Giant Telescope Project Stalled By Hawaiian Natives (khon2.com)

Fudge Factor 3000 writes: The Hawaiian Supreme Court has pulled a construction permit for the Thirty Meter Telescope project. A vocal minority of Hawaiians has vehemently protested the construction of the telescope for religious reasons. Now, they have been successful in contesting the construction permit. The ruling reads in part: "The process followed by the Board here did not meet these standards. Quite simply, the Board put the cart before the horse when it issued the permit before the request for a contested case hearing was resolved and the hearing was held. Accordingly, the permit cannot stand."

Comments

I support the telescope

[Crashmarik]

But the hypocrisy that will come from the complaints about the "Vocal Minority" will be over the top. All I have to say to both sides on this is, "Welcome to the rule of law and individual rights"

Re:I support the telescope

[pushing-robot]

Section 7. The State reaffirms and shall protect all rights, customarily and traditionally exercised for subsistence, cultural and religious purposes and possessed by ahupua’a tenants who are descendants of native Hawaiians who inhabited the Hawaiian Islands prior to 1778, subject to the right of the State to regulate such rights. [Add Const Con 1978 and election Nov 7, 1978]”

It may be law, but it makes me uneasy when a religion becomes enshrined in law. I guess we're lucky they're not cannibals.

Re:I support the telescope

[Applehu Akbar]

If Maunakea is so sacred, why has the military been able to use it as a bombing range all these years? Could it be that astronomers are just more easily picked on than soldiers?

Re:I support the telescope

[hackertourist]

This ruling has nothing to do with religion. Due process was not followed when the permit was granted. The university is free to apply for a permit again.

Re:I support the telescope

[NotDrWho]

Anyone who has ever worked with Hawaiian natives can tell you this has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with money. Basically, whoever is trying to build this telescope must not have realized that building anything big in Hawaii requires a big kickback to the natives.

Re:I support the telescope

[hackertourist]

It doesn't matter on which grounds the protest group objected to the permit. They were not heard, and that's what the Court ruled on.

Re:I support the telescope

[Solandri]

To be fair, Hawaii is a particularly brazen example of a territory grab. I mean sure, most of the U.S. was settled that way, taking territory from native Americans (who didn't have the concept of owning land). But Hawaii was originally a country. White settlers from the U.S. who wanted to use it for agriculture overthrew the native government, and got the U.S. to annex it. Even then it wasn't over, as the U.S. allows territories to vote for either independence or statehood (the Philippines and Cuba for example voted for independence, Puerto Rico is in a perpetual state of delaying the vote). But by the time Hawaii voted, its native population had been overwhelmed by sugar and pineapple plantation workers and military personnel at Pearl Harbor.

From the perspective of the natives, a mere kickback is probably a tiny fraction of what they feel is owed to them for basically stealing their country.

Re: I support the telescope

[ceoyoyo]

Jared Diamond calls it something like the noble savage fantasy. Many people insist on believing that native cultures were all peaceful utopias who called up mother Earth every Sunday. The truth is that premodern cultures, including white European cultures, were almost all incredibly nasty. Occasional, isolated, exceptions existed, until they met their bloodthirsty enslaving, often cannibalistic neighbours. Those neighbours were sometimes English, Spanish, Carib, Iroquois, Viking, Ottoman, or pretty much anybody else. Modern societies aren't perfect, but they're far, far better than anything that existed even a couple hundred years ago.

Ask the right questions

[Opportunist]

"Cut the crap, how much money to appease the spirits of your ancestors?"

Sacred ground

[sjbe]

A vocal minority of Hawaiians has vehemently protested the construction of the telescope for religious reasons.

Don't you love how people can make up nonsensical stories about how something is sacred to them to stop activities they don't like? Sometimes they even believe the nonsense they are spouting. But it's still nonsense. Personally I find scientific inquiry to be sacred ground and I can actually show how scientific inquiry benefits mankind. If they want to show how this telescope will cause some objective problem (environmental, logistical, financial, whatever) then by all means let's slow down and consider if the telescope is a good idea. But religious objections carry no weight with me.

So they have to hold a hearing so everyone can have their say. Fine. Hold the hearing. But religious objections are no grounds to stop construction of the telescope. Let them tell us how sacred this particular patch of ground is and then build the damn thing. I'm tired of people trying to trample valuable research because of their mythology.

Re:Sacred ground

[PPH]

And I'm tired of arrogant people who can't respect other people's cultures.

Science is a part of my culture. And I'm tired of people blocking its progress with silly religious objections.

Re: Where the TMT can go now

[Rei]

It' not so much about altitude and weather as it is seeing conditions; Mauna Loa has among the best if not the best seeing conditions on Earth outside Antarctica. Good seeing depends in large part on how flat and uniform the terrain is for hundreds of kilometers upwind; high mountains on islands consequently tend to fare well (the Canary Islands are another good spot)

The best known seeing location on Earth is in deep Antarctica. Unfortunately the location would make the costs prohibative.

Re:Where the TMT can go now

[gtall]

Pay off the natives like they wanted, build telescope, leave religion behind.

Re:Nothing being damaged here

[tarpitcod]

In a falsifiability test between 'Hawaiian Magma Gods' and String theory, my money is on Hawaiian Magma Gods.