Offsetting can still be done, but it costs a lot (1)
Graham Lawton can count me as a staunch fan. I agree with him that it is self-deception to imagine that he offset much, if anything, of his flight-related carbon dioxide by crossing a greenwashing scheme with a tiny piece of silver. This doesn’t mean it is impossible (11 May, p 22).
I fly perhaps once a year, for family reasons, and pay for my carbon to be removed via biochar. This costs a lot, almost exactly the same as my long-haul airline ticket. It also comes with reliable, accredited certification.
If we, the affluent-enough-to-go-on-CO2-belching-jollies, actually cleared up our pollution, the planet would be back several decades into the last century, pollution-wise, and mother nature would have hope and a reasonable chance.
Offsetting can still be done, but it costs a lot (2)
Has Lawton considered that his carbon offset certificate’s “1.69 mt” might actually be a correct use of the prefix “m” and mean that he has paid to offset 1.69 millitonnes of carbon? He could probably do a better thing for the environment if, instead of paying into a rather opaque “carbon offset” market, he visited his local garden centre and bought a native tree to plant at home, or for a nature reserve if lacking space to do so at home.
Fall of civilisations may have been germ warfare
You report the end of the Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean 3200 years ago has generally been characterised by its short duration of 50 years, mass migration of populations such as the Sea Peoples and abandonment of cities. In my view, the Sea Peoples were pushed out of their homes by plague etc. The events have all the trappings of an infectious disease pandemic, an idea I focused on in my 2014 university thesis (11 May, p 32).
When it comes to such upheavals, may I suggest we factor in the possibility of some form of infectious disease being involved as a “wild card” game changer.
The Anthropocene: it is less about the dates
Jan Zalasiewicz implies that the mass of evidence of human impact on the Earth system was rejected in the recent vote by geologists over the Anthropocene. Actually, few scientists would dispute that substantial body of evidence. What was rejected was the specific proposal that the start of the Anthropocene epoch should be placed in 1950 or 1952 (11 May, p 21).
We are in the Anthropocene for sure, and human influence on planetary change is all too real. It is time to stop thinking narrowly of the Anthropocene as a time interval and instead focus on the many manifestations of the material Anthropocene event unfolding all about us.
I have modernised my relationship with cancer
Name and address supplied
Thank you for David Ropeik’s excellent and, for me, timely article on cancerphobia. I have just undergone treatment for breast cancer, including surgery and radiotherapy. I have deliberately limited the people who know, specifically because I couldn’t face inaccurate, exaggerated, even hysterical responses. I am still working out how I might broach the subject; most probably, I won’t (27 April, p 21).
A calmer world may not be a good thing
In your look at whether climate change is accelerating after a record year of heat, you cite models that predict a speeding up due to underestimates of the loss of the cooling effect of some pollutants. These are in decline as clean air policies take hold (11 May, p 14).
The contribution of wind doesn’t seem to have been fully accounted for either. The IPCC predicts that as the planet warms, average wind speeds will fall due to lower temperature gradients. Lower wind speeds have possibly contributed to the recent record high ocean temperatures, because of a reduction in the cooling of the waters due to wind-induced evaporation. Slower winds also result in
Remembering when maths meets real life
Katie Steckles’s article about “Pythagoras in the wild” reminds me of an interesting experience of encountering maths when buying cake tins. I got two “catering-sized” square ones from a commercial baking supplier. I was intrigued by the dimensions: about 360 millimetres per side. That figure didn’t seem to mean anything special. Neither did the equivalent 14.14 inches (27 April, p 44).
Then light dawned! 14.14 is the square root of 200, so those tins give you 200 square inches of cake, and, assuming a 1 inch by 2 inch serving, that comes to exactly 100 servings. Ideal for the “nothing left to chance” caterer!
Population decline will put us on slippery slope
Several readers have voiced optimism about reaching a new economic equilibrium in a world where each generation is smaller than the previous one (Letters, 20 April).
However, such an equilibrium would be only temporary. Once the world population falls to, say, half a billion, no one is building a new particle collider or flying to the moon. And in a world with 100 million people, can I even buy a refrigerator? I don’t think so.
The current epoch, for better or worse, may be “peak humanity”, not just numerically speaking.
To escape light pollution, try life on the ocean waves
From Butch Dalrymple Smith, La Ciotat, France
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein laments the difficulty of seeing the night sky due to modern lighting. There is one group of people who can still appreciate it with no problem: sailors (4 May, p 22).
On the ocean in a sailing yacht you experience the heavens at full brilliance in a sky devoid of light, chemical or smoke pollution. No wonder sailors tend to be poetic and philosophical. When I spent much of my time sailing, I had a strong affinity with the stars.