How to Turn Down the Heat

The subtitle of January’s global warming article [“Turning Point,” Year in Science] reads in part, “now the question is: What can we do about it?” Unfortunately, a wise and workable solution has yet to be offered. Although the Kyoto Protocol is by far the most often cited proposal, there’s precious little discussion in the popular media about its predicted environmental and economic impact. From what I’ve encountered, some climate scientists expect Kyoto to have virtually no effect on the rate of warming, and some economists expect a profoundly negative impact on the United States in particular, which helps explain Kyoto’s vast support in Europe. It seems there is a consensus among Discover’s editors that it would be wise for the United States and Australia to adopt Kyoto, but I haven’t seen you examine the merits and costs of doing so.

                James Montanaro

Herndon, Virginia

No one thinks the Kyoto Protocol is a solution to the global warming problem; its effect on future temperatures (especially without the participation of the United States) will indeed be small. Climate skeptics often cite an analysis by economist William Nordhaus of Yale, who argues that the costs of Kyoto would far exceed the benefits, especially for the United States. However, Nordhaus doesn’t question the underlying goal of reducing carbon emissions—he thinks a global carbon tax would be much more efficient than the emissions-trading scheme that was championed by the American delegation to Kyoto and eventually adopted in the protocol. The importance of Kyoto is this: It’s an acknowledgement by most of the world’s nations that global warming is a real problem, and it’s a first small step toward working together to solve it.               —Author Robert Kunzig

I am amazed at the shortsightedness of researchers and reporters concerning the CO2 problem. Earth is a closed system—carbon is neither created nor destroyed, added nor removed. However, most of Earth’s history has been spent burying carbon so that it does not travel through the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is one step in the global cycle in which carbon molecules are not tied up in carbonate rocks or buried as coal and oil. By putting the carbon back into the system that was buried for eons, we are re-creating an environment from early in Earth’s history. The problem is not how much CO2 we produce but from which sources the CO2 is derived. If we truly want to solve the climate problem, we need to remove the carbon we’ve introduced over the past 50 years.

                Dave Trexler, paleontologist

                Two Medicine Dinosaur Center

Bynum, Montana

Spaceship (Private) Enterprise

Regarding your number two story of the year [“SpaceShipOne Opens Private Rocket Era,” Year in Science, January], let me first say I agree with the high ranking. But you almost missed the reason it was such an important milestone. What is so amazing about SpaceShipOne is that it was achieved solely through private enterprise, in a timely fashion, with a budget that NASA spends just blowing its collective nose. Multiple trips to outer space with a prototype ship with no major problems is an incredible achievement. Of course the government wants to intervene by enacting safety legislation, but why would you say “such caution seems reasonable” and then cite the dismal safety record of NASA, which is absolutely choked with governmental regulation? Private enterprise has more of an incentive and certainly more accountability to provide a safe service than does any government agency. Sure, there are improvements to be made before opening up spaceflight to the public, but I believe that the Rutan-Allen-Branson team can handle it much more efficiently.

                MICHAEL TALLMON

                Gering, Nebraska

Does a Vaccine Lead to Disease?

Your article “Childhood Vaccines’ Link to Autism Is Debunked” [Year in Science, January] failed to mention the fall 2004 article in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons that contradicted research discrediting the link between the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and autism. The article concluded that there is a temporal association between the introduction of the MMR vaccine and increasing rates of regressive autism. Veterinarians such as myself know that vaccinations can precipitate autoimmune disease in certain genetically predisposed individuals, and some doctors admit that regressive autism may in fact have an underlying immune component in its pathogenesis. There appears to be an increasing frequency of the disease, and some have speculated that it may be linked to an environmental trigger. It is not out of the question to wonder if one possible environmental trigger may be the modified live MMR vaccine. Measles can cause encephalitis, and it seems plausible that some component of the vaccine may, in genetically susceptible individuals, set up the pathways of inflammation that subsequently lead to regressive autism. 

                Julia Miska

                Buffalo, New York

In Living Color

Barry di Gregorio’s article [“The Color of Mars,” December] describes the effort to determine the color of the surface of Mars. He acknowledges the significance of the problem but frames the story in a way that anticipates a homogeneous and uninteresting Martian surface. For a few hours after the first Viking color images arrived in 1976, I saw the radcam calibrated version at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The colors of these original images were then inexplicably changed on the monitors several hours after they were received. The original images I saw had a blue sky, copper-colored soil, and gray rocks spangled liberally with green patches. In a recent paper (see mars.spherix.com/5555-29.PDF), I analyzed the Viking raw data as archived for NASA by Washington University in St. Louis. I compared 40 color charts visible in the archived images with the color chart on the duplicate Viking spacecraft displayed in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. An analysis of the colors in the images proved that the archived Martian raw data had been processed in a nonlinear way, adding red to the green areas and giving the surface a uniform color. This could not have been an unintentional error but rather a deliberate manipulation of the colors of Mars, probably to make Mars appear less Earth-like.

                Ron L. Levin, physicist

                Lockheed Martin

Goodyear, Arizona

The apparent color of a surface as seen by the human eye depends on the intrinsic reflective properties of the surface and on the color of the light illuminating it. During the Viking Lander mission we took raw camera images through blue, green, and red filters and calibrated the data to determine how much light the surface reflected in each color. We also imaged the sun and the sky to understand their independent colors. When we combined the results, it became clear that the surface of Mars is best described as reddish brown. If we had found green-tinted rocks or soils, we would have been running to release the data to the press! This work has been peer-reviewed and published in the Journal of Geophysical Research (Friedrich Huck and colleagues, 1977). Our approach and results have not been quantitatively challenged in the 27 years since. —Ray Arvidson, professor, earth and planetary sciences, Washington University

Science vs. Creationism

I was disappointed in your weak rebuttal of letter writer Leigh Ann Pierce’s support of creationism in January’s Letters. The editorial claim that no one has “ever seen a new language spontaneously appear” is easily disputed. I support the scientific validity of the theory of evolution and hate to see it argued so weakly. Scientific theories are propositions that have the attribute of being disprovable. Creationists do not put forth disprovable propositions (or at least none that have not been disproved); instead, they seek to make room for religious faith by casting aside that which seems to contradict their beliefs. Creationism is not science, has never been well supported in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, and should not be taught in the same context as scientific theories.

                Allen Everhart

                Larchmont, New York

Science vs. Bush

After reading the December letters to the editor, I was appalled and disappointed by the profound ignorance of some of your readers and the success of the Bush administration’s spin machine. I thought the comparison between Kerry and Bush in the October issue was among the best I’ve read, although it was far too gentle on Bush. As a scientist working at the University of Minnesota at Twin Cities, I have been following Bush and his administration since day one, and I can say unequivocally that he is one of the worst environmental and science presidents we have ever had. Examples of his travesties range all over the place, including the eroding of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, and the Roadless Rule; abandoning the Kyoto Protocol; pandering to industry and corporations through his misguided closed-door energy policy; reducing nondefense scientific research spending; and, worst of all, possibly editing and changing scientific reports to suit his agenda. I beg this magazine to continue reporting on this, and more stringently. Science of all types is under attack from this administration, and as the popular media are not reporting on these issues, it may be up to magazines like Discover to fill in the gaps.

Giana A. Gelsey

                Minneapolis, Minnesota