Consider a Spherical Cow: A Course in Environmental Problem Solving

by John Harte

Overview

This new edition of Consider a Spherical Cow teaches basic mathematical modeling skills that are widely applicable to a huge range of environmental problems facing the world today. Organized both by modeling tools and environmental topics, this innovative book includes 56 posed problems and worked-out solutions. Readers will find introductions to topics, extensive pedagogic material explaining how to use the relevant modeling tools, and opportunities to think more deeply about or confirm steps in the provided solutions. This new edition includes 101 new quantitative homework exercises, an appendix compendium of updated environmental data, a glossary, and a bibliography, plus entirely new sections on probability, toxics, radiation and radioactivity, and epidemics.With wide topical coverage, Harte teaches the math step by step in the context of actual posed environmental problems, emphasizes limitations and strengths of models, and describes practical applications to real problems and situations. Along with the many worked-out problems, discussion questions and quantitative problems are provided as exercises for the reader. The book emphasizes creative applications of math to environmental science, not plug-in problems.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781940380223
Publisher:	University Science Books
Publication date:	03/06/2024
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	378
Product dimensions:	8.90(w) x 10.94(h) x 0.79(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

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

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