SOOT is a thoroughly ticklish subject. When it gets up your nose, it鈥檚 bad for your health. And when it gets into the atmosphere, it鈥檚 a source of some scientific and political dispute.
Recent research by respectable scientists in peer-reviewed journals (an essential caveat when it comes to the topic of global warming) suggests that soot鈥檚 effect on the atmosphere may be greater than anyone realised. Mark Jacobson of Stanford University is well versed in the subject and now suggests that soot from a diesel car warms the atmosphere as much as a gasoline-powered car, mile for mile (Journal of Geophysical Research, October, p16). That has made some people feel very uncomfortable. Diesel autos have a well-deserved reputation for miserliness when it comes to fuel consumption, and this translates into lower carbon dioxide emissions. As an incentive to buy diesel cars, many European countries have in fact enacted tax laws that favour diesel engines. Recently, the people who write the air quality rules in California, which has the toughest air rules in the country, were considering a plan to encourage diesel autos. But the soot-sayers have now cast doubt on the wisdom of that idea.
Soot鈥檚 power to obscure goes beyond the atmosphere into the world of politics. President George Bush laid out several reasons for rejecting the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, one of which was that the protocol ignores soot 鈥� and countries such as China and India produce lots of it. It is likely that politicians will find soot to be a useful wedge for as long as the science remains murky.
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THE US has a lot of clout at the UN. Usually, it uses that clout to push the Bush administration鈥檚 foreign policy agenda. But now that influence is being felt in the social arena. The US delegation successfully scuttled, for at least a year, a ban France and Germany proposed on reproductive cloning.
It might seem odd that the US would oppose a cloning ban, as few countries have been more vociferous in their opposition to cloning human beings. Every time the subject comes up, you can count on a string of politicians, religious leaders, scientists, ethicists, not to mention members of the general public, to voice their opposition to what some like to refer to as 鈥減laying God鈥�.
Given that unanimity, you might think any effort to ban human cloning could count on US support. But you鈥檇 be wrong. Religious conservatives say a ban that only covers cloning babies doesn鈥檛 go far enough. That is a position President Bush and his supporters heartily endorse: they want to ban any attempt to put a somatic cell nucleus into an egg whose nucleus has already been removed, and refuse to endorse any cloning ban not comprehensive enough. So cloning legislation in the US Congress has died every time it has been proposed there. Now it鈥檚 the UN鈥檚 turn.
IT HAS been a bit more than a year since deadly anthrax spores were mailed to people in Washington, Florida and New York, and the FBI seems no closer to finding out who was responsible. According to one line of speculation, the culprit was trying to make the US take the threat of biological terrorism seriously. But another claim, that a disgruntled scientist did the dirty deed, is having a detrimental effect on microbiologists. As the head of the nation鈥檚 largest professional microbiologists鈥� society put it: 鈥淎s long as who carried out the anthrax attacks is unknown and suspected to be one of us, all of us are tainted and suspects in the community.鈥�
