PROFESSIONAL ETHICS AND PRACTICES - Column 169
Bentley calls this “environmental dis- enfranchisement.” Debates about how to deal with the issue and potential solutions that cost huge sums of money are heated and have not reached conclu- sions.
The impacts of hurricanes and sea level rise are not limited to Louisiana. They occur along the whole Gulf coast and much of the Atlantic coast. This Fall Hurricane Florence savaged the Carolina coast and Hurricane Michael essentially wiped out towns on the Florida panhandle. The projected dam- age to buildings and infrastructure are enormous. But the cost of insurance for hurricane damage in coastal areas is nowhere near high enough to cover the actual payouts. Florida law limits what insurers can charge in order to keep rates affordable.1 If the cost did cover actuarial losses, few if any could afford to live in the coast areas. This would be another form of “environmental disenfranchise- ment” as defined by Bentley. On the other hand, what about the negative impact of higher insurance rates on the rest of us needed to cover the losses suf- fered by those pay less than actuarial rates? Given climate change and rising sea levels, should people be allowed to rebuild on these coastal areas? Should the following requirements be enforced if rebuilding is allowed?:
• The full actuarial cost of hurricane insurance should be charged.
• Building codes should require that buildings be able to withstand Category 5 storms (there was one example of such a home in Mexico Beach, FL)
These requirements will make homes very expensive, pricing most people out of the market. This exacerbates Bentley’s environmental disenfranchise- ment of people in the area but relieves the rest of us from having to pay for those same people to live in a known geohazard area.
The Primary Responsibility of Geotechnical Engineers and Hydrologists
The article, “Thoughts on the respon-
sibility of geotechnical engineers and hydrologists in mining,” by R.J. Sheets in the September 2018 issue of Mining Engineering is an excellent and in-depth
1.
look (through the use of examples) at the responsibilities of geotechnical engineers and hydrologists (
http://me.smenet.org/ abstract.cfm?preview=1&articleID=84 93&page=32, for a summary). Sheets maintains that their primary responsi- bility is the safety of all affected parties, on and off site, something not empha- sized sufficiently in schools, which focus on learning professional tools more than their real-world application (including all the messy, conflicting, and missing data that are facts of professional prac- tice and that are omitted from simpli- fied school examples). I urge everyone to read this thoughtful article. Another article in the same issue of Mining Engineering, “Imminent Danger: char- acterizing uncertainty in critically hazardous mining situations,” by B.M. Elher, J. Hrica, and D.R. Willmer is also worth reading (
http://me.smenet.org/ abstract.cfm?articleID=8490&page=47, for abstract). While both articles deal specifically with mining issues, the observations are generally applicable.
Don’t Forget Your Hand Lens!
Editorial note: the text of this topic that is not italicized is from J. Bruce Gem- mell’s article, “Don’t forget your hand lens!” published in the SEG Newsletter, October 2018, p. 6, and is included with permission from Gemmell and the SEG. Gemmell is the 2018 Society of Econom- ic Geologists President.
Good exploration relies on expert
knowledge and experience to identify ground with the potential to host sub- stantial mineral resources. However, today’s exploration is ever more heavily relying on computer-aided analysis and portable field devices—to the detriment of good field skills—to derive informa- tion from which important, and costly, decisions are being made. This to me is a concern.
Now is the time to put the geology back into economic geology. Fieldwork is critically important—be it field map- ping, pit or underground mapping, or core logging. Many times in recent years, I have visited company field areas to examine outcrops or core and found (1) many of the recent graduates do not use, or sometimes do not even have, a hand lens, (2) many do not know how to use a compass for struc- tural measurements, and (3) geologists
and field technicians are not allowed to use dilute HCl to determine the carbon- ate species, due to company health and safety regulations. How have we come to this?
One of the many reasons is the reliance on portable devices (SWIR, pXRF) or core scanning technologies to provide basic observational information. While these tools can give valuable informa- tion, if the mineral geoscientist does not have the basic skills and knowl- edge to know if the information they are getting from these devices is right or useful, this can be dangerous. For instance, the early model SWIR devices would tend to identify paragonite as a common mineral in hydrothermal alteration, but a check of the lithogeo- chemistry of the same rock would show it contains no sodium (later models of this technology have rectified this issue), and if a pXRF is not calibrated and standardized properly you can ob- tain geochemical data, but it is mean- ingless—problem!
I believe that the most basic and fundamental observations for a minerals geoscientist to make are mineral and rock identification, fol- lowed by structural geology. These skills are sorely lacking in many new graduates simply because, through no fault of their own, they are not taught these skills in their under- graduate or graduate educations. Many of their lecturers and profes- sors lack these skills, owing to their own education or experiences, and therefore they do not teach basic field skills and techniques to their students. In addition, many uni- versities are dramatically scaling back fieldwork in their curriculum or abolishing it altogether, as it constitutes a liability they are not willing to risk.
As a consequence, the field-
work component of many student research projects and theses can be poor or lacking altogether. Many recent papers in the economic geol- ogy scientific literature are devoid of good, basic geologic descrip- tions of the areas/deposits, and many do not have decent geologic maps and cross sections, espe-
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/09/13/the-strange-story-of-how-floridas-lawmakers-subsidized-hurri- cane-insurance/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9e9719bf1508
42 TPG •
Jan.Feb.Mar 2019
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