COP26 summit was an opportunity squandered
As I read the accounts and reports from the COP26 climate summit, I got the impression that there was an attempt to find something positive to say (20 November, p 9). My reaction is that it was an opportunity squandered.
The event seemed badly planned and ineffectually and weakly led. I think it could have been substituted with a few well-placed Zoom calls.
Prior negotiations ought to have established tough goals out of which slick negotiators couldn’t wriggle. It is clear that the major economies of the world are still placing their own domestic economic interests and their own leaders’ electoral needs before the essential changes demanded by global humanity.
On the need for new minerals for renewables (1)
In your look at the impact of extra extraction of minerals required to expand renewable energy technologies, such as turbines and electric vehicles, environmental researcher Laura Sonter suggests that “social licence to operate” is important to the minerals industry (13 November, p 38).
Social licence to operate is a mirage conjured up by mining companies in an attempt to legitimise their operations. There are few, if any, examples of mines with explicit community permission to operate. The claimed social licence to operate is merely the absence of social injunction against operating.
On the need for new minerals for renewables (2)
When considering the downsides of mining for minerals that are essential for electrification in pursuit of net zero, I expected to find some reference to the future use of hydrogen.
In the near future, we could have hydrogen-fired boilers in our houses and transport powered by modified engines using hydrogen, including jet engines. Where fossil fuels are now used, replace with hydrogen. If this were achieved, the need for mass electrification and associated mining disappears.
Quantum computers may not be a positive thing
You quote Peter Leek at the University of Oxford as saying that the progress IBM has made with its 127-qubit quantum computer is “definitely positive” and “it’s good that they’re making something with more qubits” (20 November, p 7).
I am not sure that it is good. It seems to me that we are in a quantum computing arms race, so we have to do this, but I don’t think the world will be better or that we will be happier if we get quantum computers. For one thing, if they can factor large numbers, it will make encryption more difficult and will put past encrypted messages (that have been stored) at risk of being read.
Some evidence puts vegan substitutes in positive light
The plant-based meat options in our supermarkets probably aren’t marketed to be seen as healthier than the diet of nuts, vegetables and lentils that vegan pioneer Donald Watson enjoyed (30 October, p 38). But many are still preferable to the conventionally produced meat these products are designed to replace.
A tends to be lower in saturated fat and contains essential dietary fibre that animal products lack.
In addition, found that swapping animal-based meat for plant-based meat over an eight-week period led to weight loss and lowered cholesterol, while a study by Miguel Toribio-Mateas at London South Bank University and his colleagues concluded that replacing some meat with plant-based products .
Does life have its own quantum reality rules? (1)
Regarding the latest look at quantum theory’s implications for reality (6 November, p 38). If the moon doesn’t exist when you aren’t looking at it, do I exist when you aren’t reading my letter? More seriously, is being alive, even if no one on Earth knows, sufficient qualification for existing when no one can see you?
If so, what extra quantum-mechanical property does life confer on matter that makes it “real” irrespective of external observation?
Does life have its own quantum reality rules? (2)
I would suggest that anyone querying whether things actually exist if you aren’t looking at them has never stubbed a toe, reversed a car into an obstruction or suffered some other mishap or injury.
Less flippantly, given the severity of climate change and the inadequate attempts to mitigate it, why do people indulge in such navel-gazing? Anyone fancy telling those in low-income countries that droughts, heatwaves, poverty and locusts are figments of their imaginations?
Does life have its own quantum reality rules? (3)
In “Is reality real ?”, Thomas Lewton concludes that unless you hear the forest tree fall, it was never there in the first place. His conclusion is challenged in the same issue by the elephants in “Deciphering Dumbo” (p 42) that head for an unseen tree whose unheard fall they may have detected by its vibrations through their feet. They have no doubt that the tree exists, even when the vibrations cease, and Albert Einstein would have been delighted for them.
We must do more to protect Europe's forests
I share concerns over increased tree mortality across Europe, but one assertion in your report on this needs to be revised (20 November, p 14).
Your story concludes by citing a much-debated claim that wood harvesting in Europe has risen by 50 per cent since 2016. Subsequent evaluations suggest a substantially smaller value of 6 per cent. The revised value results in part from a more careful attribution of tree loss due to droughts, storms and diseases, and includes all these additional processes leading to the increased tree deaths already noted in your story.
Everyone involved in these assessments agrees there are still uncertainties, but we are looking forward and seeking support for an urgent multidisciplinary and collective European effort to protect forests and better ensure their future resilience.