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Find out if we can cool the planet
Give police your DNA
34 | NewScientist | 12 September 2009
“Above a certain threshold, increasing wealth seems to matter less and less to our well-being”
KENT GILBERT/WPN
DNA profiling is a powerful forensic technique. It has led to the conviction of many criminals who would otherwise have eluded justice, and the freeing of many innocent people who had been wrongly convicted. Its success in solving crimes depends on finding a match to a DNA profile generated from tissue fragments left at a crime scene, so many countries have set up databases of their citizens’ DNA profiles, and often retain the original samples too. The UK’s database includes the profiles of 7.5 per cent of its population, the highest proportion in the world. Even so, a match can be found for only around half the usable tissue samples taken from crime scenes. This is the case even though the UK database contains the profiles not only of convicted criminals but also of people who have been arrested, regardless of whether they were then charged with an offence, let alone convicted. Civil liberties advocates say that including the profiles of innocent people is unjust – and the European Court of Human Rights recently agreed. Yet removing these profiles will mean that fewer crimes will be solved. Many other countries are wrestling with this issue. One possible answer – not yet adopted anywhere in the world – is to record everybody’s profiles at birth or on entry to the country. A universal DNA database of this kind would not solve all crimes: in many cases, no DNA sample is available, or would be irrelevant because the alleged perpetrator’s identity is not in question. But it would ensure a match could be found for most crime-scene DNA samples, while also ensuring people arrested but not convicted are treated no differently to the rest of the population. There is no other way to achieve this. There are privacy issues, especially if tissue samples are retained in addition to the profiles derived from them. While profiles alone can reveal little about people besides their parentage, frozen samples allow future sequencing of the genome, which will reveal ever more about us. But the risks have to kept in perspective: if someone wants to find out your genetic secrets, there are many other ways to do it. Clare Wilson
Redefine the bottom line
Costa Rica is the best country at converting natural resources into long, happy lives
OUR profligate greenhouse emissions are creating problems of planetary proportions for our descendants. Even in the bestcase scenario, if we make drastic cuts in emissions soon, sea levels will rise by anything from 10 metres to 25 metres over the next few thousand years. Faced by the loss of so much precious coastal land, it seems quite plausible that our descendants will resort to some kind of mega-project to cool the planet and stop the ice sheets melting. If so, why not do it sooner rather than later? It might save countless lives, not to mention the myriad species otherwise doomed to extinction. There is no shortage of grand ideas for geoengineering. We
Find out if we can cool the planet could pump cooling sulphur into the atmosphere to disperse incoming sunlight, or generate reflective clouds by spraying seawater heavenwards from special ships. We might even launch an almighty flotilla of parasols into space to shade our planet from the sun. The problem with all of these schemes is that we have little clue whether they would work. Some of the best evidence so far comes from the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Pinatubo in
1991, which obligingly conducted a large-scale experiment for us on the effect of injecting sulphur into the upper atmosphere. From a global cooling perspective, the results were encouraging: temperatures sank temporarily by up to 0.5 °C. It remains unclear, however, whether the effects of sulphur on global weather patterns can be predicted or controlled. The dangers include triggering severe regional droughts, and even destroying the ozone layer.
WHICH country has the highest quality of life: Costa Rica or the US? According to the standard measure of economic development, the US wins hands down: its GDP is more than $45,000 per person, compared to Costa Rica’s $10,000. Yet looking at the health and happiness of its inhabitants – arguably more important indicators of well-being – Costa Rica comes out top. The idea that more wealth does not necessarily equate with more happiness is nothing new, even to economists. Take, for example, a recent study analysing surveys of 350,000 Europeans and Americans between 1975 and 1997. While the GDP per capita increased by 2.1 per cent per year on average, happiness actually fell slightly (Journal of Development Economics, vol 86, p 22). That’s not to say that money plays no role in our well-being; the inhabitants of the poorest nations have the worst health and the lowest life satisfaction. But above a certain threshold, increasing wealth seems to matter less and less to our overall well-being. As a result, focusing on GDP as the prime measure of progress gives only a partial picture of social and personal welfare. A better indicator is needed. The United Nations’ Human Development Index is one attempt to provide such an indicator. It takes into account life expectancy and education, two key indicators of overall well-being, as well as GDP per capita. On this measure, Costa Rica (rank 50), the UK (21) and US (15) trail far behind Australia (4). The Human Development Index, however, does not include any measure of sustainability, a crucial factor if we are concerned about the
Faced with such dangers, it would be foolhardy to do anything yet. What we need is a concerted global research drive into the potential and pitfalls of geoengineering. It will take decades to establish which of the possibilities are feasible, effective and safe, what their costs would be, and for whom. Such a programme – encompassing modelling and small-scale experiments, as well as research into the international legal implications of such schemes – need not be expensive, says Steve Rayner of the University of Oxford. It would be small change compared with, say, what is needed to develop alternative energy technologies. Despite that, resistance to geoengineering is considerable,
future, not just the here and now. The solution, according to the New Economics Foundation, is the Happy Planet Index, which balances a country’s average life expectancy and life satisfaction against its ecological footprint, in terms of how many hectares each person needs to sustain their lifestyle. It gives an indication of how efficient different countries are at converting natural resources into long, happy lives for their citizens. Using this measure, Costa Rica is ranked top, far above the UK (74), Australia (102) and the US (114) in the list of 143 countries. While Costa Rica has a slightly higher life expectancy and life satisfaction than the US, the most dramatic contrast is in the ecological footprint: on average, the footprint of a Costa Rican is just a quarter of the size of an American’s – a level that is almost sustainable. “People are frightened of giving up their quality of life to save the environment, but this shows that a happy life does not need to cost the Earth,” says Nic Marks, a statistician who helped create the Happy Planet Index. No one is claiming that this index is flawless, not least because any measure of happiness is always going to be subjective to a degree. But even supposedly objective measures have shortcomings. Great swathes of the economy – the informal or “off the books” sector – don’t even register in a country’s GDP. Alternative yardsticks like the Happy Planet Index would encourage governments to focus on the social and environmental impacts of their policies, as well the financial aspects. David Robson
and with good reason. In some quarters, geoengineering is already being promoted as an alternative to reducing greenhouse gas levels, rather than as a temporary measure for curbing warming while we get emissions under control. Cooling the planet without curbing carbon dioxide levels won’t prevent ocean acidification, whose effects will include the loss of protective coral reefs as erosion outstrips reef-building. What’s more, by deploying geoengineering without also cutting emissions, we could land ourselves in a terrible trap. The higher levels of greenhouse gases rise, the more geoengineering would be required to counteract their warming effect and the longer
it would have to go on for. We could suffer unexpected and disastrous side effects from geoengineering but be unable to stop for fear of worse consequences from rapid warming if we did. That is just the kind of thing a coherent plan of research into geoengineering should investigate. Given the possibility that researchers have underestimated the scale and speed of climate change, and with emissions rising faster than ever, it would be foolish not to investigate what geoengineering might achieve. Is it our best bet for ensuring that Earth remains a benign home to future generations, or a dangerous delusion? We need to find out. Richard Webb
Big thinkers, big ideas “The best way to make the world a better place is to make it not the only place for us. We should establish a self-supporting colony on Mars. That would make us a twoplanet species and improve our long-term survival prospects by giving us two chances instead of one. It would change the course of world history – you couldn’t even call it world history any more. We should do this before money for the space programme runs out. J. Richard Gott, astrophysicist, Princeton University
“Information is our most precious resource, limited only by the constraints of human intelligence, innovation and imagination. However, like most resources, it is not shared equally. I would like to see full and free sharing of information and knowledge, across all sectors, disciplines and borders, guided by the shared values and universal language of human rights. This would enable the progress, development and transformations necessary in such fields as science, medicine and technology to overcome our greatest challenges and make this world a better place for all. Mary Robinson, president of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative
Climate change is happening and will shape the future world. It is unlikely that we will succeed in slowing the pace of change, mainly because we are too slow and unable to make effective responses in under 20 to 40 years. More than this, the Earth itself will soon be in the driving seat and aiming at a 5 °C hotter world. I think that our best course of action is to spend at least as much effort adapting to global heating as in attempts to slow or stop it happening. James Lovelock, independent scientist and originator of the Gaia hypothesis
12 September 2009 | NewScientist | 35
34 | NewScientist | 12 September 2009
“Above a certain threshold, increasing wealth seems to matter less and less to our well-being”
KENT GILBERT/WPN
DNA profiling is a powerful forensic technique. It has led to the conviction of many criminals who would otherwise have eluded justice, and the freeing of many innocent people who had been wrongly convicted. Its success in solving crimes depends on finding a match to a DNA profile generated from tissue fragments left at a crime scene, so many countries have set up databases of their citizens’ DNA profiles, and often retain the original samples too. The UK’s database includes the profiles of 7.5 per cent of its population, the highest proportion in the world. Even so, a match can be found for only around half the usable tissue samples taken from crime scenes. This is the case even though the UK database contains the profiles not only of convicted criminals but also of people who have been arrested, regardless of whether they were then charged with an offence, let alone convicted. Civil liberties advocates say that including the profiles of innocent people is unjust – and the European Court of Human Rights recently agreed. Yet removing these profiles will mean that fewer crimes will be solved. Many other countries are wrestling with this issue. One possible answer – not yet adopted anywhere in the world – is to record everybody’s profiles at birth or on entry to the country. A universal DNA database of this kind would not solve all crimes: in many cases, no DNA sample is available, or would be irrelevant because the alleged perpetrator’s identity is not in question. But it would ensure a match could be found for most crime-scene DNA samples, while also ensuring people arrested but not convicted are treated no differently to the rest of the population. There is no other way to achieve this. There are privacy issues, especially if tissue samples are retained in addition to the profiles derived from them. While profiles alone can reveal little about people besides their parentage, frozen samples allow future sequencing of the genome, which will reveal ever more about us. But the risks have to kept in perspective: if someone wants to find out your genetic secrets, there are many other ways to do it. Clare Wilson
Redefine the bottom line
Costa Rica is the best country at converting natural resources into long, happy lives
OUR profligate greenhouse emissions are creating problems of planetary proportions for our descendants. Even in the bestcase scenario, if we make drastic cuts in emissions soon, sea levels will rise by anything from 10 metres to 25 metres over the next few thousand years. Faced by the loss of so much precious coastal land, it seems quite plausible that our descendants will resort to some kind of mega-project to cool the planet and stop the ice sheets melting. If so, why not do it sooner rather than later? It might save countless lives, not to mention the myriad species otherwise doomed to extinction. There is no shortage of grand ideas for geoengineering. We
Find out if we can cool the planet could pump cooling sulphur into the atmosphere to disperse incoming sunlight, or generate reflective clouds by spraying seawater heavenwards from special ships. We might even launch an almighty flotilla of parasols into space to shade our planet from the sun. The problem with all of these schemes is that we have little clue whether they would work. Some of the best evidence so far comes from the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Pinatubo in
1991, which obligingly conducted a large-scale experiment for us on the effect of injecting sulphur into the upper atmosphere. From a global cooling perspective, the results were encouraging: temperatures sank temporarily by up to 0.5 °C. It remains unclear, however, whether the effects of sulphur on global weather patterns can be predicted or controlled. The dangers include triggering severe regional droughts, and even destroying the ozone layer.
WHICH country has the highest quality of life: Costa Rica or the US? According to the standard measure of economic development, the US wins hands down: its GDP is more than $45,000 per person, compared to Costa Rica’s $10,000. Yet looking at the health and happiness of its inhabitants – arguably more important indicators of well-being – Costa Rica comes out top. The idea that more wealth does not necessarily equate with more happiness is nothing new, even to economists. Take, for example, a recent study analysing surveys of 350,000 Europeans and Americans between 1975 and 1997. While the GDP per capita increased by 2.1 per cent per year on average, happiness actually fell slightly (Journal of Development Economics, vol 86, p 22). That’s not to say that money plays no role in our well-being; the inhabitants of the poorest nations have the worst health and the lowest life satisfaction. But above a certain threshold, increasing wealth seems to matter less and less to our overall well-being. As a result, focusing on GDP as the prime measure of progress gives only a partial picture of social and personal welfare. A better indicator is needed. The United Nations’ Human Development Index is one attempt to provide such an indicator. It takes into account life expectancy and education, two key indicators of overall well-being, as well as GDP per capita. On this measure, Costa Rica (rank 50), the UK (21) and US (15) trail far behind Australia (4). The Human Development Index, however, does not include any measure of sustainability, a crucial factor if we are concerned about the
Faced with such dangers, it would be foolhardy to do anything yet. What we need is a concerted global research drive into the potential and pitfalls of geoengineering. It will take decades to establish which of the possibilities are feasible, effective and safe, what their costs would be, and for whom. Such a programme – encompassing modelling and small-scale experiments, as well as research into the international legal implications of such schemes – need not be expensive, says Steve Rayner of the University of Oxford. It would be small change compared with, say, what is needed to develop alternative energy technologies. Despite that, resistance to geoengineering is considerable,
future, not just the here and now. The solution, according to the New Economics Foundation, is the Happy Planet Index, which balances a country’s average life expectancy and life satisfaction against its ecological footprint, in terms of how many hectares each person needs to sustain their lifestyle. It gives an indication of how efficient different countries are at converting natural resources into long, happy lives for their citizens. Using this measure, Costa Rica is ranked top, far above the UK (74), Australia (102) and the US (114) in the list of 143 countries. While Costa Rica has a slightly higher life expectancy and life satisfaction than the US, the most dramatic contrast is in the ecological footprint: on average, the footprint of a Costa Rican is just a quarter of the size of an American’s – a level that is almost sustainable. “People are frightened of giving up their quality of life to save the environment, but this shows that a happy life does not need to cost the Earth,” says Nic Marks, a statistician who helped create the Happy Planet Index. No one is claiming that this index is flawless, not least because any measure of happiness is always going to be subjective to a degree. But even supposedly objective measures have shortcomings. Great swathes of the economy – the informal or “off the books” sector – don’t even register in a country’s GDP. Alternative yardsticks like the Happy Planet Index would encourage governments to focus on the social and environmental impacts of their policies, as well the financial aspects. David Robson
and with good reason. In some quarters, geoengineering is already being promoted as an alternative to reducing greenhouse gas levels, rather than as a temporary measure for curbing warming while we get emissions under control. Cooling the planet without curbing carbon dioxide levels won’t prevent ocean acidification, whose effects will include the loss of protective coral reefs as erosion outstrips reef-building. What’s more, by deploying geoengineering without also cutting emissions, we could land ourselves in a terrible trap. The higher levels of greenhouse gases rise, the more geoengineering would be required to counteract their warming effect and the longer
it would have to go on for. We could suffer unexpected and disastrous side effects from geoengineering but be unable to stop for fear of worse consequences from rapid warming if we did. That is just the kind of thing a coherent plan of research into geoengineering should investigate. Given the possibility that researchers have underestimated the scale and speed of climate change, and with emissions rising faster than ever, it would be foolish not to investigate what geoengineering might achieve. Is it our best bet for ensuring that Earth remains a benign home to future generations, or a dangerous delusion? We need to find out. Richard Webb
Big thinkers, big ideas “The best way to make the world a better place is to make it not the only place for us. We should establish a self-supporting colony on Mars. That would make us a twoplanet species and improve our long-term survival prospects by giving us two chances instead of one. It would change the course of world history – you couldn’t even call it world history any more. We should do this before money for the space programme runs out. J. Richard Gott, astrophysicist, Princeton University
“Information is our most precious resource, limited only by the constraints of human intelligence, innovation and imagination. However, like most resources, it is not shared equally. I would like to see full and free sharing of information and knowledge, across all sectors, disciplines and borders, guided by the shared values and universal language of human rights. This would enable the progress, development and transformations necessary in such fields as science, medicine and technology to overcome our greatest challenges and make this world a better place for all. Mary Robinson, president of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative
Climate change is happening and will shape the future world. It is unlikely that we will succeed in slowing the pace of change, mainly because we are too slow and unable to make effective responses in under 20 to 40 years. More than this, the Earth itself will soon be in the driving seat and aiming at a 5 °C hotter world. I think that our best course of action is to spend at least as much effort adapting to global heating as in attempts to slow or stop it happening. James Lovelock, independent scientist and originator of the Gaia hypothesis
12 September 2009 | NewScientist | 35