Letter: Hungarian dam
Fred Pearce’s encomium of Janos Vargha’s successful fight to persuade
the Hungarian government to stop work on the Danube linked-dam scheme will
leave those of your readers unfamiliar with the project with the impression
that this was a great victory for enlightened environmentalists struggling
against the satanic forces of Stalinist meglomania; and that Hungary has
been spared unimagined ecological disasters (‘The dam before the flood,’
Forum, 16 December).
If, instead of treating opposition to the project as part of a political
power struggle, and listening to only one side, Pearce had carefully examined
it with the aid of engineers responsible for the design and eventual operation
of the scheme, he might well have concluded that its long-term economic
and social benefits far outweighed any likely adverse ecological impact.
Certainly he would have presented a more balanced assessment. My own conclusion
is that the Hungarian repudiation of the Nagymaros Danube project provided
an excellent example of a dangerous modern trend in which a combination
of mistrust, hysteria, exaggeration and fear conspire to shout down objective
evaluation and scientific method. New 杏吧原创 is the last journal where
one expects to find implicit support for that increasingly prevalent form
of popular pressure.
Without burdening your readers with the technical details, it’s worth
observing that (1) the major benefit, hydro-electricity, would not only
pay painlessly for most of the constructional costs, and be cheaper and
environmentally less polluting or dangerous than any alternative power source,
but also meet Hungary’s pressing need for more peak power before crisis
point is due in 1993; (2) the enormous increase in navigational capacity
along a stretch of the Danube currently obstructed by hazardous shoals would
eventually enable 1500-tonne vessels to pass freely from southeast Europe
to the Ruhr and the North Sea, substantially reducing transport costs, saving
fuel and lowering pollution levels; (3) the threat of disastrous floods
like those of 1954 and 1966 would be averted.
The flow rate over a length of the Danube will decline, thereby diminishing
the aerobic cleansing effect. This has generated fears that the scheme will
add to pollution problems already serious enough in the country. It is a
reasonable fear, but no one would guess from Pearce’s article that this
has been anticipated by the pledge of extensive sewage treatment works in
riparian settlements currently responsible for much of the pollution, and
of other methods of treating shallow well supplies derived from or linked
to Danubian flows. Nor could one have guessed that 33 scientific institutions
and university faculties took part in a major environmental impact assessment
study back in 1985, or that the Hungarian parliament, after a two-day debate,
overwhelmingly endorsed the scheme as recently as October 1988, following
a close examination of environmental matters.
By turning the Nagymaros dam, an integral part of the total project,
into a political focal point, and presenting it as a lurid Dracula sucking
the life blood from the Hungarian people, the environmentalists have helped
to land their country into even deeper financial trouble, as well as ensure
a worsening of the pollution they desire to control.
Montague Keen Sudbury, Suffolk
Letter: Maintaining standards
I read with interest the article by Barbara Lloyd on gender development
in children (‘Rules of the gender game’, 2 December), noting that she worked
with children ‘who, in line with county regulations, had recently become
four years old’.
While accepting that you Poms have a bureaucratic system which is the
envy of the world, surely this is going too far?
Rex Munday Hamilton, New Zealand
Letter: Puzzling preserves
I was interested to read Alun Rees’s article about the life of pickled
onions (Forum, 23/30 December). About 10 years ago I asked a leading manufacturer
whether its bottled sauces would keep better if refrigerated. It said emphatically
that the natural preservatives in its products were adequate without refrigeration,
which may even cause curdling.
A few years later I noticed that these products said ‘Refrigerate after
opening’ on the labels. The ingredients list had not changed so I asked
the manufacturer why it was now giving such opposite advice. It gave me
a very muddled reply but assured me that the keeping properties of its products
without refrigeration had not changed.
So why the change of label? I was told that most consumers associated
‘freshness’ with the need to refrigerate but that I would not notice any
change in quality if I continued to store the products as I had done for
the past 20 years.
Maybe the answer to Rees’s question regarding a short life after opening
is that the consumer now associates short life with ‘freshness’. I can’t
imagine why any manufacturer would want its customers to throw perfectly
good food away, forcing them to buy more. For myself, if it looks, smells
and tastes good then I eat it.
J. D. Walter Woking, Surrey
Letter: Revealing hand
Regarding recent items on graphology, I wonder if the personnel departments
of such organisations employing this technique have considered the reaction
of potential applicants. Could a potential applicant be led to wonder what
‘management techniques’ are used by other functions of the organisation?
My pet image is the planning department consulting the entrails of a chicken.
Perhaps others also have such visions.
Mark Ballington, Grindleford, Yorkshire
Letter: Fair coppice?
It is somewhat irresponsible to promote the myth that there can be a
‘benign source of energy’ (‘Plant power: fuel for the future’, by Peter
de Groot, 16 December). All sources of power have human and ecological impacts,
and those of biomass fuel are worse than many.
Analyses of risks of power generation have shown biomass to be very
dangerous as a fuel source on a large scale (Risk of Energy Production,
by H. Inhaber, 1981; Atomic Energy Control Board, Ottawa, Canada, 1981).
For example, the risks (deaths per unit energy produced) of methanol derived
from wood are similar to those of coal and oil, and some 20 to 60 times
as great as the mortality due to nuclear or natural gas sources.
Biomass collects solar energy with an efficiency of only about 1 per
cent and the collection area must therefore be very extensive to extract
useful quantities of power from this low-energy density source. This involves
risk to people – all forestry and agricultural activity involves a measurable
mortality. Moreover, good agricultural land would be needed over one tenth
of the surface of the Earth to meet primary energy needs from biomass.
In Europe, a revival of coppicing is advocated to provide fuelwood.
However, recent research demonstrates that coppicing can no longer be seen
as an environmentally friendly activity. Frequent cutting of woodland perpetuates
the damage of centuries to woodland communities (‘Coppicing for Conservation:
do hazel communities benefit?’, by P. H. Sterling and C. Hambler, in Research
and Survey in Nature Conservation No 17, NCC, Peterborough, 1988). In Britain,
for example, the removal of dead and mature trees, and the microclimatic
stresses involved in the coppice cycle, have helped to exterminate the specialised
fauna of dead wood and fragile epiphytic communities in most lowland woods.
A revival of coppicing is, therefore, provoking concern among entomologists
and those protecting our internationally important lichen communities. Biomass
fuel is often obtained at the expense of natural forest.
We should, of course, aim to minimise the environmental impact of obtaining
energy – arguably our most fundamental resource. Specific options must be
examined more critically than in your article, since the field already suffers
from massive public misunderstandings. There is certainly no such thing
as a free cooked lunch.
C. Hambler Department of Zoology University of Oxford
Letter: Bowled over
I presume that David Elliott is perpetrating a ripping jape with his
article on the bowler, and that 1 April has been transposed (‘Hold on to
your hat!, Forum, 23/30 December). Any aerodynamicist worth their salt will
recognise that the ‘Airstream defected’ will produce a reduced pressure
across the top of the offending headgear, not a ‘downwards pressure’: if
Elliott’s theory held sway, no aircraft would fly.
Poor old Bernoulli must be turning in his grave.
John Linop Duddon Common, Cheshire
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Letter: Trees on the move
I was disappointed by Tam Dalyell’s comment that the site proposed for
the National Fruit Collections at Wye College is in a ‘frost hole’ (Thistle
Diary, 13 January). This is totally untrue.
The site we propose to use has grown fruit very successfully for many
years. It is on a slope and cannot be considered to be a ‘frost hole’. We
have members of staff who are experienced fruit workers and who have known
the site personally for almost 20 years. They have never seen any significant
frost damage. Much of the proposed site also has well-established windbreaks
and is therefore well protected.
Before the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food decided to transfer
the collections to Wye it inspected the site and was quite happy with what
we proposed.
I can understand Dalyell’s worry, but he can rest assured that if we
had any doubts about our ability to look after the collections we would
not have offered to take them.
J. Moorby Professor of Horticulture Wye College Ashford, Kent
Letter: Transgenic trees
I read with interest the article by Debbie Macklin concerning the future
of our rainforests (‘A nursery for the rainforest’, 2 December).
It seems that she is out of date (or has talked to people who are) when
she talks about ‘genetic engineers turning their attention to trees in the
future’. Viable transgenic trees of three broad-leaved species, poplar,
walnut and apple, have already been regenerated and in the case of poplar
the trees have been released into the environment (in the US) for studies
on their performance.
Foreign genes were transferred to all three species using Agrobacteria-mediated
transformation procedures. Poplar was transformed nearly three years ago,
and was quickly followed by walnut a year later and, most recently, by our
own work on apple last year (Plant Cell Reports, 1989, vol 7, p 658).
David J. James Institute of Horticultural Research East Malling, Kent
Letter: Metered software
I suggest that expensive software packages should be sold by the hour
(‘No way to sell a program’, by Harold Thimbleby, Forum, 2 December). What
I mean by this is that one should be able to buy a package which can then
be used for the number of hours paid for, after which more money would have
to be paid.
It would be necessary to have the ‘clock’ built into hardware in a ‘dongle’,
to avoid duplication of the bought hours when a disc was copied, but this
is only an extension of a practice already common with expensive packages.
(A dongle is a piece of security circuitry which must be plugged into a
computer if its associated software is to run.) Advantages to users would
be that they would pay for what they needed – a package used every day in
a business would be worth paying a high sum for, but the same thing used
for a few hours a year would still be purchased sensibly. Trial purchase
of the fully functional package would make real sense, as only a few hours
would be paid for initially.
Advantages to software producers would be the widening of markets, so
that under a single scheme both large users for profit and small users out
of interest could be regarded as potential customers. There would also seem
to be a measure of built-in protection against software pirates.
One simple extension to the scheme would be to arrange that one dongle
would be effective with a range of one company’s products, possibly charging
at different rates (think of an analogy with phone-cards). A further extension
with more complexity in its implementation would be to have one dongle in
a network, so that a class of students could use the package simultaneously,
running the clock down rapidly, but without the need for a multiplicity
of special hardware.
Software is currently marketed in a variety of ways, and the proposal
adds an extra approach which would suit a significant fraction of users
and producers.
D. A. Fraser Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering King’s
College, London
Letter: Uses of ultrasound
It is remarkable that ovulation has been observed using high- resolution,
presumbly high- energy, ultrasonic radiation on a 21-year-old volunteer
(Technology, 6 January). Ultrasound is clearly more than a ‘research tool’
if it can produce such superb resolution of fetal development and highlight
possible disorders.
The ultrasound scanner, in the right hands, can give early warning of
deformity. In orthopaedics we are particularly interested in early detection
of hip disorders so that treatment might commence in the immediate neonatal
period in a simple splint. For, if these hip deformities lie undetected
until the child is walking, then corrective procedures are less successful
and more expensive, requiring on average 50 weeks of hospitalisation over
the lifetime of the patient.
Measurements made from ultrasound images of the head of the thigh-bone
have been shown to be reliable in detecting hip deformities in the newborn
babies and this news of high resolution prenatal imaging means we might
anticipate even earlier diagnosis of this crippling disorder.
George Kernohan Department of Orthopaedic Surgery The Queen’s University
of Belfast
Letter: Dark art
Many of your older readers will be saddened by the reference to lycopodium
spores as being ‘fungal’ (‘Art of darkness’, 23/30 December). As we junior
scientists peered down the brass microscope to see the brown, spherical
spores and gritted our teeth at the squeaking of Kundt’s tube as the powder
shuffled into wavelengths, we were instructed that lycopodium powder was
the oily, very uniformly sized spores of a club moss.
We also learnt that its reluctance to be wetted was used, in even more
remote days, to staunch the flow of blood during surgery, although the grisly
details were not disclosed. However, I see that modern books refer to its
use as an absorbent in surgery. Were we misinformed?
J. R. Tew Oxford