Books by Vladimir Janković
Papers by Vladimir Janković
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 2025
The paper theorizes newly developing realm of generational politics — “climate citizenship”— in d... more The paper theorizes newly developing realm of generational politics — “climate citizenship”— in daily activities associated with green consumerism, solidarity, activism, and disaffection with the current economic system. The paper outlines features of climate citizenship through an alter-reality of climate impacts perceived as social objects and processes that are emancipated from the predominantly physicalist and environmental representations of the climate breakdown.
Choice Reviews Online, Jul 1, 2007
Osiris, 2011
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears... more Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Osiris, 2011
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears... more Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Weather, Local Knowledge and Everyday Life, 2009
In Georgina Endfield and Lucy Veale (eds), Cultural Histories, Memories and Extreme Weather. Lond... more In Georgina Endfield and Lucy Veale (eds), Cultural Histories, Memories and Extreme Weather. London: Routledge, 2017.
Should weather-sensitive industries be doing more to mitigate risk rather than relying on their i... more Should weather-sensitive industries be doing more to mitigate risk rather than relying on their insurance policies?
Weather, Climate, and Society, 2014
High-impact weather events are often accompanied in scientific, media, and policy circles by disc... more High-impact weather events are often accompanied in scientific, media, and policy circles by discussion of whether the events were associated with or enhanced by anthropogenic climate change. Although such discussion may be interesting scientifically, weather events will happen whether or not climate change is occurring-reducing carbon dioxide emissions will not eliminate the damage from tornadoes. Society, however, can choose to respond in a way to both reduce anthropogenic climate change and develop resilience to individual weather events. One of the long-term effects of climate change is predicted to be an increase in the intensity and frequency of many high-impact weather events. Thus, reducing greenhouse gas emissions is usually seen to be the response to the problem. Indeed, reducing humanity's impact on our planet should be pursued as a matter of highest priority. Yet, fixing the planet often receives more emphasis than being resilient to individual weather events. Three points suggest that such emphasis on climate change is misdirected. First, trying to identify an anthropogenic climate change signal from a time series of the occurrence and intensity of high-impact weather is difficult and in some cases may not be possible with the short periods of available records (e.g., tornadoes and hurricanes). Specifically, apart from some kind of tipping point that radically changes Earth's climate and weather, the time series of interannual variability of high-impact weather is often much larger than the anticipated changes due to climate change. Where the socioeconomic consequences of increases in intensity of high-impact weather due to climate change can be calculated, they are generally a fraction of the costs incurred by poor weather resilience. For example, one calculation indicates that only 13% more deaths, relative to the 1990 levels, would result by 2085 from even the warmest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenario (Goklany 2012). Second, the time scale at which most individuals and businesses plan is more consistent with weather scales (a few weeks to a few years) than climate scales (decades). Of course, large public investments (e.g., dams and flood defenses) must account for how weather might change in the future, but this does not prevent addressing socioeconomic vulnerability to highimpact weather events. Third, many situations in which the costs of disasters have been increasing have been attributed to socioeconomic factors independent from anthropogenic climate change (e.g., more high-value assets are exposed to weather-related losses). For example, avoiding construction in floodplains, implementing strong building codes, and increasing preparedness can make society more resilient to weather events. Had New Orleans been prepared enough to withstand Hurricane Katrina (repairs estimated to have cost just a few billion dollars), the estimated losses exceeding $100 billion (as well as the over 1400 deaths) would have been substantially less. Further compounding this problem is that finding money Denotes Open Access content.
Accurate and timely weather, water and climate information and products have critical importance ... more Accurate and timely weather, water and climate information and products have critical importance in world economies but their development and their relevance in the economic and meteorological contexts have generally received a poor treatment by historians and sociologists of science. The reason might be in that such information remains hidden in routine executive decisions. This may create a perception that such information is scientifically less important than the research, modelling and numerical weather prediction, the areas that currently attract most public and scholarly attention. This relative public invisibility of industrial uses of meteorological research is mirrored by the fact that there has been relatively little historical study on the applied, service and industrial meteorology compared to that devoted to research meteorology. Historians of science have generally found these areas of expertise less gripping than the historical developments in the meteorological knowledge related to numerical weather prediction, climate modelling and theoretical atmospheric research. 1 Yet throughout the twentieth century, applied meteorologyan area of research where weather data, analyses and forecasts are put to practical usebecame increasingly prominent, with an emerging number of national services and private consultancies providing services in the domains of agricultural risk assessment, air quality, transportation, construction, utilities and retail. 2 Since the 1980s in particular, there has been an unprecedented growth in the production of weather information designed to hedge against socio-economic losses caused by stochastic weather events or improve operations across industrial and service sectors sensitive to weather variations. Applied climate and weather products have since become global in reach, diverse in purposes, data-intensive and subjects of research in academic, government, and private institutions. In 2006, the total value of the commercial weather services in Europe was estimated to be 550m Euros. In the US, this market is 1 Brant Vogel, 'Bibliography of
Dolly Jorgensen and Finn Arne Jorgensen, Silver Linings: Clouds in Art and Science, Trondheim, , 2020
The chapter explores the aesthetics of aircraft condensation trails, borrowing for its title the ... more The chapter explores the aesthetics of aircraft condensation trails, borrowing for its title the moniker Ansel Adams' is claimed to have used in the 1950s to refer to the phenomena. I wish to thank Marta Goldenstein, Hester Berry, Nicholas Papadakis and Susan Makov for their kindness in giving me the permission to reproduce their art and for taking their time for interviews on their work. For their comments on the ideas developed in the paper I am especially grateful to Gavin Pretor Pinney, Berndnaut Smilde and Marie Luce Nadal as well as the participants of the workshop In the Clouds, impeccably organized by Dolly Jørgensen and hosted by the Stavanger Art Museum. My thanks also go Laura Hoff, archivist at the National Center for Atmospheric Sciences for supplying the scans of Walter Orr Robert’s photos of Flatiron contrails.
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Books by Vladimir Janković
Papers by Vladimir Janković
Vladimir Jankovic
Musee Delacroix Paris, 16 January 2018
There has been a sustained interest in Constable’s attitude towards skies; the (by now) notorious question is whether his later paintings, post-1822, show any signs of influence of Luke Howard’s classification of clouds, original published in 1803 and reprinted in his Climate of London (1818-1820). In his 1950 book, Carl Badt endorsed this position on circumstantial grounds and in 1999 John Thornes argued that Constable’s familiarity with Howard resulted in a ‘more balanced light, freshness and realistic feeling that is lacking before 1821.’ Constable’s painting that has often been assumed to demonstrate these ‘new skies’ was Hay Wain, first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1821, then, after slight revisions, at the National Gallery in 1822. During the summer of 1821, Constable worked on his cloud studies in Hempstead Heath which led scholars like Thornes to ascribe the Hay Wain’s skies as the result of these exercises.
However, the majority of art historians, including Louis Hawes, Michael Rosenthal and Graham Reynolds see no improvement in Constable’s art after the ‘skying period’. Anne Lyles argues that none of the Hampstead Heath cloud studies from 1821-2 have actually been used, nor that they would have been useful, in Constables later paintings. Even those who, like Tim Wilcox, detect an improvement in naturalistic representation of clouds after 1822, suggest that meteorological literature per se could not have materially influenced Constable technique. As a result, Gillen D’Arcy Wood suspects that ‘the rationale for the cloud studies begins to fall apart.’
In this presentation (and the forthcoming publication) I revisit these debates within the context of Constable’s ‘geographic’ engagement with landscapes to argue that Constable’s clouds substantiate a providential ‘montage’ of the English space.
Undergraduate Syllabus 2016-17
Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Society