Parental guidance
As an Irishman living in Germany and married to a German, I was interested in the graph showing that the teenage birth rate in Germany is roughly half that in Ireland (5 March, p 44). Why such a difference?
The main difference that I have observed is the attitude of parents. For example, my 16-year-old German nephew was recently invited by his 16-year-old girlfriend to sleep over with her in her parents’ house 鈥� in her room, in her bed. When he told his mother this, she phoned the mother of his girlfriend. Her mother confirmed that she knew about the invitation, and everything was OK as she had made sure that her daughter knew about contraception and that of course they would be using condoms. Both mothers trusted their children and were relieved that they were open enough to discuss the issue with them.
This may be anecdotal evidence, but such an attitude is the norm and not the exception in Germany. Here it is generally accepted that teenagers have sex. And why not? In contrast, in Ireland the attitude is that teenage sex should not happen. It is dirty and immoral.
Having sex is as natural as eating. And, like eating, it can have deleterious consequences. However, we do not tell our teenagers to stop eating. Instead we encourage them to eat healthily.
From Patrick Davey
A major issue is the peer pressure generated through the media, particularly teenage magazines, which consider sexual activity to be so much the norm that not to engage becomes the abnormality.
Here in Uganda, the only country to reduce the level of HIV and AIDS, that success has been managed by courageously promoting the culture change of ABC: Abstain, Be faithful and use Condoms. Although still at very low levels, heterosexual transmission of HIV is rising in Ireland and England, so it would be wise to start going for the culture change before the situation gets out of hand.
Fort Portal, Uganda
The rich have it
The statistical physics economic model of Sudhakar Yarlagadda surely does not support the theoretical conclusion that poverty cannot be changed (12 March, p 6). This theory is clearly false because it flies in the face of numerous facts.
The Scandinavian countries today have much less poverty than the US 鈥� which 30 years ago had much less poverty than it does today. This model, if valid, is surely just as applicable to various places and times 鈥� so it cannot support a conclusion that denies the differences between them. That should come as no surprise. After all, statistical mechanics does not prove it is impossible to heat a gas and raise the energy of most of the atoms in it.
The conclusion that we can rationally draw from this model is that the best way to eliminate poverty is not by hoping that a market will provide everyone with an adequate income, but rather through social programmes that subsidise essentials such as food, housing, mass transportation, and healthcare. Such programmes remove these essentials from the income level that is statistically distributed, so that even those who get the worst of life’s collisions will be spared the worst depths of poverty.
From David Jones
The economists and statisticians in your report appear to be aiming at expanding on the celebrated exchange between Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway:
“Ernest, the rich are different from us.”
“Yes, they have more money.”
However, I am surprised that a difference in income distribution between the very rich and the relatively poor is considered significant.
The super-rich 3 per cent of the population are not “working for a living” in the generally accepted sense of the term. The large majority of these people inherit their wealth. The distribution of their incomes would be very likely to be qualitatively different from that of everyone else’s.
Rather than demonstrating any physical law, the research merely seems a consequence of the social law that capitalist society is divided into classes.
Llanwrtyd Wells, Powys, UK
Space sisterhood
Recent letters about cranky lighthouse keepers suggest that long space trips may prove psychologically impractical (5 March, p 33). Could a possible solution be a female-only crew? With a few notable exceptions, women generally coexist with less friction than men. They also appear to use less oxygen 鈥� for instance, women use 30 to 50 per cent less air than men when diving. For really long interstellar trips, they could also reproduce to maintain crew numbers.
With these advantages it seems odd that such an obvious resource is often dismissed, as illustrated by the quote from the Chinese spacecraft designer (12 March, p 8). Or could it be that women see the futility of Mars trips, and allow deluded male flight planners to skirt the issue?
Size of Wales
I’ve been waiting for someone better qualified than I to make this point, but they haven’t, so here we go. The definitive work on land areas is produced by the one and only superpower. The CIA’s fact book gives convenient area comparisons at for: Albania 鈥� slightly smaller than Maryland, United Kingdom 鈥� slightly smaller than Oregon, United States 鈥� about half the size of Russia, about three-tenths the size of Africa, about half the size of South America, or slightly larger than Brazil.
Using the figures at , we can calculate that 1 UK = 8 Belgiums. Owing to an oversight, Wales isn’t mentioned. Other sources for the value of Wales put it at almost exactly a Burma and a touch under an El Salvador. However, a Wales is bigger than a Slovenia.
I usually get out more, but the size of my liver is approaching a Kingman Reef, so I stayed in tonight.
Drain the wetlands
Your article about hydroelectric dams leaves out an important fact about atmospheric methane (26 February, p 8).
The greatest contribution to methane emissions 鈥� almost half 鈥� is from wetlands. These have a much more important effect on atmospheric methane than hydro power stations. The worldwide attempt to stop wetlands drainage is a greater danger to the environment than the building of hydro stations.
Atmospheric methane concentrations are falling at an increasing rate, yet the IPCC continues to predict that methane concentrations are increasing. The observed methane reduction is almost certainly due to the draining of wetlands. It is good thing that the campaign against it does not work.
From Steve Bowen
Inorganic matter is not supposed to have instantly organised itself into replicating, metabolising, contained cells with heritable characteristics. Life would have emerged through a slow series of increases in complexity, stopping on the way to form amino acids, proteins, nucleic acids and the like.
Also the “laboratory” that was primeval Earth was immense, with a diversity of chemical and physical environments unattainable in a test tube. Most of all, there was plenty of time, with no accountant watching the budget (omnipotent or otherwise).
Ashford, Kent, UK
Give it time
John Athanasiou is quite correct that the quality of research input from the Los Alamos team trying to create artificial life will have a big effect on the success of the project (12 March, p 27). However, he fails to explore his thesis fully.
If the quality of the research input is very good then the team may have to try a few dozen combinations of chemicals and conditions in a few tens of litres of fluid, and will achieve their goal after a few years of effort. If the quality of the input is not as good then they may need to try several hundred combinations in hundreds of litres of fluid and take several decades. If the quality is lower still then the team may have to pass the challenge on to the next generation of researchers, who may produce life after trying many thousands of combinations and litres after a century or more.
If you extrapolate this progression you eventually get to a point where no research input is needed. This would require many billions of combinations in teralitres of fluid over millions of years. All of which sounds like the conditions on the Earth a few billion years ago.
So Athanasiou has his model for the spontaneous generation of life after all.
From Steve Welch
So, Athanasiou argues that life could not have arisen without some intelligent input. But wait a minute. By the same argument, the intelligence that gave the input could not have arisen without some other intelligent input. But wait a minute…
Folkestone, Kent, UK
Truckloads of tuck
I know we are eating more and more, but I find it hard to believe that 1.58 billion tonnes of food are transported by road annually in the UK (5 March, p 17).
That is 26.3 tonnes per person, or 72 kilos of food per day per person. Unlikely, I think 鈥� or am I not getting my share?
Jules Pretty responds: The figures quoted actually concern “agri-food” 鈥� which includes food, animal feed, drink and fertiliser. Some of the transported food is substantially reduced in mass and volume before it reaches our plates. Three-quarters of cereal produced in the UK is fed to animals, which of course only produce a small proportion of the mass as meat. Some items of food are also lifted many times. For example, an animal is moved long-distance to an abattoir, then as meat to manufacturing plants, then as a meal to the retail outlet. But we only eat the output once. A TV meal of 30 ingredients will need each one to be moved to one point to create the meal.
Mud-slinging
Thank you for publishing the essay by Jeremy Leggett on Michael Crichton’s State of Fear (5 March, p 50). It really helped confirm my views on the subject, but I’m afraid not in the way Leggett intended.
His article demonstrated clearly to me all of the ugly tactics that Crichton explains about the global warming industry. Attack is the best form of defence, they say, particularly when there is no real defence. First, set up a straw man: Greenpeace blew up a French ship rather than the other way round (oh yeah, Yanks really believe that, they must be so stoopid), then blow it away, reeking with indignation. Then pour ridicule, scorn and sarcasm all over the book to fan the flames, denigrate Crichton to destroy his credibility, bring in funding dependence on the “neocon oil lobby” to really set the burning body alight, and finish up with the predictable doomsday scenario. Crichton is ashes! Hooray for the Greens! All high emotion, assertion, indignation and condemnation, with not a real fact in sight.
From Kim Russell
Well done to Crichton for writing a work of fiction (mark my words here) that has incited such a frenzied attack. Dangerous fiction? I think not. Most people can tell the difference between fact and fiction when it is presented unambiguously (in a book of fiction, for example).
However, the title of Leggett’s essay is a symptom of a wider problem. Crichton evaluated the evidence for and against global warming and decided he was on the sceptics’ side of the fence. He is entitled to that view, and to weave a story around it. The fact that he chose a terrorist plot is indicative of the current state of the world, but especially of the public’s taste in fiction. Bombarded 24 hours a day by sensationalist media, we are all suffering adjective-fatigue. Where do you go when “devastating” is used to describe someone’s lost washing?
North Molton, Devon, UK