Oceanographers and the Cold War

Oceanographers and the Cold War PDF Author: Jacob Darwin Hamblin
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295801859
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Oceanographers and the Cold War is about patronage, politics, and the community of scientists. It is the first book to examine the study of the oceans during the Cold War era and explore the international focus of American oceanographers, taking into account the roles of the U.S. Navy, United States foreign policy, and scientists throughout the world. Jacob Hamblin demonstrates that to understand the history of American oceanography, one must consider its role in both conflict and cooperation with other nations. Paradoxically, American oceanography after World War II was enmeshed in the military-industrial complex while characterized by close international cooperation. The military dimension of marine science--with its involvement in submarine acoustics, fleet operations, and sea-launched nuclear missiles--coexisted with data exchange programs with the Soviet Union and global operations in seas without borders. From an uneasy cooperation with the Soviet bloc in the International Geophysical Year of 1957-58, to the NATO Science Committee in the late 1960s, which excluded the Soviet Union, to the U.S. Marine Sciences Council, which served as an important national link between scientists and the government, Oceanographers and the Cold War reveals the military and foreign policy goals served by U.S. government involvement in cooperative activities between scientists, such as joint cruises and expeditions. It demonstrates as well the extent to which oceanographers used international cooperation as a vehicle to pursue patronage from military, government, and commercial sponsors during the Cold War, as they sought support for their work by creating "disciples of marine science" wherever they could.

Oceanographers and the Cold War

Oceanographers and the Cold War PDF Author: Jacob Darwin Hamblin
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295801859
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book Here

Book Description
Oceanographers and the Cold War is about patronage, politics, and the community of scientists. It is the first book to examine the study of the oceans during the Cold War era and explore the international focus of American oceanographers, taking into account the roles of the U.S. Navy, United States foreign policy, and scientists throughout the world. Jacob Hamblin demonstrates that to understand the history of American oceanography, one must consider its role in both conflict and cooperation with other nations. Paradoxically, American oceanography after World War II was enmeshed in the military-industrial complex while characterized by close international cooperation. The military dimension of marine science--with its involvement in submarine acoustics, fleet operations, and sea-launched nuclear missiles--coexisted with data exchange programs with the Soviet Union and global operations in seas without borders. From an uneasy cooperation with the Soviet bloc in the International Geophysical Year of 1957-58, to the NATO Science Committee in the late 1960s, which excluded the Soviet Union, to the U.S. Marine Sciences Council, which served as an important national link between scientists and the government, Oceanographers and the Cold War reveals the military and foreign policy goals served by U.S. government involvement in cooperative activities between scientists, such as joint cruises and expeditions. It demonstrates as well the extent to which oceanographers used international cooperation as a vehicle to pursue patronage from military, government, and commercial sponsors during the Cold War, as they sought support for their work by creating "disciples of marine science" wherever they could.

Science on a Mission

Science on a Mission PDF Author: Naomi Oreskes
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022673241X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 749

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Book Description
A vivid portrait of how Naval oversight shaped American oceanography, revealing what difference it makes who pays for science. What difference does it make who pays for science? Some might say none. If scientists seek to discover fundamental truths about the world, and they do so in an objective manner using well-established methods, then how could it matter who’s footing the bill? History, however, suggests otherwise. In science, as elsewhere, money is power. Tracing the recent history of oceanography, Naomi Oreskes discloses dramatic changes in American ocean science since the Cold War, uncovering how and why it changed. Much of it has to do with who pays. After World War II, the US military turned to a new, uncharted theater of warfare: the deep sea. The earth sciences—particularly physical oceanography and marine geophysics—became essential to the US Navy, which poured unprecedented money and logistical support into their study. Science on a Mission brings to light how this influx of military funding was both enabling and constricting: it resulted in the creation of important domains of knowledge but also significant, lasting, and consequential domains of ignorance. As Oreskes delves into the role of patronage in the history of science, what emerges is a vivid portrait of how naval oversight transformed what we know about the sea. It is a detailed, sweeping history that illuminates the ways funding shapes the subject, scope, and tenor of scientific work, and it raises profound questions about the purpose and character of American science. What difference does it make who pays? The short answer is: a lot.

Ocean Science and the British Cold War State

Ocean Science and the British Cold War State PDF Author: Samuel A. Robinson
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319730967
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
This book focuses on the activities of the scientific staff of the British National Institute of Oceanography during the Cold War. Revealing how issues such as intelligence gathering, environmental surveillance, the identification of ‘enemy science’, along with administrative practice informed and influenced the Institute’s Cold War program. In turn, this program helped shape decisions taken by Government, military and the civil service towards science in post-war Britain. This was not simply a case of government ministers choosing to patronize particular scientists, but a relationship between politics and science that profoundly impacted on the future of ocean science in Britain.

An Ocean in Common

An Ocean in Common PDF Author: Gary E. Weir
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1603447210
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
Through two victorious world conflicts and a Cold War, the U.S. Navy and American ocean scientists drew ever closer, converting an early marriage of necessity into a relationship of astonishing achievement. Beginning in 1919, Gary Weir's An Ocean in Common traces the first forty-two years of their joint quest to understand each other and the deep ocean.?Early in the twentieth century, American naval officers questioned the tactical and strategic significance of applied ocean science, demonstrating the gap between this kind of knowledge and that deemed critical to naval warfare. At the same time, scientists studying the ocean labored in their inadequately funded, discreet disciplines, seemingly content to keep naval warfare at arm's length. German U-boat success in World War I changed these views fundamentally, bringing ocean science insights to an increasing number of naval objectives.?Driven primarily by anti-submarine priorities, the physics, chemistry, and geology of the ocean, more than its biology, became the early focus of American ocean studies. The World War II experience solidified the Navy's relationship with ocean scientists, and the years after 1945 found the American military investing heavily in both applied and basic research. Today, oceanography is a permanent resident on the bridge of American fighting ships and the Navy continues to provide much of the impetus and funding for fundamental research, in both naval and civilian laboratories.In An Ocean in Common Gary Weir focuses on the compelling motives and carefully engineered course that brought scientists and naval officers together, across a considerable cultural divide, to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of one another and the world ocean. Weir details how this alliance laid the powerful multidisciplinary foundation for long-range ocean communication and surveillance, modern submarine warfare, deep submergence, and the emergence of oceanography and ocean engineering as independent and vital fields of study.

Poison in the Well

Poison in the Well PDF Author: Jacob Darwin Hamblin
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813544238
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
In the early 1990s, Russian President Boris Yeltsin revealed that for the previous thirty years the Soviet Union had dumped vast amounts of dangerous radioactive waste into rivers and seas in blatant violation of international agreements. The disclosure caused outrage throughout the Western world, particularly since officials from the Soviet Union had denounced environmental pollution by the United States and Britain throughout the cold war. Poison in the Well provides a balanced look at the policy decisions, scientific conflicts, public relations strategies, and the myriad mishaps and subsequent cover-ups that were born out of the dilemma of where to house deadly nuclear materials. Why did scientists and politicians choose the sea for waste disposal? How did negotiations about the uses of the sea change the way scientists, government officials, and ultimately the lay public envisioned the oceans? Jacob Darwin Hamblin traces the development of the issue in Western countries from the end of World War II to the blossoming of the environmental movement in the early 1970s. This is an important book for students and scholars in the history of science who want to explore a striking case study of the conflicts that so often occur at the intersection of science, politics, and international diplomacy.

50 Years of Ocean Discovery

50 Years of Ocean Discovery PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309172578
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
This book describes the development of ocean sciences over the past 50 years, highlighting the contributions of the National Science Foundation (NSF) to the field's progress. Many of the individuals who participated in the exciting discoveries in biological oceanography, chemical oceanography, physical oceanography, and marine geology and geophysics describe in the book how the discoveries were made possible by combinations of insightful individuals, new technology, and in some cases, serendipity. In addition to describing the advance of ocean science, the book examines the institutional structures and technology that made the advances possible and presents visions of the field's future. This book is the first-ever documentation of the history of NSF's Division of Ocean Sciences, how the structure of the division evolved to its present form, and the individuals who have been responsible for ocean sciences at NSF as "rotators" and career staff over the past 50 years.

Science and Technology in the Global Cold War

Science and Technology in the Global Cold War PDF Author: Naomi Oreskes
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026202795X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 467

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Book Description
Investigations of how the global Cold War shaped national scientific and technological practices in fields from biomedicine to rocket science. The Cold War period saw a dramatic expansion of state-funded science and technology research. Government and military patronage shaped Cold War technoscientific practices, imposing methods that were project oriented, team based, and subject to national-security restrictions. These changes affected not just the arms race and the space race but also research in agriculture, biomedicine, computer science, ecology, meteorology, and other fields. This volume examines science and technology in the context of the Cold War, considering whether the new institutions and institutional arrangements that emerged globally constrained technoscientific inquiry or offered greater opportunities for it. The contributors find that whatever the particular science, and whatever the political system in which that science was operating, the knowledge that was produced bore some relation to the goals of the nation-state. These goals varied from nation to nation; weapons research was emphasized in the United States and the Soviet Union, for example, but in France and China scientific independence and self-reliance dominated. The contributors also consider to what extent the changes to science and technology practices in this era were produced by the specific politics, anxieties, and aspirations of the Cold War. Contributors Elena Aronova, Erik M. Conway, Angela N. H. Creager, David Kaiser, John Krige, Naomi Oreskes, George Reisch, Sigrid Schmalzer, Sonja D. Schmid, Matthew Shindell, Asif A. Siddiqi, Zuoyue Wang, Benjamin Wilson

The Geopolitics of Deep Oceans

The Geopolitics of Deep Oceans PDF Author: John Hannigan
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509500928
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Long regarded as an empty and inhospitable environment, the deep ocean is rapidly emerging as an ecological hot spot with a remarkable diversity of biological life. Yet, the worlds oceans are currently on a dangerous trajectory of decline, threatened by acidification, oil and gas drilling, overfishing, and, in the long term, deep-sea mining, bioprospecting, and geo-engineering. In The Geopolitics of Deep Oceans, noted environmental sociologist John Hannigan examines the past, present and future of our planets final frontier. The author argues that our understanding of the deep - its definition, boundaries, value, ownership, health and future state - depends on whether we see it first and foremost as a resource cornucopia, a political chessboard, a shared commons, or a unique and threatened ecology. He concludes by locating a new storyline that imagines the oceans as a canary-in-the-mineshaft for gauging the impact of global climate change. The Geopolitics of Deep Oceans is a unique introduction to the geography, law, politics and sociology of the sub-surface ocean. It will appeal to anyone seriously concerned about the present state and future fate of the largest single habitat for life on our planet.

Undersea Vehicles and National Needs

Undersea Vehicles and National Needs PDF Author: Committee on Undersea Vehicles and National Needs
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309588723
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
The United States faces decisions requiring information about the oceans in vastly expanded scales of time and space and from oceanic sectors not accessible with the suite of tools now used by scientists and engineers. Advances in guidance and control, communications, sensors, and other technologies for undersea vehicles can provide an opportunity to understand the oceans' influence on the energy and chemical balance that sustains humankind and to manage and deliver resources from and beneath the sea. This book assesses the state of undersea vehicle technology and opportunities for vehicle applications in science and industry. It provides guidance about vehicle subsystem development priorities and describes how national research can be focused most effectively.

Seventy Years of Exploration in Oceanography

Seventy Years of Exploration in Oceanography PDF Author: Klaus Hasselmann
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642120873
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 151

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Book Description
It all began with Markus Jochum approaching one of us (HvS) – “when you guys are doing interviews with senior scientists from oceanography and related sciences, why are you not doing Walter Munk?” Indeed, why not? Walter Munk, an icon in oceanography, had just given a wonderful talk in a symposium in honor of his 90th birthday, sweeping a grand circle from his earliest work with Chip Cox on airborne measurements of ocean surface roughness to the latest satellite data – not simply a review, but the struggle of an active scientist opening up new perspectives – as inspiring and stimulating as when one of us (KH) rst met him at the Ocean Waves Conference in Easton in 1961 (Fig. I. 1). Walter immediately agreed to share with us his recollections on the nearly seventy years of his path-breaking contributions in a sheer amazing range of topics, from ocean waves, internal waves, ocean currents, tides, tsunamis, sea level, microseisms and the rotation of the earth to ocean acoustic tomography. With “you guys” Markus was referring to HvS and the various partners HvS had 1 invited to join him in conducting a series of interviews of retired colleagues.