 Welcome to Think Tech on Spectromosi 16, Hawaii's weekly newscast on things that matter to tech and to Hawaii. I'm Keisha King. And I'm Cynthia Sinclair. In our show this time, we'll review the talk shows we've done to cover the 30-meter telescope project on Mauna Kea. PMT has become very controversial, and our many talk shows on the subject may be helpful for people to understand the issues and the stakes involved. Those shows include discussions with people who sympathize with the native Hawaiian opposition to the project. There have been a number of us who have played music, written songs, written poetry, gone down and give testimony at the legislature, organized and participated in the protests. And it goes back, you know, a good long ways. That thing that we saw was what, done in 1982. And, you know, the movement that sort of gave rise to that is even older than that. We're looking at, you know, 40, 45 years of pretty steady political activity, not just by native Hawaiians, but really by people who have been trying to hold on to a sense of this place as being a Hawaiian place, you know, holding on to Hawaii and trying to protect the things that were meaningful to us as we were growing up, holding on and protecting lands, protecting communities, protecting sacred places. And, my God, we're still doing it, and we still have to do it. And we're still here to do it, though. Well, you know, that's just, you know, not all of us are, right? I mean, you know, that's just the kind of luck of the draw. I'm glad I'm 65 and still alive and still able to. But some people have given their whole lives to this movement, and that performance there, we were celebrating and mourning the loss of George Helm, who's participation in this was relatively short-lived, but still so incredibly important. Female deities up there, Poliyahu, who is the snow, Lillianoi, who is the mist. And that Lillianoi is a huge component of Mauna Kea as an aquifer, as the, you know, because that brings the drip that just goes into the bogs that are that high up and then go down into the aquifer and then out, you know, along the, I mean, the water dispersal through those feminine deities at the top of Mauna Kea I had never considered. And they're kind of standalone, standalone female deities, which I didn't realize that either. So I learned something there and I thank you very much. And another thing that was unbelievable was there was an archaeologist whose name is Patrick McCoy, and he'd been doing work up there since the 70s. And finally wrote an epic piece after all the EISs were given this, this random exhibit submitted by the UH, probably by mistake, ended up being the bomb. And I'll give you a copy. No, he's now retired, but he's as epic because he, his whole conversation was about the linkage of ascent and descent routes with these priest ads makers who had consecrated work and their retinue of people coming up and down that mountain. Community groups, environmental organizations have been raising concerns ever since the first batch of telescopes were being developed on the mountain. And we also have, we have, we have laws, you know, we're, we're, we're, we live in a community that has actually the rule of law in theory. And those laws prohibit this kind of development in a conservation zone. So our job as Kea has been, has been, you know, holding the state accountable, holding these institutions accountable and ensuring that our laws are upheld. Thank you for framing it that way. There's a lot of people who, who like to split this baby around science. And it's, it's really not helpful. No, it's not. Yeah. Yeah. I know that Kea has certainly been a heavy user of science in the case. And as a matter of fact, our background is from the Huy Malama, Mauna Kea report on the aspects of Mauna Kea that have not been in compliance over the years. As you said, and this, this, the graphic is around the, the view planes that have been distorted by, by the 13 observatories that are there now. Right. Right. Okay. So this week was a big deal. It was. It was the latest in a series of, I mean, I think it's important to always keep things in, in context. It's very easy, I think, for people who are, who are deeply concerned about the, the life and health of our, of our Mauna for them to feel depressed or bummed out about the decision. They also include discussions with scientists and others in the community who support the project. Yeah, they can be protests. The protests can be on the side. Police and other forces will have to do what they need to do. And, you know, construction has to resume in a normal schedule. It's not a very large project. I mean, they try to, to put it out there to look how magnificent it is. 30 meters is not a big deal. It's a hundred feet. It's a hundred feet. But in the drawings, they make it look so beautiful and so big that then quite a few people are there culturally sensitive. They say, oh, this is a monstrosity. No, it's not. No. Again, 30 meters is a hundred feet. I mean, really, Mauna care is very big for a hundred feet. Yeah. If we are talking geometry now, it's not like they're going to take a quarter mile of the mountain or, you know, hectares or whatever. When it's finished is not going to be a giant building. A lot of the projections, again, they really brought forward the architectural and the science thing. They wanted to make it a crown jewel of the crown on the top of Mauna care, top for science. They overdid that part. Interesting. The architectural part. Again, 30 meters, which is really the big disk. And then there is the surrounding shell. 90 feet. That's all it is. Yes. You don't want to make them too big because when you make them too big, they differentially start expanding with the sun and all or the cold side and then they start distorting. So there is limits of how big you're going to make them. Again, let's stop arguing about a hundred feet. Lillia, we've seen that the demise of the 30 meter telescope here in Hawaii is a massive failure commercially, educationally in terms of the reputation of Hawaii as an investment climate and also a further failure of public policy. But one of the things public policy needs to do is balance competing needs and demands here in the United States of America, we believe absolutely in the First Amendment, the right of individuals to freedom of speech, which includes the freedom to protest one's government. So that certainly took place in the drama of the 30 meter telescope. But how do we balance this in the world of public policy? Balance with the needs of the many. It's an interesting question. And I think, you know, you can't, the protesters, what credit is due, they did a fantastic job. You know, I think they're helped because when you cover a story like this, it's certainly a lot sexier to cover, you know, protest and media. That's the story. The story is these people have this problem and what it's thanks for. And I think this is where I feel like Hawaii's, I guess, leader sort of dropped the ball is that what that story is out there, you know, they deserve a chance to tell their story, to put their position out there to let everyone know what their issue is. But we also cannot, we can't function as a state, as a government, as an economy if every activist, every group of activists has the ability to hijack everything we try to do, every state of action, every business, everything we build. I mean, you could get to the point where you can't even build, say, a hospital or a school because you could fight an activist who has a problem with some point of it. So there comes a point where your whole process is in danger of being hijacked. The Mauna Kea situation in which Hawaiians are playing a big role in terms of opposing the 30-meter telescope is an important thing for the people avoid to take note of because what we're talking about here is public policy. The objections that I disagree with the objections, the basis on which objections from the loudest speaking Hawaiians are that any digging into the mountain constitutes a cultural injury or any intrusion into the airspace, the air column above the mountain is a cultural injury. The history shows us just the opposite. I mean, there's a seven-mile vertical, seven-mile high quarry that ancient Hawaiians used to mine to get the best stone for their tools and their weapons. So the concern is that it seems that as the years go by, there are these new customs and traditions that are kind of made up in order to suit the politics of the moment. And that is my opinion and that is what I see happening. Mauna Kea is one of those things. And people ought to be concerned about it because in the case of Mauna Kea, we are talking about a public policy issue. The opportunities that a 30-meter telescope would provide for the people of Hawai'i, for education process, for opportunities in science and advancement, and to become a global leader on something that is so natural. Then if you want to talk about cultural validation, there is no Hawaiian cultural endeavor that is more important than the search for knowledge. The search for knowledge has been fundamental to Hawaiian culture, to the existence and the quality of life that was afforded Hawaiians during pre-contact before Captain Kut came. Study things that we simply can't do well with the existing class of telescopes. I think the Exoplanet application is the easiest for the viewers to grasp. But one of the main areas of astronomy nowadays is to look at planets around other stars. The recently developed field of 30 years or so ago, we weren't even sure there were planets around other stars. I grew up with only nine and now there were only eight of those in our own solar system. People always suspected there were, but there wasn't any proof. Now we know about thousands of them. Now the attention is okay. Are there any that are like Earth? How much like Earth? How many of them? And of course the follow-on question there, what's the likelihood that life could have developed on those planets? Now in order to do a good job of researching that, you need a bigger telescope than the current generation for the two reasons that I suggested earlier. Exoplanets are really faint, right? They're small and they're far away, so you need a big telescope to see them at all. You certainly need a big telescope to study their property. The other thing is that these planets are quite close to their parent star. The whole thing is far away. You need to be able to separate a really faint planet from its great big bright star right beside it. And that requires you to be able to separate things that are close together on the sky. To that you also need a big telescope. So the goal is to, among other things, with a 30-meter telescope is to look at exoplanets that we know are there from other techniques that other telescopes found, and then be able to actually get a picture of the planet separate from the star, and then be able to analyze the light from the planet and see if there's an atmosphere, what gases might be in the atmosphere, and if there are fingerprints that might indicate the presence of life. That's the real sort of holy grail of that area of astronomy, and it's one that the 30-meter telescope is uniquely capable of pursuing. The majority of the people in Hawaii supported and a large group of native Hawaiians. The Civil Bee came out with a poll that said something like 44% of native Hawaiians now supported versus previously 72%. I haven't figured out what the margin of error on that is. It's probably like 10%. So it could be over 50% or under 30% right now, or 34% supporting and opposing right now. But just like the protesters didn't care what the poll said back when they were trying to change the narrative, it's the same way that I don't care what the polls say. I want to tell my story about what... There's a native Hawaiian story out there that is a perfectly legitimate story despite what the protesters do try to tell me, that we can embrace Mauna Kea and the sacred, and Mauna Kea can embrace the telescopes and native Hawaiian culture can embrace that kind of science, that kind of use of land. I saw that article in the Civil Bee and I had the impression from it that from a time about a year ago when the support for the telescope was something in the order of 77%, the actual identifiable support has declined. And I guess the oldest protest has had an effect on the average Joe and how he feels about it, and some people are gravitating toward the opposition rather than to support the DMT, am I right? I think that's absolutely right, and I think that's democracy, that's how it works. We don't run our democracy based on polls, and just like you go out and you make your argument, you say your position and you see if you can persuade people. The pro-TMT side, the grassroots efforts that I'm contributing to, we didn't think we had to be going out there. Everybody was supporting, the rule of law was on our side. We voted for these politicians who were supporting it, so it was pretty clear which way we wanted to go in a democracy law-abiding society. And then, meanwhile, the protestors knew that for two years they... I guess I'm assuming they knew they were going to lose or thought they were going to lose in the contested case hearing because this project is so good and has done so much to accommodate so many things and has done so many things right that there would be no reason for somebody who's actually looking at the evidence to rule against it. The Institute for Astronomy is literally the world leader in this field. We have the hand-stars telescopes on Haleakala, which are about as big as I am across, and that scans the sky a few times a year looking for large-ish asteroids and they're far, far away and we could send a space mission to deflect them. And then we have the Atlas telescopes, which stands for Asteroid Terrestrial Impact Last Alert System. Those are smaller telescopes, but they scan the sky every night or so, the whole sky visible from Hawaii there and on Manaloa and Haleakala, and they just were funded to put telescopes in the southern hemisphere. That can find most asteroids like the one that was by, and so the idea is it's literally civil defense. The office at NASA that funds these is called the Planetary Defense Coordination Office. So their goal is for us not to be like the dinosaurs. And now with the telescopes that we've built and designed and systems we have here, we're responsible for more than half of the asteroids and comets that are being discovered worldwide. And then those are followed up by telescopes on Ikea. So for instance, with the current shutdown of the observatories, we're discovering things that we cannot follow up before they disappear. And if we were to discover a big Earth-destroying type of asteroid, you would find that far enough away with like the Pan-Stars Telescope that you would have 20 years or so to figure out what to do. But you would want to characterize that asteroid is it a pile of rocks or it's a one big rock. What exactly is its orbit? How big is it? And where would it hit us? And where it would hit us. And if you can get precise data, you would want something like the 30 meter telescope to be able to make those measurements when the asteroid is far away from the sun where it spends most of its time. It's extremely faint, too faint to characterize with the current ground-based telescopes. I think that a lot of people who are there don't really care about the rule of law in the first place. But I think they would care about just knowing more about what is there. Like I said from the beginning, I didn't I didn't know what's there on the mountain, what do telescopes do, what does that have to do with related to being a Polynesian and our ancestors that were star-gazers. And it's all at Imi Lua. I mean everybody should go there. But just taking the mystery out of what people are what people are protesting against. I have not met somebody in person who is protesting that I didn't tell something new about that they didn't know about the telescopes just like how I didn't know about the telescopes. They need to inform themselves maybe not just on the legal process that allows them to be there, but on the actual industry and what they really do. And I mean I'm still not a fan of like space things or whatever and nobody has to be like we're not probably going to be scientists or astronomers. Not everyone can be an astronomer. I don't know yet but okay maybe. That would be really neat if I'm proven wrong. But just to understand what it does like you don't have to just to know what happens in your neighborhood like renewable energy or how industries happen or how things happen in your neighborhood. This is what happens in your neighborhood and I don't think enough of us know about that. So not only to educate people on the legal process that let them be there but on the actual what is the TMT? What are ground telescopes? Why is it that if if TMT doesn't isn't built in Hawaii why does that affect all astronomy in Hawaii? Like astronomy in Hawaii is astronomy on Maunakea and Haleakala. This is some of the best astronomy on the planet because of where we're located and it is going to show a sign to the world we don't care if you're here or not. Why should any astronomy program continue to thrive here and it's going to be really bad for us in a big loss. What I hear you saying and I think this is the last point of the show is that inherent in in Imua and the TMT and your view of things is this notion of moving forward but also respecting what your neighbor is doing especially if your neighbor is doing it for altruistic reasons this is university stuff. Why not support that? Why not care about your neighbor? Why not care about the greater good of the whole state? Wouldn't that be better? That would be. It's caring for each other which is an old line value. These are only samplings of the shows we've done on the subject. You can see these shows in their entirety on our website and our YouTube channel and find out what our host and guest are saying. Some people are for it and some people are against it but one thing is clear after 10 years of litigation in all the courts and coverage on all the media it's not really defensible to say you don't know enough to make up your mind. It's time for all of us to take a position one way or the other. It's time for all of us to express that position so that government and the media will know how we feel. The determination of this controversy will define Hawaii and what we stand for and will have a huge effect on the future of our state. And now let's check out our think tech schedule of events going forward. Think Tech streams its talk shows live on the internet from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. Then we broadcast our earlier shows all night long. If you missed the show, they're all archived on demand on thinktechhawaii.com and YouTube and we post all our shows that's podcast on iTunes. Visit thinktechhawaii.com for our weekly calendar and live stream and YouTube links and sign up to get our daily email advisories. We'll be right back to wrap up this week's edition of Think Tech, but first, we want to thank our underwriters. Thanks to our think tech underwriters and grand tours. The Atherton Family Foundation. Carol Mun Lee and the Friends of Think Tech. The Center for Microbial Oceanography Research and Education. Collateral Analytics. The Cook Foundation. Dwayne Kurisu. The Hawaii Community Foundation. The Hawaii Council of Associations of Abarbono. Hawaii Energy. The Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. Hawaiian Electric Company. Integrated Security Technologies. Galen Ho of BAE Systems. Kamehameha Schools. MW Group. The Shidler Family Foundation. The Sydney Stern Memorial Trust. Volo Foundation. The Shidler Family Foundation. The Shidler Family Foundation. The Shidler Family Foundation. The Shidler Family Foundation. Volo Foundation. Yuriko J. Sugimura. Thanks so much to you all. Okay, Cynthia. That wraps up this week's edition of Think Tech. Remember, you can watch Think Tech on Spectrum OC-16 several times every week. For additional times, check out OC-16.tv. For lots more Think Tech videos, visit ThinkTechHawaii.com. Be a citizen journalist on Think Tech and help us have an impact on Hawaii. Thanks so much for supporting our open discussion of tech, energy, business and globalism. You can watch this show throughout the week and tune in next Sunday evening for our next important weekly episode. I'm Keisha King. And I'm Cynthia Sinclair. Aloha everyone.