Think global
I read your account of California’s carbon trading scheme with interest (24 November, p 14). I am glad economist Luca Taschini said “the best scenario would be one global market” rather than national or regional markets. For several years I have been advocating a global carbon market scheme to begin in 2020.
Rather than the current system of targets set by individual nations, a surer route to success is to cap global emissions to ensure warming does not exceed 2掳C. Force polluters, not governments, to pay, and put a price on global, not national carbon.
The dividends don’t stop there. This new system would yield major climate funds since it allows the UN body responsible for climate negotiations to own and sell emissions allocations. These funds will help poorer countries cope with rising carbon prices, buy new clean technologies, adapt and achieve low-carbon sustainable growth.
There is no other way to win this battle. With the increasingly dire fiscal state of the world, soliciting nations to raise their ambitions is like whipping horses that are already limping. We have lived long enough and seen enough of the sad reality to harbour no illusion on this, haven’t we?
Bright star
I would like to add a little to your report on the death of astronomer and The Sky at Night broadcaster Patrick Moore (15 December, p 9). He always described himself as an amateur astronomer 鈥� and indeed that is what he was, in the sense that he had no degrees, and had never been employed as a professional scientist. But his knowledge was deep and current.
His early enthusiasm for astronomy was triggered by his interest in the moon, which he observed regularly from his private observatory. Most scientists 鈥� including me 鈥� find it hard to explain clearly something we are familiar with and think we are experts on. But Moore had the rare ability to absorb some new discovery, and then immediately expound it clearly to camera, without hesitation, deviation or repetition.
He is irreplaceable, but we can celebrate a long and productive life spent studying the cosmos and inspiring millions, young and old, with his enthusiasm for the wonders in the sky.
Incubator innovation
There is no significant improvement in the survival rates of very premature babies as you reported (8 December, p 7), because there has been no significant advancement in medical technology. Premature babies are still kept in incubators.
The big barrier for earlier-born babies is maturity of the respiratory system, which is incapable of supplying the body with oxygen. Yet modern technology would appear to make possible the development of a rudimentary artificial placenta, where oxygen as well as nutrients can be supplied directly to the infant’s bloodstream.
With no need to breathe air, babies could be kept in liquid tanks, approximating the environment of the womb.
This could push the limit of viability further back, probably allowing the survival of babies much younger than 22 weeks, and with fewer complications.
Breath of fresh air
Further to your editorial and report on the outcome of the climate change summit in Doha, Qatar (15 December, p 5 and p 10), let’s find the positives. I didn’t hear anyone in Doha questioning the science or the need for urgent action. While many were lamenting the pace of the negotiations, the science tells us that there is still time both to mitigate and adapt: even low-lying island states can be saved if collectively we act significantly and immediately.
Policy-makers can witness lives saved within the span of their own careers by instigating common sense adaptation measures such as flood defences and rainwater capture. Signing the second stage of the Kyoto protocol shows real leadership from the UK, and continued pressure from all of us should force others to follow.
Unclear case
Obstetrician Lisa Harris cites protocols on abortions for women who are miscarrying at US Catholic-affiliated hospitals, and by association presumes that the death of Savita Halappanavar in Ireland was due to that country’s restrictive abortion law (24 November, p 29).
That this unfortunate mother asked for or was refused an abortion is far from clear. The initial autopsy reports septicaemia as the cause of death, but the planned official inquiry has yet to end. We should wait for this to be published before reaching any further conclusions.
It should also be pointed out that Irish Medical Council guidelines do allow interventions to treat pregnant women where necessary, even if that treatment indirectly results in the death of the baby.
Fuelling the debate
Coming from an engineering background, I was pleased to see that the only realistic alternative to fossil fuel for transport, namely biofuel from non-food crops, is at last attracting serious attention (8 December, p 34).
It was interesting to note, however, that most of the projects described are based in the US, with its high proportion of vocal climate change naysayers. Where are the UK projects that use, for example, waste heat from power stations to accelerate algal growth, or indeed, hot air from Westminster, home to Parliament?
From Almuth Ernsting, Biofuelwatch
Claims of “carbon negative” fuels rely on the assumption that adding biochar residue to soils will store carbon over the long term and improve soil fertility.
The evidence for this is far from assured. The small number of biochar field trials show that adding it to soils might not increase soil carbon at all, even in the short term, and can be followed by overall soil carbon reductions. Effects on the fertility of soil and plant growth are similarly mixed.
The last year noted: “The impacts of long-term storage of biochar (charcoal) in different soil types and under different environmental conditions are not well understood. Important issues that need to be resolved include the stability of carbon in the biochar, and effects on soil water retention, N2O release, crop yields, mycorrhizal fungi, soil microbial communities and detritivores.”
Ring theory
Your story on planetary rings and moon formation (8 December, p 18) is interesting, but Earth’s moon seems too massive to have originated from a ring system. However, the possibility that early Earth had such a system supports the capture hypothesis for the origin of the moon.
The moon could have been captured by Earth through gravitational interaction or collision with a moonlet already formed from the rings, or with ring material itself.
Mind your language
Mark Pagel suggests that human languages evolve in order to foster group identity (8 December, p 38). And he highlights our linguistic diversity in comparison with animals, saying that you could take a gorilla, chimpanzee, donkey, cricket or goldfish “and plop it down anywhere these species are found, and it would know how to communicate.”
However, many songbird species that occur in different parts of their range. Songs in these species are not transmitted genetically, but, like human language, must be acquired by the young through interaction with parents. Dialects arise because this transmission process introduces innovations and modifications.
In human language, dialect differences certainly provide plenty of grist for the mill of what Pagel calls our “groupishness”, but intergenerational transmission, not groupishness, is the main reason the differences come about in the first place.
English has the most unnecessary difficulties in its spelling, and they are a handicap for a worldwide lingua franca. So the truncated form of universal English known as Globish will not sucseed widely unless the writn language is also updated, as most other writing sistems hav been. Updating is esier than suposed.
Mount Waverley, Victoria, Australia
It would appear that a language has at least two functions 鈥� to communicate and to define a group. People living together may define “their” group by inventing specific words or even a sort of language like rhyming slang. Jargon is another example, where specific words are invented, either within a trade or in-group.
However, some important words may not change. I have been assured that the word for “louse” is roughly the same in all Polynesian languages, right back to the Formosan languages of indigenous Taiwanese.
ET self-destruct
Mathematical biologist Harold de Vladar seems to have overlooked a crucial factor in his efforts to use game theory to weigh up the losses and gains of broadcasting our presence to extraterrestrials, some of whom may be predatory (15 December, p 11).
Any alien species sufficiently hostile to make the trip all the way over here just to attack us would almost certainly have wiped itself out through intraspecies warfare long before they developed interstellar spacecraft.
Modified fears
For many Europeans, the antipathy towards genetically modified crops (13 October, p 8) stems less from their effect on our food than from the concern that their widespread introduction will enable powerful chemical companies to hold farmers to ransom over seed supplies.