Two cheers for trees
As letters from Max Trevitt (31 January, p 38) and Ceri Reid (14 February, p 30) make clear, the ability of forests to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere on a long-term basis is a controversial issue, fraught with scientific uncertainty. However, current understanding indicates that forests are already helping to slow the build-up of atmospheric CO2.
Three mechanisms are involved. First, forests are increasing in North America and western Europe, and have some way to go before they reach a carbon balance. The scale of the potential benefit from this can be judged from the fact that up to 20 per cent of the CO2 released into the atmosphere by human activities is due to deforestation, mostly in the tropics, rather than the direct burning of fossil fuels. If this were stopped or even reversed, the benefits could be very large indeed.
Second, it appears that some forests sequester carbon more or less continuously, even when the age profile of trees themselves is in equilibrium, because wood is not their only form of sequestered carbon. “Old growth” forests lay down carbon from the atmosphere as ever deeper layers of partially decomposed leaf litter in the soil. This offsets the build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere from volcanic emissions, and it is how oil and coal reserves were formed in the first place. If such forests and other appropriate vegetation types, such as peat bogs, can be better protected, the build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere will certainly be greatly reduced.
Lastly, while it is true that the wood harvested from forests will eventually return to the atmosphere as CO2, if the use of this wood has prevented or replaced the use of fossil fuel in some shape or form, then that too is a benefit. For instance, the manufacture of most building materials consumes fossil fuel, growing trees does not, so the use of timber for construction also tends to reduce carbon emissions.
The issue is how to produce the wood we need without disturbing those vital old-growth forests. If carefully managed plantation forests could be developed to supply more of the wood humanity needs, they will have a central role in achieving global sustainability.
Voting for nobody
I have to agree with the comment “electronic voting machines are threatening democracy” in your article, but not for any of the reasons given (14 February, p 6).
Certainly, the potential dangers of electronic vote-tampering and data loss are problems which need to be addressed. But a far more fundamental democratic right which risks being undermined is that of electors to cast their vote for none of the candidates. This is entirely different from simply not voting 鈥� which might just be an indication of apathetic indifference 鈥� since it proves a willingness to engage in the democratic process.
You refer in the article to a recent election in Florida in which direct recording electronic voting machines (DREs) “recorded 134 blank votes out of about 10,000 cast in an election that was decided by just 12 votes”. The conclusion drawn by some observers, namely that 134 people cannot simply have walked away without casting their vote because “that is unlikely in a simple election like this one, with just two candidates” is naive. What option does the dissatisfied elector have other than to walk away if presented with only two candidates, neither of whom he or she wishes to vote for?
If electronic voting procedures are to democratically reflect the old paper voting system, electors must be given the option of indicating that they find none of the candidates worthy of their vote, and must also be provided with a comments box as the electronic equivalent of spoiling their ballot paper 鈥� an effective means of informing those analysing the results of the reasons for their non-vote.
Soul survivor
Researchers surely do not need to go on feeling embarrassed about reporting the obvious fact that many non-human animals are to some degree conscious. (14 February, p 32).
The refusal to admit this has never been scientifically based. It arose from the metaphysical belief that human consciousness was due to something supernatural 鈥� a soul sent from outside the body. This was why it was supposed not to be found in animals, which were literally just machines.
Now that we know how closely the neural basis of human consciousness resembles that of other species, it seems perverse still to make this blank distinction. The word “consciousness” can certainly be confined to human thought if that seems convenient. But this is surely contrary to its most ordinary usage, which centres on pain. When we want to know whether the anaesthetist has done his or her work properly, the natural question for us to ask is: “Is the patient conscious?” And this usage is every bit as appropriate for vets as it is for surgeons of other kinds.
When looks deceive
Surely it cannot be any surprise to anyone that the expression of genes is at least as important as their mere presence in the genome (21 February, p 36).
Do not the caterpillar and the butterfly have the same genome? An alien taxonomist on a weekend visit to Earth would undoubtedly classify them as different species.
Slow getaway
The plan to remotely stop cars dead in their tracks misses an opportunity (21 February, p 24). Rather than shutting the engine off fully, why not restrict the speed?
Not only would car chases get a lot less exciting, but the stolen cars 鈥� and their drivers 鈥� would look a lot more suspicious.
Seeing pink
In her letter, Fiona Dumelow asks whether “it is the language or the people that are colour-blind” (21 February, p 31). It is extremely unlikely that an entire language population would be colour-blind, and it is a far-fetched conclusion to draw from the fact that their language has only one word for two colours.
A lot of languages do not have a word for pink 鈥� Japanese had to borrow from English 鈥� but that does not mean that speakers of these languages don’t see pink. Conversely, Russian has two words for blue, one of them being “light blue”, the way pink is “light red” 鈥� but speakers of other languages can see light blue too.
Futile fusion
There are concerns that if Japan hosts ITER, it could have the potential to build fusion bombs because of the technology that will be needed to handle tritium (7 February, p 7).
If this is true, then once the technology is developed, any country with fusion technology will be able to develop fusion bombs. The inevitable conclusion is that only those countries that already have fusion bombs should be allowed to operate fusion power. How, then, will this clean technology benefit the environment if only a very limited number of countries can use it?
Safety in a box
In his article, James Randerson neglects a primary benefit of motor vehicle event data recorders: improved safety via better data on crashes (21 February, p 24).
MVEDRs would provide crash investigators with valuable insights into what design features lead to crashes and injuries. This would enable researchers to better assess the performance of emerging safety features and formulate better safety standards. Gaps in safety performance could also be more quickly identified, and emerging defects uncovered.
Privacy considerations are important, and there would have to be safeguards against abuse. But the government has for years collected data of this kind 鈥� though of lower quality 鈥� without posing a privacy problem.
Most auto companies are installing the devices as a protection against litigation, but each system has its own technologies and protocols, hampering its use for public data collection. The key question is whether the data will be standardised and used for the public good, or remain under industry’s private control.
Company for Hubble?
It would appear that one of the main reasons why Hubble has to go is that its gyroscopes are in constant need of repair, and NASA doesn’t want to continue sending up missions to repair them (31 January, p 4).
Hubble is apparently in an orbit some 150 kilometres higher than the International Space Station (ISS). So why not modify either or both their orbits to permit easy access to Hubble from the ISS on the odd occasions that this is necessary?
Their orbits only need bring them close for a short while, so Hubble could continue at its present inclination if that were a primary concern.
David L. Chandler writes:
鈥� This sounds like a tempting idea. There’s just one problem with it. One of the most difficult things to do with an orbiting spacecraft, in terms of energy expenditure, is to change the inclination of the orbit in relation to the Earth’s equator 鈥� in aerospace parlance, to make a “plane change”.
Hubble, launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, is at 22.5 degrees inclination. The ISS, designed to be reachable by spacecraft launched from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, is at 51 degrees inclination 鈥� a very big difference. The energy penalty of plane changes is precisely why the ESA launch site at Kourou (latitude 7 degrees north) has such an advantage for launching geosynchronous satellites, which must end up at zero inclination.
No rocket now available is powerful enough to change the inclination of the massive ISS to 22.5 degrees 鈥� and if that were done, the ISS would become inaccessible to Soyuz, the only human-rated craft that can now reach it. Changing Hubble’s orbit would require the shuttle to attach some huge rocket to it 鈥� but, of course, the shuttle is currently grounded, which brings us back to square one.
Grass gives omega-3
Researchers at Harvard Medical School who have genetically engineered mice with a gene from a nematode worm to enrich their tissues and milk with omega-3 (7 February, p 18) may be unaware of the research done in the UK at the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research in Aberystwyth, which has found that grazing animals produce more omega-3 than housed animals.
Also, Heide Dorte-Matthes of the University of Rostock in Germany has shown that pasture-fed beef has three to four times as much omega-3 as intensively fed beef. The least favourable values were found in meat from animals raised on intensive feed lots in North America.
For the record
鈥� In our item on the herbal remedy boom (10 January, p 10), the Latin genus name for the first plant mentioned, tetu lakha, had a “t” where it should be a “p”. Nothatodytes, in other words, should read Nothapodytes.
Keep the secret secret
I’m not an enormous fan of the trend towards biometric IDs because I believe most systems will only assist individuals with a serious leaning towards ID theft. People are likely to become so accustomed to the use of a technology that it ceases to be questioned, and therefore becomes unreasonably trusted.
However, according to your short technology news item, IBM seems to have almost cracked a major part of my concerns by having a “secret code” that is used to distort the image recorded on the card (21 February, p 23). But then it goes and spoils it by suggesting that the said “secret code” should be recorded on the ID card too. Why not simply leave it unrecorded and have it entered for verification by the individual owning the ID, as we do with other PINs? That would be far more secure 鈥� until someone develops the technology to scan my thoughts at a distance.