To respond to khz's posting I will only say a few things.
I think we do understand why people are afraid. It is because they are told to be afraid by people who have something to gain by manipulating and controlling other peoples' lives. The problem is nothing is accomplished by fear - rational concerns and rational actions that lead to tangible results accomplish things. Wasting time and money chasing boogeymen may make some people feel good, but it accomplishes nothing.
Personally, I do not want to "minimize the impact of technical civilization" because it is technical civilization that has made life more comfortable, healthy, safe and secure for just about everyone in the world. And besides, if the system is far from being understood then how do we know that it is being harmed? After all, lead was around in the environment long before man made its appearance and will be around long after man is gone. If the current science on the subject is so imperfect it
may ultimately turn out that lead isn't really all that bad.
You say "... problems were ... not solved by the responsible engineers, but by the dumb people that noticed the disadvantages and made it a POLITICAL topic." Well, dumb people may have made it a political topic, but the problems were, in fact, solved by the engineers (in the broad sense of the term) and not by the "dumb people" or the politicians. It was "engineers" applying technology that solved the problems (or when there wasn't really a problem, at least altered the conditions to make the
"dumb people" and the politicians happier). But one must also consider the loss to humanity when people waste human and capital resources pursuing solutions to non-problems. The efforts could have been better spent in solving real problems that afffect real people.
I don't think anyone on this listing has called people who are driven by irrational fears "fools", although I am not sure I can think of a more appropriate term. And no one has suggested that "fools" do not have the "right to take part in the decisions that define the future of" their lives, but I am not particularly keen on having fools define the future of my life. We can both agree that someone with an "irrational blind trust in science" is also a fool (by definition he would be a fool if
his trust was irrational) but what do we call someone with a "blind trust" in psuedo-science? And it is a blind trust in psuedo-science that drives the fears of so many people. Is it not better to educate people when they are motivated by irrational fears rather than to give in to them, as you would a small child?
It seems to me that the non-foolish thing to do is not to blindly follow irrational fears or irrational "science" but to rationally try to understand the real issues and rationally determine if a problem does exist and rationally take actions that will actually resolve actual problems. And it seems that most of the postings on this list do take such rational approaches even if the rest of the world does not.
Chuck Dolci
Karl Heinz Zuber wrote:
>
> So you really dont understand why many people are afraid that the waste
> and emissions we all generate and release into environment could be a
> problem? You really dont think it is worth the effort to minimize the
> impact of technical civilisation on a system that is far from being
> understood by science but human existence will depend on for many more
> years (milleniums rather than decades)?
>
> In early times of industrial development, uncontrolled emissions DID
> cause health problems and destroyed many parts of nature (that has a
> value by itself for many people, without being useful for your personal
> advantage). And this problems were basically not solved by the
> responsible engineers, but by the dumb people that noticed the
> disadvantages and made it a POLITICAL topic.
>
> Now the situation is in many ways better than in the early days of
> industrial revolution. But maybe all your reasonable and well founded
> points would have much more acceptance and impact if you stopped calling
> every non-engineer or person that is led more by fear (the famous german
> "Angst" ;-) than by (equally irrational) blind trust in science a fool
> who has no right to take part in the decisions that define the future of
> his life. I like cynicism too, but sometimes it becomes too much, and
> sometimes its simply contraproductive.
>
> Regards,
> khz
>
>
> -----
> Karl Heinz Zuber
> Technische Universitaet Berlin
> Forschungsschwerpunkt Technologien der Mikroperipherik
> Abt. Nachhaltige Technologien
> Gustav-Meyer-Allee 25, Gebaeude 17, 5. Etage, R. 556
> D-13355 Berlin
> Tel: +49 (30) 46403-138, -130
> Fax: +49 (30) 46403-131
>
> Im Verbund mit:
> Fraunhofer Institut für Zuverlaessigkeit und Mikrointegration
> Abt. Environmental Engineering
>
> http://mst.tu-berlin.de/becap/
>
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