On the Shelf at CCBC Libraries
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Sea Level
by
Traces a commonplace average--sea level--from its origins in charting land to its emergence as a symbol of global warming. News reports warn of rising sea levels spurred by climate change. Waters inch ever higher, disrupting delicate ecosystems and threatening island and coastal communities. The baseline for these measurements--sea level--may seem unremarkable, a long-familiar zero point for altitude. But as Wilko Graf von Hardenberg reveals, the history of defining and measuring sea level is intertwined with national ambitions, commercial concerns, and shifting relationships between people and the ocean. Sea Level provides a detailed and innovative account of how mean sea level was first defined, how it became the prime reference point for surveying and cartography, and how it emerged as a powerful mark of humanity's impact on the earth. With Hardenberg as our guide, we traverse the muddy spaces of Venice and Amsterdam, the coasts of the Baltic Sea, the Panama and Suez canals, and the Himalayan foothills. Born out of Enlightenment studies of physics and quantification, sea level became key to state-sponsored public works, colonial expansion, Cold War development of satellite technologies, and recognizing the climate crisis. Mean sea level, Hardenberg reveals, is not a natural occurrence--it has always been contingent, the product of people, places, politics, and evolving technologies. As global warming transforms the globe, Hardenberg reminds us that a holistic understanding of the ocean and its changes requires a multiplicity of reference points. A fascinating story that revises our assumptions about land and ocean alike, Sea Level calls for a more nuanced understanding of this baseline, one that allows for new methods and interpretations as we navigate an era of unstable seas.
Call Number: GC89 .H37 2024 -
Rising
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FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE IN GENERAL NONFICTION WINNER OF THE NATIONAL OUTDOOR BOOK AWARD ACHICAGO TRIBUNE TOP TEN BOOK OF 2018 AGUARDIAN, NPR'sSCIENCE FRIDAY,PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, ANDLIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2018 Hailed as "deeply felt" (New York Times), "a revelation" (Pacific Standard), and "the book on climate change and sea levels that was missing" (Chicago Tribune),Rising is both a highly original work of lyric reportage and a haunting meditation on how to let go of the places we love. With every passing day, and every record-breaking hurricane, it grows clearer that climate change is neither imagined nor distant--and that rising seas are transforming the coastline of the United States in irrevocable ways. InRising, Elizabeth Rush guides readers through some of the places where this change has been most dramatic, from the Gulf Coast to Miami, and from New York City to the Bay Area. For many of the plants, animals, and humans in these places, the options are stark: retreat or perish in place. Weaving firsthand testimonials from those facing this choice--a Staten Islander who lost her father during Sandy, the remaining holdouts of a Native American community on a drowning Isle de Jean Charles, a neighborhood in Pensacola settled by escaped slaves hundreds of years ago--with profiles of wildlife biologists, activists, and other members of these vulnerable communities,Rising privileges the voices of those too often kept at the margins.
Call Number: GB459.4 .R86 2018
Online From CCBC Libraries
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Introducing Sea Level Change
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One of the most important issues in current debates on climate change is sea level rise. Hardly a day goes by when there is not a newspaper article, TV or radio presentation on the topic. Nearly half of the world's population live on or near the coast, so there is real concern about the impact that future sea level rise may have. Yet media predictions of future changes tend to be depicted in a sensationalist manner and quite often the explanations of the science of sea level change bear little relation to reality. This book details the history of scientific discoveries that have explained the patterns of sea level change that have taken place across the Earth in the past. Alastair Dawson introduces the many complex processes, some of which are not well-known, that influence patterns and rates of relative sea level change. Using this knowledge, the reader is much better placed to form a clearer perspective on what the future is likely to have in store for sea levels on Earth.Alastair Dawson first addresses some of the most important misconceptions about the topic of sea level change. He then explains the principal causes of sea level change focusing on the key issues of vertical land movements and changes in global ocean volume. He explores the key areas of science that we need to understand in order to evaluate competing assertions of how sea level is likely to change in the future. He also shows how, remarkably, the melting history of the last great ice sheets on Earth is still playing an important part in contributing to present patterns of sea level change. The book concludes with a consideration of the rates and patterns of sea level change that have occurred over the last century and demonstrates how satellite technology is presently contributing new ways of understanding of present patterns of change.
Publication Date: 2018 -
Retreat from a Rising Sea
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Melting ice sheets and warming oceans are causing the seas to rise. By the end of this century, hundreds of millions of people living at low elevations along coasts will be forced to retreat to higher and safer ground. Because of sea-level rise, major storms will inundate areas farther inland and will lay waste to critical infrastructure, such as water-treatment and energy facilities, creating vast, irreversible pollution by decimating landfills and toxic-waste sites. This big-picture, policy-oriented book explains in gripping terms what rising oceans will do to coastal cities and the drastic actions we must take now to remove vulnerable populations. The authors detail specific threats faced by Miami, New Orleans, New York, and Amsterdam. Aware of the overwhelming social, political, and economic challenges that would accompany effective action, they consider the burden to the taxpayer and the logistics of moving landmarks and infrastructure, including toxic-waste sites. They also show readers the alternative: thousands of environmental refugees, with no legitimate means to regain what they have lost. The authors conclude with effective approaches for addressing climate-change denialism and powerful arguments for reforming U.S. federal coastal management policies.
Publication Date: 2016 -
The Remembered Land
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How did small-scale societies in the past experience and respond to sea-level rise? What happened when their dwellings, hunting grounds and ancestral lands were lost under an advancing tide? This book asks these questions in relation to the hunter-gatherer inhabitants of a lost prehistoric land; a land that became entirely inundated and now lies beneath the North Sea. It seeks to understand how these people viewed and responded to their changing environment, suggesting that people were not struggling against nature, but simply getting on with life - with all its trials and hardships, satisfactions and pleasures, and with a multitude of choices available. At the same time, this loss of land - the loss of places and familiar locales where myths were created and identities formed - would have profoundly affected people's sense of being. This book moves beyond the static approach normally applied to environmental change in the past to capture its nuances. Through this, a richer and more complex story of past sea-level rise develops; a story that may just have resonance for us today.
Publication Date: 2015
Ocean City, Maryland
Tools
Streaming Video
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Two Degrees : The Point of No Return Sea Level RiseAs the Earth's average temperature rises each year, experts warn that we are nearing a fatal tipping point, 2 degrees Celsius above the norm that will set into motion a cascade of natural disasters that will devastate America and the world.
Databases
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Environment Complete This link opens in a new window
Articles about ecology, energy, natural resources, science, technology, law, public policy, and social impacts.
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Science Database
Articles on both the applied and general sciences like aerospace, computers, transportation, and biology.
Articles
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Is Sea Level Rising?
from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) -
Sea Level Rise is Accelerating
from NASA Earth Observatory -
Planning For Sea Level Rise
from NOAA
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Sea Level Trends
from NOAA
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Sea Level Rise Hits Home at NASA
from NASA Earth Observatory
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Antarctica's Effect on Sea Level Rise in Coming Centuries
from NASA Jet Propulsion Lab
