Letter: Sleeper's pitch
My alarm clock works on this principle: when the alarm goes off, five
little moles on top starting bobbing up and down, and the only way to get
a five-minute snooze is to hit at least three of the moles with the supplied
mallet. Of course, all the flailing around induces such a state of awareness
that the snooze is no longer necessary. As this is Japan, and I’m on a futon,
the entire apartment floor is effectively my bedside table and so the opportunity
for collateral damage is immense, as spectacles, lamp, remote controls,
dancing beer can, radio, telephone and so on come under the scrutiny of
the mallet.
Paul Hardy Osaka, Japan.
Letter: Sun trap
William Beale’s comments (Letters, 3 November) on Peter Spink’s article
on solar energy prompts me to speak out a question which I have not so far
seen answered. Any system exploiting solar energy, be it photovoltaic or
thermal, removes this energy from the earth-atmosphere system. This must
have a damping influence on global warming caused by the greenhouse effect.
Has anyone ever calculated this damping influence with a view to finding
out whether global warming could be effectively slowed down or compensated
by replacing many roofs of buildings by such energy ‘absorbers’?
Wilhelm Oettinger European Patent Office Munich, Germany.
Letter: Point of order
I don’t really understand what Antony Edwards is fussing about (‘Vanishing
point’. Forum, 8 December). The use of the decimal sign in decimal numbers
is defined, at least since 1965, by all the international bodies concerned.
For example, in the booklet of the International Union of Pure and Applied
Physics it states: ‘the decimal sign is a comma (,) on the line. Documents
written in English may use a comma or a dot on the line (.)’. Perhaps in
mathematical biology, being a relatively new field, they do not keep references
that old.
Hans Breuer Stellenbosch South Africa.
Letter: Fizzy logic
Formation of bubbles from microcavities in sparkling wines is not just
a theory but a demonstrable fact (‘Popping the champagne bubble’, 22/29
December). Detachment of bubbles from the parent cavities, and their expansion
as they rise through the liquid, follow a consistent and predictable pattern.
These aspects of effervescence have been described in a number of technical
articles published in Australia and Germany.
Interest in the subject is not confined to fizzicists. Bubble information
and growth play an important part in industrial processes, geology, volcanic
eruptions, marine engineering and oceanography. Sparkling wine just happens
to be a convenient and convivial medium.
Obscurantism is used as a marketing tool by the wine industry, and it
will be interesting to see what 2.4 million Pounds worth of research will
produce.
May all your bubbles in the new year be little ones.
John Casey North Ryde, Australia
Letter: Llama wool
In ‘Europe’s farmers plough a new furrow’ (8 December) it is implied
that wool from sheep is 10 times worse than the wool fibre of llamas. You
may be interested to know that llamas do not produce valuable alpaca wool.
In general, the average fibre diameter of llama wool is coarser than alpaca
wool and is consequently less valuable.
Robert Hall Port Stanley, Falkland Islands
Letter: Careful logging
My family was intimately involved in the logging business in Burma,
Siam and Borneo in the years from 1860 until long after the Second World
War and we introduced teak to the world (‘No surrender in Sarawak’, 1 December).
Our hardwood extraction operations were always strictly monitored by the
Conservator of Forests in each country and a steady regime of felling on
a perpetual rotation basis was controlled by the management so as to ensure
a constant regeneration of the forests. Nothing could have been more responsible
than the attitude of the British administrators of the forests of those
days.
The reputation of the Bombay Burma Trading Corporation and North Borneo
Timbers and Wallace Brothers were deservedly synonymous with good husbandry
of the rainforests in those countries and eveyone thought in terms of preservation.
Much of the good effects of the old style administration have been forgotten,
or ill advisedly criticised, but here is one aspect that surely stands out
sharply, in contrast to the rainforest devastation of these days.
Vere Fane London
Letter: Energy estimates
John Feather’s letter in the issue of 8 December strays some way from
the original Atomic Energy Authority letters and my reply. However, his
letter does need a few comments.
The 1 kilowatt per head primary energy does not just rely on Energy
for a Sustainable World. Lovins of the US Rocky Mountain Institute, and
colleagues, concluded that the figure could be even less. They assumed a
standard of living similar to West Germany’s in 1975, probably close to
southeast England’s in 1990.
It is straightforward to construct buildings which need little space
heating energy, even in cold climates. This is being widely done, in countries
which include the US, Canada, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden
and Denmark. The techniques to construct such buildings have existed for
at least a decade.
With today’s knowledge, buildings which use no energy for space cooling
even in hot climates, yet still stay comfortable, are also rather easy to
design. So although ESW may have been overoptimistic to assume that the
whole Third World has a totally equable climate, its result was realistic.
Of course, I agree that one must look at whole systems, but to do this
would take up a book. As far as one can sum up a very complex subject, both
simple energy efficiency improvements and elaborate ones cost less, per
unit of energy saved, than nuclear electricity does per unit of energy supplied.
David Olivier Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire
Letter: Film credits
In your review of our video programme Genetic Fingerprinting, you imply
that the programme was influenced by outside agencies (Review, 10 November).
It is important to state that while we did approach certain companies for
advice, we also received advice from a number of other authorities, including
members of the Home Office Forensic Laboratories, as the credits of the
film spell out. We produced the film independently, without financial support.
Paul Clayton Science Pictures Hitchin, Herfordshire
Letter: Warm bandwagon
John Gribbins’s criticisms of the Marshall Institute are becoming boring.
‘Whatever happened to the mini ice age?’ (Forum, 14 April 1990) was followed
by ‘Why caution is wrong on global warming’ (Talking Point, 28 July) and
now we have ‘An assault on the climate consensus’ (15 December). In each
article the theme is that the Marshall Institute is wrong because the IPCC
is right. However, the IPCC, packed as it is with the proponents of the
global warming theory, still has to admit in Climate Change: ‘We have not
yet detected the enhanced greenhouse effect and detection is not a simple
issue. Uncertainties will always remain.’
He suggests that the Marshall Institute is a lone voice crying in the
wilderness, but you reported last year that ‘a worldwide poll of scientists
showed that 81 per cent of respondents felt that the world had become warmer
but only 71 per cent of them believed that this could be wholly due to natural
variations’ (In Brief, 19 May).
Gribbon also seeks to denigrate any work done on climatic variation
due to orbital aberrations and variations in solar energy as does the IPCC.
But there has been much interesting work done by a number of astrophysicists
apart from the Marshall Institute which cannot be dismissed out of hand.
Two of the organisations which contributed to the IPCC assessment were
talking about a return to an ice age not very long ago. In the early 1970s
the then Director General of the Meteorological Office gave a lecture which
clearly indicated that we were heading for the next ice age, and the same
sort of thing was being said by the University of East Anglia.
One can only speculate as to whether global warming has more chance
of research funds than global cooling. Certainly, the proponents of global
warming adopted the classic ploy for getting research funds: ‘frighten the
life out of them’. Once the research funds went out, the speculations were
revised downwards, I don’t blame the politicians one bit for hanging back.
Arthur Blackham Alton Hampshire.
Letter: Sleeper's pitch
Barry Fox mentioned an inertial alarm clock sealed inside a baseball,
which is turned off by throwing it against the nearest wall (Patents, 22/29
December). The baseball clock is available, and my son has owned one for
over a year. As far as I am aware, it is indeed made by Off-the-Wall, and
if Fox or anyone else wants one they are readily available from the Argos
shopping chain.
The idea, though, is not just limited to baseballs, and I can see distinct
possibilities for similar clocks in the shape of the heads of some of the
overweening ‘personalities’ currently infesting my television set.
R D Bagnall Dunfermline, Fife.
Letter: Climate strategy
Your editorial urges international treaty-makers to break down the issues
they deal with into bite-size chunks to ensure that they are negotiable
(Comment, 15 December). Rightly noting that the world desperately needs
a workable strategy on climate, you urge that the treaty-making be broken
up into separate, achievable agreements.
This all sounds very pragmatic, and no doubt some nice-sounding verbiage
might emerge from such a process, but you fail to highlight the risks of
such a procedure. By breaking up the ‘immense complexities’ contributing
to greenhouse gases into agreeable packages, the probability is that the
real issues – the political conflicts of interests that underlie the processes
causing greenhouse gas emissions – will get shoved aside in favour of technical
fixes. The result will be global agreements that fail to tackle the root
problems.
Take, for example, the issue of forests. The Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change already favours a separate protocol for forests, which
both President Bush and the FAO are trying to exalt into a Global Forests
Convention to be rushed through by 1992 – the year Bush stands for re-election.
In the interests of pragmatic negotiability, such a process looks likely
to leave out crucial and controversial issues, such as community participation,
land ownership, forest dwellers’ rights and the relations with agrarian
structure, debt, and trade and aid policy. Consequently, we risk ending
up with a ‘tree planting, logging and forest parks convention’, which will
further marginalise the rural poor and powerless that make up the majority
of the world’s population.
Marcus Colchester World Rainforest Movement Chadlington, Oxfordshire.
Letter: Hospital hygiene
Recent press coverage about Peter Slade’s paper to the British Psychological
Society on infections acquired in hospitals has concentrated upon the apparent
failure of hospital staff to wash their hands adequately. This is one aspect
of poor post-operative infection control in hospitals. Patients frequently
catch infections unrelated to the origial reason for admission.
I suggest that standards of asepsis – including, but not solely those
of hand washing – may have lapsed during the last century due to excessive
reliance upon antibiotics. Penicillin and its successors were initially
so powerful in destroying bacteria that simple hygiene and older chemical
methods of asepsis were gradually overlooked. But nature has fought back
with the growth of antibiotic-resistant strains of microorganisms. Perhaps
it is time to reconsider the use of inorganic chemical antiseptics such
as hypochlorite.
In the mid-1940s, successful ward trials were carried out at Guy’s Hospital
and elsewhere using atomised sprays of dilute sodium hypochlorite for air
control. Also, burns and other wounds were bathed in hypochlorite using
the ‘irrigation envelope’.
Eric jenkins Liverpool.