Word: arctics
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KOBUK VALLEY. Fifty-six kilometers (35 miles) north of the Arctic Circle, the Kobuk Valley presents another topographical surprise-a stretch of glacier-formed sand dunes, some as high as 30 meters (100 ft.), where summer temperatures can soar to more than 38° Celsius (100°F.). The desert-like dunes are more than 33,000 years old; pre-Eskimo archaeological sites along Onion Portage, which cuts through them, are estimated to be 10,000 years old and are considered among the most important in the Arctic...
GATES OF THE ARCTIC. Above the Arctic Circle in the central Brooks Range, the Gates of the Arctic is the crown jewel of Alaska's proposed parklands, a haunting, austere land of towering peaks and unspoiled wilderness. White, curly-horned Ball sheep, caribou, wolves and other game are found in the park. Nunamiut Eskimos and Athabaskan Indians venture into its vastness to hunt these animals for food...
...aside areas of this magnitude." Other conservationists, including spokesmen for the 16-organization Alaska Coalition, endorse his views. "This is it," says Jack Hession of the Alaska chapter of the Sierra Club. "This is the nation's last chance to set aside meaningfully large areas of Arctic and subarctic lands. It doesn't make sense to sacrifice the lands now for short-term economic gains...
...exactly new. Cave dwellers, Kurds, birds, bees, Bedouins, medieval Irish monks, Indians, Eskimos, Zulus, lighthouse keepers and leprechauns, to name a few, have tried it. But it took the genius of R. Buckminster Fuller, now 81, whose brilliantly engineered structures were used as radar domes on the arctic DEW line after World War II, to demonstrate conclusively that for the material used they are the strongest and most efficient way to enclose space. Moreover, they cover maximum volume with minimum surface area. Ergo, it takes less energy to heat or cool a spherical structure than the rectilinear box of traditional...
Perhaps the most intriguing scheme came from an imaginative scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. After an earlier drought in the 1950s, John Isaacs proposed towing giant, flat-topped icebergs from Antarctica (those from the Arctic would not be big enough) to the California coast; as they melted, fresh water could be siphoned out of the lakes that would form on top of them. The idea has impressed at least one country: petroleum-rich, water-poor Saudi Arabia. A French engineering firm hired by the Saudis is studying whether or not the plan is practical. Towed by six tugs...