Author: Henry F. Diaz File Type: pdf Extreme climatic events present society with significant challenges in a rapidly warming world. Ordinary citizens, the insurance industry and governments are concerned about the apparent increase in the frequency of weather and climate events causing extreme, and in some instances, catastrophic, impacts. Originally published in 2008, Climate Extremes and Society focuses on the recent and potential future consequences of weather and climate extremes for different socioeconomic sectors. The book also examines actions that may enable society to better respond to climate variability. It provides examples of the impact of climate and weather extremes on society. How have these extremes varied in the past, and how might they change in the future? What type of efforts will help society adapt to potential future changes in climate and weather extremes? The book is designed for all policy-makers, engineers and scientists who have an interest in the effects of climate extremes on society.Review,,,an interesting read and should appeal to anyone working at the intersection of climate extremes and social impacts of those extremes, especially those wanting to learn what the insurance industry is thinking about climate change. Philip Mote, Oregon State University...an interesting read and should appeal to anyone working at the intersection of climate extremes and social impacts of those extremes.... Geophysical Research Letters Review,,,an interesting read and should appeal to anyone working at the intersection of climate extremes and social impacts of those extremes, especially those wanting to learn what the insurance industry is thinking about climate change. Philip Mote, Oregon State University...an interesting read and should appeal to anyone working at the intersection of climate extremes and social impacts of those extremes.... Geophysical Research Letters

Author: Sass Brown File Type: pdf Sass Browns darkly funny debut collection of poems explores both the isolation and the absurdity of twenty-something apartment living. The world Brown creates in USA-1000 overflows with infomercials, classic Hollywood films, billboard messages, strip clubs, and fortune-tellers, illuminating our complex relationship with consumerism. In the absence of personal intimacy, everyday objects take on unexpected importance the clothing of a would-be couple mingles in a washing machine a father watches pornography in a hotel room with his wife and daughter a woman searches a shopping mall to put on hold items shell never buy a broken hair dryer prompts a complaint letter to the Better Business Bureau. Browns dazzling poems probe the disappointment of domestic reality in the face of Americas glossy facade, abundance and emptiness hand in hand. Ultimately, the book finds beauty in the deliciously artificial and resurrects the missing world with words and memory.**ReviewBrown is a poet of insatiable curiosity, sly wit, and a wry wisdom. She draws no distinction between high culture and what others would call kitsch. Hers is a world where the archaeopteryx commingles with loads of laundry, where Barbies and Hallmark Cards give way to sleaze and more insidious consumerism, andalmost invariablycelebration gives way to elegy. It takes character and craft to describe a world so various and capacious, and Brown has plenty of both. USA-1000 is a scintillating collection by a poet of unusual promise.David Wojahn Combining humor with pathos, USA-1000 reflects upon lost fathers and fallen idols, ex-lovers and an American commercial landscape that simultaneously exploits, celebrates, and dismisses young women. Its a whip-smart, timely, even prescient debut, whose liveliness, humor, and readability belie its darkest undercurrents.Paisley Rekdal USA-1000 makes an album documenting the mind stream of a womans life in a contemporary colonized world. These poems purr with the power of the female vision in a domestic universe.Joy Harjo Sass Browns poems resonate with knowledge and experience, yet they retain an almost childlike desire for all things to have integrity, to be what they promised. Even in the face of great loss, these poems move through lifes vicissitudes with a persistent, energetic willingness to hope.Adrienne Su Browns world is a world of many things, the world given us by commerce, movies, and television, but the book is a record of the distance, often unbridgeable, between wanting and getting. The world conjured here is a large one, teeming with life, elusive and funny in the same breath.Roger Mitchell USA-1000is the number to call if you want to hear all about the sizzling longing at the heart of contemporary American life. Sass Brown, in wry, witty poems flavored with irony and lashed with sadness, knows all about loneliness and losshow it insinuates itself under the cheerful banter on television and deflates the ordinary objects we depend on for comfort. Browns voice in these rich poems is both comic and tender, and reveals the truth about our way of lifethat a sweater can mimic an embrace, that a broken hairdryer can equal a broken heart.Maura StantonAbout the Author Sass Brown is a recipient of the Ruth Lilly Fellowship in Poetry, a Vermont Studio Center fellowship, and a Bread Loaf Writers Conference scholarship, among other honors. She earned her MFA in creative writing from Indiana University. Her poetry has been published in many literary journals, including Haydens Ferry Review, Crazyhorse, Black Warrior Review, and Gulf Coast. USA-1000 is her first book.

Author: Douglas V. Hoyt File Type: pdf The luminosity of the sun governs the temperatures of the planets. Yet the solar forcing, or driving, of climate, primarily due to changes in solar radiation, has never been well documented. Recent satellite measurements have shown that solar radiation varies as a function of time and wavelength, a concept that has been hypothesized for the past two centuries and has recently become a major topic with all the attention paid to global warming. This book reviews the physics of the concept of solar forcing, from its beginnings in the early 1800s and apparent success in the 1870s, to its near demise in the 1950s and recent resurgence. Since its emphasis is on solar variations as a driver for climate change, with only a brief discussion of other mechanisms, the book will be of most interest to students in climate studies.ReviewDouglas Hoyt and Kenneth Schatten. . .review the effects that solar irradiance variations have in producing climate changes. The book summarizes both the history and our present understanding of this field, so as to provide a solid foundation for graduate students, current researchers and interested scientists in related fields. The book is easy to read, well written, and hard to put down. . . .The two most important problems examined by the book concern the presence of sign reversals in the observed correlations and the fact that the climate variations that are observed are larger by a factor of ten than simple energy-balance calculations can account for. The book reviews the possible explanations for these problems and is quite successful in giving the reader a well-balanced picture of the field.--Physics TodayDouglas Hoyt and Kenneth Schatten point out that the large numbers of sunspots during the 11th and 12th centuries made Earth significantly warmer, allowing Vikings to settle in Greenland, for example. The authors review many historical studies of the Suns influence on climate. A successful blend of astronomical and climate studies with modern scientific and statistical analysis, this history of solar observations is followed by a review of how variations in solar brightness have been measured, both from the ground and space. --New ScientistThis book approaches the sun-climate connection as an ongoing journey. In three parts, the authors present material on solar activity, development of humankinds understanding of the sun, and the suns variations the sun-climate connection, particularly on the 11-year timescale and possible alternative explanations for variations. Throughout the book, the authors pose the question `Does the sun affect the climate? and present evidence to support and to discount the theory. --Bulletin of the American Meteorological SocietyHoyt and Schattens book is a fascinating and well written history of this interesting chapter of science that is relevant to the understanding of the earth system on one hand and to the increasingly fierce battle between conservationists and industrialists concerning global warming, on the other. The well organized book takes the reader in a carefully planned and cross-referenced way from the sun to the earth, and from Theophrastus in the fourth century B.C. to solar-terrestrial physicists in the early 1990s.--Journal of Geoscience EducationA valuable resource to those engaged in global warming studies and interpreting the effect of the sun on the Earths climate changes. . . . The book is divided into three parts. The first part . . . is an examination of solar activity throughout history to reveal the slow development of our understanding of the sun. . . . The second part . . . deals with the climate and the sun-climate connection. The final part . . . discusses possible alternative explanations for variations in the sun and climate on time scales from decades to billions of years. . . . The book has an impressive bibliography of nearly 2000 articles and papers on the suns influence on weather and climate dating back to 1796. . . . the book could be used as a reference text for students in the civil or environmental engineering programs when they do course work in hydrology, water and wastewater management, and land-use planning.--Geo Info SystemsAbout the AuthorDouglas V. Hoyt was a Senior Scientist at the HughesSTX Corporation. Kenneth H. Schatten is the Program Director for Solar Terrestrial Research at the National Science Foundation.

Author: Michael Broers File Type: epub Napoleons life reached its most extraordinary stage, between 1805 and 1810. In 1805, Napoleon was suddenly at war with Britain, Russia, and Austria. He mobilised all his power to confront them, unleashing his magnificent Grande Armee. Its first, resounding victory at Austerlitz was followed by a whirlwind of campaigns, bringing Napoleon and his men to the borders of Russia. These stunning triumphs made Napoleon the master of the continent, but they left Britain unbowed. In the years that followed, this struggle with Britain came to dominate Napoleons actions, leading him into the bloodbath of the Spanish Peninsular war, and his attempt to blockade Europe against British commerce. In 1809, Austria launched yet another assault on him. By 1810, Napoleon had routed them, and divorced Josephine in order to marry the daughter of the Austrian Emperor.But at a time of such victory, his own family was torn asunder in the struggle for survival.