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We shouldn't mess with species names for the sake of 2023 ideas of virtue. As a coastal engineer, I was "house trained" by an ecologist friend and collaborator and learned a heap of names for coastal marsh plants and their ecology. Then some international body changed them all, reducing my ability to interact with botanists …

Regarding the fate of the genus name Brontosaurus . The specimen described as Brontosaurus excelsus in the 1870s was later reclassified as Apatosaurus , to many people's disappointment. But, in 2015, Brontosaurus was reclaimed as a genus by some researchers .

Your climate special gives us some hope that we are on the way to decarbonisation, but also leaves an impression that the situation is going to get worse before it gets better. You have to ask yourself why politicians haven't done more. For instance, a couple of decades ago, they could have ended financial incentives …

Felicity Callard at the University of Glasgow, UK, is lead investigator of the rest test ( 2 September, p 32 ).

Instead of using a 1950s sedimentary layer in a lake in Canada to define the start of the Anthropocene, I suggest that the appearance of lead in Greenland ice is, at least, a measurable and significant marker of our activity. Lead levels in Greenland ice became significant from 1000 BC, but they skyrocketed when leaded …

Your story on the breakdown of the water cycle states that one cup of coffee requires 140 litres of water to produce. I have tried to reverse-engineer this claim using rainfall data and crop yields, and this is only explicable on the basis that every drop of rain that falls on a plantation is somehow …

You say it takes 12,651 litres of water to produce 100 grams of vanilla beans. Clearly that doesn't all end up in the beans. Surely at least some ends up in the atmosphere or in groundwater.

Reader Geoff Hammond might not see white roofs where he lives in the UK, but here in the US they aren't uncommon, or at least they are a choice. When having our roof reshingled a few years back, we opted for the whitest shingle available. The results are plainly visible in the view from Google …

Hammond suggests a lick of climate-friendly white paint on the roof. I did this about 30 years ago when my garage roof was replaced. It made a huge difference to the temperature in the garage, making it cooler in summer sunshine and less cold in winter. I agree – more people should do it. On …

I would like to make a change to cartoonist Tom Gauld's diagram of knowledge. Beyond the "Zone of Utter Ignorance" – in the interests of topicality and with half an eye on the future – should be added the "Event Horizon of Conspiracy Theory" ( 2 September, p 47 ).