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Leaked IPCC report doesn't let us off the hook
Marcio Machado/Zuma Press/Eyevine
UPFRONT
Spanish rail inquiry begins WHY did Francisco José Garzón, a train driver with 30 years’ experience, hit a bend at 190 kilometres per hour when the speed limit was 80 km/h? Did he ignore the automated warnings? Or did his train’s alert system fail at a critical time? An inquiry is under way into the derailing of the packed train, which killed 79 people in north-west Spain on 24 July. Garzón has admitted to “confusion” over the train’s speed and, though freed on bail, is facing 79 charges of negligent homicide. One focus of the investigation will be the fact that the crash took place at a point where one safety system hands over to another – from one that controls the train’s speed to one that does not. On high-speed sections, the European Rail Traffic Management
System (ERTMS) intervenes wirelessly to ensure a train slows down if alerts are ignored. “ERTMS has all sorts of measures that prevent trains going over speed and will eventually be fitted over the whole route from Santiago to Madrid,” says Roger Kemp, a rail safety engineer at Lancaster University, UK. “But it is not a finished project.” So 4 kilometres from Santiago de Compostela, the line switches to a slower section without ERTMS. Instead, an older system advises the driver of the correct speed – but cannot intervene so long as the driver has acknowledged its alert. Investigators will now examine the train’s electronic systems to check for technical problems with the switchover.
Jab for girls
(CDC), which last week released new figures on the US vaccination rate. In 2012, only 33 per cent of eligible girls had all three doses needed for maximum protection, well short of the 80 per cent target. The CDC warns that unless uptake improves, there will be 1400 unnecessary deaths from cervical cancer each year. Frieden said that a continuing worry among parents is that the jab will tempt their daughters to engage in risky sex. “HPV vaccine does not open the door to sex,” he said. “It closes the door to cancer.”
–Safety systems switch over here–
No climate let-up
“Other ways of calculating the climate’s sensitivity to rising CO2 levels continue to point to higher values” be that CO2 levels have kept rising over the past decade without much surface warming, so newer calculations of sensitivity based on recent decades have come up 4 | NewScientist |3 August 2013
ISS/NASA
IS IT time to relax over global warming? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may be set to revise downwards its estimate of climate sensitivity – the extent to which the world will warm as carbon dioxide levels rise. But while lower climate sensitivity would be good news, we certainly shouldn’t bet on it. The last IPCC report stated that climate sensitivity for a doubling in CO2 levels was between 2 and 4.5 °C, mostly likely 3 °C. Now an article in The Economist, based on a leaked draft of the next report, due in September, claims it will give a figure between 1.5 and 4.5 °C, with no most likely value. The reason for the change may
with lower values. If, as most scientists think, this lull is just a blip and warming resumes, the calculations will rise in tandem. Indeed, other ways of calculating sensitivity continue to point to higher values, says Reto Knutti of the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich, Switzerland. The IPCC won’t confirm or deny the leak, but the figures given by The Economist are hardly comforting. “What matters for avoiding dangerous climate change is the upper end, and that hasn’t changed,” says Knutti.
RWANDA doesn’t do many things better than the US, but in some ways it protects its teenage girls better. It is more than twice as successful as the US at vaccinating girls against human papillomavirus (HPV), which can lead to cervical cancer. “Our vaccination rate is stuck at one-third of our teen girls, yet Rwanda has vaccinated more than 80 per cent of its target population,” says Tom Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Look, no leaks NEED new tools to fix a leak? NASA has you covered. The agency has delivered a spacesuit repair kit to the International Space Station that will hopefully mend astronaut Luca Parmitano’s broken helmet. A spacewalk on 16 July was aborted when Parmitano felt liquid on the back of his head. His helmet rapidly filled with water, which floated into his eyes, –Packed your spacesuit repair kit?– nose and mouth. Fellow
UPFRONT
Spanish rail inquiry begins WHY did Francisco José Garzón, a train driver with 30 years’ experience, hit a bend at 190 kilometres per hour when the speed limit was 80 km/h? Did he ignore the automated warnings? Or did his train’s alert system fail at a critical time? An inquiry is under way into the derailing of the packed train, which killed 79 people in north-west Spain on 24 July. Garzón has admitted to “confusion” over the train’s speed and, though freed on bail, is facing 79 charges of negligent homicide. One focus of the investigation will be the fact that the crash took place at a point where one safety system hands over to another – from one that controls the train’s speed to one that does not. On high-speed sections, the European Rail Traffic Management
System (ERTMS) intervenes wirelessly to ensure a train slows down if alerts are ignored. “ERTMS has all sorts of measures that prevent trains going over speed and will eventually be fitted over the whole route from Santiago to Madrid,” says Roger Kemp, a rail safety engineer at Lancaster University, UK. “But it is not a finished project.” So 4 kilometres from Santiago de Compostela, the line switches to a slower section without ERTMS. Instead, an older system advises the driver of the correct speed – but cannot intervene so long as the driver has acknowledged its alert. Investigators will now examine the train’s electronic systems to check for technical problems with the switchover.
Jab for girls
(CDC), which last week released new figures on the US vaccination rate. In 2012, only 33 per cent of eligible girls had all three doses needed for maximum protection, well short of the 80 per cent target. The CDC warns that unless uptake improves, there will be 1400 unnecessary deaths from cervical cancer each year. Frieden said that a continuing worry among parents is that the jab will tempt their daughters to engage in risky sex. “HPV vaccine does not open the door to sex,” he said. “It closes the door to cancer.”
–Safety systems switch over here–
No climate let-up
“Other ways of calculating the climate’s sensitivity to rising CO2 levels continue to point to higher values” be that CO2 levels have kept rising over the past decade without much surface warming, so newer calculations of sensitivity based on recent decades have come up 4 | NewScientist |3 August 2013
ISS/NASA
IS IT time to relax over global warming? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may be set to revise downwards its estimate of climate sensitivity – the extent to which the world will warm as carbon dioxide levels rise. But while lower climate sensitivity would be good news, we certainly shouldn’t bet on it. The last IPCC report stated that climate sensitivity for a doubling in CO2 levels was between 2 and 4.5 °C, mostly likely 3 °C. Now an article in The Economist, based on a leaked draft of the next report, due in September, claims it will give a figure between 1.5 and 4.5 °C, with no most likely value. The reason for the change may
with lower values. If, as most scientists think, this lull is just a blip and warming resumes, the calculations will rise in tandem. Indeed, other ways of calculating sensitivity continue to point to higher values, says Reto Knutti of the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich, Switzerland. The IPCC won’t confirm or deny the leak, but the figures given by The Economist are hardly comforting. “What matters for avoiding dangerous climate change is the upper end, and that hasn’t changed,” says Knutti.
RWANDA doesn’t do many things better than the US, but in some ways it protects its teenage girls better. It is more than twice as successful as the US at vaccinating girls against human papillomavirus (HPV), which can lead to cervical cancer. “Our vaccination rate is stuck at one-third of our teen girls, yet Rwanda has vaccinated more than 80 per cent of its target population,” says Tom Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Look, no leaks NEED new tools to fix a leak? NASA has you covered. The agency has delivered a spacesuit repair kit to the International Space Station that will hopefully mend astronaut Luca Parmitano’s broken helmet. A spacewalk on 16 July was aborted when Parmitano felt liquid on the back of his head. His helmet rapidly filled with water, which floated into his eyes, –Packed your spacesuit repair kit?– nose and mouth. Fellow