Letters : Bit of both
Much blood is spilt in conflicts fuelled by doubtful beliefs in the
biological nature of ethnic identity and it is unfortunate that Roger Lewin
(“Ancestral echoes”, 5 July, p 32)
has chosen to frame the debate over European
origins as an either/or question based on genetics.
Both the mitochondrial and nuclear genetic data suggest that most Europeans
are descended from both Near Eastern “farmers” and indigenous “foragers”. The
geneticists only disagree about their relative contributions and, either way,
individual Europeans will probably have genes from each source. So why bother to
postulate exclusive descent from one or other group?
However the genetics debate resolves itself, explanations of cultural
development may be very different. A simple equation of cultural and biological
roots reinforces a misleading view of social history.
Letters : Rhino control
Williamstown, Victoria Australia
Regarding Max Glaskin’s warning to Australia about a possible plague of
rhinos (Letters, 12 July, p 50),
I believe we’d handle such a plague by introducing a rhino-virus.
Letters : Toe job
Cork, Ireland
Your article on vomit science and motion sickness sent my brain, not my
stomach, in a whirl
(“Feeling a little strange?”, 14 June, p 24).
In my undergraduate days, an effective countermeasure to nausea, after having
imbibed too many Rag Week beers, was to wiggle one’s toes vigorously. This has
saved many an unfortunate 4 am trip to the bathroom. Pressing and massaging the
fingertips together can have a similar effect, but to a lesser degree.
In California, two death-row prisoners are reputed to have discovered that it
is possible to beat a lie detector test by wiggling their toes.
The digits contain large concentrations of nerve endings at their tips. I
suggest that stimulation of them through disorganised movement sends out a large
number of random sensory signals which distract or drown out the brain signals
calling for a good heave or instructing the palms to sweat. Perhaps this
argument counts as evidence against the “false information/poisoning” theory
outlined in the article.
“The tips of the fingers are the eyes of the body,” said Stanislavski. He
forgot to include the toes. The next time an astronaut gazes out of a shuttle
window at an upside-down Earth and gets that retching feeling, perhaps he should
remember this advice and try a spot of energetic toe-wiggling before reaching
for the sick-bag.
Letters : Life in the Sun
Heriot, Midlothian
The news that water may have been detected on the Sun may well be surprising
to astrophysicists
(In Brief, 26 July, p 25). But for the rest of us, it is more
surprising that no NASA scientist has yet claimed that these “damp sunspots”
might provide a niche for some form of life on our local star.
Letters :
Correction: The University of Texas Medical School is in Houston, not
Galveston as stated in the article “Halcyon days for bugs”
(This Week, 19 July, p 20) .
Letters : Global roulette
Peterborough
Following the reasonable doubts expressed over the perils of global warming
(“Greenhouse wars”, 19 July, p 38),
I made a brief investigation of the statistics of Russian roulette.
Surprisingly, this much-decried practice is perfectly safe in more than 83
per cent of cases. Is it not alarmist, therefore, to suggest that it is
inherently dangerous and should be stopped?
Seriously, if one man says the house is on fire and one man denies it, a wise
person would act on the assumption that the house is indeed on fire. Even if the
proportions are reversed, it would be silly to assume that the house is safe
until solid proof is provided.
A look at Mars and the other utterly uninhabitable planets of the Solar
System suggests that our biosphere is rather rare. It may be sheer luck that it
has lasted long enough for our species to happen to evolve. It would be foolish
to push that luck. Don’t break the world, it is the only one we have got.
Letters : . . .
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has published the statement:
“The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on climate”. But
this ambiguous statement is a far cry from an assertion that human-driven global
warming is happening, or would be harmful if it is.
Greenpeace and the IPCC are calling for actions which would reduce economic
growth, with resulting hardship to the entire world. As the end of each century
draws near, there are always those who proclaim that the world is doomed unless
people change their ways and accept great hardship. We are nearing the end of
the 20th century鈥攖he end of the second millennium鈥攕o something like
the global warming scare can be expected at this time.
Letters : Hot concrete
Darlington, Co. Durham
Your article about the high emission of carbon dioxide from cement kilns
(This Week, 19 July, p 14),
prompts me to suggest that one way of securing a
reduction in this emission, albeit indirectly, might be for the heat output of
these kilns to be harnessed to generate electricity for national distribution.
This would result in a reduction of carbon dioxide emissions from conventional
electricity generation.
Letters : Unlucky lambs
Edinburgh
I cannot believe I am alone in feeling sickened at the misery suffered by
lambs in field trials by the New Zealand based company, Woolovers
(This Week, 26 July, p 24).
There already exists a wealth of knowledge relating to lamb deaths caused by
hypothermia which has, for many years, resulted in practical preventative
measures being taken by farmers: lambs being fitted with biodegradable jackets,
ewes being brought down to lowland pastures to lamb, or ewes and lambs being
brought indoors until the lambs are strong enough to be allowed out of
doors.
Yet, despite this knowledge and practical experience, this company went ahead
and placed 40 newborn lambs in a paddock, each “protected” with a so-called
“woolover jumper” and then deliberately placed a further 40 “unprotected” lambs
in another paddock and exposed them all to the rigours of a “particularly severe
storm”. This resulted in the death of two “protected” and 35 “unprotected”
lambs. In my opinion this totally unacceptable research displays a cavalier
attitude towards the welfare of animals by those concerned.
I also note with concern that “a larger trial” is now planned with backing
from New Zealand’s Ministry of Agriculture. No prizes for predicting the
outcome.
Letters : No conflict
Nottingham
The British Geological Survey is a public sector research establishment which
acts in the national interest
(Letters, 19 July, p 53). Nirex has never placed
any constraints of confidentiality on research we have carried out for them. All
results of the BGS research were available to the public inquiry in published or
unpublished (but accessible) reports.
It is because of our impartiality that we could not take part in the inquiry
in the way David Smythe suggests. It is not our function to formulate policy or
to take sides in a dispute. Our role is to carry out research and present the
results in an impartial manner. This way, the results of the BGS’s research are
available equally to both sides in a dispute.
There are no circumstances in which a BGS staff member would have taken part
in a public inquiry, “to point out the misrepresentation of the geological
understanding of the area as presented by Nirex”, to quote Smythe.
This same philosophy explains why there is no conflict of interest when BGS,
as a public body, carries out commercial contracts such as those for Nirex. By
carrying out such contracts, BGS establishes itself at the cutting edge of
radioactive waste research, building up expertise which can then be more widely
used in the public interest.
Letters : . . .
London
Fred Pearce notes that patterns of warming seem to have changed since about
1987, with subsequent strong warming in the northern hemisphere and cooling in
the southern hemisphere, which Pat Michaels, a climatologist at the University
of Virginia, claims “makes a nonsense of both the theories of sulphate cooling
and global warming”.
Surely, it is relevant that emission trends started to change radically in
the mid-1980s. The European agreements on sulphur emissions, the progressive
collapse of former communist economies, and the US’s policy on sulphur dioxide
emissions all combined to result in a large reduction in sulphate emissions in
the northern hemisphere in the decade 1985 to 1995. Indeed, the collapse in
eastern Europe resulted in global CO2 emissions being roughly
stabilised for a few years.
At the same time, emissions of both SO2 and CO2 in
subtropical regions and in the southern hemisphere expanded rapidly with the
explosive growth in Asian, Australasian and Latin American economies.
Are not these trends broadly consistent with existing theories and observed
north-south atmospheric temperature trends?
I would not dispute for a moment the assertion of greenhouse
“sceptics”鈥攁nd most others鈥攖hat we do not fully understand
atmospheric processes, and hence do not fully understand the consequences of the
ways we are interfering with the global atmosphere. What mystifies me is why
that should make us any more comfortable about extending this great experiment
further and faster, now that global CO2emissions have started to rise
rapidly once again.
Letters : Late learning
Stockport, Cheshire
Although many secondary school pupils spend five or more years studying a
foreign language, few speak it fluently as adults, and very few are accent-free.
Could this be because the “new brain area” that Joy Hirsch and her colleagues
(This Week, 12 July, p 7)
discovered in some of their bilingual subjects is a second best?