Urgency needed now the climate alarm is ringing
Record-breaking temperatures in the air and oceans highlight two extremely urgent challenges (1 June, p 8).
Despite the Paris deal for a 1.5掳C warming limit and undertakings at subsequent COP meetings, total energy-related annual carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise, approaching 37 gigatonnes in 2023. Drastic action to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels is needed for us to have any chance of reaching net zero by 2050.
The other challenge is adaptation to climate change, particularly the rising number of days with almost intolerable temperatures in nations near the equator. Most of these countries have released minimal emissions. The industrialised world must provide urgent financial assistance to alleviate the problems or the inevitable result will be huge numbers of climate refugees.
Hours and hours of fun thinking about time (1)
Your intriguing article about retrocausality poses the question of whether quantum information could be sent back in time. Surely the answer must be yes. How else could we explain the fact that electrons sent through a double slit, one at a time, create an interference pattern on a screen beyond? Each electron must be sending a signal back through time to the previous particle, in order to let it know that it needs to interfere “with me” (1 June, p 32).
Hours and hours of fun thinking about time (2)
You report that time could be a quantum illusion. Maybe it is the other way round. Perhaps space-time is fundamental and the simplest way a universe with time can be predictable, but not deterministic, is for it to obey the rules of quantum mechanics.
We could tackle salt addiction at its source
Yes, there is a problem with salt addiction, but it is social rather than biological. A liking for salty food is far from universal and is probably acquired rather than innate. In family homes and in restaurants, the salt shaker is a ubiquitous presence on the table. Many people add salt to their food before they even taste it (8 June, p 32).
When I was growing up, not only did my mother cook with a fairly modest amount of salt, I was always encouraged to taste food before adding anything to it. And almost always, I was happy with it the way it was and didn’t add salt. As a result, I grew up without any particular fondness for salty food.
Altering the sodium content of table salt could be good for public health, but avoiding habituation to a high-salt diet would be a better long-term solution.
The AI singularity is only nearer for wrong reasons
Alex Wilkins’s review of books on artificial intelligence mentions Ray Kurzweil’s prediction that the Turing test of machine intelligence will be passed by 2029, along with his belief that the singularity 鈥� when AI will surpass human intelligence 鈥� is nigh (1 June, p 28).
I don’t think this is just a question of AI’s progress. Judging by our breathless espousal of much “creative” AI, we are approaching the singularity from the opposite direction too, by dumbing down in accepting a mere superficial resemblance in the work of AI to what we regard as adequate art and literature.
One could almost assert that an AI will be deemed to have reached equivalence with human general intelligence when we are stupid enough to say it has.
You can have your milk and drink it
James Wong needn’t choose between drinking milk or using it as a plant fertiliser. Drink the milk, then, a few hours later, you can be fertilising plants with it 鈥� possibly in a way that makes it easier for the minerals etc. to be assimilated, especially if your efflux is diluted with soft water (8 June, p 44).
Wooden buildings are the gift that keeps on giving
Graham Lawton delved into the many benefits of using wood in construction beyond its ability to store carbon, and I can vouch for some. Years ago, I designed an award-winning school using Japanese-style hybrid-timber construction, including a laminated timber frame with solid-timber decking (8 June, p 24).
The real reason for the choice of timber was for the physical, psychological and spiritual benefit to pupils and staff. The school was designed to be biophilic: biophilia literally meaning a love of life or living things. I see a great future for the use of wood in buildings.
Three meals a day is a dream for some
In your interview with Sophie Attwood, it was good to read about the simplicity of effective interventions to modify our unsustainable eating habits. However, the final quote that “8 billion people are eating three meals a day” is debatable (1 June, p 37).
According to a recent UN report, close to a billion people aren’t food secure. They are probably grateful if they get one good meal a day. The report estimates that 2 billion people can’t afford to eat healthily. Both figures are rising not falling.
Offsetting: A chicken and egg problem
Even if we ignore the various technical doubts about carbon offsetting, whether offsetting a flight makes flying acceptable depends upon what activity you think of as coming first (11 May, p 22).
The usual view is that the climate-negative activity of flying is being compensated for by offsetting. But an alternative view is that the climate-positive act of offsetting is being nullified by the taking of the flight. Seen from this angle, using offsetting as a way to continue flying starts to seem like a terrible waste of our limited offsetting opportunities.
Why don't we just throw our rubbish in a volcano?
Your review of the book Eruption got me wondering if it is possible to dump anything into an erupting volcano? Could, say, landfill waste be disposed of in the gaping “incinerator”(8 June, p 30)?