Bill Streever - Böcker

From avalanches to glaciers and seals to snowflakes, from igloos to icebergs, permafrost to hoarfrost, chilblains to frostbite, Bill Streever unearths the consistent, ongoing influence of cold on the planet. Evoking history, myth, geography and ecology, Streever's quest for icy, forty-below cold gains purchase in July, while he's taking a dip in an Arctic swimming hole; in September, while excavating our planet's ice ages; and in October, while exploring animals' hibernation habits, from humans to wood frogs to bears. In March he even does his best to escape it, bundling up in layers of polyester, spandex and Primaloft fill to face thermometers reading twenty-three below. Streever visits an underground Cold War-era tunnel, where preserved remains mingle with new-fangled machinery and gear; weighs in on the scientific quest to reach absolute zero (-459 F); and describes how refrigeration evolved from worldwide ice shipping to the chemical coolants we know today.

A bestselling scientist and nature writer who goes to any extreme to uncover the answers, Bill Streever sets off to find out what heat really means. Let him be your guide and you'll firewalk across hot coals and sweat it out in Death Valley, experience intense fever and fire, learn about the invention of matches and the chemistry of cooking, drink crude oil, and explore thermonuclear weapons and the hottest moment of all time-the big bang.Melting glaciers, warming oceans, forest fires, droughts-it's clear that today's world is getting hotter. But while we know the agony of a sunburn or the comfort of our winter heaters, do we really understand heat?Written in Streever's signature spare and refreshing prose, HEAT is an a compulsively readable personal narrative that leaves readers with a new vision of an everyday experience-how heat works, its history, and its complete connection to daily life.

Full of mystery and danger, the deep sea has long been a symbol of the great unknown. In this dramatic and thrilling account, acclaimed biologist and deep sea diver Bill Streever shows us the incredible adventures happening in earth's almost incomprehensibly vast oceans.From the bottom of the Challenger Deep (the deepest known point in the ocean), to the earliest submarine technologies and exploratory deep dives, into the world of competitive breath-hold divers and the riskiest thrill seekers on the planet, In Oceans Deep is a human history, and a natural history of the earth's last true frontier. With treasure ship wrecks, the echoing pings of trapped submariners, and the vast expanse of otherworldly robots and oil rigs that dominate the oceanic landscape, In Oceans Deep is a rare and fascinating trip to the wild, strange, night-dark place that lies beneath the waves.

In an age of unprecedented exploration and innovation, our oceans remain largely unknown, and endlessly fascinating: full of mystery, danger, beauty, and inspiration. Bill Streever-a longtime deep-sea diver himself-has masterfully woven together the science and history of Earth's last remaining frontier: the sea. In Oceans Deep celebrates the daring pioneers who tested the limits of what the human body can endure under water: free divers able to reach 300 feet on a single breath; engineers and scientists who uncovered the secrets of decompression; teenagers who built their own diving gear from discarded boilers and garden hoses in the 1930s; saturation divers who lived under water for weeks at a time in the 1960s; and the trailblazing men who voluntarily breathed experimental gases at pressures sufficient to trigger insanity.Tracing both the little-known history and exciting future of how we travel and study the depths, Streever's captivating journey includes seventeenth-century leather-hulled submarines, their nuclear-powered descendants, a workshop where luxury submersibles are built for billionaire clients, and robots capable of roving unsupervised between continents, revolutionizing access to the ocean. In this far-flung trip to the wild, night-dark place of shipwrecks, trapped submariners, oil wells, innovative technologies, and people willing to risk their lives while challenging the deep, we discover all the adventures our seas have to offer-and why they are in such dire need of conservation.

Salt water is inundating coastal Louisiana, transforming precious wetlands into backwaters of the Gulf of Mexico. Science may hold the key to reversing the problem. But what will the cost be? And will the plan work? These are the quandaries reported in Saving Louisiana? The Battle for Coastal Wetlands. In what is unquestionably the most ambitious ecosystem management and restoration program ever proposed, calls have been made to save the Louisiana coast, with a price tag of fourteen billion dollars. And how can science contribute to the rescue? From the Mississippi River's Old River Control Structure to the pipeline canals of the Gulf's oil fields to the capitol in Baton Rouge, Saving Louisiana? follows scientists, conservationists, and politicians, as they persistently ask the same question: Can Louisiana's coastline be saved? For some experts, technical uncertainty impedes progress. For others, bureaucracy and special interests block what they see as the right path. Still others believe that the real challenge lies in determining what society really wants, so that ecosystem restoration becomes a balance of dollars against choices. Saving Louisiana? builds a story of doubt and discord that captures the technical and human drama of ecosystem restoration and management. Anyone intrigued by the big ecosystem restoration projects underway in the Florida Everglades, the Chesapeake Bay, the Puget Sound, and elsewhere will find this account of Louisiana's morass compelling and cautionary. Streever says science alone cannot save Louisiana's wetlands without attention to and appreciation of the many proposals and controversies afloat on the state's marshes and bayous. Bill Streever is a research biologist in Eagle River, Alaska, and was formerly at the Waterways Experiment Station (Wetlands Branch) in Vicksburg, Mississippi. He is the author of Bringing Back the Wetlands (1999), and his work has appeared in such periodicals as Wetlands, Journal of Environmental Management, Estuaries, and American Midland Naturalist.

An inspired and impassioned story of adventure that explores the richness of marine life and charts a path of resilience and hope. Everyone alive today is witnessing a mass extinction event caused by the more than eight billion humans who share this planet. At times, it seems there is little hope. Climate change, resource exploitation, agrochemicals, overfishing, plastics, dead zones in our oceans, drought and desertification, conversion of habitat to housing, farming, and industrial infrastructure—the list of impacts and insults goes on and on. We are, it seems, on an unalterable path that will continue to decimate biodiversity. A feeling of hopelessness, while not unwarranted, is part of the problem. Without hope, without some belief in the possibility of positive outcomes, the fight for nature is over. Why even try if the battle is already lost? While staring the problems squarely in the face, A Sea Full of Turtles offers hope for those who care about our living world. Delivered as a travel narrative set in Mexico’s Gulf of California (Sea of Cortez), at one level the book focuses on dramatically underfunded but highly successful efforts to protect sea turtles. But the book goes beyond Mexico and beyond sea turtles to look at how some humans have changed their relationship with nature—and how that change can one day end the extinction crisis. Enchanting, galvanizing, and brimming with joy and wonder, A Sea Full of Turtles will inspire immediate action to face the great challenges that lie ahead. Pessimism is the lazy way out. Optimism, it turns out, is both a reasonable and an essential attitude for us all as we fight for the beautiful diversity of life on our Earth.