1st Edition

Interdisciplinary Research on Climate and Energy Decision Making 30 Years of Research on Global Change

Edited By M. Granger Morgan Copyright 2023
    348 Pages 66 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    348 Pages 66 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    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.

    1. Tools to Analyze Uncertainty
      Granger Morgan
    2. Let’s Do the Same for Climate Change
      Granger Morgan
    3. The ICAM Model of Climate Change
      Granger Morgan and Hadi Dowlatabadi
    4. Getting Experts to Give Us Their "Betting Odds"
      Granger Morgan
    5. What the Public Knows about Climate Change
      Granger Morgan
    6. Social/Ecological Dimensions of Climate Change Hadi Dowlatabadi, Granger Morgan, Mike Griffin, and Tim McDaniels
    7. Impacts on Public Health
      Elizabeth Casman and Hadi Dowlatabadi
    8. Energy Efficiency
      Inês Azevedo
    9. Energy Rebound
      Granger Morgan and Brinda Thomas
    10. Energy from the Wind and the Sun
      Jay Apt
    11. Capturing and Disposing of Carbon Dioxide from Power Plants
      Granger Morgan and Dalia Patino-Echeverri
    12. Can Nuclear Power Help Solve the Climate Problem?
      Granger Morgan and Ahmed Abdulla
    13. Making Electric Power More Resilient
      Jay Apt and Granger Morgan
    14. Transportation without Carbon Dioxide
      Granger Morgan and Parth Vaishnav
    15. Uncertainty in Energy and Other Forecasts
      Granger Morgan
    16. We Have No Choice but to Adapt
      Granger Morgan and Hadi Dowlatabadi
    17. Scrubbing Carbon Dioxide out of the Atmosphere
      Joshuah Stolaroff
    18. A Last Resort – Engineering the Planet
      Granger Morgan
    19. What We Have Learned
      Granger Morgan (informed by many others)


    Appendix 1

    Appendix 2

    Appendix 3

    Biography

    M. Granger Morgan is the Hamerschlag University Professor of Engineering in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP) at Carnegie Mellon University. He also holds appointments in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and in the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy. He holds a PhD in Applied Physics from the University of California at San Diego. He was the founding Department Head in EPP, a job he held for 38 years. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.