From readers.

Science-Based Policy in an Imperfect World

In an interview in your March/April 2003 issue ("Long Range Forecast"), Robert Watson, former chief of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said, "I believe that national and international [scientific] assessments should not recommend policy action...an assessment should be policy relevant and policy neutral." I would be interested to know why he believes this. Policy-neutral assessments, although sound in theory, have worked poorly in the United States, the world's leading emitter of greenhouse gases.

Neutral assessments from the IPCC land on the desks of U.S. policymakers who are beholden to corporate patrons. As long as scientifically uncertain and neutral reports are pitted against the aggressive advocacy (and often misinformation) of industry, U.S. climate policy will continue to err on the side of recklessness.

Watson's suggestion that scientists advocate policy as individual citizens offers a poor substitute for advocacy rooted in scientific consensus. The history of climate policy reveals that scientists with minority opinions, most of whom are not climate researchers, attract industry funding that gives them the time and support needed to make their minority viewpoints disproportionately heard. (For details consult Ross Gelbspan's The Heat Is On.)

Scientists, not policymakers, are best suited to understand and interpret the possible implications of scientific uncertainty. Moreover, although scientists are not experts on many social issues, they also tend not to labor under the biases weighing upon legislators in today's corporate-dominated political culture.

Advocacy may lead to occasional mistakes by scientific bodies, but it is unlikely that the costs will exceed what we are paying now to protect the notion of scientific neutrality. Until some sort of separation of corporation and state occurs in the United States, scientific bodies should endeavor to make clear recommendations that can hold leaders accountable.

MATTHEW ORR 

University of California 

College of Natural Resources

The Cheapest Ways to Save African Lives

Regarding the scourge of AIDS in Africa, what is often forgotten is that TB and malaria are as deadly as AIDS. Malaria alone kills as many as 2.7 million people each year, at least as many as AIDS. The numbers for TB are similar. All three diseases impose huge costs on the African economy.

As for treatments, both TB and malaria can be cured by drugs costing $10 to $15 per year, while even the cheapest AIDS drugs are $300. It makes little sense to focus on AIDS alone, when lives can be saved so much more cheaply with TB and malaria programs.

For this reason, the "Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria" is the most effective channel for the U.S. government's proposed $15 billion in global AIDS funding.

African countries must also do more. Sixteen African countries, including the continent's most populous country (Nigeria), still impose taxes averaging 40 percent or more on mosquito bed nets. These nets can reduce the toll of malaria by up to 50 percent, but the taxes have pushed mosquito nets out the reach of many of the poorest citizens. The small revenue gained from the taxes is far outweighed by the costs of the increased disease burden.

BIAISE SALMON

Victoria, B.C., Canada

Climate Change and Population

In "Bush's Scientific Relativism" (Note From a Worldwatcher, January/February), Ed Ayres put his finger on a key point about climate change--namely that Bush refuses to accept what is scientifically probable because it does not fit what he would like to believe.

There is just one thing missing from the article: the population factor. If the U.S. population continues to expand at the present rate, and the per capita emission of fossil fuels does not fall (and there is little sign of that), then by 2050 the United States alone will be emitting carbon dioxide containing 2.5 billion tons of carbon per year--which is, as confirmed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the maximum that all humans can continue to emit if the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere is to stabilize.

ANDREW R. B. FERGUSON

Optimum Population Trust,

United Kingdom

News From the Garden: No Apple, Very Little Roundup

The November/December 2002 issue was splendid. But you did miss the boat on one thing. The inside back cover caption [with the 1908 watercolor of a Borovinka apple] states that "The Old Testament says that our troubles started with an apple." Not so. The story of the Garden of Eden says that man and woman were tempted to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Not an apple tree!

Thank you very much for your good work on the genetic modification stories. Several years ago I sold farmland in Kentucky, and just before that our tenant (sharecropper) had found that he could apply Roundup at 15 percent of the indicated strength and get just as much effect as he would by using Monsanto's directions.

WARD MCCABE

San Jose, California 

Tom Prugh responds: Guilty--of an unexamined assumption about the apple tree. Perhaps we can be forgiven on the grounds that the tree of knowledge in Paradise has routinely been depicted as an apple tree since at least the fifth century A.D. "Paradise," it turns out, comes from the Persian words pain (around) and daeza (wall) and referred to walled fruit gardens. The monasteries where Celtic monks translated Hebrew and Greek biblical texts (and pondered the fact that the Greek melon can be rendered as either "fruit" or "apple") often featured walled gardens filled with apple trees. The power of suggestion? All this is from Frank Browning's fascinating book Apples--which we clearly should have read before writing the caption.

Numbers Nightmare

In "A Human Thirst" (January/February 2003), Don Hinnichsen cites a figure of 450 cubic kilometers [of untreated or partially treated wastewater discharged into rivers, lakes, and coastal areas each year], then says that equals 99 million gallons. However, 450 cubic kilometers equals 365 million acre-feet, whereas 99 million gallons equals only 304 acre-feet. For God's sake, at least get your numbers tight! Such readily apparent discrepancies compromise the credibility of the entire article, if not the entire issue.

Since probably most of your readers are American, there is merit in using measures more readily visualized by Americans. However, converting huge units like cubic kilometers into puny units like gallons is inappropriate.

PETER B. JANSEN

Berkeley, California 

The editor responds: This is awfully painful to admit, but you are right. The UN figure cited by Don Hinrichsen is wrong by such a huge magnitude that we were derelict in not spotting it instantly. The 450 cubic kilometers is indeed 365 million acre-feet as you say, but that's not the 99 million gallons we printed--it's 99 trillion gallons. The 99 million gallons would be a mere 365 acre-feet. Hinrichsen was referring to Imperial gallons, and an American gallon is 0.8327 times an Imperial gallon, so 99 million American gallons would be 0.8324 times 365, or 304 acre-feet--exactly the figure you mention.

As for converting huge units into tiny ones, we take it that you wouldn't approve of our suggesting that in hot weather, an adult should try to drink 3.686 x 106 acre feet of water per day.

Who Wields the Most Weapons of Mass Destruction?

Since World War II, the United States has produced and built the largest arsenal of mass-destruction weapons in the world. The U.S. policymakers have overextended their country by building and maintaining bases and troops all over the world. They are disregarding the fact that the country is now a net importer of oil, and is deficient in many of the resources essential to maintain its industrial power. The present policies are on a collision course with physical reality.

CLYDE WILSON

Sun City, Arizona