Political realities may rule out energy sharing future (1)
Your article “A new energy world” floats a potential solution to intermittent renewables: continental-wide power grids (7 August, p 34). This is a fantasy in the current and likely future world we live in.
One of the primary responsibilities of a country to its citizens is the security of power supply and this solution simply doesn’t allow for that. In the recent past, we have had reports of France threatening Jersey with switching off interconnectors, and a report that the their trade deal negotiations.
It simply isn’t feasible that countries could work together in the manner suggested whilst resisting the temptation to weaponise the grid when it suits them.
Of the four futures you describe, those where energy nationalism features heavily are the more likely outcomes for entirely practical reasons.
Political realities may rule out energy sharing future (2)
It is a tragedy that the public won’t support taxation of hydrocarbon fuels to a level that reflects the damage that vehicles and home heating systems do to the environment. It is absurd that for many trips, private cars are still more economical than trains, even when a car has no passengers.
However, there is one cheap, simple action that could be enacted tomorrow: ban all publicity for fossil fuel-powered vehicles, including hybrids, especially self-charging hybrids. While we’re at it, how about decorating petrol stations with heart-wrenching pictures of scorched koalas and starving polar bears? It worked for tobacco.
Political realities may rule out energy sharing future (3)
Capturing carbon from the air to make jet fuel isn’t carbon negative. Burning the fuel will release all the carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. It is, at best, carbon neutral, but in reality will have inefficiencies that will need to be offset by additional carbon capture and storage. We need to do this, but we also need to cut the number of air journeys taken.
Almost all air and car travel for business is unnecessary and done either to make people feel important or as a “jolly”. So that could be largely avoided.
Holiday travel is more of a problem. In the UK and wider Europe, big investment in rail and bus networks and cross-border integration, along with subsidised fares, might encourage the use of these forms of transport to get to sunnier climes rather than flying or driving.
Political realities may rule out energy sharing future (4)
The graph on page 38 didn’t feature renewables that were used in 1800. At that time, wind energy was used for fishing, merchant shipping, travel, food production and household tasks such as drying clothes, yet it is rated nil on the graph. Likewise, hydropower turned mill wheels and solar power was used for food preservation.
Finally, animal power in agriculture, industry, travel and heating the homes of cottagers was a substantial “renewable”.
Weird new forms of matter may be among us already
After reading Jon Cartwright’s article “Solid, liquid, gas… and beyond” on “bizarre new states of matter”, I begin to find the apparent reports of UFOs more credible (14 August, p 40). If ETs read 快猫短视频, they should now realise we aren’t as backward as they might think. They might even invite somebody to visit a UFO factory to see how they are made.
We can go in peace to settle the wider galaxy (1)
Richard Jones suggests that it would be better if we don’t try to spread ourselves across the galaxy because of our tendency to greed and crime (Letters, 7 August). We are, like all other life on Earth, the product of evolution and many of our more negative behaviours have helped us to survive in the past. We don’t condemn the lion for its routine infanticide or the spider for its casual cannibalism.
We have developed concepts of empathy, charity and altruism 鈥� signs that our intellect is freeing us from the tyranny of the selfish gene.
We can go in peace to settle the wider galaxy (2)
I was rather disturbed by the negative attitude to humanity expressed by your correspondents regarding a 500-year plan to send us into space. Of course we have given rise to Hitler, Stalin and vast mounds of plastic, but we also have the works of Shakespeare, da Vinci and Mozart and the ability to work cooperatively to avert disaster in dire circumstances.
We have our faults, but we have the ability to overcome them 鈥� that is what being human means. As far as we know, we are the only species capable of understanding such concepts. If colonising space is our salvation, we must seize the opportunity for our own good and that of the universe.
No membranes required: another origin of life story
The question of what came first 鈥� cells or cell membranes 鈥� is asked yet again in your report on a method to create membranes using a set of relatively basic starting materials (14 August, p 19). Perhaps the question is redundant.
The proposal that life began in alkaline hydrothermal vents doesn’t require cell membranes. The pores in the vent structures are about the size of a cell and the initial chemical reactions were driven by the proton gradient between the hot alkaline water of the vents and the cold seawater.
To this day, all life obtains energy from proton gradients. It was only after self-replicating molecules evolved in the pores of the vents that cell membranes became advantageous, as the protocells were able to sequester available resources to themselves. Eventually, protocells evolved to the point were they could exist independently of vents, thus cells were released into the oceans.
Too much chatter at sea may hamper marine life
Whales and dolphins already have enough difficulty communicating because of pervasive human-generated marine noise (7 August, p 15).
Now we learn that humans are going to make life more difficult for them by transmitting their clicks and whistles to hide secret underwater messages. I imagine that for cetaceans it will be akin to us trying to have a conversation with someone in the middle of a crowded, noisy cocktail party.