Letters archive

In your extended look at how to transform our energy system to a climate-friendly one, nuclear power doesn't make the cut ( 7 August, p 34 ). It should. For starters, Rolls-Royce is leading a consortium to produce small modular nuclear reactors producing about 450 megawatts each. It says that they could be operating in …

The future widespread use of electric cars is an unthinking assumption. Cars are a particularly inefficient mode of transport. Most spend 90 to 95 per cent of the time parked in driveways, car parks and on the road. A traffic jam of electric cars will still happen. A mix of public transport, cycleways and footpaths …

There has long been a negative stance on biofuels, but they don't have to be made from food crops. They can be made from any kind of plant. The main rivals to power transport – batteries for electric vehicles – are not only heavy, but entail an environmental and human cost in production. For example, …

You report climate scientist Tim Palmer's call for a "CERN for climate change" supercomputer project ( 31 July, p 11 ). Why not incentivise the vast computing resources of the cryptocurrency mining community to perform the calculations? Although most mining hardware is targeted at cryptocurrency solutions, this could be addressed. Palmer cites €200 million a …

Ian Napier writes that Australia isn't responsible for climate damage because its carbon emissions are less than 2 per cent of the world's total ( Letters, 31 July ). This can't be justified when it is known that its population is only about 0.33 per cent of Earth's. Its annual export of some 400 million …

Jim Watson proposes that there are advantages for many countries to skipping fossil fuels and moving directly to renewable energy supplies ( 7 August, p 23 ). I'm sure he's right about that. He then says that this switch could underpin economic development. But is it not the case that economic development – in other …

You report suggestions that asthma could be reduced in a lower oxygen atmosphere ( 31 July, p 42 ). There may be a simpler explanation – a controlled or high-altitude atmosphere may lack the irritants that provoke shortness of breath. Several years ago I went on holiday in North Wales. I climbed Snowdon, Pen yr …

In our recent feature on cave art (31 July, p36), the depiction of a kangaroo shown on page 39 was in fact ancient aboriginal rock art at Kakadu National Park, Australia

After reading Jon Cartwright's article "Solid, liquid, gas... and beyond" on "bizarre new states of matter", I begin to find the apparent reports of UFOs more credible ( 14 August, p 40 ). If ETs read New Scientist , they should now realise we aren't as backward as they might think. They might even invite …

I was rather disturbed by the negative attitude to humanity expressed by your correspondents regarding a 500-year plan to send us into space. Of course we have given rise to Hitler, Stalin and vast mounds of plastic, but we also have the works of Shakespeare, da Vinci and Mozart and the ability to work cooperatively …