- Email: [email protected]
The new definition of the annus should be welcomed
EDITORIAL
LOCATIONS UK Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250 Australia Tower 2, 475 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, NSW 2067 Tel +61 2 9422 2666 Fax +61 2 9422 2633 USA 225 Wyman Street, Waltham, MA 02451 Tel +1 781 734 8770 Fax +1 720 356 9217 201 Mission Street, 26th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 Tel +1 415 908 3348 Fax +1 415 704 3125 to SUBSCRIbe UK and International Tel +44 (0) 8456 731 731 [email protected] The price of a New Scientist annual subscription is UK £143, Europe €228, USA $154, Canada C$182, Rest of World $293. Postmaster: Send address changes to New Scientist, PO Box 3806, Chesterfield, MO 63006-9953, USA. cONTACTS Editorial Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Who’s who newscientist.com/people Contact us newscientist.com/contact Enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 Display Advertising Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1291 [email protected] Recruitment Advertising UK Tel +44 (0) 20 8652 4444 [email protected] Permission for reuse [email protected] Media enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 Marketing Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1286 Back Issues & Merchandise Tel +44 (0) 1733 385170 Syndication Tribune Media Services International Tel +44 (0) 20 7588 7588 UK Newsagents Tel +44 (0) 20 3148 3333 Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, The Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark St, London SE1 OSU Tel: + 44 (0) 20 8148 3333 © 2011 Reed Business Information Ltd, England New Scientist is published weekly by Reed Business Information Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England by Polestar (Colchester)
Fleeing climate change How many climate refugees are there? No one knows CLIMATE change is about to that numbers would swell to climb up the agenda of the United 50 million by 2010 and 200 million Nation’s Security Council, the by mid-century. However, he did body charged with maintaining warn that his figures were “a firstglobal peace and security. The cut assessment… to ‘get a handle’, reason why was forcefully put two however preliminary and years ago in a speech by the chair exploratory, on an emergent of the Intergovernmental Panel problem of exceptional on Climate Change (IPCC), Rajendra significance”. That was either Pachauri, to India’s Military foolhardy or heroic, according College of Telecommunications to your point of view. Engineering: “Our defence The scandal is that those forces might find themselves… old figures still turn up in IPCC guarding our borders against reports, the UK’s Stern review of climate refugees, as rising sea the economics of climate change, levels swamp low-lying areas [in Bangladesh], forcing millions “The scandal is that these old numbers are still used of climate refugees across as nobody has attempted India’s border.” to improve on them” When diplomats and military strategists gather for a meeting of the council this July they will and statements from the UN ask a simple question: how High Commissioner for Refugees many refugees can we expect as (UNHCR). They do so because, as regions and countries become far as New Scientist can establish, uninhabitable due to climate nobody has attempted to improve change? A clear-cut answer could on Myers’s “first cut” calculations spur politicians to do something (see page 6). about this problem. If only one Stranger still, when New could be found. Scientist questioned some of The first stab at an answer came those who have quoted his 2010 in 1995 when British academic prediction, none wanted to stand Norman Myers calculated there by it. Why? were 25 million environmental There are many grounds for refugees, mostly in drought-hit questioning Myers’s numbers. parts of Africa. He predicted Last year, Gunvor Jónsson of
the University of Oxford’s International Migration Institute listed confusion about definitions of a climate refugee, ignorance about the many motives involved when people move, and a failure to understand that migration can be a normal part of coping with climate variability. There are also concerns about how the statistics have been used. A UNHCR report in 2008 warned that they “evoked fantasies of uncontrollable waves of migration that run the risk of stoking xenophobic reactions”. There is no doubt that the continued reliance on Myers’s number is unhelpful. Climate sceptics have in recent days been trying to create a spectacle of embarrassment at the UN Environment Programme after it deleted a page on its website stating the prediction. The sceptics see the deletion as a sign that these refugees don’t exist: another alarmist prediction debunked. Maybe. But Myers could be right. If his numbers cannot be relied on, then the critics should come up with better ones, preferably by July. Otherwise Myers’s first cut will carry on being circulated – to increasing, and justified, scepticism. n
Define a year at your peril MORE than three centuries after Isaac Newton introduced the concept of absolute time, we are still struggling with how best to measure its passing. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry and the International Union of Geological Sciences have agreed on the annus as a definition of the year in terms of seconds (see page 10) along with the symbol a, that will
denote both time spans and points in time. Some geoscientists are incensed. They claim this overturns a convention of using different symbols for time span and age, rather like the distinction between “one thousand, nine hundred and eighty four years” and the date “1984”. The journal Science is siding with the geoscientists and will not follow
the new recommendations. The unions argue the annus will bring the unit in line with the internationally accepted SI system. There is a certain appeal to this argument. But it seems perverse to risk sowing confusion by choosing a symbol that is already widely used to denote a slightly different concept. By adopting another symbol, both systems could coexist in harmony. n 30 April 2011 | NewScientist | 3
LOCATIONS UK Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250 Australia Tower 2, 475 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, NSW 2067 Tel +61 2 9422 2666 Fax +61 2 9422 2633 USA 225 Wyman Street, Waltham, MA 02451 Tel +1 781 734 8770 Fax +1 720 356 9217 201 Mission Street, 26th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 Tel +1 415 908 3348 Fax +1 415 704 3125 to SUBSCRIbe UK and International Tel +44 (0) 8456 731 731 [email protected] The price of a New Scientist annual subscription is UK £143, Europe €228, USA $154, Canada C$182, Rest of World $293. Postmaster: Send address changes to New Scientist, PO Box 3806, Chesterfield, MO 63006-9953, USA. cONTACTS Editorial Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Who’s who newscientist.com/people Contact us newscientist.com/contact Enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 Display Advertising Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1291 [email protected] Recruitment Advertising UK Tel +44 (0) 20 8652 4444 [email protected] Permission for reuse [email protected] Media enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 Marketing Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1286 Back Issues & Merchandise Tel +44 (0) 1733 385170 Syndication Tribune Media Services International Tel +44 (0) 20 7588 7588 UK Newsagents Tel +44 (0) 20 3148 3333 Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, The Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark St, London SE1 OSU Tel: + 44 (0) 20 8148 3333 © 2011 Reed Business Information Ltd, England New Scientist is published weekly by Reed Business Information Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England by Polestar (Colchester)
Fleeing climate change How many climate refugees are there? No one knows CLIMATE change is about to that numbers would swell to climb up the agenda of the United 50 million by 2010 and 200 million Nation’s Security Council, the by mid-century. However, he did body charged with maintaining warn that his figures were “a firstglobal peace and security. The cut assessment… to ‘get a handle’, reason why was forcefully put two however preliminary and years ago in a speech by the chair exploratory, on an emergent of the Intergovernmental Panel problem of exceptional on Climate Change (IPCC), Rajendra significance”. That was either Pachauri, to India’s Military foolhardy or heroic, according College of Telecommunications to your point of view. Engineering: “Our defence The scandal is that those forces might find themselves… old figures still turn up in IPCC guarding our borders against reports, the UK’s Stern review of climate refugees, as rising sea the economics of climate change, levels swamp low-lying areas [in Bangladesh], forcing millions “The scandal is that these old numbers are still used of climate refugees across as nobody has attempted India’s border.” to improve on them” When diplomats and military strategists gather for a meeting of the council this July they will and statements from the UN ask a simple question: how High Commissioner for Refugees many refugees can we expect as (UNHCR). They do so because, as regions and countries become far as New Scientist can establish, uninhabitable due to climate nobody has attempted to improve change? A clear-cut answer could on Myers’s “first cut” calculations spur politicians to do something (see page 6). about this problem. If only one Stranger still, when New could be found. Scientist questioned some of The first stab at an answer came those who have quoted his 2010 in 1995 when British academic prediction, none wanted to stand Norman Myers calculated there by it. Why? were 25 million environmental There are many grounds for refugees, mostly in drought-hit questioning Myers’s numbers. parts of Africa. He predicted Last year, Gunvor Jónsson of
the University of Oxford’s International Migration Institute listed confusion about definitions of a climate refugee, ignorance about the many motives involved when people move, and a failure to understand that migration can be a normal part of coping with climate variability. There are also concerns about how the statistics have been used. A UNHCR report in 2008 warned that they “evoked fantasies of uncontrollable waves of migration that run the risk of stoking xenophobic reactions”. There is no doubt that the continued reliance on Myers’s number is unhelpful. Climate sceptics have in recent days been trying to create a spectacle of embarrassment at the UN Environment Programme after it deleted a page on its website stating the prediction. The sceptics see the deletion as a sign that these refugees don’t exist: another alarmist prediction debunked. Maybe. But Myers could be right. If his numbers cannot be relied on, then the critics should come up with better ones, preferably by July. Otherwise Myers’s first cut will carry on being circulated – to increasing, and justified, scepticism. n
Define a year at your peril MORE than three centuries after Isaac Newton introduced the concept of absolute time, we are still struggling with how best to measure its passing. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry and the International Union of Geological Sciences have agreed on the annus as a definition of the year in terms of seconds (see page 10) along with the symbol a, that will
denote both time spans and points in time. Some geoscientists are incensed. They claim this overturns a convention of using different symbols for time span and age, rather like the distinction between “one thousand, nine hundred and eighty four years” and the date “1984”. The journal Science is siding with the geoscientists and will not follow
the new recommendations. The unions argue the annus will bring the unit in line with the internationally accepted SI system. There is a certain appeal to this argument. But it seems perverse to risk sowing confusion by choosing a symbol that is already widely used to denote a slightly different concept. By adopting another symbol, both systems could coexist in harmony. n 30 April 2011 | NewScientist | 3