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Discussion around limiting climate change primarily focusses on whether the best results can be gained by individuals changing how they act, or governments introducing new legislation.
Now though, University of Leeds academics Dr Rob Lawlor and Dr Helen Morley from the Inter-Disciplinary Ethics Applied Centre suggest engineering professionals could also play a pivotal role, and could provide a co-ordinated response helping to mitigate climate change.
Writing in the journal Science and Engineering Ethics, they say engineering professional institutions could take a stand in tackling climate change by developing a declaration imposing restrictions and requirements on members.
"A strong and coordinated action by the engineering profession could itself make a significant difference in how we respond to climate change," they said.
"We know many engineers and firms make great efforts to be as environmentally friendly as possible, and research is carried out and supported by the sector to help reduce its impact on the world. We're suggesting that concerted action could improve this process further."
Quoting 2014 research by Richard Heede from the Climate Accountability Institute, they say nearly two-thirds of historic carbon dioxide and methane emissions could be attributed to crude oil and natural gas producers, coal extractors, and cement producers. These are industries typically enabled by the engineering profession.
They're looking at you, VW engineers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by caffeine on Sunday March 19 2017, @12:02AM (8 children)
The subject of this sounded interesting. Was excited to see discussions of engineering and scientific solutions to climate change. Then read "take a stand in tackling climate change by developing a declaration imposing restrictions and requirements on members." and realised it was the same hands tied behind the back ideas applied to engineers.
If the climate is changing and that is a problem regardless of ratio of natural and man made, we should be open to all engineering solutions to the problem. The greenie religious gaia BS that science is bad, so any scientific solutions must be bad, needs to be challenged head on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @01:45AM (6 children)
realised it was the same hands tied behind the back ideas applied to engineers.
You realised that, huh?
Seems more like you failed at reading comprehension.
The article suggest no such thing. It says that engineers need to start paying attention to the impact their designs have on the climate. That it is unethical to ignore the full consequences of their work, just like it is unethical for medical researchers to ignore the full consequences of their work.
How you went from that to "greenie religious gaia BS" I don't know. But it sure as hell looks like you are the one with religious issues, not the authors of the article.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @07:52AM
As a medical researcher, the "full consequences" of using liquid He to diagnose your cancer is a lot of extra CO2 in the air. Not gonna do it, you'll have to walk it off.
(Score: 2) by caffeine on Sunday March 19 2017, @09:46AM (3 children)
I think you missed my point.
The article suggest no such thing. It says that engineers need to start paying attention to the impact their designs have on the climate. That it is unethical to ignore the full consequences of their work, just like it is unethical for medical researchers to ignore the full consequences of their work.
My point is that they are not talking about using engineering to tackle the problem head on, they are being asked to be less damaging when they solve other problems. Big difference.
I'm talking about climate engineering.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @04:01PM
Yaaa, that point was 100% lost in your original post.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @10:17PM (1 child)
Oh please.
Your post said nothing of the sort.
And your post-hoc rationalization doesn't even make sense - nothing the article suggests prevents anyone from "tackling the problem head on."
Just hang your head in shame for posting random idiocy and then trying to baffle us with bullshit instead of admitting your idiocy.
(Score: 2) by caffeine on Monday March 20 2017, @12:02AM
Perhaps you should reread my original post.
Was excited to see discussions of engineering and scientific solutions to climate change.
we should be open to all engineering solutions to the problem.
Seems clear to me that I was talking about engineering solutions to climate change. I guess I could have made it clearer by explaining that all solutions included climate engineering, not just mitigation.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday March 19 2017, @01:09PM
It says that engineers need to start paying attention to the impact their designs have on the climate
If you want a serious answer from engineering-land come back after marketing, sales, finance, and management all with higher impact on the problem than engineering, have signed it first. Otherwise it smells like "engineers are nerdy pushovers so we'll attack them first with this crap". Yeah um how bout a nice resounding "F no".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @06:34PM
Was excited to see discussions of engineering and scientific solutions to climate change.
The solution is known. Don't emit CO2. Now why would companies and people want to do that? Maybe if it costs money to emit, there would be an incentive not to. But for now, pollution is free, so why would any company or individual care except for their own personal beliefs?