More good reasons to stop burning wood at home
You report a rush to buy firewood in the UK amid rapidly rising gas prices, and highlight the pollution that will result from burning more wood (10 September, p 8).
There is another issue: the relatively poor overall efficiency of wood-burning stoves. The wood needs to be dried and transported to the user, which takes energy. The stove itself takes time to start and can’t be shut down at will, so may generate more heat than is required. A gas-fired stove doesn’t suffer from these disadvantages.
Wood can be anaerobically processed in a slurry digester to generate methane, and there is already a gas distribution mechanism that makes gas available to users, at least in cities and towns. If firewood is to be used, surely it should be in this way?
Hormone replacement therapy isn't for everyone
Caroline Williams raises some interesting points on taking hormone replacement therapy to reduce the negative impacts of the menopause, but doesn’t mention the difficult situation faced by the substantial minority of women who have had breast cancer (3 September, p 38).
Current estimates suggest that there are 600,000 such women in the UK alone, who have specific risks associated with taking HRT due to their diagnosis.
Saving Earth must be top priority for one and all
It was a pleasure to read William MacAskill’s article “Planning ahead”, which reminds us that we don’t just inherit Earth from our ancestors, but are its stewards for our descendants (10 September, p 27). I content myself with wanting to leave somewhere behind where my children will be able to thrive, without looking thousands of years ahead, but the sentiment is the same.
The piece came soon after the UK’s Daily Telegraph gave its view: “.” Words fail me.
We can't have our AI cake and eat it too
Much has been said about bias in decisions made by AI and the need to make it neutral and “fair” (10 September, p 47). In your interview with Paolo Benanti, he brings up the call to get women and children onto the lifeboats of the Titanic first, and suggests that AI should follow an ethical rule he calls “the quality of gentleness”. This directly contradicts the attempts to remove biases from AI. We can’t have it both ways.
A little bit of latitude in health advice is needed
One of the main problems with so much health advice, including that based on BMI, is that it is too absolute, too definite (10 September, p 28). Advice on body weight, the recommended number of alcoholic drinks, the number of steps to walk and so on is rarely given as a range.
Why don’t we see standard deviations or some other measure of variation with each of these numbers? There is a huge amount of variation in humans, and this needs to be explicitly recognised.
A little bit of latitude in health advice is needed
Consuming fewer calories than are burned each day will cause weight loss. Unfortunately, too many people eat more than they need, and excess food production has major environmental impacts. Perhaps there is merit in an environmental tax that could deter this? That will motivate the curbing of appetites.
Fears of the death of plastic may be a little premature
Alec Williams fears that microbes genetically engineered to eat plastic waste might come to consume useful plastics (Letters, 20 August). This echoes the 1970s novel Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters. The risk is all too real, but the catastrophe might be slowed by the fact that there are many different types of plastic. In addition, the proposed sea-dwelling plastic-eating microorganisms won’t become land or air dwellers all that easily.
Radiation is a lesser worry for astronauts
Bryn Glover questions the European and Russian space agencies designating a 1-sievert dose of radiation as acceptable for astronauts, which is estimated to equate to an average 5 per cent rise in cancer fatality risk (Letters, 10 September).
Given the total number of astronauts and the number who have died in testing, on the launchpad or during a mission, the rise in risk of a poor cancer outcome in later life would seem insignificant by comparison with the risks from sitting in a capsule on top of a massive load of fuel. Even as it becomes “routine” to send people to the International Space Station and on future lunar missions, they remain very brave.
Super batteries will need a super grid to charge them
Several of your recent articles have mentioned battery types in development that could be charged quicker than previous systems 鈥� for example, quantum batteries (10 September, p 38). This would be very useful for electric vehicles, for instance. But all that stored energy has to come from somewhere.
Fast charging means a high charging current. Without plenty of capacity and suitable infrastructure, it will be difficult to take advantage of these advanced electrical storage systems.
Water meters may not be the drought fix you think
In the story “England faces a drier future”, it was observed that households with water meters use 24 per cent less water than those without (20 August, p 9). You seem to imply that having a meter lowers usage. I suspect the causality is the other way around. Since water meters are optional, what households might elect to have one installed? Ones already with low usage. It certainly saved me money.
For the record {24 September 2022}
In our look at remastered NASA images (10 September, p 30), Rusty Schweickart was in a photo of the Apollo 9 mission and the Apollo 8 astronaut was Bill Anders.