Engineering Response to Global Climate Change: Planning a Research and Development Agenda [Hardcover]

Robert G. Watts (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1566702348 | ISBN-13: 978-1566702348 | Publication Date: June 30, 1997 | Edition: 1

This book goes beyond the analysis offered by typical works on this subject to propose real solutions to problems caused by changes in the earths climate. From new ways to cut energy consumption and reduce carbon dioxide emissions to discussions of the possibilities of sea walls and climate- altering technologies, Engineering Response to Global Climate Change presents new conceptual tools and suggests research necessary for correcting and alleviating problems caused by global warming. Edited by a regional director of the National Institute for Global Environmental Change and offering the collective expertise of a team of expert authors, this book offers thorough coverage of this important topic from an engineering and technology perspective.

Editorial Reviews

Review

If you have a genuine interest in climate change issues you may wish to make a serious effort to find this book...focuses on realistic responses and realistic time frames...Rigorous arguments are presented, not avoiding recourse to mathematics, chemistry, and physics...substantial space is given both to energy demand reduction and to geo-engineering solutions...addresses the serious matter of climate change causes and responses with appropriate respect for the scales involved, in all respects.-Michael Tobis, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: CRC-Press; 1 edition (June 30, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566702348
• ISBN-13: 978-1566702348
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,445,762 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars unique, competent, extremely useful, March 12, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Engineering Response to Global Climate Change: Planning a Research and Development Agenda (Hardcover)

If you have a genuine interest in climate change issues you may wish to make a serious effort to find this book despite its steep price and limited distribution. It addresses the basic situation in a forthright fashion and in terms familiar and accessible to a general engineering or physical science audience, in brief. The analysis is succinct and fair, even going so far as to point out (as I myself try to do) that the worse-than-consensus scenarios get much less attention than the better-than-consensus ones. However, the focus of the book is not the issue of climate sensitivity, nor the pseudo-issue of "whether to believe in global warming". The book focuses on realistic responses and realistic time frames in which to accomplish them. Rigorous arguments are presented, not avoiding recourse to mathematics, chemistry and physics. References to primary peer reviewed literature are provided in abundance. Some of the better informed gadflies on this issue will be gratified to see that substantial space is given both to energy demand reduction and to geo-engineering solutions. (Proponents of these approaches often seem to find them mutually exclusive, which of course an engineering point of view as presented in this volume does not.) This book addresses the serious matter of climate change causes and responses with appropriate respect for the scales involved, in all respects. The general public has difficulty absorbing that an issue can be timely without being urgent, and very large without being apocalyptic. Engineers are used to dealing with questions of scale and this book can go a long way toward putting matters into a fair perspective for a reasonably competent readership, as well as elucidating the spectrum of promising response strategies. I would be very interested in hearing from anyone who has any idea if, when, and how the level of competence exhibited in this book will enter the discourse of the general public on this matter, or how, in the larger sense, a distractible and information-overloaded democracy can deal with matters which are subtle without being (as some nay-sayers venture in the matter of global climate change) particularly intractable. Michael Tobis, Ph.D. (Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences)