Letters archive

Gaia Vince discusses how we will cope if the Earth's temperature rises (28 February, p 28) . It's time to face facts: if we don't reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by at least 70 per cent within five years, we will have blown it. Of course, what stands squarely in the way of what we …

Peter Fournier writes that proposals to produce electricity in Norway by osmosis of fresh water into seawater are impractical (4 April, p 23) . Like so many "green" ideas, it suffers from remote location and low power density. However, the idea could be applicable in Australia: an evaporating pond in inland Queensland could produce very …

Michael Siegel's claim of censorship as described in David Robson's article on tobacco policy (4 April, p 34) effectively casts him as the enlightened Galileo to tobacco control's blinkered church. In fact, the international tobacco control community not only tolerates debate on scientific and policy matters, but actively encourages it. In the past year I …

The article "Many happy returns for cold fusion" contained a subtle but significant ambiguity (28 March, p 10) . The article mentions my scepticism of "cold fusion" as a theoretical explanation for the low-energy nuclear reaction experimental phenomena, but fails to mention other theoretical models for these phenomena which also propose nuclear processes, namely, neutron-catalysed …

Mary Midgley states that "many are anticipating conversion with some interest" (21 March, p 22) . I think it very likely that, when the time comes, evangelists will be queuing up to try to convert him on his deathbed, hoping to make Lady Hope-style conversion claims as they did with Charles Darwin. Dawkins has, I …

M. Bell argues that science is independent of great names while religion is not (7 March, p 24) . Certainly, other intelligent beings would develop science of a kind, but there is no reason for it to have much in common with, say, Newton's billiard-ball vision of the universe. Newton's view was specific to the …

Vicky Robinson claims that common ground can be found between scientists and opponents of animal research throughthe three Rs: the replacement, reduction and refinement of scientific procedures on animals (7 March, p 22) . Unfortunately, many anti-vivisectionists reject two assumptions on which this approach is predicated: that knowledge gained from animal research can be applied …

I'd like to say "no thanks" to the intercontinental electrical supergrids discussed in the "Green grid" feature (14 March, p 42). Adopting them would make us more vulnerable than ever to the whims of countries from or through which the cables pass, and they would be easy targets for any would-be attacker intent on causing …

"I didn't notice hordes of physicists in a frothing rage when the line 'Why Einstein was wrong about relativity' appeared on your cover", Paddy Shannon wrote (14 March , p 24, regarding 1 November 2008 issue ). While not frothing with rage, Brian Newham did point out that the problems in Einstein's theories were those …

Simon Wessely's interpretation of certain medical conditions as having a psychological component makes perfect sense to me (14 March, p 26) . We cannot blame our mind for everything, but it undoubtedly plays a major role in many illnesses, as I know from personal experience. I suffered from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) from early childhood, …

Keith Tritton's suggestion of knitting patterns as a metaphor for DNA are indeed a much better analogy than a blueprint (21 March, p 22) . Some decades ago New Scientist published an article on random knitting patterns and I realised they could be used to encode anything into a sweater. I convinced my wife to …