© 2001,

AAPG/DEG

, 1075-9565/01/$15.00/0Environmental Geosciences, Volume 8, Number 2, 2001 145–147

B O O K R E V I E W S

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Book Reviews

“Scientific Uncertainty and Environmental Problem Solving” Edited by John Lemons (1996).

Blackwell Science, Malden, MA, 433 pp. Hardcover, $91.95.

As a rule, I tend to dislike compilation volumes of the-matically linked essays. Their reach often exceeds theirgrasp in terms of evenness of contributions, uniformity ofpresentation, and overall readability. On one hand, this vol-ume did nothing to change my mind and I would not recom-mend that any geoscientist purchase it for their own use. Onthe other hand, there are some parts of this collection thatare worth the read if you borrow it from the library.

John Lemons, a professor of biology and environmentalscience at the time this volume was produced, gathered to-gether 14 essays that cover the gamut of philosophy, geol-ogy, ecology, resource management, and law and their ap-plications to environmental problem solving. The unifyingtheme is reflected in the title, namely how do the observa-tion-based earth and life sciences contribute to solving envi-ronmental problems when our understandings of complexand dynamic earth and life systems are fraught with uncer-tainty?

The strongest contribution in the volume is the introduc-tory essay “Methodological Rules for Four Classes of Sci-entific Uncertainty” by Kristen Shrader-Frechette. This es-say outlines the types of uncertainty we face and the variousways that scientists and technocrats make decisions in theface of these different types of uncertainty. The essayistpulls back the philosophical curtain and exposes the culturalbiases embedded in our choice of approach to decision mak-ing. She shows in a clear and forceful presentation that theway we choose to frame a decision can determine the an-swer. This presentation is both illuminating and disconcert-ing to scientists who may have come to believe that tech-niques like expected utility analysis (of the kind commonlyused in the petroleum industry to evaluate undrilled pros-pects) provide a rational and objective tool to arrive at deci-sions in the face of scientific uncertainty. This author, if notthis essay, is a must-read for environmental geologists notalready familiar with her work.

The rest of the volume, however, is an uneven collectionof essays that discuss or demonstrate by example the waysthat scientific uncertainty impacts decision making in morespecific fields. Topics include nuclear waste facility siting,managing marine fisheries, and determining sustainable har-

vests in the forestry industry. Because the book is targetedat a broad audience, most of the essays are written in the styleof a high-level, general overview. This approach is unfortu-nate, because the best parts of the book are found in the es-says where very concrete examples are used to make a point.

I found the opposite to also be true. Some of the essayistsfelt compelled to share so much of the details of their ownwork that their thematic points become lost in a densethicket of fine details. A related criticism is that the contrib-uting essayists all seem to suffer from the American predi-lection for turning everything into acronyms: NIS, EIS, NA-PAP, PMPs, ICNAF, MATS, ESAP, SPA, CEQ, VPA—you get the picture. As well, the essays are qualitative instyle, providing very little in the way of formulas or calcula-tions, even when statistics or probabilistic methods are men-tioned. The emphasis on qualitative reasoning and argumentmakes the book longer than it could have been.

On the positive side, the collection includes some goodcase studies that exemplify how decisions were made in thereal world in the face of scientific uncertainty. In particular,I found the essay entitled “Scientific Uncertainty and Envi-ronmental Policy: Four Pollution Case Studies” by Judith S.Weis a good read because it was concrete, brief, and exam-ined how scientific uncertainty contributed to policy fail-ures as well as successes.

There are good reference lists accompanying each chap-ter. Because the contributions were solicited from differentfields, the reader will find in those reference lists good ma-terial that may otherwise have remained hidden in the jour-nals of an environmental discipline different from that ofthe reader. I should point out that the references are made ina footnote style rather than a direct author and date citation.These are compiled at the end of each essay by number, inorder of citation in the text, rather than alphabetically by au-thor. I found this style annoying because when I went backto find some references, I had to skim the entire text again tofind the appropriate reference number and then cross-refer-ence to the reference list to see if that reference was indeedthe one I had in mind. The volume also has a common in-dex, which is a must for a volume of this breadth.

On the whole, I would not recommend this book for apersonal reference collection. A more reasonable purchasewould be one on the same topic but by a single author, pref-erably one who is familiar enough with applications to asingle discipline to guide the reader directly to some usefultechniques and new understandings.

Dr. Kevin Parks

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

146

E N V I R O N M E N T A L G E O S C I E N C E S

“Studies of Earth’s Atmosphere and Geology Beneath the Seafloor” by Dudley J. Hughes, Eunho Ha, Gerald R. North, and Philip D. Rabinowitz (1998).

Texas A&M University College of Geosciences, College Station, TX, 155 p. Softcover $12.00.

When I read the title of this book, I was immediately in-terested. Somehow, it triggered in me an anticipation of acomprehensive summary of the interdisciplinary approachesused to improve our understanding of the history of Earthand its atmosphere. I was more than a little disappointedwhen I found out that instead the book contains two highlyspecialized scientific papers and one summary paper onrather unrelated topics.

In the first paper entitled “A Geologic Reinterpretation ofthe Earth’s Atmospheric History, Inferring a Major Role byCO

2

,” Mr. Dudley J. Hughes makes theoretical inferencesfrom a comprehensive study of current data about Earth’searly atmosphere. In his paper, he challenges conventionaltheories on the evolution of Earth’s atmosphere, proposinghigh concentrations of atmospheric CO

2

throughout muchof Earth history. Drawing supporting evidence from a widerange of disciplines within the earth, atmospheric, and plan-etary sciences, he argues that the commonly-held belief thatmild temperatures, similar to the present, have existed onEarth for the last 3.5 billion years is the result of constraintsplaced on scientific interpretation by geologists. For aplanet of its size, Earth should have cooled much moreslowly than what is currently accepted. In summary, hismain statements are:

1. The Earth’s atmosphere began with high temperatures,which have gradually cooled with time.

2. Maximum atmosphere apparently existed as accretionsubsided.

3. The atmosphere acted as an insulator retarding the es-cape of heat from the Earth’s surface.

4. The mass of the atmosphere has steadily declined asthe Earth cooled.

5. The Earth’s atmosphere was principally CO

2

for an es-timated 2 billion years.

6. Many ancient erosional features on Earth were formedby liquefied atmospheric gases other than water.

This, of course, is a rather radical reinterpretation ofEarth’s early history, and the author acknowledges that“some portions of the premises presented here may fail topass the scrutiny of intense examination.” However, hiscontribution can serve as a starting point for discussion andchallenge of conventional wisdom.

In summary, Mr. Hughes’ paper provides a good exampleof the scientific method: asking a question, providing aworking hypothesis, supporting this hypothesis with well-

researched evidence, and linking it together in a way that, atleast at first glance, makes sense. Although spanning over80 pages, I found it interesting and intellectually stimulatingto read.

The second paper, “Statistical Problems in Satellite RainEstimation,” authored by Drs. Eunho Ha and Gerald R.North, attempts to offer insight into the engineering/scienceinterplay in designing satellite observation systems to mea-sure meteorological parameters used in the prediction ofrain. However, without a thorough grasp of the higher artsof math and its application in statistical analysis, it is almostimpossible to follow. It starts out with a general statementthat statistical correlation studies and modeling studies areessential to gain a better understanding of the coupling be-tween the location of fields of heavy precipitation over thetropical oceans and the circulation patterns thousands of ki-lometers away in the middle latitudes. Because of the diffi-culty of measuring precipitation directly over the tropicaloceans, satellites are the only means to ensure adequate cov-erage of the area. However, there are statistical problems as-sociated with inferring precipitation rates from satellite aswell. Two of these problems are (1) the “gappiness” of theobservations resulting in errors in estimating rain rates, and(2) errors introduced by averaging areas of rain fields thatare not uniform in space and time (“beam-filling” problemand “ground-truth” problem). In the following 40 pages, theauthors explore these problems with statistical means. Forsomeone like me, who is not familiar with the subject and/orthe statistical methods applied, this is very tedious to read.Furthermore, the paper lacks a concluding chapter or para-graph in which the main findings are summarized, so thatfor the nonspecialist the results of the work presented are re-ally hard to discern.

The title of the third paper, authored by Dr. Philip D.Rabinowitz, says it all: “A Summary of Results of over TenYears of Scientific Ocean Drilling.” It provides a goodoverview of the activities of the Ocean Drilling Program(ODP), including the operational and funding statistics aswell as the scientific and technical objectives. It is wellstructured, reads well, and is informative, but appears to beout of place in this book. It would have made an excellentintroductory chapter to a special publication of ODP results.

The anonymous writer of the foreword to this bookclaims that this collection of papers exemplifies “a range ofapproaches used to gain a better understanding of theEarth.” To me it appears more like a random choice opera-tion of mixing apples and oranges. After reviewing thisbook, I am still at a loss as to the why these three articleswere put together into one book. The first two papers surelyhave their scientific merits but are definitely too long forpublication in scientific journals. They probably wouldmake good stand-alone publications once exposed to criticalexternal peer review (from the acknowledgments of the in-

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dividual contributions, I was not able to discern if they hadbeen externally reviewed or not). All of the authors are affil-iated in one way or another with the College of Geosciencesof the Texas A&M University (TAMU). At the time of pub-lication, two of the authors (G.R.N. and P.D.R.) were De-partment Heads and the other two (D.J.H. and E.H.) areformer TAMU students. I sincerely hope that the TAMU

does not require their students to buy this book for any oftheir courses. Mind you, it costs only $12, but the articlesare so vastly different in their topics that the contents of thebook could never be fully utilized within a given course.

Dr. Matthias Grobe

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada