Histories of Technology, the Environment and Modern Britain

Histories of Technology, the Environment and Modern Britain PDF Author: Jon Agar
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 1911576585
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
Histories of Technology, the Environment and Modern Britain brings together historians with a wide range of interests to take a uniquely wide-lens view of how technology and the environment have been intimately and irreversibly entangled in Britain over the last 300 years. It combines, for the first time, two perspectives with much to say about Britain since the industrial revolution: the history of technology and environmental history. Technologies are modified environments, just as nature is to varying extents engineered. Furthermore, technologies and our living and non-living environment are both predominant material forms of organisation – and self-organisation – that surround and make us. Both have changed over time, in intersecting ways. Technologies discussed in the collection include bulldozers, submarine cables, automobiles, flood barriers, medical devices, museum displays and biotechnologies. Environments investigated include bogs, cities, farms, places of natural beauty and pollution, land and sea. The book explores this diversity but also offers an integrated framework for understanding these intersections.

Histories of Technology, the Environment and Modern Britain

Histories of Technology, the Environment and Modern Britain PDF Author: Jon Agar
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 1911576585
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357

Get Book Here

Book Description
Histories of Technology, the Environment and Modern Britain brings together historians with a wide range of interests to take a uniquely wide-lens view of how technology and the environment have been intimately and irreversibly entangled in Britain over the last 300 years. It combines, for the first time, two perspectives with much to say about Britain since the industrial revolution: the history of technology and environmental history. Technologies are modified environments, just as nature is to varying extents engineered. Furthermore, technologies and our living and non-living environment are both predominant material forms of organisation – and self-organisation – that surround and make us. Both have changed over time, in intersecting ways. Technologies discussed in the collection include bulldozers, submarine cables, automobiles, flood barriers, medical devices, museum displays and biotechnologies. Environments investigated include bogs, cities, farms, places of natural beauty and pollution, land and sea. The book explores this diversity but also offers an integrated framework for understanding these intersections.

Britain's Changing Environment from the Air

Britain's Changing Environment from the Air PDF Author: Tim Bayliss-Smith
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521327121
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Commercial pressures and mechanization have rendered almost unrecognizable the natural and man-made landscapes of Britain as they existed before World War I. How this happened and how we can best conserve what is left is charted using the perspective of aerial photography in this book.

Britain's Changing Environment

Britain's Changing Environment PDF Author: Garrett Nagle
Publisher: Nelson Thornes
ISBN: 9780174900238
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
Britain's Changing Climate.Human Impact on Hydrology and Rivers in Britain.Changing Landforms.Soils and Ecosystems.Managing Environments.

Climate Change

Climate Change PDF Author: The Royal Society
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309302021
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 74

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Book Description
Climate Change: Evidence and Causes is a jointly produced publication of The US National Academy of Sciences and The Royal Society. Written by a UK-US team of leading climate scientists and reviewed by climate scientists and others, the publication is intended as a brief, readable reference document for decision makers, policy makers, educators, and other individuals seeking authoritative information on the some of the questions that continue to be asked. Climate Change makes clear what is well-established and where understanding is still developing. It echoes and builds upon the long history of climate-related work from both national academies, as well as on the newest climate-change assessment from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It touches on current areas of active debate and ongoing research, such as the link between ocean heat content and the rate of warming.

Political Ecology and Environmentalism in Britain

Political Ecology and Environmentalism in Britain PDF Author: Brendan Prendiville
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527547442
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
This collection of essays highlights the different dimensions of the contemporary British environmentalist movement from a multidisciplinary viewpoint. Beginning with an historical overview of the movement, the reader is then presented with an analysis of the politics of climate change from a political science perspective. This is followed by a sociological examination of climate change protesters and environmental activism among young people. The volume also includes an analysis of the ideological relationship between political ecology and the British Left, as well as a case study of environmentalism in Wales against the backdrop of devolution. The book is based on two distinct, yet complementary, perspectives: environmentalism and political ecology. What is this distinction and what is its significance? Answers to these questions and others can be found in these essays which are a must-read for both students and researchers interested in environmental politics in Britain and British area studies.

False Alarm

False Alarm PDF Author: Bjorn Lomborg
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541647483
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
An “essential” (Times UK) and “meticulously researched” (Forbes) book by “the skeptical environmentalist” argues that panic over climate change is causing more harm than good Hurricanes batter our coasts. Wildfires rage across the American West. Glaciers collapse in the Artic. Politicians, activists, and the media espouse a common message: climate change is destroying the planet, and we must take drastic action immediately to stop it. Children panic about their future, and adults wonder if it is even ethical to bring new life into the world. Enough, argues bestselling author Bjorn Lomborg. Climate change is real, but it's not the apocalyptic threat that we've been told it is. Projections of Earth's imminent demise are based on bad science and even worse economics. In panic, world leaders have committed to wildly expensive but largely ineffective policies that hamper growth and crowd out more pressing investments in human capital, from immunization to education. False Alarm will convince you that everything you think about climate change is wrong -- and points the way toward making the world a vastly better, if slightly warmer, place for us all.

Future Nature

Future Nature PDF Author: W.M. Adams
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136533893
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
The countryside is changing faster than ever. Fifty years of conservation achievements in the UK are now being confronted by a new complexion of economic forces that are driving change in the countryside. At the same time new ideas in conservation are altering the role that conservation is being asked to play in negotiating the transition from past to future. This revised edition of Bill Adams classic work Future Nature tackles the new challenges in the countryside and wildlife conservation head-on through a new Introduction and Postscript with updated arguments about naturalness and our social engagement with nature, and complemented by a new Foreword by Adrian Phillips. Concepts such as biodiversity and sustainability, and changes in our understanding, appreciation and concern for nature, offer unprecedented opportunities. Bill Adams explores the scientific, cultural and economic significance of conservation. He argues that conservation must move beyond the boundaries of parks and reserves to embrace the whole countryside. The importance of conservation for the future is enormous. It holds the potential to create new spaces for nature, both in the landscape and in our lives and imaginations. This factual, beautifully written and thought-provoking book offers a fundamental reassessment of conservation, its importance, and how to achieve it. Published with BANC

The Next War in the Air

The Next War in the Air PDF Author: Brett Holman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317022637
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
In the early twentieth century, the new technology of flight changed warfare irrevocably, not only on the battlefield, but also on the home front. As prophesied before 1914, Britain in the First World War was effectively no longer an island, with its cities attacked by Zeppelin airships and Gotha bombers in one of the first strategic bombing campaigns. Drawing on prewar ideas about the fragility of modern industrial civilization, some writers now began to argue that the main strategic risk to Britain was not invasion or blockade, but the possibility of a sudden and intense aerial bombardment of London and other cities, which would cause tremendous destruction and massive casualties. The nation would be shattered in a matter of days or weeks, before it could fully mobilize for war. Defeat, decline, and perhaps even extinction, would follow. This theory of the knock-out blow from the air solidified into a consensus during the 1920s and by the 1930s had largely become an orthodoxy, accepted by pacifists and militarists alike. But the devastation feared in 1938 during the Munich Crisis, when gas masks were distributed and hundreds of thousands fled London, was far in excess of the damage wrought by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz in 1940 and 1941, as terrible as that was. The knock-out blow, then, was a myth. But it was a myth with consequences. For the first time, The Next War in the Air reconstructs the concept of the knock-out blow as it was articulated in the public sphere, the reasons why it came to be so widely accepted by both experts and non-experts, and the way it shaped the responses of the British public to some of the great issues facing them in the 1930s, from pacifism to fascism. Drawing on both archival documents and fictional and non-fictional publications from the period between 1908, when aviation was first perceived as a threat to British security, and 1941, when the Blitz ended, and it became clear that no knock-out blow was coming, The Next War in the Air provides a fascinating insight into the origins and evolution of this important cultural and intellectual phenomenon, Britain's fear of the bomber.

The natural choice

The natural choice PDF Author: Great Britain: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780101808224
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 84

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Book Description
This white paper sets out proposals for a detailed programme of action to repair damage done to the environment in the past, and urges everyone to get involved in helping nature to flourish at all levels - from neighbourhoods to national parks. The plans are directly linked to the groundbreaking research in the National Ecosystem Assessment that showed the strong economic arguments for safeguarding and enhancing the natural environment. They also act on the recommendations of 'Making Space for Nature', a report into the state of England's wildlife sites, led by Professor John Lawton and published in September 2010, which showed that England's wildlife sites are fragmented and not able to respond to the pressures of climate change and other pressures we put on our land. Key measures proposed include: i) Reconnecting nature with New Nature Improvement Areas (NIAs) with a £7.5 million fund for 12 initial NIAs, biodiversity offsetting, New Local Nature Partnerships with £1 million available this year, phasing out peat, ii) Connecting people and nature for better quality of life with Green Areas Designation, better urban green spaces; more children experiencing nature by learning outdoors, strengthening local public health activities, the new environmental volunteering initiative "Muck in 4 Life" to improve places in towns and countryside for people and nature to enjoy and iii) Capturing and improving the value of nature with a Natural Capital Committee; an annual statement of green accounts for UK Plc, a business-led Task Force to expand the UK business opportunities from new products and services which are good for the economy and nature alike.

The Economic Implications of Climate Change in Britain

The Economic Implications of Climate Change in Britain PDF Author: Martin Parry
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134168659
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
Climate change could have a substantial economic impact, particularly on coastal states where seas level rises will be felt most strongly. Among these, the British Isles are likely to be significantly affected, and they provide an excellent case study of the consequences for specific sectors of the economy. In this book, leading experts - including several authors of reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UK Climate Change Impacts Review Group - examine the background and alternative scenarios for change, as well as its implications. They look in detail at water supply and management, agriculture and land use, energy, and the finance and insurance sector. In each case, they show how current activities will have to adapt and they conclude by evaluating the arguments for prevention now vs adaptation later. The changes in store could be huge, requiring the attention of academics and professionals from a wide range of disciplines and industries, as well as government action. This book makes a major contribution to understanding what is at stake.