted that C02 and other greenhouse gases generated by events like volcanoes and forest fires are natural events having occurred over millenia, and nature has adapted quite well to them, but that human activity has added a great amount of C02 to the atmosphere and in a relatively short period.

Scientists have long noted that as we pump more C02 into the air, more is absorbed by the oceans, which turns them slightly acidic as the C02 in combination with the water becomes a mild form of carbonic acid.

As the water becomes more acidic, it becomes more difficult for marine life such as shell-fish to form their shells, and also weakens the shells  as the acidic condition reduces the concentration of calcium carbonate, a key building block of seashells and other marine skeletons.

This new study shows the Arctic is more acidic than the Antarctic and that it will become even more so and at a much faster rate than the Antarctic Ocean.

Their study noted differing conditions between the polar regions, with those conditions creating a greater propensity for the Arctic to become acidic more quickly.

The time scale to prevent massive biogeochemical changes to occur in polar regions is extremely short; only a very few decades in the Arctic. – Helmuth Thomas, Professor of Oceanography, Dalhousie University

One such difference was the higher freshwater content of the Arctic and the much greater variation in temperatures there. Between winter and summer conditions, water temperature could vary by up to 10 degrees, whereas in the Antarctic water temperature throughout the season remained almost constant throughout the year.

Carbon dioxide absorbing phytoplankton also increase in the warmer summer and die off in the colder months in the Arctic even as the warmer summer water absorbs more carbon,

Because of the mixing of different oceans around the Antarctic, there were also more nutrients in the water than in the Arctic which may help to mitigate acidification there.

However, because of the fragile nature and “narrow windows” that enable life to exist in the polar oceans, even minute changes may have enormous affects.

What was also unique was the full-cycle year-long duration of the study. The research vessel Amundsen, remained frozen in the ice during the winter as the studies continued.

Up until this project, the Arctic and Southern Oceans remained under-studied at the annual scale compared to other oceans, with the majority of observations restricted to the less difficult and slightly less costly ice-free summer and autumn seasons.

Dr Thomas noted that the changes in the Arctic will occur rapidly, and “the time scale to prevent massive biogeochemical changes to occur in polar regions is extremely short; only a very few decades”

Because acidification will affect marine life such as tiny pteropods which are an important food source for fish, along with shell fish, both of which are important for marine animals higher up the food chain, including humans.

The expected changes in the polar oceans, especially the Arctic are likely to result in changes resulting in severe consequences for the polar ecosystem, and the region’s inhabitants.

Science reports: Vulnerability of Polar Oceans to Anthropogenic Acidification: Comparison of Arctic and Antarctic Seasonal Cycles

Dr Helmuth Thomas-Dalhousie University page

Marc Montgomery, Radio Canada International, 21 August 2013. Article and audio.

Richard Heinberg has been following and writing about peak oil for a long time. In the last decade, he has published 10 books on peak oil and related resource depletion topics as well as given some 500 lectures warning about the hard times ahead. The subtitle of his recent book, “How Fracking’s False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future” captures “Snake Oil’s” theme in a lucid phrase. This is an angry book, for it is intended as a rejoinder to the avalanche of half truths and optimistic estimates concerning the future of our energy resources which have filled our media in the last few years.

As the evidence accumulates that man is destroying the atmosphere by ever-increasing carbon emissions and bankrupting his economic systems by continued reliance on increasingly expensive oil, realistic appraisals of our true energy situation are being lost.

In recent years numerous institutions which should know better, major universities and widely respected publications have joined the chorus talking about “energy independence for America” and a century of oil and gas just waiting to be tapped.

“Snake Oil” starts with a review of the fundamentals that most “peakists” have come to understand and accept. Peak oil is about the rate of supply, not estimated size of underground resources. There is a lot of oil and gas still in the ground, but only a small percentage will ever be extracted at prices people can afford to pay. Production from existing oil fields is declining by 4-5 percent annually and demand is increasing by about a million b/d each year. To keep the lid on costs, the world will have to come up with 5 million b/d of new oil production each year for the foreseeable future.

It takes energy to produce energy so that when you spend more than you get back, it is time to quit extracting. As the Middle East gets hotter, both physically and politically, oil exporters are consuming an increasing share of their own production to keep their people cool and off the streets. These and other underlying realities are largely ignored by those enamored with recent, admittedly impressive, gains in US oil production and optimistic talk of billions and sometimes trillions of barrels of oil waiting to be produced.

Heinberg acknowledges that the fracking boom has produced some spectacular numbers with US oil production increasing by 766,000 barrels a day (b/d) in 2012 and is likely to do about the same this year if current trends continue. The problem, of course, comes from projecting this spectacular growth into the more distant future. There are simply too many factors especially rapid decline rates and lower initial production rates as the best drilling locations are used up.

The heart of “Snake Oil” is directed at countering the optimistic projections for production of oil and gas by hydraulic fracturing (fracking). Fracked oil and gas production is simply another, albeit expensive, resource that will climb to a peak and then deplete away just like all the others.

Using the work done by two independent geologists, Arthur Berman of Texas and David Hughes of Canada, who have extensively analyzed the production of fracked oil wells across the US, Heinberg and his associates conclude that “shale gas and oil wells have proven to deplete quickly, the best fields have already been tapped, and no major new field discoveries are expected; thus with average per-well productivity declining and ever-more wells (and fields) required simply to maintain production, an “exploration treadmill” limits the long-term potential of shale resources”.

With per-well production decline rates of between 81 and 90 percent in the first 24 months, wells must be constantly replaced by new ones just to keep production flat. The higher production gets, the more new replacement wells have to be drilled. Before the end of the decade, this bubble will collapse on its own accord and fracked oil and gas production will begin dropping. As usual there are disputes as to just when this downturn will begin, but the best available analysis suggest that four or five years from now will be the time period when fracked oil peaks in the US and a few years later for gas.

The analysis shows that decades of abundant fracked oil and gas production is simply not in the cards that we see today.

An interesting chapter in the book deals with just who has benefitted from the shale boom. Although thousands of jobs have been created and some landowners have profited handsomely from lending their property for drilling, local governments have yet to fully comprehend the damage that boom towns have done to their communities and that heavy trucks have done to their roads. Service companies that sell equipment performing the actual fracking have done well, the drillers, include large ones such as ExxonMobil, who assume the ultimate risk have been losing money on natural gas and only some are making money on oil due to the high prices.

Heinberg concludes that the real winners, however, are the investment banks that have earned huge fees for raising the money that has fueled the boom.

The book is clearly a contribution to the literature of peak oil for it updates recent developments and does an effective job in separating reality from the hype of the financial media.

Heinberg leave us with two somewhat contradictory thoughts:

• Hydrocarbons are so abundant that, if we burn a substantial portion of them, we risk a climate catastrophe beyond imagining.

• There aren’t enough economically accessible, high-quality hydrocarbons to maintain world economic growth for much longer.