Editor's pick: Treat carbon as a long-term hazard
Jon Cartwright portrays cracking methane into hydrogen and carbon as a way of avoiding the need to come off fossil fuels (8 October, p 28). I argue that the method fails, because it merely delays burning the carbon by a few years. My concern is largely about the researchers' optimism that “a cheap and abundant supply of pure black carbon will find its uses, given that the element is already in demand for nanotechnology, steel production and car tyres”.
These products have lifespans of decades or less. Even if some recycling takes place, almost all the carbon will eventually end up in waste streams, meaning that much of it will rot or be burned –forming the CO2 we were hoping to stop producing.
Perhaps the only plausible way to ensure the carbon is not burned over geological timescales is to bury it deep underground. We should resist the temptation to sell it as a raw material and treat it as a long-term environmental hazard akin to nuclear fuel rods.
Wesel, Germany
Are these whales showing altruism?
I do not believe that a humpback whale that stops killer whales killing a seal is trying to save the seal's life (15 October, p 42). It is stopping the killer whales from getting an easy meal.
This has a direct benefit to the humpback: the killer whales go hungry and will be weaker if they intend to attack a humpback calf.
An indirect benefit may be to make a point: we are in charge and there are no easy meals round here – clear off.
Are these whales showing altruism?
In Richard Dawkins deals with “stotting” by Thompson's gazelles. A young male will leap in the air right in front of a predator, provoking it to chase him. This benefits the herd, because an exhausted predator is an ineffective predator, and has been advanced as evidence of altruism. However, the male gazelle might benefit, for example by demonstrating his fitness to females. Has this been excluded for the humpbacks?
Or could the killer whales' calls simply set off an attack reflex in the humpbacks?
First class post
Yes, let's let AI learn about humanity through GTA. What could go wrong?
Manny Sani about teaching self-driving cars the rules of the road through the mayhem of video game Grand Theft Auto (29 October, p 24).
Biological firewalls will crash down
Ricard Solé proposes harnessing synthetic biology to fix our planet (1 October, p 36). He discusses the “Jurassic Park effect” in which such engineering goes awry and concludes that it can be dismissed because we can “give bacteria a suicide switch” or because they can be engineered not to survive outside a given ecosystem.
This claim smacks of hubris. We can design “firewalls” to try to avoid unintended consequences but, as with all engineering, we are talking about probability not certainty. Even non-biological systems can behave in ways not predicted by their designers. Biological ones involving open-ended self-replication will inevitably mutate and evolve.
Biological firewalls will crash down
The “firewall” safety device designed to prevent genetically-modified bacteria escaping their designated environment – for example by programmed cell suicide – worries me. Isn't the entire theory of evolution based on organisms adapting to novel environments through genetic mutation?
Dunfermline, Fife, UK
Ricard Solé writes:
• Of course no designed firewall will behave completely as predicted. Consider, however, a microorganism adapted to a specific food source that strongly differs from any “natural” metabolic pathway. How will it mutate – out of the blue – into something dangerous?
More respect for languages please
You had the grace to describe the impending loss of Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language as “a genuine shame” (8 October, p 5). But you qualified that by limiting it to “a linguistic perspective”.
It was with anger and revulsion that I read that “for the deaf villagers, Israeli sign language is an upgrade…” I can easily imagine the same argument being used against Cherokee, Lakota, Welsh, Gaelic, Finnish or Czech.
Hebrew having been “brought back from the dead” gives all the more reason for its speakers to have more respect for languages and cultures presently under threat, as once their language and culture was.
Will no one think of the Martians?
Lisa Grossman is right to say that humanity's energies are better spent re-terraforming our planet, rather than Mars (8 October, p 21). Elon Musk's fantasies are signs of that same quest to control and conquer nature that has driven us to the point where we might consider so desperate a fallback option. Who gave him permission to bioengineer Mars? Did anyone consider the Martians?
If there are microbes hidden under the icy ground of the Red Planet, will their eradication as a by-product of “greening” Mars be just another example of an indigenous population extirpated by the human steamroller?
Hey aliens! We're over here!
You discuss propelling a probe to the planet Proxima Centuri b using a laser (15 October, p 7). Some light will unavoidably spill past the sail. If the probe travels in a straight line, this would alert any inhabitants to our location as well as our existence. This idea was explored in by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in 1993.
We need to know more about porn
You report research about the effect of porn on the men who use it (1 October, p 20). But what about the effects of this porn-watching on their sexual partners?
Particularly among teenagers and young adults, this promotes male-centric beliefs about sex, for example that it's the woman's role to please the man and that all women want a man to “give it to them”, undermining people's understanding of consent. There is a growing body of evidence that it is affecting the types of sexual acts young people are asking their partners to engage in.
And what of the effects of the pornography industry on the women and men who perform in porn films, some of whom are victims of crime or circumstance?
Take aim, shopping list, loose arrow…
Caroline Williams discusses the role of the unconscious in making decisions (1 October, p 30), It can, under certain circumstances, also control the body. In his book Simon Needham says that, having trained and practised, he does not concentrate on shooting but rather thinks of anything apart from shooting. His unconscious then draws on all his years of archery experience to deliver, he says, better scores than his conscious mind, limited to the here-and-now, can deliver.
Making gods in technology's image
Richard Weeks proposes a final test of whether our universe is a digital simulation, run by beings in a “higher” universe (Letters, 15 October). We humans have, over the millennia, invented our gods in many and various forms. Often gods are imagined as powerful controllers of those aspects of the material world over which we have limited control. Farmers had grain gods, hunters had animal gods, seafarers had sea gods and warriors had fighting gods.
Homo digitalis, it seems, has invented giants of computing skill, who have the power and knowledge to simulate a universe.
Wood, wood, glorious wood
Liegh White is keeping a log burner “with a clear conscience” (Letters, 15 October). Burning wood is not just about carbon dioxide. Wood smoke is roughly as carcinogenic as tobacco smoke.
I propose we change the goal of “sustainable energy” to “clean energy”. I know of no clean energy that is not sustainable and renewable. Wood is much too valuable a resource to burn.
Heated statements and cold fusion
Michael Brooks reports on a possible resurgence of “cold fusion” (17 September, p 34). There must be many others who feel that Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann were treated shamefully in the announcement of their research (). They did not actually say that they had at room temperature in the laboratory tamed the process that powers the sun; merely that they had achieved what looked like significant results. In the ensuing debacle they were made to carry the can for the University of Utah public relations department.
I do think there is every prospect of cold fusion being achieved in our generation.
The way of least embarrassment
Andrew Sanderson recalls Henry Miller, professor of neurology at Newcastle University, observing that medical facts have a half-life of five years (Letters, 8 October). This took me back to 1975. Miller, by then vice-chancellor, chaired a panel of nine interviewing me for a professorship. Several minutes into a discourse, I found myself rambling. I couldn't remember what the question had been. Having no acceptable alternative, I admitted that I had forgotten what the subject was.
He raised an eyebrow, looked around the unresponsive panel and said: “So have we. I suppose we'd better appoint you to avoid embarrassing us all.”