Still in the wild
We welcomed the article by Fred Pearce about conservation agencies pulling
out of African game reserves
(This Week, 7 November, p 16)
as it raised a number
of pertinent issues. But it also contains a number of inaccuracies regarding the
World Wide Fund for Nature that warrant correction.
WWF is categorically not pulling out of Africa’s national parks and game
reserves as Pearce asserts, nor is it “moving out of the wild and into the
office”. On the contrary, over the past 10 years, WWF has seen its annual budget
for conservation in Africa and Madagascar increase from nearly $11
million to over $29 million. WWF has also substantially developed its
existing field-based capacity during the past five years to support well over
200 projects in more than 20 countries across the continent, including work in
48 protected areas.
Advocating a more realistic approach to conservation does not mean
dismantling Africa’s parks and reserves. But it certainly does entail paying far
more attention to what happens outside their boundaries and targeting the root
causes of biodiversity loss, encroachment on protected areas and the
unsustainable use of natural resources.
Perilous plastic
The observations regarding domestic electrical earthing are most interesting
(Letters, 17 October, p 53).
Dangers arise without being noticed.
The system of copper water pipes is used as the earthing network in my house,
which is quite a common method. A leak occurred in the length of pipe between
the water company stopcock and the stopcock in our property. The faulty pipe was
replaced with a standard blue plastic pipe which now meets our stopcock about
six inches above ground level. So, no metal contact to earth鈥攋ust through
the water in the pipe.
I am installing an earth spike to securely earth the network of pipes. I
wonder how many others are in the same situation.
Eco-friendly tours
I read with interest your article on unscrupulous operators of shark diving tours
(This Week, 24 October, p 4).
Being fortunate enough to have visited many
ecologically fragile and precious places, I have seen at first-hand other
examples of the dangers of the ecotourism industry.
Why is there not some regulatory body that can vet operators and award them a
certificate for good environmental practice? The operator could then display a
logo to advertise this fact. If the scheme were sufficiently known, consumer
pressure would force operators to comply.
This is directly analogous to, say, the situation with “dolphin-friendly”
tuna.
The Association of British Travel Agents tells us that there are three
organisations actively involved in ecological and ethical concerns related to
tourism. The first, run by the World Travel and Tourism Council, is called Green
Globe. It will vet operators, resorts and services for Green Globe
accreditation. The others are the Campaign for Environmentally Responsible
Tourism, which awards a kitemark, and Tourism Concern. All operate voluntary
蝉肠丑别尘别蝉鈥抬诲
Current position
I would like to make a correction to Fred Pearce’s article on our scientific
presentation at the Buenos Aires climate conference
(This Week, 14 November, p 15).
While I discussed model studies showing that a weakening of the North
Atlantic current (the extension of the Gulf Stream) is a likely consequence of
global warming, I did not say that “the current has already been weakened by
increased flows of freshwater into the North Atlantic”. To my knowledge, no
observational evidence for anthropogenic weakening of this current exists.
Most models predict an accelerated decline in the North Atlantic current over
the next 50 years. Our new study suggests that this will be a direct response to
the warming of the surface waters, rather than to increased freshwater flow. The
latter may become important after the middle of the next century.
All we can say is that the risk of unpleasant “surprises” in the form of
rapid nonlinear changes in the climate system becomes higher the more 鈥攁nd
the more quickly鈥攚e force the climate away from its present
equilibrium.
Letter
Practising chemists use the trivial names because they are largely synonymous
with the IUPAC terms, they are understood by other practising chemists, and
because they are a useful, unambiguous shorthand.
In a patent application, it is presumably more important that the information
is correct than that it adheres to an often unused standard. Typos can creep
into the most carefully written piece, especially if the terms used are
unfamiliar or are rarely used.
Letter
Young was surprised that the Patent Office allows use of non-IUPAC chemical
names such as iso-pentane. However, this is the British Standard name for
2-methylbutane listed in BS2474 Recommendations for Names of Chemicals used
in Industry published in 1993.
The IUPAC system is the logical international naming system, but some names
are unwieldy. The British Standard is a useful guide which includes some
well-established older names such as toluene (methylbenzene), but not more
obscure ones such as triptane.
Aqua, please
Feedback
(14 November)
comments on the use of the word “aqua” instead of
“water” on product labels. This obfuscation is nothing to do with deviousness on
the part of manufacturers, but is a result of the scourge of the age, a European
directive.
In an effort to promote harmonisation, all ingredients in non-food products
now have a standard list of names across Europe. Deciding what to call water was
contentious because it is the main ingredient in many products. After much
deliberation “aqua” was decided upon.
In a spin
Your article on a “revolutionary” spinner states that a microscopic gear
wheel spinning at 350 000 revolutions per minute is some kind of record-breaker
for machine tools
(This Week, 24 October, p 17).
Air-turbine dental handpieces with orthodox ball bearings routinely spin at
this kind of speed and have done so for over 30 years. Handpieces using
air-cushion bearings allow speeds in excess of 500 000 rpm, albeit with lower
torque.
I believe that devices with magnetic bearings such as textile spindles run at
over one million rpm.
Unattached
Debora Mackenzie’s otherwise informative article on testing cows for BSE
incorrectly describes the Institute of Food Science and Technology as “an
industry self-regulator” (This Week, 14 November, p 22).
On the contrary, the IFST is not an industry body of any sort. It is the
self-regulating professional qualifying body for food scientists and
technologists. It is totally independent of government, industry and any
lobbying groups or special interest groups.
Its professional members are elected by virtue of their academic
qualifications and relevant experience, and their signed undertaking to comply
with the institute’s ethical code of professional conduct. They are elected
solely in a personal capacity and in no way represent organisations where they
may be employed.
Variable noon
In his letter “Midday noon”
(Letters, 31 October, p 64),
Nick Flowers states
that in Greenwich Mean Time, clocks strike 12 when the Sun is at its zenith.
This situation is far from the truth, given not only the distance of most
sites in longitude from the average longitude of their time zone, but also the
so-called equation of time, in which the Sun ranges as much as 16 minutes
earlier or later than the average time that is kept by clocks.
I discuss the matter in my Field Guide to the Stars and Planets.
Some sundials include figure-eight shaped gnomons to provide the correction, or
show it on attached plaques.
Passive profits
I was surprised to read in Netropolitan that plaintiffs’ lawyers in Florida
have an impressive track record in getting $350 million for passive
smokers
(This Week, 31 October, p 21).
They don’t鈥攖he lawyers got $49 million for themselves and
$300 million for a medical foundation. The individual claimants got
nothing at all.
Letter
I reject the widely held interpretation that disasters of this magnitude are
directly caused by global warming. Humanity is certainly to blame, but for a
different reason.
Tropical storms are nothing new, and have raged in the summer period for
millennia. However, if and when they went ashore, their enormous energies were
absorbed by the trees of the rainforests, which although suffering damage,
protected the landscape. In addition, the lush vegetation absorbed the intense
rainfall, releasing it slowly so that fragile tropical soils did not suffer from
erosion due to floods.
Uncontrolled logging in these regions has now so disturbed the environmental
balance that there is now no protection from the winds. Torrential rain falling
onto fields cleared for cash cropping washes away the soil and everything else
besides.
Only when these lessons have been learnt will such tragedies be
minimised.
Meaning of Mitch
Many governments in industrialised countries claim to be doing all they can
to provide relief for the victims of Hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua, Honduras, El
Salvador and Guatemala
(This Week, 14 November, p 5).
Indeed, it is said that to deal with this disaster effectively, the world’s aid
coffers may be stretched to the limit.
This may be so. However, if these countries were at all serious about
providing relief they would reduce their greenhouse emissions, the effects of
which, it is widely accepted, are exacerbating the frequency and possibly the
intensity of extreme weather events.
The industrialised countries have produced over 90 per cent of the
anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions since the middle of the last century, but
have constituted only a minority of the world’s population. An immediate
reduction in emissions would demonstrate that, at the very least, some
responsibility is being taken for the damage from those emissions.
Ways with words
Graham Young complains that the World Intellectual Property Organisation
patent office uses what he calls “antiquated nomenclature” when describing
chemicals (Letters, 7 November, p 66). In fact, the International Union of Pure
and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) allows what are called trivial names as long as
they are widely understood.
A-level students are taught about “methylbenzene” because some committee of
educationalists doesn’t know any better, but it’s “toluene” once you’re out of
school. I have the mental image of a welding apprentice getting a thick ear for
daring to suggest that the labels on his gas cylinders should read “dioxygen”
(oxygen) and “ethyne” (acetylene).
The last time I visited the chemistry lab at my son’s school, I was intrigued
by a bottle of a chemical labelled, if I remember rightly,
2-hydroxypropane-1,2,3-tricarboxylic acid. Underneath was written in very small
letters “citric acid”.
Where to draw the line in the case of some industrial chemicals is another
matter, and I am aware of several areas in which nomenclature needs cleaning up.
The truth is that not many practising chemists like myself can be bothered to do
anything about such a boring subject. This is because we don’t, in fact, use
much by way of nomenclature: we converse by drawing structures.
When we really must know the systematic name, we go and see a documentalist,
because for all but the simplest molecules the technical difficulty is on a par
with that of drafting an Act of Parliament.
Religious fundamentalists think they’re more omniscient than the Good Lord;
musical fundamentalists will have Beethoven’s piano sonatas played on the
execrable instruments the composer complained about all his life. In the world
of science, there are nomenclature fundamentalists and units
fundamentalists.
Impact avoidance
Al Gore’s $75 million Triana satellite
(This Week, 7 November, p 5)
will be perfect for watching an asteroid or comet collide with the Earth.
Of course, if the money had been spent on the struggling Spaceguard proposal
then such an impact might be avoided altogether. See
http://www1.tpgi.com.au/users/tps-seti/spacegd.html.
Correction:
Thanks to reader Ciaran Byrne for pointing out that in the
article on confusion over drugs with similar names
(This Week, 14 November, p 28),
the drug Amiodarone was ironically misspelt as “Amriodarone”.
Letter
Your article on the effect of pollution on the sex life of birds
(This Week, 7 November, p 12)
ends with a comment from one of Britain’s foremost
authorities on birds. His name is given as Andy Gosling.
Clearly, steam has run out of the nominative determinism campaign and New
杏吧原创 is reduced to inventing cases. Andy is not a Gosling, merely a
Gosler.
Clinton determined
There is now a case of nominative determinism that cannot be ignored. It has
been genetically verified that former US president Thomas Jefferson had a
productive affair with a young lady in his employ.
The recent scandal surrounding the present US President, William Jefferson Clinton, proves that he
was doing nothing more than following his nominatively determined fate.
I know that Feedback has stated that the subject is closed, but perhaps this
historical and history-making case can be published as a postscript to the
subject.