(Part 2) 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 products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
Apparently yes. Here's a relevant page from the source that the comic lists.
Was it GarbageLand: The Secret Trail of Trash ?
The comic has a citation at the bottom, "The Earth's Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change" by Vaclav Smil.
Try to understand that the hearing you saw was political theater. It's a gimmick orchestrated by the majority party to try to drum up headlines on partisan media, galvanize the hardcore issue-followers from their base, and make snarky comments. The purpose of a hearing like this is most emphatically not to dig into the heart of an issue and try to come to a better understand of it. It's also an opportunity for trying to re-frame political discourse; bear in mind that a the very moment of this hearing, the ADP was convening to finalize the penultimate text of the COP21 and Paris Agreement.
It's very worrisome to me that you came away from this hearing with the impression that there are two sides to the climate change issue. There are not. There is not competing, alternative explanation of modern climate change, and there is no serious, scholarly debate about broad swaths of the field. What you saw at the hearing were manufactured controversies - misdirections which prey on the lay person's unfamiliarity with the science. For instance, Senator Cruz insisted - multiple times - that the satellite temperature record is the "gold standard" for recording temperatures and documenting potential climate change, and that we can't trust the surface temperature record because the data isn't available. That's, without any question or minimization whatsoever, absolute horseshit. In reality, all of the data and code necessary to reproduce the surface temperature record is available freely for anyone to download, and old records are archived in their original format. On the other hand, the satellite record is not freely available - it's privately maintained by both RSS and UAH. UAH has also - for two decades now - refused to release the code used to produce their dataset. That's a major problem, given the complexity of trying to infer temperatures from what satellites measure. In fact, it requires simplified atmosphere/climate models validated against the surface temperature record. So you can begin to see the problem here, and the insidious goal of this hearing - to invert the idea of which dataset is more reliable.
If you want to learn more about climate science, then stick to your textbooks. Some very good ones for geosciences students would be "Global Warming: The Complete Briefing" by John Houghton and "What We Know About Climate Change" by Kerry Emanuel. I'd be happy to recommend further resources from there.
But if you're looking for a head-to-head debate about climate science you won't find one, because there isn't a serious contrarian side on the issue.
Here’s a really solid read on the Colorado River and how it’s water is used. I highly recommend it.
Volcanology:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Volcanoes-Late-Peter-Francis/dp/0199254699
otherwise:
Petroleum Geology From Mature Basins to New Frontiers
\>>> I tried to compile the rest of the books.
​
But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz
by Geoff Dyer
(can't find the same edition)
"May be the best book ever written about jazz."—David Thomson, Los Angeles Times
In eight poetically charged vignettes, Geoff Dyer skillfully evokes the music and the men who shaped modern jazz. Drawing on photos, anecdotes, and, most important, the way he hears the music, Dyer imaginatively reconstructs scenes from the embattled lives of some of the greats: Lester Young fading away in a hotel room; Charles Mingus storming down the streets of New York on a too-small bicycle; Thelonious Monk creating his own private language on the piano. However, music is the driving force of But Beautiful, and wildly metaphoric prose that mirrors the quirks, eccentricity, and brilliance of each musician's style.
​
The Tide: The Science and Stories Behind the Greatest Force on Earth
by Hugh Aldersey-Williams
Half of the world’s population today lives in coastal regions lapped by tidal waters. But the tide rises and falls according to rules that are a mystery to almost all of us. In The Tide, celebrated science writer Hugh Aldersey-Williams weaves together centuries of scientific thinking with the literature and folklore the tide has inspired to explain the power and workings of this most remarkable force.
Here is the epic story of the long search to understand the tide from Aristotle, to Galileo and Newton, to classic literary portrayals of the tide from Shakespeare to Dickens, Melville to Jules Verne.
​
Return of the Sea Otter
by Todd McLeish
A science journalist's journey along the Pacific Coast from California to Alaska to track the status, health, habits, personality, and viability of sea otters--the appealing species unique to this coastline that was hunted to near extinction in the 18th and 19th centuries. These adorable, furry marine mammals--often seen floating on their backs holding hands--reveal the health of the coastal ecosystem along the Pacific Ocean. Once hunted for their prized fur during the 1700s and 1800s, these animals nearly went extinct. Only now, nearly a century after hunting ceased, are populations showing stable growth in some places. Sea otters are a keystone species in coastal areas, feeding on sea urchins, clams, crab, and other crustaceans. When they are present, kelp beds are thick and healthy, providing homes for an array of sealife. When otters disappear, sea urchins take over, and the kelp disappears along with all of the creatures that live in the beds. Now, thanks to their protected status, sea otters are floating around in coves in California, Washington, and Alaska.
​
Why Women Will Save the Planet
by Friends Of The Earth, Jenny Hawley (Editor)
Women's empowerment is critical to environmental sustainability, isn't it? When Friends of the Earth asked this question on Facebook half of respondents said yes and half said no, with women as likely to say no as men. This collection of articles and interviews, from some of the leading lights of the environmental and feminist movements, demonstrates that achieving gender equality is vital if we are to protect the environment upon which we all depend. It is a rallying call to environmental campaigning groups and other environmentalists who have, on the whole, neglected women's empowerment in their work.
​
Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea and Human Life
by George Monbiot
This book explodes with wonder and delight. Making use of remarkable scientific discoveries that transform our understanding of how natural systems work, George Monbiot explores a new, positive environmentalism that shows how damaged ecosystems on land and at sea can be restored, and how this restoration can revitalize and enrich our lives. Challenging what he calls his “ecological boredom,” Monbiot weaves together a beautiful and riveting tale of wild places, wildlife, and wild people. Roaming the hills of Britain and the forests of Europe, kayaking off the coast of Wales with dolphins and seabirds, he seeks out the places that still possess something of the untamed spirit he would like to resurrect.
He meets people trying to restore lost forests and bring back missing species—such as wolves, lynx, wolverines, wild boar, and gray whales—and explores astonishing evidence that certain species, not just humans, have the power to shape the physical landscape.
​
To the River: A Journey Beneath the Surface
by Olivia Laing
To the River is the story of the Ouse, the Sussex river in which Virginia Woolf drowned in 1941. One midsummer week over sixty years later, Olivia Laing walked Woolf's river from source to sea. The result is a passionate investigation into how history resides in a landscape - and how ghosts never quite leave the places they love. Along the way, Laing explores the roles rivers play in human lives, tracing their intricate flow through literature and mythology alike. To the River excavates all sorts of stories from the Ouse's marshy banks, from the brutal Barons' War of the thirteenth century to the 'Dinosaur Hunters', the nineteenth-century amateur naturalists who first cracked the fossil code. Central among these ghosts is, of course, Virginia Woolf herself: her life, her writing and her watery death. Woolf is the most constant companion on Laing's journey, and To the River can be read in part as a biography of this extraordinary English writer, refracted back through the river she loved. But other writers float through these pages too - among them Iris Murdoch, Shakespeare, Homer and Kenneth Grahame, author of the riverside classic The Wind in the Willows.
No the site you linked is NOT the peer reviewed study OR a peer reviewed source. It is a newspaper in Abu Dhabi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_National_(Abu_Dhabi)
There is a HUGE difference between some random newspaper says "this scientific study says XYZ" which is all you have linked and an actual peer reviewed study I can read. Under the best circumstances a lot of studies are mis-attributed or mis-understood by the media but in this case we have no evidence such a study even took place.
No where in the article do they give a link or proper attribution to a peer reviewed source. They claim that NOAA has all this data BUT they provide nothing to back that up with. Also searching for the Author of the paper they claim wrote it finds again no evidence any such paper exists. They talk about his Gaia hypothesis (something he came up with 50 years ago) but then make a whole lot of claims about the effects that I can find no evidence of.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock
Even if he had published such an article he is considered fringe because many of his ideas while interesting are un-proven and alarmist so I would want to see other scientists weigh in on the paper as well. I consider it unlikely that he wrote such a paper saying that global warming is no big deal which is the point the article is making since recently he published this gem:
https://www.amazon.com/Vanishing-Face-Gaia-Final-Warning/dp/0465019072
The reason I asked for sources was not that I needed you to do research for me it was that I had already done all this research and determined the article you linked to be un-reliable for all the reasons I linked and I was giving you the benefit of the doubt that perhaps there was something I was overlooking or a source I could not see. If there is an actual peer reviewed article on this I would be very interested in reading it but as of yet I cannot find one and I am starting to think one does not exist.
So to summarize the article you linked is some journalist in Abu Dhabi taking a 50 year old theory and using it to say oh look global warming is no big deal without providing very much if any evidence or sources for those claims. Meanwhile the guy who came up with that theory thinks the sky is falling and Europe and North America will be un-inhabitable in the next 30 years due to climate change.
I think the books of Ken Deffeyes are great introductions. He is a really smart and knowledgeable geology professor at a top Ivy League school.
http://www.amazon.com/Hubberts-Peak-Impending-World-Shortage/dp/0691141193/
http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Oil-View-Hubberts-Peak/dp/0809029561/
http://www.amazon.com/When-Oil-Peaked-Kenneth-Deffeyes/dp/B004WSW1E4/
We need to invest in ethanol man, burn corn, save the earth, peak oil man.
"In 2001, Kenneth Deffeyes made a grim prediction: world oil production would reach a peak within the next decade--and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. "
http://www.amazon.com/Hubberts-Peak-Impending-World-Shortage/dp/0691141193/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1453429516&sr=8-3&keywords=peak+oil
Technical books?
http://www.amazon.com/Groundwater-R-Allan-Freeze/dp/0133653129
http://www.amazon.com/Ground-Water-Contamination-Transport-Remediation/dp/0130138401
Here's my books from grad school
https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Attenuation-Chlorinated-Solvents-Subsurface/dp/0471197491
https://www.amazon.com/Hydrology-Floodplain-Analysis-Philip-Bedient/dp/0132567962
https://www.amazon.com/Ground-Water-Contamination-Transport-Remediation/dp/0130138401
https://www.amazon.com/Environmental-Organic-Chemistry-Rene-Schwarzenbach/dp/0471357502
https://www.amazon.com/Environmental-Biotechnology-Principles-Applications-Rittmann/dp/0071181849
https://www.amazon.com/Air-Pollution-Its-Origin-Control/dp/0673994163
Ozonation is used a number of countries as the primary disinfecting agent:
http://www.lenntech.com/processes/disinfection/regulation-eu/eu-water-disinfection-regulation.htm
They teach this in first-year engineering classes, and it works quite well.
This book covers it in detail:
http://www.amazon.com/Environmental-Engineering-Joseph-A-Salvato/dp/0471418137
No idea.
Amazon has a few books:
https://www.amazon.com/Software-Engineering-Embedded-Systems-Integration-ebook/dp/B019ZU5APU/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=ISO26262&qid=1555694080&s=gateway&sr=8-4
Self assessment should go over what you need to know internally:
https://www.amazon.com/ISO-26262-Complete-Self-Assessment-Guide-ebook/dp/B07CVVGKCN/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=ISO26262&qid=1555694080&s=gateway&sr=8-3
Alright, well a book you could look at would be this book. However it's very math/statistics heavy. It covers the simplex algorithms and all that you'll need. It's probably not laid out like you are looking for it to be though.
With regards to OR, there aren't many 'review courses' because it's a very narrow and very specific field. Having said that, you could look for courses that has a description having something like, "fundamentals of deterministic optimization algorithms." But, lol, I doubt any class with that title would be simple, or one you could take without a lot of pre-requisites.
Look at this and this as well.
I recommend "What we know about climate change" by MIT's Prof. Kerry Emmanuel or "Global warming: understanding the forecast" by University of Chicago's Prof. David Archer (two prominent climate scientists). I think the first is more accessible to someone with just a high school science background and the second for someone with a college science background. The information on the NASA site is quite good. The best technical document out there is the most recent IPCC report on climate change science, but its several thousands pages long and quite dense.
Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb.
"In Eager, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb reveals that our modern idea of what a healthy landscape looks like and how it functions is wrong, distorted by the fur trade that once trapped out millions of beavers from North America’s lakes and rivers. The consequences of losing beavers were profound: streams eroded, wetlands dried up, and species from salmon to swans lost vital habitat. Today, a growing coalition of “Beaver Believers”—including scientists, ranchers, and passionate citizens—recognizes that ecosystems with beavers are far healthier, for humans and non-humans alike, than those without them. From the Nevada deserts to the Scottish highlands, Believers are now hard at work restoring these industrious rodents to their former haunts. Eager is a powerful story about one of the world’s most influential species, how North America was colonized, how our landscapes have changed over the centuries, and how beavers can help us fight drought, flooding, wildfire, extinction, and the ravages of climate change. Ultimately, it’s about how we can learn to coexist, harmoniously and even beneficially, with our fellow travelers on this planet."
Well, this is considered by most of us to be the go-to for that kind of purpose: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Volcanoes-Late-Peter-Francis/dp/0199254699
I had these text books:
one, two, three, four
And I loved this book Cadillac Desert ; there's a lot more .....
Applied Hydrogeology
I used it for a course in grad school - but I end up using it now while on the job. Not a tremendous amount in it about mineral deposition, but it still has a good bit on water chemistry, and explains carbonate equilibrium really well.
http://www.amazon.ca/dp/0070418780
I have one chapter left in George Monbiot's Feral and it has really opened my perspective drastically. I visited Scotland for my first time last summer, and Wales just last month (I recently moved to Europe), and although something felt "off" to me, I couldn't put my finger on it. Now I understand that it is entirely the result of grazing and poor management requirements that are even set forth by the government (declaring that oaks, alders, birches, and other trees are "invasive" although they are natural is insane).
I was lucky enough in both Wales and Scotland to find some older forests, which were absolutely stunning. I have spent a lot of my life in New Hampshire (USA), and until the early 1900s something like 95% of the state was clearcut, and I had never been able to imagine that as possible until realizing why the UK looks like it does.
If you have not read Monbiot's book, I highly recommend it for his critique of the UK "wilderness," as well as his overall thesis on rewilding.
>Metcalf and Eddy
This is also a good one.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0070418780/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i4
Just read about this last month in How to Cool the Planet by Jeff Goodell.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Cool-Planet-Geoengineering-Audacious/dp/0618990615
I came into this with a BS in micro biology and an MS in soils, so no relevant coursework. The exam is all over the board. I was able to get through it using study material. This guide was awesome, https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0984254536/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_bdcrb_top?ie=UTF8. This one is the bible Environmental Engineering https://www.amazon.com/dp/0471418137/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_U3GiDb37BV6QH.
Many of the questions in the exam age more critical thinking than anything. Take your time and go over your answers.
Came here to say MWH. If you're looking for a more undergraduate level type of book, look at Water and Wastewater Engineering, Principles and Practices. We used it in an undergrad class I was in, it explains processes and designs, as well as gives some generally used dimensions and values.
There are four links in the proposal, under the Cloud Seeding subhead near the bottom. Here's Lovelock's book.
http://runoffgroove.com/ has a lot of good pedal schematics and clips for how they sound. Lots of innovative ideas that might help put a schematic to a sound. Unfortunately it is missing a lot of circuit theory on how they work. Assuming that you are in high school I would start by learning op amps, diodes, BJTs, MOSFETs, and maybe JFETS.
This book should be able to tell you how all these work and you could probably find a PDF copy online, just be careful about that. It explains pretty much anything you might want to know about these, but it is a lot of theory if you do want to learn how these components work.
If you have questions you can always PM me and I'll do my best to answer!
Microelectronics Circuit Analysis and Design - by Neamen
This is the textbook for my colleges course. The description for the class is "Diode and transistor circuits, small signal analysis, amplifier design, differential and operational amplifiers, flipflop circuits and waveshaping."
Cheapest paperback is $90. But let's just say if you can wade your way through the torrential downpour of webpages on the internet you can find it much cheaper.
(was that subtle enough? haha)
In no particular order:
More like a journalist's POV: Garbage Land by Elizabeth Royte
A Better version of Royte's book: Waste and Want by Susan Strasser
This is just a good read: Gone Tomorrow
My Objective Favorite (has the story about the 50 year old hot dog):
Rubbish!: The Archaeology of Garbage by William Rathje
About personal hygiene with some intersecting stories: The Dirt on Clean by Katherine Ashenburg
I have not read but I'm including because I cannot find my Primer on Recycling and this book is on my wish list: Garbology by Edward Humes
I'm an extreme water nerd.
I agree with all of geocurious' recommendations. For textbooks, those are the main ones for groundwater, especially. Fetter is another mainstay. I'm sure you can find the textbooks easily enough.
As for less academic, Cadillac Desert is good and goes into the policy behind U.S. dam building (which is long but interesting). Water: The epic struggle... is a history of the world with some interesting connections to water (though doesn't get enough into the water, from my perspective).
As for beautiful writing about water, I can't recommend Loren Eiseley enough. The Immense Journey has some really great chapters about water (and then goes on and on about human evolution, but still ok). A really neat excerpt book about geologic themes is Bedrock and that is how I found my pal, Loren.
I have also been amassing a public Spotify playlist of songs that have a hydro-theme. Message me if you want it. Sitting at a couple hundred songs right now, but definitely biased towards my musical interests.
Other books:
A good list by someone else: Aguanomics
Quotes
I have been following Paul Hawken's Drawdown ideas to sequester the excess carbon dioxide from the troposphere. Supposedly, using 102 different solutions from energy generation, to educating girls, to rebuilding cities, to clean transportation, it is possible to 'rewind' the carbon dioxide levels back to below 350 PPM.
Also, Oliver Morton's book The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change The World walks the reader through how humanity could intentionally lower the temperature of the planet temporarily, giving humanity enough time make the transition from a heavily dependent fossil fuel based civilization to a renewable energy infrastructure.
Geo engineering is still applicable for the short term until we get a permanent solution. The problem with Geo-engineering is applying permanent solution. I recommend this book.
http://www.amazon.com/How-Cool-Planet-Geoengineering-Audacious/dp/0618990615
edit: forgot book