Word: absorber
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Experience has shown the Third World that destruction of forests can have disastrous consequences. Forests are vital watersheds that absorb excess moisture and anchor topsoil. Deforestation contributed to the recent droughts in Africa and the devastating mud slides in Rio de Janeiro last year. In Costa Rica topsoil eroded from bald hills has greatly shortened the life of an expensive hydroelectric dam. Alvaro Umana, Costa Rica's Minister of Industry, Energy and Mines, estimated that the surrounding watershed might have been protected 20 years ago for a cost of $5 million. Now the government must reforest the watershed...
...more immediate concern is that the chlorine released when CFC molecules break up destroys ozone molecules. The ozone layer, located in the stratosphere, between 10 and 30 miles up, is vital to the well being of plants and animals. Ozone molecules, which consist of three oxygen atoms, absorb most of the ultraviolet radiation that comes from the sun. And ultraviolet is extremely dangerous to life on earth...
...early 1800s, man suddenly threw a new factor into the climatic equation. Carbon dioxide is released in large quantities when wood and such fossil fuels as coal, oil and natural gas are burned. As society industrialized, coal- burning factories began releasing CO2 faster than plants and oceans, which absorb the gas, could handle it. In the early 1900s, people began burning oil and gas at prodigious rates. And increasing population led to the widespread cutting of trees in less developed countries. These trees are no longer available to soak up excess CO2, and whether they are burned or left...
Dirty air? Look outside the window. There stands the most efficient antipollution device ever made: trees. "They absorb carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide and give out oxygen. What could be more desirable? And they look good in the bargain. Stop chopping down the rain forests and plant more saplings...
...Strategic stability is the holy grail to defense planners," says former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. Hopes of achieving national military superiority disappeared in the radioactive clouds over Hiroshima; today nuclear deterrence is built on the shaky assurance that either the U.S. or the Soviet Union could absorb an attack and still devastate its enemy in response. By this logic, a first strike would never be attempted...