Engineering the Climate: The Ethics of Solar Radiation Management discusses the ethical issues associated with deliberately engineering a cooler climate to combat global warming. Climate engineering (also known as geoengineering) has recently experienced a surge of interest given the growing likelihood that the global community will fail to limit the temperature increases associated with greenhouse gases to safe levels. Deliberate manipulation of solar radiation to combat climate change is an exciting and hopeful technical prospect, promising great benefits to those who are in line to suffer most through climate change. At the same time, the prospect of geoengineering creates huge controversy. Taking intentional control of earth s climate would be an unprecedented step in environmental management, raising a number of difficult ethical questions. One particular form of geoengineering, solar radiation management (SRM), is known to be relatively cheap and capable of bringing down global temperatures very rapidly. However, the complexity of the climate system creates considerable uncertainty about the precise nature of SRM s effects in different regions. The ethical issues raised by the prospect of SRM are both complex and thorny. They include: 1) the uncertainty of SRM s effects on precipitation patterns, 2) the challenge of proper global participation in decision-making, 3) the legitimacy of intentionally manipulating the global climate system in the first place, 4) the potential to sidestep the issue of dealing with greenhouse gas emissions, and, 5) the lasting effects on future generations. It has been widely acknowledged that a sustained and scholarly treatment of the ethics of SRM is necessary before it will be possible to make fair and just decisions about whether (or how) to proceed. This book, including essays by 13 experts in the field of ethics of geoengineering, is intended to go some distance towards providing that treatment."

Engineering the Climate: The Ethics of Solar Radiation Management discusses the ethical issues associated with deliberately engineering a cooler climate to combat global warming. Climate engineering (also known as geoengineering) has recently experienced a surge of interest given the growing likelihood that the global community will fail to limit the temperature increases associated with greenhouse gases to safe levels. Deliberate manipulation of solar radiation to combat climate change is an exciting and hopeful technical prospect, promising great benefits to those who are in line to suffer most through climate change. At the same time, the prospect of geoengineering creates huge controversy. Taking intentional control of earth's climate would be an unprecedented step in environmental management, raising a number of difficult ethical questions. One particular form of geoengineering, solar radiation management (SRM), is known to be relatively cheap and capable of bringing down global temperatures very rapidly. However, the complexity of the climate system creates considerable uncertainty about the precise nature of SRM's effects in different regions. The ethical issues raised by the prospect of SRM are both complex and thorny. They include: 1) the uncertainty of SRM's effects on precipitation patterns, 2) the challenge of proper global participation in decision-making, 3) the legitimacy of intentionally manipulating the global climate system in the first place, 4) the potential to sidestep the issue of dealing with greenhouse gas emissions, and, 5) the lasting effects on future generations. It has been widely acknowledged that a sustained and scholarly treatment of the ethics of SRM is necessary before it will be possible to make fair and just decisions about whether (or how) to proceed. This book, including essays by 13 experts in the field of ethics of geoengineering, is intended to go some distance towards providing that treatment.

It is already clear that climate engineering raises numerous troubling ethical issues. The pertinent question yet to be addressed is how the ethical issues raised by climate engineering compare to those raised by alternative proposals for tackling climate change. This volume is the first to put the ethical issues raised by climate engineering into a comprehensive, comparative context so that the key ethical challenges of these technologies can be better measured against those of alternative climate policies . Addressing the topic specifically through the lens of justice, contributors include both advocates of climate intervention research and its sceptics. The volume includes a helpful blend of the theoretical and the practical, with contributions from authors in philosophy, engineering, public policy, social science, geography, sustainable development studies, economics, and climate studies. This cross-disciplinary collection provides the start of an important and more contextualized "second generation" analysis of climate engineering and the difficult public policy decisions that lie ahead.

It is already clear that climate engineering raises numerous troubling ethical issues. The pertinent question yet to be addressed is how the ethical issues raised by climate engineering compare to those raised by alternative proposals for tackling climate change. This volume is the first to put the ethical issues raised by climate engineering into a comprehensive, comparative context so that the key ethical challenges of these technologies can be better measured against those of alternative climate policies . Addressing the topic specifically through the lens of justice, contributors include both advocates of climate intervention research and its sceptics. The volume includes a helpful blend of the theoretical and the practical, with contributions from authors in philosophy, engineering, public policy, social science, geography, sustainable development studies, economics, and climate studies. This cross-disciplinary collection provides the start of an important and more contextualized "second generation" analysis of climate engineering and the difficult public policy decisions that lie ahead.

Gifford Lecturer and Templeton Prize winner Holmes Rolston, III is widely known as the father of environmental ethics. From his authorship of one of the first articles in professional environmental philosophy ("Is there an Ecological Ethic?" 1975) to his most recent article on the place of humanity in the cosmos ("Generating Life on Earth: Five Looming Questions" 2007) no author has taken a more prominent role in mapping out the terrain in environmental philosophy. His writings range between natural philosophy and theology and include detailed presentations of an interlocking position that includes aesthetics, value theory, natural resource policy, wilderness advocacy, and sustainable development.

"Nature Value and Duty: Life on Earth with Holmes Rolston, III" is a collection of contemporary writings on the work of Holmes Rolston, III. The authors contributing to this volume are a mixture of senior scholars in environmental ethics and new voices in philosophy and in literature. Together they provide an in depth evaluation of many of the topics discussed by Rolston. They probe the strengths and weaknesses of his work and suggest valuable correctives. Rolston himself, in a detailed reply to each of his critics at the end of the volume, reveals where some of these criticisms sting him the most and in the process provides one of the most detailed and articulate defenses of his position ever offered.

The book is an introduction to some of the 1967 1974 results and techniques in classical lattice statistical mechanics. It is written in the language of probability theory rather than that of physics, and is thus aimed primarily at mathematicians who might have little or no background in physics. This area of statistical mechanics is presently enjoying a rapid growth and the book should allow a graduate student or research mathematician to find out what is happening in it. The book is self-contained except for some basic concepts of probability theory, and can be read by any undergraduate student in mathematics who has a reasonable background in probability.

Nanotechnologie, synthetische Biologie, Wiedererweckung ausgestorbener Arten und Geoengineering - werden Menschen die Natur in Zukunft mit solchen Methoden grundlegend umgestalten? Man koennte es sich vorstellen. Auf der Erde gibt es keinen von Menschen unberuhrten Ort mehr - das hat wohl jeder schon einmal gehoert. Aber die Bedeutung dieser Tatsache erschoepft sich nicht in Statistiken, die Gletscherschmelze und Artensterben dokumentieren. Vielmehr kennzeichnet sie den Beginn einer neuen Epoche der Erdgeschichte. Und das Auffalligste an diesem Synthetischen Zeitalter, so Christopher Preston, sind nicht nur die Auswirkungen des Menschen als solche, sondern die Veranderungen, die wir von nun an gezielt und absichtlich herbeifuhren werden. Neue Technologien werden uns die Macht verleihen, viele grundlegende Ablaufe der Natur selbst in die Hand zu nehmen. Damit verlassen wir nicht nur das Holozan und treten ins Anthropozan ein; wir lassen auch eine Zeit hinter uns, in der globaler Wandel nicht nur die unbeabsichtigte Folge einer ungezugelten Industrialisierung ist. Mit einer von Ingenieuren und Technikern gestalteten Welt beginnt das erste Synthetische Zeitalter unseres Planeten. Preston beschreibt eine Reihe von Technologien, die den "Stoffwechsel" der Erde umgestalten werden: Nanotechnologie gibt den naturlichen Formen der Materie eine neue Struktur; "molekulare Produktion" eroeffnet unzahlige neue Anwendungsmoeglichkeiten; synthetische Biologie erlaubt es uns, Genome nicht nur zu lesen, sondern auch aufzubauen; "biologische Mini-Maschinen" uberflugeln die Evolution; Arten werden umgesiedelt und wieder zum Leben erweckt; und mit Geoengineering kann man die Sonnenstrahlung mit Vulkandunst abschirmen, die Temperaturen auf der Erde durch hellere Wolken senken und mit kunstlichen Baumen, die Kohlenstoff aus Wind gewinnen, das CO2 aus der Atmosphare beseitigen. Was bedeutet es, wenn Menschen die Erde nicht nur verwalten, sondern auch grundlegend umgestalten? Und wem sollten wir vertrauen, wenn es darum geht, uber die Umrisse unserer synthetischen Zukunft zu entscheiden? Solche Fragen sind zu wichtig, als dass man sie den Ingenieuren uberlassen sollte.