Letters: Retro rice
Although some scientists at the International Rice Research Institute
favour production systems requiring fewer pesticides (‘A natural way with
weeds’, 7 May), this does not seem to be reflected in the institute’s design
for the ‘architecture’ of a new rice plant featured in its medium-term plan
for 1994-1998.
The proposed ideotype will have a reduced tillering capacity, larger
ears and upright leaves – characteristics which do not favour the shading
out of weeds. It is suitable for direct seeding rather than transplanting.
This again favours herbicide use, and increases costs for farmers as more
seed per hectare is required.
In many rice-growing countries it is the lack of work in rural areas
rather than the pull of industrialisation that has caused people to drift
off the land, and strategies such as direct seeding which replace labour
with costly inputs are of no benefit to small peasant farmers, many of whom
are already in debt.
Risks due to pests may also be increased. In the Philippines, for example,
two of the major pests of rice are the aquatic golden apple snail, Pomacea
canaliculata and the stemborer moth larva, both of which eat through the
tiller base of rice plants. This damage will be more significant in the
‘new’ rice plants with only four or five tillers. Traditional varieties
and earlier IRRI strains have 10 to 20 tillers and are better able to recover
from such attacks, without resort to pesticides.
Whilst the IRRI has in recent years promoted some valuable schemes to
release farmers from the chemical-dependent farming that the institute had
previously advocated, it appears that in many respects little has changed.
Paul Farbon Philippine Resource Centre London
Letters: Insulphurable
It upset me to read your report of a US patent granted to a researcher
at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Bolder, Colorado, to
estimate more accurately the amounts of methane produced by ‘bovine belchers’
by placing a cartridge steadily emitting sulphur hexafluoride in the stomach
of the test animals. (This Week, 7 May).
Methane is described as a ‘potent greenhouse gas that may make a major
contribution to global warming’. This concerns me, as it should concern
everyone. But what upset me was the use of sulphur hexafluoride as the indicator
gas in the process.
This highly stable anthropogenic greenhouse gas was recently described
as increasing at a rate of 8.3 per cent per year and having increased 200
per cent since the first measurements in 1970 (Geophysical Research Letters,
Vol 21, No 7, 1994). It is another gas well suited for many applications
in industry and can be expected to increase rapidly unless banned. Unlike
the notorious CFCs, which last only tens of years, SF6 lasts hundreds of
years in the atmosphere – a lifetime of 3200 years.
These scientists should know better. They are setting a bad example.
Little good can come from using destructive means to a constructive end.
We seem to be repeating our worst environmental nightmares.
If the argument is that the amounts of this gas are ‘very small when
compared to total emissions’, that is the standard argument of everyone
who does not want to change a destructive habit. We really can’t go on and
on like this.
Jim Scanlon San Rafael, California
Letters: Cars are cute
My attention has been drawn to the article by John Whitelegg (Forum,
30 April). Cars, roads and motorways, in particular, seem to rouse Whitelegg’s
ire, and he notes with bizarre displeasure that they are associated with
economic progress, increased industrial development and job creation. With
an air of discovery, he also points out that they have an impact on the
environment, and suggests that neither national governments nor the International
Road Federation are concerned about this.
The fact of the matter is that roads and cars tend to represent a worldwide
aspiration to freedom and prosperity. And, as I am sure Whitelegg is well
aware, road builders, the car industry and IRF (which has its own environmental
group) are devoting not only a great deal of time but also important financial
and human resources to environmental questions.
Such considerations are an integral part of major road projects, at
both international and national levels. The IRF is an active participant
in structuring the planning and legislative framework required, which includes,
incidentally, a strong intra-modal component, to ensure the most environmentally
acceptable mix of road, rail and other modes of transport.
We would like to suggest the governments, institutions and people of
the places Whitelegg mentions are in a better position to know what they
want than he is. The needs and aspirations of the majority may not always
be acceptable to the self-appointed protectors of the world, but then that
is democracy.
M. W. Westerhuis International Road Federation, Geneva
Letters: Riding the auk
Your depressing article on the way that greedy harvesting and irresponsible
collecting drove the great auk to extinction (‘How collectors killed the
great auk’, 28 May) spells out the way the planet can lose one species due
to another’s wantonness, but did not mention other consequent losses.
When a species such as the great auk disappears, so do its species-specific
parasites. The loss to parasitology in the case of an unusual species such
as this is irreparable. We need to realise that we have lost not only a
flightless seabird, but a troop of unknown and forever unknowable creatures,
which we can now only lump together as the Riders of the Lost Auk.
Thomas Gretton University College London
Letters: Riding the auk
Tim Birkhead is not quite right in stating that the greak auk is ‘the
only species whose extinction is known precisely’.
Martha, the last recorded passenger pigeon, died in the Cincinatti Zoo
at 1.00 pm on 1 September 1914.
R. V. Taylor Abingdon, Oxfordshire
Letters: Teeming tuatara
Leigh Dayton reports (New 杏吧原创, Science, 12 March 1994) that the
place with the highest density of predators in the world is the flood plain
of the Adelaide River near Darwin. The peak density of water pythons reaches
30 to the square kilometre. It is also stated that the water python is the
only cold-blooded animal known to be a top predator.
The tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus) of Stephens Island, Cook Strait, New
Zealand can shatter all of these records. These only living members of the
Sphenodontia reach densities of over 1500 individuals to the hectare in
forest remnants.
Using a conservative figure of 300 grammes per tuatara with the recorded
density range of 560 per hectare in scrub to 1500 per hectare in forest,
this yields a staggering biomass of 17 to 45 tonnes of tuatara per square
kilometre, two orders of magnitude higher than the Adelaide water pythons.
The slow-growing, long-lived tuatara produce this high biomass by tapping
into the nutrient flow provided by one million burrow-nesting seabirds,
principally fairy prions. The tuatara are the top predators on the island
which lacks introduced mammals other than sheep and humans.
This may be a world record, but even Australians should be cautious
about such claims before all the facts are in.
Peter Lawless Department of Conservation Nelson, New Zealand
Letters: Time theft
What Donald Simpson and other writers on the same subject are describing
(Letters, 23 April and 28 May) is an old and well-established socio-economic
disease that is probably best described as ‘Chronolatria’.
Basically it is the theft of another person’s time. However, the aetiology
of the disease is changing. Until recent years it was practised in the social
sense of, ‘My time is more important than yours’. Now the emphasis would
appear to be a matter of economic gain.
A typical example is to be found in supermarkets. Here, flexitime has
been interpreted by the large retailers as having checkout staff on standby,
to be called in from their homes when needed to deal with the customer flow.
Needless to say, the staff are only paid for time actually spent in the
store.
The customer, having selected his or her goods, often finds a high percentage
of non-operating checkouts and has to wait for periods commonly of 15 to
20 minutes. This is due to the time lag between queue build-up and the management
calling in standby staff.
There is obviously an equation here. Put crudely, it will be something
like T1 + T2 = Psec, where T1 is the customer detention time, T2 is the
unpaid staff standby time and Psec is the secondary profit to the retailer
derived directly from the theft of time. No doubt some of your more mathematically
competent readers can easily produce a set of equations which show the
value per minute of lifespan in terms of shareholder dividend.
A parallel situation occurs in organisations where staff numbers are
reduced or natural staff wastage is not replaced. Mike Stevenson (Letters,
28 May) put his finger on that one. Diane Jones (same page) indicates that
the social component of chronolatria is still alive and kicking.
In the natural sequence of events, given that no prophylactic measures
are forthcoming, the disease will become epidemic. Eventually, only a small
core of indispensable people will be employed while the rest of the population
waits for something to happen. No doubt the ‘Adams Myth’ Institute is already
working on it, but don’t hold your breath. You will be wasting your time.
P. Blanshard Southampton
Letters: Last straw
Irene Ridge’s letter (21 May) about the use of barley straw in pond
treatment raises again the question of the nature of the active ingredient.
For three successive years I have treated my pond with barley straw
at the recommended rate. For two years there was total success even after
a late start in the first year. In 1993 failure was total, blanket weed
even growing over the bales of straw.
This raises again the question as to whether the active constituent
is not, in fact, algicide or fungicide residues, and nothing inherent in
the straw.
John Robinson Macclesfield, Cheshire
Letters: Rocket riddle
Few in London had an inkling as to how good our defences against V-1s
were (‘The V-1 menace: secret weapons that saved Britain’, 4 June). I was
in London during the war and a V-1 landed in a road 60 yards from our shelter,
leaving a crater, 30 feet wide and 15 feet deep. The houses around were
just piles of rubble.
One day a V-2 landed 300 yards away. After the bang there was a loud
rushing sound for several seconds. The Imperial War Museum says the rocket
may have broken up on descending, the after sound being the casing coming
down. Do any New 杏吧原创 readers know if you can hear a supersonic missile
arriving, after it has arrived? I have puzzled over this for 50 years.
Ernest Spratt Hayling Island, Hampshire
Letters: Universal happiness
Now don’t get me wrong, happiness is a fine thing, in the right hands
(Forum, 28 May). But it must strike many observers of the trajectory of
this century, as it strikes me, that perhaps unhappiness is not just a natural
and common state of mind, but also a justified, logical and necessary outcome
of living in the midst of modern civilization.
If a pharmaceutical revolution can alleviate most or even some of people’s
unhappiness, would this not allow, even encourage further deterioration
in collective behaviour? Maybe unhappiness is a reaction to the conditions
of life, built in through evolutionary causes, that signals the individual
to give greater effort to ameliorating his (or her) situation. This would
be a dangerous thing to suppress.
Peter Webster London
Letters: Universal happiness
Alison Brooks says that there are people who believe that the general
level of happiness can be raised by the improvement of social conditions.
Don’t such people realise that improvements of this sort can only make people
happier until the novelty wears off and the new conditions become the norm?
The only way that the average level of happiness can be raised in the
long term is by discovering the physical or chemical processes that underlie
changes of mood and learning to control them. If ever this happens it will
be, quite simply, the greatest discovery in the history of the world.
Chris Jesty Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria
Letters: Universal happiness
In regard to Alison Brooks’s comments concerning the availability of
the drug Prozac, I feel I must express my wholehearted agreement. Why should
people be denied access to a powerful drug just because there is nothing
wrong with them?
And while we are on the subject why not lift the restrictions on Valium,
which gets rid of all those worries and has no side effects, well, not ones
you would worry about. Fair enough, addiction is likely and brain damage
possible. However, if you just keep taking the pills you won’t go through
withdrawal, and the science of brain grafting may be able to help you eventually.
Better still, if happiness is the name of the game why not start taking
heroin? It’s been tried and tested by millions. If supplied by friendly
chemists, then the deaths due to adulterants or accidental overdose would
be minimised. So hey, let’s just ignore those puritanical pundits who are
apparently only objecting because of neophobia.
Graham Pluck Birmingham