Editor's pick: Smoking reduction and a room with a fume
Lara Williams supports the UK ban on e-cigarettes on public transport and in workplaces (1 September, p 22). But how do we know what the health effects of keeping or ending the ban would be?
I would like to propose a clinical trial to test the effect of passive vaping. It will not seek informed consent and it won't even tell people they are taking part in a trial.
It will not bother with a control group and it won't record exposure levels. Indeed it won't be applying measured doses, just random amounts at random times and places. It won't bother measuring lung function, blood or urine levels, inflammatory markers, or collect any data at all. Would you grant ethical approval?
I didn't think so. If politicians and policy-makers want to support the switch to safer nicotine habits, then hospitals and businesses could have vaping rooms. That would encourage smoking reduction but not force the unaddicted to participate in the office, on the bus or when fighting through the toxic fog at building entrances.
How green can nuclear power really be? (1)
Chris Baraniuk reports on nuclear power innovations such as floating reactors and shortening the half-life of nuclear waste (1 September, p 32). Perhaps tackling the energy crisis needs something more ambitious.
Just after the second world war, liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTRs) and other molten salt reactors were developed as an alternative to those based on the uranium-plutonium cycle. Sadly, the prototypes were mothballed before they could deliver on their promise.
Meltdown of these reactors would be impossible. What little waste they produced would have a much shorter half-life than that generated by existing reactors and, unlike conventional nuclear power, their fuel cycle could not be weaponised. True, there . But a concerted effort to develop LFTRs could avert the impending energy crisis without threatening the environment 鈥� and might reduce international conflict too.
First class post – 22 September 2018
Oh please… I’m tired and depressed even without gluten
Colin (@diabloamp47) has nothing to fear from news that eating gluten could make you tired and depressed (22 September, p 15)
How green can nuclear power really be? (2)
You say that about . What about emissions during its construction, including making the concrete and steel, and from the large number of vehicle movements? I would expect another peak in CO2 emissions during the decommissioning phase. The really useful figure to know would be annualised CO2 emissions, from ground-breaking to final decommissioning, of each of the various options for electricity production.
The editor writes:
鈥� Estimates vary: one study suggests total emissions of 3.5 to 12 grams of CO2 per kWh for nuclear, wind and solar power alike (Nature Energy, ).
The long history of work on sterile salmon
As someone who has conducted and published research into farmed salmon for more than 30 years, I take exception to the statement that it has just now been confirmed that triploid Atlantic salmon are effectively sterile (18 August, p 7). This brushes aside decades of research and dozens of publications in peer-reviewed journals by groups in Canada, the UK, Norway, Ireland and Australia on triploid Atlantic salmon. I reviewed this work in 2015 in Reviews in Aquaculture ().
There is a long history of triploid salmon being used in aquaculture in Australia specifically because they are known to be sterile.
Stupidity hasn't worked in the past, so why now?
Chris Baraniuk asks whether stupidity could save us from an AI apocalypse (1 September, p 13). Stupidity has not saved us from an environmental apocalypse – and most likely will not do so. Why should AI be any different?
Even if we date environmental awareness only back to Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring – and so ignore the writers, including Karl Marx and William Morris, who earlier raised warning flags – then for the past half century we have ploughed on to global disaster in the face of massive, mounting piles of evidence that the path we have chosen is the wrong one.
Perhaps we would be better off handing global political decisions to some sort of United Nations Artificial Intelligence and commit ourselves to obeying its decisions, whatever and however uncomfortable they may be.
Further alternative air conditioning technology
Michael Le Page reports that air conditioning could warm Paris by an extra 2°C and that it is expensive to install and run (4 August, p 18). Do not overlook and cooling systems. In these, energy is required only to circulate the fluid being cooled through the evaporator. Such systems can be driven by solar hot water or other heat sources. Perhaps they will not suit some situations, but using energy from the sun directly avoids the need to use energy stored in coal, oil or gas.
Data protection rules could be backfiring
You observed that our inboxes were full of pleading emails because of the European Union's new data rules (26 May, p 22). Now, every website asks for our consent to set cookies and so on.
Has anyone estimated how many hundreds of millions of extra mouse clicks have been caused by the General Data Protection Regulation? And is there a danger that requiring everyone to click through endless distracting GDPR agreements could condition people to automatically consent to more sinister things, without thinking?
Consciousness pure and simple – perhaps?
I much enjoy the ongoing discussion of consciousness in your pages (for example, Letters, 21 July). It seems to me that one cannot just be conscious: you have to be conscious of something, whether it is the scent of a rose, the internal feeling of being happy or sad, or the words you are reading now.
Consciousness, whatever it is, must have content in order to exist. Substituting the phrase “consciousness” with the phrase “consciousness of” makes the entire issue seem more tractable.
Where cash comes from and keeping track of it (1)
Joshua Howgego writes that the money in commercial bank accounts, which makes up roughly 97 per cent of the money used in the economy, is either created by interest on loans made by that institution, or by you when you make a deposit (25 August, p 36). Perhaps surprisingly, this is wrong.
As the Bank of England itself explained in a 2014 article, ““, in its Quarterly Bulletin: “Rather than banks receiving deposits when households save and then lending them out, bank lending [itself] creates deposits.”
The article notes that this is why “some economists have referred to bank deposits as 鈥榝ountain pen money鈥�, created at the stroke of bankers’ pens when they approve loans”. The consequences are profound. Some economists have argued that, as a result, there should never be a shortage of money for society’s most important needs, provided the system is regulated correctly.
Our own dysfunctional system, long dominated by the interests of finance capital, is a very different matter.
Where cash comes from and keeping track of it (2)
Howgego discusses the risks of a cashless society. Another very significant aspect is a possible discriminatory effect. There seems to be a convenient assumption by both governments and commercial players that everyone is capable of using electronic devices and can understand what assets they have in remote ledgers.
This ignores ageing, intellectual or physical disabilities or simply living in certain places. I have a tiny dyslexic issue that predisposes me to transposing digits and makes online banking a dreadful anxiety inducer.
If anything is likely to reduce a person’s ability and confidence to live independently, it would be having to rely on a carer to assist with, let alone manage, their financial affairs.
The positive side of negative colleagues
You report that people paired with mean, negative robots performed a task faster and better than those working alongside kind, positive ones (25 August, p 16). There is at least one other interpretation. I used to get tasks done more efficiently when around negative colleagues because I would be in their presence for less time, have to listen to their negativity for less time and could sooner interact with someone more positive.
The size of this glacier really is astounding
John Sherlock doubts the capacity of the Totten glacier in Antarctica to raise sea levels by more than 3 metres and you respond that its catchment area is more than 500,000 square kilometres (Letters, 1 September). But the world's oceans cover 350 million square kilometres. I calculate that unless the average thickness of this glacier is over 2.5 kilometres and all of it is above sea level, the figures don't stack up.
The editor writes:
• The ice in East Antarctica , and it is almost all sitting on rock.
For the record – 22 September 2018
鈥� Land of the rolling wheel, still: Japan’s bullet trains do not levitate (Feedback, 8 September).