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This is a wide-ranging and persuasive book written by an undisputed expert. Beginning with a broad history of the Universe, Earth, Life, and Man, it considers the origins and rise of science and technology, before moving on to discuss the present state of the world and its/our possible futures. Humans on Earth then addresses the main challenges for social and economic development in the 21st century in the context of global change. It presents a detailed but non-technical analysis of questions relating to climate change, our dependence on fossil fuels, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, desertification, and air, water, soil, and ocean pollution, as well as problems related to overpopulatio...
This book illuminates the importance of threat on the representation of everyday life, from an interdisciplinary perspective. Divided into three parts, the book sets out by addressing the conceptual aspects of threat and by opening views on phenomena and social processes associated with threat. It shows how threat constitutes an analytical category that simultaneously involves social, psychological, religious, historical and political factors, and calls for a sufficiently broad conceptual definition to integrate pluri-disciplinary contributions. The second part focuses on the building of threats, mainly the environmental threats that have reached a tragic dimension today and are a core aspec...
The essence of this book can be found in a line written by the ancient Roman Stoic Philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca: "Fortune is of sluggish growth, but ruin is rapid". This sentence summarizes the features of the phenomenon that we call "collapse," which is typically sudden and often unexpected, like the proverbial "house of cards." But why are such collapses so common, and what generates them? Several books have been published on the subject, including the well known "Collapse" by Jared Diamond (2005), "The collapse of complex societies" by Joseph Tainter (1998) and "The Tipping Point," by Malcom Gladwell (2000). Why The Seneca Effect? This book is an ambitious attempt to pull these vario...
Climate change highlights the challenges for long-term policy making in the face of persistent and irreducible levels of uncertainties. It calls for the development of flexible approaches, innovative governance and other elements that contribute to effective and adaptive decision-making. Exploring these new approaches is also a challenge for those involved in climate research and development of adaptation policy. The book provides a dozen real-life examples of adaptation decision making in the form of case studies: · Water supply management in Portugal, England and Wales and Hungary · Flooding, including flood risk in Ireland, coastal flooding and erosion in Southwest France, and flood management in Australia’s Hutt River region · Transport and utilities, including the Austrian Federal railway system, public transit in Dresden, and Québec hydro-electric power · Report examining communication of large numbers of climate scenarios in Dutch climate adaptation workshops.
Historic Urban Landscape is a new approach to urban heritage management, promoted by UNESCO, and currently one of the most debated issues in the international preservation community. However, few conservation practitioners have a clear understanding of what it entails, and more importantly, what it can achieve. Examples drawn from urban heritage sites worldwide – from Timbuktu to Liverpool Richly illustrated with colour photographs Addresses key issues and best practice for urban conservation
The vulnerability of socio-ecosystem combines the probability of exposure to natural or anthropogenic pressure, sensitivity and resilience. This book presents a systemic view of the diversity of pressures and impacts produced by climate change and human actions. Erosion of biodiversity by changing ocean chemistry, the intensification of global change raises the problem of the adaptation of living resources.
A meandering celebration of the indirect and unforeseen path, revealing that to err is not just human—it is everything. This book explores how, far from being an act limited to deviation from known pathways or desirable plans of action, wandering is an abundant source of meaning—a force as intimately involved in the history of our universe as it will be in the future of our planet. In ancient Australian Aboriginal cosmology, in works about the origins of democracy and surviving disasters in ancient Greece, in Eurasian steppe nomadic culture, in the lifeways of the Roma, in the movements of today’s refugees, and in our attempts to preserve spaces of untracked online freedom, wandering is how creativity and skills of adaptation are preserved in the interests of ongoing life. Astray is an enthralling look at belonging and at notions of alienation and hope.
This book discusses many of the recent theoretical and observational developments that have significant implications for astronomy and astrophysics. The main themes are (i) cosmology, (ii) gravitational wave astronomy and gravitational physics, (iii) stellar astrophysics, and (iv) active galactic nuclei and disk accretion. There are also contributions on the solar system. Contents: Cosmology: New Cosmological Data and the OCyBest-FitOCO Universe (O Lahav); Measuring the Universe with the Cosmic Microwave Background (D Barbosa & M Chu); Initial Conditions for Hybrid Inflation (L E Mendes & A R Liddle); The Density Parameter in Scalar Field Cosmologies (J P Mimoso & A Nunes); Relativistic Astr...
The spectacular success of the scientific enterprise over the last four hundred years has led to the promise of an all encompassing vision of the natural world. In this elegant picture, everything we observe is based upon just a few fundamental processes and entities. The almost infinite variety and complexity of the world is thus the product of emergence. But the concept of emergence is fraught with controversy and confusion. This book ponders the question of how emergence should be understood within the scientific picture, and whether a complete vision of the world can be attained that includes consciousness.
Há peixes tropicais a surgir na costa portuguesa. Há aves que deixaram de migrar para África e passam cá o Inverno. As amendoeiras estão a florir quase um mês mais cedo do que há 30 anos. Nas montanhas, as árvores estão a trepar para fugir ao calor. Na ilha da Madeira, os mosquitos que transmitem a dengue e a febre amarela chegaram, em 2004, e instalaram--se. Só não transmitem as doenças porque não estão infectados com osvírus. Há muitas incógnitas sobre o rumo que o clima do planeta tomará. Não se sabe onde está o ponto de ruptura do equilíbrio climático. Em parte, vai depender de nós e da maior ou menor quantidade de gases com efeito de estufa que atirarmos lá para cima nas próximas décadas. A Europa será dos continentes mais afectados e Portugal terá de enfrentar uma das maiores subidas regionais da temperatura. Há quem diga que Lisboa pode vir a ter a temperatura média actual de Rabat.