September 2007 Issue
READERS' FORUM
We welcome Readers’ Forum letters of interest to the professions. Send
them to PEGG Managing Editor George Lee, glee@apegga.org. Although we will run
longer letters at our discretion, please try to keep them under 300 words. Letters
represent the opinions and not necessarily the expertise of writers. The PEGG
reserves the right to reject letters. Letters are edited for style, clarity,
length, taste and legality.
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Alberta’s Exploit-it-Now Bias
Re: Doing Business, The PEGG, July 2007.
One of your items states that Enbridge Inc. has filed an application for “a proposed 1,607-km (pipeline) expansion to provide greater access to the U.S. Midwest for Western Canadian crude oil.”
The wording seems to imply that Western Canadian crude is short of access to U.S. markets — a situation presumably requiring correction. However, by changing just two prepositions it could be made to read “to provide greater access by the U.S. Midwest to Western Canadian crude oil.” This wording gives a quite different and perhaps truer picture of the motives and consequences of the project, which by exporting raw crude would provide processing jobs and added value in the U.S. Midwest, not here in Alberta.
To an observer not directly involved, the present objective of both industry and government in Alberta seems to be to extract and export our non-renewable oil and gas resources as fast as possible, thereby supporting the addiction of the U.S. and other nations to excessive petroleum consumption and leaving a questionable future for coming generations of local people.
Many — perhaps most — of APEGGA’s professionals are involved
directly or indirectly in servicing this breakneck exploitation, which is drawing
large numbers of people into the province (perhaps on a very temporary basis
for the construction phase), overheating the economy, promoting massive sprawl
in our urban centres, and contributing substantially to polluting and global-warming
emissions.
What may seem good for APEGGA members in the short term is not necessarily good
for Alberta in the long term. In fact, it is difficult to see why considerably
lower rates of exploitation would not have been of greater long-term benefit.
Surely the value of the resource, if kept in the ground, can only increase with
time.
In your same edition, the Professional Practice & Ethics Corner draws attention to our responsibility to protect the well-being and safety of the public, and states that our duty to the public is paramount. But which public? Surely not that in another country?
Much of the provincial public seems ill-informed about the medium- and long-term
implications of current energy policy, and about the comparatively small — some
might even say derisory — returns the province receives from current oilsands
production.
Without necessarily implying that APEGGA should engage in political debate, is
it unreasonable to suggest that items in The PEGG should avoid loaded
wording or uncritical cheerleading of oil and gas projects?
C.R. Neill, P.Eng.
Edmonton
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Aboriginal Columns Don’t Belong
Re: Aboriginal awareness columns.
I am concerned that a select group is being highlighted over others. Why is APEGGA supportive of singling out Aboriginals?
Can I be assured that the disabled community will be given the same awareness? Or the homeless? How about senior citizens?
Why is a regulatory association for professional engineers, geologists and geophysicists so concerned with Aboriginals and not concerned with other groups? Surely these other groups have had injustices against them as well.
APEGGA could actually be proactive for some of these other groups. For example, shouldn’t every building and home in Alberta be constructed for wheelchair accessibility? If we have a responsibility to conserve energy and protect the environment, shouldn’t these buildings be up to the standards of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design?
APEGGA members have no control over what happened to Aboriginals in Canada over the past several hundred years. Nor are we responsible. Your columnist appears to be using The PEGG as a tool to vent frustrations.
Robert Laboucane mentions billions of tax dollars spent on programs for Aboriginals, and also the rights they have over and above those of other Canadian citizens, but he doesn’t describe solutions. What is his point and why is he allowed to continue getting published?
I hope in the future The PEGG restricts its articles to those pertinent to engineering, geology and geophysics, unless it is prepared to allow all special interest groups equal space to increase awareness of their issues.
Wendy Dolynny, P.Eng.
Calgary
Editor’s Note: Improving Aboriginal awareness is part of a larger APEGGA Business Plan goal to increase Aboriginal representation in our three professions. All business plan goals stem from strategies that Council develops and approves.
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Enough With Fear and Cultural Pessimism
Re: Global warming debate.
Recently, there have been some good letters on this topic. Some I agree with, some I don’t. But, as engineers, it is our duty is to make changes that optimize the benefit to the public.
On this note, I fully agree with the comment of John Aumuller, P.Eng., in the June PEGG that we should be identifying meaningful mitigation strategies. The Al Gore, media hype approach is to effectively shut down industries. It provides no rational solutions, only fear and an air of cultural pessimism.
Engineers have always been able to solve most of nature’s problems.
Roosevelt wiped out the Great Depression and won the war against fascism through
infrastructure and industrial development. The Tennessee Valley Authority, also
a Roosevelt initiative, solved flooding problems and poverty through employment
in infrastructure-building. New Orleans, much of which is below high sea level,
was inhabited and protected until infrastructure maintenance was stopped
in the so-called interest of fiscal
responsibility.
I totally disagree that carbon dioxide has any significant global warming
effect. But regardless of that, or whether it’s caused by solar activity or whether
it’s real, our responsibility is to ensure that the facts are properly
evaluated by engineers and rational mitigation measures are implemented.
These measures must not include legislation that, in effect, shuts down necessary
industries and collapses humanity’s standard of living. We must not allow
a cure worse than the disease.
There is political evidence that the global warming theory was developed as a population control policy by anti-humanists, who hate the idea of the creativity of the human mind. Let’s not give these pagans the chance to see us go back to their utopian view of the feudal system.
Instead, as engineers, let us revive the era of cultural optimism.
Bill Bohdan, P.Eng.
Calgary
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Real Pollution Is an Issue — Carbon Dioxide Isn’t
Re: APEGGA and climate change.
There is a lot of rhetoric but no valid science behind climate change as it’s presented to the Canadian public. The entire basis for Kyoto is the correlation of a cyclic global temperature record with a smoothly accelerating carbon dioxide concentration curve.
However, it is not possible for something that has no periodicity to cause a cyclic change.
The concept that human CO2 emissions are the primary driver of climate change is further discredited by a comparison of the human CO2 emissions with the actual atmospheric CO2 concentration. If you graph the data, you will see there are sharp slope changes in the emissions curve that are not visible on the concentration curve, indicating something else is the primary source for the increase in CO2 concentration.
Since 2001 the rate of emissions changed to a level three times greater than the previous five years, but the atmospheric concentration increase rate only changed slightly over both five-year periods. This is sufficient information to calculate that sources other than human emissions are responsible for over 73 per cent of the CO2 concentration increase.
The very concept that greenhouse gases can cause ice to melt and raise sea level defies proper science protocol. Greenhouse gases capture thermal energy from the ground below and the temperature of that thermal energy must be cooler than the greenhouse gases, otherwise there will be no energy transfer from the ground — at least according to the second law of thermodynamics.
Thermal radiation from ice sheets can only warm the atmosphere to below freezing temperatures, so it is not possible for greenhouse gases, regardless of the source, to cause any melting. Any observed melting can only result from changes to the amount of solar energy reaching the ice sheet. This solar energy is controlled by cloud cover, so its changes are likely responsible for our current warming.
The sun has been at its highest level of activity in our current solar cycle 23, but solar cycle 25 in 2022 is predicted to be the lowest level of activity since the Maunder minimum, which brought us the Little Ice Age. If theory holds true — and there is no evidence that does not support it — we will be facing cooler temperatures in 15 years, not the warmer ones the political conjecture suggests.
Satellite temperature measurements of the lower troposphere show that global warming actually ended in 2002 and we are likely starting on a cooling trend, if the last four years represents the actual trend. This end to global warming is taking place just when human emissions are increasing at unprecedented rates.
If emissions are increasing and global temperature is falling, what is the purpose of spending billions to slow the temperature rise?
The most important job for an environmental committee of APEGGA to do is to question why Alberta is spending all this effort on CO2 emissions, which are actually beneficial for the environment, and ignoring the real pollution issues associated with fossil fuels and the impact on the environment of acquiring them.
Norm Kalmanovitch, P.Geoph.
Calgary
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APEGGA Takes Proper Tack On Climate Change
I fully support the stand taken by APEGGA in the June front-page article on climate
change, and I am most pleased that our Association is in favour of attempts to
further identify what causes this rather serious phenomena.
It would appear that the whole question of climate change has become highly politicized, to the extent that the only cause being popularly considered is human activity. I believe the jury is still out on this question and that other factors need to be seriously explored, with natural causes being a major contender.
I applaud APEGGA’s approach to this question and urge that this effort be well supported by our Association.
George A. Faulder, P.Eng.
Life Member
Edmonton
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Sweet Words Go Down Better Than Foul Ones
The July issue of The PEGG published two “hot” letters from members regarding APEGGA’s announcement of a coming September members’ survey on climate change. One letter writer was hot that APEGGA appeared to be accepting man-made climate change as fact without challenge, and the other was equally hot that APEGGA was calling for discussion rather than regulations for greenhouse gas emissions.
We engineers are trained in, and become quite skilled at, critically examining and solving problems involving the physical sciences. The dramatic increases over the past century in living standards, particularly in industrialized countries, are due in large part to the application of these engineering skills.
In the political arena, however, our impact and track record are not remarkable. Many of us display a distaste for the entire political process, probably because it is, by nature, applied compromise. Compromise cannot be proven correct or incorrect and is inherently tedious, uncertain and messy.
In a democracy, once compromise is reached, we are all required to live with
the results, good or bad.
When we abdicate our civic responsibility to season the public debate with our
scientific training and critical thinking, we do ourselves and the public a disservice.
To be effective in helping shape a better future, we must sometimes subordinate
our technical skills and demonstrate instead our persuasive skills. The only
way to do this is to engage in the public dialogue at every opportunity.
It also helps to remember the old cowboy proverb, “Make sure all your words are soft and sweet, because you never know which ones you may have to eat.”
Tom Phelps, P.Eng.
Raleigh, N.C.
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Fires Announce Leadership Opportunity
The APEGGA Code of Ethics, pursuant to the EGGP Act, makes engineering professionals responsible for the safety of the public, when it comes to professional matters. Fires in Edmonton and Calgary, involving wood-frame, multiple dwelling buildings, call into question whether the safety of the public is being properly addressed by the building codes of this province.
It is recognized that APEGGA is not an organization that develops standards.
Therefore, does it not
behoove APEGGA to spearhead a review of the building codes in this province to
ensure that such damaging and wasteful fires do not continue to reoccur?
It appears to me that to take seriously our professional responsibility for protection of the public means to ensure that building codes are updated to minimize such repeated destruction of property, as well as the related personal trauma and hardship.
Laszlo Jamniczky, P.Eng.
Calgary
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Whistleblowers Need Ethical Back-up
Re: Professional Practice & Ethics Corner, The PEGG, July 2007.
The two questions were ironic and illuminating. The hypothetical engineer is required by professional ethics to “blow the whistle” on his municipal employer for falsifying drinking water test reports to Alberta Environment, but the Association has done virtually nothing to protect him in the execution of his professional duty.
In fact, the Association has mandated an abusive situation for its members by its failure to protect them in the ethical performance of their duty. Clearly, this failure to provide protection to Association members as they ethically perform their professional activities compromises the health, safety and welfare of the public.
Further, the suggestion to use Crime Stoppers is ludicrous. This would not absolve the engineer of professional duty, nor would it be effective, since this type of crime is well beyond Crime Stoppers’ normal mandate. In response to my inquiry on this issue, Crime Stoppers stated it would be “an effective way of receiving this type of information” and its “process would be to pass the tip on to any appropriate agency for their investigation,” most likely to the local RCMP detachment.
However, it is evident that Crime Stoppers does not have a process for a public safety issue of this nature and it is moot whether an anonymous tip passed to the RCMP or another agency would be an effective means of dealing with it. The Association has a duty to work to ensure that its members are protected in their ethical performance with respect to the health, safety and welfare of the public, much like medical health officers are. Otherwise, the health, safety and welfare of the public are compromised.
APEGGA’s mandate is to protect the public, but it fails the public and its members by failing to protect its professionals when they are acting ethically in the public good. The Association should work immediately to include whistleblower protection for its members in the Engineering, Geological and Geophysical Professions Act, and it should lobby government to provide whistleblower protection legislation in Alberta.
I am concerned that inaction on this may provide a made-in-Alberta Walkerton experience and may damage the reputation of my Association.
Richard Ferguson, P.Eng.
Hanna