Climate change campaign
While I was delighted to see your new climate change campaign, I was appalled to read “The mainstream argument has moved on [from the science] to the politics and economics” (13 March).
Not burning fossil fuels is an excellent idea, but what should we do instead when wind and solar power are the answer to the question “How would you like your society to come to a stop on calm nights?”. Things are going to have to change. Some examples:
The central problem is the production and consumption of energy. The science of energy is thermodynamics, but somehow this word never appears in your discussions. It is literally impossible to understand the economic efficiency of energy without the second law of thermodynamics. Those who do not know it spend thousands putting solar panels on their roofs to drive their hot-air clothes driers. Those who do hang their clothes outside to dry.
Agriculture will be central because it removes CO2 from the atmosphere to make useful stuff. The key will be to maximise the efficiency with which this stuff is used. Think only of a corn plant: a small fraction of the total mass in the kernels gets eaten, but what happens to the rest? A lot of these kernels now get fermented to make fuel ethanol, but for every tonne of ethanol a tonne of pure CO2 gets released to the atmosphere. Why is this allowed?
The concern should not stop after we have eaten the stuff. Treating sewage anaerobically produces vast amounts of biogas that can be burned to generate both electricity and hot water. It’s called co-generation, another consequence of the second law.
Where did you ever get the absurd idea that rainforests absorb CO2? It is only growing forests, like growing plants, that do this and most rainforests are climax ecosystems that do not change from one year to the next. Clear-cutting and burning of forests must obviously be condemned, but responsible logging can have a beneficial effect outside protected areas.
Graham Andrews
Spokane, Washington, US
• I couldn’t agree with Mark Lynas more about the climate change debate (20 March). However, nearly three weeks have elapsed before I’ve got around to writing this: that means I am part of the problem he’s up in arms about. It’s not that I’m an extremist; my problem is that I’m too middle-of-the-road to get off my ass to do anything. This despite being reasonably well informed, having spent my first career in the oil industry fuelling capitalism and my second in development education dealing with its debris.
It doesn’t matter that Naomi Klein is your flagship for the Keep It in the Ground campaign: what matters is at long last, thanks to different prods from different directions, the cattle are moving.
Richard Crane
Vallon Pont d’Arc, France
Plato got the ball rolling
Tim Radford’s book review (3 April) refers to Steven Weinberg’s belief that “the impossible Platonic goal of a purely deductive natural science stood in the way of progress”. But Galileo got the idea of explaining nature in mathematical terms from Plato. And one of Plato’s beliefs – that the elements are not really elementary but can be further analysed in terms of atomic structure – is a principle used in modern chemistry.
Weinberg also claims that there is no hint of love or justice in an impersonal scientific universe. But the law of gravity as an attractive force is at least a hint of the attractive force of love, and the occurrence of balanced forces in nature is a precursor of the lamentably infrequent balance in human societies called justice.
Radford’s statement that “the universe may not fit any framework humans can devise” sounds like an admirable statement of scientific humility, but it is actually incoherent since it makes the contradictory assumption that we can know what the universe is like outside of our knowledge, so that we can compare our knowledge with it.
Stephen Porsche
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Beards are nature’s bounty
The article How beards can prompt prickly debate (10 April) seems to have surfaced from the archive of five or six years ago. Has the writer not noticed that beards have been ubiquitous amongst trendy young men for at least that amount of time? And in spite of shaven journalists’ efforts to convince us the craze is over, it certainly isn’t.
London and Paris are full of handsome bearded fellows of all ages, aware perhaps of how attractive we find them in full facial hair mode. The male’s delight in female secondary sexual characteristics hardly needs acknowledgement. Why can we not accept that the reverse also holds good? A fine beard and moustache are part of nature’s bounty, an enhancement to every face; and all intimacy, not just the kiss.
Elizabeth Whittome
Taize-Aizie, France
University deserves praise
I fully agree with Andrew Brown’s comments on the attributes of U3A (University of the Third Age) (17 April). His comments relate to the U3A in Britain but they are just as appropriate in Australia. I have been involved with Bayside U3A (Melbourne) since its inception just over two years ago. The formation committee expected to get 100 or so students and run maybe 15 classes. There are now almost 700 students enrolled in 75 classes.
I have been the tutor/organiser of classical music and jazz appreciation classes since our U3A started in February 2013. I have no musical training and do not play an instrument; however, I have been an avid record collector for 60 years and enjoy sharing my vast collection and my knowledge. My classes are always well attended, so I must be doing something right!
David C Peake
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Cricket, golf and snooker
Stephanie Merry asks: can Slow TV exist outside of Scandinavia? (10 April).
There has been a cable channel for several years at least here in British Columbia which shows a wood fireplace 24/7 throughout the holiday period each year. Devotees await the appearance of the poker.
Outside of this period it usually shows slideshows of landscape photography.
More obviously, though, many countries continue to show live Test cricket; one can watch four or five golf tournaments a week on US television, with up to six hours per day of “action” over the course of three or four days per tournament (the final two rounds of PGA tournaments get three-plus hours per day of live coverage on a major network); and the BBC, to the best of my knowledge, continues to televise snooker.
Adam Williamson
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Briefly
• After a century’s shameful neglect, it’s high time indeed the popes continue to confront Turkey over the Armenian genocide (17 April). Perhaps we will prove the glib cynicism of Hitler wrong when he spouted in 1939, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
R M Fransson
Englewood, Colorado, US
• Nothing demonstrates the complete moral bankruptcy of the US so vividly as your adjacent reports that while it has contributed $507m to the humanitarian crisis in Syria it has at the same time supplied Egypt with $1.3bn in military funding along with more jets, tanks and missiles (10 April).
Warren Lindberg
Auckland, New Zealand
• Why are we interfering with the remains of Cervantes (27 March)? The man was properly buried in accordance with his beliefs and the customs of his time.
He may have been moved since, but why compound the intrusion? If we want to honour him, why not read and enjoy his works?
Keith Burton
Fouesnant, France
• The article Silicon Valley stands up to anti-gay laws (10 April) invites another interpretation of the situation: non-democratically elected conglomerates are intimidating state legislatures and undermining the democratic process.
Michael Payne
High Wycombe, UK
• The concept of “sifting sewage for gold” (3 April) sounds odd. Surely the traces of precious metal would fall through the holes of the sieve.
The “traditional prospectors” mentioned would have used a pan to get gold dust from the slurry derived from stream bottoms. Perhaps a new term is needed for this process. Anyone for “bedpanning”?
Anthony Walter
Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
• Jeremy Butterfield’s welcome article on misuses of language (10 April) reminded me of Ezra Pound’s caution: “when language goes rotten thought and feeling decay with it, for each of us and for society”.
My favourite: when did you last hear about a view that isn’t “stunning”?
Howard Millbank
Bristol, UK
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