We are getting somewhere. There is a long response to my Times
article from ocean acidification scientists
here. This makes me rather happy. The response confirms the
accuracy of my main points. I have sent the following response
to Nature’s website, which carried a report on
this matter:
I am glad to have my main point confirmed by
the reply: that there is in fact no evidence for net biological
harm likely as a result of realistic changes in ocean pH. This is a
huge and welcome change from the exaggerated rhetoric that has been
used on this topic.
The reply also confirms the accuracy of
virtually all of my factual assertions about the likely change in
pH, the natural variation in pH and other issues, including the
involvement of a Greenpeace ship in a research project. Only my
interpretation is challenged.
The reply goes on to say that `positive and
negative impacts do not cancel out, but both contribute to
ecosystem perturbation’. This strange remark flies in the face of
everything that ecologists have been discovering ever since Charles
Elton coined the term, namely that ecosystems are dynamic, not
static entities. It amounts to saying that change is bad because it
is change. That is a ciurcular argument.