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UK emissions are growing faster than government says they are falling
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THIS WEEK Imports mean UK emissions are up not down THE UK government is sitting on a report that shows its emissions rose by 13.5 per cent between 1992 and 2004. It previously claimed they fell by 4.6 per cent over the same period. The discrepancy appears when emissions from goods that are made abroad and imported into the UK are included. “We seem to emit less because we don’t produce much here any more,” says Giovanni Baiocchi, an economist at Durham University, UK. “But more emissions are released now in other countries because of our consumer demands.” Baiocchi and his team were asked by the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to carry out an audit of the nation’s emissions. They found that efforts to decrease national CO2 emissions, mainly by shifting from coal to natural-gas power plants, cut 148 megatonnes between 1992 and 2004. But this was outweighed by a 217-megatonne rise in CO2 emissions from imported goods. “This undermines the whole Kyoto process,” says Glen Peters of Norway’s Center for International Climate and Environment Research. Under the Kyoto protocol, developed nations are only required to cut emissions produced within their own borders. “The UK can pat itself on the back and say they reduced carbon dioxide emissions, but they just pushed those emissions elsewhere.” DEFRA has not yet published the report, whose results now appear in Environmental Science & Technology (DOI: 10.1021/es902662h). “[It] was finished six months ago,” says Peters, who reviewed the study for DEFRA. “It could be a slow bureaucratic process or it could be that they are worried about the impact of the results.” “Unfortunately it has taken longer than anticipated to publish the report due to the technical nature and terminology used in initial drafts,” DEFRA told New Scientist. DEFRA aims to publish the report later this year. Phil McKenna ■ 11 | NewScientist | 6 February 2010
respond to their opponents’ actions. So although they moved faster, they never won. Is there any truth in the Hollywood version of the gunfight, where the last guy to draw is the winner? If there were, a gunslinger would have to wait for the hotheaded villain to move first. But that couldn’t have worked when two clued-up cowboys faced each other. Now Welchman says neuroscience doesn’t support Hollywood’s portrayal either. The only way the last guy to draw
“It would be hard to get fast enough to recover the time it takes to react to your opponent” could win is if the reactive part of the brain makes him move so fast that the time it takes him to draw, plus his reaction time, is less than the time it takes the first guy just to draw. “It would be hard to get fast –Face-off– enough to recover the time it takes to react to your opponent,” says Welchman. He thinks fast reactions evolved for avoiding unexpected danger, or for confrontations in which animals are in a face-off and the second to move needs speed. “Voluntary and reactive people against each other. The movements differ in basic ways,” task? Lift your hand off a button, says Florian Waszak, who studies push two other buttons, then movement at the University of return to the first (Proceedings of Paris Descartes, France. The the Royal Society B, DOI: 10.1098/ system has evolved so that rspb.2009.2123). There was no reactions may be very fast but start bell. “Eventually, one decides perhaps less accurate, Waszak it’s time to move,” Welchman speculates. says. “The other player will then Indeed, Welchman’s “reactive” try to move as fast as possible.” players hit the buttons less The players who had to react accurately than the “intentional” took 21 milliseconds less time to players, another reason fast move, on average, than the first reactions may not win gunfights. ones. Welchman thinks reaction So it was all Hollywood movement involves a faster brain legend. “I’ve found little evidence pathway than intentional for face-to-face duels on the movement. So Bohr was right? streets of Dodge,” Welchman says. Not quite. And Bohr? “Maybe he was just a There was also a “reaction good shot.” Or maybe everyone time”, a delay of 200 milliseconds just expected the great Niels Bohr before the players started to to win. ■
He who draws last, draws his last breath Debora MacKenzie
NIELS BOHR once had a theory on why the good guy always won shoot-outs in Hollywood westerns. It was simple: the bad guy always drew first. That left the good guy to react unthinkingly – and therefore faster. When Bohr tested his hypothesis with toy pistols and colleagues who drew first, he always won. Andrew Welchman of the University of Birmingham, UK, has now taken this a step further. Bohr may have won a Nobel prize for his work on quantum mechanics, but it turns out the answer to this puzzle is more complicated than he thought. Welchman pitted pairs of
THIS WEEK Imports mean UK emissions are up not down THE UK government is sitting on a report that shows its emissions rose by 13.5 per cent between 1992 and 2004. It previously claimed they fell by 4.6 per cent over the same period. The discrepancy appears when emissions from goods that are made abroad and imported into the UK are included. “We seem to emit less because we don’t produce much here any more,” says Giovanni Baiocchi, an economist at Durham University, UK. “But more emissions are released now in other countries because of our consumer demands.” Baiocchi and his team were asked by the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to carry out an audit of the nation’s emissions. They found that efforts to decrease national CO2 emissions, mainly by shifting from coal to natural-gas power plants, cut 148 megatonnes between 1992 and 2004. But this was outweighed by a 217-megatonne rise in CO2 emissions from imported goods. “This undermines the whole Kyoto process,” says Glen Peters of Norway’s Center for International Climate and Environment Research. Under the Kyoto protocol, developed nations are only required to cut emissions produced within their own borders. “The UK can pat itself on the back and say they reduced carbon dioxide emissions, but they just pushed those emissions elsewhere.” DEFRA has not yet published the report, whose results now appear in Environmental Science & Technology (DOI: 10.1021/es902662h). “[It] was finished six months ago,” says Peters, who reviewed the study for DEFRA. “It could be a slow bureaucratic process or it could be that they are worried about the impact of the results.” “Unfortunately it has taken longer than anticipated to publish the report due to the technical nature and terminology used in initial drafts,” DEFRA told New Scientist. DEFRA aims to publish the report later this year. Phil McKenna ■ 11 | NewScientist | 6 February 2010
respond to their opponents’ actions. So although they moved faster, they never won. Is there any truth in the Hollywood version of the gunfight, where the last guy to draw is the winner? If there were, a gunslinger would have to wait for the hotheaded villain to move first. But that couldn’t have worked when two clued-up cowboys faced each other. Now Welchman says neuroscience doesn’t support Hollywood’s portrayal either. The only way the last guy to draw
“It would be hard to get fast enough to recover the time it takes to react to your opponent” could win is if the reactive part of the brain makes him move so fast that the time it takes him to draw, plus his reaction time, is less than the time it takes the first guy just to draw. “It would be hard to get fast –Face-off– enough to recover the time it takes to react to your opponent,” says Welchman. He thinks fast reactions evolved for avoiding unexpected danger, or for confrontations in which animals are in a face-off and the second to move needs speed. “Voluntary and reactive people against each other. The movements differ in basic ways,” task? Lift your hand off a button, says Florian Waszak, who studies push two other buttons, then movement at the University of return to the first (Proceedings of Paris Descartes, France. The the Royal Society B, DOI: 10.1098/ system has evolved so that rspb.2009.2123). There was no reactions may be very fast but start bell. “Eventually, one decides perhaps less accurate, Waszak it’s time to move,” Welchman speculates. says. “The other player will then Indeed, Welchman’s “reactive” try to move as fast as possible.” players hit the buttons less The players who had to react accurately than the “intentional” took 21 milliseconds less time to players, another reason fast move, on average, than the first reactions may not win gunfights. ones. Welchman thinks reaction So it was all Hollywood movement involves a faster brain legend. “I’ve found little evidence pathway than intentional for face-to-face duels on the movement. So Bohr was right? streets of Dodge,” Welchman says. Not quite. And Bohr? “Maybe he was just a There was also a “reaction good shot.” Or maybe everyone time”, a delay of 200 milliseconds just expected the great Niels Bohr before the players started to to win. ■
He who draws last, draws his last breath Debora MacKenzie
NIELS BOHR once had a theory on why the good guy always won shoot-outs in Hollywood westerns. It was simple: the bad guy always drew first. That left the good guy to react unthinkingly – and therefore faster. When Bohr tested his hypothesis with toy pistols and colleagues who drew first, he always won. Andrew Welchman of the University of Birmingham, UK, has now taken this a step further. Bohr may have won a Nobel prize for his work on quantum mechanics, but it turns out the answer to this puzzle is more complicated than he thought. Welchman pitted pairs of