Born to be good
If one looks for a morality in other social species 鈥� wolves and meerkats, for instance 鈥� one finds that behaviour that can be regarded as “good” benefits, strengthens and maintains the pack (26 November, p 34). It is normal species behaviour, not optional. Hence “goodness” is normal.
I suspect that the same is true of all social species, including ours during 3 million years or so of small-group hunter-gathering. We would have been cooperative, comradely, compassionate and, if necessary, self-sacrificing, as well as hostile to outsiders. We found our life, meaning, support and purpose in our community. It would have been self-destructive to damage it.
I doubt that anything significant has changed in the 10,000 years of civilisation except that we destroyed the packs and communities and replaced them with agglomerations riven by differences in wealth and power in which morality is most often a means of control.
However, we remain innately social, which is to say, moral animals. The problem is to create a community life suitable for the world today and tomorrow 鈥� not the world of prehistory 鈥� in which self-interest and social benefit are again the same.
Bored to distraction
I read your item about “bored monkeys” with great interest (19 November, p 21). The sterile laboratory environment has many effects on the behaviour and biology of primates. For example, reports by National Primate Research Centers in the US suggest that approximately 90 per cent of caged monkeys show some form of abnormal behaviour, such as rocking and pacing. About 25 per cent engage in self-harming behaviour such as biting their extremities.
I doubt that many of your readers would be surprised to learn that separating monkeys from their mothers during infancy, isolating them in captivity and subjecting them to frequent and intense experimental procedures increases the risk that monkeys will develop these tragic ailments.
Charles Gross points out in your article that people are fortunate because we get to make choices about our environment. We are responsible for choosing the environment that laboratory animals live in as well 鈥� but we just aren’t making the right choices. Given all we know about primates, we must also realise that life in laboratories is at least uncomfortable and distressing for them, and is at times unsafe, painful and frightening. It is time that we replace the just-enough-to-get-by mindset of the current regulatory standards with housing and enrichment practices that truly minimise suffering and promote the well-being of animals in laboratories as much as possible.
Supersonic guzzlers
You juxtaposed two stimulating articles in your 26 November issue: one on supersonic aircraft (p 43) followed by one on glaciers melting (p 46). Is this cause and effect?
Some simple global warming arithmetic is in order. Assume that a 60 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is needed to stabilise the climate. Combine that with a future world population of 10 billion, with each person having an equal right to emissions, and the result is an annual quota of about 0.3 tonnes of carbon (1 tonne CO2) emission per person. Depending on exactly how thirsty the proposed supersonic planes are, a flight of perhaps 1500 kilometres, taking an hour or so, might use up an individual’s carbon quota for the whole year.
High-altitude flight has additional effects. Around the tropopause, 6 to 10 kilometres up, aircraft emissions increase ozone formation and cloud cover, leading to a warming effect of two or three times that due to the CO2 alone, so perhaps the equivalent “global warming” quota could be used up in a half-hour flight. Higher, in the stratosphere, emissions can reduce levels of the ozone that shields the world from dangerous ultraviolet.
The plane that can “whip you from London to Tokyo” will whip the world and its people at the same time. The “眉ber-rich celebrities and time-poor executives” may not see the submerged coastal cities from 15 kilometres up, but what will their reception and business conditions be like on landing?
Such impacts of supersonic (and subsonic) transport have been discussed for some three decades. It is time we learned how to substitute telecommunications for travel where possible, and develop sustainable forms of long-distance transport for all, not just the rich.
Nuclear impact
The Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Establishment has not gained approval for its new laser as expected (26 November, p 20). At a village hall planning meeting on 23 November, West Berkshire Council refused to support AWE’s application because, despite repeated requests, it failed to provide the committee with an Environmental Impact Assessment for the whole site. Councillors deferred a decision to either agree the plan or refer it back to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister for a public inquiry.
AWE did produce a last-minute self-styled “environmental sustainability assessment”, but too late for half the committee to receive it, or for those who did get a copy to consider it in time for the meeting. This little local difficulty may seem far away from the weighty decision needed on whether or not to replace the UK’s Trident nuclear weapon system, but it is emblematic of the unease people feel in unquestioningly fuelling a nuclear arms race that is a waste of money and morally bankrupt.
Forests but no trees
Far from representing a “glimmer of hope”, the latest UN figures actually reveal the continuing glimmer of forests going up in smoke (19 November, p 5). The latest five-yearly UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) figures on global deforestation, in its report Global Forest Resource Assessment 2005, are misleading, inaccurate and understate the real extent of deforestation and damage to forests globally.
The UN figure for “net” deforestation conceals the fact that most deforestation is taking place in the world’s tropical rainforests, whereas most of the reforestation and natural regrowth of forests is taking place in the northern hemisphere. The UN figures for the area of forest remaining are based on a definition of forest as being an area with as little as 10 per cent actual tree cover, which would include badly damaged forests and areas that are actually savannah-like ecosystems.
Moreover, areas of land that at the moment have no trees on them at all, but that are “expected” to regenerate, are also counted as forests. Finally, the FAO includes in its data for existing areas of forest those that are covered by industrial tree plantations, which actually lack many of the key functions of true forests.
It is a global disgrace that after decades of concern about the world’s declining forests, the UN still can’t produce an accurate assessment of how much forest is actually left. The FAO’s figures are used as the main basis for global decision-making and policy on forests. In their current form they will lead to poorly informed decisions. We believe that the latest forest resource assessment should be scrapped, and a new more rigorous assessment carried out.
Waders on the roof
I was interested to note in Gail Vines’s article no mention of oystercatchers nesting in cities (29 October, p 34). Oystercatchers nest on flat, gravel-covered roofs in Britain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Northern Germany, and Belgium. None have been reported in France. Aberdeen has about 220 pairs nesting on roofs in the city and a few pairs nesting on the ground in car parks, industrial yards and flowerbeds. They feed the young on earthworms obtained from playing fields and other grassy areas near the buildings.
The birds can exploit the roofs because they are one of the few wading birds that carry food to their young. Interestingly, about 24 towns in Scotland have a few pairs nesting on roofs, but only about six towns in England. I would be very interested to hear of any oystercatchers nesting on roofs or in an urban situation, and I can be contacted at alistair@cairncry.freeserve.co.uk.
Emordnilaps
Paul Dove’s idea of backwardly-spelled words for reversed or inverted actions is fun, but not original (Feedback, 19 November). Anyone familiar with the writings of Terry Pratchett will have come across “knurd”, a state of excessive sobriety that strips away the cosy mental fog that prevents people from being overwhelmed by their insignificance in the immensity of the universe. People suffering from this condition require alcohol just to bring them back to “normality”.
From Dan Huisjen
When a knitter makes a mistake and must remove a few stitches, one at a time, in order to get back to the site of the mistake and correct it, they are said to “tink”.
Brooksville, Maine, US
From Barrie Wells
The Welsh language has two words for “now”: rwan and nawr. The former is more prevalent in the South, the latter more prevalent in the North.
Deganwy, Conwy, UK
From Andrew Fogg
It would be very handy to be able to pord something, and I knilb at the clock lots of times every morning. It struck me that an example of the genre has been current in my family for many years: “zzub” has always been our word for the noise that bees make when they fly backwards.
Thinking of things working backwards, you’ll be pleased to hear that in a fine piece of nominative antideterminism, one of my father’s hobbyhorses during his long career in environmental health was clean air.
Great Gransden, Cambridgeshire, UK
Arctic's ice-free habit
The shrinking of the Arctic ice cap has occurred before (8 October, p 12). In 1422 a Chinese squadron sailed in open water through Baffin Bay and then around the north coast of Greenland, and thereafter back to China charting the north coast of Siberia from the White Sea to the Bering Strait as it went (see 1421, The Year China Discovered the World by Gavin Menzies, Bantam Books).
This suggests that the Arctic ice cover varies in extent over the centuries and/or millennia. Presumably this effect will also be mirrored in the Antarctic. Assuming the Chinese voyage really happened, this indicates that there have been previous episodes of global warming which pre-dated the today’s concerns about the production of “greenhouse gases”.
For the record
鈥� Our article on the unreliability of gunshot residue evidence cited a report on the procedures of the Baltimore County Police Department’s crime laboratory (26 November, p 6). In fact, this lab does not carry out gunshot residue analysis. The report we quoted referred instead to the Baltimore City Police Department, which is a separate jurisdiction with its own crime lab. We offer our sincere apologies to the Baltimore County Police Department for this error.
鈥� In the story “Innocents die as DNA goes untested” (26 November, p 10) we misspelled the name of the barrister Faisal Saifee. Our apologies.
鈥� In “The day the gold rush stopped” (12 November, p 60) we reported that in the 1880s, 6000 square kilometres of California farmland was buried in mud from upstream gold mining in the 1880s. The correct figure is 6000 hectares.
鈥� In last week’s Insider article on Ireland (3 December, p 58, UK edition only), we said that 鈧�250 billion was set aside for science for 2002 to 2006. This should have been 鈧�2.5 billion for 2000 to 2006.
Scary science, comforting religion
The “perennial philosophy” 鈥� appealing to perceived universal truths about human existence to prop up religions 鈥� has not survived for thousands of years because of its veracity, but because of its appeal (5 November, p 48). Traditional spiritual cosmologies support and encourage ignorance by providing purpose and meaning to suffering and discontent. The faithful tolerate their condition because they believe in God, personal growth, redemption, and eternal life. Religion offers hope, tells us our lives have meaning beyond the mundane, and insists that we are eternal souls beloved of God who need not fear the darkness.
Science does the opposite. Science makes us feel frightened and alone. It tells us that we are mere mechanism hopelessly enslaved to biochemical processes beyond our control, that we are in truth nothing more then this fragile mortal body. Evolution, whether fact or fiction, makes us feel that life has no purpose other than brute survival, and that the universe is a vast, cold and impersonal place. Science breeds terror.
People (and this includes all scientists) are open-minded to the extent that they are able to embrace ideas and concepts that do not threaten their established beliefs and prejudices. The brain cannot convince the heart. Science versus creationism or intelligent design is not an argument to be won by facts. If science wishes to supplant religion it must offer comfort, mystery and hope.
Ironing out the wrinkle
Why were you surprised that Morphy Richards asks purchasers of its Turbojet steam iron if they bought the iron because they wanted to eat more healthily (Feedback, 19 November)? I have it on good authority that one should have iron in one’s diet.
Stew from the vents
If we agree that life might arise out of a chemical stew, then what better candidate could there be than the mixture of water, gases and metal sulphides spewed out by a deep-sea vent (12 November, p 44)?
Free oxygen would not be needed by primitive life forms, as many of today’s bacteria can use the sulphate radical in seawater as an oxidant for hydrogen or organic compounds.
From John Postgate
Your article perpetuates a misunderstanding concerning hydrothermal vent communities. They are not independent of sunlight. The chemosynthetic processes of the primary producers do indeed depend on the oxidation of methane or hydrogen sulphide, but the ultimate oxidant is dissolved oxygen, generated by photosynthesis.
Lewes, East Sussex, UK
How green your garden?
It is all very well for the European Commission to introduce energy performance directives for buildings from 4 January next year, in an attempt to meet the European Union’s Kyoto protocol targets (5 November, p 24). But should any future “thermal efficiency police” ever point a thermograph camera into your average suburban back garden, I wonder what they might make of all the gas-powered barbecues, garden heaters, insect-repellent candles, fireworks and banks of 1-kilowatt halogen flood lamps that seem to have become such an important part of our modern social lifestyle?
Missing neutron
I found your article on fusion encouraging. At last there seems to be progress in investigating what could become a vital world resource if the pros outweigh the cons (12 November, p 52). But the article did not give details of the vital reactions needed to create the tritium fuel in the lithium blanket. It is clear that a neutron can react with a lithium-6 atom to produce two deuterium atoms and one tritium. But natural lithium is mostly lithium-7, not lithium-6. What happens to the extra neutron? Is this released or recycled somehow?
The editor writes:
鈥� Lithium-7 also produces deuterium, tritium and an extra neutron. In an ideal design, this extra neutron is then captured by another lithium-6. Almost all the blanket designs are enriched with lithium-6 to enhance tritium production.