PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet, 37/2003 - 4 April 2003
------------------------------
"A new study of several meteorites collected on Earth and
thought to have come from the
same large asteroid reveal the structure of the parent
space rock to have been something
like an onion, with layer upon layer of differing
structure."
--Robert Britt, Space.com, 2 April 2003
"Looking from Earth, it's hard to keep an eye on rocks in
the Asteroid Belt that are less
than 10 kilometres in diameter. We don't know what's
flying around up there, or if anything
may be on track to hit us. The Bering probe will help us gain a
much better perspective on
interplanetary asteroids."
--Anja C. Andersen, Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen
"For the past century the world has got steadily better for
most people. You do not believe
that? I am not surprised. You are fed such a strong diet of news
about how bad things are
that it must be hard to believe they were once worse. But choose
any statistic you like and
it will show that the lot of even the poorest is better
today than it was in 1903."
--Matt Ridley, The Guardian, 3 April 2003
(1) NEW STUDY: SOME ASTEROIDS MAY BE LAYERED LIKE ONIONS
Space.com, 2 April 2003
(2) LIFE HISTORY OF AN ASTEROID
Nature, 3 April 2003
(3) PHOTO OF ASTEROID VESTA
Ron Baalke <info@jpl.nasa.gov>
(4) NEW LAUNCH DATE FOR DEEP IMPACT
Deep Impact Project <info@jpl.nasa.gov>
(5) HOT ON THE ASTEROID TRAIL
The Copenhagen Post, 3 April 2003
(6) HITCHHIKING BACTERIA COULD COMPROMISE THE DETECTION OF LIFE
ON MARS
BioMed Central, 3 April 2003
(7) RE: THE OECD MEETING AND THE FUTURE OF THE EUROPEAN NEO
RESEARCH
Jens Kieffer-Olsen <dstdba@post4.tele.dk>
(8) CHAPMAN PAPER FOR OECD NEO WORKSHOP
Michael Paine <mpaine@tpg.com.au>
(9) HOMO SAPIENS AND HUMAN CATASTROPHES
Stephen Ashworth <sa@astronist.demon.co.uk>
(10) SADDAM POSES BIGGEST HEALTH HAZARD
Michael Martin-Smith <lagrangia@lagrangia.karoo.co.uk>
(11) AND FINALLY: WE'VE NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD - AND IT'S ALL
THANKS TO SCIENCE
The Guardian, 3 April 2003
======
(1) NEW STUDY: SOME ASTEROIDS MAY BE LAYERED LIKE ONIONS
>From Space.com, 2 April 2003
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/onion_asteroids_030402.html
By Robert Roy Britt
A new study of several meteorites collected on Earth and thought
to have come from the same large asteroid reveal the structure of
the parent space rock to have been something like an onion, with
layer upon layer of differing structure.
The asteroid, long ago destroyed in a collision, was once hot
enough to have a molten core and cooled from the outside inward,
the research shows, confirming a long-held expectation that had
eluded supporting research.
Asteroids are leftovers of planet formation. While some rocks got
together to build planets about 4.5 billion years ago, a bunch
never achieved as much. Most of this debris now orbits the Sun in
the so-called asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter. Collisions
in the belt have been frequent through time, and some of the
resulting smaller chunks make their way to Earth, where they fall
as meteorites.
Scientists see these meteorites as a collective window to planet
formation and the evolution of the early solar system.
Researchers already suspected that the initial asteroids,
sometimes called planetesimals because they were like precursors
to planets, were heated internally by the decay of a short-lived
aluminum isotope that was common in the early solar system. The
middles of some asteroids would have melted.
The new work, led by Mario Trieloff of the University of
Heidelberg, Germany, examined crystals in several meteorites
known as H-group chondrites, all of which were presumed to have
come from the same parent asteroid. Some of the crystals were
damaged by spontaneous fission generated long ago by decaying
plutonium. The damage was healed by high temperatures -- like
those occurring in the center of an asteroid -- but remain in
meteorites that were cooler, presumably from outer layers of the
asteroid.
This allowed Trieloff's team to create a temperature map of the
original asteroid. The map confirms a suspected layered
composition, the so-called onion model.
"This cooling behavior is in perfect agreement with what we
expect, if an asteroid is heated by an internal heat source that
comes from the rocks itself," Trieloff said. The research
will be detailed in the April 3 issue of the journal Nature.
Scientists have sought confirmation of the onion model for
decades, but it was lacking. Perhaps, some thought, the
H-chondrites came from many different asteroids, instead of one.
John Wood of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center analyzed the research
for Nature.
Trieloff and his colleagues "now dispel these doubts,"
Wood writes, by showing that the chondrites "can be fitted
into a straightforward model of a planetesimal with a radius of
about 100 kilometers [62 miles] and an onion-shell structure,
which was internally heated ... and cooled over about 100 million
years."
The study looked at just one sort of asteroid, however, and it
does not represent the structures of asteroids in general.
Trieloff points out that there are about 10 different major
chondrite classes in meteorites, material that represents
"at least 50 originally different asteroids."
Meteorites in other chondrite classes typically do not show the
diversity of types that would indicate the extensive layering of
a parent object as found in the new study. Among these are
so-called carbonaceous chondrites.
Trieloff told SPACE.com that the parent bodies of these other
chondrites might either have formed a few million years later,
after the aluminum isotope had already decayed, and so never had
a chance to grow so hot. Or the parent asteroids might simply
have been smaller (size affects heat, too).
Yet another class of chondrites (called L and LL) represent
asteroids that probably did have a layered structure but might
have broken apart before cooling down, thereby eliminating the
sort of evidence that the new study looked for, Trieloff said.
Copyright 2003, Space.com
===========
(2) LIFE HISTORY OF AN ASTEROID
>From Nature, 3 April 2003
http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?e66498898&e=6513
For the first time we now have a record of the structure and
cooling history of a planetisimal from the early Solar System,
from its formation 4.6 billion years ago to its existence as a
cool, stony asteroid. Much later it was to fragment, and parts of
it fell to Earth. Measurement of plutonium-244 and argon isotope
thermochronologies in a collection of meteorites classified by
their chemical composition as 'chondrite H', and thought to have
originated from different depths within the same asteroidal body,
shows how rapid accretion, in just a few million years, was
followed by internal heating to produce a layered body. Heat
production was insufficient for the separation of a molten iron
core, and after 160 million years of cooling the rocks at the
centre had reached 390 K.
Structure and thermal history of the H-chondrite parent asteroid
revealed by thermochronometry
MARIO TRIELOFF, ELMAR K. JESSBERGER, INGRID HERRWERTH, JENS HOPP,
CHRISTINE FIÉNI, MARIANNE GHÉLIS, MICHÈLE BOUROT-DENISE &
PAUL PELLAS
Nature 422, 502-506 (2003); doi:10.1038/nature01499
============
(3) PHOTO OF ASTEROID VESTA
>From Ron Baalke <info@jpl.nasa.gov>
http://science.nasa.gov/ppod/y2003/02apr_vesta.htm
April 2, 2003
Asteroid Vesta
Credit: Don Pettit, ISS Expedition 6 Science Officer, NASA
Picture this: You're at home in your living room. It's dark
outside. A few of the brightest stars shine in through the
window. Meanwhile, two hundred million kilometers away, a nearly
invisible asteroid glides through space. You grab your camera,
point, click, and capture the space rock on film--right through
your living room window. No problem?
It wasn't for International Space Station Science Officer Don
Pettit, who enjoys space-dark skies and the clearest living room
window in the solar system. On March 24th he pointed his digital
camera out the station's Destiny Lab window and snapped this
picture of asteroid Vesta in the constellation Virgo. Vesta is so
big--about 500 km wide--that astronomers consider it to be a
minor planet. Even so, distant Vesta is barely visible to the
naked eye from the darkest and clearest observing sites on Earth.
Taking its picture through any window is remarkable.
The brightest star in Pettit's photo is epsilon Viriginis. Also
known as Vindemiatrix, this star is 60 times more luminous than
the Sun and lies 100 light years away. The faintest stars in the
photo are approximately 16 times fainter than you can see with
your naked eye--i.e., the limiting magnitude was 9. In a larger
version of this image you might also notice some dim smudges.
These are galaxies in the Virgo Cluster about 50 million light
years away. "The space station functions very well as a
platform for astrophotography," notes Pettit.
==========
(4) NEW LAUNCH DATE FOR DEEP IMPACT
>From Deep Impact Project <info@jpl.nasa.gov>
http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/
New Launch Date for Deep Impact
Deep Impact Project
April 1, 2003
A new launch window is announced for the Deep Impact project, the
first mission to look deep inside a comet. Technical and
management issues, including contamination in the propulsion
system and late deliveries of key spacecraft components, resulted
in delays in the pre-flight testing
schedule. These concerns led Deep Impact Principal Investigator,
Mike A'Hearn, to recommend to NASA a delay of launch. A launch
window beginning December 30, 2004, previously identified as a
back-up date, provides more thorough testing for the spacecraft
systems before launch and allows the spacecraft to arrive at
Comet Tempel 1 to impact it as originally scheduled on July, 4,
2005. NASA management approved the recommendation.
Old Trajectory Diagram:
http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/jpg/traj_old_color.jpg
New Trajectory Diagram:
http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/jpg/traj_new_color.jpg
Deep Impact will be the first mission to make a spectacular,
football-stadium-sized crater, seven to 15 stories deep, into the
speeding comet. Dramatic images from both the flyby spacecraft
and
the impactor will be sent back to distant Earth as data in
near-realtime. These first-ever views deep beneath a comet's
surface, and additional scientific measurements will provide
clues to the formation of the solar system. Amateur astronomers
will combine efforts with astronomers at larger telescopes to
offer the public an earth-based look at this incredible July 2005
encounter with a comet.
===========
(5) HOT ON THE ASTEROID TRAIL
>From The Copenhagen Post, 3 April 2003
http://cphpost.periskop.dk/default.asp?id=29767
With the space-age Bering Probe, astronomers will develop
groundbreaking new technology to study rogue asteroids
Leading Danish astronomers have launched an ambitious plan: a
team at the Niels Bohr Institute hopes to become the first in the
world to develop technology capable of probing the Asteroid Belt.
The new Danish probe would investigate asteroids up to 400
kilometres from Earth, and provide much more effective
information on rogue space rocks that may be on a collision
course with the planet.
Researchers from Denmark's Technical University and the Niels
Bohr Institute have begun the developmental stages of the Bering
space probe, named in honour of the Danish explorer. Equipped
with a telescope, cameras, a magnetometer, and a computer, Bering
will investigate asteroids travelling between Mars and
Jupiter.
The Bering probe will be aimed primarily at smaller asteroids,
which pose the greatest threat of colliding with this
planet.
'Looking from Earth, it's hard to keep an eye on rocks in the
Asteroid Belt that are less than 10 kilometres in diameter. We
don't know what's flying around up there, or if anything may be
on track to hit us. The Bering probe will help us gain a much
better perspective on interplanetary asteroids,' said Niels Bohr
Institute astronomer Anja C. Andersen, speaking with daily
newspaper Berlingske Tidende.
According to the newspaper, earthly collision by an asteroid just
two kilometers in diameter could unleash a global catastrophe,
wiping out huge segments of the planet's population.
A final price-tag on the Bering project has been estimated at DKK
1.2 billion (162 million euros). Researchers are appealing for
financial aid from global (sic) space organisations.
All rights reserved CPHPOST.DK ApS
=========
(6) HITCHHIKING BACTERIA COULD COMPROMISE THE DETECTION OF LIFE
ON MARS
>From BioMed Central, 3 April 2003
http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/pr-releases?pr=20030403
Is there life on Mars? It's possible, but it may not Martian, say
scientists. New research, published in the open access journal
BMC Microbiology, suggests that conditions on Mars are capable of
supporting dormant bacteria, known as endospores. This raises
concern about future attempts to detect Martian life forms
because endospores originating on Earth could potentially hitch a
ride to Mars and survive on its surface.
Soil on Mars is thought to be rich in oxidising chemicals that
are known to destroy life. The high levels of ultraviolet
radiation on the surface of the planet make it unlikely that any
organism could survive. Ronald Crawford and colleagues from the
University of Idaho have investigated whether bacterial
endospores can exist in Mars's hostile environment.
Endospores are a survival form of bacteria, formed when they find
themselves in an unfavourable environment, and are perhaps the
most resilient life form on Earth. They are resistant to extreme
temperatures, most disinfectants, radiation, drying, and can
survive for thousands of years in this dormant state. There is
even evidence that they can survive in the vacuum of space. Given
the possibility of endospores hitching a lift on spacecraft bound
for Mars, Ronald Crawford and his colleagues investigated whether
endospores could survive in a simulated Martian environment.
Martian soil was created by mixing dry sand containing endospores
with ferrate. The soil was then left at -20 oC and exposed to
high levels of UV light for six weeks. These conditions were
designed to simulate the dry, cold, oxidizing environment found
on Mars. Subsequent analysis of the soil showed that endospores
were still alive below a depth of 5mm, suggesting that life is
possible in these hostile conditions.
The authors speculate, "that if entities resembling
bacterial endospores were produced at some point by life forms on
Mars, they might still be present and viable, given appropriate
germination conditions."
Although the researchers have not found direct evidence for life
on Mars their research does throw up a potential problem with
future space missions. The survival of endospores in such adverse
conditions raises the possibility that bacterial endospores could
travel to Mars on the surface of spacecraft and survive on
Martian soil. This could seriously compromise future efforts to
establish whether there is, or has been life on Mars, as it would
be difficult for researchers to know whether any endospores found
originated from Earth or Mars.
Whilst this work establishes that bacterial endospores can
survive exposure to the conditions probably found on Mars, it
should be noted that it was not possible to test whether their
simulated Martian environment would kill endospores over a
geological timescale.
Further Information:
This article in freely available in the open access, peer
reviewed journal, BMC Microbiology http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2180-3-4.pdf
Contact one of the authors, for further information about this
research
Ronald L. Crawford
Environmental Research Institute
and Department of Microbiology,
Molecular Biology & Biochemistry,
University of Idaho,
Moscow, USA
Email: crawford@uidaho.edu
============================
* LETTERS TO THE MODERATOR *
============================
(7) RE: THE OECD MEETING AND THE FUTURE OF THE EUROPEAN NEO
RESEARCH
>From Jens Kieffer-Olsen <dstdba@post4.tele.dk>
Dear Benny Peiser,
CCNet 35/2003 brought an item THE OECD MEETING AND THE FUTURE OF
THE EUROPEAN NEO RESEARCH from
Tumbling Stone, 23 March 2003 by Andrea Carusi, which I feel
deserves a comment:
> The document has not yet been finalized and therefore cannot
> be reported here; however, a few comments on its
"spirit" can
> be made. A first important point is that the NEO threat is
> recognized as real, although of very low frequency.
'Of very low but unpredictable frequency' would be a better
wording, keeping a balance between scaremongering and downplaying
the risk.
> A second point that has been raised is that the scientific
> investigations on all phenomena related to impacts should
> receive more attention and, in the end, more funds. The link
> between scientific research and civil defense initiatives
has
> been stressed, because the science findings are essential to
> characterize the risk and to indicate the most effective
ways
> of planning mitigation measures.
Actually, I doubt that it can be deemed cost-justified to involve
civil defense on a detailed scale, until a threat is for real.
But identifying NEO orbits early on, such that the warning
time before impact is maximised, is a purpose to which many more
funds should indeed be given.
> A third point concerns international collaboration. It is
clear
> that impacts are a potential hazard that involves, by its
very
> nature, many countries; actions should therefore be taken to
> improve the international collaboration both in finding the
> objects and in analyzing possible countermeasures.
I don't see why finding the objects needs international
collaboration at all. Observations need to be communicated as
happens already to-day, but independent search programs are
warranted in a number of countries for several good reasons. Any
data received from probes in solar orbits would
be scrutinized first by scientific or military personnel of the
country that built the probe. As for analyzing counter-measures
to-day, it seems a futile exercise except for NASA and their
Russian counterpart, although of course ESA and China may have a
role to play in some future mitigation strategy.
Yours sincerely
Jens Kieffer-Olsen, M.Sc.(Elec.Eng.)
Slagelse, Denmark
============
(8) CHAPMAN PAPER FOR OECD NEO WORKSHOP
>From Michael Paine <mpaine@tpg.com.au>
Dear Benny
For those who, like me, have difficulty with the OECD website the
paper by Clark Chapman is at
http://www.oecd.org/oecd/pages/documentredirection?paramID=38766&language=EN&col=OECDDCoreLive
Clark's homepage is http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~cchapman/
but he hasn't listed the paper there yet.
regards
Michael Paine
============
(9) HOMO SAPIENS AND HUMAN CATASTROPHES
>From Stephen Ashworth <sa@astronist.demon.co.uk>
Dear Dr Peiser,
It is not clear what motivates Andrew Glikson's extraordinary cry
of despair (CCNet 15/2003 - 2 April 2003, item 8).
If his references to the "global market force" and the
"desert sky god" are intended as references to the
recent military conflict in Afghanistan, or (less plausibly) the
current one in Iraq, then his analysis omits a number of relevant
factors. These include the progressive nature of human evolution
(amply illustrated today in Iraq, where one side is fighting with
one hand tied behind its back and subject to the court of world
opinion) and the demonstrated superiority of the global market
economy as a system for generating wealth.
It is also unclear what his references to "destruction of
the biosphere" and "planetary ecocide" are apropos
of, given that environmental awareness in the rich world has been
growing over the past 30 years, and that near-future technologies
will one day be vital in the prevention of that
tragedy on Earth due to the long-term increase in solar
luminosity.
Stephen Ashworth
Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society
3 April 2003
**************************************
Stephen Ashworth, Oxford, U.K.
http://www.astronist.demon.co.uk/
http://www.creative-evolution.net/
**************************************
============
(10) SADDAM POSES BIGGEST HEALTH HAZARD
>From Michael Martin-Smith <lagrangia@lagrangia.karoo.co.uk>
Dear Benny,
Judging from the personal testimony of many Iraqi exiles around
the world, it seems clear that the postulated health hazards of
the present war are vastly dwarfed by the well-known health
hazards of being ruled by Saddam Hussein and his totalitarian
National Socialist (Ba'ath Party) regime. A Manifesto for this
Party, both in theory and practice, would differ from
Hitler's "Mein Kampf" chiefly in the substitution of
the word "Arab" for "Aryan". The health
hazards inherent in Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and its
anti-democratic/anti-Judaic creed are the stuff of history; the
same ideas, intrinsic alike to Ba'athism, are now potentially
even more hazardous to
health, since today's Israelis, unlike the victims of the
Holocaust 60 years ago, are not without the means of massive
retaliation.
We would do well to remember this, I think
Michael Martin-Smith
=============
(11) AND FINALLY: WE'VE NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD - AND IT'S ALL
THANKS TO SCIENCE
>From The Guardian, 3 April 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/opinion/story/0,12981,928170,00.html
Acclaimed author Matt Ridley on why it's high time we cheered up
about the new technologies
If you debate the new genetics in Europe and America these days
you get asked the same question in two different ways. The
average European says, with dread: "How do we stop people
doing x?" The average American says with excitement:
"When will I be able to do x?" For x, read "test
myself for future dementia risk," "change my unborn
children's genes," or even "fill my blood vessels with
nano-robots to enable me to live to 150".
To the jaded European palate, the American attitude seems silly
and irresponsible. Caution should be the watchword for all new
technology. I beg to differ. I think the American optimism is
necessary and responsible. It is the European pessimists who are
in danger of causing real harm. Caution has risks, too.
My techno-optimism is deeply unfashionable in Europe, where
Jeremiah is treated as a serious, cautious and - let's face it -
cool guy, but Pollyanna is a silly twit.
We discuss the potential drawbacks of genetic testing or genetic
modification of crops. We do not discuss the suffering and
environmental damage that will be caused by holding back
innovation.
I am not arguing that all new technologies are risk free.
Reproductive cloning, for example, carries a 30% risk of
producing a bodily deformity, 15 times the normal rate. To use
this technology on human beings is wrong precisely because it is
unsafe.
I am arguing that the debate is unbalanced here because it is
complacent about the imperfect present. As James Watson, an
unabashed proponent of more genetic testing, has said: "If
there is a paramount ethical issue attending the vast new genetic
knowledge created by the Human Genome Project, in my view it is
the slow pace at which what we know now is being deployed to
diminish human suffering." He points out that almost no
pregnant women are offered screening for fragile X syndrome, an
easily identified genetic cause of terrible mental retardation.
Ethics cuts both ways.
This applies even to esoteric discovery. In Europe most people
think the discovery of genes that influence human behaviour must
inevitably lead to a sort of behavioural apartheid in which the
genetically disfavoured are abandoned to their fate.
But examine what actually happens when society concludes that a
particular behaviour is innate. Dyslexia and autism are good
examples. In the 1960s, most people believed they were caused by
nurture - by parenting or schooling. Now most people believe they
are primarily genetic. Has this change led to dyslexics and
autistics being thrown on the educational scrap heap? Quite the
reverse: a belief in genetic determinism has been accompanied by
a renewed determination to find remedial education that works.
Far from imprisoning us in fate, self knowledge about the causes
of our behaviour will liberate people to make choices: as the
philosopher Daniel Dennett argues, more knowledge brings more
free will. The horrors of eugenics were helped not by biological
discoveries - the eugenic movement pre-dated the rediscovery of
the gene in 1900 by 26 years - but by biological ignorance.
Demagogues could whip people into a frenzy about genetic
deterioration only because so little was known about real genes.
Since then, the history of biology is a history of worrying too
much and hoping too little. In 1975 at Asilomar in California
scientists in effect called a five-year moratorium on the new
technology of microbial genetic engineering until regulation
caught up. Responsible? Perhaps, but the effect was to delay by
five years the production of vital drugs for haemophiliacs,
diabetics and people deficient in the human growth hormone. The
first and last groups were, as a result, more exposed to Aids and
new variant CJD respectively.
Soon after, many people feared that test-tube babies would lead
to eugenics: to people choosing to use the eggs of beauty queens
or the sperm of Nobel prize winners. In fact, businessmen tried
to sell both and failed. People use in-vitro fertilisation mostly
to have their own babies, not somebody else's.
Then along came genetic fingerprinting, invented by Alec Jeffreys
in Leicester in 1985, and everybody worried so much about its
potential for incarcerating the wrong criminals that almost
nobody noticed until recently that it was the ideal tool for
exculpating the wrongly convicted. To date, the Innocence Project
in New York has used DNA to exonerate more than 100 wrongly
convicted people, some of whom were on death row. That project is
run by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, the two lawyers who helped
get OJ Simpson off by challenging DNA evidence: they are now its
fans.
Then we were told that genetic modification of food would lead to
the use of more chemical sprays. The opposite proved true: GM
cotton growers in India, Australia and China are spraying less
than half as much pesticide on their crops; GM corn growers in
the United States are spending less than before on insecticide.
British growers of GM sugar beet are spraying herbicide once
instead of five times. The birds, butterflies and flowers are
coming back into the fields where GM crops are grown.
Of course, the organic farming lobby argues that it, too, can
bring back wildlife. But only at a price. Because organic crops
require nitrogen grown elsewhere rather than manufactured from
the air in a factory, organic farming is land-hungry. The
economist Indur Goklany has calculated that if the world tried to
feed its current six billion people using the (mainly organic)
technologies and yields of 1961, it would require 82% of land
area to be cultivated instead of 38%. That means ploughing up the
Amazon, irrigating the Sahara and draining the Okavango.
Speaking of food, in Europe it is common to hear the argument
that the world now produces enough food without GM. Yes, but how
did it achieve this? By rapidly adopting fertiliser, pesticides
and high-yielding varieties. This "Green Revolution"
depended on genetically new varieties created by artificial
mutation using nuclear radiation and chemical mutagens.
Ah, say the pessimists, but the green revolution did not solve
all poverty and malnutrition. True - which is precisely why it is
so important to press ahead with new technologies to solve the
remaining problems. There was no golden age: old-fangled farming
caused environmental and humanitarian problems, too.
"Organic farming is sustainable," says Indian
biotechnologist CS Prakash. "It sustains poverty and
malnutrition." DDT was brought in to replace arsenic
compounds that left birds dead in the fields. Or, as a
biotechnologist said to me the other day: "If you think GM
disrupts the environment, try watching what a plough does to soil
structure".
For the past century the world has got steadily better for most
people. You do not believe that? I am not surprised. You are fed
such a strong diet of news about how bad things are that it must
be hard to believe they were once worse. But choose any statistic
you like and it will show that the lot of even the poorest is
better today than it was in 1903. Longevity is increasing faster
in the poor south than in the rich north. Infant mortality is
lower in Asia than ever before. Decade by decade per-capita food
production is rising.
Here at home, we are healthier, wealthier and wiser than ever
before. Pollution has declined; prosperity increased; options
opened.
All this has been achieved primarily by that most hated of
tricks, the technical fix. By invention, not legislation.
My point? Simply this: if you asked intellectuals at almost any
time since Malthus to talk about the future, they would have been
pessimistic and they would have been wrong. The future (actual)
has consistently proved better than the future (forecast).
Malthus said we could never grow enough food; the Club of Rome
said the oil would soon run out; Paul Ehrlich said the population
would expand until it crashed.
(Population is the one issue where my optimism relies on a
miracle. Given unlimited food, other species expand their numbers
until they crash. Human beings, instead, go through something
called the demographic transition, when they voluntarily adjust
their birth rate once infant mortality decreases. It happened in
Sweden first, Britain next, Thailand recently and it's happening
in Bangladesh now. The forecast peak size of the world population
has fallen from 15bn to 9bn in just 25 years. As I said, a
miracle.)
What accounts for Europe's techno-pessimism? I suspect
environmentalists merely milk it, rather than create it.
Novelists and screen writers have a lot to answer for. How many
movies have you seen set in the future in which you thought -
what a nice place to live? Thought not.
The future is always depicted as a place where a technical fix
has gone wrong, where androids stalk a devastated urban
landscape. I have recently noticed a lot of people suddenly
worrying about nanotechnology. Could Michael Crichton's
"Prey" have anything to do with this?
Many people in the environmental movement will object that they
have nothing against new technology per se, but they distrust its
ownership by big corporations. Yet their actions often belie the
distinction. When presented with a biotechnology that was
developed in the public sector and is freely available to all in
the developing world, they still object to it. A good example is
'golden rice'.
In the 1990s Ingo Potrykus genetically engineered some strains of
rice to contain a natural vitamin A precursor precisely because
he was affronted by the fact that half a million children go
blind every year in the third world for lack of vitamin A. He
gave up his intellectual property rights, and persuaded Syngenta
and other companies to waive their patents so that he could give
the rice away for free in poor countries.
Yet the crop remains tied up for years to come awaiting
regulatory approval as a "drug" because of
precautionary regulations urged on third world countries by
environmental groups. Greens argue that Potrykus's rice should
never be used because a person would need to eat up to nine
kilograms a day to get enough vitamin A and because there are
better ways to get vitamins to the poor. The first assertion is
false - the true figure is up to 200 grams. As for the second, if
greens know a better way to get vitamins to the poor, let them do
it. At least Potrykus acts, rather than just postures.
I met Potrykus recently in Monterey in California. He was filming
harlequin ducks in the harbour: he is as passionate about nature
as he is about humanitarianism. We talked about birds and how to
restore the British skylark. We agreed that the invention of
winter wheat in the 1970s, not pesticides, was the chief problem
because it robbed the species of its winter stubble habitat.
Spring wheat is now uneconomic to produce. It should be possible
now, he said, to genetically-modify wheat so it can be just as
productive if planted in the spring.
I put that idea to the John Innes Centre, Britain's leading plant
biotechnology research centre. Nobody will fund environmental
genetic modification on wheat these days, I was told: the greens
have frightened off the public funds, and the private funders
have gone back to inventing new chemical sprays because they get
less flak that way. How sad for skylarks.
The burden of proof should be on those who think the present
cannot be improved upon.
Matt Ridley's new book, Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience and
What Makes Us Human, published by 4th Estate, priced £18.99, is
out now.
Copyright 2003, The Guardian
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*
MAINE CRATER RELATED TO DINO-KILLER IMPACT?
>From Discovery News, 3 April 2003
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20030331/crater.html
By Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News
April 3, 2003 - The evidence is still skimpy, but there is a
chance that the dino killer asteroid was not alone when it
walloped the Earth 65 million years ago.
A possible second crater, at least as big or bigger than the
famous Chicxulub crater off Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, may have
been created by a second hit moments after Chicxulub and off the
coast of Maine.
"It probably is a crater, but we really don't have age
data," said marine geologist Dallas Abbott Lamont-Doherty
Earth Observatory at Columbia University.
What makes Abbott suspect a crater is a large and unexplained
difference in the magnetism of the crust in the Gulf of Maine.
Then there is an arrangement of ridges on land that channel
rivers and streams in Maine and Massachusetts along arcs that
might be ridges of the western part of an eroded crater, said
Dominic Manzer a NASA spacecraft engineer.
Abbott and Manzer presented their very preliminary work on what
they are calling the Small Point crater late last week at a
regional meeting of the Geological Society of America in Halifax,
Nova Scotia.
Other asteroid and crater specialists are not so optimistic that
the Gulf of Maine will yield a crater that corresponds with the
end of the dinosaurs - the Cretaceous-Triassic (K-T) boundary 65
million years ago.
"There is no evidence of an impact event," said David
Kring of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of
Arizona. What's more, if there were a second impact, said Kring,
there would be a second blanket of debris at the K-T Boundary,
which so far is not there.
Abbott agrees that the evidence is slim at this point. In fact,
glaciers of past ice ages probably scoured away all the real rock
evidence on the surface long ago, she said. That's why she hasn't
tried to publish any official papers on the matter.
Instead, she intends to start looking further south, in the
Martha's Vineyard area, for any impact-related rocks of the right
age that might have been dropped there after the glaciers
retreated.
If there was a double impact, said Manzer, it could have been
that the asteroid or comet broke up before hitting Earth, leaving
a rapid-fire line of craters, as has been seen on other planetary
bodies in the solar system.
Copyright 2003, Discovery Channel
