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Petroleum and hard minerals from the sea
306
Book
reciert’s
The question of the national orientation of this otherwise valuable contribution on the role of bio-indicators leads us in the direction of the main drawback of the text. and that is that much of the argument in relation to environmental legislation is solely geared to the legal mandates of the US federal government and the State legislatures, a perhaps less than helpful aspect of a book that deserves an international readership. However, at a time in which scepticism is rife regarding the degree to which environmental pollution hazards may or m,ay not affect the lives of people, ‘we need’, this volume alleges, ‘to guard against sceptlctsm that develops as a result of misunderstandings or because of inaccurate or misleading information on the effects of these environmental contaminants’. Certainly a wide lay readership for this book might have taken the ‘black’ humour out of an advertisement that appeared recently in a Mississippi newspaper: it read ‘Azaleas for Sale; not known to cause cancer’. John R. Blunden The Open Unirersily,
Milton Keynes
Earney, F. C. F. Pe[rolewn 1980. 29 Ipp. f14.95 cloth.
and hard minerals from
the sea. London:
Edward
Arnold,
The book is organized in two sections, dealing respectively with the continental margin and deep seabed, all minerals other than petroleum and manganese nodules being dealt with in a single chapter at the beginning. Professor Earney then goes on to review the development in the two major areas. including the development of technology, transport infrastructure, and the impact of offshore activities in a regional context. as well as covering environmental, economic, social, legal and political aspects. The discussion of the offshore petroleum industry is timely, with a useful review of activities on a world scale followed by in-depth studies of the North Sea and United States offshore-the two major regional concentrations of effort. Good teaching summaries of technological, offshore transportation and environmental developments are provided. The approach adopted in dealing with manganese nodules is inevitably somewhat different. There is much emphasis on the geological background and origins of nodules, followed by a chapter on production economics and technology, which of course remain at the research and development stage. The potential market situation for nodule products and the relationships with the UNCLOS III negotiations occupy a further two chapters. The book is on the whole clearly written and well organized, and as such constitutes a valuable undergraduate teaching text covering an area of study much in need of systematization at this level. However, the narrative style based on many references leads to great condensation in presentation of information in places, especially in the chapters on offshore petroleum development and impact. Here, the greater complexity of the North Sea situation relative to the US offshore is notable, being due to the number of national states involved in the former case. From the research point of view, the book also constitutes a useful compilation of material. Here it is worth commenting upon the presentation of the 600 or so references listed alphabetically at the end, and also numbered consecutively according to the alphabetical order. with the numbers used in the text. One suspects this may be due to the use of a large number of trade press references, inevitable in dealing with the fastdeveloping offshore industries, which are fortunately endowed with a good trade press. Despite its length. the list is not comprehensive even in the field of major texts, and the listing adopted makes evaluation by the researcher more difficult in unfamiliar areas of study.
Book reviews
307
Some criticism may be levelled at the balance of coverage, in the sense that roughly equal space is allotted to offshore petroleum and manganese nodules respectively, given that the former is, and is likely to remain. the major offshore mineral industry in a geographical context, whereas the latter is still at the R & D stage. The author does indeed point out the misleading publicity which deep seabed mining often receives, and the approach may thus be justified in a futuristic sense rather than as a geography of the present. The term ‘maritime geography’ is nowhere mentioned in this book, but it may be regarded, despite its balance, as a valuable contribution to this relatively new and fastdeveloping field of study, as well as to the well-established study of the geography of mineral resources. H. D. Smith Department of Maritime
Studies,
Black, J. Urban transportplanning.
UWIST
London:
Wolman, H. and Reigeluth, G. Financing New Brunswick: Transaction Books, Eastbourne). 44 pp. X3.50.
Croom Helm, 1981. 248 pp. &7.95 limp.
urban public transportation: 1980 (distributed in UK
the US and Europe. by Holt-Saunders,
The field loosely described as transport planning emerged from a number of disciplines in the 1960s. Its foremost source of practitioners was highway and traffic engineering, its main sources of initial ideas were geography and economics, but its growth has been autonomous, based on the needs and experience of practising transport planners. It is therefore less applied geography than what transport geography might have become if it had truly been applied. The range of techniques developed has been great, and the newcomer is often perplexed by the variety of technical terms (category analysis, diversion curves, modal split, and disaggregate demand models) which are used. Most of the texts in this field are either outdated or only partially cover the ground. A new text in this field is therefore most welcome. Black divides the topic under two main headings: theory and practice. Under theory he discusses the fundamental land use-transport relationship and then examines supply, demand and forecasting. The thoroughness of the approach can be judged from the sections of chapter 3-data collection, traffic generation, traffic distribution, modal split, traffic assignment and behavioural modelling, and the author gives useful references to sources which discuss method, which he does not cover (p. 61). The biggest doubt about this first section, however, is in the treatment of demand, which too often seems to be thought of as a fixed quantity (rather than as a demand curve). This is, of course, the greatest fallacy of much traditional traffic planning and Black certainly gives a fair reflection of the field. The second part of the book (Practice) is more mixed. Chapter 5 describes the Canberra Area Transportation Study as an example of conventional studies, and the same study is used as the main context for discussions of strategic transport planning (chapter 6), public transport planning (chapter 7) and short-term planning (chapter 8). Chapter 9 looks at local area transport planning for pedestrians, for parking and for residential areas. In both parts of the book the author takes an avowedly technical stance. He makes a distinction between ‘transport planning’ (a collection of integrated tools for defining and solving transport problems) and ‘transport policy’, in which the ethical and political issues are discussed. Following this distinction he seeks to avoid any discussions of policy (even
Book
reciert’s
The question of the national orientation of this otherwise valuable contribution on the role of bio-indicators leads us in the direction of the main drawback of the text. and that is that much of the argument in relation to environmental legislation is solely geared to the legal mandates of the US federal government and the State legislatures, a perhaps less than helpful aspect of a book that deserves an international readership. However, at a time in which scepticism is rife regarding the degree to which environmental pollution hazards may or m,ay not affect the lives of people, ‘we need’, this volume alleges, ‘to guard against sceptlctsm that develops as a result of misunderstandings or because of inaccurate or misleading information on the effects of these environmental contaminants’. Certainly a wide lay readership for this book might have taken the ‘black’ humour out of an advertisement that appeared recently in a Mississippi newspaper: it read ‘Azaleas for Sale; not known to cause cancer’. John R. Blunden The Open Unirersily,
Milton Keynes
Earney, F. C. F. Pe[rolewn 1980. 29 Ipp. f14.95 cloth.
and hard minerals from
the sea. London:
Edward
Arnold,
The book is organized in two sections, dealing respectively with the continental margin and deep seabed, all minerals other than petroleum and manganese nodules being dealt with in a single chapter at the beginning. Professor Earney then goes on to review the development in the two major areas. including the development of technology, transport infrastructure, and the impact of offshore activities in a regional context. as well as covering environmental, economic, social, legal and political aspects. The discussion of the offshore petroleum industry is timely, with a useful review of activities on a world scale followed by in-depth studies of the North Sea and United States offshore-the two major regional concentrations of effort. Good teaching summaries of technological, offshore transportation and environmental developments are provided. The approach adopted in dealing with manganese nodules is inevitably somewhat different. There is much emphasis on the geological background and origins of nodules, followed by a chapter on production economics and technology, which of course remain at the research and development stage. The potential market situation for nodule products and the relationships with the UNCLOS III negotiations occupy a further two chapters. The book is on the whole clearly written and well organized, and as such constitutes a valuable undergraduate teaching text covering an area of study much in need of systematization at this level. However, the narrative style based on many references leads to great condensation in presentation of information in places, especially in the chapters on offshore petroleum development and impact. Here, the greater complexity of the North Sea situation relative to the US offshore is notable, being due to the number of national states involved in the former case. From the research point of view, the book also constitutes a useful compilation of material. Here it is worth commenting upon the presentation of the 600 or so references listed alphabetically at the end, and also numbered consecutively according to the alphabetical order. with the numbers used in the text. One suspects this may be due to the use of a large number of trade press references, inevitable in dealing with the fastdeveloping offshore industries, which are fortunately endowed with a good trade press. Despite its length. the list is not comprehensive even in the field of major texts, and the listing adopted makes evaluation by the researcher more difficult in unfamiliar areas of study.
Book reviews
307
Some criticism may be levelled at the balance of coverage, in the sense that roughly equal space is allotted to offshore petroleum and manganese nodules respectively, given that the former is, and is likely to remain. the major offshore mineral industry in a geographical context, whereas the latter is still at the R & D stage. The author does indeed point out the misleading publicity which deep seabed mining often receives, and the approach may thus be justified in a futuristic sense rather than as a geography of the present. The term ‘maritime geography’ is nowhere mentioned in this book, but it may be regarded, despite its balance, as a valuable contribution to this relatively new and fastdeveloping field of study, as well as to the well-established study of the geography of mineral resources. H. D. Smith Department of Maritime
Studies,
Black, J. Urban transportplanning.
UWIST
London:
Wolman, H. and Reigeluth, G. Financing New Brunswick: Transaction Books, Eastbourne). 44 pp. X3.50.
Croom Helm, 1981. 248 pp. &7.95 limp.
urban public transportation: 1980 (distributed in UK
the US and Europe. by Holt-Saunders,
The field loosely described as transport planning emerged from a number of disciplines in the 1960s. Its foremost source of practitioners was highway and traffic engineering, its main sources of initial ideas were geography and economics, but its growth has been autonomous, based on the needs and experience of practising transport planners. It is therefore less applied geography than what transport geography might have become if it had truly been applied. The range of techniques developed has been great, and the newcomer is often perplexed by the variety of technical terms (category analysis, diversion curves, modal split, and disaggregate demand models) which are used. Most of the texts in this field are either outdated or only partially cover the ground. A new text in this field is therefore most welcome. Black divides the topic under two main headings: theory and practice. Under theory he discusses the fundamental land use-transport relationship and then examines supply, demand and forecasting. The thoroughness of the approach can be judged from the sections of chapter 3-data collection, traffic generation, traffic distribution, modal split, traffic assignment and behavioural modelling, and the author gives useful references to sources which discuss method, which he does not cover (p. 61). The biggest doubt about this first section, however, is in the treatment of demand, which too often seems to be thought of as a fixed quantity (rather than as a demand curve). This is, of course, the greatest fallacy of much traditional traffic planning and Black certainly gives a fair reflection of the field. The second part of the book (Practice) is more mixed. Chapter 5 describes the Canberra Area Transportation Study as an example of conventional studies, and the same study is used as the main context for discussions of strategic transport planning (chapter 6), public transport planning (chapter 7) and short-term planning (chapter 8). Chapter 9 looks at local area transport planning for pedestrians, for parking and for residential areas. In both parts of the book the author takes an avowedly technical stance. He makes a distinction between ‘transport planning’ (a collection of integrated tools for defining and solving transport problems) and ‘transport policy’, in which the ethical and political issues are discussed. Following this distinction he seeks to avoid any discussions of policy (even