Low levels of artificial light have been used for a long time in the
growing of flowers and pot plants. They can be used to alter the shape of
a plant, for example, by influencing stem-elongation. The length of the
day can also be changed to control flowering. In poinsettias, flowering
and the colouring of the bracts are a response to the longer nights in autumn.
To produce a plant in peak condition for Christmas in the northern hemisphere
the process must be delayed by two to three weeks. This can be achieved
by illuminating it for a few hours in the middle of the night.

The biological mechanisms influenced by these low levels of artificial
light-20 to 300 lux, depending on the application-centre on two forms of
the plant hormone phytochrome. Their interconversion and breakdown are influenced
by red light, which is conveniently provided by incandescent lamps. These
lamps produce light inefficiently, but they are cheap and their maximum
output is at the red end of the spectrum.

Commercial growers are becoming increasingly interested in using much
higher light levels-2000 to 3000 lux or more. The aim in this case is to
encourage photosynthesis by topping up the natural daylight, so the technique
is called ‘supplementary lighting’. Advances in greenhouse technology and
feeding have made light the critical factor limiting plant growth in winter.
If it can be provided economically a bottleneck can be removed. The favourite
lamp for this is the high-pressure sodium-vapour lamp that lights our streets,
though versions now exist which meet the plant’s needs better by supplying
more blue light.

In the Netherlands the area of greenhouses using supplementary lighting
has been rising rapidly. The cost of the electricity needed has stimulated
the use of small, gas-fuelled combined-heat-and-power (CHP) schemes with
an internal-combustion engine driving a generator. The waste heat warms
the greenhouse.

The use of this lighting technique is not always straightforward. Different
varieties of a plant can react very differently, so growers have to discover
what combinations of light and heat work best for each. Speeding up generative
growth more than vegetative growth can give a very desirable house plant
which flowers while it is still compact. But overdoing it gives all flower
and no foliage.

At present, in Britain and Holland at least, only expensive products
give the required return on supplementary lighting, so the technique is
largely confined to growing flowers and pot plants and to propagating plants
of all kinds. (In California, where they take everything to extremes, it
has been used to produce the ultimate pot plant-marijuana.) In Sweden, however,
where agriculture is highly protected and winters are darker, lettuces and
herbs are illuminated 24 hours a day in winter. Since electricity there
is relatively cheap this is economic with power from the grid, even though
it takes 1.5 kilowatt-hours to produce a winter lettuce. But the experiment
may be short lived if Sweden joins the European Community and salads from
the south can enter freely.

Danish growers take advantage of the country’s CHP power stations. Begonia
holdings cluster round Odense power station, from which they obtain both
heat and electricity. In Holland, and probably in Britain, the large-scale
use of light will depend on installing smaller versions of this.

The efficient generation of electricity thus increases the demand for
it. Whether this leads to higher fuel consumption is more difficult to say.
The efficiency with which the gas is used is much the same whether it burns
in a boiler or generates both heat and electricity, and the electrical energy
mostly gets converted back to heat in the greenhouse. Although total energy
use per greenhouse may not change much, use per plant can fall: faster growth
gives more crops per year, and more compact plants mean that more are produced
per square metre. On the other hand, if the plants are more desirable or
cheaper, total sales may increase.

This brings us to the catch-22 of using artificial lighting to bring
a product to market in top condition when prices are highest. Not just poinsettias
at Christmas but all sorts of cut flowers and pot plants at Easter and on
Mother’s Day. The first growers to apply the technique to a particular crop
make money. The rest follow suit, depressing prices again because if quality
is the norm it cannot command a premium. In the end, all the ingenuity in
the use of lighting may produce a better product but little economic benefit
for the grower.

John Feather writes on energy topics.

The idea in its most refined form is that the electricity supplier (known
as the ‘utility’) no longer supplies energy. Instead it now supplies ‘energy
services’. The logic behind this is that energy is not wanted by the consumer
for its own sake. It is wanted for what it can do. We want warm, well-lit
homes – not kilowatt-hours or therms.

This kind of perception causes problems for anyone trying to encourage
energy conservation, as a good thing in itself or as a way of controlling
the greenhouse effect – we ordinary mortals do not think in that way. Our
homes are not insulated to the economically optimal level and we do not
diligently install the most efficient lighting systems. But our apathy can
be overcome if the utility takes on these tasks. By insulating homes, for
example, a utility can reduce its customers’ total costs. It needs to put
up prices to meet the cost of doing this, but bills, which are what really
matter, will be lower.

So America has invented an efficient, painless way of saving energy
– perhaps, at long last, the truly calorie-free lunch – yet at the same
time is fearful of attempts to cut energy consumption. If we are not to
write off a whole nation as a group of paranoid schizophrenics the paradox
must be resolved. This is not just of academic interest. The Labour Party
in Britain has said that it will impose least-cost planning on the electricity
industry, and it has also been suggested that the system should be applied
to British Gas. So there are good reasons for trying to understand what
it is about.

Least-cost planning in the US really took off in the 1980s. Electricity
demand was growing but the building of new power stations was very unattractive,
for three main reasons. First, they are expensive. And worse, in the US
(as in most countries, though not in Britain) electricity prices are based
on the historic cost of the generating plant, which ignores any inflation
since it was bought. This means that electricity from new power stations
would cost a lot more than from older ones. Secondly, environmentalist opposition
would mean long, expensive planning inquiries and the generation of bad
will. Thirdly, having had their fingers burned by overinvestment in nuclear
plant, the utilities were reluctant to trust their own forecasts of future
demand.

All these things combined to make another option – energy conservation
– seem attractive. If utilities could persuade customers to cut their demand
at peak times they could defer building new generating plant. This was the
least-cost option.

There are many different ways of cutting peak demand. For utilities
which have their peak demand in the summer, one possibility is to offer
subsidies for installing more efficient air conditioners. The result of
this, of course, is that less power is used whenever the air conditioner
is running and not just at peak times. The utility therefore loses revenue.
This reduces its interest in such measures even though they could lead to
a real cut in the non-energy part of its costs.

To ease this contradiction the authorities that set tariffs in the US
permit price increases to make up the lost revenue. Although the tariff
rises, the average electricity bill falls because consumption is less. This
system seems to be working. Generating-plant requirements are being held
down and consumers do not seem to object strongly to the fact that they
are treated inequitably – those who have not benefited from the cost reductions
and had their consumption reduced end up paying more for their electricity.

This is least-cost planning as it is practised in the US. It is not
the same as the refined version which I described earlier; but if it is
recognised that the term covers two quite different ideas the discrepancy
is disposed of. People who believe in greate state intervention to save
energy imply that least-cost planning in America is of the ‘sale of energy
services’ sort, though in fact it is not. Whereas if this system was implemented
it would raise some fundamental questions, not least of which is whether
the utility’s monopoly (which is justified by the inefficiency of duplicating
distribution systems) would still be justified if energy services were being
sold rather than energy.

In practice, least-cost planning in the electricity and gas industries
can cut energy consumption only by implementing cost-cutting possibilities
where they exist. It is not a magic solution to problems of energy conservation
or the greenhouse effect. We still end up paying for our lunches.

John Feather writes on energy topics.

But what is ozone? It is, I read in the newspapers, ‘triple oxygen’,
or ‘a substance related to oxygen’, or ‘an oxygen molecule with more oxygen
than it needs’, and much more along the same lines. Now, you and I know
that ozone is O₃, while oxygen is O₂, so all these
definitions project a refracted version of the truth. But the problems journalists
have in writing about science for a non-scientific audience draw attention
to remarkable deficiencies which exist in the vocabulary of science when
it comes to talking about what for simplicity I shall call ‘the elements’.

If you don’t agree with my statement that ‘oxygen is O₂‘,
you are probably a spectro scopist or a coordination chemist and go around
irritating people outside your specialism by calling O₂ ‘d¾±´Ç³æ²â²µ±ð²Ô’.
The rest of us get by on our more limited vocabulary. When communicating
among ourselves we know that when we say ‘oxygen’ we can mean (1) an element;
(2) a molecule consisting of two atoms of that element; (3) a bulk substance
consisting of molecules of that type; (4) the gaseous form of that bulk
substance. By and large the context sorts out which of these meanings is
appropriate in a particular case.

But start trying to communicate with a lay person and there is immediately
an op portunity for serious misunderstanding. Two places where such communication
is attempted are scientific dictionaries and elementary general encyclopedias.
The compilers of such volumes can get themselves and their readers into
real difficulties by not paying enough attention to the imprecision of our
terminology.

Take, for example, the entry ‘Hydrogen’ in Chambers Science and Technology
Dictionary. I choose this book simply because I own a copy. You can read
the same sort of thing in many others.

‘Hydrogen. The least dense element, forming diatomic molecules. Symbol
H, at no 1 . . . It is a colourless, odourless, diatomic gas, water being
formed when it is burnt. It is widely distributed as water . . .’

The entry then continues with lists of manufacturing processes and uses
of the bulk gas and the molecule (nitrogen fixation, balloons, and so on),
followed by:

‘It is of great importance in the moderation (slowing down) of neutrons
as hydrogen atoms are the only ones of similar mass to a neutron . . .’

Chambers starts well by trying to distinguish between the element hydrogen
and the hydrogen molecule but quickly jumps to saying that ‘it’ is a gas
and that ‘it’ is widely distributed as water. When in doubt, ‘it’ it.

The opening phrase of the entry seems to be a case of what linguists
call hypercorrection. We learnt at school not to say ‘Hydrogen is lighter
than air’ but ‘Hydrogen is less dense than air’, in which context it is
evident that we are talking about ‘hydrogen the gas’. Someone seems to have
learnt the lesson but applied it incorrectly to the phrase ‘the lightest
element’ (that is, the element with the lightest atoms) to produce the nonsensical
‘least dense element’. Density is a property of bulk substances, not elements.

The emphasis on the importance of hydrogen in slowing down neutrons
is curious, especially as there is no indication as to where or why one
would wish to perform this trick. Worse, though, is the implication that
it is elementary (that is, uncompounded) hydrogen which is used for this
purpose. The reference is, of course, to thermal nuclear reactors and the
hydrogen used is normally present in the molecules of liquid water.

It would be nice to draw some far-ranging conclusion from all this about
why schoolchildren don’t want to study chemistry or why, if they do, they
then become accountants. Perhaps students who take the latter career path
find a precision in financial figures which chemistry does not provide them
with. If so, the banishing of the balanced chemical equation to the A-level
syllabus must stimulate the flight from chemistry. That aside, there is
a real paradox in the fact that science, in which precision is so important,
uses a tool – language – which is so imprecise. This gives rise to the practical
problem that writers who do not recognise this imprecision can easily mislead
the non-expert reader.

John Feather is a linguist and one-time chemist.

Came the storm of 1987, some slates slipped and rainwater started removing
the paper for me. When the insurance company agreed to pay for the redecoration
I seized my chance. Down came the fluorescent tube and up went two 60 W
downlighters and a cute set of lights for the new mirror over the hand basin,
the whole lot controlled by two dimmer switches. The new decoration concealed
the holes in the walls and ceiling, and now at the press of a switch I can
have dim light for a relaxing contemplative bath, or bright light for reading
New ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ on the loo, and I can respond to nature’s call in the middle
of the night without blinding myself.

Despite these innocent pleasures I am beginning to feel guilty about
what I have done. Everywhere, it seems, I read that to save the planet we
all ought to be using compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) in our homes in place
of old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs (what the trade call GLS lamps).
CFLs plug into an ordinary lamp holder and use about 20 per cent as much
electricity as a GLS lamp to produce the same amount of light. They also
have a much longer life – around 8000 hours – but against this they cost
much more, from about Pounds sterling 7 to Pounds sterling 17 depending
on the type and output.

Compact fluorescents come in a surprising range of shapes and sizes,
varying from an oversized pretzel to a five-inch diameter ball, from a cylinder
rather larger than the conventional light bulb to a cluster of shortish
parallel tubes. Rumour has it that somebody, somewhere, has produced something
which is actually no bigger than a GLS lamp, though I have not come across
it myself.

Partly to assuage my guilt and partly in a spirit of scientific inquiry
I checked all the lights in my flat to see whether I couldn’t make use of
CFLs myself. I couldn’t. The only bulb which I might be able to replace
economically is in the hall, as this is the light which is left on for longest.
In many homes I am sure that the hall light would be the obvious first choice
for greening. In mine, however, I calculated that it would actually be necessary
to leave the light on longer each day than I do at present in order to make
a financial saving, so even the cheapest CFL would not be a bargain.

There are a number of reasons why CFLs cannot always be substituted
directly for the old GLS lamps. The main technical ones are that they are
generally rather larger, so they will not fit inside many existing shades
and fittings, and they cannot be controlled by dimmer switches, which are
in widespread use and which themselves make a contribution to energy-saving.
But, equally significantly, the number of old-fashioned GLS lamps is itself
decreasing.

Lighting is becoming more and more an aspect of decoration. I still
remember the wonder of our first 150 W bulb at home, lightening the dullness
which prevailed in the postwar years, but a single bright light in the centre
of the room is no longer fashionable. That is the role for which the CFLs
are most suited. In that respect they differ little from the full-sized
fluorescent tube which used to be in my bathroom. But cheap light is not
the prime requirement in the modern home. The effects which can be produced
by tinted lamps, spotlights and halogen lamps (which themselves save a lot
of energy) have a higher priority. An incandescent lamp is as likely to
be compact and round, pointed or fluted, as it is to be of the conventional
size and shape. Given the divergence of tastes, the CFL is not a magical
solution to the problem of cutting energy consumption in domestic lighting.
It is just a product which will find a place among a range of other products
performing a similar function.

Paradoxically, CFLs could actually increase the demand for electricity.
The one place where they may make a large impact is in outdoor lighting.
This is a relatively undeveloped market where the economy of a low-energy
light-source and the convenience of a long life are particularly important,
and where the size and appearance of the lamp are of lesser significance.
So CFLs may glow where no lamp has glowed before.

All this is of relevance to the problem of the greenhouse effect and
to the practicability of some of the technical-fix solutions being proposed.
Theoretically, all domestic lighting can be provided by the highefficiency
compact fluorescent lamps now on the market. In practice, it is highly unlikely
that it will be. People get in the way. And so it will prove to be with
many other alleged solutions which ignore the human element.

John Feather is a translator and energy consultant.

The presumption that the translation most likely to be wanted is of
a chemical text in German reflects both the pre-eminent position that Germany
achieved in chemistry around the turn of the century and its subsequent
loss to Britain and the US. Germany held on to third place and there remained
a large volume of chemical literature in German (notably Beilstein’s Handbuch
der organischen Chemie – the chemist’s Mrs Beeton) which an English-speaker
might well need to consult.

In the early 1960s it was still necessary to pass a test in German to
obtain an honours degree in chemistry from most British universities and
a PhD from most American ones. Scientific German was taught to me by a young
woman in red shoes, a postgraduate student in the German department, whose
knowledge of science was, on the evidence available, zero. I still recall
her disbelief and delight on learning that air could be liquefied. Would
I have remembered this, though, if it had not been for her shoes? They focus
the memory like that transient cloud in Brecht’s poem which makes the poet
remember Marie A.

While a postgraduate myself I did some Russian, which was offered because
the physicists had to pass tests in two languages, the other options being
German and French. This teacher taught schoolboys as his day job and us
in the same way, with no reference to science. I recall little of what I
learnt except how to say ‘He is sitting in a little park on the right bank
of the River Volga’ – the fate of some British defector, perhaps? (While
I’m reminiscing, Klaus Fuchs, a spy who didn’t escape conviction, was arrested
while teaching at my college – in the physicis department.) A knowledge
of German is no longer deemed essential before a chemist is turned loose
on the world. Beilstein is now available on-line in English to those who
have the hardware needed to gain access to it. Nevertheless, there’s still
plenty of material in every field half-hidden behind an unfamiliar language.

It recently occurred to me that what we – both chemists and physicists
– should really have been taught was not elementary German or Russian but
how to extract information from foreign texts. I now spend a lot of time
translating (from Dutch, French and Scandinavian languages as well as German)
for information purposes. Most of the effort is probably wasted. My customers
rarely want to know everything a paper contains, but I have no choice but
to translate every word. Logically, the would-be users of the information
are the best people to extract it because they know the subject and, in
principle, what information is of interest. In a friend’s biotechnology
company they regularly extract information from papers published in Japanese
though none of them knows the language. The thought crossed my mind that
a book on the rudiments of this process might be useful to my customers.

But the time for that approach has probably passed. The way forward
must surely lie in computerised translation. The European Commission’s SYSTRAN
system, for example, reportedly does a good job on certain types of technical
material, including nuclear physics, producing the results faster than a
human can type and at a twelfth of the cost of a human-generated translation.

Although the need to create appropriate machine-accessible dictionaries
can be an obstacle to the wider use of computerised translation, the main
problem at the moment seems to be the attitude of both translators and potential
technical users. The former, like other skilled tradespeople, resent the
fact that a machine can do their job and (as they see it) threatens to put
them out of work. The latter, for their part, are often still convinced
that if you asked a computer to translate ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ into
a foreign language and back again it will offer you ‘Invisible idiot’ as
the result.

It’s true that contextual ambiguities are machine translation’s weak
point. I recently saw a rather good translation done by a computer which
nevertheless stumbled over the German verb ausbauen, which perversely means
both ‘dismantle’ and ‘reconstruct’. The computer guessed wrong, but could
graduates with a brand-new degree in German – the sort of people from whom
technical translators are mostly recruited – guarantee to get this sort
of thing right? I wonder how my old German teacher would have done.

John Feather is also consultant on energy policy.

Things were simple when I was in Miss Williams’s class in primary school.
Then the old phone book became the loo paper – half a sheet per child per
visit. Not just direct and effective re-use of a waste product but a lesson
in economy and a statement against sybaritism as well.

In the adult world, however, I have to take my own decisions and consider
their consequences. Even if my actions cause fewer trees to be turned into
envelopes or loo paper, will the end result be to save any of them? The
market for paper products is constantly expanding and that expansion has
been planned for by the producers of pulpwood trees. If demand is reduced
significantly that must mean lower prices and hence the possibility of new
markets opening up. Vigorous new markets could even mean more trees being
cut down. So it’s not certain that I ultimately help the trees by not buying
their products. Probably the best I can do is reprieve the occasional tree
for a year or so.

The dilemma of whether or not to save and recycle waste paper would
be eased if we incinerated refuse and used the heat. Then we should, logically,
not mind throwing paper away. A lot of research is going on into growing
trees for fuel. It would seem very odd to grow energy crops in remote rural
areas when a major source arises in cities where the energy is needed.

I know many people who are very keen on saving wastepaper. My residents’
association wants to set up a scheme. Some of its members believe, mistakenly,
that their efforts will help to save the rainforests. For others the motivation
may simply be a desire to make some response in the face of an unattractive
world. Put any of the counterarguments to a dedicated paper-saver, however,
and a fairly predictable answer is: ‘Well, at least I’m trying to do something’.

Even so, there may be better things to do. Unless there’s a real market
for the paper collected, increased supplies just depress the price until
it becomes a drug on the market. This has happened on the Continent where
municipal collection in West Germany has led to surpluses which have been
exported at low prices, killing the market for wastepaper collected in neighbouring
countries. Reprocessing capacity is currently being expanded in Britain
so that the risk of this happening here should be less. We may get back
to the situation where charities once more go around collecting wastepaper
as a significant source of income.

But if anyone can ever point to a tree which has truly been saved by
saving wastepaper I shall undo the good work immediately by eating it.

John Feather works as technical translator and energy consultant.