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The outrage at the World Health Organization suggesting something we like might be bad for us is pretty emblematic of our national pastime: getting angry at science when it doesn't perfectly align with our political beliefs. If it's mildly inconvenient, we don't want to deal with it. And what do we do when we don't want to deal with something? We ship it off to the Pacific Islands.But this time the Islands don't seem so happy about it. Kiribati's President Anote Tong has called for a global moratorium on the expansion of coal mines, before his low-lying island nation is consumed by rising sea levels and increasingly extreme weather conditions.Sixty-one prominent Australians have co-signed a letter to Malcolm Turnbull asking him to put coal exports on the agenda at the upcoming Paris climate summit.RELATED: Coal and Solar Power Are Neck and Neck in the Developing World
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Turnbull added his support to this approach, announcing that the "nuclear option" must be on the table. Of course, it's worth noting that the phrase "nuclear option" is more commonly associated with taking the most extreme path in a difficult situation (as in: "Should we get pizza or burgers?" "Pizza, or I'll tell the police about the time you killed that guy.") This is probably as close to a gaffe as we'll ever see from Turnbull, who is, we're sad to say, unlikely to ever mention a suppository of wisdom or praise a female candidate's sex appeal.Related: Nuclear Energy Could Be the Key to Fighting Global Warming
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