Word: carbons
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...efficiency isn't the only reason fuel cell advocates take the gadgets so seriously. In theory, unlike internal combustion engine--which spew greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere--a fuel cell's only "pollution" is pure water and electrical current...
Only a decade ago, the debate over global warming dealt mainly with whether it was a real problem or a Chicken Little scare story. In theory it made sense: we are burning more and more coal and oil; coal and oil generate carbon dioxide gas; carbon dioxide traps the sun's heat like the glass of a greenhouse. In theory, therefore, the earth's temperature should be on the rise--with potentially disastrous consequences that could include inundated coastlines, drastically altered weather, severe disturbances to agriculture, and tropical diseases' pushing into new territory. But the effect was still too small...
Julia is a computer program, a piece of genuine artificial intelligence with a crude front end (you type as if chatting on America Online). She is also spellbinding. Indeed, our conversation with Julia was so realistic my girls, convinced that a carbon-based life-form was doing the real typing, insisted the whole thing was a scam. "Do you like cats?" Julia asked us. "Nope," I typed back, nudging Zoe and Ella to watch as I tripped up the primitive program. "I like pizza." "Great," replied Julia. "I go crazy for pizza." Doh! Next, Ella, the bawdiest member...
...invitation said casual, although the occasion was anything but: dinner at the media moguls' summit, an annual gathering at which financier Herb Allen played host at his Sun Valley digs. Nobuyuki Idei was late and tired, and since he was still wearing a suit, he looked like the carbon-copy Japanese manager that Hollywood had taken to the cleaners in recent years. So the Sony Corp. president doffed his jacket and donned a Men in Black T shirt for his big entrance. "Just a little marketing gimmick," jokes Idei. "But the guests congratulated us." Idei got hoots of approval...
...definite, it is entirely, recklessly speculative. But very satisfying to his eco-apocalyptic politics. After all, if El Nino is the cause of a biblical plague of calamitous weather, and if global warming is the cause of El Nino, then you have a most beautiful link: human sin--burning carbon and, more generally, prideful exploitation of the planet for man's pleasure and greater glory--makes hail and floods and fire and brimstone fall upon us from heaven. Angry skies are no mere Act of God; they are provoked by man. It is a theology the Aztecs and the Hittites...