Major migrations
Kate Ravilious claims that “no empirical data exists on the movement of ancient hunter-gatherer tribes” (25 November 2006, p 44). There are in fact many examples of hunter-gatherer communities that moved long distances within a few generations, if you accept their languages as evidence.
In North America there are two small groups speaking Algic languages, the Wiyot and the Yurok, on the Californian coast, a thousand kilometres west of the other speakers of languages in the same group, the Algonquin. The linguistic evidence indicates that they moved several thousand years ago. Early in the last millennium the ancestors of the Apache and Navaho travelled down from their Athabaskan homeland in north-west Canada to what is now the south-west US. In Australia the Yolngu, a Pama-Nyungan-speaking people of north-east Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, are located a thousand kilometres from their linguistic relatives, with dozens of non-Pama-Nyungan languages in between.
Once hunter-gatherer groups are forced, for whatever reason, to move from their ancestral land, they have no reason not to keep on moving in the same direction every time food runs low or the locals turn unfriendly. Eventually they will die out, be assimilated into another group, find a new homeland so attractive that they decide to stay or, as in two out of the three cases above, they will be forced to stop by an impenetrable barrier: the sea.
Of course, this behaviour isn’t restricted to hunter-gatherers. My own ancestors, after living within a couple of hundred kilometres of one place for a millennium or so, upped and travelled 10,000 kilometres to the other side of the world, where their descendants have remained for over a century and will probably stay for many centuries more.
Sceptical inquirer
The creationist group “Truth in Science” apparently wishes to correct teaching that is, according to their website, “dogmatic and unbalanced” (2 December 2006, p 4). In that case they would no doubt wish to see this approach taken throughout the curriculum. They would presumably wish for a less dogmatic and more balanced view to be taken of religious education 鈥� with coverage of such issues as “What is the evidence for a God?” and “What are the aspects of human psychology that make us go down on our knees to worship imaginary beings?”
I would suggest that a suitable teaching pack be delivered to all schools, both secular and religious.
Attainable gas targets
The UK government’s Stern report considered the economics of climate change (25 November 2006, p 5). Unfortunately it appears to contain a serious confusion over the units used to refer to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
The report refers to the present level of greenhouse gases as 430 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent, or ppmCO2(e). This measures all gases in the atmosphere, weighted to the strength of the greenhouse effect of each. To use CO2 equivalents is fair enough, but the report then compares these with a pre-industrial level of 281 ppm of actual CO2.
This is not comparing like with like. It also refers to the well-known targets for stabilisation at levels of 450 and 550 ppmCO2(e), whereas the International Panel on Climate Change reports refer to levels of 450 and 550 ppm of actual CO2.
If Stern wants to compare the present level of 430 ppmCO2(e) with future stabilisation targets, then these should probably be expressed as around 507 and 620 ppmCO2(e).
This apparent confusion appears again in the statement about the Stern Report by David Miliband in the UK House of Commons on 30 October. His statement and the ensuing discussion hinted that a target of 450 ppmCO2(e) is unattainable when we already have 430 ppmCO2(e) in the atmosphere. He should have stuck to the same units and referred to the target as 507 ppmCO2(e).
This matters tremendously, because this latter target is much more attainable. The difference between stabilising at 450 and 550 ppm CO2 is a difference of several degrees Celsius in global warming. I hope that the UK government will not go down the wrong road because of a confusion of units.
Safety out of reach
I worked on the early stages of the proposed directive implementing the European Union REACH system for control of commercial chemicals (9 December 2006, p 7). The final text is scarcely recognisable as the same measure. Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the conservation organisation WWF, in a joint statement with consumer groups, denounced it as “a deal struck behind closed doors”, pointing out that it “will allow many chemicals of very high concern 鈥� including many that cause cancer, birth defects and other serious illnesses 鈥� to stay on the market and be used in consumer products even when safer alternatives are available”. Kartika Liotard, a member of the European Parliament, described it as “one more example of power politics in which the interests of industry have been put before those of the general public”.
The most important objections to the compromise proposal are the lack of a general obligation either to replace dangerous substances wherever an alternative exists, or to inform consumers about dangerous substances, except for those in the very highest category. This follows what Liotard referred to as “the lobbying war which has raged around this proposal” from which “the industry has clearly emerged as the winner, while environmental and health NGOs have been thrown a few insignificant crumbs”. This is the latest example of a “compromise” which is in reality a capitulation to the irresponsible, profit-hungry corporations which increasingly dictate policy at European level.
Trees of wrath
I have no doubt that Africa is getting the short end of the stick once again, this time in the context of carbon trading negotiations (9 December 2006, p 10).
I also wonder about the wisdom of the proposed means of gaining carbon credits: planting trees across “millions of square kilometres of farmland”. This sounds like a very environmentally invasive plan: more pleasant-sounding than deforesting the same area of land, but potentially just as destructive in terms of alteration of ecosystems and destruction of habitats.
It wouldn’t do anything for Africa’s real problems; instead it would make African nations reliant on yet more handouts from the First World that wouldn’t really help their economic development.
Surely we can think of a better plan. My nomination: money gained from carbon taxation in the developed world 鈥� including, urgently, the US 鈥� should be spent on building infrastructure in Africa and east Asia to help nations build green economies directly, leapfrogging over the polluting stage of industrialisation as much as possible.
The editor writes:
Louis Verchot of the World Agroforestry Centre, quoted in the article, is proposing planting trees not “all over” farms but between fields, in the hope that as well as capturing carbon this will improve soils and increase crop yields.
Phone fee flaws
Your report on the proposal that cellphones be used to trigger toll-road charges would have been better placed on the Feedback page, in the Ludicrous Proposals category (9 December 2006, p 29). Under the system outlined, every phone-owning passenger in any vehicle (car, bus, train or plane) would incur a toll every time they crossed the boundary of a cellphone region, as would hikers and boat owners.
Perhaps you omitted some vital detail?
The editor writes:
It might not be the phone in your pocket that talks to the road-pricing network. For example, cars could have cellphone modules installed under the hood. If drivers registered this number, or even their phone number, others would not be charged.
From Derek Storkey
Motorists are already charged to use the roads. It is called petrol tax. It is amazingly easy to collect, needs no high technology, no infrastructure, no vehicle sensing and no call centres to deal with complaints.
Even better, it doubles as an eco-tax, penalising cars according to the amount of carbon dioxide they put into the atmosphere. The concept has a proven track record 鈥� compare US fuel taxes and average engine size with those in Europe. Much as I hate to say it, if you want to penalise road use, raise the petrol tax. Some may say that one thing it cannot do is charge selectively based on what roads you use. But it doesn’t need to. Congestion is self-limiting: if you don’t like it you make sure you don’t live in congested areas, or you choose routes and times of travel that avoid congested places, or you use public transport.
Better yet, by delaying every passenger by the same amount, no matter what their social status or income, congestion is egalitarian. What’s more, if you accept rich people’s argument that their time is worth more than other people’s, then congestion has a greater impact on them.
All this is a shame, since the article went on to describe a really nifty bit of technology. But if we are going to implement road pricing, let’s be honest about the motives. It is either a way for rich people to use tax revenue to make it harder for poor people to clutter up the roads, or a way for the security services to be able to keep tabs on the whereabouts of anyone who uses a vehicle, any time, anywhere.
Hook, Hampshire, UK
For the record
鈥� Our story about the possible replacement of the caesium atomic clock with strontium contained inaccuracies (9 December 2006, p 32). The frequency involved is that corresponding to the energy of a photon absorbed or emitted when an electron changes quantum states, not the oscillation of the electrons as the story stated. Atomic clocks, as their name suggests, are based on atoms, not ions.
鈥� According to Domingo An铆bal Garc铆a-Hern谩ndez’s research, the solar system might be younger, not older, than we think it is, as all those who read to the end of the story would have spotted (18 November 2006, p 21). Also his name is not Pedro 鈥� sorry.
鈥� Saanich Inlet is on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, not in the Canadian Arctic as we stated in our story on soil as a sink for carbon (2 December 2006, p 13).
鈥� In the feature entitled “The dead zones”, on marine pollution, we asserted that nearly every country around the Black Sea is a member of the European Union (9 December 2006, p 38). Actually, none was then a member.
Reality is shared
Roger Penrose’s article on reality seems to miss the mark (18 November 2006, p 32). Where a reality external to the observer exists, then the observer merely rationalises, processes and expresses it. If more than one observer does this and communicates their expression, such interactions may refine others’ perceptions, perhaps through what amounts to “destructive testing” of reality along scientific lines.
Such ideas are already contained in the ancient concept of dialectic, which in classical philosophy relates to language 鈥� that is, to communication between at least two parties, even where one is entirely passive in the conversation. In dialectic, just as in now dismissed concepts such as animism, lies rather more truth about the nature of life and its relationship to reality than meets the eye. It is only in this relational sense that reality can really be meaningfully discussed.
Dialectic is thus interactive 鈥� whereas scientific thought processes as currently understood tend to be based on a dogmatic search for certainty that is solipsistic, as if the observer were the only intelligence in the universe. This quest for pure and absolute description may account for the way we return to gnawing at this rather sterile issue.
Logic, mathematics and all abstract thinking are forms of dialogue or dialectic. The key to loosening this desire to get an absolute grip on reality is to understanding that “according to whom?” is the ultimate question, for a human being at least, whatever the figments of our imaginations may choose to say about it.