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The weather on planet Earth is a vital and sometimes fatal force in human affairs. Efforts to control or reduce the harmful impacts of weather go back far in time. In this, the latest National Academies' assessment of weather modification, the committee was asked to assess the ability of current and proposed weather modification capabilities to provide beneficial impacts on water resource management and weather hazard mitigation. It examines new technologies, reviews advances in numerical modeling on the cloud and mesoscale, and considers how improvements in computer capabilities might be applied to weather modification. Critical Issues in Weather Modification Research examines the status of the science underlying weather modification in the United States. It calls for a coordinated national research program to answer fundamental questions about basic atmospheric processes and to address other issues that are impeding progress in weather modification.
In the middle of the Mojave Desert, Las Vegas casinos use billions of gallons of water for fountains, pirate lagoons, wave machines, and indoor canals. Meanwhile, the town of Orme, Tennessee, must truck in water from Alabama because it has literally run out. Robert Glennon captures the irony—and tragedy—of America’s water crisis in a book that is both frightening and wickedly comical. From manufactured snow for tourists in Atlanta to trillions of gallons of water flushed down the toilet each year, Unquenchable reveals the heady extravagances and everyday inefficiencies that are sucking the nation dry. The looming catastrophe remains hidden as government diverts supplies from one area t...
Meteorology.
A growing appreciation for how variations in climate affect society and the environment has increased the demand for fast and accurate predictions of climate variability. The Climate Variability and Predictability (CLIVAR) program, established internationally in 1995 and expanded to include a U.S. component in 1998, focuses on improving understanding and skill in predicting climate variability on seasonal to centennial time scales. This report evaluates the performance of the U.S. CLIVAR Project Office (PO) in fulfilling its charge from supporting agencies. The report concludes that the project office is vital for coordinating US CLIVAR activities and is effective despite limited resources. It also provides suggestions for enhancing the communications from and visibility of US CLIVAR activities and for developing strategic directions for the future.
Geoengineering, the idea of addressing climate change through large-scale technological projects, stands out among contested technologies in the degree to which its scope of possibilities and its premise are characterized by global existential risks. Despite controversy, this field has been shifting toward mainstream consideration. Geoengineering Discourse Confronting Climate Change: The Move from Margins to Mainstream in Science, News Media, and Politics examines the trajectory of geoengineering through critical discourse analysis of three key genres: science policy reports, news journalism, and congressional hearings. Brynna Jacobson explores how reports from distinguished scientific societies have constructed certain notions of legitimacy around geoengineering, how narratives within news coverage have reflected and shaped the public discourse and understanding of geoengineering, and how geoengineering has garnered political support from both major political parties in the United States. Through analysis of discursive conventions within these genres, the author reveals the evolution of notions of normalcy, legitimacy, and imperative around the field of geoengineering.
Cold War Science and the Transatlantic Circulation of Knowledge delves into how the Cold War, as a global phenomenon, shaped local conditions and decisions for science in light of US-Europe relationships. The articles in this volume, edited by Jeroen van Dongen, show how the western network in which science was circulated and produced was strongly conditioned by the state and its international relations. The workings of secrecy, the consequences of US hegemony and decolonization, and the ambitions of post-war recovery attempts were all mediated through the interference of the state and through its relative position in the network. At the same time, hubristic expectations prefigured in the state’s relation to science.
In April 1997, United States Secretary of Defense William Cohen declared that there are terrorists at work who “... are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves...“ Weather modification in the form of cloud seeding to increase snow packs in the Sierras or suppress hail over Kansas is now an everyday affair. Hundreds of environmental and weather modifying technologies have been patented in the United States alone-and hundreds more are being developed in civilian, academic, military and quasi-military laboratories around the world at this moment! This book lays bare the gri...
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The subjects refer to histories of ancient and modern use of seacoasts; possible macro-projects capable of massive changes in the coastlines of the Dead Sea, Red Sea and Persian Gulf caused by canal and massively scaled hydropower dam installations; relevant macro-projects for the Black Sea and Baltic Sea; possibilities of refreshment of the Aral Sea and Iran’s Lake Uremia with seawater or river freshwater importation macro-projects; potential rehabilitation of some vital arid zone regions now dominated by moving or movable surface granular materials using unique and unusual macro-projects; seawater flooding of land regions situated below present-day global sea-level; harnessing energy and obtaining freshwater from the world’s salt-laden ocean by modern industrial means; various macro-projects designed specifically for the protection (reduction of vulnerability) of particular Earth geographical regions.
A synthesis of the relevant agreements, customary norms and ongoing discussions on the international law on climate change.