Fixing the Sky


Book Description

Weaving together stories from elite science, cutting-edge technology, and popular culture, Fleming examines issues of health and navigation in the 1830s, drought in the 1890s, aircraft safety in the 1930s, and world conflict since the 1940s.




The Military Balance 2022


Book Description

Published each year since 1959, The Military Balance is an indispensable reference to the capabilities of armed forces across the globe. It is used by academia, the media, armed forces, the private sector and government. It is an open-source assessment of the military forces and equipment inventories of 171 countries, with accompanying defence economics and procurement data. Alongside detailed country data, The Military Balance assesses important defence issues, by region, as well as key global trends, such as in defence technology and equipment modernisation. This analysis is accompanied by full-colour graphics, including maps and illustrations. With extensive explanatory notes and reference information, The Military Balance is as straightforward to use as it is extensive. The 2022 edition is accompanied by a fullcolour wall chart illustrating security dynamics in the Arctic.




Capturing Carbon


Book Description

We now possess the technology to capture carbon emissions as they are released into the atmosphere. After capture, the gas is trapped within facilities hidden far underground. As promising as this process sounds, can it really compete with the often cheaper, low-carbon technologies currently available, and is the practice really safe and eco-friendly? Furthermore, will governments and societies embrace this controversial method and integrate it fully into their economic markets? Capturing Carbon is one of the first books to seriously evaluate this issue, describing the need for this new technology and the components that make it work. Robin M. Mills, a longtime energy professional with a background in geology and economics, paints an accessible portrait of carbon capture's existing and projected technologies. He covers the specifics of geological storage and, interestingly, compares it to the biological sequestering of carbon occurring naturally in soils and forests. With a frank and unbiased analysis, Mills considers the costs of this process and its value in curbing climate change.He tackles the politics and policies that will help the technology take root, and he anticipates the public's reaction and opportunities for business. Mills also accounts for the risks of carbon capture, rounding out a definitive and all-encompassing volume for environmentalists, policymakers, investors, industry insiders, and anyone wishing to understand these new developments.




Weather Warfare


Book Description

In April 1997, United States Secretary of Defense William Cohen declared that there are terrorists at work who “... are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves...“ Weather modification in the form of cloud seeding to increase snow packs in the Sierras or suppress hail over Kansas is now an everyday affair. Hundreds of environmental and weather modifying technologies have been patented in the United States alone-and hundreds more are being developed in civilian, academic, military and quasi-military laboratories around the world at this moment! This book lays bare the grim facts of who is doing it and why. The earth and the sky have themselves been turned into weapons! Underground nuclear tests in Nevada have set off earthquakes. A Russian company has been offering to sell typhoons on demand since the 1990s. Scientists have been searching for ways to move hurricanes for over 50 years-the same timeframe that took us from the Wright Brothers to Neil Armstrong. In this book, Jerry E. Smith picks up where his 1998 book about the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) left off. He reports on recent developments at HAARP, including its possible connection to the crash of the Space Shuttle Columbia and what role, if any, it played in certain “natural” disasters, like Hurricane Katrina. Tackling the chemtrail controversy, Smith examines claims that particles called aerosols are being deliberately injected into the atmosphere. Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb, proposed putting up a “sun screen” of aerosols to save the earth from global warming-is someone actually doing it? Numerous ongoing military programs do inject aerosols at high altitude for communications and surveillance operations. Could these include mind control or population control applications? Smith puts these technologies into context by examining the geopolitical conflicts that are driving their development from Globalization to the rise of Neo-Con Neo-Fascism.




Planet Earth


Book Description

As weaponry and warfare have become more complex and sophisticated, so the long-term effects have become more deadly. In Planet Earth Rosalie Bertell proposes that the key to understanding the impact of future wars lies in a close analysis of the past. She shows how the quest for military power has destabilized the delicate natural balance of the earth's ecosystem, causing widespread devastation in environmental, economic and social terms and calls for a new approach to security, which rises above national agendas to seek global solutions to a global problem.




Warfare in a Fragile World


Book Description

"Among the crucial problems that confront mankind today are those associated with a degraded environment. This book examines the extent to which warfare and other military activities contribute to such degradation. The military capability to damage the environment and to cause ecological disruption has escalated, and there is no sign that the level of conflict in the world is decreasing. The military use and abuse of each of the several major global habitats -- temperate, tropical, desert, arctic, insular, and oceanic -- are evalusated separately in the light of the civil use and abuse of that habitat"--Dust jacket.




The Perfect Weapon


Book Description

NOW AN HBO® DOCUMENTARY FROM AWARD-WINNING DIRECTOR JOHN MAGGIO • “An important—and deeply sobering—new book about cyberwarfare” (Nicholas Kristof, New York Times), now updated with a new chapter. The Perfect Weapon is the startling inside story of how the rise of cyberweapons transformed geopolitics like nothing since the invention of the atomic bomb. Cheap to acquire, easy to deny, and usable for a variety of malicious purposes, cyber is now the weapon of choice for democracies, dictators, and terrorists. Two presidents—Bush and Obama—drew first blood with Operation Olympic Games, which used malicious code to blow up Iran’s nuclear centrifuges, and yet America proved remarkably unprepared when its own weapons were stolen from its arsenal and, during President Trump’s first year, turned back on the United States and its allies. And if Obama would begin his presidency by helping to launch the new era of cyberwar, he would end it struggling unsuccessfully to defend the 2016 U.S. election from interference by Russia, with Vladimir Putin drawing on the same playbook he used to destabilize Ukraine. Moving from the White House Situation Room to the dens of Chinese government hackers to the boardrooms of Silicon Valley, New York Times national security correspondent David Sanger reveals a world coming face-to-face with the perils of technological revolution, where everyone is a target. “Timely and bracing . . . With the deep knowledge and bright clarity that have long characterized his work, Sanger recounts the cunning and dangerous development of cyberspace into the global battlefield of the twenty-first century.”—Washington Post




Armed Conflict, Women and Climate Change


Book Description

The gender-differentiated and more severe impacts of armed conflict upon women and girls are well recognised by the international community, as demonstrated by UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on Women, Peace and Security and subsequent resolutions. Similarly, the development community has identified gender-differentiated impacts upon women and girls as a result of the effects of climate change. Current research and analysis has reached no consensus as to any causal relationship between climate change and armed conflict, but certain studies suggest an indirect linkage between climate change effects such as food insecurity and armed conflict. Little research has been conducted on the possible compounding effects that armed conflict and climate change might have on at-risk population groups such as women and girls. Armed Conflict, Women and Climate Change explores the intersection of these three areas and allows the reader to better understand how military organisations across the world need to be sensitive to these relationships to be most effective in civilian-centric operations in situations of humanitarian relief, peacekeeping and even armed conflict. This book examines strategy and military doctrine from NATO, the UK, US and Australia, and explores key issues such as displacement, food and energy insecurity, and male out-migration as well as current efforts to incorporate gender considerations in military activities and operations. This innovative book will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, international development, international security, sustainability, gender studies and law.




Warfare Ecology


Book Description

The purpose of this book is specific and ambitious: to outline the distinctive elements, scope, and usefulness of a new and emerging field of applied ecology named warfare ecology. Based on a NATO Advanced Research Workshop held on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico, the book provides both a theoretical overview of this new field and case studies that range from mercury contamination during World War I in Slovenia to the ecosystem impacts of the Palestinian occupation, and from the bombing of coral reefs of Vieques to biodiversity loss due to violent conflicts in Africa. Warfare Ecology also includes reprints of several classical papers that set the stage for the new synthesis described by the authors. Written for environmental scientists, military and humanitarian relief professionals, conservation managers, and graduate students in a wide range of fields, Warfare Ecology is a major step forward in understanding the relationship between war and ecological systems.




Make It Rain


Book Description

Weather control. Juxtaposing those two words is enough to raise eyebrows in a world where even the best weather models still fail to nail every forecast, and when the effects of climate change on sea level height, seasonal averages of weather phenomena, and biological behavior are being watched with interest by all, regardless of political or scientific persuasion. But between the late nineteenth century—when the United States first funded an attempt to “shock” rain out of clouds—and the late 1940s, rainmaking (as it had been known) became weather control. And then things got out of control. In Make It Rain, Kristine C. Harper tells the long and somewhat ludicrous history of state-funded attempts to manage, manipulate, and deploy the weather in America. Harper shows that governments from the federal to the local became helplessly captivated by the idea that weather control could promote agriculture, health, industrial output, and economic growth at home, or even be used as a military weapon and diplomatic tool abroad. Clear fog for landing aircraft? There’s a project for that. Gentle rain for strawberries? Let’s do it! Enhanced snowpacks for hydroelectric utilities? Check. The heyday of these weather control programs came during the Cold War, as the atmosphere came to be seen as something to be defended, weaponized, and manipulated. Yet Harper demonstrates that today there are clear implications for our attempts to solve the problems of climate change.