IMHO - and in case
someone is unaware of the meaning - In My Humble Opinion:
A sense of
perspective is perhaps required for some technical content
purists...
Our industry is only
one of several - although of a higher profile than many - that is used / abused
but most certainly influenced by politics. When these ignorant people are
presented with extreme arguments, they become faced with a decision to act upon
it, mostly without due regard for the consequences to that
industry.
We should have such
discussions or views aired through this forum. It helps to maintain a sense of
balance and get the decisions made that HELP rather than hinder our industry -
and therefore ourselves.
Bev posed a
perfectly fair and valid question to this forum. I would like to share the
following with those who opened this posting:
In 1988, I became
heavily involved in the debate over CFC's and their influence. At that time, I
was working with Professor Bill Brox then with the Swedish Research Institute
IVF. Sweden was the first country to mandate the elimination of
CFC's.
Remaining as I am,
unconvinced by the argumentation on this topic to ban them, I asked Bill for his
view to which he replied:
"I attended both the
British and Norwegian Antarctic Survey conferences. Each gave a totally
convincing argument, diametrically opposed to one another. One said we must act
to remove these substances because the problem is huge and had the majority of
more than 1200 scientists in tears. The other argued that it was a naturally
occurring event and we have nothing to do."
"In my opinion", he
continued, "we cannot afford to take the risk that one is right and one is
wrong, so we must act to remove the potential danger".
I thought this to be
the most balanced view, and BOY, did that influence our
industry!
The lead-free debate
is an even more interesting one - and for the technical purists, don't even go
to the Lead-Free forum!
I suspected that the
reason the Japanese went lead-free was because they caught with their pants down
over the CFC issue, and they did not want to be caught out again. So, when they
heard about the WEEE lead-free issue, they acted to the original time-table of
2001. Needless to say, they feel somewhat bemused by recent developments that
push the date out to 2008 - if ever!
This, by the way, is
supported by the result of the SMART Group Trade Mission that visited Japan
earlier this year. If you want copies, visit www.smartgroup.org
Now, back to Bev's
question about global warming. If you are involved in paleoclimatology,
paleoarchaeology, paleobotany, dendrochronology - and yes I am - then you will
be aware that there is good evidence to support the view of a 2,500 year cycle.
That this is the result of a huge comet that broke-up within our solar system
some 600K years ago. The effect is that the earth experiences some
considerable climatic disturbances coupled with periods of greater space
"bombardment" from meteorites, asteroids or comet matter far greater than the
1Million tons per year that usually hits the earth. Furthermore, the matter that
is exhausted by comets is pretty nasty stuff, that would certainly influence the
upper atmosphere of our little planet - and we have just been visited by a
couple of them recently.
Man-made global
warming? To quote my friend Prof. Bill Brox - can we afford to take the risk
that we are not to blame?
BTW Bev, one of the
best works on this topic is The Cosmic Serpent by Victor Clube and Bill Napier
originally published in 1982 by Faber and Faber. They are/were both
scientists with the Royal Observatory. This is science not science
fiction.
Well, I will now
descend from my soap-box, apologise to those unfortunate Techno-Purists who
opened and read this clearly marked NTC posting, and get back to grappling with
the day-to-day problems. Onward through the fog......
Regards, Graham
Naisbitt
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