This book explores the role and importance of interdisciplinary research in addressing key issues in climate and energy decision making.
For over 30 years, an interdisciplinary team of faculty and students anchored at Carnegie Mellon University, joined by investigators and students from a number of other collaborating institutions across North America, Europe, and Australia, have worked together to better understand the global changes that are being caused by both human activities and natural causes. This book tells the story of their successful interdisciplinary work. With each chapter written in the first person, the authors have three key objectives: (1) to document and provide an accessible account of how they have framed and addressed a range of the key problems that are posed by the human dimensions of global change; (2) to illustrate how investigators and graduate students have worked together productively across different disciplines and locations on common problems; and (3) to encourage funders and scholars across the world to undertake similar large- scale interdisciplinary research activities to meet the world’s largest challenges.
Exploring topics such as energy efficiency, public health, and climate adaptation, and with a final chapter dedicated to lessons learned, this innovative volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, energy transitions and environmental studies more broadly.
Author(s): M. Granger Morgan
Series: Research and Teaching in Environmental Studies
Publisher: Routledge/Earthscan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 348
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
1 Tools to Analyze Uncertainty
Technical Details for 1
Note
2 Let’s Do the Same for Climate Change
Technical Details for 2
Notes
3 The ICAM Model of Climate Change
Technical Details for 3
Notes
4 Getting Experts to Give Us Their “Betting Odds”
Technical Details for 4
Notes
5 What the Public Knows About Climate Change
Technical Details for 5
Notes
6 Social/Ecological Dimensions of Climate Change
Background On Socio-Ecological Systems
Modeling the Ecosystem Impacts of Climate Change
Asking Experts How They Think Forests Will Respond to Climate Change
Growing Corn to Make Biofuel
Limiting Habitat Fragmentation From Gas Well Development
Managing Soil Carbon
Drivers and Dynamics of Environmental Policy Change
Decision Aids for Resource Managers
Technical Details for 6
Notes
7 Impacts On Public Health
The Contextual Determinants of Malaria
Climate Change Compared With Policy Impacts On Malaria
Controlling the Spread of West Nile Virus
Cryptosporidiosis
Climate Mitigation and Air Pollution
Technical Details for 7
Notes
8 Energy Efficiency
Solid-State Lighting
Energy-Efficiency Supply Curves
DC for Buildings
Consumer Choices for Energy-Efficient Technologies
Technical Details for 8
Note
9 Energy Rebound
Technical Details for 9
Note
10 Energy From the Wind and the Sun
Technical Details for 10
Notes
11 Capturing and Disposing of Carbon Dioxide From Power Plants
Capturing Carbon Dioxide From Power Plants
Flexible Mandates to Incentivize Investment in CCS
Technical Details for 11
Notes
12 Can Nuclear Power Help Solve the Climate Problem?
Technical Details for 12
13 Making Electric Power More Resilient
The Characteristics of Large Blackouts
Jay Apt
Disruptions Caused By Extreme Heat and Cold
Jay Apt
Assessing the Cost of LLD-Outages
Granger Morgan
Strategies to Increase Resilience to LLD-Outages
Granger Morgan
Technical Details for 13
Notes
14 Transportation Without Carbon Dioxide
Cars and Light Trucks
Heavy Freight
Ships and Aircraft
Technical Details for 14
Notes
15 Uncertainty in Energy and Other Forecasts
Technical Details for 15
Notes
16 We Have No Choice But to Adapt
Technical Details for 16
Notes
17 Scrubbing Carbon Dioxide Out of the Atmosphere
Technical Details for 17
Notes
18 A Last Resort – Engineering the Planet
Notes
19 What We Have Learned
What We Learned About Deep Uncertainties, Integrated Assessment, and Climate Policy
What We Learned About Conventional Tools for Analysis and Policy Advice
What We Learned About the Need to Treat Climate as Just One Element of Global Change
What We Learned About Building and Sustaining a Distributed Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration
Some Final Thoughts
In the Small, a Great Deal
In the Large, Not as Much as We Would Have Liked
Technical and Other Details for 19
Notes
Appendix 1 Short Biographical Sketches of the Co-Authors
Appendix 2 Publications Resulting From Work Supported By Our Three Centers
CEDM
Journals
Books and Book Chapters
Theses
CDMC
Journals
Books and Book Chapters
Theses
HDGC
Journals
Books and Book Chapters
Theses
Appendix 3 Groups With Which One Or More of Our Centers Have Collaborated
Index
