carbon conjuring
TRANSCRIPT
News in perspective
Upfront–
IT IS said you can prove anything
with statistics – even, if you believe
the White House, that climate
change can be tackled without
making economic sacrifices. Last
week US government statisticians
announced that the country’s
carbon dioxide emissions
dropped in 2006, even as the
economy grew. President Bush
took the opportunity to announce
that his “effective” and “science-
based” policy was working well.
Yet Bush’s approach to
combating climate change, which
relies on the development of low-
carbon technologies, had almost
no effect on 2006 emissions. The
bulk of the 1.3 per cent drop
was due to mild weather, which
reduced demand for heating and
air conditioning. High oil prices
also helped cut petrol use. True,
renewable sources are starting to
play a greater role in the US, but
they still generate just 0.8 per
cent of electricity there. It was
market forces and a clement
climate that cut emissions, not
new technology.
This is not the first time the
White House has spun emissions
statistics. In May press secretary
Tony Snow repeated a claim the
administration has made many
times: that the US is doing
better than Europe in cutting
greenhouse gas emissions.
European emissions are up a
few per cent since 2000, says the
White House, while the US has
managed a drop of 1.7 per cent.
A closer look at the numbers
shows that while Snow’s
statement is not untrue, he has
been selective in the data he
quotes. According to an analysis
by the Pacific Institute, an
independent research centre
based in Oakland, California,
European emissions have
dropped 1 per cent since 1990,
and over the same period, US
emissions have risen 15 per cent.
Snow is able to make his claim by
ignoring data from before 2000;
since then the US does indeed
have a very slight edge, although
both sets of emissions are
effectively flat over that period.
IF NOTHING else, this should
worry smokers: the radiation
dose from radium and polonium
found naturally in tobacco can be
a thousand times more than that
from the caesium-137 taken up
by the leaves from the Chernobyl
nuclear accident.
Constantin Papastefanou
from the Aristotle University of
Thessaloniki in Greece measured
radioactivity in tobacco leaves
from across the country and
calculated the average radiation
dose that would be received by
people smoking 30 cigarettes a
day. He found that the dose from
natural radionuclides was 251
microsieverts a year, compared
with 0.199 from Chernobyl fallout
in the leaves (Radiation Protection Dosimetry, vol 123, p 68).
Though the radiation dose
from smoking was only 10 per
cent of the average dose anyone
receives from all natural sources,
Papastefanou argues that it is an
increased risk. “Many scientists
believe that cancer deaths among
smokers are due to the radioactive
content of tobacco leaves and not
to nicotine and tar,” he says.
ALWAYS LETHAL WEAPONS?When is a non-lethal weapon lethal?
When it’s a drug, say UK doctors. In a
report last week, the British Medical
Association concluded that drugs used
to stupefy hostage-takers, for example,
can never be classed as “non-lethal”
because they can all kill at high doses.
The BMA cites the alarming death
toll from the Moscow theatre siege in
2002, when Chechen terrorists held
more than 800 theatre-goers hostage
and threatened to kill them all. To end
the siege, Russian authorities filled the
theatre with the breathable anaesthetic
fentanyl, quickly knocking out the
occupants. However, 130 of the hostages
died from the drug’s effects (New Scientist, 2 November 2002, p 7).
The report urges doctors to oppose
the development of drug-based non-
lethal weapons, denouncing calls from
countries such as the US, China and Czech
Republic to legalise them by rewriting
the Chemical Weapons Convention.
QUICK CHECK-UP AND AN HIV TEST
“Renewable sources generate just 0.8 per cent of electricity in the US”
Next time you visit your family doctor,
don’t be surprised if you’re offered an
HIV test. New guidelines issued by the
World Health Organization on 30 May
have recommended that doctors
everywhere, including richer nations,
consider routinely offering the test.
The aim is to identify carriers before
they unwittingly spread the virus or
get too ill to benefit from treatment. In
some parts of sub-Saharan Africa where
HIV is rife, only 12 per cent of men and
10 per cent of women know their HIV
status, while research in the US has
shown that unwitting carriers account
for 50 to 70 per cent of new infections.
“I think this is extremely
important,” says Kevin De Cock, the
WHO’s HIV/AIDS director. “This is advice
for countries and it must be country-
led.” The guidelines stress that no one
should feel forced to take a test, and
people can opt out. But by offering tests
much more routinely, the hope is to de-
stigmatise HIV infection. Only in “high-
burden” countries would all visitors to
surgeries be offered the test. Elsewhere
it would be confined to those at greatest
risk, such as intravenous drug users.
The WHO decided to act following
encouraging results from countries that
had already introduced routine testing,
such as Kenya, where 85 to 95 per
cent of people now agree to be tested.
The US also introduced routine testing for
all citizens aged 13 to 64 last September
(New Scientist, 24 July 2006, p 8).
However, there are concerns that
testing may not be appropriate for those
who can’t get access to antiretroviral
drugs – a total of 72 per cent of people
infected with HIV globally. Even so,
De Cock says they can still benefit from
interventions such as better nutrition.
ROBY
N BE
CK/A
FP
–Awareness saves lives–
6 | NewScientist | 2 June 2007 www.newscientist.com
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