Letters archive

Lenny Smith wisely counsels against the incautious use of the results of climate models (6 December 2008, p 42) , but in doing so he risks denying decision-makers access to the best available climate science. In recent years "ensembles" of many climate models have been run in order to explore the uncertainties inherent in each …

Michael Le Page, in his open letter to Barack Obama (6 December 2008, p 20) , would have done better to build on his excellent critique of the Kyoto protocol's bureaucracy and "leakage" problems. Part of the difficulty with Kyoto is that carbon caps are applied at the point of emission to the atmosphere. The …

Peter Millican discusses the history of controversy over "thinking matter" (29 November 2008, p 23) , but the real trouble with the mind-body problem centres on the word "materialism". This word is itself a relic of dualism: it suggests that there are two rival stuffs – mind and matter – competing to be seen as …

The suggestion that drinking heavy water might counter ageing (29 November 2008, p 36) reminds me of the late 1950s when, as a fresh graduate, I joined a team of nuclear physicists at a UK research establishment that I had better not name. My older colleagues had both formidable intellect and a mischievous sense of …

It is indeed a shame that the potentially lifesaving pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV will certainly be heavily criticised by those who are against "carefree sex" ( 22 November 2008, p 41 and p 5 ). Detractors will no doubt include those who are also against vaccinating girls against cervical cancer, just because in order …

Mark Buchanan's report of the claim by Mitchell Feigenbaum and Vittorio Gorini that the celebrated space-time anomalies of Special Relativity "emerge... from basic, purely mathematical considerations" shows how once-discredited " a priori " reasoning is becoming somewhat acceptable in science again (1 November 2008, p 28) . The philosopher Gottfried Leibnitz took a broadly "rationalist" …

Your correspondent Tony Kline implies that any human who has walked in the woods with a hungry Labrador that has dragged them towards a previously discovered food source will find the hypothesis that the animal has foresight obvious. He also says that "comparative psychologists should get out more and keep their eyes and minds open" …

• We reported that the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica was "about the size of Scotland" (6 December 2008, p 7) . In fact, the ice sheet used to cover about 16,000 square kilometres, and Scotland is actually almost five times that area. • To refer, as we did, to a photovoltaic panel "rated to …

Your recent article on tunnelling nanotubes (15 November 2008, p 43) begins: "Had Amin Rustom not messed up, he would not have stumbled upon one of the biggest discoveries in biology of recent times." Well, perhaps I can give my account of events. Everything started when I ordered a fluorescent membrane dye. Having some cells …

In acting against climate change, we are not limited to high-tech initiatives. Simpler solutions can take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. In Australia, a pilot scheme exists to pay farmers to capture and store carbon in their farm soils, yielding the farmer around A$20 (US$14) per hectare per year above normal farm income: see …

John LeBrun makes some good points about the advantages of diesel engines (6 December 2008, p 22) , but there is more to be said. Diesels have a great advantage in city traffic because they burn very little fuel when idling, while gas engines burn about as much at idle as they do while driving …

Your articles about new cancer treatments were interesting (25 October 2008, p 26) . However, when my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer a year ago the treatment was based on slash-and-burn approaches that have been around for years. On offer were: amputation and pre-emptive amputation – the cancer was in one breast, but "just …