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Storm Warning: The Story of a Killer Tornado
by Nancy MathisA nail-biting, captivating look at tornados, from personal stories of those impacted by the natural disasters to the history of the struggle to understand this bewildering force of Mother Nature.May 3, 1999, is a day that Oklahomans will never forget. By the time the sun set over a ravaged plain, some 71 tornadoes had claimed around 11,000 homes and businesses and caused $1 billion in damage. One of them was a mile-wide monster of incredible power, the fiercest F5 twister to hit a metropolitan area, and whose 300 mph winds were the fastest ever recorded. Veteran journalist Nancy Mathis draws on many interviews to weave the story of those few terrifying hours that irrevocably changed the lives of many Oklahomans. Storm Warning features Kara Wiese, who fought to save her son from the fatal winds; and Charlie Cusack, who followed the tornado's progress on television until it came knocking on his front door. Amazingly, only thirty-eight people perished at the hands of the Oklahoma F5. Many lives were saved by the efforts of professionals such as Ted Fujita, the creator of the Fujita Scale and dubbed "Mr. Tornado" for his relentless pursuit to unravel a twister's mysteries; the oft-criticized but dogged government meteorologists; and Gary England, a resourceful TV weatherman whose tireless efforts prepared hundreds of people in the tornado's path.
Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming
by Chris MooneyAn investigation into climate change and increasingly dangerous hurricanes from the New York Times–bestselling author of The Republican War on Science. A leading science journalist delves into a red-hot debate in meteorology: whether the increasing ferocity of hurricanes is connected to global warming. In the wake of Katrina, Chris Mooney follows the careers of leading scientists on either side of the argument through the 2006 hurricane season, tracing how the media, special interests, politics, and the weather itself have skewed and amplified what was already a fraught scientific debate. As Mooney puts it: &“Scientists, like hurricanes, do extraordinary things at high wind speeds.&” Mooney—a New Orleans native, host of the Point of Inquiry podcast, and author of The Republican Brain—has written &“a well-researched, nuanced book&” that closely examines whether we as a society should be held responsible for making hurricanes even bigger monsters than they already are (The New York Times). &“Mooney serves his readers as both an empiricist who gathers data and an analyst who puts it into context. The result is an important book, whose author succeeds admirably in both his roles.&” —The Plain Dealer &“Engaging and readable . . . Mooney catches real science in the act and, in so doing, weaves a story as intriguing as it is important.&” —Los Angeles Times Book Review &“Mooney has hit upon an important and controversial topic, and attacks it with vigor.&” —The Boston Globe &“An absorbing, informed account of the politics behind a pressing contemporary controversy.&” —Kirkus Reviews
Storm-triggered Landslides in Warmer Climates
by Diandong RenThis volume discusses the general physics of debris flows and various approaches to modeling - including the SEGMENT-Landslide approach - as well as the pros and cons of these approaches and how other approaches are sub-sets of the SEGMENT-Landslide approach. In addition, this volume will systematically unify the concepts of vadose zone hydrology and geotechnical engineering, with special emphasis on quantifying ecosystem consequences of storm-triggered landslides in a warmer climate setting. The reader will find a comprehensive coverage of concepts ranging from hillslope hydrology, porous granular material rheology and the fundamentals of soil properties, to state-of-the-art concepts of enhanced hydrological cycle with climate warming and a discussion of new approaches for future research.
Stormchasers: The Hurricane Hunters and Their Fateful Flight into Hurricane Janet
by David ToomeyFifty years after Isaac's Storm, a riveting story of the first Hurricane Hunters, and the one crew who paid the ultimate price. "In a virtual age when tempests are monitored by global positioning and The Weather Channel, Stormchasers reminds us that our first understanding of hurricanes was directly built on the risks and sacrifices of living, breathing heroes," writes Hampton Sides (author of Ghost Soldiers). In September 1955, Navy Lieutenant Commander Grover B. Windham and a crew of eight flew out of Guantánamo Bay into the eye of Hurricane Janet swirling in the Caribbean: a routine weather reconnaissance mission from which they never returned. In the wake of World War II, the Air Force and the Navy had discovered a new civilian arena where daring pilots could test their courage and skill. These Hurricane Hunters flew into raging storms to gauge their strength and predict their paths. Without computer, global positioning, or satellite support, they relied on rudimentary radar systems to locate the hurricane's eye and estimated the drift of their aircraft by looking at windblown waves below. Drawing from Navy documents and interviews with members of the squadron and relatives of the crew, Stormchasers reconstructs the ill-fated mission of Windham's crew from preflight checks to the chilling moment of their final transmission.
Storminess and Environmental Change
by Nazzareno Diodato Gianni BellocchiThis book describes recent developments in the modeling of hydro-climatological processes in time and space. The topic brings together a wide range of disciplines, such as climatology, hydrology, geomorphology and ecology, with examples of problems and related modeling approaches. Parsimonious hydro-climatological models hold the potential to simulate the combined effects of rainfall intensity and distribution patterns in the absence of precipitation records for short time intervals (e. g. daily to sub-hourly) and over large areas (e. g. regional to continental). In this book, we show how the principle of parsimony can be followed without sacrificing depth in seeking to understand a variety of landscape and surface processes that include hydrologic phenomena. Geographically speaking, the focus of the book is on Mediterranean environments. In this region, which is characterized by a complex morphology, soil erosion by water is a major cause of landscape degradation and the fragility of ecosystems is abundantly documented. By exploring interactions between erosive storms and land with the help of modeling solutions created at a variety of scales, the book investigates in detail the climatic implications for the Mediterranean landscape in an effort to bridge historical and contemporary research, which makes it unique in its approach. The book provides a valuable resource for environmental scientists, while also providing an important basis for graduate and postgraduate students interested in research on hydrological cycles and environmental changes.
Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics
by Rebecca SolnitStorming the Gates of Paradise gathers together nearly forty essays whose common ground is a concern with place, geography, land, environment, and an interest in reading them politically-- and in understanding politics through place.
Storms
by Seymour Simon"A succinct, informative essay illuminated by magnificent photographs. The subject is particularly absorbing, as it highlights the natural drama of a commonly experienced phenomenon. . . . The stunning visual portrayal of storms, accompanied by impressive factual data and clear explanations in crisp prose, is truly compelling. "--Horn Book.
Storms (Readers)
by Miriam Busch GoinStorms are SCARY! But it&’s cool to understand what&’s going on when Mother Nature gets angry. Why does the wind howl? Why does it rain for days? How do rivers overflow? Thunder and lightening, monsoons, hurricanes, tornadoes... the facts and photos in this book will blow you away!
Stormwater: A Resource for Scientists, Engineers, and Policy Makers
by William G. WilsonAs cities grow and climates change, precipitation increases, and with every great storm—from record-breaking Boston blizzards to floods in Houston—come buckets of stormwater and a deluge of problems. In Stormwater, William G. Wilson brings us the first expansive guide to stormwater science and management in urban environments, where rising runoff threatens both human and environmental health. As Wilson shows, rivers of runoff flowing from manmade surfaces—such as roads, sidewalks, and industrial sites—carry a glut of sediments and pollutants. Unlike soil, pavement does not filter or biodegrade these contaminants. Oil, pesticides, road salts, metals, automobile chemicals, and bacteria all pour into stormwater systems. Often this runoff discharges directly into waterways, uncontrolled and untreated, damaging valuable ecosystems. Detailing the harm that can be caused by this urban runoff, Wilson also outlines methods of control, from restored watersheds to green roofs and rain gardens, and, in so doing, gives hope in the face of an omnipresent threat. Illustrated throughout, Stormwater will be an essential resource for urban planners and scientists, policy makers, citizen activists, and environmental educators in the stormy decades to come.
Storying Multipolar Climes of the Himalaya, Andes and Arctic: Anthropocenic Climate and Shapeshifting Watery Lifeworlds (Routledge Environmental Humanities)
by Dan Smyer Yü Jelle J.P. WoutersThis book initiates multipolar climate/clime studies of the world’s altitudinal and latitudinal highlands with terrestrial, experiential, and affective approaches. Framed in the environmental humanities, it is an interdisciplinary, comparative study of the mutually-embodied relations of climate, nature, culture, and place in the Himalaya, Andes, and Arctic. Innovation-driven, the book offers multipolar clime case studies through the contributors’ historical findings, ethnographic documentations, and diverse conceptualizations and applications of clime, an overlooked but returning notion of place embodied with climate history, pattern, and changes. The multipolar clime case studies in the book are geared toward deeper, lively explorations and demonstrations of the translatability, interchangeability, and complementarity between the notions of clime and climate. "Multipolar" or "multipolarity" in this book connotes not only the two polar regions and the tectonically shaped highlands of the earth but also diversely debated perspectives of climate studies in the broadest sense. Contributors across the twelve chapters come from diverse fields of social and natural sciences and humanities, and geographically specialize, respectively, in the Himalayan, Andean, and Arctic regions. The first comparative study of climate change in altitudinal and latitudinal highlands, this will be an important read for students, academics, and researchers in environmental humanities, anthropology, climate science, indigenous studies, and ecology. Chapters 8 and 9 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/10.4324/9781003347026 under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
Storytelling for Sustainability in Higher Education: An Educator's Handbook
by Tony Wall Petra Molthan-Hill Heather Luna Denise Baden Helen PunthaTo be a storyteller is an incredible position from which to influence hearts and minds, and each one of us has the capacity to utilise storytelling for a sustainable future. This book offers unique and powerful insights into how stories and storytelling can be utilised within higher education to support sustainability literacy. Stories can shape our perspective of the world around us and how we interact with it, and this is where storytelling becomes a useful tool for facilitating understanding of sustainability concepts which tend to be complex and multifaceted. The craft of storytelling is as old as time and has influenced human experience throughout the ages. The conscious use of storytelling in higher education is likewise not new, although less prevalent in certain academic disciplines; what this book offers is the opportunity to delve into the concept of storytelling as an educational tool regardless of and beyond the boundaries of subject area. Written by academics and storytellers, the book is based on the authors’ own experiences of using stories within teaching, from a story of “the Ecology of Law” to the exploration of sustainability in accounting and finance via contemporary cinema. Practical advice in each chapter ensures that ideas may be put into practice with ease. In addition to examples from the classroom, the book also explores wider uses of storytelling for communication and sense-making and ways of assessing student storytelling work. It also offers fascinating research insights, for example in addressing the question of whether positive utopian stories relating to climate change will have a stronger impact on changing the behaviour of readers than will dystopian stories. Everyone working as an educator should fi nd some inspiration here for their own practice; on using storytelling and stories to co-design positive futures together with our students.
Storytelling for Sustainability: Deepening the Case for Change
by Jeff LeinaweaverStorytelling is an ancient practice and a priceless skill. For sustainability practitioners who want to be more strategic and have more influence in shaping a better world, it is a crucial skill to master.In this short guide, veteran sustainability strategist and storyteller Jeff Leinaweaver shows you which ways of storytelling "transmit resonance" and lead to success and which lead to failure.You will learn techniques for using storytelling to attract attention and get better results, whether you are communicating statistics and priorities, advocating for change, organizing stakeholders, or building an authentic brand and community.Storytelling for Sustainability offers a comprehensive primer on storytelling and a range of insights and practical exercises, including: the failure of the sustainability story, discovering your passionate fact, your convenience story, reverse storyboarding, and what’s my storyline?
Storytelling to Accelerate Climate Solutions
by Hua Wang Emily CorenThe climate is changing faster than our cultural practices are adapting to it. This Open Access volume, co-edited by Emily Coren (a science communicator) and Hua Wang (a communication scientist), presents a survey of the latest in agency-focused climate storytelling. Together, practitioners and scholars across different fields shared their knowledge, experience, and insight about how stories can be designed and told to engage, enable, and empower individuals and communities in climate communication and action. You will learn a wide range of narrative strategies and exemplary applications of climate storytelling in terms of professional practices (e.g., education, literature, journalism, popular media), genres and formats (e.g., drama, comedy, fiction), media platforms (e.g., television, radio, mobile), and communication modalities (e.g., text, visual, audio, multisensory). Entertainment-education has been proven over decades to be an effective tool for social and behavior change in the public health sphere and has not yet been applied at scale to the massive ongoing climate–related disasters that we need to solve now, fast. There is an urgent need to rapidly apply and adapt public engagement tools for climate communication to speed up our response times for climate change mitigation and adaptation. This book takes a snapshot of where climate storytelling is currently at, describes where it fits within a climate communication landscape, and supports the next steps of its development. It facilitates the of creation climate storytelling efficiently by sharing and amplifying what is working well, and building collaborations between practitioners and researchers.This is an open access book.
Stoves and Trees: How Much Wood Would a Woodstove Save If a Woodstove Could Save Wood? (Routledge Library Editions: Forestry)
by Lloyd Timberlake Gerald Foley Patricia MossOriginally published in 1984, Stoves and Trees asks whether better stoves really help the two billion people in the developing world who rely on wood and charcoal for cooking and heating their homes. It also asks if improved stoves actually save fuel and if they can help slow down tropical deforestation. The book not only examines newer stoves but also ascertains how people buy, collect and use wood in the developing world. It finds that most forests are cleared for timber or farmland not fuelwood and explains why stoves which show 50% energy savings in European laboratories often save little or none in village homes.
Strain Gradient Plasticity-Based Modeling of Damage and Fracture
by Emilio Martínez PañedaThis book provides a comprehensive introduction to numerical modeling of size effects in metal plasticity. The main classes of strain gradient plasticity formulations are described and efficiently implemented in the context of the finite element method. A robust numerical framework is presented and employed to investigate the role of strain gradients on structural integrity assessment. The results obtained reveal the need of incorporating the influence on geometrically necessary dislocations in the modeling of various damage mechanisms. Large gradients of plastic strain increase dislocation density, promoting strain hardening and elevating crack tip stresses. This stress elevation is quantified under both infinitesimal and finite deformation theories, rationalizing the experimental observation of cleavage fracture in the presence of significant plastic flow. Gradient-enhanced modeling of crack growth resistance, hydrogen diffusion and environmentally assisted cracking highlighted the relevance of an appropriate characterization of the mechanical response at the small scales involved in crack tip deformation. Particularly promising predictions are attained in the field of hydrogen embrittlement. The research has been conducted at the Universities of Cambridge, Oviedo, Luxembourg, and the Technical University of Denmark, in a collaborative effort to understand, model and optimize the mechanical response of engineering materials.
Strand Theatre Fire, The: The 1941 Brockton Tragedy and the Fallen Thirteen (Disaster)
by Brockton Fire Chief Foreword By Galligan James E. Casper RetiredOn March 10, 1941, at 12:38 a.m., the Brockton Fire Department responded to Fire Alarm Box 1311, which was pulled for a fire at the Strand Theatre. Fire Alarm dispatched the deputy chief, three engine companies, a ladder company and Squad A. Within six minutes, a second alarm was struck. Less than one hour after the first alarm, the roof of the Strand collapsed, and what appeared to be a routine fire turned into a disaster that killed thirteen firefighters and injured more than twenty others. The disaster marks one of the largest losses of life to firefighters from a burning building collapse in the United States. Jim Benson and Nicole Casper chronicle this devastating tragedy and celebrate the community’s heroes and resilience in the face of adversity.
Stranded Assets and the Environment: Risk, Resilience and Opportunity (Routledge Explorations in Environmental Studies)
by Ben CaldecottDrawing on the work of leading researchers and practitioners from a range of disciplines, including economic geography, economics, economic history, finance, law, and public policy, this edited collection provides a comprehensive assessment of stranded assets and the environment, covering the fundamental issues and debates, including climate change and societal responses to environmental change, as well as its origins and theoretical basis. The volume provides much needed clarity as the discourse on stranded assets gathers further momentum. In addition to drawing on scholarly contributions, there are chapters from practitioners and analysts to provide a range of critical perspectives. While chapters have been written as important standalone contributions, the book is intended to systematically take the reader through the key dimensions of stranded assets as a topic of research inquiry and practice. The work adopts a broad based social science perspective for setting out what stranded assets are, why they are relevant, and how they might inform the decision-making of firms, investors, policymakers, and regulators. The topic of stranded assets is inherently multi-disciplinary, cross-sectoral, and multi-jurisdictional and the volume reflects this diversity. This book will be of great relevance to scholars, practitioners and policymakers with an interest in include economics, business and development studies, climate policy and environmental studies in general.
Stranded at the Top of the World: A Story of Exploration and Heroic Rescue in the Arctic
by Cornelia Lüdecke Mary R. TahanThis book provides a well-researched, well-structured, interesting, and informative narrative depicting the little-known yet successful efforts of the Captain Arve Staxrud Norwegian Arctic Rescue Expedition of 1913 that searched for and saved members of the Lieutenant Herbert Schröder-Stranz German Arctic Expedition of 1912 in Spitsbergen (Svalbard). The book portrays the cooperative and strategic endeavors of the humans and animals involved in the Staxrud expedition who worked together to save human lives on the icy fjords and glaciers of the far north during an unseasonable time of year for exploratory expeditions. It examines and analyzes the unpreparedness and lack of training that resulted in the failure of the Schröder-Stranz expedition. It compares and contrasts concurrent rescue expeditions that failed, including the Kurt Wegener expedition and the Theodor Lerner expedition. It describes the crucial role of animals in both the Norwegian and German expeditions, as well as German interest and Norwegian activity in Spitsbergen leading up to the expeditions. And it reconstructs the interaction and organization of principal officers, overwintering experts, Norwegians, Sámi, draft reindeer teams, and experienced sledge dogs who made the Staxrud rescue mission a success and who created and enabled improved search and rescue capabilities for Spitsbergen and for the future of the Arctic archipelago.
Strands: A Year of Discoveries on the Beach
by Jean SpracklandStrands describes a year's worth of walking on the ultimate beach: inter-tidal and constantly turning up revelations: mermaid's purses, lugworms, sea potatoes, messages in bottles, buried cars, beached whales and a perfect cup from a Cunard liner. This is a series of meditations prompted by walking on the wild estuarial beaches of Ainsdale Sands between Blackpool and Liverpool, Strands is about what is lost and buried then discovered, about all the things you find on a beach, dead or alive, about flotsam and jetsam, about mutability and transformation - about sea-change.
Strange Creatures of the Snow and Other Great Mysteries
by Edward F. DolanDiscusses some unusual creatures and events that have been seen or taken place in cold climates including sightings of the mysterious Yeti, and the discovery of the remains of a nineteenth-century polar expedition.
Strange Harvests: The Hidden Histories of Seven Natural Objects
by Edward PosnettAn original and magical map of our world and its riches, formed of the stories of the small-scale harvests of seven natural objectsIn this beguiling book, Edward Posnett journeys to some of the most far-flung locales on the planet to bring us seven wonders of the natural world--eiderdown, vicuña fiber, sea silk, vegetable ivory, civet coffee, guano, and edible birds' nests--that promise ways of using nature without damaging it. To the rest of the world these materials are mere commodities, but to their harvesters they are imbued with myth, tradition, folklore, and ritual, and form part of a shared identity and history.Strange Harvests follows the journeys of these uncommon products from some of the most remote areas of the world to its most populated urban centers, drawing on the voices of the people and little-known communities who harvest, process, and trade them. Blending history, travel writing, and interviews, Posnett sets these human stories against our changing economic and ecological landscape. What do they tell us about capitalism, global market forces, and overharvesting? How do local microeconomies survive in a hyperconnected world? Is it possible for us to live together with different species? Strange Harvests makes us see the world with wonder, curiosity, and new concern.
Strange Natures: Conservation in the Era of Synthetic Biology
by William M. Adams Kent H. RedfordA groundbreaking examination of the implications of synthetic biology for biodiversity conservation Nature almost everywhere survives on human terms. The distinction between what is natural and what is human-made, which has informed conservation for centuries, has become blurred. When scientists can reshape genes more or less at will, what does it mean to conserve nature? The tools of synthetic biology are changing the way we answer that question. Gene editing technology is already transforming the agriculture and biotechnology industries. What happens if synthetic biology is also used in conservation to control invasive species, fight wildlife disease, or even bring extinct species back from the dead? Conservation scientist Kent Redford and geographer Bill Adams turn to synthetic biology, ecological restoration, political ecology, and de-extinction studies and propose a thoroughly innovative vision for protecting nature.
Strange Natures: Futurity, Empathy, and the Queer Ecological Imagination
by Nicole SeymourIn Strange Natures, Nicole Seymour investigates the ways in which contemporary queer fictions offer insight on environmental issues through their performance of a specifically queer understanding of nature, the nonhuman, and environmental degradation. By drawing upon queer theory and ecocriticism, Seymour examines how contemporary queer fictions extend their critique of "natural" categories of gender and sexuality to the nonhuman natural world, thus constructing a queer environmentalism. Seymour's thoughtful analyses of works such as Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues, Todd Haynes's Safe, and Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain illustrate how homophobia, classism, racism, sexism, and xenophobia inform dominant views of the environment and help to justify its exploitation. Calling for a queer environmental ethics, she delineates the discourses that have worked to prevent such an ethics and argues for a concept of queerness that is attuned to environmentalism's urgent futurity, and an environmentalism that is attuned to queer sensibilities.
Strange Spaces: Explorations into Mediated Obscurity
by André JanssonCertain bizarre spaces, where disruption or disarray rule, leave us estranged and 'out of place'. This book examines such spaces, highlighting the emotional and mediated geographies of uncertainty and the state of being 'in-between'; of cognitive displacement, loss, fear, or exhilaration. It expands on why space is sometimes estranging and for whom it is strange. It is the first book to link strangeness and spatial production, as well as empirical explorations of strange spaces within a profound theoretical discussion of 'what is strange about strange spaces' and how they evolve in a modern media age.