Environmental Technology

Buying green products might be good for the environment but could also undermine your ethics. In a behavioral study, University of Toronto researchers found that participants purchasing green products were more prone to cheat and lie in follow-up tasks relative to those buying conventional items. Another group asked to evaluate, but not buy, green products acted more altruistically. Can it be that performing one socially responsible act gives psychological permission to slack off later? Have you been guilty of this?

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The global warming debate is never ending: three recent papers argue for greenhouse gas reduction actions that are more cost-effective than simply reducing emissions through efficiency and renewable energy. Lower costs can be incurred by implementing forestry campaigns, controlling methane emissions, and addressing soot or black carbon. The latter two options offer almost immediate benefits while all three approaches together would be optimal. How do you see these opportunities fitting into an international program that encompasses both industrial and developing areas?

The preceding article is a "sneak peek" from Environmental Technology, a newsletter from GlobalSpec. To stay up-to-date and informed on industry trends, products, and technologies, subscribe to Environmental Technology today.

A new global poll finds that 73% of respondents worldwide want their government to place a high priority on climate change. More than 18,000 people in 19 nations were surveyed by WorldPublicOpinion.org. Majorities in 15 nations think their government should give higher priority to climate change than it does now. Majority support was not expressed by U.S., Iraq, and Palestine Territory participants. In China and India, 94 and 59% of respondents, respectively, endorse government keeping climate change a top priority. How do you interpret these regional disparities?

The preceding article is a "sneak peek" from Environmental Technology, a newsletter from GlobalSpec. To stay up-to-date and informed on industry trends, products, and technologies, subscribe to Environmental Technology today.

In part one, I detailed being confronted with an accidental climate change debate at a local college in Troy, New York. A comment by the presenter - a PhD level tribologist at a local research company - got me to imagine, in a John Lennon sort of way, how things might have been different for controlling climate change over the past thirty years or so if the majority of politicians in the U.S. - at all levels of government - had had an engineering or science background, instead of a legal one.

In this last part, I'm demonstrating from personal experiences during and after engineering school - 1990 and beyond - how my own behavior and that of a company I worked for has been guided - to a certain degree - by a fear of lawyers and their possible actions. To be clear, it's not the law that myself and folks I've worked with have been fearful of, but instead, those who both make the law and are lawyers. I've always had respect for the law, as have the majority of the folks I've worked for over the years.

My idea is that, beyond being responsible for inaction on climate change, lawyers may also be impacting on the innovation of engineers generally, and holding American companies back at a time when they should be pushing forward with new products and ideas. At the same time, I'm also trying to demonstrate the positive side to lawyers in my experiences with them over the years, to try and be fair.

While using Google to check my work on part one, it was so very nice to stumble upon an Internet article published this year from respected U.K. publication The Economist.

The author of the April 16th piece - who's name was likely revealed in the print version but not on the web - supported with data and graphs the assertion made by the tribologist who inspired me to write part one. The Economist author called the idea of lawyers crafting legislation that wasn't as rational - that's how I'd call preserving our planet - as laws that might have been crafted instead by engineers and scientists, selection bias.

After explaining selection bias, The Economist author then went on to present 2009 global statistics of the most common professions for politicians worldwide, by percentage. Engineering was ranked at about 7%, while Law was ranked at about 19% - almost three times. A world-wide problem of irrational lawmaking!

<-- My wife and I are long-time fans of the American Law & Order television series.

Sam Waterston plays Jack McCoy, a highly ethical and much respected District Attorney. This and other images courtesy Wikipedia.

Within the U.S., the statistic was even worse - less than 5% percent of politicians have an engineering background, while approximately 45% have a legal background!!

Engineering School Memories
My earliest "adult" experience with the legal profession was asking for help in reducing the penalty for a speeding ticket acquired while driving the great distance between Albany and Potsdam, New York - a pre-cell-phone, four-to-eight hour drive through the Adirondacks. The length and pleasure of this trip - which I repeated frequently while attending Clarkson University in the early 90's - strongly depended on the weather, and the frequent snow storms that blanket northern New York.

My counsel - a personal friend and member of Albany's O'Connell and Aronowicz law firm at the time - did a good job, and helped me to get the fine reduced. What I remember most about this experience are the cigars my friend and his lawyer friends enjoyed smoking, and, of course, the expense of hiring a legal counsel. In addition to my own fear of it, my employers' fears of expensive legal billing was something I then witnessed over and over again at the companies I worked for after graduation from engineering school.

An Engineer works with a Lawyer at an Injection Molder
Fast forward to 1995, and I had an opportunity to work as an engineer at a small - less than $10 Million per year at the time - plastics & high-technology composites factory in Upstate, New York, about an hour south of Albany.

Among other costs, electricity to power molding machines was a major expense to ownership. In order to bring costs down, a per machine estimate of power usage was required for each piece of machinery - from Comet molding machines to Brown & Sharpe screw machines to the PC's I had brought out onto the shop floor. I came in on a weekend, armed with my camera and a spreadsheet, ready to record serial numbers, manufacturer names, and power usage information available on metal plates.

It was a lawyer practicing in Hudson, New York that I reported my information to, taking direction from ownership. I can't really say I was intimidated during this experience, but I did realize at the time that the law firm we were working with was vital to my company. Advice was heeded and kept my company profitable during the go-go late nineties, a time when work for engineers in my area - fasteners, injection molding and machining - exceeded those available to perform it.

Hope for the future? U.S. Representative Paul Tonko, 1971 Clarkson University graduate in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. -->

The Go-Go Late 90's - Why Risk It?
So collaboration with my usually better-dressed legal colleagues on saving energy costs was relatively low-fear. However, during the same period, I noticed my company would not quote on jobs where our manufactured products would be used in human medical applications.

Our products - polymer fasteners available in thousands of possible grades and sizes - both machined and injection molded - were cutting-edge, and many of the big players in the semiconductor and military worlds - companies like Hewlett Packard, Submicron, Verteq, the U.S. Army and Navy, and so on - were big customers. Without it ever being explicitly stated, it was obvious that we stayed clear of human medical applications because of the potential for company-killing law suits. After all, if business tied to the rapidly expanding PC purchases of the late 90's was profitable, why risk a good thing?

- Larry Kelley

Resources:

The Economist - April 2009 - There was a lawyer, an engineer and a politician...

Selection Bias formally defined - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias

Congressman from New York's 21st district - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tonko

Watching stimulus money in action is fascinating. Or so I thought while watching a February PowerPoint slide-show detailing how tribological research, done by an Albany, New York area company, could improve energy efficiencies of compressors, pumps, and other heavy mechanical machinery, and reduce carbon emissions contributing to climate change. The slide show was put on by a PhD-level executive and mechanical engineer who's worked in the U.S. energy industry since the 1970's.

An Inconvenient Slide Show

<-- The trend here is obvious and disturbing. This and other images courtesy Wikipedia.

Then things got really interesting when a version of an often debated slide – seen and debated more than a few times here in CR4 (example) - as well as in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth – was put on the conference-room screen.

A climate-change skeptic member of the audience and fellow mechanical engineer claimed the presenter was not showing the entirety of the graph, and had the presenter done so, his thesis that climate change is happening would be shot.

What if the world were ran by Engineers?
The presenter, who, for full disclosure, I happened to agree with, went on to defend his thesis. Without saying it explicitly, he made the point that much of the skepticism that exists in the engineering and scientific community, and with the wider public at large, is the result of a deliberate effort of vested carbon-producing interests in the U.S. Congress.

<-- Fred MacMurray, who played Aerospace Engineer Steve Douglas on the early 1960's American TV series My Three Sons.

This show was popular when I was envisioning a future career for myself in the 60's and early 70's. Its lead character was a TV-engineer "role model" I personally took inspiration from.

Inspiration also came from the Apollo astronauts. They too were TV personalities that inspired me and the engineers I went to school with.

Are there as many engineer role models on TV today, or are science careers now out-of-fashion for TV characters to inspire young Americans?

Our presenter, a PhD-level researcher and recipient of ASME's prestigious Mayo D. Hersey Award for outstanding contributions to the advancement and science of tribology, then went on to point out that the vast majority of the members of Congress are lawyers, with a primarily legal, and not technical, background.

His unstated point was that if this were reversed, and Congress was composed mostly of engineers and scientists, then much of the skepticism about climate change would disappear. After all, Germany, a country that produces 46% of its energy from renewables, is led my Angela Merkel, a PhD in Physical Chemistry.

College Training Differences?
Could this be why climate change is still an issue in the U.S., I thought?

After all, way back in 1992, myself and a classroom of graduate-level mechanical engineers at Rensselaer Polytechnic were doing calculations from a Scientific American coursebook that confirmed, yes, climate change was happening, and our designs of new internal combustion engines and gas turbines should take this into account.

My own engineering training was filled with "do-no-harm" to people considerations. Safety factors for mechanical systems, product life-cycle, mean time between failure, and even the wages paid to production workers were all elements I was trained to consider as I moved forward in my engineering career. Naturally, profitability was also a consideration, but the focus of the bulk of the homework was on design of safe and long-lasting products.

So weren't lawyers receiving similar "do-no-harm" – read environment - training, like me?

Do No Harm (that bothers your legal department)
So has the legal community, having the power of the purse strings, intimidated the engineering and scientific community into accepting junk-science?

Before I lay into my own, slightly intimidating career experiences with the legal folks, I need to point out that it's easy to enjoy a good joke at the expense of lawyers, especially when surrounded by other engineers.

To their credit, I've leaned on lawyers again and again for the most important events in my life. They include an adoption, traffic tickets, home purchases, and real estate advice. I have sincere gratitude for their services, and maintain friendships with multiple lawyers, including a former college roommate and a relative who works in the field. I'm proud to say that my first home was closed on by a pillar of the Albany, New York legal community, a brave man who flew multiple missions with the Flying Tigers in China during World War II.

- Larry Kelley

Read earlier blog pieces by Larry: click here.

Resources:

http://sections.asme.org/hudson-mohawk/notables.html#Heshmat

http://sections.asme.org/hudson-mohawk/2009_Feb_Newsletter_Color_v3.pdf

Further Reading:

The Economist - There was a lawyer, an engineer, and a politician