November 2005 ISSUE
READERS' FORUM
National Focus Needed on Inclusivity
Re: Inclusivity.
I am pleased that Council has decided to shelve the new category option of Inclusivity.
However, as President Larry Staples, P.Eng., has noted, the fundamental issue
remains to be resolved.
Although administration of professional practices falls within provincial
jurisdiction, the Inclusivity issue is a national one. APEGGA should consider
raising the question with other provincial associations.
CCPE can set up a task force to study the problem and make recommendations. New
immigrants want to become Canadian engineers, not just Alberta engineers.
The task force set up by CCPE should work closely with engineering faculties across Canada. Universities have the experience and expertise in assessing foreign engineering degree programs for the purpose of recruiting graduate students.
Although the requirements for professional licensing and academic research may differ, we can nevertheless gain insight into the issue by examining the entrance requirements of these faculties. After all, an applicant with a foreign engineering degree and a Canadian graduate degree is generally considered to have acceptable qualifications for registration.
Dr. Kam Yu, P.Eng.
Assistant Professor
Department of Economics
Lakehead University
Thunder Bay, Ont.
Editor’s Note: CCPE is very much involved in a national initiative called From Consideration to Integration, which addresses some of the above. Visit www.ccpe.ca/fc2i/e/index.cfm.
More Teeth Please
Re: Calgary Man Guilty of Illegally Using Engineering Designation, The PEGG,
September 2005.
Apparently Richard Yu fraudulently used the title P.Eng. for four and a half
years, presumably to further his business. APEGGA seems satisfied with the judgment
that told Mr. Yu to stop.
How toothless of APEGGA and the justice system. It shows there is no true penalty
for misrepresentation and non-compliance. I am hugely disappointed that my Association
cannot demonstrate that there should be consequences for fraudulent use of a
professional title.
Murray Coppold, P.Geol.
Calgary
Control Controllables
Re: Why Keep Fiddling While Rome is Burning? Readers’ Forum,
The PEGG, June 2005.
Dick Wilson, P.Geoph., commenting on the implementation of the Kyoto Accord, poses the question: “Where is the downside?”
We should all remember that Kyoto is about controlling global climate. It is not designed to deal effectively with toxic pollutants.
Consider these numbers, published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The annual flux of C02 into the atmosphere from natural processes is approximately 150 billion tons. From the combustion of fossil fuels the annual flux is estimated at five billion tons, or about three per cent of the total.
Another perspective is gained when considering that 95 per cent of the total greenhouse gas in our atmosphere is water vapour. Less than three per cent is C02 — from all sources.
One could reasonably conclude that anthropogenic C02 fed into the atmosphere has virtually no impact on global climate change.
Those who live in cities are particularly aware of the significant air pollution problems due to emissions of particulate matter, carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxides. The message to me is loud and clear: control the controllables.
The suggestion is mis-leading that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age were northern hemisphere phenomena. Work by Baliunas et al., Yu et al., Haberzettl et al. and others has documented these weather periods in Australia, Africa, South America and China.
I was puzzled by the reference to the preponderance of Nobel laureates etc.
regarding C02 reduction.
The Heidelberg Appeal was signed by 3,000 scientists, including 72 Nobel Prize
winners, from 106 countries. They warn of the “irrational ideology” driving
global warming science.
The Leipzig Declaration, an anti-Kyoto petition, attracted the signatures of 1,500 scientists.
The Oregon Petition attracted 17,000 signatories to endorse this statement: “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”
It is significant that published figures show that 2,660 of the signatories to the Oregon Petition are physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers and environmental scientists. Scientists from other disciplines totaled 5,017.
What is the downside? The downside is that by implementing Kyoto we are unwisely spending our hard-earned money.
Eric Loughead, P.Geol.
APEGGA Life Member
Calgary
Making the Best Of Our Resources
Increased crude oil prices have already resulted in higher costs for Canadians of some seven to 10 per cent. This so-called “world pricing” is actually pricing based on the U.S. crude shortages. In other words, Canada, which is self-supporting, is paying for problems outside the country.
Should crude oil prices increase further, Canada will face a major depression, companies will be forced into bankruptcy and the economy will be at an all-time low. Canada must remove itself from U.S. pricing and set its own price for crude oil but sell exports at world prices. France has reduced gasoline prices and Mexico has lowered natural gas and electricity prices.
Canadian conventional oil reserves are declining every year and should not
be exported unless there are reserves protecting Canada for the future. Some
629,000 barrels of this crude oil are being shipped to the U.S. every day, with
the only protection for Canada the future protection of heavy oil.
Twilight in The Desert, The Coming Saudi Oil Shock And The World Economy by Matthew
R. Simmons predicts all major Saudi oilfields are near capacity and peaking.
Reservoir oil pressures are starting to decline and production will be lowered
until the fields are no longer economic.
This will be a major shock to the world and in particular the U.S., which appears to have no plans for the catastrophe.
Canada is exporting some two billion cubic feet of natural gas per day to the U.S. Once again world pricing is being used. The States is short of gas and Canada is self-sufficient.
World pricing is a joke. Every crude oil and natural gas price increase has been set by the U.S. Canada is being penalized for these shortages.
A gas pipeline is planned from the Mackenzie Delta into existing lines. The proposal is to export gas to the U.S., likely leaving no reserves for Canadian use. I have heard of no protection of Canadian future gas reserves.
There is great news for coal. EPCOR Utilities Inc. and TransAlta Corporation have completed a new coal electrical generation plant in Genesee, west of Edmonton. It is the largest single generation until now added to the Alberta power grid. It essentially has no environmental cost. Emissions are reduced to the level of a natural gas cycle plant.
We need to make a greater use of existing energy.
We need construction of a large number of coal fired electrical plants to provide electricity for all transportation and to light and heat buildings.
We need to develop new energy.
And we need to stand up for our rights and demand that the government establish our own pricing system, at least until the energy system is stabilized.
Gordon Darling, P.Geol.
APEGGA Life Member
Kelowna, B.C.
Hockey Stick Curve
Breaks Under Pressure
Re: The Kyoto Accord, Point/Counterpoint, The PEGG, November 2002.
I believe the anti-Kyoto scientific argument two other authors and I presented has been fully vindicated. The Pembina Institute's pro-Kyoto scientific argument relied heavily on references to the United Nations IPCC 2001 Summary for Policymakers report, which is now in disrepute.
The cornerstone of that IPCC report is the "hockey stick curve" produced by Mann, Bradley and Hughes in 1998 (often called MBH98) and two subsequent papers by Mann et al. Mann, which concluded: "Our results suggest that the latter 20th century is anomalous in the context of at least the past millennium. The 1990s was the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, at moderately high levels of confidence."
It is highly probable that none of this is true. Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre have demonstrated the flawed science behind Mann's hockey stick and have shown, among other fatal deficiencies, that almost any random number data fed into the MBH98 computer code produces a hockey stick shaped graph.
The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee has launched a federal investigation of the Mann hockey stick and the work of IPCC 2001.
The following is excerpted from a statement of Lord Nigel Lawson, former
Chancellor of the Exchequer, regarding the Report of the House of Lords Select
Committee on Economic Affairs on The Economics of Climate Change, to the U.S.
Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Oct. 5.
“I believe that the IPCC process is so flawed, and the institution, it
has to be said, so closed to reason, that it would be far better to thank it
for the work it has done, close it down, and transfer all future international
collaboration on the issue of climate change, where the economic dimension is
clearly of the first importance, to the established Bretton Woods institutions."
The underlying physics assumed by the IPCC is probably incorrect — I believe the correct physics is as outlined by Veizer and Shaviv (2003) and Veizer (2005).
Veizer states that the primary driver of Earth's climate is solar and celestial, which drives the water cycle, which in turn drives the CO2 cycle. CO2 is not the driver but the result.
Even if the IPCC's physics were correct, its climate computer models vastly exaggerate the amount of warming. A hypothetical doubling of atmospheric CO2 from pre-industrial levels (an event which is unlikely to occur due to human activity) would cause warming of about one degree C.
The Kyoto Protocol and other such CO2 abatement schemes are massive wastes of scarce global resources that should be used to alleviate real problems, not squandered on fictitious ones.
Allan MacRae, P.Eng.
Calgary
Editor’s Note: Visit the following website addresses for source material
used in Mr. MacRae’s submission.
www.climateaudit.org/index. php?p=166
www.apegga.org/whatsnew/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
http://energycommerce.house.gov/ 108/Letters/06232005_1570.htm
http://epw.senate.gov/hearing_ statements.cfm?id=246944
http://www.gsajournals.org/pdfserv/10.1130%2F1052-5173(2003)013%3C0004:CDOPC%3E2.0.CO%3B2
www.gac.ca/JOURNALS/GACV32No1Veizer.pdf