Consider a Spherical Cow: A Course in Environmental Problem Solving / Edition 1

by John Harte

Overview

This innovative compendium offers a variety of techniques for approaching contemporary environmental problems. Challenging, real-world situations and worked-out solutions provide the means both for gaining insights into the process of problem solving and for thinking quantitatively and creatively about such environmental concerns as energy and water resources, food production, indoor air pollution, acid rain, and human influences on climate.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780935702583
Publisher:	University Science Books
Publication date:	01/17/1988
Edition description:	1988
Pages:	238
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

John Harte is a Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. He did his undergraduate studies at Harvard and his PhD in theoretical physics at the University of Wisconsin. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pew Scholars award, the Leo Szilard prize from the American Physical Society, and a George Polk award in investigative journalism. He is an elected Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, the American Physical Society, the Ecological society of America, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has also served on six National Academy of Sciences Committees and has authored over 250 scientific journal publications and eight books. John’s research focuses on ecology, climate, complexity science, and environmental policy.

Table of Contents

1. Warm-Up Exercises2.Tools of the TradeA. Steady-State Box Models and Residence TimesB. Thermodynamics and Energy TransferC. Chemical Reactions and EquilibriaD. Non-Steady-State Box Models3. A. BiogeochemistryB. ClimatologyC. Survival of PopulationsAppendix: Useful NumbersGlossaryBibliographyAnswers to Exercises; Index.

Editorial Reviews

This book should be read and used by all students of environmental studies, and should be an important acquisition for any research, teaching, or general academic library.

Choice

Spherical Cow is an excellent guide to the very important art of quickly finding approximate answers to problems such as “what was the pH of rainfall before the Industrial Revolution? ” This book illustrates step-by-step how to solve dozens of problems of this type.

Journal of Chemical Information & Computational Science

For 40 years, the best basic book for learning environmental modeling skills has been John Harte’s classic text, Consider a Spherical Cow. It is now even better. This updated and expanded new edition belongs on the bookshelf of everyone who cares about the fate of our civilization.

Paul R. Ehrlich

Spherical Cow has been, for more than 30 years, much more than a book. It is a lantern that shows the way to a powerful and transferable problem-solving strategy: capture any problem’s key concepts in a highly simplified, quantified approximation to reality, and then perform straightforward calculations that lead you to good-enough conclusions. Cow applies this strategy to environmental problem-solving, producing accessible insights into a suite of urgent issues, ranging from rain’s acidity to population dynamics to nuclear power and toxic chemicals – the last two only in this much awaited, updated edition.

Rob Socolow

For young scientists, Harte’s book is an invaluable set of calisthenics to get the brain working across a wide range of problems. But non-scientists will enjoy this too—it will give you insights into how people think quantitatively.

Bill McKibben