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> great need for new basic knowledge in the sciences if we wish to improve the conditions of human life on Earth. We need more knowledge in physics and chemistr

> great need for new basic knowledge in the sciences if we wish to improve the conditions of human life on Earth. We need more knowledge in physics and chemistry, in biology and physiology, and very particularly in medicine to cope with all these problems which threaten man’s life: hunger, disease, contamination of food and water, pollution of the environment. This take is strikingly similar to the movie "Don't Look Up": > And when these treasures from heaven [asteroid fragments] are claimed, poverty as we know it, social injustice, lose of biodiversity, all these multitudes of problems will become relics of the past and humanity will stride through the pillars of Boaz and Jachin, naked into the glory of a golden age which... is a satire. We need to stop (over) polluting the environment, not to find better ways to clean the environment. Finding better ways to clean the environment will only lead humanity to pollute more. Ernst Stuhlinger obviously never took a stroll nearby a chemical plant.

themaninthedark 3y ago
I am sure that the associate director of science at NASA never visited a chemical plant. /s We pollute the environment by just living. After you eat a meal and digest it, you take a crap. After you drink some water you take a piss. That is pollution, but it is low level. You get 100 people all taking craps and pissing in one area, that causes huge problems for the local area. Also breeds disease. Your solution in this case would be what? Because you say not to find a way to clean, just stop over polluting. What you and the writer's of "Don't Look Up" don't seem to get is that, by pressing humanity into space and solving challenging problems we get new tools to deal with existing problems. Not that "All the problems will cease to exist once we do the thing." You get a new tool, how you use that tool is up to you and those around you. In 1920, someone developed a pesticide that was great for killing louse, fumigating ships and warehouses. This was great and saved many people. Then in 1942, someone decided to use it to systematically murder a race of people. This does not mean that we should never make or use pesticides again, it means that we need to bring people closer together and get them to stop trying to kill each other over slight differences.
- pizza234 3y ago
  > I am sure that the associate director of science at NASA never visited a chemical plant. /s You haven't read the text attentively. "Visiting a chemical plant" is different from "taking a stroll nearby" it, that is, seeing the effects of it in the environment. > We pollute the environment by just living. After you eat a meal and digest it, you take a crap. After you drink some water you take a piss. That is pollution, but it is low level. This is radically disconnected to what's being done to the environment now, which is not just a matter of overpopulation. Currently, as a popoluation, we are: - wasting massive amount of resources (to observe two simple examples, just go to a restaurant, or notice huge cars in tiny towns) - producing unmanageable amounts of waste in general (especially as consequence of the previous point) - most importantly, producing unmanageable types of pollutants (read HN more attentively, and you'll find recent talks of microplastics) Cleaning up after polluting is at best considerably more expensive, at worst, impossible to perform, than not polluting in the first place. And keep in mind that I'm talking about regulating (that is, at least reducing) pollution, not abolishing it (that is, going Amish).

themaninthedark 3y ago

I am sure that the associate director of science at NASA never visited a chemical plant. /s We pollute the environment by just living. After you eat a meal and digest it, you take a crap. After you drink some water you take a piss. That is pollution, but it is low level. You get 100 people all taking craps and pissing in one area, that causes huge problems for the local area. Also breeds disease. Your solution in this case would be what? Because you say not to find a way to clean, just stop over polluting. What you and the writer's of "Don't Look Up" don't seem to get is that, by pressing humanity into space and solving challenging problems we get new tools to deal with existing problems. Not that "All the problems will cease to exist once we do the thing." You get a new tool, how you use that tool is up to you and those around you. In 1920, someone developed a pesticide that was great for killing louse, fumigating ships and warehouses. This was great and saved many people. Then in 1942, someone decided to use it to systematically murder a race of people. This does not mean that we should never make or use pesticides again, it means that we need to bring people closer together and get them to stop trying to kill each other over slight differences.

pizza234 3y ago
> I am sure that the associate director of science at NASA never visited a chemical plant. /s You haven't read the text attentively. "Visiting a chemical plant" is different from "taking a stroll nearby" it, that is, seeing the effects of it in the environment. > We pollute the environment by just living. After you eat a meal and digest it, you take a crap. After you drink some water you take a piss. That is pollution, but it is low level. This is radically disconnected to what's being done to the environment now, which is not just a matter of overpopulation. Currently, as a popoluation, we are: - wasting massive amount of resources (to observe two simple examples, just go to a restaurant, or notice huge cars in tiny towns) - producing unmanageable amounts of waste in general (especially as consequence of the previous point) - most importantly, producing unmanageable types of pollutants (read HN more attentively, and you'll find recent talks of microplastics) Cleaning up after polluting is at best considerably more expensive, at worst, impossible to perform, than not polluting in the first place. And keep in mind that I'm talking about regulating (that is, at least reducing) pollution, not abolishing it (that is, going Amish).