Letters archive

Even with 1.5°C of warming on the very near horizon, the vast majority of humanity seems to be in denial of climate change and is failing to act. Perhaps calling it climate change is part of the problem. I suggest always calling it human-induced warming or fossil fuel-induced warming, so the cause is clear ( …

We are at more than 424 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and rising. With no reference to temperatures, the chemist James Lovelock – who proposed the Gaia hypothesis – considered approaching 450 ppm to be reckless; by then, damaging, irreversible positive feedbacks would start locking into place. Unlike speculating about …

You say that carbon cuts alone won't be enough to reverse catastrophic climate change. I agree. Measures introduced so far will have very little effect. Emissions continue to rise, even accelerating. This is doomsday unless something drastic is done. Fiddling with carbon capture is never going to hack it. We don't have time for such …

Chris Impey doubts the prospects of communicating with aliens, saying that despite sharing 99 per cent of our DNA with chimps, we can't communicate with them. However, humans have been making themselves understood by chimps for 50 years. We have been communicating with other animals, and they with us, for thousands of years ( 27 …

Impey doesn't mention another reason for caution in contacting aliens, even if they are assumed to be benevolent. They might freely make technologies available to us that are far more advanced than our own, thinking that they could only help us. They may assume that we don't suffer from the dysfunction and conflicts that plague …

The reason we can't communicate with chimps is because they aren't sufficiently intelligent, but this has no bearing whatsoever on whether we could communicate with an alien species clever enough to detect our messages.

Regarding negotiations between actors in the US and the film industry over the use of artificial intelligence to mimic performers on screen, it seems to me that if this technology takes over film, TV and online drama, then there will be a huge boost for live theatre. Seeing real actors on stage will be everybody's …

Michael Le Page says that brain organoids grown in labs are nothing like real brains, that they are "bunches of brain cells just a few millimetres across that are nowhere near even a simple animal brain" ( 10 June, p 21 ). Even so, that is a lot bigger than many animal brains. The whole …

Though it is great to see animal issues covered in New Scientist , it is heartbreaking to see Peter Singer, who was once a great voice for animals, even contemplating the idea that their farming and humane slaughter might be considered ethical ( 3 June, p 43 ). Can you imagine Gloria Steinem discussing types …

While not wishing to promote the freezing of heads more than sense dictates, it did occur to me that a severed head isn't just missing the rest of its natural form, but also its microbiome – increasingly recognised as an additional dimension of health and personality. To partially compensate for this, perhaps a frozen head …

I do believe a basic bag-filling algorithm, of the sort described by Peter Rowlett as "a simple rule a computer program can mindlessly apply", is already being used by the supermarkets that deliver to my home. Considering no factor other than filling space, sliced bread is routinely squashed out of all recognition by bottles, jars …