Letters : Rejecting reptiles
Epsom, Surrey
I enjoyed reading about the latest twist in dinosaur theory in Jonathan
Knight’s article
(This Week, 1 November, p 20).
However, it would be useful to lay to rest the “reptile” myth.
The article boldly states that: “Birds may not be descended from ancient
reptiles at all.” This is no doubt true, especially if you take into account
that dinosaurs were, in all likelihood, warm-blooded (reptiles are
cold-blooded). This would mean they were fast runners, rather than laggards like
reptiles, thus enabling them to catch their prey or avoid becoming someone
else’s.
Furthermore, you would have to destroy a dinosaur’s knees in order to achieve
the characteristic gait of a reptile (whose legs come sideways straight out from
the body, and then, via a joint, take a 90掳 turn towards the ground), rather
than the upright stance shown in dinosaur exhibits.
The evidence seems to suggest the reptile theory is outdated.
Letters : Mothers' milk
Leicester
While reading the letter by Dan Gollub I wondered whether it would be
possible to use induced lactation to reduce the incidence of breast cancer in
some women
(Letters, 8 November, p 59).
As I understand it, the incidence of
breast cancer is lower in women who have breast-fed a baby than in those who
have not. Would the use of prolactin to simulate breast-feeding have the same
favourable result in women who will not breast-feed children during the course
of their lives?
Letters : . . . . .
Cambridge
Gollub’s idea of inducing lactation before pregnancy to clear a putative
mother’s body of dioxins seems at first like a good idea. But aside from the
fact that dioxin in the quantities involved is a much hyped hazard, especially
when compared with our everyday exposure to countless “natural” poisons, there
seems to be one aspect of his milking scheme that he has overlooked. Where will
he discard this sea of “poisoned” milk? Not in my backyard, I hope.
Letters : Twenty-fifthly
negrande@online.no
Feedback quotes a Cambridge don using the phrase “and ninthly”
(Feedback, 15 November).
I do feel a bit silly to make an issue of this, but Nigel Rees’s book
Eavesdroppings (Unwin Paperbacks, 1981) has exactly the same story, except
the setting is Oxford.
I’m not going to question the veracity of your account鈥攁fter all, it
probably comes naturally to a don to tick off long lists of arguments during
conversations, and one might hear this kind of thing quite often鈥攂ut why
“ninthly” in both cases? Is this some kind of upper limit beyond which no don is
prepared to venture?
As a matter of interest, my Webster’s Dictionary lists “eighthly”,
“ninthly”, and “tenthly”, but goes no further. Personally, I have no trouble
visualising “eighteenthly” or “twenty-fifthly”, and would not hesitate to use
them if I had my back against the wall.
Letters : Puppetry in court
jpdriver@masa.co.za
Your editorial on expert medical witnesses’ failure to contribute to fair
judgments (8 November)
touches also on many decisions made daily in the civil
courts. These usually involve compensation claims resulting from injuries. Even
where medical experts are competent and objective it has been my experience that
unfair rulings result.
In great part this is because fine medical debate and the resulting
conclusions are removed from the scientific arena. Instead, they are transposed
to the legal ring and there played out as a form of remote puppetry, with
lawyers in control. Medical judgments of causality and quantification can never
be bettered in reinterpretation by judge and jury, and it is extreme arrogance
for the courts to claim that right.
One practical solution could be for plaintiff and defendant to each appoint
medical witnesses (ideally without the witnesses knowing who nominated whom). A
medically expert chairman鈥攁ppointed in the same way as a legal
judge鈥攚ould complete a panel to appraise the arguments. The proceedings
could be as open as court hearings, and subject to appeal or review in the usual
way.
“Hired gun” and scientifically unsound medical witnesses, at present provided
with a veneer by their lead lawyers, would be recognised promptly by competent
peers. Costs would probably be reduced. The outcome would be the reinstatement
of the credibility that the best medical witnesses undoubtedly deserve, and an
advance towards fairness and justice
Letters : Not for burning?
Sturminster Newton, Dorset
Congratulations to Matthew Leach for offering a welcome challenge to the
notion that recycling is intrinsically a good thing
(“Burn me”, 22 November, p 30).
As many environmentalists have pointed out for years, recycling regimes
which are tied to a system of long-distance distribution, dirty reprocessing
methods, centralised industry, and ever-increasing consumption often make no
dent at all in the problems they are supposed to be responding to. In the US,
increased paper recycling has not even slowed the growth of fresh wood pulp
production.
Shame on Leach, however, for lending support to yet another exploded
orthodoxy: that industrial pulpwood plantations are able to suck up the same
amount of carbon dioxide as is added to the atmosphere by the incineration of
the paper they are used to produce. As with recycling, the matter is a bit more
complicated than that.
Monoculture pulpwood plantations often damage soil fertility, rely on heavy
petrochemical applications, lack understorey growth, suffer reduced yields after
the first rotations, lower groundwater levels, and promote types of wildfire
with which local residents are ill-equipped to cope. In Finland, the draining of
millions of hectares of peatlands for industrial forestry in the past few
decades has transformed them from carbon sinks to carbon sources. In Iberia and
Indonesia, the rise of industrial plantations has been followed by an increasing
incidence of uncontrollable fires. At Jari in Brazil, tree plantations contain
only a quarter of the above-ground biomass of the vegetation they replaced.
If recycling isn’t by itself an answer to environmental problems, industrial
monocrop tree plantations are even less likely to be one.
Letters : . . . . .
Simon.Wallace-Pannell@ dsto.defence.gov.au
Recycling is the last of the three R’s鈥攔educe, reuse, recycle.
Recycling is not the environmentalists’ sacred cow. It is by no means a
solution鈥攊n fact most environmentalists agree that recycling in isolation
can lead to massive waste and abuse of natural resources. It is merely the
easiest of the three R’s to adhere to鈥攁 self-satisfying
religion鈥攎aking it an easy way for governments to score green points. It
requires no change in the culture of consumerism and can actually soothe the
conscience of a throwaway society. Paper recycling is an important part of
reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but only when paired with effective policies
to reduce its abuse.
Fred Pearce’s article showed clearly that the paper recycling process is
energy demanding and can produce toxic wastes. The Leach study highlighted
growing efficiencies in incinerators and pulp mills through use of green fuels
and scrubbers. Does this mean that the paper recycling industry needs to clean
up its act, too? Would the analyses employed by Leach return a result in favour
of recycling if the recycling process could return electricity to the grid, use
green fuels or employ the latest techniques in industrial purification?
The incineration process has only just cleaned up its act鈥攔ecycling
processes need to be given the same chance. The trick will be to make both
processes work in tandem rather than competitively.
Letters : . . . . .
Rochdale, Lancashire
Does recycling have to be carried out at a centralised mega-plant, with all
the attendant transport costs, or could we have smaller regional facilities?
Why can’t recycling plants be fuelled by incinerating some of the paper,
instead of burning gas and oil?
If you incinerate paper, instead of deinking it for recycling, where do the
heavy metals from the ink end up? In the air?
Letters : . . . . .
Lisbon, Portugal
The warning by the International Institute for Environment and Development
about the environmental dangers of reducing consumption of virgin paper is
absurd. Plantations are not forests. They are not natural habitats鈥攖hat is
why they die off if unattended. If that happens it is not a problem; it could
even be advantageous if the area they occupy reverts to natural vegetation.
When Leach says that reusing glass costs more than producing new glass, he is
not taking into account the environmental damage caused by sand removal. Sand
may be “one of the world’s most abundant resources” but this does not mean that
it can be used without restraint.
From the account given by New 杏吧原创, it seems that both studies
were focused on economic costs and profits, with total disregard for the effects
recycling/incinerating might have on conservation of biodiversity (wildlife,
habitats and landscape). Therefore, it is not surprising that they have been
ignored by environmental groups.
Letters : . . . . .
Bristol
Fred Pearce’s article makes interesting reading for environmentalists who
believe that environmental policy should be based on sound scientific
analysis.
However, I am concerned that people may seize upon such views as an excuse
not to bother with taking responsibility for their waste. Paper still needs to
be separated so that it is not burned along with waste that would cause
unacceptable pollution, such as batteries or chlorinated plastics. This kind of
separation is best done in the home before waste is collected. Similarly, recent
publicity pointing out the negative impact of car journeys to bottle banks was
cited by the media as a good reason not to recycle rather than a good reason to
promote kerbside collection schemes.
We should be putting much more pressure on the world’s manufacturers and
producers to stop over-packaging and to discourage one-use disposable,
nonrepairable products.
Letters : . . . . .
A number of readers have questioned the independence of our study comparing
the environmental implications of recycling and energy recovery options for
wastepaper. I would like to make clear that our study was funded by Britain’s
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council within their “Sustainable
Cities” programme, and we are most grateful to them for doing so.
The work on paper was initiated by my former colleagues Ausilio Bauen and
Nigel Lucas, and is now part of an ongoing project at Imperial College, London.
Our work has to date focused on conventional approaches to waste management,
looking at state-of-the-art, large-scale plants for recycling or energy
recovery.
We would be pleased to extend our analysis through cooperation with groups
proposing smaller, localised facilities which reduce some of the environmental
impacts of waste collection and transport.
Letters : . . . . .
Warlingham, Surrey
New 杏吧原创 is too good to burn or recycle. Copies are valued in
developing countries, so send bundles of old New 杏吧原创s to Book
Aid, 39/41 Coldharbour Lane, London SE5 9NR. Telephone: 0171 733 3577.
For a fuller discussion of this issue, point your browser at
http://recycle.newscientist.com/
Letters : Save the brain
The editorial about the impact of mercury on intelligence reflects many
similar stories (22 November, p 3).
Two weeks earlier there were findings from Sussex University that 10 per cent
of British children suffer IQ loss because of lead. Last July the Russian
Academy of Sciences found that in one town, Baley, 95 per cent of children have
intellectual problems because of radiation.
UNICEF has been reminding us that globally 1.6 billion people are at risk of
mental impairment because of iodine deficiency. In 1996, New 杏吧原创
reported that 1.5 billion face a similar impact because of iron shortages caused
by Green Revolution crops
(“Hungry for a new revolution”, 30 March 1996, p 32).
That year, scientists produced the “ERICE Statement” warning about new
hormone-disrupting chemicals, and Theo Colborn’s book Our Stolen Future
reported that 5 per cent of American babies were at risk.
The US Congress dubbed the 1990s “The decade of the brain” to address these
problems, yet there has been virtually no response. Why are there more eco-votes
for saving sperm whales than for saving brain cells?
One reason is the prevailing single-substance approach in science. In
Terminus Brain: the environmental threat to human intelligence (Cassell,
1997) I view the whole range of impacts within a common
term鈥攅nvironmentally mediated intellectual decline (EMID). The result is
to realise that synergistic effects are probably of the greatest import. For
example, children who are deficient in iron will absorb greater levels of lead
or mercury. But synergism makes for messy science, and so is considered a
methodological irritation rather than the central concern.
The New 杏吧原创 editorial concludes that the alternative to action
about mercury is “to admit that we really don’t mind some of the world’s
children growing up to be a little more stupid than they need to be”. But when
EMID is eventually viewed comprehensively the question is likely to become: is
it OK if most of the world’s population is functioning below par?
Letters : Solar solution
Sydney
I hope the researchers working on devices that could possibly halve the
wavelength of light at which electrical energy can be obtained
(“Your flexible friend”, 8 November, p 42)
will keep in the backs of their minds a more
important application than increasing the information density of CDs.
If it was cheap, of large area and high efficiency, such a device could help
overcome one of the fundamental problems of photovoltaics鈥攖he difficulty
in making use of photons whose energy is smaller than the bandgap energy of the
semiconductor of which a solar cell is made. Shifting these photons above the
bandgap would convert a problem into an asset.
Letters : Casual but careful?
Simon.Goodman@merck.de
Good news from the UN that unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted
diseases drop when children are given sex education
(This Week, 1 November, p 29).
But the interpretation that they are necessarily less promiscuous is odd. It
could as well be just the opposite, only now the children are taking the
appropriate care.