This book explores the role and importance of interdisciplinary research in addressing key issues in climate and energy decision making. For over 30 years, an interdisciplinary team of faculty and students anchored at Carnegie Mellon University, joined by investigators and students from a number of other collaborating institutions across North America, Europe, and Australia, have worked together to better understand the global changes that are being caused by both human activities and natural causes. This book tells the story of their successful interdisciplinary work. With each chapter written in the first person, the authors have three key objectives: (1) to document and provide an accessible account of how they have framed and addressed a range of the key problems that are posed by the human dimensions of global change; (2) to illustrate how investigators and graduate students have worked together productively across different disciplines and locations on common problems; and (3) to encourage funders and scholars across the world to undertake similar large- scale interdisciplinary research activities to meet the world's largest challenges. Exploring topics such as energy efficiency, public health, and climate adaptation, and with a final chapter dedicated to lessons learned, this innovative volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, energy transitions and environmental studies more broadly.

The elimination of the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) in 1995 came during a storm of budget cutting and partisan conflict. Operationally, it left Congress without an institutional arrangement to bring expert scientific and technological advice into the process of legislative decisionmaking. This deficiency has become increasingly critical, as more and more of the decisions faced by Congress and society require judgments based on highly specialized technical information.

Offering perspectives from scholars and scientists with diverse academic backgrounds and extensive experience within the policy process, Science and Technology Advice for Congress breaks from the politics of the OTA and its contentious aftermath. Granger Morgan and Jon Peha begin with an overview of the use of technical information in framing policy issues, crafting legislation, and the overall process of governing. They note how, as nonexperts, legislators must make decisions in the face of scientific uncertainty and competing scientific claims from stakeholders. The contributors continue with a discussion of why OTA was created. They draw lessons from OTA's demise, and compare the use of science and technological information in Europe with the United States.

The second part of the book responds to requests from congressional leaders for practical solutions. Among the options discussed are expanded functions within existing agencies such as the General Accounting or Congressional Budget Offices; an independent, NGO- administrated analysis group; and a dedicated successor to OTA within Congress. The models emphasize flexibility -- and the need to make political feasibility a core component of design.

The United States produces over seventy percent of all its electricity from fossil fuels and nearly fifty percent from coal alone. Worldwide, forty-one percent of all electricity is generated from coal, making it the single most important fuel source for electricity generation, followed by natural gas. This means that an essential part of any portfolio for emissions reduction will be technology to capture carbon dioxide and permanently sequester it in suitable geologic formations. While many nations have incentivized development of CCS technology, large regulatory and legal barriers exist that have yet to be addressed. This book identifies current law and regulation that applies to geologic sequestration in the U.S., the regulatory needs to ensure that geologic sequestration is carried out safely and effectively, and barriers that current law and regulation present to timely deployment of CCS. The authors find the three most significant barriers to be: an ill-defined process to access pore space in deep saline formations; a piecemeal, procedural, and static permitting system; and the lack of a clear, responsible plan to address long-term liability associated with sequestered CO2. The book provides legislative options to remove these barriers and address the regulatory needs, and makes recommendations on the best options to encourage safe, effective deployment of CCS. The authors operationalize their recommendations in legislative language, which is of particular use to policymakers faced with the challenge of addressing climate change and energy.

This book explores the role and importance of interdisciplinary research in addressing key issues in climate and energy decision making. For over 30 years, an interdisciplinary team of faculty and students anchored at Carnegie Mellon University, joined by investigators and students from a number of other collaborating institutions across North America, Europe, and Australia, have worked together to better understand the global changes that are being caused by both human activities and natural causes. This book tells the story of their successful interdisciplinary work. With each chapter written in the first person, the authors have three key objectives: (1) to document and provide an accessible account of how they have framed and addressed a range of the key problems that are posed by the human dimensions of global change; (2) to illustrate how investigators and graduate students have worked together productively across different disciplines and locations on common problems; and (3) to encourage funders and scholars across the world to undertake similar large- scale interdisciplinary research activities to meet the world's largest challenges. Exploring topics such as energy efficiency, public health, and climate adaptation, and with a final chapter dedicated to lessons learned, this innovative volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, energy transitions and environmental studies more broadly.

Many books instruct readers on how to use the tools of policy analysis. This book is different. Its primary focus is on helping readers to look critically at the strengths, limitations, and the underlying assumptions analysts make when they use standard tools or problem framings. Using examples, many of which involve issues in science and technology, the book exposes readers to some of the critical issues of taste, professional responsibility, ethics, and values that are associated with policy analysis and research. Topics covered include policy problems formulated in terms of utility maximization such as benefit-cost, decision, and multi-attribute analysis, issues in the valuation of intangibles, uncertainty in policy analysis, selected topics in risk analysis and communication, limitations and alternatives to the paradigm of utility maximization, issues in behavioral decision theory, issues related to organizations and multiple agents, and selected topics in policy advice and policy analysis for government.

This book explains how to develop more effective risk communications using the Carnegie Mellon mental-model approach. Such communications are designed to contain, in readily usable form, the information that people need to make informed decisions about risks to health, safety, and the environment. The approach draws together methods from the natural and social sciences, providing a framework for interdisciplinary collaboration. It is demostrated with varied examples including electromagnetic fields, climate change, radon, and sexually transmitted diseases.

Many books instruct readers on how to use the tools of policy analysis. This book is different. Its primary focus is on helping readers to look critically at the strengths, limitations, and the underlying assumptions analysts make when they use standard tools or problem framings. Using examples, many of which involve issues in science and technology, the book exposes readers to some of the critical issues of taste, professional responsibility, ethics, and values that are associated with policy analysis and research. Topics covered include policy problems formulated in terms of utility maximization such as benefit-cost, decision, and multi-attribute analysis, issues in the valuation of intangibles, uncertainty in policy analysis, selected topics in risk analysis and communication, limitations and alternatives to the paradigm of utility maximization, issues in behavioral decision theory, issues related to organizations and multiple agents, and selected topics in policy advice and policy analysis for government.

This book explains how to develop more effective risk communications using the Carnegie Mellon mental-model approach. Such communications are designed to contain, in readily usable form, the information that people need to make informed decisions about risks to health, safety, and the environment. The approach draws together methods from the natural and social sciences, providing a framework for interdisciplinary collaboration. It is demostrated with varied examples including electromagnetic fields, climate change, radon, and sexually transmitted diseases.