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I agree wholeheartedly with your exhortation not to blow the chance to save our climate (Leader, 8 December 2018 ). But barring a major miracle, it is game over: not for saving the planet itself, of course – despite the universal shorthand, it will survive in some state or other – but for saving a …

I would add lobbying for a meaningful price on carbon as another powerful individual action to deal with climate change . Taxation is never popular. But returning money from a fee on carbon at source to all citizens through a monthly or yearly dividend could be a clearly fair and planet-changing policy.

I was interested by your article on finger sacrifice possibly depicted in cave art ( 8 December 2018, p 16 ). Might this art be a form of prayer? Today we sometimes say "I'd give my right arm" for something, but we don't actually remove it. Perhaps this art was a plea to the gods …

In future they'll excavate the bones and deduce a massive chicken-worshipping cult Marjorie Meldrum predicts how the Anthropocene being marked by a layer of chicken fossils could play out ( 22 December, p 18 )

In the article on the cave painting found in Borneo ( 17 November 2018, p 18 ), it is claimed it may be the oldest figurative art in the world at 40,000 years old. In Australia, there are two detailed rock paintings depicting the marsupial carnivore Thylacoleo carnifex and two of the giant flightless bird …

Research has found that rats will help free a robot rat from a cage, possibly in the hope that it will return the favour in future ( 1 December 2018, p 8 ). Bring on a robot rat that will lead the pack to the poison dish and then "eat" a portion with no ill …

• Physicist Miguel Escudero is now at King's College London ( 1 December 2018, p 36 ). • Bitcoin mining is estimated to use 45.5 terawatt-hours of energy per year ( 15 December 2018, p 5 ). • When two particles are in quantum entanglement, measuring the state of one determines the measured state of …

Michael Le Page deals with the confusion over climate change figures ( 15 December 2018, p 34 ). This seems self-imposed. The one thing that seems certain is that more carbon dioxide means more warming. I have looked on in disbelief for 40 years as arguments have raged over the precise degree of temperature rise, …

Emma Young discusses styles of navigation ( 15 December 2018, p 38 ). As a teenager in the southern hemisphere, I learned to find north using a watch and the sun. I trained as a meteorologist in the days when students went outside to do field experiments. When I first visited the northern hemisphere, it …

Young reports Kate Jeffery using the direction of shadows as an aid to orienting herself when navigating. Satellite dishes on houses are also useful. In the northern hemisphere, they point south at satellites in geostationary orbit over the equator.