Unraveling Environmental Disasters

Unraveling Environmental Disasters provides scientific explanations of the most threatening current and future environmental disasters, including an analysis of ways that the disaster could have been prevented and how the risk of similar disasters can be minimized in the future.

Autorentext
Professor Daniel A. Vallero is a renowned environmental scientist and engineer with four decades of experience. He has advised U.S. government agencies on critical issues like PBTs, climate change, acid rain, and chemical risks. At Duke University, he led the Engineering Ethics program and taught courses on air pollution, sustainable design, and ethics. Vallero has served on the National Academy of Engineering's Online Ethics Committee and the National Institute of Engineering Ethics. An expert in emerging technologies, he focuses on societal, ethical, and public health challenges related to nanotechnology and environmental biotechnology. His work also encompasses emergency response and homeland security, making him a leading voice in environmental risk and ethics. Professor Trevor Letcher is an Emeritus Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and living in the United Kingdom. He was previously Professor of Chemistry, and Head of Department, at the University of the Witwatersrand, Rhodes University, and Natal, in South Africa (1969-2004). He has published over 300 papers on areas such as chemical thermodynamic and waste from landfill in peer reviewed journals, and 100 papers in popular science and education journals. Prof. Letcher has edited and/or written 32 major books, of which 22 were published by Elsevier, on topics ranging from future energy, climate change, storing energy, waste, tyre waste and recycling, wind energy, solar energy, managing global warming, plastic waste, renewable energy, and environmental disasters. He has been awarded gold medals by the South African Institute of Chemistry and the South African Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Journal of Chemical Thermodynamics honoured him with a Festschrift in 2018. He is a life member of both the Royal Society of Chemistry (London) and the South African Institute of Chemistry. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Chemical Thermodynamics, and is a Director of the Board of the International Association of Chemical Thermodynamics since 2002.

Klappentext
There are as many ways of describing and analyzing environmental disasters as there are disasters themselves. Unfortunately, such characterizations in the lay press and the scientific literature are incomplete and commonly wrong. Therefore, there is a great need for a dialogue within the scientific community. This book provides that dialogue between a prominent physical chemist, Trevor Letcher, and a notable environmental expert, Daniel Vallero, and in doing so approaches the presentation of disasters from a unique perspective. The book applies "failure analysis" to recent environmental catastrophes, such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the tsunami in Japan leading to the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster.

Zusammenfassung

"This important, clearly written, well-organized book addresses a confluence of significant global issues and brings them into focus. Vallero.and Letcher.examine engineering failures within the context of generating environmental disasters.The book addresses related issues of sustainability, anthropogenic global warming, pesticide use and its impact on the food chain, vinyl chloride production, etc.Summing Up: Essential." --CHOICE Reviews Online, January 2014

Inhalt

1. Failures
   
   2. Science
   3. Explosions
   4. Plumes
   5. Leaks
   6. Spills
   7. Fires
   8. Climate
   9. Nature
   10. Minerals
   11. Recalcitrance
   12. Radiation
   13. Invasions
   14. Products
   15. Unsustainability
   16. Society
   17. Future
       Glossary of Terms