Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
two-thirds of the way through, because the best way to
read the topic is not necessarily from beginning to end.
But then, who always chooses to read the introduction?
With 43 different contributors (and uncertainty about
this number until the last moment), all with their own
decisions to make about what to include, how to do so,
and when to do it (even modellers occasionally prefer
going to the cinema or to watch a football match than to
sit in front of the computer for a few hours more). Since
we cannot fit page numbers to subsequent chapters until
previous ones are complete, the whole thing is strongly
interdependent in its structure and output. Why did we
ever decide to do it in the first place? The answer may lie in
a mix of prestige, expectation and satisfaction (certainly
not for the money!). What's more, why did any of the
contributors decide to take up modelling in the first place
rather than drive trains or become firefighters? What
made you pick the topic from the shelf of the library or
bookshop (or select it on a web site)?
How this chapter got to be here and how you got
to be there reading it is therefore a function of a long
series of decisions whose ultimate explanation are, quite
literally, lost in the mists of time. If we cannot explain
these decisions, how can we expect to model the huge
number of interacting human decisions that interact with
and affect the environment at scales from local to global?
At this point, should we just throw up our hands in
dismay and give up?
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