<p>So i’m a Civ Eng student and I’ve been pondering the ramification of climate change in Civ Engineering. How do you guys think it’ll affect the discipline? Rising sea levels, increased severity of droughts and typhoons/hurricanes. Rising temperatures.
I’m pretty interested in fluid mechanics so i’m trying to tie it all together and maximize my marketability. Any input would be most welcome. Thank you :D</p>
<p>Other than increasing the importance of coastal engineering, I am not sure that it will drastically affect other realms of the discipline. Roads and bridges and buildings and water systems and the like will always be needed for civilization, so I don’t see a warming planet somehow making these things unnecessary.</p>
<p>Weather and climate are essentially large, complex fluid dynamics problems, but not of the variety that a civil engineer would typically tackle. That’s not to say you couldn’t get into that sort of thing, but I don’t believe that is typical.</p>
<p>Bill Nye was talking on the news about climate change and its effects and something he said that would pertain to engineering students was that a road may be needed to be moved five feet further inward which would cost tons in terms of construction and energy.</p>
<p>In 1980, I was interested in climatology. I ended up in “Civil & Environmental program”, but thatmostly had focus on building and sewage treatment. My interest (interaction of weather and pollution) would have been a better fit with ChemE, but that was not my cup of tea. I switched to MechE because it seemed interesting and broad. </p>
<p>I was planning on living in Australia for a while after graduation. Since most cities are in costal areas and water management is a major issue in a very very dry continent I was wondering whether there was anything in particular i should emphasize. </p>
<p>New Zealand is another contender. I attend school in California, and since New Zealand is an area of major seismic activity I could probably get some training in that area that would be valuable there. But that might limit my marketability to areas seismically active.</p>