Sam White

Christian Pfister

Franz Mauelshagen

This handbook offers the first comprehensive, state-of-the-field guide to past weather and climate and their role in human societies. Bringing together dozens of international specialists from the sciences and humanities, this volume describes the methods, sources, and major findings of historical climate reconstruction and impact research. Its chapters take the reader through each key source of past climate and weather information and each technique of analysis; through each historical period and region of the world; through the major topics of climate and history and core case studies; and finally through the history of climate ideas and science. Using clear, non-technical language, The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History serves as a textbook for students, a reference guide for specialists and an introduction to climate history for scholars and interested readers.

The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History

Christof Mauch

Catastrophes, it seems, are becoming more frequent in the twenty-first century. According to UN statistics, every year approximately two hundred million people are directly affected by natural disasters_seven times the number of people who are affected by war. Discussions about global warming and fatal disasters such as Katrina and the Tsunami of 2004 have heightened our awareness of natural disasters and of their impact on both local and global communities. Hollywood has also produced numerous disaster movies in recent years, some of which have become blockbusters. This volume demonstrates that natural catastrophes_earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, etc._have exercised a vast impact on humans throughout history and in almost every part of the world. It argues that human attitudes toward catastrophes have changed over time. Surprisingly, this has not necessarily led to a reduction of exposure or risk. The organization of the book resembles a journey around the globe_from Europe to North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, and from the Pacific through South America and Mexico to the United States. While natural disasters appear everywhere on the globe, different cultures, societies, and nations have adopted specific styles for coping with disaster. Indeed, how humans deal with catastrophes depends largely on social and cultural patterns, values, religious belief systems, political institutions, and economic structures. The roles that catastrophes play in society and the meanings they are given vary from one region to the next; they differ_and this is one of the principal arguments of this book_from one cultural, political, and geographic space to the next. The essays collected here help us to understand not only how people in different times throughout history have learned to cope with disaster but also how humans in different parts of the world have developed specific cultural, social, and technological strategies for doing so.

Case Studies Toward a Global Environmental History

Natural Disasters, Cultural Responses

Heinz Wanner

The Last Thousand Years

Climate and Society in Europe

Histoire de Nancy

Olivier de Bandt

Françoise Drumetz

La sévérité de la crise financière débutée à l'été 2007 continue de surprendre non seulement le grand public, mais aussi les praticiens de marché, de nombreux économistes et les journalistes. Face à ce défi, comme Jean Tirole l'écrit dans sa préface, "Stabilité financière prend le parti de la réflexion de long terme. Il revient aux fondamentaux : que nous disent la théorie et les observations empiriques sur les causes et les conséquences de l'instabilité financière ? Quels enseignements pouvons-nous tirer de l'économie moderne pour ne pas répéter les erreurs du passé dans un monde financier de plus en plus complexe ?" Cet ouvrage s'ouvre par une présentation des notions indispensables à l'analyse de la stabilité financière comme la liquidité, le levier, les bulles ou le risque systémique. Puis, il rend compte des causes et des mécanismes de propagation de la première crise financière du 21e siècle. Il analyse les instruments de politique publique en opérant une distinction entre les actions sur les incitations, comme le recours à la discipline de marché ou à la taxation, et les contraintes sur les activités, telles que la limitation des activités des institutions ou des marchés financiers. Les normes de liquidité et de solvabilité font l'objet de développements spécifiques, en raison de leur importance et de leur nature mixte (action sur les incitations et contraintes à respecter). Les politiques macro-prudentielles et l'interaction des politiques économiques avec la stabilité financière sont ensuite présentées. Enfin, l'architecture et la gouvernance des institutions chargées de mettre en oeuvre les politiques de stabilité financière sont décrites et évaluées. Jean Tirole relève que "Stabilité financière rend accessible une énorme littérature". L'ouvrage, "qui n'hésite pas à passer en revue des sujets techniques autrefois quasi absents du monde universitaire et pourtant indispensables à une bonne compréhension", s'adresse d'abord aux étudiants en Licence 3, en Master 1 et 2 en économie monétaire et bancaire et en finance, ainsi qu'à leurs enseignants et aux chercheurs dans ce domaine. Du fait de sa clarté d'exposition, il s'adresse aussi à un public plus large : journalistes, économistes de marché, professionnels de la finance conduits, dans l'exercice de leur métier, à s'intéresser aux défis de la stabilité financière.

Stabilité financière

Peter Brimblecombe

There is a growing need for cooperation between disciplines, not only to deal with the burning problems of the present, but to study the interaction of societies and their ecosystems in the past. In the 1970s studies in Environmental History were largely confined to North America. Recent years have brought about a vast increase in the "amount, the quality and the scope of scholarship on historical interactions between human (social and economic) de velopment and the biosphere in Europe, both East and West. This broad interest in environmental history may have been heightened and sharpened by the dangers of unbridled technology and unlimited growth, which are becoming more and more manifest. However, for several reasons it is still difficult to become familiar with the different approaches to this new and interdisciplinary of study. Many fields of thought - biology, anthropology, field geography, sociology and history - are involved; the relevant books and articles are hard to find and a coherent theoretical framework is still lacking, because the key issues have yet to be submitted to a thorough scholarly debate. It is hoped that the pre sent volume will make a contribution towards overcoming those shortcomings.

Essays in European Environmental History

The Silent COUNTDOWN

Rudolf Brázdil

Rüdiger Glaser

A multidecadal cooling is known to have occurred in Europe in the final decades of the sixteenth-century. It is still open to debate as to what might have caused the underlying shifts in atmospheric circulation and how these changes affected societies. This book is the fruit of interdisciplinary cooperation among 37 scientists including climatologists, hydrologists, glaciologists, dendroclimatologists, and economic and cultural historians. The known documentary climatic evidence from six European countries is compared to results of tree-ring studies. Seasonal temperature and precipitation are estimated from this data and monthly mean surface pressure patterns in the European area are reconstructed for outstanding anomalies. Results are compared to fluctuations of Alpine glaciers and to changes in the frequency of severe floods and coastal storms. Moreover, the impact of climate change on grain prices and wine production is assessed. Finally, it is convincingly argued that witches at that time were burnt as scapegoats for climatic change.

Climatic Variability in Sixteenth-Century Europe and Its Social Dimension

Christian Pfister

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