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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