- Email: [email protected]
The jolt we need
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 8559 Fax +61 2 9422 8552 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 Subscription Service For our latest subscription offers, visit newscientist.com/subscribe Customer and subscription services are also available by: Telephone +44 (0) 844 543 80 70 Email [email protected] Web newscientist.com/subscribe Post New Scientist, Rockwood House, Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH16 3DH One year subscription (51 issues) UK £143 cONTACTS Contact us newscientist.com/contact Who’s who newscientist.com/people General & media enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] Editorial Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Display Advertising Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1291 [email protected] Recruitment Advertising UK Tel +44 (0) 20 8652 4444 [email protected] UK Newsstand Tel +44 (0) 20 3148 3333 Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, The Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark St, London SE1 OSU Syndication Tribune Media Services International Tel +44 (0) 20 7588 7588
© 2013 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)
The jolt we need If climate change kills off coffee, will that finally spur us into action? THE introduction of coffee into is that almost all of the locations Europe in the 16th and 17th where the beans grow well will centuries has been proposed as an be unsuitable by 2080. important contributory factor to That seems a long way off, but the rush of creativity and energy the effects may already be upon that spawned the scientific and us: coffee yields are at a 35-year industrial revolutions. How low. And the direct effects of ironic, then, that the world’s climate are being exacerbated second favourite liquid after oil is by the spread of pests that thrive under threat from climate change in warmer conditions. caused by industrial pollution. The coffee plant is inordinately “Billions of people are hooked on coffee and fussy about its growing conditions. It needs a “goldilocks” would find the prospect of its soaring cost irritating” combination of temperature and rainfall to produce the high quality beans that most of us The demise of coffee is, of take for granted. course, a minor inconvenience Unfortunately, these conditions compared with some of the are set to vanish from the places projected effects of dangerous where coffee is traditionally climate change. It is not a staple grown as the climate changes crop; nobody will starve for lack of (see page 32). Temperatures are set it, though 26 million farmers who to soar and rainfall patterns will depend on it for their livelihoods change. The worst case projection face a precarious future.
But coffee still has the potential to send a powerful message to the world about the reality of what we are doing to the climate. If you wanted to find a commodity whose escalating scarcity and price would cause maximum discomfort to complacent westerners, coffee is about as good as it gets. Coffee is the world’s most popular beverage, with about 500 billion cups drunk every year, fuelling an export industry worth $15 billion. It is also the number one source of caffeine, the world’s favourite recreational drug. Billions of people all over the world – and especially in Europe and North America – are hooked on it and would find the prospect of its soaring cost or eventual disappearance very irritating. It really is time to wake up and smell the coffee. n
A store for future success ONE of the frustrating things about renewable energy is that there is so much of it available and yet we utilise so little. Every minute, enough solar radiation hits the earth to meet global energy needs for a year. Wind energy, too, could single-handedly power the planet. Why don’t we harvest this bounty and end our dangerous
reliance on coal, oil and gas? One of the main reasons is the storage problem. Whereas fossil fuels conveniently package up chemical energy for release on demand, wind and solar only generate electricity at the whim of the weather. What’s needed is a way to store surplus wind and solar energy. That much has been obvious for
years, but there are signs that the problem is finally reaching its rightful place – at the very top of the renewables agenda. Technologies are advancing, particularly liquid-air storage (see page 28). Investment is pouring in. And outdated regulations that have acted as a drag are being swept away. Anyone who tells you that renewable energy will never be reliable enough to replace fossil fuels is increasingly telling yesterday’s story. n
Catching the cyber worm
but for a long time its origins were a mystery. That is nearly always the case with cyberattacks, but not for much longer. Plans to map the family tree of each piece of malware could help trace worms back to source by spotting resemblances to existing ones (see page 15). This could reveal
what the worm might do – and, crucially, who wrote it. Cybercriminals are the obvious targets of such technology. But knowing that you’re more likely to be unmasked and embarrassed might also give certain governments pause for thought before they unleash their latest dastardly creation. n
IF MALWARE had a poster child it would be Stuxnet, the computer worm that unleashed chaos on Iran’s nuclear centrifuges in 2010. We eventually learned that it was created by the US government,
5 January 2013 | 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 8559 Fax +61 2 9422 8552 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 Subscription Service For our latest subscription offers, visit newscientist.com/subscribe Customer and subscription services are also available by: Telephone +44 (0) 844 543 80 70 Email [email protected] Web newscientist.com/subscribe Post New Scientist, Rockwood House, Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH16 3DH One year subscription (51 issues) UK £143 cONTACTS Contact us newscientist.com/contact Who’s who newscientist.com/people General & media enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] Editorial Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Display Advertising Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1291 [email protected] Recruitment Advertising UK Tel +44 (0) 20 8652 4444 [email protected] UK Newsstand Tel +44 (0) 20 3148 3333 Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, The Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark St, London SE1 OSU Syndication Tribune Media Services International Tel +44 (0) 20 7588 7588
© 2013 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)
The jolt we need If climate change kills off coffee, will that finally spur us into action? THE introduction of coffee into is that almost all of the locations Europe in the 16th and 17th where the beans grow well will centuries has been proposed as an be unsuitable by 2080. important contributory factor to That seems a long way off, but the rush of creativity and energy the effects may already be upon that spawned the scientific and us: coffee yields are at a 35-year industrial revolutions. How low. And the direct effects of ironic, then, that the world’s climate are being exacerbated second favourite liquid after oil is by the spread of pests that thrive under threat from climate change in warmer conditions. caused by industrial pollution. The coffee plant is inordinately “Billions of people are hooked on coffee and fussy about its growing conditions. It needs a “goldilocks” would find the prospect of its soaring cost irritating” combination of temperature and rainfall to produce the high quality beans that most of us The demise of coffee is, of take for granted. course, a minor inconvenience Unfortunately, these conditions compared with some of the are set to vanish from the places projected effects of dangerous where coffee is traditionally climate change. It is not a staple grown as the climate changes crop; nobody will starve for lack of (see page 32). Temperatures are set it, though 26 million farmers who to soar and rainfall patterns will depend on it for their livelihoods change. The worst case projection face a precarious future.
But coffee still has the potential to send a powerful message to the world about the reality of what we are doing to the climate. If you wanted to find a commodity whose escalating scarcity and price would cause maximum discomfort to complacent westerners, coffee is about as good as it gets. Coffee is the world’s most popular beverage, with about 500 billion cups drunk every year, fuelling an export industry worth $15 billion. It is also the number one source of caffeine, the world’s favourite recreational drug. Billions of people all over the world – and especially in Europe and North America – are hooked on it and would find the prospect of its soaring cost or eventual disappearance very irritating. It really is time to wake up and smell the coffee. n
A store for future success ONE of the frustrating things about renewable energy is that there is so much of it available and yet we utilise so little. Every minute, enough solar radiation hits the earth to meet global energy needs for a year. Wind energy, too, could single-handedly power the planet. Why don’t we harvest this bounty and end our dangerous
reliance on coal, oil and gas? One of the main reasons is the storage problem. Whereas fossil fuels conveniently package up chemical energy for release on demand, wind and solar only generate electricity at the whim of the weather. What’s needed is a way to store surplus wind and solar energy. That much has been obvious for
years, but there are signs that the problem is finally reaching its rightful place – at the very top of the renewables agenda. Technologies are advancing, particularly liquid-air storage (see page 28). Investment is pouring in. And outdated regulations that have acted as a drag are being swept away. Anyone who tells you that renewable energy will never be reliable enough to replace fossil fuels is increasingly telling yesterday’s story. n
Catching the cyber worm
but for a long time its origins were a mystery. That is nearly always the case with cyberattacks, but not for much longer. Plans to map the family tree of each piece of malware could help trace worms back to source by spotting resemblances to existing ones (see page 15). This could reveal
what the worm might do – and, crucially, who wrote it. Cybercriminals are the obvious targets of such technology. But knowing that you’re more likely to be unmasked and embarrassed might also give certain governments pause for thought before they unleash their latest dastardly creation. n
IF MALWARE had a poster child it would be Stuxnet, the computer worm that unleashed chaos on Iran’s nuclear centrifuges in 2010. We eventually learned that it was created by the US government,
5 January 2013 | NewScientist | 3