PROFESSIONAL ETHICS AND PRACTICES - Column 170
oil and gas business from the field to the office. Given that most areas of geoscience practice (including hydrologic and environmental) are increasingly dependent on geophysics and the drill, is field camp still the important capstone experience it has traditionally been?
I suggest that field camp will remain as important as ever, perhaps even more so. Examination of outcrops reveals the complexities of lithology (or petrology), stratigraphy, and structure at a variety of scales (hand samples to multiple out- crops) to a degree that pictures in text- books cannot do. There is a reason most field camps are held in the western US, that’s where the rocks hang out. Shirley Tsotsoo Mensah expressed it eloquently in her article in the January 2019 TPG, “As mapping continued, however, I start- ed to understand a lot of things out in the field which were previously abstract to me.” It is not just undergraduates who visit the west for field camps. A number of field trips for professional petroleum geologists tour areas in the west as well each summer. These are field trips not associated with a geoscience society meeting, another place to see rocks in the field. Colorado’s Piceance Basin with its spectacular geology and basin-centered gas is one such destination.
I welcome additional comments on this topic, particularly from practicing geologists, about the value of seeing rocks in the field.
The Professional Geologist & Ethics: A Cautionary Tale W.L. Mathews’ article, “The profes-
sional geologist & ethics: a cautionary tale,” in the Jan/Feb/Mar ′19 TPG is an unusual and instructive story of a geolo- gist’s introduction to and sliding down the slope of bribery in a foreign country leading to a criminal indictment for vio- lation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Everyone should read it and pass a copy on to friends and colleagues.
Is Sand Extraction a Sustainable Business?
The Geological Society of London sponsored a January 30, 2019 meet- ing, “Sand and the sandbank: is sand extraction a sustainable business?” The meeting notice stated that “The global demand for sand has been growing rapid- ly, leading to concerns that current sand use may not be sustainable. The meeting will examine the industrial demand for sand and whether existing resources are sustainable.” I suspect that given the population density of the UK, that much of the concern over sand use there comes
42 TPG •
Apr.May.Jun 2019
from dredged sand and that the answers to the question about the sustainability of the sand extraction business in the UK differ from the US. While I didn’t attend this meeting, I do know a bit about the sand industry in the US.
Sand is used for a variety of markets: construction aggregates and industrial sand are the major categories of sand use. Construction aggregates include crushed stone, sand, gravel, slag, or other material such as recycled asphalt pavement or recycled concrete used in portland concrete, asphalt, road base, railroad ballast, concrete block and pipe, filter stone or sand, etc. Most construc- tion aggregates are consumed by the concrete and asphalt industries. In 2017, the USGS estimated that 981 million
are (or were) located on the edges of most cities and towns. In the Colorado Front Range, the sand and gravel quar- ries have migrated downstream due to deposit depletion or unavailability along the South Platte River and the particle size (particularly gravel content) has decreased with increased distance from the mountain front southwest of metro Denver. Much of the construction aggre- gate now comes from three crushed stone quarries located in the Denver foothills.
While the sustainability of the sand and gravel business in the US may not be as critical as it is in the UK, it is still an issue. The particular market for sand (construction or industrial) makes a good deal of difference in the availability of supplies. However, consumption is
short tons of construction sand and gravel were produced in the US (M.J. Zdunczyk, Mining Engineering, July 2018, p, 45). Major markets for industrial sand are frac sand (≈62% of the total, M.J. Zdunczyk, Mining Engineering, July 2018, p, 58), abrasives, ceramics, chemicals, fillers (ground and whole grain), glassmaking, filtration for swim- ming pools, foundry uses, recreational uses (sand traps), roofing granules and fillers, and well packing and cement- ing applications. US consumption of industrial sand in 2017 was about 110 million short tons (T.P. Dolley, Mining Engineering, July 2018, p, 63). The St. Peter Sandstone is a major producer of frac sand and glass sand and extends throughout the Midwest from Minnesota to Arkansas. Sand and gravel quarries
increasing while aversion to living near quarries grows as well. The sustain- ability of the sand and gravel business, like that of all minerals, will become an increasing problem.
Carbon-free by 2050 “Carbon-free by 2050” was the title
of an email I received from my local power provider, Xcel Energy in early February. The links in the email touted Xcel’s planned improvements in the supply of electric power from wind and solar sources. There was zero informa- tion on switching from gas-fired furnaces and other appliances between now and 2050. If the intent is to be carbon-free by 2050, why aren’t we starting to stop the sale of gas-fired appliances and offering programs to assist with the replace-
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