Hawaiian Court Rules Against Thirty Meter Telescope
Hawaiian court revokes permit for planned mega-telescope, Nature
“Hawaii’s supreme court has ruled that the construction permit for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) atop the mountain of Mauna Kea is invalid. The 2 December decision is a major blow to the international consortium backing the US$1.5-billion telescope, and a win for the Native Hawaiians who have protested its construction on what they regard as a sacred summit. Hawaii’s Board of Land and Natural Resources should not have approved the permit in 2011, the court said, because it did so before protestors could air their side in a contested case hearing. “Quite simply, the Board put the cart before the horse when it issued the permit,” the court decision reads. “Accordingly, the permit cannot stand.” It is unclear whether and how the TMT will move forward given the new ruling.”
Thirty Meter Telescope Selects Mauna Kea, earlier post
I hope this telescope is allowed to continue. I just don’t see how an instrument that explores our universe can be considered as an act of desecration.
That sucks. It was unsurprising – there was a building political backlash against it, the prospect of further delays, and so forth. I just hope this doesn’t broaden into a larger movement to remove all the telescopes off Mauna Kea.
They could try again to get the permit, but it’s pretty unlikely they’ll get it without some massive delays, if they get it at all at this point. It’s probably worth it to instead go looking for new locations – maybe they could build it in Chile along with the EELT. I know they considered a Chilean location before selecting Hawaii.
It was EELT in Chile that prompted the push for Hawaii. The idea is that a large telescope in each hemisphere would complement each other. (Also that building the TMT near the EELT would make the much smaller TMT redundant.)
The alternative northern hemisphere site is San Pedro Mártir, Baja.
San Pedro Mártir is not a bad idea. There is a national park there, so light pollution is somewhat controlled, and there is already a small observatory.
Also a hell of a lot easier to get there.
Take the project along with all it’s big bucks and find another suitable location. Let someone else reap the economic benefits of construction, operations etc.
Its difficult to find a site as good as Mauna Kea on US soil
So be it, then take it outside of the US.
I’m certain the Chinese can find a very nice location in the Tibetan highlands – and I’m certain they wont have a problem with their local population…
In cooperation with AURA, the TMT project completed a multi-year evaluation of five sites:
Cerro Armazones, Antofagasta Region, Republic of Chile
Cerro Tolanchar, Antofagasta Region, Republic of Chile
Cerro Tolar, Antofagasta Region, Republic of Chile
Mauna Kea, Hawaii, United States (This site was chosen and approval granted in April 2013, but subsequently revoked in December 2015)
San Pedro Mártir, Baja California, Mexico
The TMT Observatory Corporation board of directors narrowed the list to two sites, one in each hemisphere, for further consideration: Cerro Armazones in Chile’s Atacama Desert, and Mauna Kea on Hawaii Island.
I said US SOIL!!! Is Chile or Meexico US territory?
Since the US hasn’t contributed much to TMT, why the hell should the main funding nations give a damn about the US?
The TMT website shows Caltech and the University of California as member institutions, the AURA as an associate, and the Moore Foundation as an observer. The project offices are in Pasadena. I agree that TMT may need to go elsewhere if the Native Hawaiians have their way but I don’t see how the US can be accused of not contributing much to this project.
UC and Caltech were the initial designers. But Japan, India and China are the primary funders. Canada has chipped in a quarter billion.
The only US funding seem to have come from a private foundation. The US govt hasn’t contributed.
So why should this SpaceMunkie be able to treat this like a purely or primarily US-owned project? It’s an international project in which the US contributes little funding.
jobs?
Time to get some new soil for US then. I hear Lunar far side is pretty good
I have very mixed feeling about this.
First, many don’t understand the nature of Hawaiian population. It is a very mixed group of peoples from all over the Pacific, folks of every shade and combination, with little racism. Heinz 57, my mom used to say. Within this setting native Hawaiians have maintained a large and active separate population. It’s not what it was in 1850, but still.
My early childhood in Hawaii, decades ago, is filled with very positive memories. I attended a one-room school house perched on a cliff overlooking incredibly green valleys with rising mountains in the distance.
A recent trip to Honolulu and Kauai for research painted a very different story.
On the one hand there is a very high level of obeisance to the native culture: many phrases are commonly used, streets, holidays, foods- the list goes on. There are Hawaiian language programs on radio and television as well. None of it rings true.
The activities of white people in the islands can easily be called desecration, and the nod to Hawaiians nothing more than shameful lip service.
Hawaii remains a beautiful place, particularly to those not familiar with what was. And as to the spiritual nature of Mauna Kea, I’m not a religious person, tending to scoff at theological objection. I think perhaps the natives are a bit late to this party given the population of scopes already operating. On the other hand, when is enough enough?
Read the Honolulu Advertiser for stories that link this issue to the larger problems in Hawaii. Our 50th state is truly in environmental crisis; perhaps it will take the native Hawaiians to somehow stop it.
Thank you, very much for the context. I can understand that development and commercialism has taken its toll on Hawaii and the native culture. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around how the Mauna Kea telescopes fit in. They aren’t huge hotels, condos, or malls. Only a few people are up there running the facilities and I think scientists are/would generally more respectful to native customs than a real-estate firm.
Possibly something could have been worked out at the start, but you have to know who your shareholders are and make them feel they are a part of the team. I suspect resentment toward the observatories has been building for awhile. At this point positions have been set in stone and a move to Altacama seems like the best bet.
Possibly. But let’s suppose all the observatories pull out and dismantle. That won’t do anything about the rest of Hawaii’s environmental problems. Furthermore I doubt that the vacated land, prepared and with infrastructure, would stay free of future undoubtedly commercial development. Those interests won’t negotiate with the Native Hawaiians. They’ll use superior political means to sweep them aside. I normally side with preservation groups but I have no sympathy for this batch.
Of course I agree; ideally the Native Hawaiians could have been given a stake in the project from the start. Membership in planning committees, and scholarships for some of their young people to study astronomy, environmental science, and other fields might have been a help. Who knows? The problem is that unless relationships can be repaired, there is no easy way forward.
I’ve gone through many articles on this issue per Michael Spencer’s suggestion. I found these particularly interesting:
http://archives.starbulleti…
https://www.staradvertiser….
http://www.nature.com/news/…
http://www.techinsider.io/t…
TMT website:
http://www.maunakeaandtmt.o…
It seems to me that the scientific community and individual scientists have made serious, earnest attempts to work with the protestors. The TMT site (admittedly biased) talks to the economic benefits and to the programs for youth from the Native communities.
The Star Advertiser editorial talks about “fair market rents” of $50M if certain laws were enforced _and_ states that Target is hiring more Hawaiians than the TMT project. To me, that speaks volumes. Target, Walmart, and the like aren’t known for environmental friendliness.
I understand that people who are ignored will fight – that’s one of the few valuable things I learned in my one management class. But, I don’t see what more the scientific community and the project could do. You can only bend so much. To me, this comes down to science versus superstition. I hope the TMT can morph, relocate, and keep pushing the frontiers. The Native people will, I think, find that the next leaseholders of their sacred land won’t be nearly as accommodating.
Terrific conversation.
It’s hard for those of us in western culture sometimes to even comprehend value systems others find so central to their lives (the opposite is true as well).
What’s happened here is that the scopes have become a symbol for what is seen as a larger and more generalized desecration, one that can’t be denied by anybody with open eyes.
It’s true that Hawaiian peoples shop at Target like anybody else. And it’s true that opposition to the project comes largely from a few very well organized and some say crazed native groups.
It’s also true that the Hawaiians are by and large a marginalized group seeing a patronage that was stolen by whites in one of America’s ugliest foreign romps, now watching the land raped over and over. It’s not that hard to understand the point of view.
In any case understanding is not needed. It is respect that will drive the parties.
“What’s happened here is that the scopes have become a symbol for what is seen as a larger and more generalized desecration, one that can’t be denied by anybody with open eyes.”
If this is the case, I don’t think any amount of respect will help. If the anti-telescope groups are using a scientific facility as the target for their anger at overdevelopment and brutality elsewhere on the island, I don’t see an answer. I only hope the telescopes that are there can continue to function.
Part of the problem is that there has been a major split in the Native Hawaiian community recently. The “traditional” Hawaiians appear to have supported it and even sent a Hawaiian priest to bless the site as is done with all major buildings in Hawaii. But the Native Hawaiians that wanted to succeed viewed it as an opportunity to make a point. Here is more on the split.
http://www.washingtontimes….
And some poll numbers
http://www.bizjournals.com/…
“Among 140 Hawaiians/part Hawaiians polled, 49 percent somewhat or strongly oppose the project and 44 percent somewhat or strongly support the project.
Hawaiians here refer to native Hawaiians. So it just had the bad luck to selected by the group of Native Hawaiians looking to gain support for succession as a symbol to promote their movement worldwide.
It’s a tough situation. The more I think about it, the more I wonder how this will affect future science/religion interactions. If the telescope is ultimately denied on the sacred ground concept, will it set a precedent for other religious groups to block scientific work they perceive as being against their faith?
It’s not really a religious issue. It is a white man guilt issue. Which is why the natives won the day.
folks of every shade and combination, with little racism
Yeah, that’s the official story. Brazilians peddle the same line of crap about their intensely race-conscious society, but the truth is that racism is rampant in Hawaii just as it is in Brazil.
Not my experience. But Brazil? Yea.
“On the other hand, when is enough enough?”
According two Hawaii’s governor, 3 telescopes will be removed by the time the TMT is complete (if built), so fewer should be enough.
That is a rationale for moving it to…space! In general populations have moved the more unpleasant/unesthetic activities away from where they live (in a broad meaning), starting first with moving industry, energy and science out of cities, then out of countries, and now, it should be out of planet. We should encourage the passing of law making it more interesting to put heavy machinery in space rather than on the Earth. No?
It’s unfortunate that such an important scientific project is now in a position of limbo because of what seems to be a complete lack of understanding on both sides, I can see that Mauna Kea is of massive cultural and spiritual importance to many of the people of Hawaii, however it is also one of the most scientifically important places on earth and science does not have to equal desecration, the problem is as it always is in these situation a lack of understanding and acceptance that a common ground can always be found providing both sides talk, listen and are prepared to look from the other side.
Have a look at the telescope sites on the volcano- what do you see? Thousands of yards of soil pushed over the side to create the needed flat plane for the scopes.
As a professional land planner my job is to make the desired improvements fit with the land. How this is done with a scope is hard to see.
The EELT is a scaled down version of the 100-meter (!!) OWL design. I think part of the downscope was cost. I wonder if the TMT consortium would consider taking its funding into the EELT effort and allowing a larger aperture to be built or to make a second 40m aperture alongside…
But I think it would be good to have a large instrument in the Northern Hemisphere to complement the one in the southern. Hopefully they will simply add the TMT to the cluster of observatories in Baja, helping to turn it into a world class facility.
I don’t know anything about the Baja site but if it is suitable, I can see that a Northern Hemisphere complement to a large telescope in Chile would be very good.
University of California’s contribution to funding is dependent on raiding the James Lick endowment, something they just could not do…until “they” decided they will. it is clear that the Telescope Wars has the TMT folks making very bad decisions, after seeing what happened in Hawaii I should think Cal would want to avoid a similar and even more public embarrassment…since that endowment is something more than public funds.
Apparently the arrogant astronomers didn’t ask the Hawaiian God’s permission for the construction, and the court is unhappy about it. It is really hard to get permission from their God? With Hollywood special effect team so close by, it shouldn’t be so hard for Caltech to carry it out.
On the other hand, since TMT probably has to use adaptive optics, a site with “perfect” seeing may not be that important anymore?
Adaptive optics reduce,.but do not completely remove atmospheric distortion. With very good seeing, they can reduce it to almost nothing. But expecting that from sea level or with bad seeing is asking a bit much. And nothing helps if you have cloud cover. Also, for spectroscopy, photometry and near IR work, adaptive optics don’t help at all.
Compared to the goal of reaching the physical limits of angular resolution, astronomers haven’t been working very hard it seems. Average seeing at Hawaii is about 0.5 arcsec, which is 50 times worse than lambda/D on Keck. AO should aim at least increasing the resolution by 10 fold. Not sure why AO can’t help spectroscopy etc, there is no reason why not, maybe the tech is just too complicated for lazy astronomers to implement?
I believe Keck claims a resolution of 0.04 arcsec for their highest resolution instruments. That’s only a factor of four or so worse than diffraction limited. Some of the instruments are worse. Those are designed for measurements which don’t need high resolution and intentionally sacrifice it for better spectral resolution. As for spectroscopy, AO simply improves angular resolution by removing atmospheric distortions. It does not and can not remove atmospheric absorption. So if you are interested in a line absorbed by the Earth’s atmosphere, AO won’t allow you to observe at low altitude.
If you want to take spectra of two sources very close by, say a pair of quasars, then spatial resolution certainly matters a lot. If your number is correct, Resolution with AO is an order of magnitude improvement, this makes selecting site with good seeing less important, which is my point. You can always get away from atmosphere by observing in space or from an airplane or a balloon, or from other high mountains in continental US, which are closer to most people and cost less to travel to.
This month’s issue of Scientific American describes the “Telescope Wars” going on between the Thirty Meter Telescope team led by Caltech and the University of California, and the Giant Magellan Telescope team led by the Carnegie Institution, which is based on a century-long animosity between these organizations both headquartered in Pasadena only a few miles apart. Each side would prefer to suffer failure rather than see (or help) their rival to succeed, both are competing for the same funding which opens the possibility that neither telescope will ever be finished. If you thought that professional astronomy was a serene business untroubled by Earthly squabbles, you don’t know very many real-world astronomers. I’m not surprised that they pissed off the Native Hawaiians given their inherent lack of people skills to begin with.