by frog
It is not my usual habit to listen to RadioNZ on a Saturday morning, but my host for the long weekend does so. I was rapt to listen to Kim Hill interview Harry Kroto.
The Nobel Prize winning chemist talked at length about many issues dear to a Green’s heart, such as nuclear disarmorment, the commercialisation of science since the neo-con revolution of Thatcher and Reagan, and his fears that our failure to fund “blue-sky” science means that the breakthroughs we need to overcome resource constraints and population pressures may not come in time, if at all. He complained that we have turned our universities into fast food outlets and that they are turning out far too many graduates in some areas, and far too few in others, such as chemistry and biology.
Kroto also had some interesting observations about the conflicts of sceince and religion, although he conceded that not all religions presented such conflicts. (This set the emails blazing in and Hill spent some time after the interview going through them.)
Kroto also questioned the interference of politicians in the scientific realm, blaming them for building nuclear and chemical weapons when it was uneccessary to do so, and for banning DDT outright when the science showed that it was just being over used (over commercialised) but still had a place in the world. He took a moderate swipe at Rachel Carson in the process, just in case you thought he was a diehard greenie.
I recommend that anyone with a scientific bent should listen to the interview, which can be found in the second link of the post. His Nobel Prize was for the discovery of fullerenes, the basis of modern nanotechnology.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by frog on Sat, February 7th, 2009
Tags: fullerenes, harry kroto, interview, kim hill, nanotechnology, radionz
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
“..It is not my usual habit to listen to RadioNZ on a Saturday morning, ..”
aah..!..so that’s one of your main problems right there then..eh..?
btw…who do you listen to..?
..’the edge’..?
phil(whoar.co.nz..
i’ll betcha don’t read whoar every day either..eh..?
ignorance is bliss..eh..?..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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as diana witchel said of the tvone breakfast hosts..
“they review themselves’..
..eh..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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yeah, Phil.
It’s her way of saying “they just said it themselves better than any bitchy comment any of us could offer”.
I caught a week of that show when staying with my Dad, & realised why I usually don’t bother. Verry irritating, and not at all intelligent.
But I’ve always had a soft spot for Kim Hill. I rather like her killer instinct for stoopid people saying rash and unsupportable things, it’s very funny listening to them squirm when they haven’t adequately prepared to go on the radio. hehehe
And then there’s the excellence of her interviews with really intelligent people.
Frog:
start a good habit – keep listening to her, she’s one of NZ media’s secret weapons, along with her research team @ Radio NZ.
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I didn’t listen, so I’m not sure what Kroto actually said, but if he claimed that Rachel Carson caused DDT to be banned for disease vector control, he is straight out wrong.
This myth has been propagated by those who want a stick to bash Carson (and environmentalists/pesticide control advocates) with.
DDT is still used successfully in disease vector control – because it has been strictly controlled and thus in most places mosquitos have not yet developed resistance.
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I thought it was just banned outright in a few developed countries (maybe he was referring to the US – will certainly have a listen)…it certainly has been used in Africa and the like for years/decades.
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He didn’t have a go at Carson, he said he didn’t know her. He was concerned at the consequences of a decision that caused more damage than it solved.
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If anyone has actually read Carson, what she was trying to get across was that indiscriminate use of organophosphates created a build-up in the food chain, which was already (in the 1950s) causing destruction of bird populations (the American eagle was one example) and toxins in fish. DDT was cited as it was very widely used at the time and was shown to be one of the culprits.
The book came out about 1957 and was one of those seminal books that made people stop and think. If it wasn’t 100% accurate (she was a biologist, not a chemist) what it did do was make people think of the long-term consequences of their actions, not the short-term fix.
For that alone, she deserves honour.
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Janine is spot on. I grew up on an orchard and saw the results of indiscriminate spraying. The small insect eating birds disappeared and we had to spray more.
When I read Rachel Carson I realised what had happened.
By the way I recently saw a one woman play in York about Rachel Carson’s life. She had to deal with a lot of pressure from those opposing her research and message particularly vested interests and disparagement from similar people to those who use this blog to abuse rather than put forward coherent arguments. She was very courageous and a good example.
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interesting thing , i read the whole article on wikipedia about Fullerene
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