Do all those who support precipitous government action to address various environmental threats out of "precaution" also support the development of defensive systems to prevent an asteroid from hitting the earth?

Such an unloaded and straight forward question.

The people and their representative government would be irresponsible not to ask a few questions. Asking questions is relatively cheap and keeps the scientists from turning their talents against us.

A. What are the odds of a massive asteroid hitting the planet, again?*
B. How far away could such an asteroid be detected?
C. Could a defensive system be built to alter the entity's vector?
D. Or can some existing technology (ICBM) be modified to do the above?
E. How long would such a system take to build?
F. How much would it cost to build and maintain?
G. Could this system be aimed at our enemies?

Once those questions are answered, some already are, we can proceed precipitously and build something which will never be used against an asteroid. Instead it will be hijacked by extremists and turned on its creators.

Lets call it the Laius Project.

* "Many" in the U.S. government and population don't believe that the earth is older than ~5,000 - 6,000 years. So it would be best not use "false" geological history as evidence.

Well, of course, no one supports "precipitous" government action. Those who support gov't action to meliorate environmental threats probably support a scientific assessment of the asteroid threat and an appropriate response based on the liklihood and severity of the danger -- much like they do with all other environmental threats.

Tell me, do those of you who support the assault and battery of straw men also support the burning of scarecrows?

Sorry, Realish, but this isn't a straw man (though I wish it were). Those who support the "precautionary principle" do explicitly support precipitous action, even where a threat is unproven. That's the whole point. As typically formulated, the principle requires government action before an assessment of the likelihood or severity of the threat. Indeed, the most common formulation, published in the Wingspread Statement, explicitly calls for government action where "insufficient or inadequate proof exists regarding the causal link." The only meaningful difference is that advocates of the precuationary principle only apply their rationale to private action, never natural risks or the government. Yet from a risk management standpoint, this is ludicrous.

For those who are interested, I've written a book chapter on the subject here: http://home.earthlink.net/~jhadler/prec.html.

Do you have some examples which I can read (and point others to) on how the "Precautionary principle" has caused harm?

In addition to the examples in the book chapter cited above, I would also recommend: Frank B. Cross, “Paradoxical Perils of the Precautionary Principle,” 53 Washington and Lee Law Review 860 (1996); and Aaron Wildavsky's book Searching for Safety.

We've been supporting the building of a strategic defense system since 1983 -- had no idea it was an environmental issue...

Hi, long time lurker, finally able to talk about something I know a reasonable bit about.

Asteroids are a potential danger to us. They have hit us in the past and there's no reason to suggest that they will not hit us in the future. Oddly, the danger to us would be larger if the asteroid hit water rather than land, I wouldn't like to be anywhere on the Eastern Seaboard if a 5 mile rock dropped into the Atlantic.

No-one really knows how big a threat they are though and it would be prudent to fund research. I would support a concerted attempt to track all asteroids of larger than 1 mile diameter with orbits that cross Earth's orbit. This would need to be ongoing to check for long period asteriods with very elliptical orbits.

The cost of such a program would be something in the region of $200m setup and $50m/year upkeep. It is probable that this tracking will have to be done in the coming centuries anyway when we get into asteroid mining.

That will tell us if we have a problem but not help us do anything about it. There are 2 basic compositions of asteriod, rocky or metal. A metallic Asteroid can be deflected by a nuclear strike if you hit the asteroid early enough as if it's 2 years away, you only have to deflect it a bit. However a nuclear strike against a rocky asteroid would tend to just break it up into little pieces still in intercept orbit with Earth, that's likely to be more dangerous than the one asteroid would have been.

So the answer is yes, I would support the development of a tracking system and advanced planning so we know what we're going to do about asteroids with a potential of hitting us.

MAkes me wonder. Who poses a larger threat to who? Us to nature, or nature to ourselves?