Poison in the Well
Poison in the Well

Author: Jacob Darwin Hamblin

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2008-01-24

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0813544238

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In the early 1990s, Russian President Boris Yeltsin revealed that for the previous thirty years the Soviet Union had dumped vast amounts of dangerous radioactive waste into rivers and seas in blatant violation of international agreements. The disclosure caused outrage throughout the Western world, particularly since officials from the Soviet Union had denounced environmental pollution by the United States and Britain throughout the cold war. Poison in the Well provides a balanced look at the policy decisions, scientific conflicts, public relations strategies, and the myriad mishaps and subsequent cover-ups that were born out of the dilemma of where to house deadly nuclear materials. Why did scientists and politicians choose the sea for waste disposal? How did negotiations about the uses of the sea change the way scientists, government officials, and ultimately the lay public envisioned the oceans? Jacob Darwin Hamblin traces the development of the issue in Western countries from the end of World War II to the blossoming of the environmental movement in the early 1970s. This is an important book for students and scholars in the history of science who want to explore a striking case study of the conflicts that so often occur at the intersection of science, politics, and international diplomacy.

Opportunities and Uses of the Ocean
Opportunities and Uses of the Ocean

Author: David A. Ross

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1461260361

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The oceans cover about 72 percent of our planet (which is named for the remaining 28 percent). These oceans have fascinated and challenged the human race for centuries. In the past, the ocean had been used first as a source of food and later as a means of transportation. However, the oceans have recently become very important-they may offer a solution to many of our modern problems. For example, refuse from land is to be dumped into the ocean never to be seen again; fish and other biological resources are to be caught and used to meet the protein deficiency of the world; oil and gas from the continental shelf and perhaps deeper areas will eventually solve our energy problems. None ofthese examples is completely possible, and the at source offood and later as a means of transportation. However, the oceans social, and ecological problems in the marine environment. Countries are al ready planning how the oceans can be divided up, so that they will get their "fair share". Economists, politicians, and others are producing almost daily, optimistic or pessimistic views (depending upon your own viewpoint) about the ocean and its resources. Equally loud reports come from environ mentalists, conservationists, government sources, and oil companies con cerning the pollution and potential destruction of the ocean.

Ocean Energies
Ocean Energies

Author: R.H. Charlier

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 1993-09-17

Total Pages: 555

ISBN-13: 0080870945

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This timely volume provides a comprehensive review of current technology for all ocean energies. It opens with an analysis of ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC), with and without the use of an intermediate fluid. The historical and economic background is reviewed, and the geographical areas in which this energy could be utilized are pinpointed. The production of hydrogen as a side product, and environmental consequences of OTEC plants are looked at. The competitiveness of OTEC with conventional sources of energy is analysed. Optimisation, current research and development potential are also examined.Separate chapters provide a detailed examination of other ocean energy sources. The possible harnessing of solar ponds, ocean currents, and power derived from salinity differences is considered. There is a fascinating study of marine winds, and the question of using the ocean tides as a source of energy is examined, focussing on a number of tidal power plant projects, including data gathered from China, Australia, Great Britain, Korea and the USSR.Wave energy extraction has excited recent interest and activity, with a number of experimental pilot plants being built in northern Europe. This topic is discussed at length in view of its greater chance of implementation. Finally, geothermal and biomass energy are considered, and an assessment of their future is given.Each chapter contains bibliographic references. The author has also distinguished between energy schemes which might be valuable in less-industrialized regions of the world, but uneconomical in the developed countries. A large number of illustrations support the text.Every effort has been made to ensure that the book is readable and accessible for the specialist as well as the non-expert. It will be of particular interest to energy economists, engineers, geologists and oceanographers, and to environmentalists and environmental engineers.

Mapping the Deep: The Extraordinary Story of Ocean Science
Mapping the Deep: The Extraordinary Story of Ocean Science

Author: Robert Kunzig

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2000-10-17

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 0393345351

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A vivid tour of the Earth's last frontier, a remote and mysterious realm that nonetheless lies close to the heart of even the most land-locked reader. The sea covers seven-tenths of the Earth, but we have mapped only a small percentage of it. The sea contains millions of species of animals and plants, but we have identified only a few thousand of them. The sea controls our planet's climate, but we do not really understand how. The sea is still the frontier, and yet it seems so familiar that we sometimes forget how little we know about it. Just as we are poised on the verge of exploiting the sea on an unprecedented scale—mining it, fertilizing it, fishing it out—this book reminds us of how much we have yet to learn. More than that, it chronicles the knowledge explosion that has transformed our view of the sea in just the past few decades, and made it a far more interesting and accessible place. From the Big Bang to that far-off future time, two billion years from now, when our planet will be a waterless rock; from the lush crowds of life at seafloor hot springs to the invisible, jewel-like plants that float at the sea surface; from the restless shifting of the tectonic plates to the majestic sweep of the ocean currents, Kunzig's clear and lyrical prose transports us to the ends of the Earth. Originally published in hardcover as The Restless Sea.

An Ocean in Common
An Ocean in Common

Author: Gary E. Weir

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2001-05-01

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 1585441147

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Through two victorious world conflicts and a Cold War, the U.S. Navy and American ocean scientists drew ever closer, converting an early marriage of necessity into a relationship of astonishing achievement. Beginning in 1919, Gary Weir's An Ocean in Common traces the first forty-two years of their joint quest to understand each other and the deep ocean. Early in the twentieth century, American naval officers questioned the tactical and strategic significance of applied ocean science, demonstrating the gap between this kind of knowledge and that deemed critical to naval warfare. At the same time, scientists studying the ocean labored in their inadequately funded, discreet disciplines, seemingly content to keep naval warfare at arm's length. German U-boat success in World War I changed these views fundamentally, bringing ocean science insights to an increasing number of naval objectives. Driven primarily by anti-submarine priorities, the physics, chemistry, and geology of the ocean, more than its biology, became the early focus of American ocean studies. The World War II experience solidified the Navy's relationship with ocean scientists, and the years after 1945 found the American military investing heavily in both applied and basic research. Today, oceanography is a permanent resident on the bridge of American fighting ships and the Navy continues to provide much of the impetus and funding for fundamental research, in both naval and civilian laboratories. In An Ocean in Common Gary Weir focuses on the compelling motives and carefully engineered course that brought scientists and naval officers together, across a considerable cultural divide, to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of one another and the world ocean. Weir details how this alliance laid the powerful multidisciplinary foundation for long-range ocean communication and surveillance, modern submarine warfare, deep submergence, and the emergence of oceanography and ocean engineering as independent and vital fields of study.

The Global Coastal Ocean
The Global Coastal Ocean

Author: Allan R. Robinson

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 1080

ISBN-13: 9780674015265

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In multidisciplinary efforts to understand and manage our planet, contemporary ocean science plays an essential role. Volumes 13 and 14 of The Sea focus on two of the most important components in the field of ocean science today--the coastal ocean and its interactions with the deep sea, and coupled physical-biogeochemical and ecosystem dynamics.