Letters: No Porsche, but . . .
How far into his cheek was Steve Ellison’s tongue when he penned the
article ‘Who wants to drive a Porsche?’ (Forum, 1 June)?
His assertions can not go unchallenged. The implication that good science
is defined by the cost of the instruments used is surely too risible to
require more detailed criticism. The main thrust of his article – apparently
that science is so satisfying that its practitioners should not expect any
salary at all – perpetuates the very attitude that consigns scientists to
second-class professional citizenship.
Most people work because by doing so they achieve a higher material
standard of living. The reasons why they do particular sorts of work include
the non-material rewards. I do not envisage that the mental satisfaction
arising from a task would be reduced by having high financial reward.
I am a professional scientist. Do I want to drive a Porsche? No; but
that is a personal taste. Do I want to have the choice between buying a
Porsche and spending that sum of money on other things? You bet I do!
J. R. Welch Sevenoaks, Kent
Letters: No Porsche, but . . .
I read Steve Ellison’s article with astonishment. Are there really scientists
who live in air-conditioned labs which cost millions to equip, who have
access to a supercomputer and who are given a few hundred thousand for an
executive toy?
Did he mean that there are some scientists who do not alternately freeze
in winter and boil in summer in unventilated labs, who actually have more
computing power at work than their children have at home, and whose idea
of a new piece of equipment isn’t a sizzling monster rescued from a lend-lease
destroyer before it was sold to a Third World navy?
Jon Scawin Salisbury, Wiltshire
Letters: Rising sea levels
In Talking Point (9 March), William Nierenberg (co-author of the 1989
George C. Marshall Institute report which downplays the seriousness of global
warming) made the improper claim that in 1980 Robert Chen and I ‘estimated
a rise in sea level of 25 feet based on a doubling of carbon dioxide in
as little as tens of years’, whereas today most estimates suggest less than
one meter sea level rise in a century.
I wonder whether he, or anyone at the Marshall Institute who has made
this claim elsewhere, has ever read that paper? Otherwise, they would have
known that Chen and I predicted nothing. We simply did an impact assessment
based on the then uncertain discussions among glaciologists about the timing
and magnitude of any West Antarctic deglaciation. All of these caveats were
clearly spelled out in the beginning, conclusions and body of the (1980)
Schneider and Chen paper.
It disturbs me that only an institution with a political agenda could
distort that stated purpose into a prediction in order to impugn our credibility
10 years later. Incidentally, research since 1980 suggests a strong possibility
that warm ocean temperatures could dramatically increase the intensity and
the length of the season for severe tropical cyclones. This could substantially
increase the probability of now rare events, such as 15 to 25 foot storm
surges. In other words, our 1980 coastal flooding impact assessment may
still have value, but from different physical reasoning – a possibility
never mentioned by Marshall Institute authors.
Our published conclusion in Schneider and Chen (1980) was that if such
a sea level rise did occur, and it took 150 years (not 10 years), then at
7 per cent per year discount rate even that very large sea level rise would
be ‘worth’ only some $30 million today. We then raised philosophical questions
about the appropriateness of such discounting in the global warming context.
We concluded (and still agree) that:
‘We recognize that quantitative assessment of a relatively far away
problem like the sea level rise case may be less useful for immediate decision
making in society than a qualitative assessment of a potentially more significant
problem like food production variations. But the general efforts at climatic
impact assessment must, we believe, expand considerably, and the hypothetical,
but plausible, sea level rise is a tangible case study. We hope many other
studies will follow. At the same time, we believe it is not premature to
begin to consider steps to minimize our vulnerability both to carbon dioxide-induced
climatic changes and to any future shifts away from fossil fuels. It is
in this spirit that we wish our efforts here to be interpreted.’
Any other interpretation, such as those previously given by Marshall
Institute authors, both distort our clearly stated views and call into question
the scholarship of the critics, if not their motives.
Stephen H. Schneider National Center for Atmospheric Research Boulder
Colorado
Letters: Protect the panda
I disagree with Derek Ager’s opinion (Forum, 1 June) that pandas should
be left to die out. Though their extinction might be inevitable were it
not for the protection given them by humans, abandonment would waste all
our earlier efforts to save them, and would also set a dangerous precedent
for other threatened species.
Environmentally detrimental companies, such as those active in tropical
rainforests and European peat bogs, could then continue their destructive
exploitation unchecked on the basis that the many species they would wipe
out were almost extinct anyway.
It is true that many types of animals and plants died out in the past
to be replaced by new ones. But in this century of ecological holocaust,
what new species have replaced the old ones? Most likely only humans, their
domesticates, and their pests (eg rats) who have expanded their lebensraum
at the expense of other organisms.
That most mammals arose after the extinction of the dinosaurs does not
preclude the possibility that our furry ancestors could have evolved alongside
these giant reptiles. Dinosaurs were wonderful creatures. So is the panda,
as Derek Ager has shown by outlining their massive number of evolutionary
drawbacks. Of course, it is easy for one species with an extensive range
of habitats to denigrate or dismiss another on the basis of its restriction
to just one habitat.
We were not around to save the dinosaurs, but we can help the panda.
Thomas G. Fewer County Waterford Eire
Letters: Curieous omission
With reference to your ‘Life, the Universe and (almost) Everything’
on Unhidden Gender (8 June): as a mere male commenting on this fascinating
review of the contributions women have made to science, I find it surprising
that arguably the greatest female scientist has been omitted.
No mention was made of the work of Marie Curie which must rank with
the world’s greatest. Not only did she make discoveries of outstanding significance,
picking up the Nobel prizes on the way, she also did what no man is able
to do. She gave birth to Irene Joliot-Curie (1897 – 1956), who also went
on to win two Nobel Prizes for Physics and Chemistry.
To omit one Curie was unfortunate. To omit two was careless!
Paul Spencer Norwich
Letters: Ignorant uproar?
According to Jeremy Webb, an international study of the Chernobyl disaster
found that none of the health disorders suffered by people living in areas
contaminated by the disaster could be attributed directly to radiation;
and this study caused an uproar at a meeting of politicians and scientists
in Vienna (This Week, 1 June).
Like most uproars, this must have been caused by ignorant people.
The only reliably recorded disorders resulting from exposure to radiation
are cancers, and these may take a decade to show themselves. The only way
in which ‘disease after disease’ could have grown worse since the disaster
could have been the effect of a coincidental loss of a large number of local
hospitals – which has not been reported. A great deal of fear and depression
brought about by ill-informed publicity about the effects of radiation could
also be at the base of many illnesses reported.
I wonder how many people know that the total of extra cancer deaths
among the irradiated populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, over the ensuing
40 years, was not much more than 200; and these were mainly among those
exposed to over 50 rems. None of the deaths from causes other than cancer
were greater among the irradiated population than among those with no extra
radiation dose.
John Fremlin Birmingham
Letters: Mine is bigger
The Masai cave painting illustrating Roger Lewin’s ‘Stone Age Psychedelia’
(8 June) is to be found in the Serengeti, Tanzania (not Kenya), and the
people who made it would have thought little of the suggestion that shamanism
or some other religious or magic motivation was behind it.
In the sixties I photographed many of the paintings, and when I talked
to the people who were actually drawing and painting in that same or nearby
rock shelters, I was told that they used these rock faces to illustrate
their stories and discussions, like a blackboard. This happens especially
during the olpul, the all-male preparation for a raid or battle, when the
warriors eat meat for days on end, and boast of their prowess, their cattle,
their killing of lions or elephants.
The patterns which identify clans and age-groups on the shields are
displayed, cattle are drawn with huge humps, horns and penises (‘My bull
is bigger than any’), lions are shown surrounded, white dots on an elephant
demonstrate where to spear it. Different species of wild game are depicted
with a frequency that appears to be related to the ecological significance
of such animals for the Masai. Patterns of lines and dots punctuate stories
of battles, or of games (eg bao, the board game), or they are mere doodles.
Such a simple, prosaic explanation might also account for many rock drawings
elsewhere; no magic is required.
Hans Kruuk Aboyne Aberdeenshire
Letters: Nannies and bikers
Far from setting the record straight, I fear your correspondent P. H.
Bly merely continues to muddy already-murky waters (Letters, 8 June). An
attempt was made in 1988 to introduce leg-protectors for motorcycles, based
on Transport and Road Research Laboratory (TRRL) research. More than 100
000 motorcyclists petitioned the government to avoid this course of action,
since the work on which these devices were based was demonstrated by work
conducted elsewhere to be flawed. Far from limiting injury to the rider,
the TRRL devices merely shifted the site of injury from the lower to the
upper leg and, far more worryingly, to the chest.
Thus, far from there being a minority of pig-headed motorcyclists who
reject all safety improvements, a myth which the TRRL is extremely fond
of perpetuating, a large number of motorcyclists were concerned about the
consequences to themselves of the imposition of a so-called safety device
which would endanger their lives by a group of nannyists whose only approach
to safety appears to be an engineering one.
It must be pointed out further that it is not simply many, but the majority,
of motorcycle accidents which are caused by other road users. Indeed, almost
two-thirds of motorcycle accidents are so caused and, according to one of
the Department of Transport’s own publications, about half of these can
be ascribed to the single cause of other road users failing to give way
at road junctions at which the motorcyclist has the right of way. Were better
standards of driving, eliminating this type of behaviour, to be promoted
and enforced, so many so-called accidents on our roads would be avoided
(far better than mere damage-limitation), with great saving fiscally and
in terms of human suffering.
D. G. Wattam Loughborough Leicestershire
Letters: Please help
As a Zambian Meteorologist/Statistician aged 33, with a family of three
children and earning a monthly salary of less than $70, I find it very
difficult to subscribe to this very interesting magazine, which I find essential.
Because of the country’s economic crisis even my employer, the Department
of Meteorology, has not been able to renew its subscription since 1976.
I am appealing, therefore, for help from any of your readers to assist
me in receiving this magazine. I would not even mind being sent old issues.
If someone feels inclined to subscribe for me, the subscription should be
sent to The Editor. My address is: c/o Department of Meteorology, Box 70474,
Ndola, Zambia.
A. Mwangase Ndola, Zambia
Letters: Hazy daze
Ariadne laments a sunset’s demise, assailed by the silent intrusion
of high-flying aircraft (8 June). But the phenomenon is surely not exclusive
to this brief period of the retiring day.
How many bright mornings have I risen to join the sun in its adventure
into a fresh clear sky, only to observe that already the ‘streaks of gold’
are invading my portion of the blue sphere in this crowded southeastern
corner of Britain? By midday, the whole southern sky is awash with the
‘fine network of white and grey’. The noonday sun has paled to a faint,
lifeless disc.
My deckchair lies vacant under the birch as I abandon my after-lunch
snooze on the lawns, and retreat to my warm, but similarly sunless, lounge.
I resent this. I, too, feel deprived.
John H. G. Allsop Rayleigh, Essex
Letters: Correction
Correction. The photograph of hazardous waste in Nigeria that appeared
in ‘The burning issue of Australia’s toxic waste’ (8 June) should have been
credited to Charles Secrett of Friends of the Earth.