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New Zealand Engineering 1999 July Letters Further to Peter Toynbee's letter (NZE June) Further to Peter Toynbee's letter (NZE June) While I do not agree with everything that Peter said, I endorse his last paragraph strongly. It is time New Zealand Engineering provided a balanced and scientifically based view on global warming, and environmental scaremongering. How about making a fuss about the huge quantities of gas that are flared from oil fields every year? No one seems to want to know about it but it is said to amount to several Maui gas fields every year. Makes our CO2 emissions pretty trivial. I also deplore the lack of technical content in NZE. I have previously suggested that NZE syndicate relevant articles out of IEE, ICE, IMech E, etc., journals so that our members get to know what is the latest in their line of business. Bryan Leyland Auckland My article was about a policy reality which will certainly affect engineering investment decisions no matter what one’s position on climate uncertainty may be. While we will shortly begin syndication, if we syndicated as widely as suggested for IPENZ’s diverse membership there would not be much to do with New Zealand left in this publication. A far more useful and fundamental plan for membership access to the world’s technical information was proposed by the President, Sir Ron Carter, at the last Board strategy meeting, and which is now being investigated. I thank Piers Maclaren for his contribution (June issue). The net rate of fixation of carbon for radiata (3.5 tonnes per hectare per year) may be about the same for all harvested vegetation. In the case of radiata it will be cycled back to CO2 after 30-35 years. The recycling period may be about five years for grazed pasture and annual crops. However, for climax forests the net rate will be near zero and the period about 500 years. Thus, together with their greater height and bulk, climax forests may be significant. If these forests were to be torched, of course the carbon would be sunk to the atmosphere but how significant would this be relative to the burning of coal, oil and gas? Further, if global warming is occurring at an unacceptable rate, how long will it be until it becomes unmanageable? What may we expect from the oceans and carbonate sinks? Volcanism is another unknown. There are so many unknowns that we tend to be coming to intuitive conclusions rather than following quantitative logic. Ross Gordon Dunedin |
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