Best environmental engineering books according to redditors

We found 268 Reddit comments discussing the best environmental engineering books. We ranked the 134 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

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Subcategories:

Groundwater & flood control books
Waste management books
Water quality & treatment books
Insecticides & pesticides books
Environmental pollution books

Top Reddit comments about Environmental Engineering:

u/rseasmith · 453 pointsr/science

For a fun read, I love The Disappearing Spoon.

For a while, I've been meaning to read Salt which is another fun read.

I also just love the Periodic Table of Videos YouTube channel for other fun stuff.

Textbook-wise, you can't beat Stumm and Morgan or Metcalf and Eddy for your water chemistry/water treatment needs.

u/somefreakingmoron · 72 pointsr/worldnews

Continued carbon emissions are putting humanity on an irreversible course for planetary devastation. If you want to get an idea of what the real world implications we may see from the 2, 3, 4+ ... degrees C of warming we are headed for in the coming decades barring radical action, check out Mark Lynas' book Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet

This webpage summarizes some of the key points from Lynas' book:

A degree by degree explanation of what will happen when the earth warms

u/hypnosifl · 22 pointsr/slatestarcodex

Climate scientist Michael Mann criticizes several of the claims in the article as overstated in this facebook post, though like most scientists he agrees with the general point that the consequences of climate change will be dire unless we take serious action (he has a book for non-scientists outlining the dangers and the politicization of the issue, The Madhouse Effect). And if anyone's interested in a book focused specifically on the best scientific predictions about the consequences of various amounts of warming, you could check out Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (see this post from one of the climate scientists on the realclimate.org blog, which gives it a positive review and says it accurately reflects the scientific literature on future scenarios).

I think our best chance of avoiding disaster lies in some combination of moving over to renewables and/or nuclear within the next few decades combined with massive production of carbon capture devices in the second half of the century, which could allow us to keep the warming to around 2 degrees or less. One important point is that without such massive deployment of carbon capture we don't really stand a chance of keeping it that low--check out the graphs here where the first two graphs show how fast carbon emissions would have to go to zero without any carbon capture if we want to keep warming to 1.5 degrees or less, along with a third graph showing how the decline can be more gradual if we have negative emissions later. The graphs are based on the "carbon quotas" for different amounts of warming on p. 64 of this IPCC report, and the quota for 2 degrees is not that much larger than 1.5 degrees (2900 gigatons vs. 2250 gigatons, only 29% larger) so the corresponding graphs for keeping it under 2 degrees wouldn't look too different.

The cause for hope here is that prototypes for carbon capture devices that remove CO2 much more efficiently than trees have already been built, see this article and this one, along with this interview with a physicist involved in the research where he makes the following point:

>My hope would be that we then would have a device that can take out a ton a day of carbon from the atmosphere. If you take out a ton a day, you would need 100 million air capture devices to take out all the C02 that we putting into the atmosphere today. And I would argue that it would be a lot less than that because we would also be capturing carbon at the flue stack, and not making the C02 in the first place by developing solar and wind technologies. ... There are about 1 billion cars out there. We are building 70 million cars and light trucks a year. So that kind of industrial production is quite possible. Eventually we should be able to produce an air capture device for roughly what it costs to manufacture a car.

I also think that another reason to be hopeful is that we may in the not-too-distant future achieve full automation of the production process for most mass-produced goods, leading to the possibility of self-replicating robot factories (what Eric Drexler calls clanking replicators), and I think the effect of this would tend to drive down the prices of all mass-produced goods--including things like carbon capture devices and solar panels--down to barely more than the cost of the raw materials and energy that went into them, so large-scale production of any good would be much cheaper. I talked more about this idea here.

u/Scarcrowe · 16 pointsr/Documentaries

That's part of it, but even when they solve the access problem, it doesn't automatically stop the practice. As you might guess, behavior change requires a bit more convincing than that.

Lots of resources are put into cultural efforts to curb public defecation. There are actually some pretty interesting and clever ideas out there including sending little kids out with whistles to embarrass people who pop a squat out in the open.

Further reading if you are interested if you want to become an expert on this topic..
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004SICIVY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

u/sciendias · 10 pointsr/askscience

A few degrees warmer is about how much we can stand. So, with that few degrees comes at least a few feet of sea level rise, likely more. So coastal areas that tend to be the highest populated, are going to need to retreat from the coast. That's going to be a huge economic burden. How is that burden born? Best left to economists I suppose....

Also, California and the west will tend to get drier, which will affect agriculture and I would venture agricultural costs. The mid-west is also slated to become drier, this is at a time when the Ogallala aquifer is being sucked dry, so we are going to be running out of a pretty precious resource in large chunks of the US. Further abroad, with melting glaciers hundreds of millions may be left without water. The middle east is supposed to also dry up. This is likely to create a humanitarian crisis.

There could be significant changes in disease distributions as well. With things like malaria, Zika, etc. becoming more prevalent in the US because of a spread of their vektors (e.g., certain tropical mosquito species).

Depending on the severity, much of the Amazon rain forest may dry out, though there is some good debate around that topic. Coral reefs laregly won't be able to keep up, which could crash some fisheries and ecosystems. Forest diseases may be more prevalent (e.g., emerald ash borer in the eastern US that is wiping out ash trees), and extinction rates are thought to spike, with 20-30% of species at risk of extinction.

Check out a book 6 degrees. I haven't read it yet, but it's on my wish list - supposed to be a good run down of the catastrphe that 6 degrees of warming will bring - basically an end of civilization as we know it. Some respected scientists think that the population will end up crashing to 1 billion in the next century..... that will cause some chaos...

u/ItsAConspiracy · 10 pointsr/collapse

Six Degrees by Mark Lynas. Great book, he read 3000 papers on the effects of climate change and summarized them, with extensive references. One chapter per degree C.

At 3C it just looks disastrous. At 4C the survival of modern civilization starts to look doubtful. At 6C it's hard to imagine our species surviving to any meaningful extent.

u/Capn_Underpants · 9 pointsr/collapse

This is a good read on some back story of the explotation of the boreal forests.

https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Spruce-Story-Madness-Greed/dp/0393328643

u/sachel85 · 6 pointsr/mining

I would recommend the hard rock miners handbook which is free. Underground mining methods is also a good book and easy to follow.

u/maychacha · 5 pointsr/FE_Exam

Did you use Kaplan's book to study for the Env exam?
https://www.brightwoodengineering.com/fe-exam/environmental
I found very helpful explaining water treatment and chemistry related concepts. I myself studied chemistry and hydrology and considered taking env FE but then after searching for study materials I found that there isn't much out there.
I also bought this one (https://www.amazon.com/Environmental-Discipline-Specific-Review-EIT-Exam/dp/1591260183) and returned it when I decided to study for the OTHER discipline instead.

u/nenzel · 4 pointsr/mining

Ok, here's a list of books that might interest you.

u/goocy · 4 pointsr/collapse

> Basically that things aren't great, but they aren't catastrophic either, and that we actually are kind of on the right path, or at least a path good enough that we'd 'only' heat the planet up another 2-3deg in the next 50 years instead of the near fatal ~8deg statistics I've seen. We could be doing a much better job as a species, but we'll still be OK.

There's a book on global warming, Six degrees. It has six chapters, one for each degree of warming. There's no need for a seventh chapter because there won't be any humans left in that scenario. According to the book, if we exceed +3°C, industrial agriculture will collapse (more or less quickly, depending on the region), and billions will starve.

We're currently on the trajectory for a warming of roughly +3.4°C. I imagine that the despair that comes with the early consequences will push down this path down to something like +2.8°C. Still, the lives of roughly five billion people are very insecure on that path. That's apocaplyptic enough for me.

u/gershom45 · 4 pointsr/energy

I recommend a book on this subject that I found well worth the read. This author sees fast reactors as the answer to most of the drawbacks to nuclear power.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1419655825

I'd be interested to hear if anyone on reddit has read this book and what they think.

u/thegodsarepleased · 3 pointsr/worldnews

For the record, Canada's old-growth forests are disappearing staggeringly fast. You should read The Golden Spruce for a first-hand account of the logging industry in British Columbia. Most of it is gone, and what is left is in once inaccessible areas (such as the Queen Charlotte Islands, or rocky coastal areas) that is already being slated for logging.

I have absolutely no idea why you are criticizing the national park system in the U.S. I am a native Washingtonian and the fact that much of the old-growth forests will forever be protected in my nearby Mt. Rainier National Park, North Cascades National Park, and Olympic National Park (a very large percentage of the state) is something to be extremely proud of. I really think that the fact that Canada has fewer national parks than the U.S. is unfortunate.

u/dang234what · 3 pointsr/scifi

I also just saw this recently after never really hearing of it growing up. Weird. Anyway, respect; I really enjoyed this movie and think it's still an important message to this day.

Would you like to know more?

u/patattacka · 3 pointsr/FE_Exam

I sent this to someone over DM, but I figure this would be a good place as any to post it. Sorry ahead of time for the wall of text!!

"Just a few questions. What have you done so far to prepare? Do you have any books or study materials?

I actually took the exam twice, passed the second time around. I took the first one after studying for about 2 months or so, and I was woefully unprepared. I used several books, the first of which was a Kaplan book:

https://www.kaplanengineering.com/fe-exam/environmental


I have an older version. While I found the book comprehensive, it lacked depth and was often too broad. It didn't give good strategies for taking the exam, and the way it would show you example problems were usually the "long and hard" way. It gave me an intro to ENV engineering, and also had some topics I couldn't find anywhere else.


Second book I used: FE Review Manual: Rapid Preparation for the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam


This was a great resource. It was practical, helped me develop methods for taking the exam, and was easy to understand. It has all the topics, so I didn't use about half the book. Rent this or buy this or borrow, but get it.


Lastly,

http://www.amazon.com/Environmental-Discipline-Specific-Review-EIT-Exam/dp/1591260183/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1450802552&sr=1-1&keywords=fe+environmental


This book is very expensive relative to size, but it is seriously the only book that has problems similar to the exam. There is no instruction in the book, just practice problems and a brief explanation of the formulas.


Next thing you really need to spend time on is MEMORIZING ALL THE FORMULAS!


Just kidding! They give you all the formulas.

http://ncees.org/exams/study-materials/download-fe-supplied-reference-handbook/

If you don't already have this, download it (it's free) and print out the environmental section. Print out several copies if you want, and mark them up as much as you can, explaining the formulas, when to use them, when to not. Knowing the reference manual will easily make the difference between you passing and not passing.


You have, give or take, 3 minutes per question on the exam (110 of them, 10 of which do not count, but they don't tell you which). If you know the manual inside and out, you will know right where to go, plug in the formula and move on. You should also be familiar with sections of the civil engineering section (especially the parts about drawdown, the charts using Reynolds number, fluid dynamics etc.) There is also a section on fluid dynamics if I'm not mistaken. Fluid dynamics was central to a lot of the problems. The most difficult parts for me were about well drawdown, aquifers, some parts about activated sludge and mass, and a hard problem with thermodynamics. The math section was not difficult (I haven't even taken calc 3 or diff eq yet)


If you haven't already done so,

http://ncees.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/FE-Env-CBT-specs.pdf

become very familiar with this list. Love it like it was your own child. Depending on your background, some parts may be more difficult than others. I struggled with groundwater, water and wastewater, and some thermo and the fluid mechanics. I have a background in biology and chemistry, so the science/bio parts were a breeze.


Once you feel comfortable with the formulas, know where to find them, and feel like you are good with the material, start slamming out practice exams.

http://www.tamuk.edu/engineering/PDF/FE%20F14.pdf

The last page of that pdf has some good resources.
The book I sent you the link to earlier (the one that is very small but not cheap) has two sets of practice exams. Try and take them without anything other than your reference manual. That should also give you a clue as to where your strengths and weaknesses are.

Some other practice exams are:

http://ppi2pass.com/fe-environmental-quiz-bank-feenqb.html


(not amazing, but will give some good questions, not cheap either)

Last, but not least, the NCEES has a practice exam, which is 50 questions, and cost 50$. I almost didn't do it, but I am so glad I did. The questions on this exam were VERY similar to the actual exam.


https://account.ncees.org/exam-prep/store/category/FE/product/fe-environmental-online-practice-exam-1

That being said, do not memorize them or spend ALL your time trying to focus on them. The actual exam has a bank of questions and both times I took the exam was different.

I would save the NCEES practice exam for last, and try to solve it without using ANYTHING other than reference manual. If you can solve them easily and pass around 80%, I would feel pretty good.

They even give you a freebie (its an errata report, but still) https://cdn.ncees.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/2013_FE_Env_practice_errata.v1.pdf

--Now on to the actual exam. Sign up for it as early as you possibly can, the dates will fill up quickly, especially after graduation times (May and January). Make sure you get there early or you can forfeit your spot. Also become familiar with what items you can have and not have. Here is a list of calculators you can have:


http://ncees.org/exams/calculator-policy/

I used the TI 36x pro because I use a ti-83 normally and it was comfortable. Use the same calculator the whole time you prepare, it will save you time and heartache. Bring a backup calculator or batteries if you want also.


http://ncees.org/exams/cbt/examinee-guide/

For the exam, you can mark problems you are having a problem with. I suggest doing this almost immediately if you don't know how to solve the problem or are spending more than a minute or two on it. The first time I took it, I ran out of time and didn't even answer the last 15 problems! Guessing doesn't hurt you, but not marking an answer is an automatic wrong. Like I said before, you have about 3 minutes per problem, so use your time wisely.


Skip problems that are too hard, mark them, and come back at the end when you have finished the easier problems. This does two things, first, it allows you to keep your mind fresh by not agonizing over one problem that you can't quite get. And second, it gives your brain the chance to reset and you might find the second time you look at it that you knew the right formula or where to find it all along. The test is in two sections, so you get a chance to try your flagged questions at the end of each. During the break, don't stray far, use the bathroom, drink some liquid (not too much! I had to leave because I drank too much and had to pee, and it hurt my time) and try and relax.

Good luck!!

u/presology · 3 pointsr/Bushcraft

If you live in Texas this book was pretty interesting.

It did a good job of showing you which plants and animals give you the most bang for your buck in terms of energy.

It really depends on where you will be living though.

u/WRCousCous · 3 pointsr/askscience

I can't give you numbers, although others have made such attempts. There is a book available called Six Degrees that attempts to describe the impacts of climate change over 100 years at different levels (1 degree C change; 2 degree C change; etc.). It has numbers, although I can't suggest how accurate they are (those kinds of numerical forecasting exercises are virtually impossible to do with accuracy in complex systems).

Another pop-science but seemingly sound exploration of likely effects (and current conditions) is Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Friedman. It definitely has a "position," but it is a good qualitative place to start if you want an entryway into global environmental change dynamics.

u/ChristopherPhilip · 3 pointsr/Bushcraft

Will you send me a copy?

Here are some more resources. Good luck finding info on cambium layers, but If you do find any, please message me! I'm highly interested to know what their value is, HIGHLY. You can PM me through my YT if you figure it out later on.

Might be limited for wild foods: https://nutritiondata.self.com/

Talks about eadibility, with ACTUAL experiments but doesn't discuss the amount of calories, and nutrition very much: http://www.eattheweeds.com/

Green Deen YT: https://www.youtube.com/user/EatTheWeeds/videos

A couple things here (the book is supposed to be good): http://www.foragingtexas.com/2007/06/foraging-for-calories.html

https://www.amazon.com/Subsistence-Gatherer-Hunting-Trapping-Foraging/dp/1479259667/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1479222444&sr=8-3&keywords=texas+foraging

All about the guts and grease (READ THIS!!!): http://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/guts-and-grease-the-diet-of-native-americans/

Another good essay with a few calorie facts: https://woodtrekker.blogspot.ca/2013/09/living-off-land-delusions-and.html

List of edibles: http://northernbushcraft.com/guide.php?ctgy=edible_plants&region=on

I have another source on wild berries, but I can't find it right now, let me know if you want me to dig deeper and find it.

I would also recommend Samuel Thayer author of Forager's Harvest and Nature's Garden...but he does NOT talk about the nutritional contents of foods.

You should be able to make broad assumptions. If you can't find something on wapato for example, which is a tuber, you could compare it to a potato. Plantain, compare to other leafy greens like spinach, etc. Berries are fairly well known. They won't be exact, but neither are the store bought foods, they are rough estimates. So they should be sufficient.

u/backgammon_no · 3 pointsr/Anarchism

I'm a climate change natalist - I recognize that civilization is over and humanity might be too. Our grandkids won't have electricity and may not have agriculture. Our great-gradkids may not have enough oxygen. Anyways given the coming crash I had a kid that I'm raising to make it through the bottleneck with good wholesome values intact. I'm raising her competent and co-operative.

If you're feeling down about working retail you should read this book. It's about the expected results of each degree of climate warming. It's 10 years old. The changes predicted here are actually mild compared to the changes we've seen, suggesting that we may be on track for a 4° warmer world (mass extinction, complete desertion of the mid-latitudes, the amazon first burning then drying to a desert, human fight toward the poles, endemic drought throughout asia, most crop-land blowing away as dust). Capitalism can't survive that!!

u/random_ass_stranger · 3 pointsr/worldnews

Climate change is a matter of degrees, literally, and the big unknown is at what point do we really start to suffer negative consequences.

Scientists and world leaders so far have a consensus that 2 degrees Celsius is safe. Some scientists say it should be even lower, but that's what most of the negotiations are assuming. 3-4 degrees Celsius is likely what's going to happen unless we make some real aggressive moves soon, which will most likely exacerbate some of the things we see already, which are sea level rises, ocean acidification (leading to fish extinctions), melting of the ice caps and glaciers, and weather changes (drought, desertification, melting tundra). 6 degrees is where most people think we're headed if we can't get our act together and there are a whole bunch of hypotheses about what may happen then: http://www.amazon.com/Six-Degrees-Future-Hotter-Planet/dp/1426203853 . Of course, then there's always the risk of runaway climate change, where we reach a point where warming begets more warming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_climate_change and we eventually end up like Venus, although that particular outcome is still up for debate.

So to your point, is this all a futile exercise? I'm not sure we can hit 2 degrees, honestly, at this point. But if we hit 3, the earth our grand children (speaking as someone without kids yet) will live most of their lives in will most likely be similar to the one we live in and the one our parents live in. If we let it get to 5 or 6, then all bets are off. You might be right that they'll come up with some kind of Manhattan project to solve it, but there's no guarantee.

u/Acanthas · 3 pointsr/japan

Renewable hydrogen can be produced using solar and or wind energy. Here's a great book that lays it out http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1849731950/

Here's what Germany is doing:
>To date, according to press material provided by Mercedes-Benz, Linde produces half of the hydrogen for existing fuelling stations from sustainable energy sources. The gas is obtained from crude glycerol, which is a by-product of biodiesel production. Biodiesel, as the name indicates, is a carbon-neutral fuel produced from plant life and other biological sources.

>Linde also splits water molecules by passing a current through the water, with the electricity procured from wind power generation. http://www.motoring.com.au/news/2014/mercedes-benz/germany-builds-more-hydrogen-filling-stations-46711

u/crsf29 · 2 pointsr/mining

A book about the history of fraud, treachery and thieves in the industry can be found here:A hole in the ground with a liar at the top

There's also another title that tells more stories about the workers in artisan diamond mining: Diamond a journey into the heart of an obsession

As far as books that get more technical, Introductory Mining Engineering would be a good start.

If the business and economics are more what you're interested in, a quick google search for "mining white papers" should yield a whole pile of results. Most of them being written by some consulting houses such as E&Y, KPMG, McKinsey, et al.

Let me know more what you're looking for. Mining Engineer here who loves to read. =)

u/ChromaticDragon · 2 pointsr/worldnews

Please pick up and read:

http://www.amazon.com/Six-Degrees-Future-Hotter-Planet/dp/1426203853

Or watch it. Goodness... they made it into film:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1224519/

The cool thing about this book is that the focus is on what we can tell happened at these temps at various points in the past. This doesn't give us a clear picture of the future. Indeed, the rate of change today is practically unprecedented. But this look into the past is rather illuminating.

4 degrees is BAD! As others have stated, it's not a simple thing of every part of the world just magically being 4 degrees warmer all the time. It won't be that uniform. There will be parts that get larger average temp increases than others.

There are simply far too many people who think they've stopped being Climate Change Deniers while remaining in incredible ignorance of the related facts. Getting more informed will address the confusion, if not necessarily the fear. I'm not trying to advocate anything here related to vegetarianism, tap water or whatever. It just will be more conducive overall the more people have a better grasp of the issues/data here.

u/GothamCentral · 2 pointsr/suggestmeabook

The Big Necessity: the unmentionable world of human waste and why it matters, by Rose George -- about sanitation around the world. It's very human and personable.

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u/Frontcannon · 2 pointsr/skeptic

Techno-Fix: Why Technology Won't Save Us Or the Environment

Pretty intriguing look on the effects of technology on the environment and society.

u/chopchopped · 2 pointsr/solar

Your post caused me to want to know more about this company. TIL-SunPower is owned 56.4% by Total, Europe's third largest oil company.

Now I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing (but I know nothing about Total, next Wiki stop!).

After all, oil companies were necessary. They provided the power that got us all to where we are today, both good and bad. No one ever held a gun to my head and ordered me to fill my gas tank. But us Hydrogen advocates are always being told that we are working for big oil. So I thought this was a bit ironic. The next time someone accuses me of working for Big Oil I'll ask them what they think of SunPower! And for the record, I'm a Solar/Wind hydrogen advocate - and a solar fan/installer/salesperson from way back. Hydrogen made from renewable energy is the cleanest fuel on the planet. And it turns out to be the best way to store renewable energy. It's the fuel of the future!

Edit: Of course oil companies are going to want to get into renewable energy. They are energy companies and the future of energy is renewable. They'd be stupid not to. So the more the better.

u/Animosity16 · 2 pointsr/FE_Exam

I used the civil Lindbergh book for the fluid, hydraulic, environmental, ect. The naimpelly book (https://www.amazon.com/Environmental-Discipline-Specific-Review-EIT-Exam/dp/1591260183) and a NCEES practice exam.

Additionally, I worked extra problem out that people from this subreddit shared from their reviews.

u/conro · 2 pointsr/Cascadia

Saw this post on /r/backpacking earlier today. In the thread someone mentioned this book, The Golden Spruce, about the of the area. I'm looking forward to reading it. I bet it will interest some of you too.

Great pics anvilman! I'm gonna have to make the trip up there some day!

u/jmilo123 · 2 pointsr/collapse

Yes! This.

Here's a paragraph from the summary to his book, Techno-Fix.

"The authors explore the reasons for the uncritical acceptance of new technologies; show that technological optimism is based on ignorance and that increasing consumerism and materialism, which have been facilitated by science and technology, have failed to increase happiness. The common belief that technological change is inevitable is questioned, the myth of the value-neutrality of technology is exposed and the ethics of the technological imperative: "what can be done should be done" is challenged. Techno-Fix asserts that science and technology, as currently practiced, cannot solve the many serious problems we face and that a paradigm shift is needed to reorient science and technology in a more socially responsible and environmentally sustainable direction."

I love the part about how techno-optimism is based on ignorance.

u/azzwhole · 2 pointsr/books
  1. The Golden Spruce - John Vaillant
  2. 9/10
  3. Non-fictional account of the story surrounding the only known golden spruce tree that grew on the Haida Gwaii islands.
  4. A profoundly interesting and addictive read on the history of British Columbia, of pacific trade and logging, of indigenous west coast tribes and their traditions, and other related subjects.
  5. book here
u/cweese · 2 pointsr/mining

SME Handbook

Hartman Book

Used both while getting my Mining Engineering degree. They are both really great for what you want but I would go with the Hartman Book. It's cheaper and does just as well.

u/isentr0pic · 2 pointsr/Physics

By chemist, do you mean undergraduate or postgraduate? What year of study are they in? It'd be difficult to study statistical mechanics from scratch; make sure the following prerequisites are in order:

  • Mathematical methods including multivariable calculus, vector calculus, differential equations and introductory (but still rigorous) probability theory. Combinatorial methods can and will help, too.
  • Classical mechanics, including analytical mechanics. A lot of important results in statistical mechanics correspond directly to what you find in classical mechanics.
  • Exposure to thermodynamics is essential. As a chemist, your friend will almost definitely have this.
  • Quantum mechanics, the ideas of which are highly important for quantum statistical mechanics. Of course, if your friend would rather stick to classical statistical mechanics, this doesn't have to be deeply studied. I'd imagine that being a chemist, your friend has seen some quantum mechanics before anyhow.

    For an introductory level book, I quite enjoyed Bowley and Sanchez. They go through relevant ideas in probability already and the appendix covers up some of the mathematical prerequisites. Further down the line, Huang is an excellent book: it is significantly more advanced than the previous, but the contents is both broad and detailed (I still refer to it for topics like the 2D Ising model). At the same time, you could also consider Volume 5 of the famous Course of Theoretical Physics by Landau and Lifshitz. The Course is famously hardcore, but it imparts mastery like nothing else.
u/georedd · 2 pointsr/environment

"5000 miles (for Ca, Or and Wa) away your talking about an insignigant amount of radiation"

no it's 1/10th the still unknown doses off the coast of Japan which the USS ROnald Reagan had to decontaminate its crew from.
see here from the UN cloud plot

http://www.earth-issues.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/image-1-for-paper-pics-19-03-2011-gallery-151030100.jpg

also see here for the actual effects of "tiny" amounts of radiation:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/harmless-chernobyl-radiation-killed-nearly-one-million-people.html

and if you don't like that source here is the original book of the studies.
Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences)

Since NO ONE knows how much was released you have no way of knowing the effects.

Radiation for "don't panic" dummies: It is not the passing cloud that is the problem but that is not the whole truth. The passing radioactive particles that you inhale or absorb keep emitting those doses long after the cloud has passed and raise your risk of cancer SIGNIFICANTLY.

u/psimagus · 1 pointr/collapse

> You seem to be forgetting the minor point of agriculture failing -- or is that no longer "your point"?

How is this not willfully obtuse, if not an outright misrepresentation?

I was the one suggesting that more northerly locations would be better situated to avoid temperatures driven to 45°C+, and you responded by pointing out that even Moscow "gets heatwaves" too.

I then demonstrated that Moscow has never experienced temperatures in the 40s. Ever.

A perfectly relevant refutation of your generalised exaggeration. That's all.

> water is going to vanish, everywhere?

Obviously not what I'm saying.

Some won't get enough, and some will get far too much. And some will even get just the right amount for some time - but at some point in a collapsing biosphere, not reliably enough in any one place to ensure sufficient crop survival and reliable harvesting to make agriculture viable.

No, I don't have a crystal ball, and can't tell you exactly where that point will be, but this extinction event is unfolding with unprecedented speed, and we are still accelerating it, so I really don't believe that ignoring uncomfortably pessimistic sources is a wise strategy.

> You're now blaming me for not engaging in threads I wasn't involved in?

Sorry, I was getting it confused with the other thread we're discussing similar matters in. I have to do all this on a crappy, broken smartphone since I don't use a computer, so no split-screen windows/advanced clipboard functionality/fancy keyboard for me.

It was referenced in this thread, not the other one.

> On the contrary, I've pointed out the "links" (really one link posted multiple times)

Since /u/Goochymayn posted the link to the projected effects here, I have posted a dozen different links that weren't this one in this thread.

> Man, you people are obsessed with this one website

Far from it, though a little stubborn in trying to encourage some sort of engagement with it on your part - it's sort of the opposite of cherry picking, to go on blithely claiming that it doesn't say what it does, and that the whole thing's just too silly to even acknowledge.

I read many websites, have read the book this summarises by Mark Lunas (FWIW, it won the 2008 Royal Society Book Prize and was turned into a National Geographic TV series, so it's not just some crappy little blog.)

And I agree it would be better if the summary had hyperlinked references. I don't post it here much/ever myself, precisely because of the lack of easy to follow hyperlinks to make it easier for people to check sources online. The book is better (books are always better than this internet rubbish.)

OK, you don't recognise it or any of its sources (though they've been bandied around here often enough,) - I will add some more links tomorrow when I've had some sleep, though it will be at the expense of speedily responding to your other posts (lots of busy-ness ATM.) I will come to them when time allows.

I accept that the descriptions of the effects at each temperature band may not be accurate. Which is why it would be interesting and useful to discuss what it actually predicts, and how much, if any merit there is to their arguments (it would be even better to discuss the book, but that's less feasible online in the temporary conversation cloud that is Reddit, given how few people have probably read it.)

It's less productive in the extreme, to only ever see it analysed by McPhersonite fanboys, too busy obsessing about the doom to look at it with a critical eye. But if they are accurate, then farming will self-evidently NOT be possible, because we will all be too extinct to practice it.

Other interesting topics exist of course, but they're pretty academic if we're looking anything like +7°C by the end of the century.

That too is an interesting topic in itself, and one I would like to see more people engaging in disputing, rather than just avoiding having to consider it at all on the one hand, or obsessively and unproductively doom-mongering about on the other.

They both seem like less productive (if understandably human) approaches.

I find it convincing enough to have committed to taking the measures I have anyway, though I try to keep an open mind.

> doesn't say what they claim it does. It literally doesn't say it.

It doesn't say exactly QUOTE farming will not be possible UNQUOTE, but FFS, it's predicting the sky effectively catching fire because of the methane content, superstorms at least as extreme as the ones that caused the Permian-Triassic extinction, with ""super-hurricanes” hitting the coasts [that] would have triggered flash floods that no living thing could have survived."

It says: "That episode was the worst ever endured by life on Earth, the closest the planet has come to ending up a dead and desolate rock in space.” On land, the only winners were fungi that flourished on dying trees and shrubs."

And you think agriculture will be possible in this?

It is true, this is at 5+°C, but they also state "Chance of avoiding five degrees of global warming: negligible if the rise reaches four degrees and releases trapped methane from the sea bed."

You've made no effort to refute any of this - you just refuse to engage with this source.

It explains the inexorable runaway temperature effect that will be (possibly has already been,) initiated, and so 4°/5°/6°/7°/+ is largely irrelevant - it's going up, up, up.

And the methane is already being released in observably huge quantities already at <1.5°C, so this does not look so unlikely that it's sensible to simply dismiss it to me, considering the fucktons of the stuff there is down there.

But hey, you've got potatoes and trees, so you'll be fine.

I (and probably other less optimistically- inclined folk here,) would be really interested in knowing why you, or other more optimistic folk, think this is not going to happen.

IF (and I freely admit that is not certain, but if) we're looking at anything like these projections coming to pass this century, then at some point this century, agriculture WILL fail.

And IF the runaway effect from all these tipping points we're burning through is real, then over some timespan, that's inevitable.

> A little emotional, aren’t we? The part where "the world" = "modern civilization"?

No. The part where everything bigger than a lystrosaur, including very probably humanity, is rendered extinct.

And actually I don't get emotional about it - I'm past that.

I get stubborn, and start building an Ark.

> The article they keep linking to doesn't say what they claim it does.

It claims unsurvivable, extinction-level conditions are coming, so yes - it does say what they claim (whether or not it's well-founded - that is a different argument. One you seem unwilling to engage in.)

> I've said that multiple times to them. They have no response for me. And neither will you, I expect. Read the goddamn article.

I have. And I can understand what it's saying. I'd like a reason to disbelieve it, but you're evidently unable to provide one.

I recommend reading the book (I ought to buy another one - lent it out, and never got it back.)

u/dotrob · 1 pointr/alaska

Try Nick Begich Jr.'s book (yes, the brother of the Senator).

u/SheCallsMeCaptain · 1 pointr/booksuggestions

I haven't read it yet, but Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet by Mark Lynas is on my wish list.

u/curiosity36 · 1 pointr/conspiracy

Begich's diploma was from a shady place, but he openly says it's an honorary degree. It doesn't effect that he does great research and has the primary source documents of what he cites. I feel he should have not accepted the degree, as it's something "debunkers" can point at- albeit the only thing. He's an activist and has been called to testify about HAARP before the European Parliament.

I linked to a video of his here a few days ago, where he does cite and source all this material, but it didn't get much of a response.

It's really worth checking out. Bernard Eastlund, the scientist behind a lot of the HAARP technology, even teamed up with Begich at one point because he had concerns about how the tech would be used.

Here's a link to his book that the documentary below is based on. Check out the user reviews to see what it's all about.
http://www.amazon.com/Angels-Dont-Play-This-Haarp/dp/0964881209

Documentary covering material in book: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLZcaItj70U

u/[deleted] · 1 pointr/Random_Acts_Of_Amazon

Girl on December 18th!

There's nothing I want that's even close to $40, but dude, thank you so much for making a contest about BABIES. All I've been doing lately is looking up pictures of cute, fat Chinese babies. THEYRE SO CUTE

My $40 prize equivalent

My $20 prize equivalent

u/eff_horses · 1 pointr/changemyview

> The global temperature is increasing wildly

Define wildly. Since 1975 it's increased by an average of about .15 to .2 ^o C per decade and it's increased about 0.8^o C overall since 1880, with about 2/3 of that coming since 1975. It's probably increasing by a bit more than that now because global emissions keep increasing.

> in a few years many heavily populated areas will exceed "wet bulb" temperature, meaning they will become so hot that it would be impossible for human life to exist there

That doesn't seem to fit Wikipedia's definition of wet-bulb temperature, although I'll admit to being very unfamiliar with the term; do you know in what context McPherson used it?

It would help to know exactly what McPherson's temperature projections are. To me, the notion that the usual projections could render places currently supporting hundreds of millions of people uninhabitable within the next few years, or even decades, is tough to believe without hard numbers to back it up.

If you're curious for other sources, my impressions are based roughly on Six Degrees, by Mark Lynas and Introduction to Modern Climate Change, by Andrew Dessler. I think climate change is definitely capable of causing our extinction eventually, but it would require a lot of inaction on our part, and it would still take several centuries at least.

u/Crimdusk · 1 pointr/ChemicalEngineering

What kind of wastewater?

For non industrial:
Get some modeling software like Biowin or GPSX and read about the Activated Sludge Model.

The EPA has detailed design documents from everything from activated sludge to the diffused aeration system which highlight best practices.

The Metcalf and Eddy text on wastewater is the best around. Ask your boss to get you a copy: https://www.amazon.com/Wastewater-Engineering-Treatment-Resource-Recovery/dp/0073401188

It's a huge process, but being a CHEG, all of the concepts will come naturally to you once you start piecing it together. Start with Secondary Aeration - it's the heart of the process.

I assume you are working under a PE (because design work frequently needs a PE stamp). You should not only have a boss to answer to but a mentor to bounce ideas off of when you find yourself struggling with concepts. It's one thing to struggle with a concept to achieve mastery, it's another to struggle with a sense of scope and understanding of the problem.

u/hard_truth_hurts · 1 pointr/collapse

It's a book.

u/shining_ike_bear · 1 pointr/suggestmeabook

Read a book like that a few years ago. Six Degrees. It's about global warming and its likely effects.

u/oztrez · 1 pointr/mining

What have you graduated as? You can get some good basics by signing up to EduMine (no $) and get a few free online materials that are a good starting point for an absolute beginner. You question is probably too broad to get everything online though, I'd suggest that if you've got a few hundred bucks to splash out for a decent underground text like http://www.amazon.com/Underground-Mining-Methods-Fundamentals-International/dp/0873351932

u/ihopeidontdeletethis · 1 pointr/worldnews

Highly suggest the people in this thread read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-War-Invasive-Species-Permaculture/dp/160358563X

u/Domethegoon · 1 pointr/FE_Exam

Yeah, there is a $25 review book with over 100 practice problems and solutions on Amazon that I will be going over this week. I also really need to study some topics like statistics so I may look into getting some review booklets about that topic.

Check this review book out: https://www.amazon.com/Environmental-Engineering-Preparation-Questions-Solutions/dp/1532827237/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1480357826&sr=1-2&keywords=environmental+engineering+fe

I found it on another post from this sub and it has good reviews. For $25 it can't hurt.

u/entheox · 1 pointr/enviroaction

Second this. Permaculture is a great sub. And also check out the book Beyond the War on Invasive Species by Tao Orion.

And if you're curious to check out some resources on permaculture, there is an online library at library.uniteddiversity.coop that will help get you started! If you find anything valuable, I recommend supporting the authors by purchasing a hard copy as well.

u/brasslizzard · 1 pointr/climate

Watch this video clip, based on actual facts.

My top book recommendation:

Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet by Mark Lynas

It paints a picture in a real nice way and serves as a good guide for thinking about various degrees.

As mentioned by /u/extinction6 watch Kevin Anderson.

u/33degree · 1 pointr/conspiracy

> But we're discussing HAARP causing earthquakes

According to the sources cited in this book

u/sevenmouse · 1 pointr/Permaculture

I found this book on the subject very thought provoking and informative.

https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-War-Invasive-Species-Permaculture/dp/160358563X

u/accharbs · 1 pointr/pics

Of course. Have you ever read Silent Spring?

u/SickSalamander · 1 pointr/biology
u/monghai · 1 pointr/math

This will give you some solid theory on ODEs (less so on PDEs), and a bunch of great methods of solving both ODEs and PDEs. I work a lot with differential equations and this is one of my principal reference books.

This is an amazing book, but it mostly covers ODEs sadly. Both the style and the material covered are great. It might not be exactly what you're looking for, but it's a great read nonetheless.

This covers PDEs from a very basic level. It assumes no previous knowledge of PDEs, explains some of the theory, and then goes into a bunch of elementary methods of solving the equations. It's a small book and a fairly easy read. It also has a lot of examples and exercises.

This is THE book on PDEs. It assumes quite a bit of knowledge about them though, so if you're not feeling too confident, I suggest you start with the previous link. It's something great to have around either way, just for reference.

Hope this helped, and good luck with your postgrad!

u/naufrag · 1 pointr/climate

Here are a few links that I've found interesting or useful.

this one is an animation of the decline of arctic sea ice over the last couple decades:
Ice Dream by Andy Robinson

The Representative Concentration Pathways- possible future greenhouse gas concentrations depending on what emissions path humanity takes, adopted for the IPCC 5th assesment report in 2014.

How the global average temperature is expected to rise based on the chosen RCP's.
global temperature rise projections for different emissions scenarios

Here is what those temperature rises translate into in the real world-
a degree by degree explanation of what will happen when the earth warms a very short synopsis of some of the effects we may expect in the coming yeara as global average temperatures rise. More detail can be found in the book,
Six Degrees- Our Future on a Hotter Planet by Mark Lynas

Antarctic sea ice has also begun to collapse in the last few months:
global sea ice area

From Climate Code Red, an article that contends there is no "carbon budget" left to limit warming to 1.5C under sensible assumptions of risk and potential damage-
Unravelling the myth of a "carbon budget" for 1.5C

Kevin Anderson argues in this presentationthat limiting warming to below 2C consistent with global fairness requires immediate and deep cuts in emissions in the developed world consistent with a revolutionary energy transformation.

Australians for Coal a insightful look at their corporate climate policy update.

u/TomatoAintAFruit · 1 pointr/Physics

For an undergraduate approach I recommend Schroeder. However, this book starts with thermal physics which is, well, a bit boring ;). The math is not hard, but developing that 'physics instinct' can sometimes be challenging.

For a more advanced, but very nice and systematic text, I recommend Toda, Kubo, et al.. Another graduate text is Huang.

There are also the books by Feynman and Landau and Lifshitz Pt. 1 (Pt. 2 is quantum field theory, which at this stage you probably will want to avoid).

u/27182818284 · 1 pointr/environment

If you have a chance, checkout the book Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet takes an interesting look not only at what happens at four degrees, but also temperatures lower and higher. Essentially the book starts low and grows to the scenario of what would happen when we've reached six degrees by looking at evidence published in respectable journals such as Science and Nature

u/calsaverini · 1 pointr/Physics

If you're going for a traditional old school textbook on vibrations and waves, maybe you want the book by A. P. French, or some of the books suggested below.

But if you want a more interesting look on the matter there was a book I loved to read as a physics undergrad called An Introduction to the Mathematical Theory of Waves. It goes on for a while trying to define what is a wave, and what kinds of waves are there, then goes on with a mathematical description of a huge number of wave-like phenomena - from the good old waves on a string and d'Alembert's equation to traffic jams, solitons and non-linear waves.

It's a little heavy on partial differential equations, but it is kind of self contained.

I haven't read this book in a while, but I really loved it when I was an undergrad. Sometimes this means the book is really good, sometimes it just means I wasn't mature enough to judge the book. :P



u/MyNinjaNear · 1 pointr/AskReddit
u/guitarrr · 1 pointr/conspiracy

I am surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet:

Angels Don't Play This HAARP - http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0964881209/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1374336059&sr=8-1&pi=SL75

The author, Nick Begich's brother, Mark Begich ended up becoming Senator of Alaska for some time. Side note, I went to the same highschool they did; granted many years apart.

u/conspirobot · 1 pointr/conspiro

guitarrr: ^^original ^^reddit ^^link

I am surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet:

Angels Don't Play This HAARP - http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0964881209/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1374336059&sr=8-1&pi=SL75

The author, Nick Begich's brother, Mark Begich ended up becoming Senator of Alaska for some time. Side note, I went to the same highschool they did; granted many years apart.

u/Fnuftig · -6 pointsr/sweden

Din rapport om dödsfall per energienhet är antagligen baserad på helt felaktiga uppgifter. Eller läste du den här boken som sammanställer en mängd försvunna vetenskapliga studier från Sovijet tiden som blivit begravda och räknade ut att över en miljon dött och ionte de tusen som var de officiella siffrorna?

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2010/04/26/chernobyl-radiation-killed-nearly-one-million-people-new-book

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1573317578?tag=commondreams-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=1573317578&adid=0XXBGW0SDX9BNQWNXS5T