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As you note, the underlying reason for energy bill spikes in renewables-dominated markets is mainly down to the pricing mechanism, which sets it according to the most expensive generator in the mix, usually gas. It is a relic of a time when renewables were a small proportion of the total, and was created to incentivise …

Energy markets aren't natural phenomena; they are devised by governments and regulators to meet certain objectives and if they don't do so, they can be changed. This isn't happening because governments still see renewables as nice extras. They need to make them the main sources of power and design electricity markets and infrastructure to make …

You reviewed a book arguing that animals should be treated as though they are conscious, with care and consideration. And yet in the same edition ( p 22 ), there is an argument for the reintroduction of predators such as the European lynx and Tasmanian tiger, saying sheep farmers can be compensated when their animals …

Are you kidding? No multiverse, no parallel Earths? Do the physicists killing off the many-worlds idea have no conscience? A whole subgenre of sci-fi is damned to extinction. Gone, vanished down a literary black hole with just a few dog-eared remnants littering the non-event horizon. Me? I'm just finishing an Adrian Tchaikovsky book involving... oh, …

Fortean Times, UK Ufological culture has always been concerned about governments hiding "the truth" and distrustful of scientific authority. That isn't new. The situation is complicated, though, by the dominant narrative about aliens and UFOs changing, moving from benign space brothers to evil greys and now to "disclosure", the idea that citizens can get authorities …

The only eco-novel of the many I have read that doesn't demonise climate deniers is Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver. Here, you can see their good intentions, their misunderstandings and their humanity, as author Kurt Gray shows in his book Outraged , reviewed on your pages. This made me realise I had been demonising them …

LanzaTech's fermentation process to make "defossilised" polyester appears to need more reactive inputs, which is why it favours hot blast furnace exhaust that contains carbon monoxide and hydrogen, as well as carbon dioxide, rather than the cool, pure, waste CO 2 streams that reader Dave Covell suggested ( Letters, 1 February ).

Your article on sabre teeth reminds me of a visit I made to a fossil site in South Africa. Using a hominid skull and two curved fingers, a researcher graphically illustrated how a sabre-toothed tiger could leap on an unfortunate hominid from behind and grab its skull, with its two fangs nicely inserting into the …

In his review of Jeff Sebo's book, Michael Marshall writes that we "can never be 100 per cent sure if another being is conscious". Perhaps we can if consciousness is a question of degree, a continuum of levels of awareness, not an either/or thing. Think back to your earliest childhood memory – it may be …

The odd gem-like shape created to simulate the fundamental nature of our cosmos just "knows about" fundamental principles of physical theories like quantum mechanics and relativity? This seems a little frightening ( 25 January, p 10 ).