Poor Malcolm Turnbull. He sounds half reasonable to me on the topic of CO2 emissions but is caught in a bind. Even though the Rudd ETS is probably an extravagant waste of time from a scientific point of view, as is probably about 95% of all nations' approaches to greenhouse gases, people like the idea of doing something better than the idea of doing nothing. Politically something has to be done, but a divided Coalition is giving every reason for the public to think they can't be trusted to do a damn thing.
Why do no politicians talk of ocean acidification as an independent reason for taking action? Here's some more depressing news from the ocean acidification blog:
* two studies indicating bad news for corals due to effects on important symbiotic relationships
* some reef fish don't seem to like it either
* another study showing a couple of bivalves (clams and scallops) don't take lower pH well.
I saw Malcolm Turnbull on Insiders last Sunday arguing that action on AGW was the prudent thing to do given the weight of science. Quite right; but why not also mention ocean acidification, given that it appears increasingly well founded that future changes to ocean chemistry are a gigantic ecological crapshoot.
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