14 September 2019 | New Scientist | 53The back pages Feedback
Sturm und Drang
US president Donald Trump has
previously dismissed climate
change as a Chinese hoax. Feedback
wonders whether at least part of his
brain sees Beijing behind the force
of Hurricane Dorian. After leaving
a deadly trail of destruction in the
Bahamas, the storm hit the US east
coast last week.
The clean-up begins, but it seems
Trump has the germ of a longer-
term anti-hurricane plan, expressed
last month before Dorian broke.
He asked aides if hurricanes might
be destroyed with nuclear bombs.
Yes, when all you have is a
hammer, everything looks like a
nail. And when you have 4000
nuclear warheads burning a hole
in your pocket, everything looks like
an opportunity to get some kind of
return on that investment.
According to the news website
Axios, which broke the story, one of
Trump’s aides assured him that the
proposal would be looked into. This
standard response of courtiers to
the foibles of royalty everywhere
ought to be the end of it.
But the US has a track record in
declaring war on inanimate objects,
like drugs and terror. Let’s not be
too surprised if we’re soon treated
to the spectacle of helicopter
gunships strafing clouds with
machine-gun fire, or modern-day
Minutemen lining up on the Florida
keys, pushing back storm surges
with volleys of AR-15 fire.
Actually, back up a moment.
Nuking hurricanes might be a
terrible idea, but perhaps this
sort of gung-ho attitude is what’s
needed to inspire right-thinking
Americans to take up arms against
climate change. Repeat after us:
we’re going to build a sea wall,
and make the hurricanes pay for it.
A whale of a saving
Meanwhile on the less hurricane-
prone side of the pond, practical
measures against climate change.
Having recently switched his UK
energy supplier to Bulb, which
boasts a renewable energy policy,
John Rowlands was delighted to
probe barrelling towards the
North Atlantic shipping lanes
rather than towards Mars. But
what other competitors do we
have for the most expensive
typo of all time?True brew
No sooner had we filed our
grant application to study the
extremophile bacteria that may
be lurking in Thai restaurant
Wattana Panich’s 45-year-old
stew (17 August) than Helen Waldie
writes to inform us of research
opportunities much closer to home.
She says that Harold Gasson,who wrote a series of books about
being a firefighter in the glory days
of the UK’s Great Western Railway,
once told of a locomotive shed in
Wolverhampton “where, allegedly,
the staffroom teapot hadn’t been
emptied since the shed was built
in the mid-19th century”. Each
morning, the engineers simply
topped up the pot with boiling
water and another spoonful of tea.
“It was supposedly a formidable
and, understandably, unique brew
that became something of a test
of character for visiting crewmen,”
says Helen. We furtively slide
our own well-tannined receptacle
out of view. ❚be informed that he would save
3500 kilograms of CO 2 per year,
which, he is told, is “the weight
of an orca whale”. Now that’s a
killer deal.Crocodile fears
A reminder that the fight against
environmental degradation has
many fronts comes from police
in Devon, UK, who sprang into
action after a dogwalker reported
a crocodile lurking in Loddiswell
swamp. After a “deathly struggle”,
according to dispatcher Lisa
Burnett, officers apprehended
the beast of Loddiswell: a plastic
toy crocodile.
We’ve been warned about the
dangers of releasing microplastics
into our aquatic environments:
could it be that entire ecosystems
are now starting to evolve from it?Plus size sub
We recently pondered what the
most expensive mistake ever
made by an individual might be
after an open hatch nearly sank
a £2.4 billion Indian nuclear
submarine (22 June). Naval yards
are a rich source of such costly
errors, Roger Helms writes,
pointing us to the saga of Spain’s
new diesel-electric Isaac Pera
submarine class. The arrival of
the first sub has been delayed
because it is 75 tonnes too heavy.
The ability to sink quickly to the
bottom of the sea isn’t a terrible
feature in a submarine, but it does
help crew morale if it is capable
of surfacing afterwards. The
engineers’ response has been to
lengthen the vessel to bring its
overall density down, but this has
created a new problem. The 81-
metre submarine is now too big to
fit in its dock at the Spanish navy’s
submarine base in Cartagena. The
port may have to be redesigned.
The Isaac Peral’s excess weight
is reportedly the result of a single
decimal point being out of place
during the drafting stage.
Feedback is reminded of the single
missing overbar that in 1962
supposedly sent NASA’s Mariner 1Got a story for Feedback?
Send it to New Scientist, 25 Bedford Street,
London WC2E 9ES or you can email us at
[email protected]Our picture this week is of Aoife Kidd and a Humboldt penguin at London Zoo.
The penguin’s natural habitat is along the coasts of Chile and Peru where they
swim in the Humboldt current, which is named after Alexander von Humboldt.
The next theme is women in STEM, to commemorate Elizabeth Garrett
Anderson, the first woman to qualify for a medical licence in Britain.
Email us your related photos to [email protected] by
Tuesday 17 September.
Terms and conditions at newscientist.com/pictureoftheweek-termsPicture of the week Alexander von Humboldt