conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a book titled The Dynamics of Disaster about Geologist, Haiti, Japan with the genre: Science & Math, Earth Sciences.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: After surviving natural disasters, from hurricanes to earthquakes to landslides, why do we persist in rebuilding with confidence that technology will protect us from the next time, if there is one? Geologist the author argues that we dont understand disasters as well as we should. She contrasts stealth disasters caused by long-term human impact, including climate change and soil erosion, with natural disasters or acts of God, which are also increasingly affected by human actions. She offers a geological field trip around the planet to illustrate the incredible diversity of geology and to impress readers with a sense of the broad time-scales, from decades to centuries, of geological change. She explores the dynamics of earthquakes in Haiti, tsunamis in Japan, landslides in Switzerland, volcanic eruptions in the Philippines, hurricanes in Missouri, and droughts and deadly floods in Australia. the author ends each chapter with reflections on how warnings are issued and the public respondssometimes ignoring warnings perceived as too frequentand recommends a Center for Disaster Control for Planet Earth. Photos enhance the drama of this highly accessible look at disasters. --Vanessa Bush
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Dynamics of Disaster
  The positive side of these case studies is that they illustrate that we know a lot about earthquakes and tsunamis, and that we know how to study them. On the other hand, forecasts such as these that have large windows of uncertainty are limited in their direct usefulness. We discussed a similar problem in the Reflections section of Chapter 3 with the use of statistics and probability.
  These tsunamis cannot be prevented, but surely the deaths of hundreds of thousands or a million people can—even given the large uncertainties of predicted place and time in forecasts. Development and deployment of monitoring systems to detect tsunamis as they are born and to follow their progress across oceans, combined with speedy warning systems, public awareness, wise decisions about land use, appropriate construction practices, and disaster drills, can all greatly reduce future loss of life in such regions.
  Tsunamis, although disastrously big onshore, are tiny on the open ocean compared to some monster "rogue waves" that roam the oceans (Figure 7.1). Nowhere is this better known than at the site of the "toughest yacht race in the world," which takes place offshore of Australia. On Sunday, December 27, 1998, during the famous Sydney–Hobart maxi-yacht race, six people died, five boats had to be abandoned, and two sank during a ten-hour storm. Of the 115 boats that started the race in Sydney, only 44 made it to Hobart. At one point in the rescue effort—the largest sea rescue operation in Australian history—the pilot of a helicopter hovering 100 feet above the sea surface saw an enormous approaching wave. Climbing as fast as possible to 150 feet, he noted that the altimeter showed that he had cleared the wave by 10 feet. The wave was 140 feet high, the largest rogue wave for which an actual measurement exists.
  Like tsunamis, rogue waves are a manifestation of a change of state in the ocean surface, but in their dynamics these waves are completely different from tsunamis. To investigate how rogue waves differ from tsunamis, our field trip takes us to a number of places in the midlatitudes, 30°–60° north and south of the equator, to look at the dynamics of the atmosphere-ocean system and why rogue waves can form where they do.
  FIGURE 7.1 Great Wave off Kanagawa, by Katsushika Hokusai. Usually interpreted as a tsunami, the wave in this print is actually a rogue wave off Kanagawa Prefecture south of Tokyo, Japan, an area of notoriously dangerous shipping conditions in the Kuroshio Current.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Flowing at the top of the troposphere, the jets have variable elevations between 12,000 and 80,000 feet, with the subtropical jet being higher than the polar jet because the troposphere is higher in the tropics than in the polar regions. The jet streams can be several hundred miles wide and 1–2 miles deep, and they can flow at speeds of up to 400 mph. Jet stream winds generally flow from west to east, but they have a loopy structure and flow in various directions, even "backward," from east to west, in some segments. The loopiness, known as a Rossby wave, has a wavelength of about 1,800–2,400 miles and arises primarily because the Coriolis effect has different strengths at different latitudes. The jets can split apart, re-join, reverse, or simply stop.
  In the Northern Hemisphere, segments of loops extending south are called "troughs," and segments extending north are "ridges." (You will hear these terms used frequently by meteorologists and weather reporters.) Without troughs and ridges, winds in the jet stream would move primarily from west to east, but the troughs and ridges cause the winds to circulate around low- or high-pressure cores. In the Northern Hemisphere, troughs host major low-pressure systems that have counterclockwise circulation, and ridges host high-pressure systems that have clockwise circulation. The direction of circulation is reversed in the Southern Hemisphere. Typically, a trough-ridge system might cover the whole US. Within it, smaller-scale circulation features ("cyclonic" features) can form at many scales—even down to individual tornadoes.
  Hurricanes are powerful tropical storms that fall into the general category of "tropical cyclones," where the term "tropical" refers to the regions in which they form, and the term "cyclone"—originating from the Greek word kykloun—means "going around." Kykloun refers to the rotation of winds in a circle around a core that characterizes the storms. Hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons are the same phenomena; the different names are used to describe these storms in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, respectively.
  Normally, an Atlantic hurricane starts in the tropics, where it is blown from east to west by the prevailing easterly trade winds. Then, as it moves north into the midlatitudes, it is blown in the opposite direction by the midlatitude westerlies (see Figure 7.10). The westerlies push most hurricanes to the northeast, away from the East Coast of the US, where they sputter out at sea or attack eastern Canada. Such was the case in 2011 with Hurricane Irene, which, after soaking Quebec and the Maritime Provinces of Canada, died in the Labrador Sea.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Reverse the sentences.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Such was the case in 2011 with Hurricane Irene, which, after soaking Quebec and the Maritime Provinces of Canada, died in the Labrador Sea.. The westerlies push most hurricanes to the northeast, away from the East Coast of the US, where they sputter out at sea or attack eastern Canada.10). Then, as it moves north into the midlatitudes, it is blown in the opposite direction by the midlatitude westerlies (see Figure 7.
  Normally, an Atlantic hurricane starts in the tropics, where it is blown from east to west by the prevailing easterly trade winds. Hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons are the same phenomena; the different names are used to describe these storms in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, respectively." Kykloun refers to the rotation of winds in a circle around a core that characterizes the storms.
  Hurricanes are powerful tropical storms that fall into the general category of "tropical cyclones," where the term "tropical" refers to the regions in which they form, and the term "cyclone"—originating from the Greek word kykloun—means "going around. Within it, smaller-scale circulation features ("cyclonic" features) can form at many scales—even down to individual tornadoes. Typically, a trough-ridge system might cover the whole US. The direction of circulation is reversed in the Southern Hemisphere. In the Northern Hemisphere, troughs host major low-pressure systems that have counterclockwise circulation, and ridges host high-pressure systems that have clockwise circulation.) Without troughs and ridges, winds in the jet stream would move primarily from west to east, but the troughs and ridges cause the winds to circulate around low- or high-pressure cores." (You will hear these terms used frequently by meteorologists and weather reporters.
  In the Northern Hemisphere, segments of loops extending south are called "troughs," and segments extending north are "ridges. The jets can split apart, re-join, reverse, or simply stop. The loopiness, known as a Rossby wave, has a wavelength of about 1,800–2,400 miles and arises primarily because the Coriolis effect has different strengths at different latitudes. Jet stream winds generally flow from west to east, but they have a loopy structure and flow in various directions, even "backward," from east to west, in some segments. The jet streams can be several hundred miles wide and 1–2 miles deep, and they can flow at speeds of up to 400 mph.Flowing at the top of the troposphere, the jets have variable elevations between 12,000 and 80,000 feet, with the subtropical jet being higher than the polar jet because the troposphere is higher in the tropics than in the polar regions
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last four paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: To paraphrase the CDC mandate, and to think about it on a global scale instead of a national scale, we propose that:
  Again, loosely following the CDC, we propose that in carrying out its activities, the CDC-PE might have the following six core functions:
  The CDC-PE was simply an abstract concept to guide our thinking, and we concluded that it must be (1) global, (2) credible, (3) scientifically based, and (4) sensitive to political, economic, religious, and cultural values. The United Nations has, in fact, an Office for Disaster Risk Reduction that aims to accomplish these goals, but even they, through their Scientific and Technical Committee, have stated that better mechanisms are needed for integrating science and technology into policy and practice. Much remains to be done. Individually, we can start by applying these concepts to our lives at whatever local levels we can ("think global, act local," "do unto your neighbor as you would have done unto you") and abiding by the ancient wisdom that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"—that is, live by the precautionary principle. If we have the collective will to think about ourselves and our relation to the planet at the scale of a "CDC for Planet Earth," we can greatly reduce the impact of disasters on us, as well as our impact on the resources of the planet.
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