PROFESSIONAL ETHICS AND PRACTICES - COLUMN 157
I logged 31.5 hours of CPD activity in September alone, over 80% of the annual required minimum CPD hours of the CPD programs with the highest minimum requirements (excluding professional practice hours, which are required by some CPD programs). Because GSL SP 419, discussed below, is about ethics, I even logged an hour of professional ethics.2
A more detailed discussion of keeping a CPD log is contained in my paper, “Maintaining a professional activities log for CPD and other reporting,” The Professional Geologist p. 61-62. Recent communications with the Enforcement Head for the Texas Board of Professional Geologists regarding the number of Texas cases on CPD issues made clear that having the will to and actually maintaining a CPD log were critical elements in being able to comply with required CPD report- ing. If you have the log, no problem, if you don’t big problem.
AIPG does not currently require CPD reporting. But if mandatory CPD reporting should become part of the Qualified Person requirements in Canada, then AIPG will have to devel- op a reporting program, at least for those CPGs who wish to maintain their current QP status. This is a big deal for those of us in the mining industry. I’m considering some ways that AIPG might implement such a program, if it becomes neces- sary. If you would like to contribute your thoughts, let me know.
Geoethics
In column 156, I provided a brief description of Geoethics: the role and responsibility of geoscientists, Geological Society of London Special Publication 419, including the titles of a number of the included papers. I’ve subsequently published a review of this book in the GSL’s Geoscientist.3 What follows is an expansion of that review, which was limited to 400 ±10 words.
Geoethics.org defines geoethics as dealing “with the ethical, social and cultural implications of Earth Sciences education, research and practice, and with the social role and responsibil- ity of geoscientists in conducting their activities.” Geoethics. org appears to be a largely European organization that has discovered that which in this country has become known as social licensing, particularly to the mining and petroleum industries, applies to other parts of the geoscience profession as well, particularly geohazards. The 21 papers in this book address the interaction between geologic processes, geoscien- tists, the general public, and decision makers. Most papers present geohazard examples but ground water, oil and gas development, geotourism, geoheritage siting, and geoeduca- tion issues are included. Communication or, more commonly, the lack of effective communication between geoscientists, the general public, and decision makers is an appropriately com- mon theme in the book, with a particular focus on effectively communicating the risk that a geologic event will occur within a specified time frame.
While geoethics may address the intersection of geoscience, sociology, politics, and human welfare, geoscientists are not experts in all these areas. Rule 3.3.1 of the AIPG Code of Ethics states, “A Member shall perform professional services or issue professional advice which is only within the scope of the education and experience of the Member and the Member’s
professional associates, consultants, or employees, and shall advise the employer or client if any professional advice is outside of the Member’s personal expertise.” D. Albarello’s paper, “Communicating uncertainty: managing the inherent probabilistic character of hazard estimates,” makes an impor- tant ethical point regarding geoscience predictions. As geosci- entists, we should effectively communicate the probabilities of a geohazard event occurring. Thus we are effectively the bookmakers. But we are not the policy makers deciding what the public should do. We should not place the bets. Doing so, or being viewed as having done so, leads to the legal troubles of the seismologist defendants in the L’Aaquila, Italy trial, the subject of another paper in the book.
P. Vecchia’s paper, “The oil and gas industry: the challenge for proper dissemination of knowledge,” provides an example social licensing for petroleum in Italy. Vecchia addresses the problems presented by NIMBYism, the so-called (but actually ignorant) experts on social media, and those who allege that anyone with actually knowledge of the petroleum industry can- not be relied on because of their conflict of interest resulting from association and experience in petroleum and bias in favor of an “evil” industry. The public’s general scientific ignorance combined with skepticism stemming from such allegations of unresolvable conflict of interest and bias presents a real chal- lenge to reaching a geoscientifically reasonable resolution of the issues surrounding petroleum development in Italy (and elsewhere), or dealing with seismic risks, or other geohazards or issues.
One of the major failings of the papers in GSL Special Publication 419 is the lack of discussion of basic geoscientific ethical principles that would provide an ethical foundation for the topics covered. D. Albarello’s paper on communicat- ing uncertainty described above makes no mention of the geoscience ethical principle of restricting one’s professional advice to one’s professional expertise. The 2015 AGI Guidelines for Ethical Professional Conduct address a number of issues that apply to the areas of geoethics concern. Sadly, neither these nor any other guidelines are cited as an ethical founda- tion for the papers in the book.
We must remember that ethics are not necessarily the equiv- alent of whatever concept someone views as good. The paper by M. Brocx and V. Semeniuk, “The development of solar salt ponds along the Pilbara Coast, Western Australia—a coastline of global heritage significance used for industrial purposes,” illustrates this point. The first two sentences of their abstract summarize their view of issue. “The Pilbara Coast in NW Australia stands unique as the most geologically/geomorphi- cally diverse arid coast globally and, as such, it is a coastline of Global Significance. Ideally, it should have been listed as a site of World Heritage.” The Figure 1 shows northwestern Australia, the over 400-mile portion of the Pilbara Coast Brocx and Semeniuk discuss and the location of Shark Bay. Prior to reading Brocx and Semeniuk’s paper, I had not heard of Pilbara Coast as a place of any sort of significance. I have heard of Shark Bay, also shown in Figure 1, the location of the first discovered living stromatolites. Brocx and Semeniuk clearly object to the development of solar ponds and what they view as the environmental destruction of an unusual environment.
2. I didn’t finish reading and writing my review of GSL SP 419 until October.
3.
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Books-Arts/Geoscientist-book-reviews-online/2015-Book-Reviews-Online/Geoethics-the-role- and-responsibility-of-geoscientists-SP-419
www.aipg.org
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