The old-fashioned news media is bleeding revenue, jobs, and influence, and media insiders claim they cannot figure out why. Many reasons are to blame, but one major reason is reader frustration with a lack of balanced reporting. A good illustration is a March 11 Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot article on the public showing of a Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) movie on alleged ocean acidification.
The Virginian-Pilot article,
“Seas’ acidity threatens life, livelihoods, film says,” presented arguments made by NRDC – an environmental activist group – in its movie, “Acid Test,” but did not mention the substantial scientific evidence that contradicts NRDC’s alarmism.
The article parroted, without any critical examination, NRDC claims that the oceans are becoming “more acidic” as a result of higher carbon dioxide content. The oceans, however, are not acidic. The pH balance of water is measured on a scale of 1 to 14. Water with a pH of 7 is neutral. Water with a pH below 7 is acidic, and above 7 is alkaline. The pH of the world’s oceans is 8.1, which is alkaline.
The article reported as fact the film’s claim that ocean acidity has increased 30 percent since the Industrial Revolution. However, a 2005 study in the peer-reviewed journal Nature reports ocean pH was between 8.1 and 8.2 at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and has decreased by less than 0.1 since then.
The Virginian-Pilot article also presented NRDC claims that ocean acidification is harming marine life. However, recent studies published in peer-reviewed journals such as Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, Biogeosciences, Global Change Biology, and Journal of Geophysical Research have all found that marine life is either unaffected by – or significantly benefits from – higher carbon dioxide content and lower pH.
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