In this collection of eight provocative and timely essays, John Hardwig sets forth his views on the need to replace patient-centred bioethics with family-centred bioethics.
Starting with a critique of the awkward language with which philosophers argue the ethics of personal relationships, Hardwig goes on to present a general statement on the necessity of family-centred bioethics. He reflects on proxy decisions, the effects of elder care on the family, the financial and lifestyle consequences of long-term care, and physician-assisted suicide from the perspective of the family.

Climate change is a matter of extreme urgency. Integrating science and economics, this book demonstrates the need for measures to put a strict lid on cumulative carbon emissions and shows how to implement them. Using the carbon budget framework, it reveals the shortcomings of current policies and the debates around them, such as the popular enthusiasm for individual solutions and the fruitless search for 'optimal' regulation by economists and other specialists. On the political front, it explains why business opposition to the policies we need goes well beyond the fossil fuel industry, requiring a more radical rebalancing of power. This wide-ranging study goes against the most prevalent approaches in mainstream economics, which argue that we can tackle climate change while causing minimal disruption to the global economy. The author argues that this view is not only impossible, but also dangerously complacent.

Adapting to climate change is a critical problem facing humanity. This involves reconsidering our lifestyles, and is linked to our actions as individuals, societies and governments. This book presents the latest science and social science research on whether the world can adapt to climate change. Written by experts, both academics and practitioners, it examines the risks to ecosystems, demonstrating how values, culture and the constraining forces of governance act as barriers to action. As a state-of-the-art review of science and a holistic assessment of adaptation options, it is essential reading for those concerned with responses to climate change, especially researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and graduate students. Significant features include historical, contemporary, and future insights into adaptation to climate change; coverage of adaptation issues from different perspectives: climate science, hydrology, engineering, ecology, economics, human geography, anthropology and political science; and contributions from leading researchers and practitioners from around the world. An interview with Neil Adger on adapting to climate change:

Our understanding of climate and its role in human affairs has changed markedly over recent years, as have climate observation systems and modelling capabilities. Reliance on recent weather statistics to provide a guide for future climate is no longer viable. Evidence of human-induced climate change has placed climate high on political and the media agendas. This text provides an account of what we know about climate and changing climates at the end of the 20th century. Integrating the historical and geographical dimensions of climate, the crucial link between past and future climatic conditions is examined through the geographical lens of the British Isles. Climates of past ages are reconstructed and full descriptions of the present climate are illustrated by graphs, maps and images. Important climate data sets are provided. Marking the 25th anniversary of the Climatic Research Unit, this book distils much of the leading research of present and recent members of the unit and presents a view of climatic change and prospects for the next millenium and beyond.

Atmospheric Thermodynamics provides a comprehensive treatment of a subject that can often be intimidating. The text analyses real-life problems and applications of the subject, alongside of guiding the reader through the fundamental basics and covering the first and second laws and the ideal gas law, followed by an emphasis on moist processes in Earth's atmosphere. Water in all its phases is a critical component of weather and the Earth's climate system. With user-friendly chapters that include energy conservation and water and its transformations, the authors write with a willingness to expose assumptions and approximations usually absent in other textbooks. History is woven into the text to provide a context for the time evolution of thermodynamics and its place in atmospheric science and demonstrating how physical reasoning leads to correct explanations of everyday phenomena. Many of the experiments described were done using inexpensive instruments to take advantage of the earth's atmosphere as a freely accessible thermodynamics library. This second edition provides updated treatments of atmospheric measurements and substantially expanded sections that include atmospheric applications of the first and second laws and energy exchange between humans and their atmospheric environment. With 400+ thought provoking problems and 350 references with annotated notes and further reading suggestions, this second edition provides a basic understanding of the fundamentals of this subject while still being a comprehensive reference guide for those working in the field of atmospheric and environmental sciences.

How did humankind deal with the extreme challenges of the last Ice Age? How have the relatively benign post-Ice Age conditions affected the evolution and spread of humanity across the globe? By setting our genetic history in the context of climate change during prehistory, the origin of many features of our modern world are identified and presented in this illuminating book. It reviews the aspects of our physiology and intellectual development that have been influenced by climatic factors, and how features of our lives - diet, language and the domestication of animals - are also the product of the climate in which we evolved. In short: climate change in prehistory has in many ways made us what we are today. Climate Change in Prehistory weaves together studies of the climate with anthropological, archaeological and historical studies, and will fascinate all those interested in the effects of climate on human development and history.

IDEAL, the International Decade for East African Lakes, is a ten-year multi-national, multi-disciplinary investigation of the biological, geological, chemical, and physical limnology of the East African Lakes, taking into special account the Great Lakes of the East African Rift Valley and the climatology and paleoclimatology of the Rift Valley itself. The selected papers in this book serve as baseline knowledge for this intensive examination, with most of the contributing authors already actively researching these lakes. The oldest in the world and the largest on the continent, the lakes are vital resources for the indigenous populations of their basins. They are unique not only in their diverse populations of endemic species of fish and invertebrates, but in their sensitivity to climatic change, unusual circulation dynamics and water-column chemistry in relation to higher altitudes, and continuous record of climatic change in tropical Africa. This volume provides an overview of our current knowledge of the lakes combined with the most recent results of specific research efforts by African, American, and European investigators. Included also are some discussions on the impact of man, as well as comprehensive bibliographies.

As governments around the globe begin to wake up to the far reaching effects of changes in climate, the search for available options and instruments for addressing the issue becomes increasingly vital. This authoritative, step-by-step guide to the assessment of the impacts from, and potential adaptations to, changes of climate is based on the approach developed by the authors and other scientists for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This approach has been widely adopted as 'best practice' by experienced researchers but has not, until now, been available in an accessible form. This illuminating account of the methods used by the IPCC scientists will be essential for all those involved in the study of climate impacts and adaptations, or designing and implementing policies for dealing with them. Written in non-technical language, this state-of-the-art guide is ideal for all people interested in the far-reaching implications of climate change and the greenhouse effect. The book contains numerous illustrations, including several worked examples, clearly presented in boxes and diagrams.

The impact of a changing environment on human society and, conversely, the impact of man's activities upon the environment are important and contentious subjects today. Climatic and environmental change have also been credited with bringing about major shifts in human history. One such case is that of the decline of Roman North Africa and its conquest by the Arabs. The evidence for this process is, however, far from clear-cut, and Professor Shaw's concern in these studies is firstly to re-examine what is known, from both archaeological and written sources, and how it has been interpreted, work which has led to some substantial revisions of accepted accounts. In the final three articles he turns to analyse how Roman society functioned on the edge of the desert and, in particular, to investigate the careful exploitation and control of critical water resources.

The Handbook of Meteorology gives specialists and non-specialists alike a clear understanding of the way our weather functions. It provides scientific answers to questions that arise when looking at the world around us. It starts with the basics of weather-temperature, pressure, humidity, and wind-before moving on to cover highs, lows, fronts, and storms, and finally ending with a look at weather forecasts, cloud watching, weather tools, and much more. The Handbook of Meteorology provides a condensed but all-inclusive broad sweep of meteorology, employing several illustrations to translate detailed technical information into terms that everyone can follow and readily refer to. It is a comprehensive reference for any budding meteorologist or environmental professional in the field, laboratory, or classroom.

Studies of Sr isotopic composition of thousands of samples of marine sediments and fossils have yielded a curve of 87Sr/86Sr versus age for seawater Sr that extends back to 1 billion years. The ratio has fluctuated with large amplitude during this time period, and because the ratio is always uniform in the oceans globally at any one time, it is useful as a stratigraphic correlation and age-dating tool. The ratio also appears to reflect major tectonic and climatic events in Earth history and hence provides clues as to the causes, timing, and consequences of those events. The seawater 87Sr/86Sr ratio is generally high during periods marked by continent-continent collisions, and lower when continental topography is subdued, and seafloor generation rates are high. There is evidence that major shifts in the seawater ratio can be ascribed to specific orogenic events and correlate with large shifts in global climate.

Over million-year timescales, the geologic cycling of carbon controls long-term climate and the oxidation of Earth's surface. Inferences about the carbon cycle can be made from time series of carbon isotopic ratios measured from sedimentary rocks. The foundational assumption for carbon isotope chemostratigraphy is that carbon isotope values reflect dissolved inorganic carbon in a well-mixed ocean in equilibrium with the atmosphere. However, when applied to shallow-water platform environments, where most ancient carbonates preserved in the geological record formed, recent research has documented the importance of considering both local variability in surface water chemistry and diagenesis. These findings demonstrate that carbon isotope chemostratigraphy of platform carbonate rarely represent the average carbonate sink or directly records changes in the composition of global seawater. Understanding what causes local variability in shallow-water settings, and what this variability might reveal about global boundary conditions, are vital questions for the next generation of carbon isotope chemostratigraphers.

Magnesium is a major constituent in silicate and carbonate minerals, the hydrosphere and the biosphere. Magnesium is constantly cycled between these reservoirs. Since each of the major planetary reservoirs of magnesium have different magnesium isotope ratios, there is scope to use magnesium isotope ratios to trace 1) the processes that cycle Magnesium at a spatial scales from the entire planet to microscopic and 2) the relative fluxes between these reservoirs. This review summarises some of the key motivations, successes and challenges facing the use of magnesium isotopes to construct a budget of seawater magnesium, present and past.

This book is the first comprehensive introduction to the theory of equatorially-confined waves and currents in the ocean. Among the topics treated are inertial and shear instabilities, wave generation by coastal reflection, semiannual and annual cycles in the tropic sea, transient equatorial waves, vertically-propagating beams, equatorial Ekman layers, the Yoshida jet model, generation of coastal Kelvin waves from equatorial waves by reflection, Rossby solitary waves, and Kelvin frontogenesis. A series of appendices on midlatitude theories for waves, jets and wave reflections add further material to assist the reader in understanding the differences between the same phenomenon in the equatorial zone versus higher latitudes.

Why, despite all we know about the causes and harms of global heating, has so little effective action been taken to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and what we can do to change that? This book explains the mechanisms and impacts of the climate crisis, traces the history and reasons behind the lack of serious effort to combat it, describes some people's ongoing scepticism and how to shift it, and motivates an urgent program of action. It argues that the pathway to stopping dangerous global heating will require a much larger mobilization of advocacy and activism to impel decision makers to abandon fossil fuels, and transition to renewable energy and electrification embedded in a political and social framework guided by justice principles. It is an excellent resource for students and researchers on the climate crisis, the need for a renewable energy transition, and the current blocks to progress.

Ancient iron formations - iron and silica-rich chemical sedimentary rocks that formed throughout the Precambrian eons - provide a significant part of the evidence for the modern scientific understanding of palaeoenvironmental conditions in Archaean (4.0-2.5 billion years ago) and Proterozoic (2.5-0.539 billion years ago) times. Despite controversies regarding their formation mechanisms, iron formations are a testament to the influence of the Precambrian biosphere on early ocean chemistry. As many iron formations are pure chemical sediments that reflect the composition of the waters from which they precipitated, they can also serve as nuanced geochemical archives for the study of ancient marine temperatures, redox states, and elemental cycling, if proper care is taken to understand their sedimentological context.

The second edition of this book presents an up-to-date account of the transfer of energy, matter, and momentum between the atmosphere and the ocean. The expository style of the book will be welcomed by students and professionals alike, within the fields of meteorology, oceanography, and physics. Topics covered include surface wind waves, the planetary boundary layer, and radiation.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of numerical weather prediction (NWP), focusing on the application of the spectral method in NWP models. The author illustrates the use of the spectral method in theory as well as in its application to building a full prototypical spectral NWP model, from the formulation of continuous model equations through development of their discretized forms to coded statements of the model. The author describes the implementation of a specific model PEAK (Primitive-Equation Atmospheric Research Model Kernel) to illustrate the steps needed to construct a global spectral NWP model. The book brings together all the spectral, time and vertical discretization aspects relevant for such a model. Spectral Numerical Weather Prediction Models provides readers with the information necessary to construct spectral NWP models, a self-contained, well-documented, coded spectral NWP model and theoretical and practical exercises, some of which include solutions."

To date, research on the economic implications of climate change on fisheries has been both limited and fragmented. The contributors to this volume remedy the lack of attention by investigating the economic consequences of pelagic fish fluctuations in the recent past in order to understand how to adapt and respond to future climate changes. Small pelagic fish constitute approximately 30 per cent of the world's fish catch, have a global distribution, and are characterized by dramatic fluctuations in response to ocean climate. Despite this, countries adjust to changes in fish abundance, regardless of the cause, at variable time scales. These adjustments are often uncoordinated. The contributors address these concerns in chapters that cover a range of topics including: historical fluctuations of Atlanto-Scandian herring, management adaptations to climate regime shifts, differential consequences of pelagic fishery collapses in Southeast Asia, and the globalized nature of fishmeal markets. The case studies are complementary and yet self-standing, highlighting the need for a more coordinated assessment of impacts, and calling for more focused research. Students and scholars of climate change and environmental and resource economics will find this cohesive volume an instructive and enlightening resource. Policymakers and those in the fisheries management community will find the case studies and analyses useful in determining future goals and responses.

The impacts of climate change can already be felt in society and on the Earth itself. As new evidence of the environmental impact of climate change is constantly emerging, we are forced to confront the significance of our political decisions about who will pay the price of responding to a changing climate. In the rush to avoid or reduce the repercussions of climate change, we need to ensure that the burden is evenly distributed or run the risk of creating injustice. ""Climate Change and Social Justice"" demonstrates that the problem of how to distribute the costs of climate change is fundamentally a problem of justice. If we ignore the concerns addressed this book, the additional burdens of climate change will fall on the poor and vulnerable. Jeremy Moss brings together today's key thinkers in climate research, including Peter Singer, Ross Garnaut and David Karoly, to respond to these important issues.

Lithium isotopes are a relatively novel tracer of present and past silicate weathering processes. Given that silicate weathering is the primary long-term method by which CO2 is removed from the atmosphere, Li isotope research is going through an exciting phase. We show the weathering processes that fractionate dissolved and sedimentary Li isotope ratios, focusing on weathering intensity and clay formation. We then discuss the carbonate and silicate archive potential of past seawater 7Li. These archives have been used to examine Li isotope changes across both short and long timescales. The former can demonstrate the rates at which the climate is stabilised from perturbations via weathering, a fundamental piece of the puzzle of the long-term carbon cycle.

"Microclimate for Cultural Heritage: Conservation and Restoration of Indoor and Outdoor Monuments, Second Edition, " is a cutting-edge, theoretical, and practical handbook concerning microclimate, environmental factors, and conservation of cultural heritage. Although the focus is on cultural heritage objects, most of the theory and instrumental methodologies are common to other fields of application, such as atmospheric and environmental sciences.

"Microclimate for Cultural Heritage, Second Edition, " is a useful treatise on microphysics and a practical handbook for conservators and specialists in physics, chemistry, architecture, engineering, geology, and biology who work in the multidisciplinary field of the environment, and, in particular, in the conservation of works of art. Part I, devoted to applied theory, is a concise treatise on microphysics, which includes a survey on the basic ideas of environmental diagnosis and conservation. The second part of the book focuses on practical utilization, and shows in detail how field surveys should be performed, with many suggestions and examples, as well as some common errors to avoid.
Presents updated scientific and technological findings based on the novel European standards on microclimate and cultural heritageIncludes the latest information on experimental research on environmental factors and their impact on materials, such as the behavior of water and its interactions with cultural heritage materialsContains case studies of outdoor and indoor microclimate conditions and their effects, providing ideas for readers facing similar problems caused by heat, water, radiation, pollution, or air motionsCovers instruments and methods for practical applications to help readers understand, to observe and interpret observations, and avoid errors