Partiendo de la crítica de la racionalidad instrumental de las instituciones jurídicas, políticas y sociales que walter benjamin sanciona en su crítica de la violencia («zur kritik der gewalt», 1921), se tratará en estas páginas de reconstruir algunos pot ; The purpose of this article is to reconstruct some elements in walter benjamin's critique of the instrumental rationality peculiar to social, juridical and political institutions («critique of violence», 1921). With regard to this, these pages are to anal
The purpose of this article is to elucidate Benjamin's Critique of violence (Zur Kritik der Gewalt, 1921) from the perspective of political systems and democracies today, and particularly their own history of violence. Has the recent history of democracy become another history of violence? Or is it that the Cold War has given way to a new paradigm, i.e., to new fighting methods for another set of symbolic forms? These very questions are, in my view, close to the Benjamin/Schmitt debate and they must return to their original spot: the debate around the political body and the notion of law ; El propósito de este artículo es esclarecer la crítica de la violencia de Benjamin desde la perspectiva del rol de las democracias actuales y su historia de violencia ¿Es la historia reciente de la democracia otra historia de violencia? ¿Han dejado paso las guerras a bajas temperaturas a un nuevo paradigma de lucha por la preeminencia de distintas formas simbólicas, si acaso fuera posible considerar las democracias actuales como tales? Estas preguntas pueden responderse desde la óptica de la dialéctica Benjamin/Schmitt, de tal forma que el debate vuelva a su lugar originario, a saber, el cuerpo político y el debate sobre la noción de ley
Partiendo de la crítica de la racionalidad instrumental de las instituciones jurídicas, políticas y sociales que Walter Benjamin sanciona en su crítica de la violencia («Zur Kritik der Gewalt», 1921), se tratará en estas páginas de reconstruir algunos potenciales elementos de disolución de dicha racionalidad en el ámbito de lo pedagógico. En esta conexión con la esfera de lo educativo, Benjamin parece asociarse con algunas estrategias de la filosofía de Kant. The purpose of this article is to reconstruct some elements in Walter Benjamin's critique of the instrumental rationality peculiar to social, juridical and political institutions («Critique of violence», 1921). With regard to this, these pages are to analyse those philosophical motifs concerning law, pedagogy and language which are to counteract this instrumental reason. When it comes to pedagogy and education, Kant plays a major role in certain strategies developed here by Benjamin himself.
The purpose of this article is to assess in a critical fashion the way Giorgio Agamben reads Walter Benjamin's essay on violence. I will particularly focus on the way Agamben relates this essay to other works by Carl Schmitt and Franz Kafka. Given his effort to steer Benjamin towards the concepts of «mere life» and certain qualities of the homo sacer, I will try to relocate Benjamin where his political essay belongs and, at the same time, re-read Agamben at his strongest points, but also at his weakest. ; El propósito de este artículo es evaluar críticamente la lectura de Giorgio Agamben del ensayo sobre la violencia de Walter Benjamin, muy particularmente en sus relaciones con otras obras relevantes de Franz Kafka y Carl Schmitt. A partir del intento de Agamben de derivar la «nuda vida» y ciertas determinaciones de su homo sacer del texto de Benjamin, buscaré situar la crítica de la violencia en el lugar que le corresponde, así como repensar la propia obra de Agamben, tan valiosa en algunos puntos como discutible en otros.
We investigate the effects of solar forcing on the North Atlantic (NA) summer climate, in climate simulations with Earth System Models (ESMs), over the preindustrial past millennium (AD 850–1849). We use one simulation and a four-member ensemble performed with the MPI-ESM-P and CESM-LME models, respectively, forced only by low-scaling variations in Total Solar Irradiance (TSI). We apply linear methods (correlation and regression) and composite analysis to estimate the NA surface and tropospheric climatic responses to decadal solar variability. Linear methods in the CESM ensemble indicate a weak summer response in sea-level pressure (SLP) and 500-hPa geopotential height to TSI, with decreased values over Greenland and increased values over the NA subtropics. Composite analysis indicates that, during high-TSI periods, SLP decreases over eastern Canada and the geopotential height at 500-hPa increases over the subtropical NA. The possible summer response of SSTs is overlapped by model internal variability. Therefore, for low-scaling TSI changes, state-of-the-art ESMs disagree on the NA surface climatic effect of solar forcing indicated by proxy-based studies during the preindustrial millennium. The analysis of control simulations indicates that, in all climatic variables studied, spurious patterns of apparent solar response may arise from the analysis of single model simulations. ; This research partly received external funding from the framework of the European Initial Marie Curie Training network ARAMACC (Annually resolved Archives of Marine Climate Change). This project has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 604802. ; Peer Reviewed ; Postprint (published version)
This study evaluates the performance of statistical models applied to the output of numerical models for short-term (1–24 h) hourly wind forecasts at three locations in the Basque Country. The target variables are horizontal wind components and the maximum wind gust at 3 h intervals. Statistical approaches such as persistence, analogues, linear regression, and random forest (RF) are used. The verification statistics used are coefficient of determination (R2) and root mean square error (RMSE). Statistical models use three inputs: (1) Local wind observations; (2) extended EOFs (empirical orthogonal functions) derived from past local observations and ERA-Interim variables in a previous 24-h period covering a domain around the area of study; and (3) wind forecasts provided by ERA-Interim. Results indicate that, for horizons less than 1–4 h, persistence is the best model. For longer predictions, RF provides the best forecasts. For horizontal components at 4–24 h horizons, RF slightly outperformed ERA-Interim wind forecasts. For gust, RF performs better than ERA-Interim for all the horizons. Persistence is the most influential factor for 2–5 h. Beyond this horizon, predictors from the ERA-Interim wind forecasts led the contribution. Hybrid numerical–statistical methods can be used to improve short-term wind forecasts. ; This work was supported by the Spanish Government, MINECO project CGL2016-76561-R (MINECO/EU ERDF), and the University of the Basque Country (project GIU17/02).
At the beginning of the Medieval Climate Anomaly, in the ninth and tenth century, the medieval eastern Roman empire, more usually known as Byzantium, was recovering from its early medieval crisis and experiencing favourable climatic conditions for the agricultural and demographic growth. Although in the Balkans and Anatolia such favourable climate conditions were prevalent during the eleventh century, parts of the imperial territories were facing significant challenges as a result of external political/military pressure. The apogee of medieval Byzantine socio-economic development, around AD 1150, coincides with a period of adverse climatic conditions for its economy, so it becomes obvious that the winter dryness and high climate variability at this time did not hinder Byzantine society and economy from achieving that level of expansion. Soon after this peak, towards the end of the twelfth century, the populations of the Byzantine world were experiencing unusual climatic conditions with marked dryness and cooler phases. The weakened Byzantine socio-political system must have contributed to the events leading to the fall of Constantinople in AD 1204 and the sack of the city. The final collapse of the Byzantine political control over western Anatolia took place half century later, thus contemporaneous with the strong cooling effect after a tropical volcanic eruption in AD 1257. We suggest that, regardless of a range of other influential factors, climate change was also an important contributing factor to the socio-economic changes that took place in Byzantium during the Medieval Climate Anomaly. Crucially, therefore, while the relatively sophisticated and complex Byzantine society was certainly influenced by climatic conditions, and while it nevertheless displayed a significant degree of resilience, external pressures as well as tensions within the Byzantine society more broadly contributed to an increasing vulnerability in respect of climate impacts. Our interdisciplinary analysis is based on all available sources ...
At the beginning of the Medieval Climate Anomaly, in the ninth and tenth century, the medieval eastern Roman empire, more usually known as Byzantium, was recovering from its early medieval crisis and experiencing favourable climatic conditions for the agricultural and demographic growth. Although in the Balkans and Anatolia such favourable climate conditions were prevalent during the eleventh century, parts of the imperial territories were facing significant challenges as a result of external political/military pressure. The apogee of medieval Byzantine socio-economic development, around AD 1150, coincides with a period of adverse climatic conditions for its economy, so it becomes obvious that the winter dryness and high climate variability at this time did not hinder Byzantine society and economy from achieving that level of expansion. Soon after this peak, towards the end of the twelfth century, the populations of the Byzantine world were experiencing unusual climatic conditions with marked dryness and cooler phases. The weakened Byzantine socio-political system must have contributed to the events leading to the fall of Constantinople in AD 1204 and the sack of the city. The final collapse of the Byzantine political control over western Anatolia took place half century later, thus contemporaneous with the strong cooling effect after a tropical volcanic eruption in AD 1257. We suggest that, regardless of a range of other influential factors, climate change was also an important contributing factor to the socio-economic changes that took place in Byzantium during the Medieval Climate Anomaly. Crucially, therefore, while the relatively sophisticated and complex Byzantine society was certainly influenced by climatic conditions, and while it nevertheless displayed a significant degree of resilience, external pressures as well as tensions within the Byzantine society more broadly contributed to an increasing vulnerability in respect of climate impacts. Our interdisciplinary analysis is based on all available sources of information on the climate and society of Byzantium, that is textual (documentary), archaeological, environmental, climate and climate model-based evidence about the nature and extent of climate variability in the eastern Mediterranean. The key challenge was, therefore, to assess the relative influence to be ascribed to climate variability and change on the one hand, and on the other to the anthropogenic factors in the evolution of Byzantine state and society (such as invasions, changes in international or regional market demand and patterns of production and consumption, etc.). The focus of this interdisciplinary
Global and regional change clearly affects the structure and functioning of ecosystems in shelf seas. However, complex interactions within the shelf seas hinder the identification and unambiguous attribution of observed changes to drivers. These include variability in the climate system, in ocean dynamics, in biogeochemistry, and in shelf sea resource exploitation in the widest sense by societies. Observational time series are commonly too short, and resolution, integration time, and complexity of models are often insufficient to unravel natural variability from anthropogenic perturbation. The North Sea is a shelf sea of the North Atlantic and is impacted by virtually all global and regional developments. Natural variability (from interannual to multidecadal time scales) as response to forcing in the North Atlantic is overlain by global trends (sea level, temperature, acidification) and alternating phases of direct human impacts and attempts to remedy those. Human intervention started some 1000 years ago (diking and associated loss of wetlands), expanded to near-coastal parts in the industrial revolution of the mid-19th century (river management, waste disposal in rivers), and greatly accelerated in the mid-1950s (eutrophication, pollution, fisheries). The North Sea is now a heavily regulated shelf sea, yet societal goals (good environmental status versus increased uses), demands for benefits and policies diverge increasingly. Likely, the southern North Sea will be re-zoned as riparian countries dedicate increasing sea space for offshore wind energy generation - with uncertain consequences for the system's environmental status. We review available observational and model data (predominantly from the southeastern North Sea region) to identify and describe effects of natural variability, of secular changes, and of human impacts on the North Sea ecosystem, and outline developments in the next decades in response to environmental legislation, and in response to increased use of shelf sea space
