Letters archive

Mark Buchanan's article on the limits of wind power raised some interesting aspects of renewable energy (2 April, p 8) , but there were some intriguing omissions. First, is Buchanan unaware that wind speeds, and therefore wave energy, increase with global warming. This has already been documented and should be factored into the free-energy balance. …

Cheating bankers always prosper, says Mark Buchanan (19 March, p 30) . One reason for this is that they control their own bonuses – a privilege most employees don't have. A solution might be to give every employee the right to decide their own salary and bonus. Inevitably, everyone would want to award themselves top …

Fail-safe technology is an essential goal in all nuclear power generation, and yet it continues to be ignored by an arrogant industry ( 26 March, p 8 ). The question that should be asked is why zirconium is still used in cladding for nuclear fuel rods after being implicated in the Three Mile Island disaster. …

Jonathan Lanman refers to the supposed "universality of religious beliefs", as many have done before (26 March, p 38) . In the society I grew up in, one might also have referred to a universality of belief in Santa Claus, but only if the subjects in the study were restricted to children under 8. As …

I was intrigued by Michael Marshall's interview with Martin Nowak (19 March, p 34) , but one statement puzzled me deeply. Nowak states that "a purely scientific interpretation of evolution does not generate an argument in favour of atheism... Evolution is not an argument against God, any more than gravity is." I have yet to …

Being an atheist and easily led, I tried to enter "Scientific Realist" in the religion box in the recent UK census, as suggested by Martin Hunt (26 March, p 36) . Only 17 characters were allowed. I had to make do with "ScientificRealist". Seventeen characters does seem a bit miserly to describe what I "do …

When listing the means of escape of plant species (19 March, p 18) , Andy Coghlan apparently overlooked one of the most obvious: the steady flow of keen gardeners pinching a bit off, with the delicious challenge of trying to root it at home. I know that I am not alone in having memories of …

David Shiga told of the Russian mock-up of a mission to Mars, which is intended to help with planning a real mission (5 February, p 10) . Is it too late to try to convince conspiracy theorists that this is in fact an elaborate front for an actual mission to Mars? If the belief takes …

Alan Chattaway's call to name the phenomenon where something is known more widely by an erroneous name than by its correct one (29 January, p 25) immediately brought to mind another common misuse. Many people in the UK refer to their local office for the registration of births, marriages and deaths as the "registry office". …

The photograph in the box in "The secret life of plants" (26 March, p 48) was wrongly accredited. It was taken by Justin Runyon (courtesy of the De Moraes and Mescher labs).