Recently you expressed your support for Native Hawaiian groups protesting the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope.

While I endorse the principle of respecting the cultures of different people, my respect ends when a particular cultural practice harms others or the practitioners themselves.

I think the latter case applies to these groups. I feel they are hurting their cause of promoting Hawaiian culture, specifically and Polynesian culture in general, and missing an opportunity to enhance their cause instead.

I am a retired United States Air Force officer living in St. Louis, Missouri. In service I was a meteorologist. As a scientist, I have held a lifelong interest in astronomy.

Early in my career I met a fellow service member who became my lifetime best friend. He and his family live on Oahu. As a resident of Hawaii, he has shared many insights with me.

I am aware the indigenous people of Hawaii have endured, and continue to endure, many inequities. However, the TMT isn’t one of these problems.

The universities, domestic and foreign government agencies, and philanthropic backers are not out to exploit anyone for financial profit. They just want to temporarily site one of the most extraordinary scientific instruments conceived by humans at an equally extraordinary location, and share the knowledge gained with all humankind.

Any astronomical telescope, the TMT included, is the most passive piece of technology imaginable. It collects starlight. The TMT would be temporary since all scientific instruments become obsolescent with time.

Flickr: fmovies st

I am a fan of your movies, especially “Moana.” Disney made a considerable effort to portray the Polynesian people in “Moana” authentically and respectfully. In the story, Moana must defy the dictates of the Elders that forbade her from leaving her island home in order to save her people from an encroaching blight.

Moana’s people were explorers. It was wrong of the Elders to prohibit seafaring, and potentially fatal to the entire population. Moana wanted to save her people, but she also yearned to see beyond the reef surrounding her island, to see beyond the horizon.

Moana’s counterparts today are the astronomers advocating for the TMT. They want to see beyond the present horizon of human knowledge. Modern physics depends as much on astronomy as it does on laboratories. With better physics comes the possibility of better technology; better technology (used wisely) could enable a better quality of life. Greater understanding of the physical universe could mean the difference between extinction and survival.

‘Message To The World’

Have we found all the asteroids aimed at the Earth? Do stars like our Sun erupt flares that can sterilize planets? What we don’t know “out there” can kill us.

What greater honor could be bestowed on Hawaiian/Polynesian culture than to be associated with an artifact more precisely crafted than any jewel or sculpture in history? The TMT on Mauna Kea could be Hawaii’s message to the world, “In the spirit of our ancestors who explored the ocean guided by stars, we welcome the explorers of the ocean of stars.”

Stopping the TMT would potentially drive a stake through the heart of future Hawaiians, as Hawaii would be perceived as a place that has turned its back on the future. Any possibility for new industries could be threatened.

This would exacerbate the gulf between rich and poor with the result of the poor becoming poorer.

Hawaiian culture stresses Ohana. If that gulf grows, more and more young people will have to leave to find work elsewhere, namely the mainland.

There is a real suffocating, creeping blackness loose in our world, and it is spreading an anti-science attitude.

“Stopping the TMT would potentially drive a stake through the heart of future Hawaiians.”

Meteorologists have been sounding the alarm for 30-plus years that the carbon dioxide accumulating in our atmosphere from an ever-increasing population burning fossil fuels is forcing the climate towards catastrophic heating, but effective action has been blocked by those seeking to protect their short-term profits.

One of the triumphs of modern medicine — vaccination — has been undermined by complacency and those who want to inflate their own social stature by exploiting the gullible.

Flat Earth; the Apollo moon landing was a hoax; the list goes on and on.

Tell me, what good will come from the empty summit of Mauna Kea when the rising sea levels push the steaming plastic pollution and rotting fish a mile inland over the swamped beaches? The tourists will be long gone by then.