Engineers who received this education are employed in transportation, electrical power, and millions of related occupations. Our livelihood comes from corporations that thrive from the burning of fuel.

Corporations and governments parrot the jargon of technology and enjoy the benefits of burning without understanding the processes or the consequences. The U.S. secretary of energy is invariably a lawyer with the narrowest knowledge of the subject. Since we have subsidized the depletion of domestic energy resources, we seek out other sources that are controlled by despots to whom energy is useful only for destruction, to reverse the outcome of 12th century wars.

The creation of entropy is universally subsidized. It should be taxed. Instead, earned income is taxed to subsidize the destruction of our planet. The value of human sweat is cheapened by competition with subsidized fossil energy. This is assumed to be progress.

Because our engineering education enables us to comprehend such absurdities, we are compelled to discuss them. A rational paradigm must evolve from our discussion. Then, perhaps, rational policies can evolve from an informed electorate and Congress.

To open the discussion, I suggest an entropy tax on the Btu content of all fossil-fuel stocks entering the stream of commerce. Most people who now pay income taxes should be exempt from filing a return; perhaps individuals with incomes that exceed the salary of the president of the United States should file.

Without the burden of income taxes, each of us can decide how much entropy tax to pay. Insulate and bicycle? How many horsepower are necessary? Will we stop buying cars, as the United Auto Workers fear? Or will we clamor for new alternatives?

As noted in the Sept. 29, 1997, edition of World Climate Report, the surface temperatures reported by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show no global warming over the past decade.

I number myself among those who have trouble finding an author who has applied thermodynamic principles to quantify the phenomena, thereby keeping the debate honest. The purveyors of doom in this matter treat any questioning of their methods as being beneath contempt.

The local library had one volume on the subject. I studied it and discussed it with the author (who holds a doctorate in geography and is the director of his university's office of climatology). I pointed out that there was no mention of the thermodynamic properties of the greenhouse gases, nor was there any mention of oxygen and nitrogen, which are the major components of air. I also questioned the trends he observed, in view of the scatter of data shown on his charts. I was greeted with a snow job regarding regression analysis, and was politely told that I was taking up too much of his time.

Following that, I obtained more than 50 abstracts on this subject from the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City, Mo.—none of which make any reference to the thermodynamic properties of the gases comprising air. What I could glean from these is that carbon dioxide and water vapor bear the blame for global warming, although they are a minuscule portion of the atmosphere.

I've done some preliminary analysis and calculated a radiant heat-transfer coefficient, which is proportional to the absolute Earth temperature cubed. Its sign indicates that as the Earth heats up, radiation from the sun is reduced and radiation to space is increased, thus tending to decrease global warming.

Some authors picture carbon dioxide and water vapor as forming a one-way blanket that permits heat from the sun to enter but absorbs outgoing energy, preventing heat from being radiated out into space. Having worked on steel-mill furnaces for a number of years, I know that gases heat up when absorbing energy and that their thermodynamic properties are the same for heating and cooling. The excess energy appears to be radiated to space.

The preceding does not deny the tremendous increase of heat rejection to the atmosphere due to the population explosion (400 Btus per hour per head) and the increase of power-consuming creature comforts. But does that necessitate our hitting the panic button because of a small temperature change (about which researchers cannot even agree) over 100 years? The need is to put this analysis on a quantitative basis, rather than the qualitative basis being used.

I entered engineering because I considered it a profession. Anyone who graduates from an accredited engineering school should aspire to professional standing. As far as I know, engineering is the only so-called profession that does not require a license to practice for most of the work. I say "so-called" because without licensing, it is questionable whether this is a profession.

If engineers were all licensed, they would have a commonality that crossed all specialties. This is very important in times when our profession becomes more and more fragmented with subdivisions. I would like to see the P.E. licensing exams changed to only determine basic competency in engineering principles, engineering thinking, and engineering ethics, with less emphasis on civil and structural engineering or any of the other specialized branches.

Let us all think professionally and do what is needed to raise engineering to a true profession, instead of bickering about the need for licensing.

I have worked with many engineers in my career. Some of them did not have engineering degrees, but their knowledge of engineering was remarkable. They understood the real world of engineering, sometimes more than I did. One of my engineering professors did not have even a single engineering degree. What he had was a doctorate in physics (along with similar bachelor's and master's degrees). He knew what he was teaching (thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and so forth) and taught it well. The knowledge he imparted to me in those courses was comparable to or better than what I got from some other professors who had advanced engineering degrees.

The knowledge of the subject is the important issue, not how one obtains that knowledge.

Would you send your family to someone who says he is a doctor but has no "M.D." at the end of his name? Would you want someone without a dentist's degree working on your teeth?

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