Fossil fuels seemed like a good innovation once
James Ball discusses some reasons why people are nervous about new technologies (19 February, p 27). Here is another: risk. Some technologies, such as the burning of fossil fuels, come back to bite us. We deploy new technologies globally and rapidly with no idea of the long-term consequences. The internet brings benefits, but it has worrying political consequences 鈥� the spread of misinformation, for example.
Governments urge ever more rapid innovation. But the faster we do this, the sooner we are going to hit upon an idea that turns out to be irretrievably and catastrophically bad. “It seemed like a good idea at the time” will be a deeply inadequate excuse.
Coral gardening is a stopgap worth having
While Catherine Collins rightly highlights fossil fuel emissions and overfishing as the sources of coral reef destruction, rejecting coral gardening is like denying the usefulness of a bandage in protecting a wound while it heals, or cancer surgery while we lack a cure for the disease (5 February, p 27).
We need to save what we can of reef functioning in the hope that true solutions will come in time.
Did space-time not exist until we came along?
I can imagine that we humans influence space-time, but not that we create it, as you suggest in your new perspective on quantum reality (5 February, p 38). Who created space-time when humanity didn’t exist?
I always had difficulty with Schr枚dinger’s cat. For me, it is clear that the cat is either dead or alive. You just don’t know which one it is. I don’t grasp how not knowing something could create space-time realities. When I ask my friend to choose a number between 1 and 10 and he does that, but doesn’t reveal his choice, then I don’t believe that he is in a superposition of 10 states in space-time. I just don’t know his choice. Or are space-time realities only created on a subatomic level?
A form of heating that could help the world
Adam Vaughan’s excellent review of ways of removing greenhouse gases from the air didn’t mention biochar production, which could be deployed at scale (19 February, p 20).
Pyrolysing (heating at high temperatures) organic materials under anaerobic conditions creates charcoal, which is called biochar when pulverised to gravel or dust-sized pieces and used as a soil additive. Carbon compounds in biochar are dominated by fused aromatic ring structures that are intrinsically resistant to biodegradation and are thus stable for climatically useful timescales as a means of carbon sequestration.
Biochar is thought to enhance soils as a result of micro and nanostructures on the surface of the particles, providing microsites for soil bacteria and mineral exchange. The net effects on soils are generally positive, improving texture and nutrient availability.
A range of feedstocks could be used, such as waste wood, forestry thinnings, miscanthus grasses and dry crop residues. Biochar offers a low-tech route to carbon removal that has minimal risk of subsequent leakage.
A reason to round on the circular economy (1)
To paraphrase the journalist H. L. Mencken, “for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong” (12 February, p 38). So it is for materials and the circular economy.
Consider two options. Produce 350,000 tonnes of very sophisticated materials, fabricate them into solar panels, then mount on metal supports, perhaps with concrete footings. This will cover some 10,000 hectares of what could otherwise be wildlife habitat. It will produce little or no energy 70 to 90 per cent of the time.
In a circular economy, you would then collect all 350,000 tonnes (plus frames) every 25 years or so and take it back on trucks to factories to reprocess it at an enormous energy cost.
The alternative (non-circular) solution is to mine 200 tonnes of uranium annually and use it as fuel in fission reactors (plus a few thousand tonnes of metals to make the pressure vessel and generators). The reactors will last 80 years or more before they also can be (mostly) recycled. That isn’t circular, but degrades very little land and has a tiny material flow by comparison.
A reason to round on the circular economy (2)
I read again that 30 per cent of food is wasted. It is high time to bring back the pig to its rightful role of converting food waste into edible protein and fat. I know that the veterinary profession, of which I am a part, has been against swill feeding for decades, but this must change and the government needs to set a framework so that pigs fed food waste are prioritised over modern intensive farming. This will cause large changes in the genetics and management of pigs.
Happiness is comfort or an inverse relationship (1)
A particular nuance of happiness has been overlooked (22 January, p 38). In her novel A Closed Eye, Anita Brookner touches on it when one of her characters reflects thus: “Happiness was what young people wanted; at his age he knew that comfort was more important.”
Happiness is comfort or an inverse relationship (2)
After your look at happiness and the letters on it, I have found the formula for the elixir of happiness: Happiness = 1/unhappiness.
The real crisis is the number of people (1)
The state of Earth in 2022 is indeed in crisis, but tinkering with the economy isn’t the answer (Leader, 12 February). The elephant in the room that few people dare to mention publicly is overpopulation of the planet. This silence must change.
The real crisis is the number of people 92)
Geoff Harding (Letters, 19 February) fears for fertility in our polluted world. As a species, we seem incapable of restricting our encroachment on, and destruction of, all parts of the planet. Human sperm counts too low for fertility may be the best hope for a world that continues to be fit to live in.