Why the Environuts Annoy the Crap out of Me

It has become tiresome that any discussion at all of an undertaking that might use the tiniest bit of electricity or other form of energy is instantly dismissed or discussed in terms of its environmental impact. I am a huge fan of all things Freakonomics and post at the Freakonomics blog regularly.  Today, there is one of their usually provocative headlines, “What’s More Likely: That Your Vote Will Matter or That You’ll Help Discover Extraterrestrial Life?” 

The first damn comment was this one:

“What about the power usage of a computer running SETI? Those costs are not negligible, especially when compared with the chances of finding life via SETI.”

Killjoy. Instead of discussion on the topic, this knucklehead instantly tries to derail the conversation into his own narrow view of the world.  As if power usage is the Single Most Important Thing in the world for every single aspect of our lives.  So I answered:

"Exploration, by its nature, carries with it the risk of absolutely zero real benefit. So are you, Jason@1&@6, Dan J@2, saying that there should be no exploration without knowing ahead of time that there will be an adequate payoff? Columbus had no assurances that he would find the West Indies or that he wouldn't die at sea, but he went ahead and killed a bunch of trees to build his ships anyway. And then we enslaved the Indians, blah, blah, blah--we're evil, etc., etc., ad infinitum. The SETI Project is taking advantage of otherwise idle resources, the very definition of responsible stewardship. Doesn't matter whether or not the payoff is there, if it does no harm, it's worth doing on the off chance that something good may come of it."

Sometimes, a thing is worth doing for the sheer sake of doing it.  SETI is not likely to produce anything of value in the near future, if ever, but that doesn’t mean you don’t do it.  The people behind SETI have enough interest in the possibility of extraterrestrial life to raise money, write code, ask for help and generally do whatever they think they need to do to satisfy their quest for knowledge, quixotic or not.  And all these knucklehead environuts can think about is whether or not Mother Earth is being harmed a little.  By their standards, we should try nothing that cannot immediately show a return that satisfies THEIR standards for usefulness.  Assholes.