Letters archive

As I read the accounts and reports from the COP26 climate summit, I got the impression that there was an attempt to find something positive to say ( 20 November, p 9 ). My reaction is that it was an opportunity squandered. The event seemed badly planned and ineffectually and weakly led. I think it …

In your look at the impact of extra extraction of minerals required to expand renewable energy technologies, such as turbines and electric vehicles, environmental researcher Laura Sonter suggests that "social licence to operate" is important to the minerals industry ( 13 November, p 38 ). Social licence to operate is a mirage conjured up by …

When considering the downsides of mining for minerals that are essential for electrification in pursuit of net zero, I expected to find some reference to the future use of hydrogen. In the near future, we could have hydrogen-fired boilers in our houses and transport powered by modified engines using hydrogen, including jet engines. Where fossil …

You quote Peter Leek at the University of Oxford as saying that the progress IBM has made with its 127-qubit quantum computer is "definitely positive" and "it's good that they're making something with more qubits" ( 20 November, p 7 ). I am not sure that it is good. It seems to me that we …

Regarding the latest look at quantum theory's implications for reality ( 6 November, p 38 ). If the moon doesn't exist when you aren't looking at it, do I exist when you aren't reading my letter? More seriously, is being alive, even if no one on Earth knows, sufficient qualification for existing when no one …

I would suggest that anyone querying whether things actually exist if you aren't looking at them has never stubbed a toe, reversed a car into an obstruction or suffered some other mishap or injury. Less flippantly, given the severity of climate change and the inadequate attempts to mitigate it, why do people indulge in such …

In "Is reality real ?", Thomas Lewton concludes that unless you hear the forest tree fall, it was never there in the first place. His conclusion is challenged in the same issue by the elephants in "Deciphering Dumbo" ( p 42) that head for an unseen tree whose unheard fall they may have detected by …

The pledge by many nations to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 is intended to address global heating, but the most we should expect from this is for raised temperatures to perpetuate for decades thereafter, due to inevitable lags between causes and effects ( 13 November, p 8 ). We should honestly acknowledge that our …

There is more and more hype regarding the push for air source heat pumps ( 23 October, p 9 ). On the edge of our small town, 300 houses are being built, all with gas boiler heating and standard insulation levels. To retrofit these with heat pumps and have the recommended air circulation space of …

Graham Lawton's article on the scaling up of mineral extraction for renewable technologies reinforced my fears that wholesale conversion to electric vehicles would generate its own problems, and that these may have been underestimated ( 13 November, p 38 ). I may not live to see the day, but lorries, aircraft and possibly cars could …