Editor's pick: Facing up to catastrophe's cost
I agreed with every word of Debora MacKenzie’s commentary on the World Health Organization’s response to the Ebola outbreak (19/26 December 2015, p 40), but I wish she had taken the argument one stage further.
She refers to concerns about “upsetting” member states and obliquely to the need for funding. It is this that needs to be tackled directly and, very probably, that would mean upsetting a large number of people in high places.
A very similar conclusion may be drawn about the outcome of the Paris climate talks (19/26 December 2015, p 7 and p 8): namely that national governments simply don’t get what is going to be involved in terms of expenditure.
The cash will ultimately come from citizens and businesses of those nations, and in turn taxation will need to increase.
In the UK, a number of large banks continue to pay a pittance in taxes, while the top 1 per cent of wealth-holders now own over 57 per cent 鈥� a level scarcely known since Victorian days. The actions of the government seem only to exacerbate this situation.
Unless some sort of dose of reality is injected into efforts to achieve an appropriate distribution of the wealth of nations, then any notions about fighting disease or climate change will prove to be so much hot air.
Kirkby Malzeard, North Yorkshire, UK
Deities versus multiverses
Mary-Jane Rubenstein describes the argument that because our universe’s constants are so precisely honed to produce suns, planets and even life, there must be many universes, each with a different set of constants; or there must be a creator who deemed it so (19/26 December, p 64).
Maybe there is a third option. Stuart Clark (2 January, p 33) describes a “big boing”, whereby instead of a single big bang, the universe shrinks to a pinprick of extremely high density, and then rebounds. If the universe does this cyclically, perhaps physics reconstitutes each time with a different set of constants. We are living in the universe that happens to have galaxies and gluons. Maybe the large voids that have been spotted in our cosmos are not areas where neighbouring universes have sideswiped us, but are remnants of previous expansions, with a different set of laws?
Lydbrook, Gloucestershire, UK
Deities versus multiverses
Rubenstein described the switch from a geocentric to a heliocentric point of view simplifying our description of the solar system. Replacing an anthropocentric view of the cosmos with one that sees life as arising from the universe’s properties could do the same. The question is no longer “Why is the universe so well suited for life?” but “Why is life so suited to the universe?”, with the answer: “If it were not, then life would not exist.”
Wincanton, Somerset, UK
Deities versus multiverses
Rubenstein appears to conclude that the traditional Jewish/Christian/Muslim view of God being separate and distinct from the universe is incompatible with the notion of an infinite universe or multiverse: if either were infinite, there would be no room left for a separate and distinct God. But we know there are many infinities. The set of all integers is infinite, yet is a subset of the set of rational numbers. It is possible for there to be mutually exclusive infinities: that which is uncreated (God) and that which is created (the universe or multiverse).
Sydney, Australia
Deities versus multiverses
鈥� I am trying to show that when secular cosmologies appeal to infinite explanatory powers, they do philosophical, mythological, and even theological work. One might interpret that as doing away with God, or as fully compatible with God, or 鈥� and this is simply the position I find most compelling 鈥� as redefining what the term “God” means.
<b>First class post</b>
I like the sound of my voice the way I hear it. Other people hear it differently
Joanna Bialek the finding that listening to your own voice helps understand your emotions (16 January, p 18).
Disturbed sleep is memory's real foe
You report that “midnight feasts hamper memory” (2 January, p 18). Is it not more likely that disturbed sleep is the determining factor? The forgetful group of mice had “shorter bouts of sleep” and their circadian rhythms were “out of sync”. I suggest a trial with two equally sleep-deprived groups of mice, one fasting, would find that the fasting group’s memory was, if anything, more impaired.
Sydney, Australia
The risks of vaping are not negligible
As an avid observer of the debate on the safety and efficacy of electronic cigarettes, I read your report (newscientist.com/article/dn28723) with great interest. I agree with toxicologist John Britton that the exposures used in the study were excessive and unrealistic. But I also note his at a that the “likely real and potential harms of e-cigarettes to users” include modest increases in risk of emphysema, pulmonary infection, cardiovascular events, lung cancer and pulmonary fibrosis 鈥� though he expects these risks to be “much lower than for tobacco smoking”.
The precautionary statements by Jessica Wang-Rodriguez at the end of your article are valid: vapers “shouldn’t assume it’s a safe alternative to smoking”.
Louth, Lincolnshire, UK
A glossary for the Anthropocene
Can I suggest that we start a “glossary for the Anthropocene” (19/26 December 2015, p 82) with a word to replace “warming” in “global warming”? When we use this phrase we are really talking about energy altering the climate more than temperature. Sadly, we do not yet have a useful vernacular word that means “a hell of a lot of energy”.
The current warming of sea surface waters is 0.01掳 C per year, which sounds small enough to safely ignore. Express it as and it looks a touch more serious.
Martock, Somerset, UK
Chicken and the power of prayer
Daniel Cossins, writing about game theory (12 December 2015, p 36), describes a game of chicken in which the first car to turn away from a potential collision loses. The article suggests that throwing your steering wheel out of the window guarantees you a win 鈥� but the choice matrix left out the possibility that the other player does the same thing.
At this point things look dire. But there is another factor to be considered. Back in 1972 I was exploring an English village 鈥� in a fast car, but strictly on the correct side of the road. Coming towards me in the middle of the road was the elderly village vicar. He put his hands together in a position of prayer, taking both off his steering wheel.
His car swerved to his side of the road and there was no collision. I don’t know how you put that into the choice matrix.
Sydney, Australia
Will see around corners for food
While pondering the laser that can see round corners (12 December 2015, p 18), I felt the need to point out that, despite being just a Jack Russell terrier, I can do this for little more than the price of a meal a day. I do it using my sense of smell. Perhaps when trying to discover what lies around the next corner (and wouldn’t we all like to know?), researchers could approach this from a different 鈥� and far more economical 鈥� angle.
c/o Tony Holkham, Blaenffos, Pembrokeshire, UK
Electric vehicles are not greenwash
Fred Pearce suggests that plugging an electric vehicle into the mains when the grid relies on coal-fired generators means “it has merely shifted its emissions elsewhere” (12 December 2015, p 37). Here in New Zealand 80 per cent of our electricity comes from renewable sources.
Electric vehicles are generally charged at night, when the proportion of electricity from wind and hydro is higher.
On top of that, their motors have few moving parts, require little maintenance and should last decades, while the battery packs can be replaced with new (and hopefully improved) ones, meaning the cars can save a couple of tonnes of CO2 annually for many, many years. Electric vehicles are not “greenwash”.
Whangarei, New Zealand
Spider webs, the guano of yore
Stephen Battersby’s description of the effect that bird droppings have on electric power lines (19/26 December 2015, p 75) reminded me of an article I came across in The Railway News of 24 September 1881. (Yes, my reading is a little in arrears.)
It reports that “one of the chief hindrances to telegraphing in Japan is the grounding of the current by spider lines. The trees bordering the highways swarm with spiders, that spin their webs everywhere between the earth, wires, posts, insulators, and trees. When the spider webs are covered with heavy dews they become good conductors…
“The only way to remove the difficulty is by employing men to sweep the wires with brushes of bamboo: but as the spiders are more numerous and persistent than the brush users, the difficulty remains always a serious one.”
Thorpe, Derbyshire, UK
There's nothing new under the sun
Reporting a flexible organic solar cell, you pose the question: “Would you wear solar power on your wrist?” (19/26 December 2015, p 20). I can only reply that I have been doing so for years 鈥� I have a solar-powered watch.
Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire, UK
<b>Boredom not known here</b>
I note your correspondence on boredom (Letters, 14 November 2015). I do not recall ever being bored. There are far too many things to do and books to read 鈥� and letters to write, although these may bore their recipients.
Barton on Sea, Hampshire, UK
<b>For the record</b>
鈥� It pours: it is heavy rain like that from storm Desmond that Friederike Otto found to be about 40 per cent more likely as a result of climate change (9 January, p 11).
鈥� The UK imports 48 per cent of its food and animal feed (9 January, p 6).