Interdisciplinary Research on Climate and Energy Decision Making

30 Years of Research on Global Change

M. Granger Morgan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032360980
• eBook ISBN: 9781000810936
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 Tools to Analyze Uncertainty
• 2 Let’s Do the Same for Climate Change
• 3 The ICAM Model of Climate Change
• 4 Getting Experts to Give Us Their “Betting Odds”
• 5 What the Public Knows about Climate Change
• 6 Social/Ecological Dimensions of Climate Change
• 7 Impacts on Public Health
• 8 Energy Efficiency
• 9 Energy Rebound
• 10 Energy from the Wind and the Sun
• 11 Capturing and Disposing of Carbon Dioxide from Power Plants
• 12 Can Nuclear Power Help Solve the Climate Problem?
• 13 Making Electric Power More Resilient
• 14 Transportation without Carbon Dioxide
• 15 Uncertainty in Energy and Other Forecasts
• 16 We Have No Choice but to Adapt
• 17 Scrubbing Carbon Dioxide out of the Atmosphere
• 18 A Last Resort – Engineering the Planet
• 19 What We Have Learned
• Short Biographical Sketches of the Co-authors
• Publications Resulting From Work Supported by Our Three Centers
• Groups With Which One or More of Our Centers Have Collaborated
• Index