Imminent Catastrophe
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Averting Catastrophe
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Author : Cass R Sunstein
language : en
Publisher: NYU Press
Release Date : 2021-04-27
Averting Catastrophe written by Cass R Sunstein and has been published by NYU Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2021-04-27 with Social Science categories.
Best-selling author Cass R. Sunstein examines how to avoid worst-case scenarios The world is increasingly confronted with new challenges related to climate change, globalization, disease, and technology. Governments are faced with having to decide how much risk is worth taking, how much destruction and death can be tolerated, and how much money should be invested in the hopes of avoiding catastrophe. Lacking full information, should decision-makers focus on avoiding the most catastrophic outcomes? When should extreme measures be taken to prevent as much destruction as possible? Averting Catastrophe explores how governments ought to make decisions in times of imminent disaster. Cass R. Sunstein argues that using the “maximin rule,” which calls for choosing the approach that eliminates the worst of the worst-case scenarios, may be necessary when public officials lack important information, and when the worst-case scenario is too disastrous to contemplate. He underscores this argument by emphasizing the reality of “Knightian uncertainty,” found in circumstances in which it is not possible to assign probabilities to various outcomes. Sunstein brings foundational issues in decision theory in close contact with real problems in regulation, law, and daily life, and considers other potential future risks. At once an approachable introduction to decision-theory and a provocative argument for how governments ought to handle risk, Averting Catastrophe offers a definitive path forward in a world rife with uncertainty.
Averting Catastrophe
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Author : Cass R. Sunstein
language : en
Publisher: NYU Press
Release Date : 2021-04-27
Averting Catastrophe written by Cass R. Sunstein and has been published by NYU Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2021-04-27 with Social Science categories.
Best-selling author Cass R. Sunstein examines how to avoid worst-case scenarios The world is increasingly confronted with new challenges related to climate change, globalization, disease, and technology. Governments are faced with having to decide how much risk is worth taking, how much destruction and death can be tolerated, and how much money should be invested in the hopes of avoiding catastrophe. Lacking full information, should decision-makers focus on avoiding the most catastrophic outcomes? When should extreme measures be taken to prevent as much destruction as possible? Averting Catastrophe explores how governments ought to make decisions in times of imminent disaster. Cass R. Sunstein argues that using the “maximin rule,” which calls for choosing the approach that eliminates the worst of the worst-case scenarios, may be necessary when public officials lack important information, and when the worst-case scenario is too disastrous to contemplate. He underscores this argument by emphasizing the reality of “Knightian uncertainty,” found in circumstances in which it is not possible to assign probabilities to various outcomes. Sunstein brings foundational issues in decision theory in close contact with real problems in regulation, law, and daily life, and considers other potential future risks. At once an approachable introduction to decision-theory and a provocative argument for how governments ought to handle risk, Averting Catastrophe offers a definitive path forward in a world rife with uncertainty.
Christians And Catastrophe
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Author : Jonathan Ingleby
language : en
Publisher: Wide Margin
Release Date : 2010-06-03
Christians And Catastrophe written by Jonathan Ingleby and has been published by Wide Margin this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2010-06-03 with Religion categories.
Catastrophe - natural, economic, environmental and military - has become the defining feature of our time. The choice we have as Christians is how we deal with it. Do we see crisis as God's judgement or do we struggle to overcome it? Do we find our solutions through the mission of the church or through the structures of the world? Do we even have to face the crisis at all? Arguing that our approach to this world determines our experience of the next, and that what we do with this planet and its people reflects our identity and our priorities, this book is a call for Christians to learn to interpret the signs of the times and to think theologically and Biblically about their response.
The Culture Of Calamity
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Author : Kevin Rozario
language : en
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Release Date : 2019-05-23
The Culture Of Calamity written by Kevin Rozario and has been published by University of Chicago Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2019-05-23 with History categories.
Turn on the news and it looks as if we live in a time and place unusually consumed by the specter of disaster. The events of 9/11 and the promise of future attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of New Orleans, and the inevitable consequences of environmental devastation all contribute to an atmosphere of imminent doom. But reading an account of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, with its vivid evocation of buildings “crumbling as one might crush a biscuit,” we see that calamities—whether natural or man-made—have long had an impact on the American consciousness. Uncovering the history of Americans’ responses to disaster from their colonial past up to the present, Kevin Rozario reveals the vital role that calamity—and our abiding fascination with it—has played in the development of this nation. Beginning with the Puritan view of disaster as God’s instrument of correction, Rozario explores how catastrophic events frequently inspired positive reactions. He argues that they have shaped American life by providing an opportunity to take stock of our values and social institutions. Destruction leads naturally to rebuilding, and here we learn that disasters have been a boon to capitalism, and, paradoxically, indispensable to the construction of dominant American ideas of progress. As Rozario turns to the present, he finds that the impulse to respond creatively to disasters is mitigated by a mania for security. Terror alerts and duct tape represent the cynical politician’s attitude about 9/11, but Rozario focuses on how the attacks registered in the popular imagination—how responses to genuine calamity were mediated by the hyperreal thrills of movies; how apocalyptic literature, like the best-selling Left Behind series, recycles Puritan religious outlooks while adopting Hollywood’s style; and how the convergence of these two ways of imagining disaster points to a new postmodern culture of calamity. The Culture of Calamity will stand as the definitive diagnosis of the peculiarly American addiction to the spectacle of destruction.
Searching For The Catastrophe Signal
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Author : Bernie Lewin
language : en
Publisher: Gwpf Books
Release Date : 2017-11-21
Searching For The Catastrophe Signal written by Bernie Lewin and has been published by Gwpf Books this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2017-11-21 with Catastrophical, The categories.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - the IPCC - is the global authority on climate science and behind some of the most important policy changes in the history of industrial society. It is therefore probably the most influential scientific body in the world. Yet the surprising story of how it came to prominence is little known. Its origins can be traced back to earlier panics over the effects of supersonic transportation and ozone layer depletion, which taught political elites that science-based scares could be powerful drivers of policy action. It was as an authority fit to deliver the required evidence on climate change that the IPCC came into being. However, in the rush towards a climate treaty, IPCC scientists continued to report the evidence of manmade climate change was scarce and that confirmation of a manmade effect should not be expected for decades. Without a "catastrophe signal" that could justify a policy response, the panel faced its imminent demise.
Disaster
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Author : Martha Wolfenstein
language : en
Publisher: Routledge
Release Date : 2018-10-24
Disaster written by Martha Wolfenstein and has been published by Routledge this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2018-10-24 with Nature categories.
This is Volume II out of eighteen on a series of the Sociology of Behaviour and Psychology. Originally published in 1957, this study is a psychological essay and is the result of a study undertaken for the Committee on disaster Studies of the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council.
How To Think About Catastrophe
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Author : Jean-Pierre Dupuy
language : en
Publisher: MSU Press
Release Date : 2022-11-01
How To Think About Catastrophe written by Jean-Pierre Dupuy and has been published by MSU Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2022-11-01 with Philosophy categories.
During the last century humanity acquired the ability to destroy itself. The direct approach to destruction can be seen in such facts as the ever-present threat of nuclear war, but we have also developed the capacity to do indirect harm by altering conditions necessary for survival, including the looming cloud of climate change. How can we look forward and work past the dire position we now find ourselves in to achieve a sustainable future? This volume presents a new way of thinking about the future as it examines catastrophe and the human response. It examines different kinds of catastrophes that range from natural (e.g., earthquakes) to industrial (e.g., Chernobyl) and concludes that the traditional distinctions between them are only becoming blurrier by the day. This book aims to build a general theory of catastrophes—a new form of apocalyptic thinking that is grounded in science and philosophy. An ethics for the sake of the future is what is required, which in turn necessitates a new metaphysics of temporality. If a way out of the imminent danger in which we find ourselves is to be found, we must first look to radically alter our ethics.
Storms Of My Grandchildren
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Author : James Hansen
language : en
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Release Date : 2009-12-10
Storms Of My Grandchildren written by James Hansen and has been published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2009-12-10 with Nature categories.
An urgent and provocative call to action from the world's leading climate scientist-speaking out here for the first time with the full story of what we need to know about humanity's last chance to get off the path to a catastrophic global meltdown, and why we don't know the half of it. In Storms of My Grandchildren, Dr. James Hansen-the nation's leading scientist on climate issues-speaks out for the first time with the full truth about global warming: The planet is hurtling even more rapidly than previously acknowledged to a climatic point of no return. Although the threat of human-caused climate change is now widely recognized, politicians have failed to connect policy with the science, responding instead with ineffectual remedies dictated by special interests. Hansen shows why President Obama's solution, cap-and-trade, which Al Gore has signed on to, won't work; why we must phase out all coal, and why 350 ppm of carbon dioxide is a goal we must achieve if our children and grandchildren are to avoid global meltdown and the storms of the book's title. This urgent manifesto bucks conventional wisdom(including the Kyoto Protocol) and is sure to stir controversy, but Hansen-whose climate predictions have come to pass again and again, beginning in the 1980s when he first warned Congress about global warming-is the single most credible voice on the subject worldwide. Hansen paints a devastating but all-too-realistic picture of what will happen in the near future, mere years and decades from now, if we follow the course we're on. But he is also an optimist, showing that there is still time to do what we need to save the planet. Urgent, strong action is needed, and this book will be key in setting the agenda going forward to create a groundswell, a tipping point, to save humanity-and our grandchildren-from a dire fate more imminent than we had supposed.
The Future As Catastrophe
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Author : Eva Horn
language : en
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Release Date : 2018-09-18
The Future As Catastrophe written by Eva Horn and has been published by Columbia University Press this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2018-09-18 with Literary Criticism categories.
Why do we have the constant feeling that disaster is looming? Beyond the images of atomic apocalypse that have haunted us for decades, we are dazzled now by an array of possible catastrophe scenarios: climate change, financial crises, environmental disasters, technological meltdowns—perennial subjects of literature, film, popular culture, and political debate. Is this preoccupation with catastrophe questionable alarmism or complacent passivity? Or are there certain truths that can be revealed only in apocalypse? In The Future as Catastrophe, Eva Horn offers a novel critique of the modern fascination with disaster, which she treats as a symptom of our relationship to the future. Analyzing the catastrophic imaginary from its cultural and historical roots in Romanticism and the figure of the Last Man, through the narratives of climatic cataclysm and the Cold War’s apocalyptic sublime, to the contemporary popularity of disaster fiction and end-of-the-world blockbusters, Horn argues that apocalypse always haunts the modern idea of a future that can be anticipated and planned. Considering works by Lord Byron, J. G. Ballard, and Cormac McCarthy and films such as 12 Monkeys and Minority Report alongside scientific scenarios and political metaphors, she analyzes catastrophic thought experiments and the question of survival, the choices legitimized by imagined states of exception, and the contradictions inherent in preventative measures taken in the name of technical safety or political security. What makes today’s obsession different from previous epochs’ is the sense of a “catastrophe without event,” a stealthily creeping process of disintegration. Ultimately, Horn argues, imagined catastrophes offer us intellectual tools that can render a future shadowed with apocalyptic possibilities affectively, epistemologically, and politically accessible.
The Heavens Are Falling
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Author : Walter J. Karplus
language : en
Publisher: Springer
Release Date : 2013-11-11
The Heavens Are Falling written by Walter J. Karplus and has been published by Springer this book supported file pdf, txt, epub, kindle and other format this book has been release on 2013-11-11 with Nature categories.
Each day we are bombarded with news of a new catastrophe of worldwide proportions promising to obliterate a part, if not all, of humankind. Confronted with these warnings of impending doom, our best defense is to understand how valid--or invalid--these predictions of calamity are. By perceiving these threats in a wise and sagacious way, we can best meet future challenges by not earmarking precious resources for wrong or misleading reasons. Walter Karplus, a professor of computer sciences at UCLA, in his 35 years of experience has made predictions for all kinds of phenomena by generating models and computer simulations. His decades of experience have taught him what we can and cannot predict with any accuracy. Dr. Karplus surveys the most hotly debated catastrophes that many scientists have predicted will imminently endanger the lives of countless people all over the globe. These catastrophes include the depletion of the ozone layer, the Greenhouse Effect, nuclear radiation, acid rain, the AIDS epidemic, the population explosion, another Great Depression, and earthquakes. Drawing on his superb background, he assesses the strengths and weaknesses of arguments propounding the seriousness of these calamities. All the while, he never allows us to lose sight of the profound shortcomings of scientific prediction. In his singularly engaging manner, Dr. Karplus traces the fascinating art of prediction from our earliest ancestors to today. He pronounces at what point prediction, even within science, becomes a black art. He elucidates the problems that computer simulations have in predicting events and goes on to pinpoint when and where these models lapse into the area of pure conjecture. Through reason and wit, Walter Karplus teaches us how to bring a trained eye to the predictions of disaster that unceasingly assault us. The Heavens Are Falling is an illuminating and entertaining work that bestows on us the wisdom to make informed judgments before taking arms against a sea of troubles.