Stephen H. Schneider – författare

For most of history, humans have made every possible effort to accurately foretell the weather, evolving from the use of guesswork, rule of thumb, and signs in the sky to the development of contemporary forecasting techniques drawn from two scientific disciplines, climatology and meteorology.The Encyclopedia of Climate and Weather 2nd Edition provides a comprehensive history of the development of this practice, as well as provides a thoroughly up-to-date resource with many additions, revisions, and updates to this field of ever-increasing importance since the publication of the First Edition in 1996. In over 330 entries, the Encyclopedia covers essential topics that include the processes that produce weather, the circulation of the atmosphere that produces the world's climates, classification of climates, important scientific concepts used by climatologists and meteorologists, as well as the history atmospheric sciences, biographies of noteworthy contributors to the field, and significant weather events, from extreme tropical cyclones to tornadoes to hurricanes. New to this edition are articles on headline-grabbing topics that include the Kyoto Protocol, global warming, tradable permits, and extreme weather.Each entry is fully cross-referenced, to both definitions of weather- and climate-related terms as well as additional sources for further study. Over 300 photographs, maps, and charts offer highly evocative depictions of various weather and climate conditions around the world and across time. The Encyclopedia is also equipped with historical examples of disasters caused by bad weather, milestones in the development of the atmospheric sciences, and the geological time scale round out this survey, making it a comprehensive and authoritative resource for anyone doing research in this area or working in the field.

Does the solution to our energy crisis depend upon the de­ velopment of coal, nuclear, solar, or some other energy source? Are we better off because science and technology have made us less vulnerable to natural catastrophes? How, in fact, do we see ourselves now in relation to our natural world? The answers to these questions lie as much within the humanities as in the sciences. Problems as seemingly unrelated as our vulnerability to OPEC oil price hikes or a smog alert in Los Angeles or Tokyo often have common, hidden causes. One of these causes is simply the way our society sees its place in nature. There are many reasons for the heavy demand for oil. Among these we vii viii I PREFACE can include desire for industrial growth, hopes for improved living standards, mobility through automobiles and rapid transportation systems, and, not least, an attempt to loosen the constraints on man imposed by nature. These constraints and man's concomitant dependence upon nature are exam­ ples of the intense and finely interwoven relationship be­ tween man and nature, a relationship that constitutes a pri­ mordial bond forged long before the era of modem technology. Similarly, man has explored this primordial bond through the humanities for all the centuries prior to our present techno­ logical age. As we will see in this exploration, the bond un­ derlies many of the environmental and technological prob­ lems we have come to label the ecological crisis.

This project had its origins in discussions of social forecasts and forecasting method­ ologies initiated a few years ago by several social and natural science members of the Social Science Research Council's Committee on Social Indicators.