Download or read book Manipulating the Sun written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-12-18 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume puts two biblical miracles - the Sun reversing its course in II Kings 20:8-11/Isaiah 38:8 (Horologium Ahaz) and the Sun standing still in Joshua 10:12 -, in the early modern period centre stage. We pay special attention to the development of related imagery, their role as anti-Copernican arguments (in text and image), their reception, their treatment in the mathematical sciences, and their various cultural layers, with a focus on the history of art and the history of science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The material discussed spreads from rather prosaic mathematical reflections to highly appealing visual representations of the two miracles.

Download or read book Climate Intervention written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2015-06-23 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The growing problem of changing environmental conditions caused by climate destabilization is well recognized as one of the defining issues of our time. The root problem is greenhouse gas emissions, and the fundamental solution is curbing those emissions. Climate geoengineering has often been considered to be a "last-ditch" response to climate change, to be used only if climate change damage should produce extreme hardship. Although the likelihood of eventually needing to resort to these efforts grows with every year of inaction on emissions control, there is a lack of information on these ways of potentially intervening in the climate system. As one of a two-book report, this volume of Climate Intervention discusses albedo modification - changing the fraction of incoming solar radiation that reaches the surface. This approach would deliberately modify the energy budget of Earth to produce a cooling designed to compensate for some of the effects of warming associated with greenhouse gas increases. The prospect of large-scale albedo modification raises political and governance issues at national and global levels, as well as ethical concerns. Climate Intervention: Reflecting Sunlight to Cool Earth discusses some of the social, political, and legal issues surrounding these proposed techniques. It is far easier to modify Earth's albedo than to determine whether it should be done or what the consequences might be of such an action. One serious concern is that such an action could be unilaterally undertaken by a small nation or smaller entity for its own benefit without international sanction and regardless of international consequences. Transparency in discussing this subject is critical. In the spirit of that transparency, Climate Intervention: Reflecting Sunlight to Cool Earth was based on peer-reviewed literature and the judgments of the authoring committee; no new research was done as part of this study and all data and information used are from entirely open sources. By helping to bring light to this topic area, this book will help leaders to be far more knowledgeable about the consequences of albedo modification approaches before they face a decision whether or not to use them.

Download or read book The Natural Navigator written by Tristan Gooley and published by The Experiment. This book was released on 2012-06-05 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times-bestselling author of The Secret World of Weather and The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs, learn to tap into nature and notice the hidden clues all around you Before GPS, before the compass, and even before cartography, humankind was navigating. Now this singular guide helps us rediscover what our ancestors long understood—that a windswept tree, the depth of a puddle, or a trill of birdsong can help us find our way, if we know what to look and listen for. Adventurer and navigation expert Tristan Gooley unlocks the directional clues hidden in the sun, moon, stars, clouds, weather patterns, lengthening shadows, changing tides, plant growth, and the habits of wildlife. Rich with navigational anecdotes collected across ages, continents, and cultures, The Natural Navigator will help keep you on course and open your eyes to the wonders, large and small, of the natural world.

Download or read book Taming the Sun written by Varun Sivaram and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-02-26 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How solar could spark a clean-energy transition through transformative innovation—creative financing, revolutionary technologies, and flexible energy systems. Solar energy, once a niche application for a limited market, has become the cheapest and fastest-growing power source on earth. What's more, its potential is nearly limitless—every hour the sun beams down more energy than the world uses in a year. But in Taming the Sun, energy expert Varun Sivaram warns that the world is not yet equipped to harness erratic sunshine to meet most of its energy needs. And if solar's current surge peters out, prospects for replacing fossil fuels and averting catastrophic climate change will dim. Innovation can brighten those prospects, Sivaram explains, drawing on firsthand experience and original research spanning science, business, and government. Financial innovation is already enticing deep-pocketed investors to fund solar projects around the world, from the sunniest deserts to the poorest villages. Technological innovation could replace today's solar panels with coatings as cheap as paint and employ artificial photosynthesis to store intermittent sunshine as convenient fuels. And systemic innovation could add flexibility to the world's power grids and other energy systems so they can dependably channel the sun's unreliable energy. Unleashing all this innovation will require visionary public policy: funding researchers developing next-generation solar technologies, refashioning energy systems and economic markets, and putting together a diverse clean energy portfolio. Although solar can't power the planet by itself, it can be the centerpiece of a global clean energy revolution. A Council on Foreign Relations Book

Download or read book The Discovery of Global Warming written by Spencer R. Weart and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2001 a panel representing virtually all the world's governments and climate scientists announced that they had reached a consensus: the world was warming at a rate without precedent during at least the last ten millennia, and that warming was caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases from human activity. The consensus itself was at least a century in the making. The story of how scientists reached their conclusion--by way of unexpected twists and turns and in the face of formidable intellectual, financial, and political obstacles--is told for the first time in The Discovery of Global Warming. Spencer R. Weart lucidly explains the emerging science, introduces us to the major players, and shows us how the Earth's irreducibly complicated climate system was mirrored by the global scientific community that studied it. Unlike familiar tales of Science Triumphant, this book portrays scientists working on bits and pieces of a topic so complex that they could never achieve full certainty--yet so important to human survival that provisional answers were essential. Weart unsparingly depicts the conflicts and mistakes, and how they sometimes led to fruitful results. His book reminds us that scientists do not work in isolation, but interact in crucial ways with the political system and with the general public. The book not only reveals the history of global warming, but also analyzes the nature of modern scientific work as it confronts the most difficult questions about the Earth's future. Table of Contents: Preface 1. How Could Climate Change? 2. Discovering a Possibility 3. A Delicate System 4. A Visible Threat 5. Public Warnings 6. The Erratic Beast 7. Breaking into Politics 8. The Discovery Confirmed Reflections Milestones Notes Further Reading Index Reviews of this book: A soberly written synthesis of science and politics. --Gilbert Taylor, Booklist Reviews of this book: Charting the evolution and confirmation of the theory [of global warming], Spencer R. Weart, director of the Center for the History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics, dissects the interwoven threads of research and reveals the political and societal subtexts that colored scientists' views and the public reception their work received. --Andrew C. Revkin, New York Times Book Review Reviews of this book: It took a century for scientists to agree that gases produced by human activity were causing the world to warm up. Now, in an engaging book that reads like a detective story, physicist Weart reports the history of global warming theory, including the internal conflicts plaguing the research community and the role government has had in promoting climate studies. --Publishers Weekly Reviews of this book: It is almost two centuries since the French mathematician Jean Baptiste Fourier discovered that the Earth was far warmer than it had any right to be, given its distance from the Sun...Spencer Weart's book about how Fourier's initially inconsequential discovery finally triggered urgent debate about the future habitability of the Earth is lucid, painstaking and commendably brief, packing everything into 200 pages. --Fred Pearce, The Independent Reviews of this book: [The Discovery of Global Warming] is a well-written, well-researched and well-balanced account of the issues involved...This is not a sermon for the faithful, or verses from Revelation for the evangelicals, but a serious summary for those who like reasoned argument. Read it--and be converted. --John Emsley, Times Literary Supplement Reviews of this book: This is a terrific book...Perhaps the finest compliment I could give this book is to report that I intend to use it instead of my own book...for my climate class. The Discovery of Global Warming is more up-to-date, better balanced historically, beautifully written and, not least important, short and to the point. I think the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] needs to enlist a few good historians like Weart for its next assessment. --Stephen H. Schneider, Nature Reviews of this book: This short, well-written book by a science historian at the American Institute of Physics adds a serious voice to the overheated debate about global warming and would serve as a great starting point for anyone who wants to better understand the issue. --Maureen Christie, American Scientist Reviews of this book: I was very pleasantly surprised to find that Spencer Weart's account provides much valuable and interesting material about how the discipline developed--not just from the perspective of climate science but also within the context of the field's relation to other scientific disciplines, the media, political trends, and even 20th-century history (particularly the Cold War). In addition, Weart has done a valuable service by recording for posterity background information on some of the key discoveries and historical figures who contributed to our present understanding of the global warming problem. --Thomas J. Crowley, Science Reviews of this book: Weart has done us all a service by bringing the discovery of global warming into a short, compendious and persuasive book for a general readership. He is especially strong on the early days and the scientific background. --Crispin Tickell, Times Higher Education Supplement A Capricious Beast Ever since the days when he had trudged around fossil lake basins in Nevada for his doctoral thesis, Wally Broecker had been interested in sudden climate shifts. The reported sudden jumps of CO2 in Greenland ice cores stimulated him to put this interest into conjunction with his oceanographic interests. The result was a surprising and important calculation. The key was what Broecker later described as a "great conveyor belt'"of seawater carrying heat northward. . . . The energy carried to the neighborhood of Iceland was "staggering," Broecker realized, nearly a third as much as the Sun sheds upon the entire North Atlantic. If something were to shut down the conveyor, climate would change across much of the Northern Hemisphere' There was reason to believe a shutdown could happen swiftly. In many regions the consequences for climate would be spectacular. Broecker was foremost in taking this disagreeable news to the public. In 1987 he wrote that we had been treating the greenhouse effect as a 'cocktail hour curiosity,' but now 'we must view it as a threat to human beings and wildlife.' The climate system was a capricious beast, he said, and we were poking it with a sharp stick. I found the book enjoyable, thoughtful, and an excellent introduction to the history of what may be one of the most important subjects of the next one hundred years. --Clark Miller, University of Wisconsin The Discovery of Global Warming raises important scientific issues and topics and includes essential detail. Readers should be able to follow the discussion and emerge at the end with a good understanding of how scientists have developed a consensus on global warming, what it is, and what issues now face human society. --Thomas R. Dunlap, Texas A&M University

Download or read book Geoengineering the Climate written by Royal Society (Great Britain) and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Royal Society has published the findings of a major study into geoengineering the climate. The study, chaired by Professor John Shepherd FRS, was researched and written over a period of twelve months by twelve leading academics representing science, economics, law and social science. Man-made climate change is happening and its impacts and costs will be large, serious and unevenly spread. The impacts may be reduced by adaptation and moderated by mitigation, especially by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. However, global efforts to reduce emissions have not yet been sufficiently successful to provide confidence that the reductions needed to avoid dangerous climate change will be achieved. This has led to growing interest in geoengineering, defined here as the deliberate large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment to counteract anthropogenic climate change. However, despite this interest, there has been a lack of accessible, high quality information on the proposed geoengineering techniques which remain unproven and potentially dangerous. This study provides a detailed assessment of the various methods and considers the potential efficiency and unintended consequences they may pose. It divides geoengineering methods into two basic categories: 1. Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) techniques, which remove CO2 from the atmosphere. As they address the root cause of climate change, rising CO2 concentrations, they have relatively low uncertainties and risks. However, these techniques work slowly to reduce global temperatures. 2. Solar Radiation Management (SRM) techniques, which reflect a small percentage of the sun's light and heat back into space. These methods act quickly, and so may represent the only way to lower global temperatures quickly in the event of a climate crisis. However, they only reduce some, but not all, effects of climate change, while possibly creating other problems . They also do not affect CO2 levels and therefore fail to address the wider effects of rising CO2, including ocean acidification. The report recommends: Parties to the UNFCCC should make increased efforts towards mitigating and adapting to climate change and in particular to agreeing to global emissions reductions of at least 50% on 1990 levels by 2050 and more thereafter; CDR and SRM geoengineering methods should only be considered as part of a wider package of options for addressing climate change. CDR methods should be regarded as preferable to SRM methods. Relevant UK government departments, in association with the UK Research Councils, should together fund a 10 year geoengineering research programme at a level of the order of £10M per annum. The Royal Society, in collaboration with international science partners, should develop a code of practice for geoengineering research and provide recommendations to the international scientific community for a voluntary research governance framework. The Royal Society issued a call for submissions and convened a small ethics workshop as part of the evidence gathering process. More information is available in the main report.

Download or read book Reflecting Sunlight written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by . This book was released on 2021-12-25 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The National Research Council report Climate Intervention: Reflecting Sunlight to Cool Earth (NRC, 2015) reviewed the state of the science and provided high-level findings and recommendations regarding SG methods. This current study was tasked to update the 2015 assessment of the state of understanding and to provide recommendations for how to establish a research program, what to encompass in the research agenda, and what mechanisms to employ for governing this research.

Download or read book Cooking with the Sun written by Beth Halacy and published by Morning Sun Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shows how to harness the sun's energy in preparing food with plans for building solar ovens. Includes over 90 recipes.

Download or read book Manipulating the Sun written by Julia Ellinghaus and published by Brill. This book was released on 2023-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first interdisciplinary approach to the multi-faceted role of the prominent biblical miracles of the Sun reversing its course in II Kings 20:8-11/Isaiah 38:8 (Horologium Ahas) and the Sun standing still in Joshua 10:12 in Early Modern exegesis, arts and sciences.

Download or read book Sun of Suns written by Karl Schroeder and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2007-07-31 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Karl Schroeder's sci-fi thriller, Hayden Griffin has come to the city of Rush with one thing in mind: to take murderous revenge for his parents' deaths. It is the distant future. The world known as Virga is a fullerene balloon three thousand kilometers in diameter, filled with air, water, and aimlessly floating chunks of rock. The humans who live in this vast environment must build their own fusion suns and "towns" that are in the shape of enormous wood and rope wheels that are spun for gravity. Young, fit, bitter, and friendless, Hayden Griffin is a very dangerous man. He's come to the city of Rush in the nation of Slipstream with one thing in mind: to take murderous revenge for the deaths of his parents six years ago. His target is Admiral Chaison Fanning, head of the fleet of Slipstream, which conquered Hayden's nation of Aerie years ago. And the fact that Hayden's spent his adolescence living with pirates doesn't bode well for Fanning's chances . . . At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download or read book The Governance of Solar Geoengineering written by Jesse L. Reynolds and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-23 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Solar geoengineering could reduce climate change, but poses risks. This volume explores how it is, could, and should be governed.

Download or read book Handling The Sun And Sunburn Naturally written by Monalisa Lorran and published by Editora Bibliomundi. This book was released on 2021 with total page 55 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Apropos very little, here’s a useless piece of information with which to baffle your friends, colleagues and family members.You’ve possibly heard of people being described of as ‘posh’, meaning that they were somewhat upper-class or in many situations, that for some unfathomable reason, they think they are. Did you ever wonder where the word comes from?Well, the answer is, it’s an acronym for ‘port out, starboard home’, which is a reference to the days of the British empire when the ladies – the real ladies – who were sailing out to India would stay on the port side of the ship whilst they would stick to starboard on the way back.Why? Because they didn’t want their perfect milk white skin tainted by any hint of having been in the sun! Imagine that, going to all that effort to avoid even the merest tinge of facial redness because it was considered low-class, something that only the common hoi-poloi would ever be subjected to or even contemplate!How times change.From the mid-1990’s onwards, most people couldn’t wait to get away from it all so they could disrobe on the beach before subjecting their body to the seemingly warming, calming ministrations of a blazing sun in a clear blue sky.The cost of air travel fell so that overseas vacations became a genuine possibility for millions of people for the very first time and, boy, did they take advantage of that fact. People who had never before travelled much further than the family car would take them were now able to fly thousands of miles to chase the sun. Thus, they were able to expose themselves to the warmth of the sun for the very first time, and they could not believe their luck.Of course, because of their inexperience, most of these people suffered sunburn to a greater or lesser degree at some point, and equally obviously, most of them had very little idea about what to do when they did so.In this guide, I am therefore going to look at three things.Firstly, I am going to expand upon exactly why the ‘posh’ ladies got it right whereas for most of the second half of the 20th century, we were all getting it very wrong as far as the sun and its potential ‘benefits’ were concerned.Secondly, I want to bring the whole thing bang up-to-date by looking at what you can do to minimize the dangers represented by the sun when you go on holiday, because there is no doubt that playing on the beach in the sunshine is an essential part of the family holiday for many millions of people all over the world. And of course, the main objective is to focus on natural ways of minimizing the dangers posed by being out in the sun for a lengthy period of time.Thirdly, I am going to highlight natural ways of dealing with the adverse effects of too much exposure to the sun.Although it should be possible with sensible precautions to limit the chances of sunburn happening to you or family members, it is unfortunately a fact that balancing enough sunshine against too much is not always a particularly easy task. This is especially true if you are someone to whom regular exposure to the sun is unusual because you have far less natural ability to withstand the effects of sunshine.

Download or read book Losing Earth written by Nathaniel Rich and published by Picador. This book was released on 2020-03-05 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By 1979, we knew all that we know now about the science of climate change - what was happening, why it was happening, and how to stop it. Over the next ten years, we had the very real opportunity to stop it. Obviously, we failed.Nathaniel Rich's groundbreaking account of that failure - and how tantalizingly close we came to signing binding treaties that would have saved us all before the fossil fuels industry and politicians committed to anti-scientific denialism - is already a journalistic blockbuster, a full issue of the New York Times Magazine that has earned favorable comparisons to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and John Hersey's Hiroshima. Rich has become an instant, in-demand expert and speaker. A major movie deal is already in place. It is the story, perhaps, that can shift the conversation.In the book Losing Earth, Rich is able to provide more of the context for what did - and didn't - happen in the 1980s and, more important, is able to carry the story fully into the present day and wrestle with what those past failures mean for us in 2019. It is not just an agonizing revelation of historical missed opportunities, but a clear-eyed and eloquent assessment of how we got to now, and what we can and must do before it's truly too late.

Download or read book The Complete Idiot s Guide to the Sun written by Jay M. Pasachoff and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2003 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No Marketing Blurb

Download or read book Printmaking in the Sun written by Dan Welden and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Solar printmaking is a revolutionary advance in printmaking technique. The flexibility of this method allows artists to create a range of imagery and prints that resemble etchings, woodcuts, lithographs, screenprints or photographs. This handbook combines creative artistic expression with scientific discipline to provide a practical discussion of solar printmaking. It includes instructions and tips, as well as a comprehensive troubleshooting guide. Diagrams, charts and step-by-step photographs illustrate the text, while images created by artists such as Eric Fischl and David Salle show the diverse ways of working in this medium.

Download or read book The Linux Command Line 2nd Edition written by William Shotts and published by No Starch Press. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You've experienced the shiny, point-and-click surface of your Linux computer--now dive below and explore its depths with the power of the command line. The Linux Command Line takes you from your very first terminal keystrokes to writing full programs in Bash, the most popular Linux shell (or command line). Along the way you'll learn the timeless skills handed down by generations of experienced, mouse-shunning gurus: file navigation, environment configuration, command chaining, pattern matching with regular expressions, and more. In addition to that practical knowledge, author William Shotts reveals the philosophy behind these tools and the rich heritage that your desktop Linux machine has inherited from Unix supercomputers of yore. As you make your way through the book's short, easily-digestible chapters, you'll learn how to: • Create and delete files, directories, and symlinks • Administer your system, including networking, package installation, and process management • Use standard input and output, redirection, and pipelines • Edit files with Vi, the world's most popular text editor • Write shell scripts to automate common or boring tasks • Slice and dice text files with cut, paste, grep, patch, and sed Once you overcome your initial "shell shock," you'll find that the command line is a natural and expressive way to communicate with your computer. Just don't be surprised if your mouse starts to gather dust.

Download or read book The Healing Power of the Sun written by Richard Hobday and published by Findhorn Press. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: • Shares scientific research on sunlight therapy and tuberculosis, as well as studies on sunlight with regard to osteoporosis, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, tooth decay, psoriasis, heart disease, and several forms of cancer • Reveals how the sun can act as a natural disinfectant, killing viruses and bacteria, and how this wisdom was put into use by doctors • Explains how sunlight affects eyesight, sleep, mental health, and the immune system For thousands of years, the human race lived in harmony with the sun and used its heat and light as medicine. In recent history, however, with skin cancer on the rise, we have become too focused on the negative effects of the sun. Fortunately, science has made new discoveries showing just how beneficial the sun truly is to our lives. In this new edition of The Healing Sun, Richard Hobday draws on historical and scientific evidence to explore the many ways that sunlight affects our health and well-being. He shows how the sun acts as a natural disinfectant, killing viruses and bacteria outdoors as well as inside buildings. The author highlights how sunlight therapy has been used to prevent and treat serious health problems like tuberculosis and other infections in the years before antibiotics were developed. Explaining how doctors of the past realized that sunlight and fresh air helped patients recover, he shows how this wisdom was put into use by doctors such as Niels Finsen, Oskar Bernhard, and Auguste Rollier, who each contributed substantially to the development of heliotherapy. Hobday also examines the role of sunlight in regard to conditions like osteoporosis, rickets, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, tooth decay, psoriasis, heart disease, and several forms of cancer. Exploring the sun’s effects on body and mind, the author reveals how our modern artificially lit lifestyles can throw off our biological rhythms, create stress within the body, and lead to poor sleep as well as worsening eyesight, cataracts, obesity, depression, and weakened immune systems from lack of vitamin D. Showing why and how we should welcome the healing sun back into our lives, this seminal book reveals how humanity needs sunlight for health and well-being and for vitality and happiness.