Can’t Explain by Oze

The hall Climate

Loudness 8

Ocean acidification

The name is acid. The number is still eight.

Oceans around Australia are becoming more acidic.

Quoted in source: “Oceans around Australia are becoming more acidic, with changes happening faster in recent decades.”

BOM and CSIRO, State of the Climate 2024: oceans around Australia are “becoming more acidic.” AdaptNSW opens with the same verb: “the process of oceans becoming more acidic.” The noun that travelled is acidification. Acid, on the scale the same pages print, is below 7.

This card files that noun. It does not file “the pH did not move” and it does not file “shells are fine.”

What did have a receipt:

  • AdaptNSW, same page as “more acidic”: surface ocean pH is 8.1 now, and “could change from the current 8.1 to 7.7 in the next 100 years.” Still alkaline. Neutral is 7. Acid is below that.
  • Australian Antarctic Program: “pH 7 is neutral… between 7 and 14 is alkaline. While the ocean pH is currently above pH 8… By 2100 under ‘business as usual’… ocean pH 7.8.” Their own high-emissions number never reaches 7, let alone the acid side.
  • CSIRO, 2020: surface pH around Australia down about 0.12 since the 1880s; because the scale is logarithmic they write “more than 30 per cent” more acidic. A 0.1 step is a hydrogen-ion percentage. It is not a crossing of 7.

Grammar: more acidic. Logic: more-toward-acid is not acid. Rhetoric: acidification.