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International Affairs U4735
Environmental Science for Decision Makers

Syllabus - Fall 2003

Lecture: Tu & Th 2:40 - 3:55p.m; Room 407 IAB.
Seminar: TBA, office hours Tu or Th 1:00-2:30 p.m. 551 Schermerhorn Annex

Instructors' Contact Info | Course Summary | Grading Guidelines
General Course Goals | Texts | Additional References

Semester Schedule and Lecture Notes

Course Summary.

Through lectures, discussions, assigned readings, and problem sets we will address three central themes of current environmental policy:

1. Water,
2. Energy,
3. Climate.

These examples include issues about which there is considerable divergence of opinion both about underlying data/observations and about the most effective policy options. This one-semester course has a modular format presenting selected scientific foundations for specific given policy issues, followed by analysis and discussion of relevant scientific/policy controversies. Lectures/discussions will be led by three staff members from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. There will be a short exam and problem sets assigned for each of the three segments of the course. Materials covered will include a range of time and space scales, from those primarily relevant to particular river systems (ie. Indus & Nile Rivers) over decades, to topics of global significance on the time-scale of a century or more (climate change and energy). Our primary goal is to present simple, first-order quantitative methods that can be applied to analyzing environmental problems. A companion, optional, one point seminar, available to all registered students in U4735, will pursue similar topics and issues through more extensive problem sets. This seminar is highly recommended for all SIPA students & required for undergraduate students receiving science requirement credit for U4735.

Grading Guidelines.

Course grade (3 Points) based on 25% for each in-class plus final exam and 25% on problem sets. One point seminar will be evaluated independently and the grade for this component averaged (25% of total weight) with that for the lecture portion of the course (75% of total weight).

General Course Goals.

Many environmental problems are inherently international and they all may have some impact on public policy. The demands of increasing human populations for earth resources and the concomitant generation of waste stresses a variety of earth systems. Assessment of complex interactions between nonrenewable resource use, pollutant generation and renewable resource contamination requires understanding of a number of natural systems of the Earth's environment and their sensitivity to a variety of stresses.

Although you can expect to learn some specific factual information about several subjects in environmental science during this course, probably the most important result of participation should be to gain confidence in analyzing the dynamics of the natural world on your own, especially through simple, order of magnitude calculations.

Texts.

Gleick, Peter H., The World's Water, the Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources, 2002-2003, Island Press, Suite 300, 1718 Connecticut Av, NW, Washington, DC 20009, Covelo, CA, 2003.
Brief articles on selected topics concerning water, with extensive tables of data on water resources.

See: www.worldwater.org for further data resources.

Harte, John, Consider a Spherical Cow, A Course in Environmental Problem Solving, University Science Books, Mill Valley, CA,1988, 283 pp. paperback.
Used as text for companion tutorial on quantitative examination of natural systems, excellent resource for tabulated scientific data (appendix) and methods of first-order calculations.

Above texts are available from Labyrinth Books (536 West 112th St, 212-865-1588) or on reserve in the SIPA (IAB) Library or on-line.

Additional references [recommended source material, but not required reading for this course].

Brown, Lester R., Christopher Flavin, Hilary French, et al. State of the World, 2000, Worldwatch Institute, W.W Norton & Company, NY, 2000, 276 pp. (paperback). Selected chapter topics authored by WWI staff.

Cohen, Joel E., How Many People Can The Earth Support?, WW Norton & Company, NY, 1995, 532 pp. (paper back & hard cover). Excellent resource for history of human populations.
Chap. 5, Human population history in numbers and graphs: 76 - 96.
Chap. 14, Water: a case study of natural constraints: 297 - 328.
Appendix 2, Estimates of past human population sizes (millions): 400 -401.

Dai Qing, edited by John G. Thibodeau and Philip B Williams, The River Dragon Has Come!, The Three Gorges Dam and the Fate of China's Yangtze River and Its People, Probe International, International Rivers Network, M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY, London, England, 240 pp. (paper back).
Brief essays and appendices by a number of authors covering a range of environmental and social issues posed by construction of the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River. General thrust of the articles is in strong opposition to the dam construction, hence the treatment is not balanced. However, the book does provide a valuable source of relevant information.

Feynmann, R. (1963) Atoms in motion, Chapter 1 in: Lectures on Physics. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.

Firor, John, The Changing Atmosphere, A Global Challenge, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1990, 145 pp. (paperback).
Simple introduction to human impacts on the atmosphere.

Gleick, Peter H., The World's Water, the Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources, 1998-1999, Island Press, Suite 300, 1718 Connecticut Av, NW, Washington, DC 20009, Covelo, CA, 1998, 307 pp (paper back) ISBN 1-55963-592-4 Brief articles on selected topics concerning water, with extensive tables of data on water resources. This was first edition of book series previously used as text for this course.

Gleick, Peter H.,  The World's Water, 2000-2001, The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources,  Island Press, Suite 300, 1718 Connecticut Av, NW, Washington, DC 20009, Covelo, CA, 2000, 315 pp (paper back) ISBN 1-55963-792-7
Brief articles on selected topics concerning water, with extensive tables of data on water resources. This was the second edition of the book series previously used as a text for this course.

IPCC Summary for Policy Makers: A report of Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change.

Murck, Barbara W., Brian J. Skinner, Stephen C. Porter, Environmental Geology, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, NY, 1996 535 pp. (paperback)
Good general reference on a number of topics discussed in this course.

Meyers, Norman, Gaia, An Atlas of Planet Management, Anchor Books, Doubleday, New York, 272 pp., 1993.
Another source of a broad spectrum of data on the environment, with much of the information presented in graphs and diagrams.

Paulos, John Allen, Beyond Numeracy, Ruminations of a Number Man, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1991. 281+ pp.
Chapters w/ definitions and descriptions of scientific notation, statistics, E, exponential growth, Arabic numerals, and many other topics. Easy to read.

Paulos, John Allen, Innumeracy, Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences, Hill and Wang, New York, 1988, 135 pp. Science Library at CU, QA93.P38, 1988.
Probability, coincidence, statistics and society. Many examples of the effects of not having basic intuition about statistics in assessing risks and other aspects of modern society. Easy to read.

Postel, Sandra, Pillar of Sand, Can the Irrigation Miracle Last?, WW Norton & Co, New York, 313 pp., 1999. Summary of the history of irrigation, with extensive citations of source information. Worldwatch Institute publication.

Radiation Through the Atmosphere.

Solar Radiation and Chemical Change.

Turner, B.L. (ed), The Earth as Transformed by Human Action, Cambridge U. Press, 1990.
Contains chapters on population, water, energy, climate, forest and many other subjects. 700+ pages, now in paperback (about $44.00).

Updated December 10, 2003 .
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